Baultriel

- 42 -

Velnias is not my city and the Palisade is not my world, but I am here now, and I suppose I am now of this city and of this world, and so I have taken up the mantle of someone who cares about it, same as anyone takes up the mantle of a carer for whatever cause they are stuck between. Wasn't Nelly growing up on Old Tibor. Wasn't a citygoer in the endless swamps of Stromm's Landing. When Pell sailed us on a vacation north to someplace warm and pretty, islands in a little jeweled sea called Gavoris upon the equator, I felt like throwing up so bad I couldn't stay. I'm seasick, Pell. It wasn't home. Nothing is home until you are placed there too long. Do you miss Stromm's Landing at all, Nelly?

Whoever was there was not me, and I am not her. But I am still a stupid brute doing what I am told. That's alright by me. Always did well as someone else's soldier.

One hand lopped off and the other all calloused and tan. I belong to Salt Row and the sea air and I belong, too, in the awaiting arms of the town of Baultriel, despite never being there in my life. Why does Ceder care about it? Why do I?

Sometimes you love something, is all.

Baultriel is a slum. It's a red light district some massive strata across, spanning mostly Gutters but with many tall buildings, and just about everyone is raised in the grey markets or the black markets. Daughters of prostitutes and fathers of gangsters. The League's trying to outlaw prostitution, and anyhow the sheer quantity of drugs and bodies shuffled through the precinct was enough for them to accelerate the surveillance structure. NO FREE TRADE IN BAULTRIEL. PENALTIES APPLY. Then some people protested and got killed. Then again. Then again after that. Guild Destri takes slaves and the Peacekeepers take permanent prisoners, and the little city of Baulriel just rots.

I don't know a thing about fixing any of it. I just figure I can love it for someone else's sake, and I can hold a gun alright, and that's all that's being asked of me.

-

I can hold a gun.

-

Staring down at my shotgun splayed out on the table, now, all the component parts I've been cleaning to distract from my headache and fever. Whirlwind of movement around me, Ceder unpacking disguises from the ceiling, Noss borrowing use of his desktop computer. Rhodes is bickering with the both of them but I can't hear any of it.

Wiping down the barrel.

Carbon and gunsmoke. Only fired you four times and you're already tired.

Stock comes off with these pins here. Needs new varnish someday.

How'd you get here? You fly on some spaceship, same as me? Why? You've seen too much fighting. It should have been retirement for you. How'd I lose you, anyway?

I detach the pistol grip. It's from some airgun kit and I screwed it on wrong and it doesn't look right having something stupid and plastic on a nice wooden stock. But it looks exactly right, too. Just like it used to.

How'd you get here?

"It won't work," Ceder says. Snaps me out of my trance. "We cannot suppress it."

I look over to him. He's dressed. No robes, just a suit jacket and some slacks, big but fitting. Black gloves. Hiding his scale color. "What?" I ask.

"We cannot mount a suppressor to your gun." He smiles a little. "When I received it, I wanted our gunsmith to install threading of a proper type, but someone had already chipped out a... crude muzzle brake. It wasn't worth the extra cost."

Yeah. I guess someone did do that, for some reason. "Oh well," I say. "Wouldn't fix the sound much anyway. Got anything else?"

"This time, yes. Though I'm sorry to make you two part again."

"Nah." I'm starting to wake up again. Back into reality. We're gearing up and I'm smiling. "It should be a walking stick at this point," I tell him.

He seems to get a kick out of that. "Then we shall retire it, and get you a rifle."

Heard that before. "Her too?" I point at Rhodes.

She looks away from her datapad to wince and squint at me. "Nelly, I don't know even how to use a gun."

"We will do the shooting," Ceder assures her, "although nobody will be shooting much, if we are lucky."

I nod, and take one last look at my shotgun.

I'll be back for you. But I won't need you. You've given enough.

Promise.

-

I am put into a poorly-fitting two-piece suit and adorned with a plastic mask of the Biztram Nadaz, and we walk out of the Hang'd Knight as a motley bunch of criminals at noon.

- 43 -

As always, the subway does a good job of getting us where we're going, and it's a shame I spent these months so often on foot or else riding a stolen moped to get about. As long as we're unarmed at least—probably not the best idea to use public transit while packing heat.

We shuffle mostly out of sight of the cameras in Laudenberger Station and slink into the first train to Lowry Harbor. According to Ceder he's got no reason to think we need to be cautious here, even after the shootout—confident in his own ability to cover his tracks, and maybe a little too confident in mine and Rhodes'. Suppose it means the trip to the other part of the Undercity was pointless, but it did save that kid's life, and it was safer than barging into Corundum Town blindly. Train is a little dirty and smells faintly like gasoline, but it's on time and isn't too crowded.

I look down at Rhodes hugging my side for support. She's got a Tasran surgical mask and a beanie to hide her cybernetic, and she looks a little goofy, buried under my arm as I use a pole to stand up. "Did you used to do public transit a lot?" I ask, quiet enough not to make a scene.

"Yeah," she says, smiling faintly. "I loved the train. How I got, ah, all those... got work done in Salt Row. Cams and shit. It took months."

I nod. "Sure. Guess you'd need it to travel, since you weren't walking," I say.

She looks off. "I did also have a moped for stuff that wasn't close to a station..."

"So that's how you came up with that idea. You get it stolen ever?"

"Naw. I was smart."

We did have some fun conversations, back before she ran off, trying to justify our moped theft by reckoning that the owner deserved it. "What happened to ours?"

Rhodes hums mutedly, and doesn't turn to me. "Did me really good, 'til... you know." Yeah, probably best we leave that unsaid here. Not a good spot to talk business.

I look across the train. There's some old looking folks with instrument cases, one guy with tan skin fiddling with a trumpet. Two seats occupied by stray cats who must be on for the long haul. A big Neriak blocking the view to the next car, clothed in red and brown robes like something I'd seen back home. And Ceder and Noss across from us, in their own little conversation. They act a little like father and daughter on occasion, though Ceder also seems to get a kick out of seeing her flare up and groan. Both are wearing simple cloth facemasks—maybe believable that they're just for fashion, but not that believable.

Not a long ride, which is for the best, because we stand out pretty bad.

-

Noss is parked a couple blocks from the Ajbal Station Platform in Lowry Harbor, not far off the waterfront. Horrible stench of motor oil swirling in the air, and concrete dust on everything, and we emerge out of the subway into a loud construction zone for some kind of enormous renovation of the freight platform just aboveground. Cargo trains are a decent part of Velnias' commerce, and a lot of cargo might as easily come from Berith by land as by sea. Lots of folk about, and a big ostentatious cafe with vaulted windows, and a squad of armored security by a parked van. We got no business here.

On the corner of Bolasettum and 119th, we come across Noss's car. It's a beater, I think you'd call it, this compact green-painted thing with a combustion engine partly emerging from the hood, paint flecking off and a splatter of rust on the back, and a floppy antenna sagging pathetically from the front of the roof. Angular, too. Probably cheaper than the electric moped Rhodes and I used, though it's also probably got more robust security.

"Don't scuff it up," Noss explains, and I almost laugh at that. "Rhodes, sit behind Ceder, he's gonna need leg room and you're tiny."

"Okay, but don't squish me," says Rhodes.

Ceder gives her a smile. "I will not squish you."

I sit behind Noss, the others pile in, and we get going. Tires screech for a second when she gets the engine on, and it's bumpy from the word go, but it works.

-

Heading into the very center of Velnias, now. Baultriel is its heart geographically and red-lit like blood, and even in the midday, there are still a thousand blinking lights and neon signs and enormous imposing buildings with different designs making for a glass-toothed skyline. The highways of the city are far above the streets, and higher above the Gutters, and then Noss takes us on an off-ramp and I think we're close, but we're not even out of Lowry Harbor, and we're getting on a superhighway. Ten lanes either direction and we're nearly touching the buildings on either side. Little daunting. I look over and Rhodes is as infatuated staring out the window as me.

"Shit, we're higher up than some apartments," I say, laughing a little.

"I get a little vertigo up here," she says back. "But when I was little I used to really like being in the back seat and just watching."

"Sure. I liked the same as a kid."

Rhodes tilts over to look at me, and we lock eyes. First time in a while we're in someone else's hands. "Yeah? Where'd you live on Old Tibor anyway?"

I hear Noss let out a noise. Whatever. Not like I intended to keep it a secret. Probably worth clarifying I'm not much of a fed, though. "Paraschiv. The capital. Most years the sandstorms kept the view pretty hazy, but I remember my parents driving me to basic training and watching the whole city disappear bit by bit." One last look at home, kiddo. Sorry for saying that. I know you'll be back soon.

"Was it big?"

"Yeah, I guess." It was my whole entire world. Though I spent most of it indoors. "Wide, not tall. You could drive forever and keep seeing farms. I bet it's different nowadays, but probably not that different."

She nods, though I reckon she can't readily conceptualize forty years. Neither can I. "It's like that here too, you know," she says. "It'd take you days to drive out of Velnias, if you include all the smaller towns."

"Damn right," says Noss.

I snicker. "Everything's bigger around here, huh."

"You could never ever explore it all," she explains. "Not even one district. I don't even know most of Salt Row, i-it's probably the size of your home town."

"Probably." I know you'll be back soon. "Things always seem bigger when you're a kid. It felt as infinite as this."

"Rhodes," calls Noss. Her voice still has a little contempt in it, but she's lightened up since we first met. The growl is as guttural as ever, though. Just how she talks. "I got confused and forgot. What network key do we need to pick up?"

Rhodes shakes her head. "Ah, ah, no, we don't need it. I mean, we need it, but I can spoof it when we get to the core."

"Bah. I don't like chancing that." I hear her step on the gas a little harder. We pass by a little convoy of electric cars in the rightmost lane. "Can't we get a physical copy?"

"It'd be in a League checkpoint, I dunno where..."

"We have insiders. I'll ask."

Weakly, Rhodes says, "Okay."

Then Noss's voice gets a little firmer. "Don't whimper at me. If it doesn't work, and we're stuck holding out in the server room with you fumbling—"

"Then I'll be dead," Rhodes stammers, "and you'll have time to run."

"Tch. Our allies elsewhere expecting us to do our jobs won't have time to run."

"Fucking cool it," I tell her. Gritting my teeth a little. "She knows the stakes."

I hear her start to speak, but Ceder says, "Yes, Noss, a little faith."

Noss relents and flicks the car radio between a few frequencies, pulls a couple dials, and turns it on. The roar of static fills the car, and then fades as she starts to tune the antenna.

Rhodes reaches over, and I hold her hand.

-

It's a rapidfire series of affairs. Turns out the radio in Noss's car is a souped up walkie-talkie like I used to use back home, complete with a little encrypting setup and a patch panel by the ashtray, and even as she's barking commands into various channels she uses codewords, short sentences. Partially Vasthi, although when she speaks to "Team Seesee" she speaks entirely in Common, and doesn't seem to like whoever's on the other end. Eight channels, and she treats them as leaders with as much responsibility as her. Team Glass is arming for operation Velvet. Team Mini is arming for operation Runway. She tries to mobilize Team Seesee but they're slow to get organized every time she checks in, and it seems to piss her off plenty. "Albala," she says.

"Seesee will come around," Ceder assures her. "We have been preparing—how long? Everything is set in place, as it has been for very long. We are too ready to be caught unready."

"They sound unready," Noss grunts.

"They have time to fix that."

I lean over to glance at Noss in the rear-view mirror. "It's safe to use radio for stuff like this?"

"Barely," she responds. "We think the League busted our encryption back in July, so we changed it, but they could've busted it again since then. I'm using codewords."

Ceder pipes up, too. "She uses the radio every day, almost exactly like this. This won't seem different than usual, despite it being a very different day."

"Cool," says Rhodes.

Funnily enough I hadn't seen Noss around the Hang'd Knight much, if at all. I figure I'd remember her, with her height and bulk. As we pass close by a grand and imposing skyscraper that looks like a hotel—a little like the Okamoto Industries one that me and Rhodes once hid out in—I ask a question. Talking staves off the headache. "How'd you two meet, anyway?"

"Tch, take a guess," Noss says.

Ceder leans back and gives her a little smile, then turns to me. "I knew her grandmother during the War, and I helped raise her mother. Then I was back home for a while, though the timeline escapes me slightly. Then I returned to see Noss when she was born, and helped them secure housing."

"You were gone a lot," Noss says, quieter, "but I remember you during March of the Free every year."

"Hah, yes. I suppose I came over for vacations now and then."

Come on, fed, drink. Come on. It's a good day to drink your brains out. "What's March of the Free like around here?"

"Fucking crazy usually," Rhodes giggles.

"I like it," says Noss.

Ceder gives me a sly look. "I would not know. I don't typically remember it the morning afterward."

I snicker a little. "I see."

"Anyhow," he says, "certainly more lively than anything else. The Guilder holidays are... not for you and I, and Pioneer Day does not see much Vasthi attendance."

"Yeah," I say, "you don't see anyone cool at Pioneer Day anywhere." Some shit city kids do to celebrate being colonizers. "Oh, god, the way my parents would fawn over it every year..."

"You aren't much Fed anymore, right?" asks Noss. "Don't got to punch you in the face to make sure you play along?"

I stare at her.

She grunts, but I can hear her exhaling some tension out. "Good. You still stink like a Confederate, but if Ceder trusts you..."

Rhodes is a little astonished. "How the fuck do you people keep detecting fed on her?!"

"I don't know," Noss says. "It's just a thing."

"No, I wanna know too. I got a new accent, I should stink like swamp at this point..."

But Noss continues to be no help. "Whatever. You're with Baultriel now. I don't care. Just follow orders and we'll get this done."

"Can do, ma'am," I say, and I cough.

"And don't die yet," she says.

"Yeah, Nelly," Rhodes says. Her voice is a little restrained. "Don't die anytime soon. I like you."

I got better things to do than that.

I just lay back and stare at the roof as Noss gets back to checking in with the squad leaders on her big radio, and Ceder and Rhodes watch the city go by, and I think about some long-off time like this, some car on a dirt road headed someplace foul to do business, brandishing guns, and making things change, and I am a gun, and I am just your gun.

We take one turn onto an offramp, and head into the little city of Baultriel.

- 44 -

Down on the streets we are completely dwarfed by the infinite apartment blocks in every direction, and the highways blotting out the sun overhead, and all the light is replaced by neon. The nightlife is thriving at noon, but some roads are completely unoccupied, and too wide, and abandoned warehouses and broken-down factories in the bottom floor of megastructures peek out of every corner. At times it looks like a warzone, and at times it looks like the prettiest and most lively parts of some fantastical city in a novel, with ravers and scene kids about, and prettily-dressed Baldari coaxing money for some service or another, and lights in all the windows, all these lives, all these people. In Baultriel there isn't really a difference between Gutters and non-Gutters. It's all low and stinks of shit and looks like home.

Cameras at every intersection, though.

And Baultriel Law Enforcement out front of that building, and that one.

And that Baldari over there is getting pushed along by three Tasran into an abandoned building.

Noss is gripping the steering wheel tight. Ceder has his face low, and puts on a carved wooden mask with painted fangs like an overgrown monster of some kind. Rhodes is curled up against the side door. She puts down the datapad she's been typing on. "I'm sorry," she says, like she is some thermoelectric cell in space, emitting but not for any reason. Sorry for what, lady? Sorry is such a stupid word for stupid people. Don't be stupid anymore.

"Shush," I tell her, quietly.

"What?"

"Stop being sorry. You got better shit to think about."

Noss leans back in her seat slightly. "And cut your wireless on your datapad, moron."

She snaps back. "Obviously I did." After a moment of trembling, she elaborates. "I was looking shit up before we got here, and I gotta write a virus. The camera subroutine here got changed last week, so I'm starting from scratch."

"You need more time?" I ask.

"Nah. It's just getting me stressed the fuck out. Was sorry for not doing it sooner."

Ceder has a self-assuredness in his voice. "You will do well in this. Noss, next left."

"Thank you, I know," Noss grunts. "Come on, you know I know the way."

"Ha, yes, of course."

"How'd you find these two people, anyway," she asks. I guess it's a little playful. Doesn't seem to despise Rhodes the same as this morning.

"In some gutter somewhere," I say. "Like stray cats." I could use a vet. Head is starting to throb real bad from all the moving around, but at least I can still see.

Ceder proudly clears the record. "They were on the run, and I took them in. Nelly also worked for me. They earned their keep."

"Very like you."

Noss makes a left at Blastdeck and 56th, and we emerge onto the heart of the innermost row of bars along the most populated main street in all of the Gutters. Traffic slows. Lots of little rusty electric cars, buskers in full bands, dusk lighting and great concrete expanses spattered with wet trash and foul runoff, and people too day-drunk to walk alongside groups of young Baldari and Tasran sprinting around getting into some shit. Big overhangs on bigger buildings. Basement bars forever. Lucy's. The Bald Pit. Frank's Glasshouse. Easy Swinging. Two human Peacekeepers in light plastic-steel padding are chain-smoking outside of an unmarked storefront. There's a sign that says NO LOITERING. Nobody is doing anything that isn't loitering.

Somehow I figure there'd be a more obscure route to get where we're going, but I see Noss has her head tilted, and she is looking at the row of Baultriel folk with some longing. Maybe a slow moment looking at it before things go to shit is what she needs.

Then the traffic lets up, we speed up, and we get where we're going by two PM.

-

We're huddled around in a dim personal storage container about six meters across in any direction, and I'm on a raggy couch that could have easily come right off the street. There's an anti-tank gun under the cushions though. And all the cardboard boxes around are filled with more things of its ilk.

Rhodes is sat in the corner on one box, displaying her cybernetic to Noss, who is casually loading a couple mags on the floor. Has an interest in her, though. Rhodes pulls at a little tab on her facial cybernetic and does something I haven't ever seen her do—she starts unwinding a flat, multicolored cord, which emerges from her skull in a way that looks like a parasite, more than anything. "See?" she asks.

"Fucking gnarly," Noss admits. "Kahah. So you're just fully computer up there, huh."

Rhodes lets go of the cord, and it effortlessly unwinds and snaps back into her head with a whir. "Nah. Thirty one percent. Any more and Ceder would have to kill me."

"No I wouldn't!" Ceder calls, shuffling through some boxes.

Noss bangs a couple extra oddly-shaped rounds into the magazine she's been stuffing. "So," she says, "how long's it take once we wire you in?"

She ponders. "Ah, to what? The MONITOR?"

"The thing we're about to do."

"Like ten seconds, about?"

"Tch." Noss seems tempted to laugh it off, but I see some kind of other emotion pass her face, and she pauses. "It better. We're going to be on the tightest fucking schedule."

I call over, itching at my head. "That thing long enough to reach out of the Bug Bag?"

"Yeah, if you help!" She laughs, but it's a little forced. "I can, ah, crawl out a little maybe."

"Whatever you gotta do."

"Just as long as you are out in swift order," says Ceder. "Nelly, I have found what I was looking for."

"Yeah?"

He plops down a cardboard box in front of me, heavy and jostling with rattly things, and then unfurls it, crouching in front of me. "I will have to explain some of this."

So Ceder walks me through my armaments for the day.

I have been equipped with a special-issue League chemrail rifle called an NLNA Leopardo 4, with a short magazine and standard ring sight, as well as a big tubular suppressor slapped on the front. I click on the mounted flashlight and it stings from how bright it is. The gun is surplus, technically, though I doubt it came from a surplus store. "We never used chemrail back home," I comment.

"It is the future, you know," Ceder says, playfully. Railgun perks made accessible and portable.

"Fucking pain in the ass, and smells terrible, and you can't handload it."

Noss nods. "True. But it's what you get."

The Leopardo is equipped with an underbarrel grenade launcher, also standard, although it has some grippy tape and the hinge feels funny with overuse. Ceder explains that, for the work we are doing, it is convenient not to shoot people with bullets. "We are expecting two threats," he explains. "Flesh and blood, and robotic. For both, bullets will be less than helpful. These," and Ceder pulls free a box of white-painted forty-millimeter grenades, "are airburst foam shells, as once requisitioned by Baultriel Law Enforcement. They solidly cast a person's legs and arms with a rapid-sealing material, which makes hostage-taking much simpler."

"I knew a guy that got killed with these," I say, flatly. One of Jed Garcia's friends.

"Yes," Ceder says. His tone lowers drastically. "Aim as far from the head as you possibly can. The little computers inside the payload will try their best."

Try your best to talk it through, Nelly, but aim for center mass if you have to.

"Then there are these."

He hands me a different box of shells, this time with transparent tips revealing some kind of intricate payload. The box is just matte black cardboard, but the shells themselves look immaculately-made, with little markings in Colonial Common and instructions on loading and unloading.

"EMPs," I say.

"Yes. Electro-magnetic pulse. Er, or ions. I cannot remember which. Both?"

I grimace a little, and then let out one single laugh. Kind of burns my throat. "I don't mean to say shit, but no wonder you got eyes on Baultriel if this is what you've been hauling."

Noss pipes up immediately, and accidentally thwacks Rhodes in the face with her elbow as she shifts to face me. "It's not so fucking simple," she says.

"I know. Just commenting."

She opens her muzzle for a moment, teeth bared, but again she relents, and turns back to Rhodes to bicker about our plan with her.

"Nelly," Ceder asks, "you are aware on how to load and fire these shells?"

"Yeah. I was on smoke grenade duty for ages." I have to cough a little at the mention of smoke. Maybe I got smoke in my lungs. Actually it's probably some shit I caught in the Undercity.

"Pacification will be our main purpose. No bloodshed in Baultriel. Use the foam shells without prejudice, and if we come across robotics, assail them relentlessly with the ions, and destroy them. The bullets are simply to reiterate our presence for those disinclined to listen to words."

"Got it," I tell him. Got to blink heavily because the light is starting to worsen my headache. Don't turn into a migraine. "Got it."

He's got more goodies for me in the box and in assorted little hiding places around the storage closet. Another ballistic vest from Baultriel Law Enforcement, and a green shrapnel helmet made of solid steel that looks flimsy. A big bunch of webbing that goes over everything else and has spots for eight of the grenades. Earmuffs, or I guess headphones, which quiet loud sounds before they blow your eardrums out. I had a pair like these once. There are three sets of everything, which I take to loading up in the overworked Bug Bag for transport back to the car. "When do we go?" asks Rhodes.

"Seesee said they'll be ready at six, and Thursday is already in place. You three can stay in here," says Noss. "I'll man the radio in the car."

"Will you eat something first, Noss?" asks Ceder.

She stares at him blankly for a moment, then sighs. "Yeah."

"There are some surplus rations in here. We will all need our strength."

So, in the little twilight before a terrible storm, we eat some rations.

-

Salted herring from some aquafarm someplace, in a vinegary sauce. I still have no appetite. A juice box too sweet to drink. Powder coffee, which I am happy to have, and Rhodes lends me a water bottle to mix it in. Always seems to bring me water these days. We eat huddled up on boxes and shitty furniture, and for a little while, we can breathe.

Rhodes asks a question. "Noss," she says. "Why do you trust that I'm not bullshitting I can do this?"

"Oh, you could be," Noss grunts. "But I did a little background check when Ceder was talking to me."

"Yeah?"

Something twinkles in her deep-set animalistic eyes. "Your hacker name isn't hard to find shit about online. Turns out it was you and your little gang that were behind the Delron hack, back in 536." Nine years ago now. There's a loyalist camp that's been here since 534, and we're the ones that get to bring 'em to light. Noss grins. "Those rapist fucks who got fucked over, it was your doing."

I know all this. The Delron hack is what got Rhodes into prison for a year, and it's what made her so easy to find online. If you look on the buoy and you're trying to find someone associated who could be behind the Jericho Arborist fiasco, Rhodes' name lights up like fireworks. Ex-hacker kid turned corporate. Brilliant. Crippled. Impulsive. Untrustworthy. I knew her track record before me and Jed even landed in Berith; I don't know why she didn't wonder how I knew to find her, but she was easier to find than she probably hoped. Hubris I guess. Often is hubris for her.

Rhodes slowly smiles back to Noss. "Yeah. I did lots of bold stuff as a kid."

"Well, I was a kid too, and I remember thinking it was good news that those shitheads got what was coming." But then Noss flicks a finger at her. "But I'm still watching you, hacker, because bold idiots have gotten my people killed before, and if you're wrong about what you can do, you need to say so before there's no going back."

"I'm right," says Rhodes. No hesitation, and again she looks fired up. "The backdoor is the only reason me and Nelly are alive, and the MONITOR exploit is the only way they could stack so many on an overlapping network. Neither one's got patched yet. I've never been more confident in shit in my life."

Ceder puts down a chunk of synth-beef he was gnawing on. "It was some sort of fate," he says.

"Tch!" Noss exclaims. "Here we go."

"It was some sort of fate for you to drop back in the middle of all this, at this point in time, after all that has happened." He leans back slightly as if creaking on a nice rocking chair, then forth. "I have decided to have some faith in it, no matter what I may think about the state of affairs."

Rhodes is quiet. "You have been nice in hearing me out," she mutters.

"When Norak speaks through somebody, with or without their permission, it is our duty to listen." Tiredness strikes his expression. "It is my duty."

I sip at my cold instant coffee. Everything is feeling a little dreamlike.

Hour until we got to get moving.

Check in, I tap.

"All clear," Rhodes says, too quiet to hear, too quiet to be real, but still there, as she always has been, ephemeral and omnipresent in my life since the day I learned her name.