CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE - A RED SUN DAWNS

The sky remained blazing as they navigated through the colony. There wasn't any real risk of getting attacked immediately, of course. The mutants had just sniffed out trouble, and that was enough warning for them to get indoors. Maybe it'd be a false alarm, maybe this was the start, but... either way, Tanner had a problem to nip in the bud. Her mind was eerily still as she moved, nothing feeling... especially real. Almost glad that the mutants had detected the approach when they did. The idea of going back up to the mansion, sitting down, trying to sleep... no, just didn't work. At this point, she was working on the assumption that she'd continue working until she collapsed. The last of the coal had been shovelled into the boiler, the door had been welded shut, and the icebreaker was in motion. She just had to move forwards until... something happened. But once she stopped, she stopped. The momentum wouldn't allow her to cease until every last particle of fuel had been expended, or the vessel containing that fuel had exploded.

She was now in a state of gathering catastrophe.

A living theurgic engine.

Worked for her. Lyur's execution had planted a final vow in her - she was willing to kill for the colony. Not just to die, that was easy, could do that while lying down. Nor to lie, which she'd done plenty of. But to actively plan out and stage the murder of a fellow human being in full view of everyone else. At this point... there was nothing to hold her back. Nothing at all. And the gyre of her mind whirled outwards with speed so intense it seemed like it was barely moving at all, and her outward calm was... more or less the eye of the storm.

After all.

She couldn't stop seeing a red sky full of blazing crimson stars.

She stared up at the looming statues. Imperial and austere, beautiful in a grand and terrible sort of way, the sort of beauty that emerged from a simple lack of comprehension. She could never equal the kind of... sheer fanatical belief that produced these things, she could never explore those depths of human experience. Looking on them was... like looking at another species. Or like looking at someone she could never be, the versions of herself that lacked some crucially swollen organ of self-doubt. That part which refused to jump over the ledge, convinced no-one would catch her. Well. She'd... almost jumped over that ledge. Barely an hour ago. Split a man's skull open and watched the liquid mass of his thoughts, his soul, his entire personality and every scrap of his history, the world he birthed around himself, the unique perception only his convolutions of brain-matter could produce... watched it bubble out through the chasm she made, moving like some exotic piece of sea-life, unaccustomed to the air, expanding and bursting on contact with it. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was why humans mutated so badly, why they just... went mad. The contamination found the body, and decided to change it into a better kind of mammal. Then it found the brain, and it turned out, the human brain was a sea-parasite that crawled up and found a nice hollow host it could infest, so thoroughly that it seemed indistinguishable. And the contamination was so very, very confused... so it made the brain suit the body, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. And that meant it became slower, stupid, lost the parasitic instincts which made it human to begin with.

The mutant at her feet was silent on the topic. Maybe she was more human than Tanner. Maybe she was... redeemed, brought back from parasitic sin into a kind of purity.

She heard something carry on the wind. Mutants? Humans? Something...

No.

She was just going funny again.

The statue was murmuring to her from up above. Growling away in a hoarse, gravelly voice.

Thanks for the meal, big woman.

Shush, hallucination. Shush.

Red tide's coming. Feed the land, the land just gets hungrier. You took a thirsty man and stuffed salt in his mouth. Can't be too surprise when he turns his tongue into a long mosquito proboscis and decides to go for the jugular, hm? Mutants are the hunger of the world, and you've roused them.

Shush.

Hundreds of people in the colony. Hundreds. And you've just offered them up on a silver platter. Lyur was a sacred beast, Lyur was a true human, he knew the ocean his brain had crawled from, and he knew what he was meant to be. And you killed him. Might as well have killed a hundred bears.

Nonsense.

Blood calls to blood. Hundreds of colonists, and you've failed them all.

As you always will.

Come to the breast of Rekida. Come and be close when the end comes.

Maybe they'll spare you. Until you stop giving them meals. Maybe the land's about to start chewing at your ankles...

It didn't.

Of course it didn't. It was dirt. Furthermore, it was frozen. Which, in Tanner's mind, made it muzzled. The world was still busy chewing on the last meal she'd given it - that was all. The rush to the walls continued. There was a tide of people around her now - bodies, and she tried to avoid looking at them. Could feel the warmth of their breath, though, rolling over her like some tropical storm. Humid, cloying, far too warm, far too intense. Her skin prickled at the sensation, but her face remained utterly flat. It was quite conceivable that she was having something of a mental breakdown, she thought abstractly. Quite conceivable. Intense stress, breaking every restraint she'd once had, killing a man, seeing people crowd around her, feeling their stares, feeling how none of them could see past the image she'd started to accidentally project. If she stopped projecting this image, her mind idly considered, she'd be dead. They'd tear her apart like wild animals - because she was a murderess, a strange monster, a creature who had a mutant dogging her heels, who was assisted by a personal army of Rekidan nobles (equally mutated), and slung around an axe like it was nothing.

Tanner knew she didn't understand people. The fact that no-one was crying out 'she's a monster, tear her to shreds!' was yet more proof of that fact. Maybe they were all mad, just like she was. Maybe the sky had turned red, the sun was surrounded by a crimson aurora, the statues were speaking, and everyone was thinking to themselves 'boy, I ought not to look mad in front of everyone else, ought to pretend this isn't happening', and when everyone did that, a kind of delusional consensus formed where everyone was the sole lunatic in the crowd.

No, just you.

Shut up, statue-woman. One of your breasts has broken off and lies shattered, scrawled with the names of every worker who came in and out of the city, like a prostitute with the names of her clients tattooed onto her body.

Rude.

Yes, it was, wasn't it? Goodness, she used to be nicer. Swore she did. The bodies were all around her. Each one scanning her with eyes black as obsidian mirrors, watching for any sign of weakness, any sign that she wasn't a single-minded machine of rulership and administration. She was more chaotic than she'd ever been, more... unrestrained, yet she felt as though all she'd done was explore a newer, more terrible machine that was now expected to fill her skull. Chaos hadn't freed her. Chaos had just... expanded the range of what was possible. Higher highs. Lower lows. If she continued to let the gyre spin wide, she'd likely become something stranger still, something worse. Peel away layers of membrane from her skin, translucent and glistening as tadpole tails, falling away in gelatinous ectoplasm that probably had interesting chemical properties, and emerge as something red and peculiar, fronds peeling away in a haze of haemolymph, ready to taste air and drink dust. Could feel something black squirming in her spine.

She moved on.

There was nothing more to be done.

Nothing more to be amended. The momentum was inexorable, and flowed through her like a bolt of lightning, so powerful and shocking that she was surprised to see her blood vessels were still pale blue and only visible where she was tense and taut - as opposed to turning black and carbonised, spreading in branching tree-root patterns, lightning scars to mark out the sheer force blazing through her.

Quite conceivable she was having a breakdown.

...regardless.

The city opened around her, and the colony flowed inside. They'd been bracing for this - their bags were already packed, or rather, their sacks. Burlap, stuffed with the few personal effects they'd brought in the first place. Realised with a small jolt just how... homeless most of these people were. The overwhelming majority of the colonists had come along with a knife, a mug, and some trinkets. Nothing major, no cherished heirlooms, no expansive wardrobes, none of the creature comforts one accumulated over the years. Maybe that was it - and the thought was accompanied by the jangling of metal on metal, muffled by fabric, echoing around the ruined-yet-barricaded streets. Maybe that was why none of them could see how little she understood what was happening, how little she was really in control, how close she was to a sheer drop. They weren't... meant to stand up to her. The systems the Erlize, the Great War, the Golden Parliament and the cartel had created were still in place. Designed to crush out the revolutionary instinct, to increase compliance, to breed the notion that when faced with someone asserting authority, one ought to lie back and accept them. The Erlize interrogated them until resistance seemed pointless, the cartel's impunity to justice added to this, the Great War displaced them and tore away the things which might've bound them together tightly, and the Golden Parliament wanted them out, wanted them gone, and made this clear with the continuing existence of the shantytown, with the whole colonial project that was meant to drain the place of civilians. From birth, given the idea that they should pack light and be ready to move at all times, the moment someone barked the right combination of orders.

She felt, suddenly, that she could see the strings pulling her.

Hadn't... really torn down the status quo. Just removed a few puppets, and put herself in their place.

No-one was really in control.

And somehow, everyone was in control.

She had no ability to know others, she lacked the power to understand others, and she was bound by systems she couldn't control and which no-one could. Never moving a single step, not truly. The momentum going through her wasn't of her own creation - she'd just stepped into the flow. Had that step been her own choice?

Yet she'd killed Lyur. She could've chosen not to swing. Could've stayed out of the momentum, though that would just be a form of suicide.

She looked at the guns of the soldiers.

In those, lay freedom. In those, lay some kind of... independent choice. Just had to press the barrel against her temple, and she defied the momentum. She turned back time. Swimming against the current was only possible for so long. But by jumping out of the river, and slithering over the land...

Maybe that was it. Turning back time. Reversing the momentum, and flowing backwards instead. Atavism. Apocatastasis. Resuming some... ideal state. Because right now, there were no choices, the momentum was overwhelmingly strong, the systems overwhelmingly all-consuming, so... maybe things had been different, once. Rekida hadn't needed to come to the conclusions it came to, culturally speaking. Could've gone the Nalseri route, or the routes taken by any of the states which lingered in the cold spaces of the north. At some point, choices had declined, routes had narrowed, and now there was nothing but the binary of survive/don't survive, and survival had fewer variations than ever before. She couldn't... become a priest-queen of the frozen north, nor could she be a revolutionary firebrand preaching of... forming a nudist commune, or something. Her leadership had to take the forms that the others had made for her, that Vyuli, Canima, the governor, the nobles, the Erlize had created. And they'd passed it down from others in turn. And so on, and so on, and so on.

At some point, there must've been more options.

Maybe it was possible to return to that state.

Maybe.

The rushing of the crowd brought her back to reality. They were close to the bunkers. They were coffins, really. Not dissimilar to the cold-houses in terms of shape and size, but designed for... slightly warmer meat. Demanded different conditions. They'd been among the first things built for this colony, when fear of the mutants was still running high. Built of pale stone, though - not the fire-red of the cold-houses. Repurposed from the surrounding structures. It made them look almost like blisters in the skin of the urban landscape, surrounded by flat expanses where much of the material had come from. Like a great hand had reached down and pinched up the rubble into this odd pale pimple. The crowd began to split up, moving to the bunkers they'd been assigned beforehand, guided by yelling soldiers... who stiffened at the sight of Tanner, clicked their heels, and doubled their efforts while forcing their faces into smiles, trying to... gods, impress her. On their best behaviour around the giantess with the axe that was still slightly warm from the steaming innards of Lyur.

Her own bunker loomed.

Her entourage paused...

And followed her through the heavy metal doors, into the strangely lit interior. The flameless lamps of theurgists burned around them, embedded in the walls. Reminded her a little of the inner temple, but these lamps were a little... less soothing. The inner temple's lamps were blue, the better to cultivate thought. These lamps were yellow, sickly, staining the pale stone the colour of aged porcelain, of antique candle wax. The bunker had narrow corridors, no windows, and high ceilings. Small openings led to rooms filled with supplies, each one packed away in tightly sealed boxes. Some were designed to be inaccessible - full of things they wouldn't need now, but would miss dearly afterwards if they were contaminated. Serving as a kind of insulation around the inner layers of the bunker, which contained great heaps of food and barrels of water, along with all the tools necessary to monitor the outside. There were no decorations, only the barest concessions to comfort. She could already feel how the walls would grow damp with accumulated breath, how the smell of sweat would ooze into the floors and linger permanently, how grime would accumulate in the cracks...

A low whine filled the air.

Ah.

Mutant. She glanced at the creature near her feet, and quietly asked one of the nearby soldiers:

"This is the bunker with cells, yes?"

"Has some, ma'am. We're using one for the prisoner."

"Right. Show me to them."

Wanted to say 'please' or 'thank you', but... the man staring at her seemed to be a little hypnotised by the pale expanse of her face, by the gleam of her axe, and she felt as though being... normal wasn't expected of her. Even now, she still wanted to behave the way people thought she should. Even if it was just because they might tear her to pieces if she let it slip that she was very, very scared. The cells were... cells. Comfortable enough, largely because they weren't meant for prisoners, really. They were meant for quarantining those suffering mutation, for keeping troublemakers away from the general population, just to provide an option for whoever was keeping an eye on the bunker. The mutant stared at one of them as the metal door creaked open. Like she said - good for containing contamination, and the mutants who bore it. Her ruptured eyes flickered to Tanner, staring flatly.

Tanner pointed mutely.

Get in there.

The mutant sniffed at the edge of the door-frame, clearly weighing up the pros and cons. Tanner would've just told her to remain outside, to find her own way to safety, but... the thing had, when she arrived in the city, found a dark, sheltered room and blocked it up with metal. If Tanner was going to guess... she was fleeing what Lantha had fled. Whatever force allowed these mutants to work together without any animosity, it wasn't a negotiable master. And as masters went, it... might demand sacrifices from its servants. For all Tanner knew, this mutant, and her fellows, had just been running from the fate of becoming cannon fodder. If the humans won, good, they got to feast on the remains of the attacking army and could go back to their normal schedule. If the mutants won... well, they stood a better chance of surviving their victory if they weren't in the first wave. If ther ewas one thing Tanner had started to realise about mutants, it was that they had a startling amount of intelligence, especially when working from a human template. Just... lost things like empathy, sociability, conversation...

The mutant padded inside.

Turned around.

Sat on her haunches.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And closed the door of her own volition.

Tanner stared.

...an odd thought occurred. Did the mutant trust her? Trust her to let her back out, to not deliberately kill her? She thought... mutants couldn't really trust anyone or anything, not without unnatural influences. Maybe she just decided this was the best option she was likely to get, and she ought not squander it. Don't let the great be the enemy of the good.

The soldier seemed to think that she was loyal, based on his surprised snort.

"Never seen one of them do that before. How'd you manage to train it?"

Tanner shrugged vaguely, her enormous shoulders making the act... a little more dramatic than it necessarily was.

"Self-interest. They're fairly predictable, I suppose."

"Well, I'll tell the lads to keep the detector in that cell switched off. Be wailing non-stop."

"That it would."

She came back to reality.

"Right. Ought to get on with it."

"Of course, ma'am. Right this way."

He led her back down the wax-yellow corridor, towards the central chamber of the bunker. Tanner shivered at the thought of being stuck here for more than a few days. Dread of boredom rose up - the boredom of a siege, maybe. Dread of seeing the same faces, over and over and over, having to maintain the act for longer, longer, longer... would she emerge into the humidity of the spring thaw, her skin faded as yellow as the bunker walls by lack of sunlight? Even grasping the notion of remaining in the same place for months and months failed to really click in her brain, the terror that had dwelled in each individual hour over the last few weeks was... such that a month became incomprehensible. Several months became inconceivable. A year wasn't a unit of time she recognised as legitimate, probably a myth invented by historians flogging their books. No, no, don't think about that - she could always not emerge at all, that was very much an option. The central chamber ran much of the length of the structure, and was dominated by bunks arranged around the edges, curtains that divided the sexes, and a central table for... everything, it seemed. Eating, talking, playing the battered board games that sat in lurid cardboard boxes, threadbare around the corners. Already a few souls were spilling in, carrying bags of... significantly higher quality than the others.

Marana... she reacted strangely, hissing through her teeth and stiffening her back, consciously aware of her position at Tanner's side.

"Ah. Them."

Tanner had never really met the business owners, the investors the governor had kept under such tight control. She could see why - if anyone felt like fostering resentment among the colonists, they'd just need to highlight the fine suits, the leather bags, the plump faces... but the governor had corralled them very effectively, never allowed them to become a proper aristocracy. Like schoolchildren from wealthy families, forced into the same uniforms as everyone else, the same dormitories, the same canteens with the same food. They streamed in in silence, glancing around nervously...

And froze at the sight of Tanner.

Probably on account of her just killing someone.

And, of course - their bodyguards. Soldiers who were marching in, expecting to find a bunker full of their own, effectively giving the business owners double the amount of protection afforded to the rest, compromising the security of the entire operation.

Instead, they found an empty bunker.

Empty save for Tanner, and her limited entourage. Even the soldier who'd guided her around nodded politely, saluted, and headed for the exit to rejoin his own group.

Tanner sat down at the head of the table.

Placed the axe against it, the head rasping against the floor.

A motley collection of rich men and rich women looked at her like she was going to rip them limb from limb.

And in the distance, a metal door closed with a deep, bassy ring as metal struck metal and metal struck stone. The entire bunker turned into an enormous bell, through which the tone could rumble like a living force.

"Sit."

They sat.

* * *

"There'll be more coming. Liaisons with the forces outside. I suggest you stay out of their way, and don't intervene in any discussions I have."

The investors glanced at one another. Not very many of them, really. About... twenty in total, with the actual investors making up about fourteen of them, the rest being their families. More, indeed, would be coming - she anticipated close to thirty, once the last few stragglers were factored in. They were well-dressed, and had the same look of... not pudginess, not softness, but a hard-edged, colony-weathered countenance bred from rich living from a young age, and a lifestyle which was significantly more demanding than it'd been back home. Some people, exposed to the cold and the labour and the dark, became shrivelled and odd, pale as milk and almost as soft. These people were able to convert that into a kind of mass, a solidity that was significantly more real. The men had stubble roughening their cheeks, and hands tanned chestnut-brown by exposure to sunlight. The women had faces reddened by the same sun, and their dresses had to be held tight around their waists by sashes and belts, while the men looked oddly clownish in suits that had long-since stopped fitting them properly, pounds flayed away by stress and labour. Even their bags were significantly lighter than she expected, not stuffed with ballgowns or exotic fragrances. It was strange, but...

There was some kinship here. Even if she didn't like seeing it, and she doubted the investors did either, if they saw it at all. Both of them had come out to a place where their estimates of what the world should look like were irrelevant, and the knapsack of custom had fallen from their backs, straps slipping with each step forwards until... it crashed down, and it seemed impossible to lift it back up again. There was strength in that, like how lame horses could be sent out without horseshoes, to walk in broad fields and repair the damage in their hooves. And there was danger. Tanner had lost the weight of custom from her back.

Now she had a cloak of buffalo pelt. An axe. The crushing pressure of ever-accelerating momentum.

One of the men coughed into a handkerchief, and examined her with dark eyes.

"Well? What else? Are we prisoners?"

Not pleading. That was good. Tanner shook her head.

"No, not prisoners. Just... misguided. Don't try and subvert me in future, and don't subvert our defence. At this point, all you need to do is sit tight and wait for the situation to be resolved."

One of the women, a tall soul with a face that made her think of certain birds of prey, glared openly, and her harsh voice split the yellow-tinted air.

"And how, precisely, do you intend to resolve this situation? For that matter, why should we place our trust in you?"

"Not much of a choice."

"We've never met you before, only glimpsed you - Marana, darling, won't you at least explain what's going on? There's mutants, and executions, and criminals, and... it's all too much. Won't you-"

Marana coughed.

"I'd recommend just listening to the judge, Mallug."

Ah, lug. Suffix meant she was a Parliamentarian, or from a Parliamentary family. Understood. That one hint was enough for Tanner to adjust her approach, just a little bit.

"I've been given the authority by Mr. Canima to manage the defence, to use the assets most appropriate to the situation, and to otherwise act as an acting governor, and a temporary, honorary member of the Erlize. I assure you, this is all entirely normal."

A flicker of fear. But it translated quickly into anger. Animals backed into corners - the only way out lay through the enemy, everything else was death.

"...you've been conspiring with her, haven't you, Marana? And we let you into our homes, let you eat our food, drink immense quantities of our wine, we... trusted you, and what, you were spying on us?"

Marana said nothing. But her face was twisted with shame. Tanner felt an odd surge of defensiveness, and the anger made her face turn very flat indeed, and her voice was a bureaucrat's dull drawl.

"Ms. Mallug, calm down. There's been no spying. I found out about this... idea from the garrison. Soldiers talk to one another, you understand."

The soldiers around the edge of the room stiffened a little, unwilling to look one another in the eye. Like that, destabilised it a little more, just a little. The soldiers were going to distrust one another, and that ought to help put to bed any further rebelliousness or susceptibility to bribery. And for the investors, it unnerved them a little, eroded faith in their own ability to subvert.

Goodness, she... very rarely thought like this.

Not sure how she liked it.

Someone she recognised spoke up - Mr. Nangi, someone Canima had intimidated into submission after the governor's death. Small, fierce man, heavily weathered by working outdoors, with mutton chops that seemed to thrust outward like a boar's tusks.

"If you're in charge, then explain the defences. Are you a general? Have you ever organised this sort of thing before?"

The immediate response that came to mind was 'have you?', but she fought it down. She... was deeply unqualified for this. Still. Her face was flat, and she projected the same aura of calm that always emerged when she was at her most emotional. Yes, the sky was red, she could hear statues talking, but she was definitely fine. Definitely. Nuts, should've asked Canima for his advice on these people, gotten access to all the juicy gossip he was surely privy to. Though... honestly, if she found out that Mr. Nangi was having a steamy affair with someone in this room, she'd genuinely find it hard to look him in the eye without blushing. Lunatics, she could deal with. Mutants, she could deal with. But... having knowledge of someone's intimates tended to unmake her. It was a source of unending gratitude for her that the mortuary assistant always covered up the bodies he worked on, the notion of having seen the governor and Mr. Lam naked was...

No. Just... no.

Wouldn't even be able to look Yan-Lam in the eye at that point.

Right, right... steel her features, steady her voice, and soldier on.

"Mr. Canima authorised me to organise things. My advisors on military matters-"

A mutant aristocrat and a very out-of-his-depth Sersa.

"-trust me as well, as I trust them. Now - the plan is to allow the mutants to take the broader colony, but once they enter the streets, they'll find a bloodbath. We have more specific plans, but frankly, none of them have any bearing on this bunker at this point in time. We have supplies, we have backup, we have a telegram system to link us to the other bunkers, and a system of flares and messengers if the cables are cut, and equipment to defend ourselves, and theurgists who are, I understand, finished with the major projects they were working on to defend the colony. We are as well-prepared as we possibly could be."

A pause.

"And ultimately, if you want to challenge my authority, try and order everyone around - I invite you to try."

Her hand wrapped around the hilt of her axe, softened by the silk of the governor's scarf. She ran her fingers over it, and thought, idly, that she was erasing evidence of her misdeeds in front of the people best able to expose them, given their resources, their motivations, their connections. She met Mallug's eyes, and stared deeply into them - lug, she was likely related to Parliamentarians, the people who controlled the Erlize, had set up this entire colony, and she had no idea that Tanner was actively destroying evidence. Come on, feed on the confidence, feed like Lyur had fed on attention and fear, and... now she was thinking about Lyur. She could split this woman's head open with her axe. The woman wouldn't be able to stop her. No-one in this room would. The soldiers would be paralysed by fear and indecision, not sure if they could trust one another, not sure if trusting the investors was the way to go. The investors, though tougher-looking than she expected, were still... not exactly trained fighters.

She could cut down every last one of them.

The stench of copper was already filling her nostrils. The floor felt distinctly spongy, as if the stone was soaking up blood and swelling up like a drenched carpet. She'd sink ankle-deep in it as she proceeded around the table. Her axe seemed to warm in her hand, the silk took moisture into itself and clung to her flesh, a soft, slithering umbilical cord winding around her wrist and attaching it to the axe-parasite and-

Calm down.

Mallug was talking.

Hm. Funny thought. She had two suffixes. Mal meant someone from one side of the river Irizah. Lug was for Parliamentarians. Bit like if Tanner was called Magg Magg.

She... needed to stop thinking. She couldn't keep bouncing between inanity and insanity, it would probably send her into fits after a while.

"You..."

A pause.

"...what about our investments?"

Her voice became a little more wheedling. Alright. She'd won. They were accepting her role as someone who could at least talk about the future.

Even if it was... completely pointless, honestly.

"Leave that until the crisis is over. Once it is, there can be proper discussions."

For her to delegate to someone who knew what they were doing. Not sure who that might be, but... Nangi was grumbling.

"Judge. A bloody judge, ordering people around."

Something clicked in his head, and now he was standing, his voice quivering with suppressed rage.

"A judge, executing people in broad daylight. A judge, who says that Mr. Canima let her do this - an old man who, what, we've barely seen since the governor died. And now there's mutants everywhere, theurgists appearing from thin air, something to do with a cartel, and she's walking around with an axe and furs like some kind of caricature barbarian. She's young enough to be my granddaughter, and I wouldn't trust her to organise anything larger than a linen cupboard!"

A pulse of fear.

He knew.

"I don't mind the idea of a judge ordering us around, I don't even mind if Mr. Canima appointed someone to act instead of him, not if it's necessary enough. But the idea of someone... being manipulated by other people, because she clearly is, there's no chance that someone who's barely forgotten what her mother's teat feels like - sorry, ladies - could do this on her own... anyway, I don't want to talk to the monkey, I want to talk to the organ grinder. Is it that.. cartel, whatever that is? Is it one of the soldiers? What about one of the theurgists, or that massive thing which was on the roof during the execution."

Murmurs of disquiet and discontent. The soldiers stiffened. Their loyalties were in the air - this group were the bribable, the corruptible, the impure and undecided souls which swung every issue, while other camps picked their sides and stuck to them. She was... not in front of a good crowd, she realised. None of the loyal soldiers, none of the cartel, none of the Rekidans, even Ms. Blue was busy managing troop movements and fetching equipment and whatnot - for once, Tanner wanted her eerie devotion at her side, just to give her a sort of... half-feral attack dog. Right, first real test of authority...

"Look at her - locks herself up in a mansion for weeks, now tries to order us around."

He was growing bolder with her silence. He was aware she hadn't read the Erlize files which would give her power over him, he could smell her lack of connections to anyone notable in Fidelizh, he could taste her weakness. Her fear. A droplet of sweat made its way down the back of her neck, and all she could think about... all her mind could process at this moment was that she could just kill him. The precedent was there. In the chaos, no-one would particularly mind if some... steps had to be taken, not like this bunch were popular. Not that she wanted to murder anyone, she didn't, even the idea was making her sick, but-

But she'd done it once.

The gap between zero and one was an infinity unto itself.

Her breath was filled with the stench of iron. Her mind had formed into the patterns of a murderer, and it knew the route, it was developing the muscle memory required to form them again.

From zero to one could be an exceptional circumstance never repeated.

From one to two was the movement from unique and mutant to standardised and mass-producible. Two to three was nothing. Three to ten was easy. Ten to a hundred was a matter of time.

She wasn't... ready for being interrogated at this stage, she needed time, she needed time to get her mind in order and... maybe she could bellow? No, no, she never yelled, that would come across as far too unusual, all eyes were on her, her skin was crawling with what felt like tiny insects, she was convinced that she was sweating too much, she...

Marana spoke up.

"Oh, for crying out loud - the reason she never talked to you was because she never needed to. You weren't connected to the governor's murder - and you can thank her for crossing you off that list, incidentally, there were quite a few people trying to paint your bunch as killers. Really - questioning the person who's already done more for the colony's defence? All of this, coming from someone who actively compromised it? Really. Just sit back, let her do her job, and wait."

Yan-Lam, who until now had been silent, chimed in, her face almost as red as her hair, her eyes burning with something... protective? Obsessive?

"Yes! Exactly! You all just sat around and... and drank wine while she was doing her job, you found out about the governor's death, and you started asking about investments, and Ms. Magg went and started solving it the next day! Refused to sleep until it was done, refused to eat, too! And you just... just sat around!"

Her voice became more and more shrill, and when she ran out of breath, Marana took over.

"Precisely, the agitated redhead is quite correct - oh, and you probably missed the part where she was almost killed, and broke out of captivity. Really, and you're criticising her, when you, Mallug, hardly have much experience with escaping bond-"

Mallug squeaked in embarrassment, flinging her hands over her own mouth like that would do something. Yan-Lam almost leapt into the air she was so agitated, and her voice barely entered the realms of human hearing.

Oh gods, this was awful, Tanner was going to implode right here, right now, oh gods...

"I've been cleaning your houses for my entire life, you ingrates, and I've seen multiple foreign pairs of undergarments, I know you're doing more than talking about investments, so while you sit around having... having arrangements and drinking, she was actually solving matters!"

"And I know for a fact half of you would have heart attacks if she actually started bellowing at you, and have you seen the size of her axe?"

"And the soldiers are getting bribes while she does all of this for free - her house is still full of poison, she's practically homeless and she's still doing her job!"

"And she was working the same night she got poisoned, after saving me from it. Yes, I've drunk most of your wine, that was to cope with the poison that she inhaled and just shrugged off. Janlug, you were out for days with the flu, I'm fairly sure she has had the flu, and just ignored it. She's vomited blood before getting back to work."

"And I didn't see any of you volunteering to help when she was fighting criminals you didn't even know about!"

"And she went to an underground river for an afternoon, and came back with an army and an axe."

"She stopped people running away from the colony, and you're probably still planning on that, if push comes to shove!"

Tanner was utterly frozen.

She was dying.

She was dying.

She was dead.

She was a dead body in a dress at a table, Tanner had left, Tanner was not here, Tanner was mortified beyond belief, she was imploding, she'd actively imploded and they were just seeing the after-image it'd been so violently swift. All of these praises were incorrect or missed the point. She'd been terrified the entire time. She was still terrified. She found it hard to even stomach food when she was under pressure and working, it wasn't some sort of noble fasting, she just couldn't eat. Not like she stopped drinking coffee or tea, she swallowed that stuff by the gallon. She'd actively spied on these people just to make it seem like she suspected them, she didn't warn them, or work out of the kindness of her heart - their well-being hadn't even entered her brain, she'd never seen them as people at risk. She'd reufsed to sleep because she couldn't sleep, too nervous, and she'd started work immediately because of guilt and terror. She'd torn her way out of her ropes because she had an inherited deformity, someone who sweated enough could probably have managed to slip out without being a brutish thug. She didn't sit around drinking and having arrangements because the thought of the latter made her want to explode and the former didn't work. If she saw them having heart attacks after she started bellowing, she'd have a heart attack herself out of sheer shame. She received a lighter dose of poison, and Marana was twice her age with a heavier dose. What was she meant to do after vomiting blood, keep vomiting blood, think about vomiting blood, rest and wait to vomit more blood? The underground river had been insanity and a last-ditch effort, and she'd stopped people running because it wouldn't have worked!

She was still terrified. She was a murderess and a usurper. She was an out-and-out criminal. She doubted everything she did.

And...

And the investors were shifting in their seats. The soldiers almost looked ashamed.

They thought she was a confident person who could just let her loyal attack dogs do the work.

They didn't know.

Oh, gods, it was the execution again. The same feeling of silently begging for someone to save her, to help her, to just make it all stop. But no-one did, because they all thought she was... she was someone she definitely wasn't. All they saw was a giant woman with wild hair and a buffalo pelt and an axe and an army of mutants and silence and calm and austere justice and none of this was true.

This was insanity, why couldn't anyone else see this was insanity? Why wasn't someone stopping her? She should be stopped! She had to be stopped! She'd killed a man, she had killed a man, and they were all praising her, she was hallucinating wildly, possibly having a nervous breakdown, stop it, stop it, stop it, Nangi was right, he was utterly correct, stop shouting him down.

She was screaming on the inside, and she couldn't quite bring herself to stop. If she wasn't still recovering from murdering a man, she'd probably be flushing bright red - no, she was, but as always, it was around her damn collarbone, and not her face, which was flat as ever, placid as ever, argh!

Tanner really... uh...

Come on, do something.

Do something.

She tapped her axe against the floor softly.

"That'll be quite enough."

Her voice should not sound this calm and collected when she was begging them to stop before she died.

"I... hope there'll be no further need to discuss these matters."

She was bloody praying to every god in the civilised and uncivilised world that everyone stopped talking.

"If there's nothing else, I have telegrams to send."

Please take her away and let her sit in a dark room.

Oh, thank the gods for her axe.

Stopped her falling over when she stood up and walked away, her mind screaming perpetually.

...no, wait.

That wasn't her mind.

That was something else.

A low, low wailing sound, growing ever-so-slightly louder as the seconds went on...

The tell-tale sound of a contamination detector.