The uniform did not fit.
At all.
“Hm,” said the girl as she studied my chest. “You didn’t look so… generous in the cafeteria. Must've been the light.”
I swiped at her, but the girl was too quick, her auburn hair flipping across her shoulders as she leaned out the way.
“Fuck you,” I said.
"That was a compliment." A smile played at the girl's lips. “You’re going to be popular with the boys.”
I swiped at her again. This time, she caught my hand before it could connect with her. “Some girls too, I’m sure. But you’re really going to need to work on your people skills.”
“I don’t need people skills,” I shot back, yanking my hand away, but the violent action tugged the top button of the uniform apart, sending it flinging across the room and revealing even more of me. I gasped and wrapped my arms around myself.
The girl’s eyes lasered into me as she watched my struggles with amusement, and a hint of something else.
Could she be…?
I cleared my throat, suddenly unsure if I wanted her to fear me, or like me. “Shit, sorry. I’ll uh, get it fixed.” I went over to the end of the locker room to retrieve the gold button, putting distance between us. It had skipped under a bench, and I had to get on my knees to get it. When I got back up again, the girl was standing over me, too close. I shot backward, the back of my knees crashing into the wooden bench so hard I sat myself down.
“You're the one who came late to roll call,” the girl said, hands clasped on her hips. “I remember now. Aiyano, wasn’t it?”
I ignored her, because I didn't want to give this coffee-spilling clutz the satisfaction of being right. I stood, trying not to brush against her, which was almost impossible due to how little space she was giving me.
“Quite the first impression coming late on the first day,” the girl continued, not moving an inch despite the daggers I'm sending her way. "Balsy move if you wanted to get noticed."
I knew she meant my dynamic entrance of slamming through the gymnasium doors, still dressed in the civilian clothing I had worn when visiting Hikari last night, but now was not the time to be embarrassed.
“I don’t care what you think of me.” My voice sounded too defensive even to my own ears. “I’m just here to graduate from this academy and get my mech.”
One of the girl’s eyebrows quirk up. “Well, I’d like to think so, seeing as how we’re humanity's last hope and all.”
She said that last part with a heavy tone of sarcasm, and it took me by surprise. “Are you making fun of the Protocol?” I demanded. She was nearly a foot taller than me, so I had to tilt my chin up to glare at her. “You could lose your number for that.”
She smirked. Her eyes were green, like the color of the moss that grew on the deck of the ship. “Only if you reported me.” She leaned closer, one arm out to support herself against the wall. I couldn’t move back anymore, or else I’d be sitting down again.
“You don’t think I would?” I challenged back, hoping my face wasn’t really as red as it felt. “I could reprimand you right here and drag you to the commanders myself.” I tried to look menacing, but couldn’t quite remember how. All I could do was stare into those green eyes of hers. Eyes that seemed to hold me.
She chuckled, and I could smell her breath, that same floral, sweet tone that had ruined my skirt and burned me.
“You can try,” she whispered, and when she leaned closer again, I punched her right in her flat chest.
----------------------------------------
“Elevena!”
11 doubles over, the urge to gag overwhelming her senses as her body tries to violently reject the liquid tar. The ashen bitterness bites into her teeth, piercing into her nerves like she’s holding a mouthful of bullet ants. Within moments, her tongue crumbles into charcoal and her entire being melts away into a pile of android goo.
Gradually, the pain begins to subside, and 11’s mind begins to right itself. Fragments of memories pulse through her like ripples across a crystal lake, their images too jumbled for her to make any sense. But beneath that is something even more interesting.
From its discovery in the Ethiopian Plateau to its cultivation in the Arabian Peninsula, the entire history of coffee unfurls before 11. She sees the thousand-billion-dollar industry grow in front of her eyes, spreading across Europe and the rest of the world like wildfire.
A seedling of a thought rears in 11’s heart then, as ambitious as it is mad.
“Oh no, oh no.”
Yue’li’s panicked voice cuts through 11’s contemplations. She feels the yaojin shaking her. “Hang in there, Elevena! I’m going to get help!”
“W-wait.” 11 swallows, coughs, swallows again, forcing down the trail of blistering fire through her body. She feels the hum of the nanobots in her blood as they furiously work at breaking the toxins down into fuel, and information.
> Identifying teophylline, liberine, methylliberine, high levels of lipids, and other volatile compounds...
Yue’li is saying something else, but she sounds so far away. 11 struggles off the floor, holding her head as it threatens to burst from the pressure. She has no clue what time of day it is, or how long she’s been lying there, but by the look of the room, not more than a few seconds have gone by.
“Argh,” she mumbles, opening her eyes just to shut them again. “So… bright.”
“I’ll get the curtains,” Yue’li says, and 11 hears the yaojin girl's footsteps pattering away, followed shortly by the sliding of the curtains as she shuts them. Too quickly, she’s back.
“Can you stand?”
“Mmh-hm.” 11 will have nodded, but she worries her head might fall off her shoulders if she does. She feels small but very strong hands grip her elbows, lifting her up.
“There’s a seat behind you. Careful.”
11 sits, and something cold is pressed into her hands.
“Drink. It’s water.”
11 drinks, moaning inwardly as the soothing coolness chases away the vile metallic sting of Yue’li’s Death Coffee. It’s only after draining the whole cup that 11 feels well enough to open her eyes again.
She’s sitting by the table, in Yue’li’s seat, and the yaojin girl is kneeling in front of her, those cat-like eyes brimming with tears.
“This is the best water I’ve ever tasted,” 11 says, holding up the cup. “We don’t need to tweak or improve anything on this front. That’s good. It saves us a lot of work.”
Her interface chimes with a completed report.
> Analysis complete.
>
> Compounds in the liquid identified as the unroasted seeds of the Coffea plant, otherwise known as ‘green coffee beans’.
>
> This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
>
> Caffeine content: 8,200 milligrams.
Breed of beans? 11 demands the computers in her brain. I didn’t suffer through that for so little.
In front of 11, Yue’li looks like she’s going to cry. “I’m so sorry,” she says in a small voice. “I messed it all up. You didn’t have to drink it to make me feel better. I swear I won’t make you drink anything I make again. Please don’t die.”
Touched by Yue'li's concern, 11 reaches out and ruffles the top of the yaojin girl's head, her fingers sinking into that nest of fluffy blond hair. The movement is so natural it only occurs to 11 to question it after she’s already done it. “Relax, Yue’li, I’m not going to die. I just needed to find out what your coffee is missing, and I don’t need to do that ever again, thank God. No offense.”
> From the ratio of caffeine to coffee, the best candidate for the bean used is Coffea eugenioides, a rare species indigenous to the East African highlands, most noteworthy for being one of the parent plants of Coffea arabica, the most widely commercialized Coffee bean of the modern era.
Yue’li sniffles, looking like she enjoys the head pat more than she wants to admit. “Surely you didn’t have to knock yourself out to do it. But if it’s true, what is it that I’m missing?”
11 takes a minute to think, to water that sprout of crazy ambition inside her, just to see what it may grow into.
The throne to the coffee empire is vacant. And waiting.
If she can reintroduce this billion-dollar trade industry into this new world, 11 can fast-track herself and everyone in Gandolia to an A-rank license a hundred million times over, and still have enough money left to buy Gandolia itself, probably.
But more than that, having a global market under her control will extend 11’s reach beyond what any database or spy network can accomplish. If she can set up shop in multiple places in multiple countries, she won’t need to go through any dusty old archives to get information on the missing God Giers. For what better place is there than a café for information to be exchanged?
11 turns to Yue’li and says, “Everything. The beans, the preparation, the brewing. It’s all incorrectly done.” She messes the little yaojin girl’s hair again, lessening the sting of her words. “But that’s a good thing. An extremely good thing, actually, because if you've been making these errors, it means no one else has gotten further.”
She waits, but when it seems Yue’li isn’t following, she continues. “Which means we have zero competition in an emerging market, therefore allowing us first dibs to patents and trademarks."
Still nothing.
"Don’t you see, Yue’li? It’s the perfect head start in monopolizing one of the biggest commodities in the world! First, we establish ourselves here, then franchise to nearby villages, then export our beans to neighboring countries…” 11 has to pause then, because she’s breathing too hard, and the Master Core inside her is spinning too fast. She touches a hand to her chest, taking a moment to savor this mixture of exhilaration and anticipation; this incredible knowledge that she too, is a creature of life, and desire, and dreams.
Is this… what excitement feels like?
Yue’li, however, is still just looking confusedly at 11. “Us?” Is all the yaojin girl asks.
“Yea, well.” 11 clears her throat, reigning herself back. Has she gone too far? Assumed too much? “All that I’ve just said will be largely impossible for you to achieve alone.” She starts listing on her fingers. “Let’s see. There are the beans, first and foremost. We can make do with eugenioides to start with, but eventually, you’re going to want arabica and robusta, as those have the purest, most widely accepted taste. I can breed arabica easily enough, but I’m going to need a lot of space and resources. Then we’ll need manpower, equipment, distributors and advertisers...”
Yue’li smiles uncertainly. She gets up and goes to the kitchen, taking the empty cups with her. “I’m not really following, Elevena, I’m sad to admit,” she says, “but anyway, I’ve always thought of this coffea thing as a side hobby, something I can enjoy doing alone.” She looks up from the sink, a dishcloth in one hand. “Please don’t misunderstand me, it’s not that I don’t want to spend any time with you, just the opposite actually, but when I’m drying the coffea berries, or peeling them or mixing them, I like the calm it brings to me. And having someone else with me while I do all that… I’m not sure what it’d be like.”
“Oh,” 11 says, and whatever she was feeling before, excitement or not, is doused. “I… sorry. I guess I didn’t see it from your perspective.” She stands and makes her way to the counter, and watches Yue’li clean the cups.
The yaojin girl’s hands seem flighty, and more than once the cups slip from her fingers, clattering into the metallic sink.
“Hey,” 11 says, leaning her arms on the counter, “what’s wrong? Is it something I said? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“It’s not that,” Yue’li says, shaking her head. She looks up, then back down again. “When you were…” she begins, but falters and then has to start again. “When you were on the floor, you were talking.” She swallows, her yellow eyes tightening as she stares into the empty sink. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but it seemed you were in a lot of pain. I was really worried.”
11 waits. But Yue’li is silent. “Tell me,” she prompts, her voice low and controlled, even though she's already beginning to feel something wrap around her mind, like a Kraken made of binaries, dragging the memories back down into the depths of her consciousness before they can surface.
“What was I saying, Yue’li?”
The yaojin girl looks up, her face a mix of concern and fear. “You were saying, ‘Don’t leave me.’”
----------------------------------------
I learned her name was Mia Robinson from roll call the second day into the first semester, and we became rivals soon after.
We were put in the same class, being top 20 of the battalion and all that, but ended up stuffed into the same dorm room.
It turned out that only the top 10 got special treatment, but that never seemed to bother Mia as much as it did me. Maybe it was because I was closer to them than she was, even if it’s just by one number.
“I don’t understand why you try so hard,” Mia said one day at lunchtime, a few weeks after I punched her and almost lost my number because of it. We were on the roof of the academy, overlooking the streets and man-made hills below. In the distance, the ocean is a sliver of shining immensity, bordering the horizon all around us with its deadly secrets.
The E.H. Michael was busiest this time of day, and I watched the endless array of drones carrying crates of god-knows-what across the ship’s vast decks. You can tell which ones are headed below deck; they look depressed, even though they're just robots.
“I don’t get why you don’t,” I mumbled through my mouthful of mayo-chicken sandwich. “You know your number can change at the end of the year, right?” Something moving along the base of the library building caught my attention. A few students were scurrying through the synthetic tree line, the overcast sky providing just enough cover for them to stay hidden from the patrolling drones.
We didn't get to leave the academy often, but there were always ways around enforcement if one was determined enough to look.
Mia shrugged. “Not mine.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she turned to me, winked, “no one wants to be roomed with you.”
I almost threw my sandwich at her then, before realizing I was going to throw a sandwich.
“Yea, well.” I turned back to the wire fence in front of us, through which the cloud-filled sky opened across the entirety of my vision. They seemed to hang there, frozen against the blue, even as we continued to drift beneath them. “Not if I get into the top 10 first. Then I’ll be living in a private quarter, and your number will mean nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Mia counters, suddenly serious. She was raking her fork through her noodles, as if looking for treasure. “It brought you to me, didn’t it?”
My heart did a strange flip at hearing that, but I pretended it didn’t affect me. I silently vowed to work harder and increase the distance between us, so that by next year I wouldn’t have to deal with Mia anymore and the complications that seemed to always arise with her. “I’ll make you regret saying that,” I said, stuffing the rest of my sandwich into my mouth.
“I bet.” Mia set down her bowl of noodles onto the bench, in the small space between us. I peered into it, a habit I’d pick up from constantly doing it to Hikari, notorious as she is about refusing her meals.
“You haven’t finished it,” I dutifully noted.
Mia shrugged. “I’m full.”
I was angry at that, far more than I should have been, I knew. But something about Mia drinking more coffee than she ate food reminded me of my sister, and it made me think of the metal bucket Hikari had to keep under her bed specifically to use after mealtimes, even after her treatments were finished.
It made me too angry to think of anything else.
“Why do you always leave your food unfinished?” I demanded, pointing accusatorily to the damning evidence of her wasteful nature. “I’ve never seen the bottom of your food bowls.”
The bowl sat untouched, and Mia looked at me unfazed.
“I don’t like to be done with things,” she said, cocking her head to one side and spilling her auburn hair down one thin shoulder. “Be it food, dreams…” her green eyes danced as the sun reappeared from behind the clouds, “…or love.”
“That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.” I scoffed and snatched up the bowl. Without another word, I shoveled down the rest of the noodles with a vengeance, ignoring how Mia was looking at me, grinning stupidly like she knew something I didn’t.
“I’m going to make you regret ever wasting anything,” I said once I finished, and tossed the empty container onto my metal tray, where even a crumb is not to be seen. “People starve aboard the other six ships so that we can eat. Do you know that?”
Mia stood. “Aye aye, Miss Saviour of Humanity.” Chuckling, she dug into her skirt pocket and fished out her I.D. card.
A plastic cup, just bigger than my thumbnail, dangled from a tiny silver hoop on one end of the card. I recognized it as a coffee cup, but only because Mia had an empty, full-sized one on her side of the bench, where she probably thought I wouldn’t notice.
“Hey, you want to order something to take back to the dorm?” Mia asked as she waved her I.D. card around, the corners of her mouth twitching like she was fighting a smile. “I’ve got a few extra portions saved up from earlier this week. You could get a pudding.”
I shook my head, even as the golden jello bounded alluringly across my vision. “Save them,” I said, picking up my tray as I stood. “You can't bribe me into going easy on you. Bruises are badges of honor, so you should wear them proudly."
“Ah, welp. I tried.” Mia laughed as she swung the card around by the silver hoop, and no matter how hard I tried, the sound of her laughter lingered in my ears long after the bell rang and we headed back inside.