The elevator didn't respond to my pressing the buttons. It just started heading up, and up, way past the point where I'd ever been before. When it arrived, it was still too soon. My heart was in my mouth, and I wanted to throw up.

The doors opened to the penthouse foyer. There were pictures of children in golden frames on the white- and gold- striped wall-papered walls. Me, in the few happy times, mostly post-refugee camp life. And a little boy, here on the Thorn, in this white and gold penthouse. Over the years, his chubby golden-brown face got slimmer and slimmer. I recognised the illegal limb-trainers spacing out his body in the pre-teen and teenage pictures. I'd busted up enough mod shops on Gerondia to know what I was looking at.

Poor Nadir. Tagetes, I mean. As if she wasn't already a monster, she'd put her own boy through a form of torture, to turn him into her personal creature. Not to mention that thing he'd said to me, when he thought he was dying after fighting Korr.

She'd told him he was birthed at her lowest point. What a terrible thing to tell a child. To nickname him Nadir after that fact. To use and abuse him like she had.

She deserved my anger and hatred.

But the child in me wanted something else.

I walked down the corridor, past pictures of myself and my brother, past bedrooms and bathrooms and sitting rooms, towards the balcony, where I could see the top of the Atrium, this time from closer than ever before.

There was something else on that balcony too. As I walked closer, the smell became undeniable. There were Gerondian natives on that balcony. Flowers in the full bloom of spring.

I passed out of the striped corridor into the balcony garden. Yes, I was right. All the flowering trees and bushes here were redolent with the smell of home. Sweet baby pinks dripped forth heady pollen onto the grass underfoot. Blood red blooms hung heavy heads beside lilac star-shaped blossoms twinkling from within the depths of a bush so dark green it was almost black. Daisies and dandelions carpeted the floor, surrounding the slim stone path leading to the edge of the balcony, where a white-painted iron-wrought table sat with a teapot awaiting me.

Next to the table stood Black Rose, shining darkly in her black chitin gown. I took a step closer. She touched behind one ear, and her obscuring skin mod of matte black vanished.

Her face was like the one in the picture from the cafe, except heavier with age. Her skin was bone-white like mine, the striations deeper with age, her eyelids hooded, dusted with pollen. She lowered the hood over her hair. The black plate slivered back into the neck of her gown automatically. Her hair was not the bright red of my grandmother, or the orangey tone from the picture. It was the same pink as the heavily-blossomed tree overhanging the entrance to the balcony, as soft and luminescent as a cloud at sunset.

And she was smiling.

The murderer of millions was smiling at me.

Black Rose approached as I did, meeting me with hands extended for the formal greeting of our people. Over her shoulder, I saw the teapot again, white and gold, with two teacups, laid out for us.

Suppose she knew I might try to kill her, out of vengeance for Gerondia?

Then she could be about to poison me.

But in her eyes, as our hands met, there were tears and joy.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment. I examined her face, waiting to understand what I was feeling, one way or another. Where was the recognition I had expected? Her smell was not hauntingly familiar to me. But she was here, real.

This was Black Rose, my mysterious benefactor. I was suspicious of her motives. I had thought I was helping her, only to learn from Xen that in reality, I was being manipulated by her, a pawn in her game of holding the Thorn against the Wilt. The back of my neck prickled under her gaze.

This was Lisia. I ought to hate her. Her face had been the fixation of my dreams of revenge since I was a little petal. My teeth gritted and my jaw ached and my fists wanted to clench.

This was my mother. I ought to love her. Now I was seeing the face I had long imagined, and the look in her eyes was wonder and pride and everything I'd been missing. My heart panged and my arms wanted to wrap around her.

I spoke first, unable to bear the silence any longer.

"Agathis, the seed,

Araucaria, the bed,

Astrantia, the root,

Lisianthe, the stem,

Amaryllis, the sole petal."

Black Rose chuckled once, and a tear escaped her eye. She took a breath, then began:

"Agathis, the seed,

Araucaria, the bed,

Helianthe, the root,

Astrantia, the stem,

Lisianthe, petal one of two."

She turned to invite me to the table, leading me to the left chair. I had to swallow back a sob wanting to escape. Did she not want to hug me? Maybe that could wait. I'd been long enough without my mother. I could wait until we were a little more comfortable with each other.

Unless...

I stared down at my teacup. Still standing, Black Rose poured us each tea, first into my cup, second into hers. It was a warm brown liquid, steam sending forth hints of jasmine, bergamot, and more notes which I suspected would become clearer with a taste.

Black Rose sat across from me, and took a sip from her cup. She smiled at me expectantly.

She could have killed me at any point since I set foot on this station. But instead, she'd been helping me. So I picked up my cup, and sipped. The tea was bittersweet, the taste living more in the nose than in the mouth.

When I put my cup back down on my saucer, she spoke. "I'm an open book. Please, ask me anything. Everything."

"Why did you do what you did to Gerondia?" Everything hung on this question. Why the biological warfare, why the tyranny, why flee in disgrace?

She took another sip. "I have outlined this all in full in a document for you, but let me explain in brief. Our people are not naturally occurring. We were created by some scientists a long time ago, to be a perfect amalgamation of animal and vegetable. But that led to many problems. Sickness, infertility, non-viability of life... we were a beautiful experiment gone wrong, then abandoned. I wanted to correct that. I wanted to make us survive. I of course went about it in the completely wrong way."

"How? Why?"

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"My backers. I gained backing for my experiments from a group of off-world businessmen. I thought they were interested in saving Gerondia out of pure philanthropy. But no. They gave me money for the research, and nudged me in the wrong direction in order to sow chaos. Their real aim was to profit off the misery created by me. I tried to outsmart them by creating the cure and taking control, but it was too late. The damage was done."

"The Wilt."

"Exactly. That's why, when I fled Gerondia, I came here, with as much capital as I could squirrel away. I wanted to take them down, on my own terms. I wanted revenge. I had no idea who I was messing with. But once they destroyed my life for a second time... I decided I wouldn't let it happen again. I would become the weed in their garden, impossible to remove. Slowly, surely, I took over this station, until I'd wrapped myself so tightly around them that they couldn't hurt me without hurting themselves."

"Why didn't they just sell you out? Tell Gerondia where to find you?"

"Because by then, I had enough evidence to prove their part in it. So it was mutually assured destruction at that point. The only option they had since then was trying to take me out physically. Which they made a sport out of on a monthly basis, as you got to see."

I sat back and took another sip of my tea. She did the same. The day Teg Korr had shown me the picture of Xen and Lisia together had come to mind. Even though he'd been friends with people in the Wilt, had presumably been told by one of them who Black Rose really was, he didn't have the same interest as they did in hiding her identity. He'd sat at that table at the ball that night, ignored, bored. I guess he'd been throwing a little wrench in the works by telling me what he told me. Pity he had to die as he did. But we were all of us uncompromising people. Me, and the woman sitting across from me too.

Like mother, like daughter.

"Gran told me my dad died in the pandemic. Was that true?"

Black Rose half-nodded, then tilted her head. For the first time, her eyes were genuinely sad. "Tritic was good to me. He wasn't a scientist himself, but he offered himself freely as a test subject for what was supposed to be the inoculation of our species against our genetic degradation. And as such... he was one of the first to die. You weren't even a year old. I left you with my mother after that. Figured you deserved a better mother than the one who'd killed your father. And to live with the benefits of my discovery. As a child, the inoculation passed to you without harm."

"And what about my brother -"

"Half-brother."

I was silent for a few seconds, trying to master my anger. The nickname, the body mod, the story she'd let him grow on... it was sick. The vengeful construction of a woman bent on destruction, turning a child into a weapon.

"Has he ever lived a happy day in his life?" I glared at her as I waited for the answer.

She drank deeply of her tea, and clicked it back on the saucer a little louder than before. But she kept a smile on her face. "I was a bad mother to you. But I was much worse to him. He was nursed on my pain, and grew into the outward expression of the darkness in my heart. And yet... he remains to this day a sweet-natured sepal. There is some intrinsic part of him deep within that no amount of my pain can corrupt. I don't deserve him. I'm not sure the world does either. And yet, he lives. After going to save all of your lives, he lives. I only hope... he can grow outside of my shadow after this."

"Did you send him to look after me? All those times?"

"No, not at all. He wanted to help you. His sister..." She chuckled behind pursed lips. "I hope you don't mind, I made him lie to you. Of course he recognised you, from the instant you stepped on the station. But I told him he was to let me have my fun. And he has always been such a good little boy."

"How did the two of you always seem to know what was going on?"

"Oh, Marys. I'm a little disappointed. I thought you might have been clever enough to guess that one yourself. It's not like I was hiding them. They were everywhere important. My eyes and ears, in plain sight."

I breathed out, then laughed. "The root-stem weavings. They were bugged."

Black Rose laughed, then sighed. There was a hollowness to her laugh, as if she never really laughed; as if her laughter were amputated and replaced with a prosthetic of a laugh. "We are running low on time. Was there anything else you wanted to ask me? As I said, I have written most everything down you will need to know. But I want you to ask me everything you need to hear from my lips."

"Why are we running low on time?"

She looked out over the Atrium. "Events have been set in motion. Come now. Ask anything pressing you have left to ask."

There was still one thing bothering me. I felt so silly for needing to know. But for all that Xen had reassured me, Xen could have been reprogrammed not to realise the truth. "Did you program Xen to be interested in me romantically?"

Black Rose's eyes snapped to me. Surprise, then a knowing smile, then a gentler smile cycled over her face. She sipped her tea again. "No, Marys. I would never do that to a sentient being. Not with what I've been through, and not with what Xen had been through. Xen is my friend from way back. An innocent, someone who only knew me as a person rather than a monster or an avenging force. I only did to Xen exactly what we agreed on before the reprogramming."

I sighed, closing my eyes, unable to hold back the smile on my lips.

She spoke again, dragging my eyes open. Her words were clipped, prim and proper "I'm glad, for all that you are like me, insatiable for truth and vengeance, that you have that much innocence in you. Enough that you can want honest love like that. It gives me so much hope for you. Perhaps we aren't all that similar. Perhaps you have more good in you. Like your father. He was a simple, uncomplicated man. He loved me honestly, more than I ever deserved. Please be that, Marys. Be better than me."

Could I? I'd murdered a man just a few hours ago. To save others, yes, but perhaps there had been other ways. I was still so scared that I didn't know how to be a good person anymore. I'd spent so long chasing Lisia, doing anything to get her, that I didn't know what I would be without this chase.

And it wasn't really over yet, was it? Because I had to decide, still.

Was I going to arrest her?

Was I going to kill her?

Whatever I was going to do, it would happen before I left this room. Perhaps it wasn't killing her. It would be too cold-blooded, which I knew now I wasn't. I felt more hurt than rage when I looked at the woman in front of me now. These were not killing feelings.

It didn't make me a good person, but perhaps I wasn't all bad either.

"Time's up," she said, a sigh leaving her lips. Her posture, which had been perfect up until now, sagged. She looked over the balcony, leaning back in her chair. I followed her gaze.

Below, a ship had docked, and pouring forth into the base level of the Atrium came a stampede of people in the all-too familiar uniform of the Keepers of the Law.

"Thank you for the evidence you sent me," Black Rose said, still watching the proceedings. Her tone, her face, her body, all were exhausted. "I sent it on. Justice will be had, at long last. The Wilt is finally over."

I exhaled, letting a frisson of joy seep through me. "But what about you? Won't they be coming for you t -"

Black Rose slipped from her chair to the floor. I dashed around the table to pick her up, to hold her in my arms as her breathing turned ragged, lips going blue.

"What have you..."

She raised a trembling hand to my cheek. "I took the choice out of your hands, Marys. I didn't want you to become a monster."

"What? I - The tea?"

"No, only my teacup. I have destroyed myself before you could kill your own mother."

"I wasn't going to! Damn it, Lisia! No!" I shook her, and she only smiled. "Where's the antidote?"

"There is none."

"Don't lie! There must be! Surely you might have thought I would try to swap the teacups, in case I thought you were poisoning me."

"No. I trusted I knew you better than that, after watching you all this time. I knew you would be more straightforward than that. If not, you would have died, and I would have handed myself into the law."

"You haven't even said goodbye to Na- to Tagetes!"

"This has always been about you and me, my Zenith. You are my perfect little creation." I wanted to slap the love out of her eyes. Stupid, stupid woman!

"You are literally the worst mother. How could you not stay and... and pay for your crimes... and be here for me..."

Her eyes were growing hazy, but her fingers strayed to her side. Gentle, spider-like in their dying meander, they managed to pull a piece of black card from a hidden pocket in her gown. She tried to hand it to me, but went limp before she could.

As the elevator dinged, and the Gerondian forces surrounded us, I wept, cradling my dead mother in my arms. Astera slinked toward me, triumph on her face, but a grey-brown hand on her shoulder gave her pause. Constable Frod pulled her to a stop.

"Have a bit of respect," he murmured.

When at last I could see through my tears, I picked up the black card from Lisia's cold fingers, and opened the single fold.

In gold was written:

All of it is yours. You will find everything documented, completely legal, in a case on my bed.

Be better than me, my Amaryllis.