Rio -- or the illusion of Rio, I couldn't be sure which -- led me through the gates to the inner ring and true to her word, gave me a tour of their innermost workings. As a high priestess myself, apparently, nothing in the city was barred from me, and all of her secrets would be mine to know.

And as I learned those secrets, two very large, very disturbing truths emerged, both of which unsettled me tremendously.

One: we already suspected. But within the pearly walls of the innermost buildings were weapons and artifacts like I could not begin to fathom. Everything from the XPCA's exotics grenades to spindly guns, so delicate and carefully-wrought that it looked like they would fall apart as soon fire. And more -- clubs, swords, warheads, shields, exosuits, and hundreds and hundreds of other unfathomable, unrecognizable arms...it was like a museum of every possible method of war ever conceived, but twisted with the impossible exotics tech that made each piece so, so beyond their humble ancestors.

And two: Rio scared me. Yes, for the obvious delight and rapture she had as she walked me past the rows of weapons, caressing them like old lovers, her eyes aglow with the desire to flip them on and try them out. But more, because she turned those same eyes on me, like I was the most attractive bombshell of the bunch, and it was all she could do to keep herself from jumping on me then and there.

"These are some of my favorites," she purred, as she introduced me to yet another rack of weapons. "I call them Enervators. A whole family of weapons, because just one wasn't enough to work out that...you know, kink."

She hefted a device in her arms that must have been heavier than it looked. Shaped like an uppercase D more than a gun, the middle end of it nonetheless had a large hole that some kind of death invariably shot out of.

"Useless around here. I've never been able to test it myself, and so I haven't let go of any yet -- against our principles to sell products if we can't confirm they work, you know. Because there's no electricity here. The Enervators...beautiful instruments...they sap all electrical potential from anything inorganic. We've had some scuffles with the XPCA in the past, and I keep hoping they'll try flying some of their planes against us again so I can make them fall out of the sky."

She sighed wistfully as she held up the device's sights to her eye and made a trigger-pulling gesture and a muttered pew. Thankfully she didn't actually fire it, because if it worked as she described, I'd be completely inoperable.

"Um, so this is great," I said. "But why?"

She blinked at me. "It's my calling." As though that cleared everything up. So much so that she began moving on to the next set of rooms, even.

"Wait, come on," I said, catching up to her. "You just...decide to...have a billion guns? And that's your goal in life? How do you know you aren't like...called to crochet or something? I've seen a marked lack of lace doilies in Oasis, and I think that's a niche that needs filling far more than this one."

She chuckled at my presumed joke. "I guess you might not understand quite yet. But as a high priestess, you'll find your calling soon enough."

"What the heck is a calling? And...maybe this is stupid of me to ask, but how the heck are you so certain about me being a high priestess anyway? What's that even mean? Like, I walked in here yesterday. Maybe I hate it here, maybe I'm...I dunno, an anarchist, who just wants to ruin Oasis. How can you promote me to the top of your strata without so much as a wink of oversight?"

She smiled at me like I was a child, which is something I didn't know I hated until she did it. "What does the word 'priestess' mean to you?" she asked, leadingly.

"I don't know. Rituals? Fancy robes? A lot of hooey, more often than not?"

"How about...faith?"

"Okay, sure. Probably some kind of religion involved for you to be a priestess of. Religion is founded on faith. So?"

"So I don't have to question or wink at your oversights because I have faith. You were chosen, and so I know you will be right."

I sighed enormously at her. "Chosen. Yeah. Sure."

She sighed right back, and tossed in a shrug and a shake of her head for good measure. "I know...this might surprise you, but...all of your friends that you came with, they're no longer here. Not like we are."

"Yeah, they're trapped in their own little illusionary worlds, I noticed. You can fix that, right? I'm sort of attached."

"Only a select few are given the true sight to see the world as it really is, to live outside the visions. They are the chosen, they are you, and me, and all the other high priests and priestesses. Some of the others might be useful in our callings, and they are made priests and priestesses and work among us, but they do so through the vision. Only a very few of us can truly see."

"Oh, I added something to what 'priestess' means to me. Cults."

"There's no need to be mean. We are no cult. Though you might be overwhelmed now, you can't deny our god. He exists, and his love is the order in Oasis. Every measured step and angled wall reflects his glory--"

"Oh here we go."

"But if that isn't sufficient for you, you need look no further than the visions. You saw them yourself, and he is their source. Through them, he creates perfect lives for all those within, where they can work for the good of the city while also experiencing a completeness impossible in the sighted world."

I tried not to make my backing away too obvious, but I was coming to a third disturbing truth about this place. She was a straight-up zealot, worse even than Karu.

"Oookay," I said. "Guess it doesn't matter to your god that there are things like...I dunno...personal liberty? Freedom? Autonomy?"

"Of course they do. That is why you and I and the others are blessed with sight. The city itself, existing eternally through the toil of hundreds just to exist...that would be pointless. Nothing would come of it but existing for its own sake. That's the true purpose of the high clergy, and our callings. What we decide, the city becomes."

"Yeah, you lost me halfway between the logical fallacy and the mythological bullshit."

"I said you don't have to be rude," she said, sounding legitimately hurt. "I'm only trying to explain. I don't think you understand how lucky you are. There are over a thousand in Oasis, and hundreds of Exhumans. And only a very, very few are high clergy. You can do whatever you wish, any dream you want to fulfill, the city is yours to fulfill it."

I blinked at her. "You're serious."

She nodded.

"So like…" I looked around. "These guns. This was someone's idea of a good idea. They said, 'I'd really like to focus on creating the most devastating, destructive, efficient death-creating devices the world's ever known. And then they used the resources of a few thousand mind-fucked people and Exhumans all bent to their service to make it happen?"

She stared at me. I stared back. And then I was very surprised when she started to cry.

"Why do you have to be so mean about this?" she wailed, and I was reminded that not a minute ago, she was looking at me like I was a child. "I was so excited to finally have a new high priestess and...and you're just being rotten and cruel."

"I'm not the one making the guns! They're the crazy one, go yell at them."

"I'm the one making the guns!" she shouted back. "That is my calling, and you are dismissing my life's work."

Well, I suppose I should have seen that coming. Still, my foot was too far in my mouth now to back out. I pushed my glasses up and rubbed my eyes as I thought.

"Look," I said, keeping my voice calming. "The truth is, all of us came here because those weapons of yours...they're really messing up the outside world. There's a pretty awful guy who's selling them and building himself an army and empire of wealth and corruption--"

"And my weapons are being used for that?" she asked, startled. I nodded. And then she surprised me again by suddenly beaming. "Hooray! They're being used!"

"Are you not listening to what I'm saying?" I asked. "Exhumans have a bad rap because they're so much stronger than everyone around them. They develop this power advantage, and then there's a constant temptation to exploit it. 'Why work when I can just take?' they think. And now you've introduced these weapons to the equation and made it so that anyone with enough money can just buy powers. There were people protesting IkaCo and he just had them annihilated, and the whole thing was covered up and painted them the bad guys."

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She thought for a moment, leaning against a bench of guns. "It sounds to me like the problem lies in the disparity."

"Yes, exactly."

"So the solution is," she turned around to face them. "More weapons, of course. If there are enough for everyone, then nobody can take advantage of anyone anymore."

I almost bruised my synthetic skin with how fast my palm met my forehead. "No. Seriously. You're just...you don't even--"

I stopped and did a mental reset, dropping my thousand stammered arguments from my lower-level caches before they fell out of my mouth in an inarticulate deluge of disbelief. And frustration.

I had to stop considering this from any other perspective but her's, because clearly, she was a hugely fucked-up person who didn't see the world like a sane being would. God's sake, she was absolutely fine with living in a city of slaves so that she could play at making her toys. If those lives didn't matter to her, why was I wasting my time pleading about others halfway across the globe?

I took a few deep breaths and decided to get more data. More data was always good. "So, this god of yours, how does he create these visions?"

She shrugged. "How did your god create the heavens and the Earth in seven days?"

"O...kay. Fair point. I more meant like...how does it work...from a practical standpoint? Everyone was just fine yesterday, and then this morning, they woke up in their own heads."

"They're still just fine," she said, sitting down at a bench of parts now and putting on a pair of gloves. I watched her for a minute as she put together pieces of an ion accelerator column faster than I thought possible. It was like she was assembling a jigsaw puzzle and knew exactly where each piece went the second she picked it up.

I guess I hadn't put together the fact that literally, all these guns, she'd made by hand. Every exotic in the hands of the XPCA and IkaCo, and all the thousands here, that was all her. She was a technopath, and these were her specialty.

It occured to me that if I reached out right now, picked up any one of these devices, and pulled the trigger into her back, half of our problems with IkaCo would be solved in a heartbeat. But I couldn't do that just yet, not while everyone was still...embracing the visions, or however she wanted to dress it up.

"You know what I mean," I said, at long last, the words coming out as the tail end of a lingering thought, long dead.

"Sorry. What?" she asked, turning back to me.

"How do the visions work? Is there any way to reverse them?"

She scowled at me and my heresy, and I gave her the most genuine smile I could summon. I had to remember, she'd already expressed that she wanted me here, and wanted me to work out. Lia probably would have picked up on that leverage instantly, but I could still work that angle, later than never.

"Nobody knows," she said, turning back to her work. "I just do the rituals as we're supposed to."

"And that is?"

"The blood," she said. "We take it from all who enter the city, and then in the night, offer it up to our god. When he consumes it, the supplicant is given visions, they find their place and their caste. Some aren't affected at all, like us, and we just have to live without the visions."

"You mean, we get to."

She gave me a dark look. "Sure."

"Wait, weren't you just telling me how great it was going to be for me? That I'd have the whole city at my beck and call and all that? And now you're telling me it's a rip-off and you'd rather be...down there, picking rice?"

She put the pieces in her hands down on the bench with a clang and glared at me. "You know, I'm not sure I like you anymore. You seem awfully quick to decide you know everything."

"Sorry? I'm a little grouchy because I joined a cult this morning without my consent, and all my friends got mind-jacked."

She blew some air at me in what I assumed was an eclectic, derisive gesture. "This right here, this is what the outside world is like, isn't it? Just people who can't get along, always fighting, always with their own ideas they're so sure of, without any proof."

"You're literally in a cult."

"This is why the visions are the best possible life. They give you exactly what you need, they take from you exactly what you can give. Everyone in the visions is always content. Everyone is useful. There's none of this...needing to be right or...arguing over whether picking rice is more important than making weapons." She crossed her arms and stared down at the bench in front of her, the implement of death on it still half-constructed. "There's no need to question because our god takes care of you."

"Don't you ever want to question? Wouldn't you feel like your whole life was potentially wasted if you never, even once, pondered the alternatives?"

She looked me dead in the eye. "No. Don't you ever feel like you're wasting your life, flirting with every half-baked idea that crosses your mind? Don't you wish you had a purpose you could dedicate yourself to, with total commitment?"

I grinned at her. "No. Because I have a goal like that, and it didn't require me to get mind-fucked by anyone else to have. I picked my own life goals, and I'm gunning for them. And they're my goals, not something someone else jammed into my head."

Her lips moved a bit for a moment wordlessly, and then without a retort, she closed them and glared at me. "This is why it's better in there," she said. "It's not fair for you to come here and try to make my whole life meaningless. You can't just do that to a person. In there, this would never have happened. There'd never be any doubt. I'd be happier."

I shook my head disbelievingly as I gestured towards the outer city. "Their whole lives are meaningless. They were once people with thoughts and histories and desires, and now they're just machines you use to make your weapons. They've been reduced to cogs. They might be content, but they're also without value or agency. It's fucked up."

She stood up and crossed her arms, swaying like she was unsure of herself. She seemed to want to argue with me, but had no grounds to do so. But she also looked like she wanted to agree with me, but couldn't. So she hung, rocking back and forth while too many thoughts passed behind her oval glasses and the eyes behind them that glared at me.

"I don't like you," she finally confirmed. "But I also respect you. You think more than any other high clergy I know of, and I have to respect you for that."

I blinked at her, not at all expecting the conversation to swing back towards me, or hell, our relationship. "Thanks?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure if having you here is good or not. I was excited but now...I'm worried that every day with you is just going to be drowning in questions I can't answer, with thoughts I'm not sure aren't yours. I don't approve of you getting in my head--"

I made a noise and gestured again at the rest of the whole fucking city but she continued, louder.

"--but I have faith, that our god brought you to me for a reason. Maybe he wants me to think about my place more. Maybe that is your calling -- obnoxious though that would be -- to add more purpose and self-awareness to each of the others. Or, maybe in time, you will come around to our way of thinking. Our god would know, but I would not."

"So that's it then?" I asked.

"For now, I suppose," she replied. "You've already said far more than I'd hoped." She frowned bitterly at me. "You know, all I wanted was a friend. I was quite serious that it is liberating and empowering as none would ever experience to be a high clergy, but it is lonesome work too. So...perhaps out of desperation...I haven't written you off just yet."

"I'm flattered. But aren't there others?"

"There are," she nodded. "And you should meet them, and know of their callings. Perhaps twist their logic and faith into knots as well."

"Well, I assume none of them are actively destroying the outside world, so I might not have quite so much issue with them. Sorry, I did walk in here with a little bias."

"Lucky me. I'll have them summoned, this way."

She led me through the rest of her armory into a series of halls and chambers that gradually began to resemble a mosque instead of a military installation, with high domed ceilings and airy breezeways. I realized we were headed towards the very center of the city.

"Most you see here are priests and priestesses. If you have need of them, just ask, and your wishes will be conveyed through the visions. Don't waste your breath on those in the outer city, though."

Don't waste your breath on literally any of your friends.

"But these," she said, clearing her throat and speaking up, "are the others. Know them so that they may know you."

There were three of them, counting Rio, and I understood what she meant about it being lonely. Both the others were male, though it wasn't immediately obvious as they were wearing trappings related to their 'calling' I had to assume, like Rio's lab coat, and for one of them that meant a loose cloak draped around him entirely.

The other was in fancy white and blue frippery, gold buttons gleaming and moustache and goatee waxed and dangerously pointed. Like Rio, like most here, he was asian, and he bowed low at my approach.

"This is Tobias," Rio said.

"Pleasure's all mine," he muttered, his voice indistinct like he didn't know how to use his lips properly.

"His fascination is with the reaches beyond our world. Unfortunately, Oasis has little to offer him to realize those dreams, so...like you, I imagine, he spends most of his days lost in thought."

"Only because I cannot be lost in space," he mourned.

"Charmed," I said, returning his bow. We turned towards the final person in the room, whom I could barely see through his cloak, his deep hood pulled low.

"And this is Liwei. His aim is Oasis itself."

Through the hood's gap, I could see him watching me. I felt at once like a prey animal, but also that this predator was too large to be concerned with me. I didn't know what it would mean for him to be hungry, but knew that if he were, he would be dangerous.

"Liwei seeks to explore the world and find Exhumans who are uniquely gifted, and brings them back here that the city may thrive with their talents. We owe much to his efforts."

He didn't move or speak, but something about his stature struck me as familiar. And not comfortingly so. I'd been on-edge since I saw him, and the feeling only grew the longer we stared at each other in silence.

"He is...rather intense," Rio apologized.

It was exactly five seconds after she spoke that he finally moved, an action so subtle and so quick that no human would have caught it. But I did, seeing him turn and glance around the room as though expecting an ambush any second.

And with that motion, I saw his cloak move across his body and realized by its sway, he had only one arm under there.

It hit me all at once, the eye, the poise, the swift movement, the arm I'd been responsible for crushing.

"Dragon," I gaped, my engines roaring to life on their own as my feet set under me. "It's you."

"Oh, you two know each other?" Rio asked, perking up and glancing between us. "Oh this is so exciting! I didn't even know Liwei had friends!"