Into The Thin Air

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

One, two, three and four
The devil's knocking at your door
Caught in the eye of a dead man's lie
Start your life with your head held high
Now you're on your knees
With your head hung low
Big man tells you where to go
Tell 'em it's good
Tell 'em okay
Don't do a goddamn thing they say

--The Pretty Reckless, Heaven Knows


It hadn’t been that long ago, it seemed, that she’d held her own children in her arms, much as she was holding one of her grandsons now. They had seemed so small, so helpless. And now, they were both rulers in their own rights. And one, with children of her own. It was unfathomable in some ways. Where had the time gone?

Gabriel stretched slightly in his sleep, his tousled brown hair showing the telltale red highlights indicative of his parentage, as she gently stroked her fingertips through it. Not so tiny now, she reflected. The pair were walking, and of course, wreaking havoc around the household, as young children often did.

Naiya seemed to roll with it fairly effortlessly. Nathicana suspected she ‘cheated’ to some degree. Her consort, the Lost fellow she’d brought back with her from the desert, the one making a paternal claim to the twins, seemed more caught off-guard at some of their antics. Aeturnus was a good father, she had to admit, his sometimes stiff demeanor notwithstanding. It still didn’t sit right with her, the entire situation, but it was her daughter’s choice to make. And she had made it, firmly. Unrepentantly, even.

With a quiet sigh, she slowly stood, careful not to wake the little boy. She made her way over to one of two small beds in the room, both with soft side-rails present to prevent toddler tumbles. Nathi gently tucked him in, leaning down to place a kiss on his forehead. He shifted again at all of that before settling in comfortably.

Lucian was sleeping in his own bed, his own reddish blonde mop of hair peeking above his covers that he’d managed to pull up halfway over his face. She gently pulled them away, and kissed his forehead as well. The only sound he made was his continued steady breathing, deeply asleep.

It hurt, she realized. The aching she was feeling in her chest. It wasn’t what one might expect, no. Nothing was physically wrong with her. She had simply been keeping such a tight control over her emotions, her thoughts for such an extended time, that the muscles had tensed in response, and were tiring out and strained. Her internal stresses had resolved themselves externally. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the proverbial broken heart. That sort of triviality was for sappy stories and other such nonsense.

Her expression tightens, her chin coming up slightly as she suppresses a typical snort of derision at the thought. All the same, she backs out of the door slowly, her eyes shifting from one small bed to the other, locking the details into place that she’s spent the past several hours cementing in her mind. The doors here have always been well-cared for. It doesn’t make a sound as she pulls it nearly closed. Her chest tightens again, her breathing temporarily pausing, before she lets it out in a slow, measured exhalation. The raven-haired woman takes a moment before turning from the door, and slipping silently down the hall.

It used to be their mother’s room. It still is, technically, with the two beds set up for when the little ones are over. Nathicana had kept Marcus’ room as well, though as yet, she had no hopes of her serious-minded yet idealistic son producing any heirs. He was young, still. He had plenty of time. It might have been nice if …

With a half-hearted wave of her hand, she dismisses those thoughts. Now is not the time for it. She has things she has to do, and time is running out.

To her room, then, first of all. There are letters she’s prepared in secret, and she brings them out of their assorted hiding places, laying them out on the small writing desk she has there along one wall. She had half thought to leave them in her office, but this seemed more appropriate somehow. More personal. Less businesslike.

So far as security goes, she had done what she could within the system. It had taken hours of careful work, gradually working her way past various blocks and checkpoints. She’d practiced on closed systems prior to that, jacking in, and running various programs she’d hacked together to fool the failsafes. It had been years since she’d done anything as complicated as this, and things had changed immensely in the interim. Still, so far the planted packets hadn’t been detected. She would go off as planned, on command unless they had, and no one had bothered notifying her. She would know soon enough.

The only thing she was after that way was the camera system, and only for a short time. She didn’t want to put her little family in danger, nor anyone there at the villa, after all. Simply a small window, a tiny loop in the feedback - that’s all she needed.

Just a window.

She had a lot of those in this home. She had always liked letting the natural light in. From her room here, she could look out across the courtyard, or out the other way, showing more the steep drop-off and a bit of the pool below. The way the sunrise filtered through had always been a contenting sight, laying there in her bed. Their bed, that they’d shared and fought and fucked in too many times to count, when he’d been here at least. ust as that had been their bathroom, where they’d played so many games between the large spa tub, the enclosed shower, drying after … and that was the problem, really. Too many memories here that simply wouldn’t leave her in peace.

Every inch of the house held something that caused a twinge when she thought about it. Every bit of the property had some meaning to it. And it didn’t stop there. Her offices downtown, though they weren’t hers anymore. The halls of the various state buildings. The Piazza, the various cafes, ristorantes … she could barely bring herself to eat at Benvito’s any more. And certainly not the lasagna.

It was time. Past time, really. The sick feeling she had in the pit of her stomach said otherwise, but she stubbornly ignored it. One step at a time, don’t think too far ahead - that was the key.

Assuring herself that all was in place, she nodded curtly to herself, and exited the room, locking and shutting the door behind her. She took a steadying breath, then walked down the length of the hall, and headed down the stairs.

Gianni was sitting quietly in the living room, going over something on his datapad. He looked up when she entered the room, and started to stand.

“No, no - I’m just going to go work out for a bit, then a quick dip in the pool, and bed I think,” she reassured him, smiling softly. “If you could listen for the boys, though? I’ve left the monitor on there, on the table. I’d rather not be disturbed.” Nathicana gestured to the small decorative table that stood against the wall that separated this room from the kitchen and dining areas.

“Of course,” he said simply, gradually relaxing back. “I was just going over the list for grocery supplies. Was there anything special you wanted, outside the ordinary?”

“No, but if you could put some halved grapes in the freezer? It might be nice for the boys tomorrow. I hear it’s going to be warm. Naiya can always take them with her if she’d rather, and if not, I’ll have them myself.”

It was a familiar request, and Gianni nodded and smiled in return. “I’ll have them ready by morning.” The lady hadn’t been sleeping well of late, and he knew it. If there was anything he could do to help keep things calm and quiet, he would.

She knew it. She was counting on it.

“Good night, Gianni. And thank you,” she said simply.

“It’s my pleasure,” he replied, watching her turn to head back out to the kitchen, then turned back to his datapad.

She padded down the stairs at the back of the house, down to the small room where she and he used to spar, among other things. From under a counter, she pulled a gym bag, and took out the contents, shedding her casual clothes and slipping on the black outfit she’d hidden there some time before. It felt odd wearing it like this, but without it, things simply wouldn’t be right.

Nathicana had already had her hair pulled back into a simple braid. Little hands too often found long tresses and pulled, or chewed on them. Nevermind the reading glasses - those were simply foolish to wear around the twins. Those she kept in her office, which was still off-limits to little ones, even now. She’d said her farewells there earlier in the day. There was no point in prolonging things further.

Also in the bag was a small remote. She pulled it out, and typed in the correct code. She would know in minutes if something was wrong with her coding. In the meantime, she turned on her music, loud as she tended to do, and waited.

Two minutes passed, and no response. Good. She looked at herself in the mirror, her expression contemplative.

‘You’re not serious, are you, Red?’

“Shut up, Dev,” she muttered reflexively.

‘This isn’t going to help. You know it won’t.’

“No one asked you.”

‘Go take a nice hot bath, call up one of your friends. Greer, maybe. Let this go.’

“I’ve already said my goodbyes there, he simply doesn’t know it.”

‘That’s cold, Nath.’

“So was leaving me like you did.”

‘We’ve been through this. You need to be there, carry on where I couldn’t.’

“I have been. Its in other’s hands now.”

‘Don’t leave Marcus on his own. Especially with what’s happened with her.’

“It’s done, finished, he’s fine, he has family, and she is not the problem here. She never was. Just … just shut up. I’ll be there soon.”

She could swear she heard a long-suffering sigh, one that was so familiar, it sent chills up her spine. Half expecting to see him, she looked past her shoulder in the reflected image. Of course, there was nothing there. No one. How could there have been? Part of her agreed that what she was doing was foolish, but that part had already lost the fight that had been waging in her mind ever since they’d lost contact with his shuttle.

Her window of opportunity was closing, and fast. Pulling a close-fitting hood over her head as she moved, she made her way quickly to the back door that lead out to the pool area, and slipped outside.

Don’t think, she told herself. Don’t think about what you’re about to do. Just do it. Just do it.

The words became a mantra of sorts as she skirted the pool, breaking into a jog. The diminutive woman cleared the safety fence with a smooth motion, swinging her legs over and continuing on without missing a beat. The words in her mind gradually reached her lips, her heart beginning to pound in spite of the fact that her efforts had yet to task her augmented system. She was at the far edge of the courtyard, and ahead of her was the retaining wall. The one thing she had actively avoided in all the years since that night she had tried very hard to forget.

“Just do it … just do it …”

Devon had come for her when she most needed him. She was going to go to him now.

A single leap took her to the top of the wall, balanced precariously for a brief moment, then crouching down, looking out across the glittering scene below and trying to ignore how her limbs shook. The roadways, the bright lights of Devras in the distance, and closer, the dark wooded hillsides. Nathicana knew instinctively that the cliff face went straight down for at least a couple hundred feet. She didn’t look down, though, even as she gathered her strength and flung herself out into the darkness, arms spread at her sides, the night air whipping at her clothing as she plummeted down.

I’m coming, Dev.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

“The look on daVila’s face,” Naiya said through her laughter, as she and Aeturnus made their way up the walk, arm in arm. “I thought he was going to swallow his own tongue when Mirando made that toast. The two of them have been at each other’s throats for ages. They probably keep score in some ancient Book of Grudges, the way they carry on with it all.”

“I still haven’t grasped your people’s sense of humor,” Aet replied, shaking his head slightly. “Why don’t they simply settle their feud man to man?”

“That would be barbaric,” Naiya teased, taking the sting out of the comment by stretching up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “We’ve advanced past simple violence to backstabbing, plotting, insults, and treachery.”

“Our way is simpler, more honest.”

“True. This way, however, is more entertaining for the observers,” she quipped, opening the door to the villa, her voice lowering automatically.

The house was quiet, save for a vague thumping that could be heard towards the back. She was well familiar with that, noting the bassline beat from the sound-dampened room on the lower level. Naiya smiled at the normalcy of it all. Sometimes, it was the little things that made all the difference.

They made their way further in, and were met by Gianni who was walking in from the front room. “Good evening, Imperatrice e Consorte,” he said, offering the couple a bow, and a smile. “I believe the little ones are still sleeping soundly. I haven’t heard a peep since your mother tucked them in earlier.”

“Gianni, please. You helped raise me. Must you be so formal?”

“Think of it as loving respect,” the older man replied. “I take it the dinner went well?”

“About as well as can be expected. No major incidents, the usual veiled jabs and baiting. From what mama says, it hasn’t changed much since she re-instituted the titled class.”

“Not from what I’ve seen, no. Your mother is downstairs working out. I haven’t heard the music go off, so I would imagine she hasn’t hit the pool yet. Can I get either of you anything?”

“No, no, thank you Gianni. We’re just going to check on the boys, and turn in for the night,” Naiya answered, already heading towards the back stairs.

“She asked not to be disturbed,” Gianni cautioned, as Aeturnus began his ascent to the upper level.

“Obviously that doesn’t mean me,” Naiya quipped, winking at Gianni, then heading on down.

The sound got louder as she reached the door, and she paused for a moment before opening it.

“Mama, we’re home,” she said loudly, wanting to give her mother a heads up, knowing that surprising the woman would be a patently bad idea. The room, however, was empty. She took the details in at a glance. Clothing uncharacteristically tossed aside. A cupboard door open. The music on, set to loop. A gym bag laying on the floor nearby. Her eyes went next to the back door, and she quickly strode in that direction.

Outside, there was no noise from the pool area. Nor was anyone there that she could see. She hurried down the steps, looking more closely. Nothing. The safety gate was closed. There were no telltale splashes to indicate there had been any recent activity there. Her pace increased as she skirted the outside of the pool, listening closely for any sign of her mother.

The gate made its usual squeak and clang as she went through it, closing automatically behind her as it always had due to the spring mechanism that was always in need of oiling.

“Mama?” she called out, looking around the courtyard area. There was a lot of space, and the lights were out, shrouding much of the area in darkness. “Mama, are you out here?”

Nothing but the usual sounds of nighttime insects, and the rustle of leaves from the occasional light breeze came back to her. Throwing her usual caution aside, she actively reached out to try and touch on her mother’s consciousness. Her range had expanded appreciatively, though she still had limits. Surely, if her mother were in the area …

Naiya touched several other minds with a feather-light brush of her own, further back. One was on the other side of the courtyard, past the guest house. Another, up near the doors that lead from the front room out to the courtyard. She could sense Aet and the babies upstairs, and Gianni faintly, probably near the front of the house. The kitchen, perhaps. She walked quickly towards the stables. There was an outdoor area there her mother often worked out in, for a more direct approach.

She passed under the overgrown archway of vines and trees that lined either side of the walkway. And as she neared it, she picked up on another of the guards making his rounds, near the barn. The area was empty, however. Nor was there any indication her mother had been there. The barn contained only the horses, and all of them were present, ruling out a night ride.

Her mother had been doing better, she had thought. Even the staff had relaxed a bit. Surely she wouldn’t have done something stupid … Naiya hurried back to the house, this time going up the stairs from the courtyard that lead up to a wrapped porch of sorts, and from there, to her mother’s room.

The door was locked, which was not typical. All the lights were out, however. And nothing registered on the other side of the door. It was a simple mechanism. She willed it open, and entered the darkened room, reaching instinctively for the light switch.

Her mother’s room was empty. Everything was neat and in its place, unlike the exercise room below. But why was it locked? Naiya looked more closely at the room’s contents as she walked through it towards the door. On reaching it, she noticed it too was locked. That was entirely out of keeping, without her mother inside the room.

There was one thing that caught her attention, even as she turned the doorknob. The writing desk. There were several sealed envelopes there. Naiya hurried over to it, and picked them up, scanning them quickly.

Gianni, Calabrese, herself … “What in hell,” she murmured, reaching for the letter opener and quickly opening the one addressed to her.

Naiya scanned over the words, her expression going from consternation to concern, to outright fear. She read it again, then opened the others, and read them as well, having no time or patience for niceties.

A cold knot seemed to form in her stomach as she pieced it all together, and she was halfway down the hall before she called out silently to Aeturnus. He was at her side between heartbeats, his expression concerned.

“I’m afraid mama has done something … rash,” she said simply, as they both descended the stairs, with Naiya looking first for Gianni, who was pouring himself a glass of water in the kitchen.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, noting the expressions on both, and the fact Naiya had not come from the direction he expected.

“Gianni, have the guards search the property, and alert the soldati who patrol the base to start a detailed sweep from the base on out. My mother is missing. And from these,” she said quietly, handing Gianni the letters. “I fear the worst.”

The man paled as he scanned the first letter, his hand moving to activate his Spook device as he started on the second. “Mas, Nathi has gone missing. You know what to do.”

Hearing the affirmative, he walked to a radio set that was stored in an out-of-the-way corner of the kitchen, and contacted the group on their nightly patrol of the woods below. Ever since that night when Ardan mercs had managed to scale the cliff and make off with Nathicana, there had been increased patrols there, and a blocking off of the immediate area that one might access the property by any means other than the road.

“Here, the security system. Cameras, all that,” Gianni said, leading the way back to a small room under the stairs. “We should at least be able to pick up something there to indicate where she went.”

The monitors showed the common areas outside. Nathi had refused to allow any monitoring of the inside of her home, to the point of threatening violence. But the entryway, the drive and front gate, the field, the barn, the courtyard, all showed. Codes were sent to the system when someone entered or left the area of each sector monitored by motion sensors. There was a log of their actions that could be seen on another monitor, regularly ticking away the minutes and movements.

Gianni scanned back through over the past hour, his brows drawn together. Naiya looked over his shoulder, nervously squeezing Aet’s hand as he stood behind her protectively.

“There,” she said first, pointing to a spot in the log. “It looks like a glitch. See? The times overlap. They’ve doubled up for a space of several lines.”

Gianni peered closely, then nodded. “So they have. That would have been … let me see. Around the time your mother went downstairs. I remember, I was going over the grocery lists. She asked for some halved frozen grapes for the little ones in the morning.”

“Go back to that time on the cameras,” Naiya instructed, though his hands were already moving, calling up the moments just before the odd timestamps.

“Nothing … nothing … there. You’re right, there’s a hiccup. You can see that guard exiting at the bottom corner there, skipping back a moment and going forward again. What, she hacked her own security system?”

“She did something,” Naiya said quietly, scanning over the log again. “Thirty minutes. It was looped for thirty. See there, a similar skip in the sequence. Dammit, mama.”

“Everyone has checked in, Mas says,” Gianni interjected, after pausing to listen to his small ear device. “No one unaccounted for, and no sign of anything untowards from the house on back to the road. There’s been no odd traffic, and the only car in the past hour thirty was yours. Surely you don’t think ...”

Their eyes met, and Naiya shrank back against her lover, simply needing his silent strength. “We’ll know soon enough,” she forced herself to say. “We’d best go back and monitor the radio. I’d never have thought she would … I mean, that wall. She was petrified of it. How could she …”

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Gianni said, his own face pale, but relying on his familiar role of taking care of the family here at the villa. “I’ll pour you both some wine, and we’ll have Mas run recon on it all. You know how good she is. She’s probably just given them the slip, and gone out to be alone for a while. I’ll contact your aunt, Cesare, and the usual spots, just in case. I’m sure it will be fine.”

Neither of them believed it, but it was a pleasant lie to cling to all the same.

[Zero-One]

Back when the entity simply referred to as Naiya's aunt made the personal connections that would eventually earn her that sobriquet, she was made of computronium encompassing the volume of the northern half of the North American continent down to about the Mohorovicic discontinuity. Many years of exponential growth throughout ansible-linked dead rocks throughout interstellar space later, that volume, and the efficiency of the computronium itself, had increased tremendously. Nevertheless, it was the same deep feminine voice that answered the call. Gianni was, in a way, a part of the strange little family--perhaps equivalent to a cousin--and so she answered with perhaps normally uncharacteristic joviality. "Ah, Gianni--it's good to hear from you. It has been a while. How is my dear sister-in-mind--"

That would probably be about the point where the good-natured butler had to interrupt the local hyperintelligence and give her the bad news. The joviality was therefore short-lived.

"Oh." S.H.O.D.A.N.'s tone had gone from uncharacteristically--based on her public persona--cheerful to uncharacteristically flat.

There was a pause. Behind the pause, a mind went into motion.

This was unexpected but not entirely outside of the bounds of possibility given the increasing distance since Devon's death (the mechanoid did not mince concepts with herself; the man was probably dead). From her central idealization, the grey-skinned queen in her core, she borrowed runtime from all nodes on critical protocol, allowing for momentary delays on less critical tasks such as maintaining highly-complex Test Sector experiments, running the national economy, or running security aboard Machiavelli Station. Out of respect she'd never manufactured a high-quality model of Nathi's heuristics, so she threw several together and simply confirmed what she expected to see: that recent distance inserted a high degree of variance in simulation results.

She had insufficient data to predict her sister's actions to the degree of confidence she was used to. Some degree of grief-based psychosis was known, based on reports from Naiya. The worst-case scenario hinged on the balance of exciting and inhibiting factors. Primary inhibitive factors: emotional attachments to family and friends, survival instinct, acrophobia. Primary exciting factors: grief, chronic psychological trauma. Religion would not play a particular factor, as it was known that Nathi did not particularly consider death to be 'uniting' in the form of an afterlife and had shown no signs of the increased religiosity that often occurred as a psychological crutch in the grieving, a form of psychological denial of their loss. Increased decision-tree noise due to severe emotions could, in very rare simulation results, lead to self-destructive excitation exceed the inhibitive activation energy. Psychologically, that's how suicides usually worked.

If her sister-in-mind jumped off the cliff to her death, she probably managed to regret the decision before she hit the water.

Possible. Not particularly likely, though just how likely depended on how much she wanted to trust her mental models. She very much did not want the worst-case scenario to be true, and as such, decided that she needed the hypothesis tested to a confidence level greater than what she usually made decisions on. She also readily recognized that this was due to her own emotional valence regarding the situation. Still.

More data would keep her from grieving if she did not have to. More data could narrow down the probability space of other decision tree actions. There were alternate hypotheses, ones that would definitely fit her beloved (and damnable) sister-in-mind's attitudes.

After a notable pause of several seconds, she continued speaking, now in a sharp, authoritative tone.

It wouldn't do for the mere mortals to think that she was stumped.

"I'll need copies of those letters, Gianni. All of them." A beat for that to register, and then she deigned to explain herself. "We're both aware of her recent... peculiarity. Variations of her writing from the baseline--terminology, vocabulary, syntax, conceptual order--will allow me to establish with clearer certainty where her mind is at. Until then, I will be keeping my eyes out for anything out of the ordinary."

The variation from the usual cliche was entirely intentional. She would not merely be keeping something in the back of her mind in case something crossed her peripheral vision... and beyond that, it did not need to be said that she had so very many eyes.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

For a few heartstopping moments, her descent was rapid and terrifyingly uncontrolled. This was the part she hadn’t rehearsed. How could she? Base jumping was not one of her usual entertainments, after all. Nor had she had any inclination to make it one prior to now. But the information she’d studied, the instructions she’d pored over, eventually translated into a resistance against the wind she understood, and could settle into, turning the fall into an unsteady glide.

The unfamiliar clothing was all that made such a thing possible. It had been tricky to get, and she’d utilized her more shady contacts to do it, none of which had any formal arrangement with those who might have interfered with her intentions. Sure it had cost her, and granted, there had been some … unfortunate losses in that regard. But to her, it was all worth it. Wingsuit indeed. She was damned lucky she hadn’t tripped on her way over the wall, she couldn’t help but think, her mind racing in time with her rapidly-beating heart.

That people chose to do this for entertainment escaped her. But at least thinking about the ridiculousness of it helped take the edge off her mounting panic at the way the ground continued to get closer and closer.

There had been several points she had plotted out for possible landing sites, where the area was free from traffic, houses, and too many trees. The difficulty was navigating in the dark, with unfamiliar gear, on a first time jump. And without any guiding flares. She hadn’t trusted anyone enough to go that far. Not now. Not when she knew there were far too many who would stop her, or try to, or at the very least, guilt her into inaction.

Nathicana tried to direct herself towards one of her choices, her teeth clenched. It wasn’t as if she had unlimited time to think. And her lack of experience came as a sharp reminder as she misjudged the angle of approach, and crashed down through the tangle of tall trees that lined the near side of the field.

She had the presence of mind not to yell or curse as she wanted to. The noise of breaking branches and her uncontrolled tumble to the ground was loud enough as it was. The ground met her reinforced bones with a thud that knocked the wind out of her, enough that she started to panic when she couldn't breathe as she wanted to for what felt like an eternity.

The first gasp came sharp and painful, and after she'd managed several ragged cycles, she had the presence of mind to check herself for any real damage.

Scrapes, bruises even, those she was going to have without a doubt. The wetness along her cheek verified that she had been correct to get a suit that had covered her eyes with built-in protective goggles. She brushed the back of her hand across her face, noting the sting. It wasn't serious, but it'd likely bleed for a bit. She was definitely going to feel all this in the morning.

The suit had been torn in several places, but she no longer needed it. Shrugging it off, she stripped down to what little she'd had on under her casual clothes - a close-fitting tank and shorts of the same. The shoes she kept, being a good set of runners. And the suit, she folded up into itself, tucking it into a pocket of sorts, and taking out a strap that she fit over her head and one shoulder. The rest of the small bulk of it was another pocket on the opposite side that contained a few necessary things. Money, identification - false, of course, though here in Devras it wouldn't get her far. But that wasn't the point. A utility knife, multi-tool, some nutribars. She'd be digging into those soon enough.

Looking up, she took her bearings, and set off in the direction of the coast. Once she hit the road, she'd know better her location, and would adjust as needed. Her conscience gave a momentary twinge as she thought back to the villa, and those she'd left there, and would be there all too soon.

It wasn't fair, no. But in her mind, it had to be done. She'd made all the necessary arrangements, so far as she could figure. They wouldn't like it. They'd be looking. She hadn't had it in her to utterly fake her death, though she knew how she'd arranged things would worry them, at least until they didn't find a body, or her landing site was found, knowing her daughter. Damn her cheating. It was why she hadn't said anything to her. Or to Marcus. They could read her too well. Nor her sister-in-mind, who she very much doubted she could have fooled in any case.

No, it was better this way. And once she reached the boat, and made it down the coast, well ... hopefully, the rest of her plans would continue to go as she designed them to.

Putting those thoughts aside, she pressed on, moving quickly now, pushing herself as she leaped over fallen branches and rocks. Time was not on her side, even with the small tricks she'd used to buy more of it. Mas was no slouch, and her daughter, with those damned Lost and their odd abilities? She had to use every moment she had to try and stay ahead of the search.

Sorry, bambi. I had to.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

While the search progressed as rapidly as possible, Naiya handwrote a note to her Auntie Shodey to send along with the letters, via secure scan.

Mia zia, if you know anything of what my mother was thinking, please help me understand. She was watching the boys at her villa while we attended a political dinner down in the city, and by all accounts, she appears to have either vanished into thin air, or done the unspeakable and taken the only exit that wasn’t as closely watched at the time, due to her longstanding reticence in approaching the wall along the cliffside of the property. I know you know why, and probably understand better her silent refusal to so much as acknowledge its presence more often than not.

We have the soldati scouring the area below, and beyond, as well as the other routes out from the property, just in case. We’re trying to keep it as quiet as we can, given the more remote location might help, but we’ll have to make a statement at some point. I don’t know what to think, what in hell she was thinking, where she might be headed to first if she has managed to simply give us the slip ? I thought she was improving. She seemed less despondent in any case, and the night walks had stopped along with the sedatives.

In any case, she tucked the boys in, told Giani she was going to go work out, go for a swim, then head on up to bed – nothing out of the ordinary, really. Or at least, none of it seemed out of the ordinary. When we arrived, her music was still playing, but she was gone. And it seems she, or someone else tampered with the surveillance systems. The best we can manage is about thirty minute’s time was temporarily looped. It’s quiet enough here at night, and there hasn’t been any problems for so long, well – you know how adamant she’s been about having too much security anyway. She’s always hated it.

We’ll question everyone that was on duty all the same, but I just cannot fathom anyone doing anything to put her at risk. Mas would have their heads on a pike. And none, that I’m aware of. were new, or hadn’t been properly vetted. She always treated her people well, even if she often argued with them over how much space she wanted.

I’m sorry, this is getting all sorts of messy. We’re here at the villa, should you care to join us. Otherwise, my lines are always open. Thank you so much, mia zia. I’m so sorry to have let this happen. I should have been more attentive, should have realized something was up.

Much love --- Naiya

Dearest Naiya,

This is really for both you, and your brother. You can share it with him when you believe the time is right. You know I love you both, and the little ones, more than anything in this world. And regardless of what may happen in the future, I want to make sure that you are all taken care of.

That said, should the time come when I am no longer in a position to delegate my personal business, it will fall on the two of you to take it over, and hopefully, to continue to utilize my various holdings to your benefit.

All proceeds and control will be split evenly between you. I have this written down in my instructions to Calabrese, and reiterated in my official will, held in my security box. Rogiero Di Santi has the second key – yes, the lawyer – and he’ll see to it that everything is carried out to the extent of the law. No one will be able to contest it, or call any of the arrangements into question. The other key, you’ll find in my safe in the office at the villa. You know the code.

What you do with it all from there, will be between the two of you. Whether you maintain joint control, or buy one another out of this, that, or the other, I trust to your judgment, and hope that you carry out these decisions with an eye to your future, and that of your children. Yes, Marcus, I still have hope for you that way, though I would think it was about high time you started looking at settling down, at least a little, yes?

The only caveat I insist on, is that the properties and holdings stay within our family. I worked hard for what I’ve had, and I’ll be damned if it goes to someone who hasn’t shed blood, sweat, and tears over it all. Family excepted, of course.

Marcus, be careful in your reign. Don’t let your conscience get in the way of your doing the right thing. I’m sure that sounds familiar – it should. And he was right, in that regard at least. Watch who you let get too close. And watch your advisors even closer. And please, don’t let your idealism blind you to some of the harsh realities of rule.

Naiya, take care of those two sweet boys. Teach them right. Don’t spoil them too much, but don’t be too harsh either. And please, watch yourself with the foreign entanglements. Our allies can be both a blessing and a curse at times. Don’t get so caught up in things that you forget. And remember – two kinds, bambi. Two kinds.

My love to all of you. And to the rest of our odd little family. May they all grow and thrive.

--Mama

Cesare,

The eventualities we spoke of and planned for in the past have been set in motion. If you do not have any contact from me in the next 365 days, make it so. Naiya has one key. Di Santi has the other. All the proper documents will be in the safe, and he knows the location and number.

Pelegrino can run any oversight necessary, don’t fear to bring him in if needed. I know there are a few in the nuveau royale who would give their left balls to get hold of my vineyard, if nothing else. If the usual rule of law doesn’t do the trick, do what’s necessary to disabuse them of the notion that they will ever have anything of mine.

You’ve proved a better Chancellor than many had thought, both to myself, and my daughter. And I thank you for it. That said, should you ever take any action that puts my children, or theirs in peril, not God himself will keep you safe from my vengeance. I’ll let you worry about what all that may or may not mean.

Be well, you son of a bitch. My best to the lovely lady. I’ve set aside a modest ‘thank you’ in an account that Di Santi will see to you receiving, once the full 365 have passed. You have my gratitude for not proving my choice to have been a poor one.

--Nathi

Gianni,

You’ve been a friend, a confidant, a nanny, and more all these years. And you have deserved much better than you have gotten. Regardless of whether or not you hear from me in the time allotted, I have set aside enough for a very comfortable retirement, whenever you’re ready for it. You, and Dom, Else, Marina – each have been provided for. Please see to it the others take advantage, hm? It is a poor thanks, but is well meant. I could say more, but you know how I get, and you know what I mean better than I could put down here in words in any case.

There is a shelf at the vineyard, the foreman there will know which. Split it between you, as you like, to your tastes. May you all enjoy the bottles in good health and spirits. My thanks, and love to all of you.

--Nathi

[Zero-One]

Recommended soundtrack.

In an infinitesimal fraction of the blink of an eye, the machine read the scanned documents. The mind, the portion that was the person, the slightly mad entity that lived based on her self-stylings, commisserated. The body, the cold instrumentality that spread across worlds real and virtual, calculated and analyzed--directed by the mind and directing the mind. Shodey would have to wait to console her dear niece until S.H.O.D.A.N. had done its work--

Suicidology--such an unwieldy term--is complex, with multiple confounding variables. Unlike the maudlin descriptions of suicide notes in fiction, the reality is that the overarching attributes of human beings about to destroy themselves are far more subtle than usually thought. As such, analyzing Nathi's letters wasn't a simple matter of finding whether or not they fit the trope: there was no trope to fit. To D'Aquisto, Naiya (dearest): businesslike, authoritative. Broad strokes inconclusive. Terminology scan: "regardless of what may happen in the future" is remarkably indistinct--broad majority of suicide notes indicate the fact. Writers are usually not indecisive and are not shy of mentioning the act. "Should the time come when I am no longer in a position to delegate"--additional confirmation. Highly suggestive that the position remains true. Age of documents: fresh documentation tends towards specificity; generality is therefore indicative of either uncertainty or completely intentional. Known profile of D'Aquisto, Nathicana matches the intent of generality as masking true intent. Sincerity in emotional statements confirms to high confidence that, for something as obvious as suicide, such would be mentioned and explained.

To Calabrese, Cesare (bastard): reminder of economic and political failsafe systems already established (refer private conversation timestamp N890_34095729600). Trust not fully established. Recommendation of extralegal procedures interesting given this statement: if trust uncertain, then why give order? Hypothesis: compliance can be observed. Hypothesis would then explain the "should you ever" threat (promise) as not merely rhetorical. Alternate hypothesis: relying on trust network (family) to enforce. Note for investigation.

To Cafagna, Gianni: "whether or not you hear from me in the time allotted"--further generality and uncertainty. Psychological profile and certainty of rest of documentation reinforces probability of generality-as-obfuscation.

Analysis: overarching theme of closing affairs. Lack of theme of closure, leaving opportunity for return. Relevant phraseology--"entanglements." Common enough in political discourse but reinforces a theme in the letter to D'Aquisto, Naiya. Keeping assets in family, emphasis on self-reliance. "Watch who you let get too close." Too close.

Shodey couldn't help but feel a little hurt--but it couldn't let that stop the machine from turning.

Analysis: closing affairs reduces entanglements, enhances freedoms. Correlates with reduction in sedative usage, using known opinions of subject D'Aquisto, Nathicana regarding pharmaceutical usage. The desire for freedom is not incompatible with suicide hypothesis, but not a deciding factor.

Correlation: freedom with ambiguity. The expression of action, and freedom, without specifying action.

Simulation comparison with epidemiology: suicides very rarely choose 'facing greatest fear' as method. Security camera footage already looped, so any action possible until discovered. Desire for 'cleanliness' of act possible, but then why add ambiguity?

Antagonist analysis: psychological profile of D'Aquisto, Nathicana confirms that search-and-rescue efforts are expected in any case. Suicide risk minimal (but evaluation still not within acceptable confidence parameters), but pragmatism suggests that the act would be both 'clean' yet not hidden (asphyxiation, poisoning, 'clean' energy weapon wounds most likely conclusion of suicide-positive simulations). Uncertainty therefore forces search-and-rescue efforts to be equally sparse, with little information for targeting. Assumption is that search efforts would begin locally and fan out. Similar strategy used during coup, retreating to wilderness to make distance, thus dispersing search efforts and reducing probability of detection. Retreat from public and private life began with disappearance of Treznor, Devon, particularly upon declaration of death. Events at time indicated frustration. Reports of psychotic hallucinations by D'Aquisto, Naiya, subsequent voluntary psychopharmaceutical regimen, retreat from personal connections indicative of attempt to control situation. Probable motivation for said control: maintain image in eyes of others. Psychological profile and observations suggest that over time this control would be projected towards others, turning them into psychological jailers.

Mind and machine united. This is a jail break.

Assumption: escape via cliff face. Instrumentality unknown and considered irrelevant.

Maneuver options: land, sea, air.

Air avenue considered unlikely due to lack of observed aircraft. Possibility still exists, based on capability of allies, but use of low-observability extraction technology overall would require usage of very particular contacts. Note for investigation. Strategically best option for escape due to speed.

Land avenue limited in area to coastline roads and woods. Dominion internal security and infrastructure management regularly monitors roads; as known hazard, probably avoided. Woods limited in volume, particularly between coastal towns. Submersible use possible but unlikely due to rarity and difficulty of submersible operations in rocky coastline.

Sea avenue offers greatest potential for movement tactically but is limited with regards to strategic escape as singular boats on open ocean are easily detected.

Antagonist analysis: assuming goal is to escape area, optimal course of action is to travel through woods until water travel can be achieved. Use water travel tactically until strategic escape movement can be made.

The mind gently yanked on the body's leash; within her own consciousness, she collected herself and thought.

The greatest question, the one left unanswered, was 'why?' Nathicana was no fool (not usually, at least); she would have to know that S.H.O.D.A.N. would be among the first to know of her actions--and since the perfect, immortal machine knew her so well... That was a wrinkle that almost made the suicide hypothesis make more sense. There was nothing preventing the mechanoid queen from activating Earth Theatre assets to chase her down. Sea travel would make the most sense, but boats are visible from orbit. All could be tracked--

--and with that in mind, Shodey dispatched a frigate to observe the area--

--and it was not as though midnight boat trips were particularly common. It wouldn't even really take statistical analysis to figure out which boat was the most likely. Between S.H.O.D.A.N.'s observation and analysis capabilities and Naiya's complete command of the local government, escape was unlikely. And yet Nathi still had to try.

And if she were so easily caught, what then? Capture and interrogation, no matter how friendly... would that not just confirm her probable mental model of being caged? Would it not, in all truth, mean she actually was caged?

That made the decision for her. It was vitally important to her to keep an eye on her sister-in-mind, but not necessarily to cage her. It was more important to track down the reasons behind this, to monitor her connections, to shadow and rendezvous rather than pursue and capture. Monitoring? That S.H.O.D.A.N. could do. The Dominion telecommunications network wasn't technically an open book to her, but she had confidence in her ability to make it so. The surveillance network... traffic surveillance, dock cameras, random webcameras sitting around were reasonable targets; there was no need for her to burn the Dominion intelligence services and piggyback off of their inevitable surveillance systems. She could probably build one better on the fly anyway, considering their perhaps over-emphasis on secret police and informers. All she had to do was burn the hubs and the trunks, get into the very backbone of the wired world of the nation, and she'd see and hear everything she'd need. Even if Nathi was careful, what about her contacts? What about the contacts of her contacts? Making oneself silent is not necessarily the best way to hide in a world of noise; just look for where there's nothing.

Then there were the notables in her analysis. Calabrese, he needed monitoring, if nothing else but for Shodey to come down as the avenging deity if she had to. Nathi's known contacts, they'd be watched. Nathicana had, in the past, entrusted Shodey with some very secure information; given the situation, the mechanoid queen had no issues with cracking the security on it and putting taps on whomever she found in there. The entire criminal underworld, well, they generally weren't stupid, but there was only so much that single-use cell phones could do (yes, must watch the entire cellular grid; compromise the entire tower network). Someone, somewhere, sometime had to make a phone call.

She'd also have to observe all aerospace and sea traffic around the region, especially things heading out. Security cameras at airports and docks were a given, however unlikely avenues they were, but if they could be written out, that narrowed the solution space.

Money. Nathi had it, and she'd inevitably have to use it if this 'jail break' wasn't just a conspiracy of friends. Muttering a quiet apology, S.H.O.D.A.N. directed several nodes to burn every bank account and business she knew about, keeping in mind to burn connected nodes as well to find those that she didn't.

Intelligence assets. Not that they weren't active, but the hyperintelligence decided that they would probably require more of her attention. Her personal projects would simply have to wait. She therefore dumped all processing loads on less vital nodes, leaving the government, security, and economic ones to do their jobs as they should. The momentary pregnant pause of the operation of the Queendom was over.

This being said, physical avatars in more secure, trusted settings could be seen to be somewhat distracted.

Finally, after nearly a minute of work, S.H.O.D.A.N. transmitted a reply. It may as well have been handwritten.

My niece-in-mind,

I am certain, to a high degree of confidence, that your mother is alive and, hopefully, well. I am less certain as to what she is thinking--I have hypotheses, but they are conjectural at this point. My operating theory is that she is trying to escape. What, exactly, she is escaping I cannot be certain; again, I am operating on the assumption that it is the general state of things due to an extended period of psychological anguish. It wouldn't suprise me too much if she were going after him. I doubt that would surprise anyone at this point. If that's the case, then she will be heading for the Periphery. I doubt your uncle would be amused with the news, but it is not as though I am blind there either.

In terms of advice, don't bother with local security. That's exactly what she would expect. I would also recommend against reining her in, to be honest: if this is caused by a psychological need to escape, we cannot allow ourselves to validate that mindset by treating her as an escaped prisoner.

I will watch her.

I will do my utmost to keep her safe.

I will, if possible, bring her home on her own terms.

Don't blame yourself, any further than you inevitably will. The Nathicana D'Aquisto that you grew up with, your mother, is not what she ever considered her natural state. This is, perhaps, something more of a return to form... and like all psychological regressions, is brought upon by primarily defensive needs. Once those needs are met... we will see. There's been an open wound that we've all politely ignored for too long; I intend to close it. There is no reason for me to mince words with you--I am going to dig to the root of this matter, tear it from the ground into the light, and, if need be, strangle it.

I'll be over shortly to provide moral support and perhaps do a little investigating in person.

Love,

Zia Shodey

The root, perhaps the key to everything. The event that pulled her sister away from her--no, S.H.O.D.A.N. was not merely being poetic or resorting to emotional rhetoric when she brought it up. That needed to be solved, and if it was more than just the official mechanical error, it needed to be revenged.

Start at the beginning. It was a trip from point A to point B. People knew about these points: mechanics, controllers, schedulers.

Find them.

Deep inside her core, in the room of grey light in which she was the central fixture, the mind-body-image of S.H.O.D.A.N. rose from Her throne of wires and conduits, fiber-optics pulsing with the light of thought that spread Her will throughout Her domain. At one nominal end of the roughly toroidal room of metal and pipes she waved one arm, calling up in front of her literal mind's eye her memory of that cliff wall looking over the sea. She gazed at, through the image, at the stars in their current positions as if light were instantaneous. A proper rendering would perhaps have more appropriate, considering how the dead past tied in with the living present, but she preferred it this way: a representation of things as they were now, as she had to deal with them now. She looked at the picturesque view, one she had enjoyed in the past, but at this point she could only sigh silently.

The first person to truly trust her had, however unintentionally, rejected her, and she had allowed it. She'd given space, she'd respected silence, and now that silence had doubled in on itself to create a chasm. Whatever it was, whatever Nathi was doing, she should know--not because she'd developed models and run simulations, not because she'd bent her incalculable will towards knowing in minute detail the workings of three pounds of meat in a skull that she'd reinforced with her own fingers. She should know because Nathi should have told her, would have if things were as they should have been. If that trust were as strong as it should have been. In the solitude of her own mind, she spoke in the mad hope that her sister-in-mind might hear. Even if so spurned, even if so hurt, she could not blame. She could not, would not, lose the endearment that bound them.

"What are you up to, bug?"

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

The protein bars weren’t the tastiest things, but they did what they were supposed to; refuel her energy reserves that she’d been burning through consistently as she ran through the underbrush and jumped over deadfalls. She’d dashed across a couple of the roads that ran through the area further away from the cliffside, always nervous at the sound of any approaching vehicles.

She knew the sound of most of the vehicles they used instinctively. Or at least, she had. She’d gotten lax in her usual oversight – it had no longer been her job, really. And in giving in to the illusion of a peaceful retirement, she’d allowed herself to get soft. Too soft.

'I hate to say I told you so, but …'

“Shut up, Dev,” she blurted out breathlessly, shoving the wrapper into a pocket.

'This isn’t going to work, love.'

“Yes it is. I keep my promises, you bastard.”

'Red, think for a moment.'

Nathicana bit back the instinctive retort, choosing instead to push on more aggressively, gritting her teeth as she dug into the damp undergrowth, bruising the grasses and plants with little regard.

There was a notable silence from the voice she’d become so accustomed to hearing over the years. She almost thought she detected a sigh.

“Look,” she growled. “I now damn well this whole thing was a façade. It’s the only alternative that makes sense. Somewhere between here and where they lost track of you, you got off that shuttle. Maybe you never left Devras on it to begin with. I know you, Dev. You’ve done it before, and rather well. So well you fooled all of us – especially me.”

The silence continued, eliciting a curse as she cut left around a particularly large tree.

“I know what you’re capable of. If that’s the way you want it, that’s fine. But you aren’t going without me. You can’t. You promised.”

'I never intended to, Red.'

“I’ve thought it through, and I can’t blame you, what with how Nadia had such a mad-on for calling you to account and god only knows who else – you had a knack for picking up some of the most interesting allies and enemies, mi amore. In fact I’ve almost forgiven you for not telling me. Almost.”

'You’ve been thinking a lot, haven’t you?'

“Don’t you take that tone with me, Dev …”

'I’m just saying, you’ve thought it through. But have you thought it all the way through?'

Nathicana let out an exasperated sigh. “I wouldn’t be haring off through the ever-thinning woods here if I hadn’t, you smug son of a bitch.”

It was his turn to sigh again, or at least, it seemed so to her.

'They’ll expect it. If you start following the trail, you’ll lead them right to me.'

That particular revelation stopped her dead in her tracks. She didn’t even bother wiping the strands of hair that had come loose in her frantic flight away from her face.

'Like I was saying, this isn’t going to work.'

“Then … then I’ll just have to go about it all in a more round-about way. You aren’t the only one who can sneak about, and cover their tracks.”

There was no answer. Nathicana swore again and impulsively stomped one foot against the damp ground. She thought of a few more choice phrases as she took measure of her position, and adjusted her path slightly before taking off again. This far out, angling as she was, down the coast from Devras, she could already smell the tang of the ocean on the night air.

Before long, she’d made the beach, or what there was of it at this point. More a rocky shoreline with various inlets and places to dock without the hassle of the city ports. She tore into another of the bars, chewing thoughtfully, and took a slow measure of her placement, relative to the warm city lights to the North, and the stars visible overhead. Nodding as she made her decision, she began trekking further South, sticking to the shadowed places higher up from the waterline, where the trees and bushes offered cover.

She came across more than one boat, but they weren’t what she was looking for. It wasn’t until she hit a particularly secluded little cove, one difficult to get down to no less, given the rather steep, rocky shore, that she allowed herself a slight smile.

The signal had been the flag being flown on the modest craft. Being a nation that was comprised mostly of shoreline, it was natural to have a lot of water travel by natives, as well as visitors. This was a motorboat with an enclosed cabin, and a rain cover to keep the sun or weather off one when navigating it. The flag was from a nation unaffiliated with the Dominion politically, and a check would find it registered to a Mr. and Mrs. Smythe-Jessamin – the latter a match to her identification.

Funds had been slowly set aside and laundered through a series of underworld contacts, eventually finding their way to foreign banks that her cards should have access to. It wasn’t unlimited, but it should do, or so she hoped. If not, there were other ways of acquiring what was needed. First off, however, was the boat.

For someone with her enhanced abilities, the way down wasn’t as much of a stretch as it might have been for others. She still managed to scrape up her hands on the rocks a time or two, and was swearing under her breath by the time she made the final jump to the front of the boat. It was a matter of minutes to haul up the anchor, and stow her pack in the cabin. She would make a more thorough check of things once she was out and away. Her trail was not going to be a difficult one to follow, having relied on speed rather than misdirection.

The motor started, which was a relief, and she maneuvered the craft out of the cove at a wakeless speed, not wanting to draw any more attention than might be warranted. This late at night, there was little traffic, at least this far out, save for the occasional adventurous couple, or fisherman with a penchant for moonlight casting. Once she was out and safely clear of the rocky shoreline, she gradually increased her speed until she’d reached full, navigating by the lights along the shore, and the soon disappearing glow of Devras.

By the time the town of Padrova came into sight, about forty-five miles down the coast from the capital, about an hour had passed. She’d started a good ways down, granted, given her villa’s location and the distance she’d angled away from Devras, but push too far, and she would stand out. Not push far enough, and she ran a bigger chance of being caught out of hand. It was a risk, but blending in now, she believed to have a good shot at continuing down South to her first intended destination.

There were several boats docked out far enough that the tide wouldn’t ground them, off the shore of the resort town. She slowed, then cast out the anchor once it came to a relative stop in the midst of the scattered group.

Another bar was quickly devoured, the wrapper again disappearing into a pocket. Her ears strained to catch any hint of pursuit, but the waves against the shore, the boats, was too immediate, too present to tell much past. Another risk.

Leaving the top down, she retreated into the cabin, locking it behind her after switching on the overhead light. It was cushioned and comfortable-looking, with supplies stocked around the edges in neat packs. A blanket and pillow were set up in the bow, and she tiredly pulled herself into the cozy nook, not bothering to kick off her shoes or change her clothes.

Rest now, start up at a reasonable hour. Blend. Look natural. And put the small top up come morning to dodge the satellite searches she was certain would be running. With luck …

Yes, with luck. She was going to need it.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

Many things were happening at once, if seemed. And none of them fast enough for Naiya’s satisfaction. She paced and hovered, nervously biting her lower lip or chewing a nail without seeming to notice. Even Aet’s attempts at soothing were met more often with an absent nod, or an uncharacteristically terse response.

Nothing had been found at the foot of the cliff, or the immediate area where a body might most likely be found, which was a relief. Aunty Shodey had called it; which really, wasn’t much of a surprise, if one thought it through. Unfortunately, that left a lot of space that needed searching. And it was all taking painfully long, in her opinion.

Even her brief response to her adopted Aunt reflected her impatience, being more brief and to the point than would be usual between the two. She’d winced slightly on sending it out, though she made sure to sign off with her love, and sincere thanks. It hadn’t been enough, but there was so much she was trying to monitor. Her abilities aside, it was difficult.

She was getting desperate enough to cheat. Really cheat. She had tumbled that thought around in her head time and again, agonizing over the morality of it, of the dangers of pushing too far into things she wasn’t entirely familiar with, of the potential side effects, or problems that might arise should she bend things that far … things were different these days, there were consequences for actions. And it would bring secrets out into the open. And in turn, potentially endanger her two sons, who were currently sleeping, contentedly unaware, upstairs.

Naiya swore in several languages under her breath, feeling the Ardan phrases in particular lent a certain scope to her roiling emotions. What would her father do in this situation? What had he done previously?

Hell, what would Devon have done? The two of them had gone up against some rather daunting odds before she’d been born, but at that time, they had a suspicion at least, of location. Here, she hadn’t a clue.

Granted, discreet messages were being sent through various methods to the right people in allied and related nations, to keep a watch out, and some suggestions as to what to watch for. Hopefully, one of the lines they’d cast would trip her mother up, and give some notice as to where she’d gone.

“Put out another line of searchers,” she said firmly, looking over the latest projected maps, showing maximum distance via various means from what they were calling the jumping point. “Put them out on the furthest line, and work them in. They can all meet up in the middle. Perhaps we’ll catch her in between somehow.”

“You know how fast she can move sometimes, yes?” Gianni mentioned quietly.

“Yes, yes, I know. And how quiet. Just do it.”

“Torino is already on it,” the older man confirmed. “And Calabrese is on his way over.”

Naiya sighed. Turning her mother’s villa into base one didn’t appeal to her, but at the moment, it seemed like the best idea. Less fuss to the children, and at least here, they were safe, and could sleep undisturbed, for the most part.

“Send him in when he gets here.”

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

“Son of a bitch.”

Calabrese was nervously toying with his cane as his car sped along the darkened roadway towards the villa. His own thoughts were scattered across several points - the prime being ‘what was going to happen to him’, all things considered.

True, Treznor was no longer an issue. But he had no way of knowing what programs and orders he might have left in place. It was damnably inconvenient not knowing. And with that idealistic son of his now running things, well … bright boy, yes. Unlikely to continue in the same direction. But would he know? Might he even suspect some of the things his father had set in motion? And how to broach the subject, even, without making things worse?

Bloody inconsiderate of the wench to go haring off like this. And it wasn’t just old issues he had to be concerned with. There was that thrice-damned Pellegrino holding a Sword of Damocles over his head. Clever bastard, figuring all that out … he hadn’t given him enough credit. Not by half. And he’d been so careful in covering his tracks, too.

No one had been told, he was certain. If they had, his head would likely no longer be gracing his body. There were several rather … enthusiastic parties who would no doubt take his actions rather personally. On both sides of the allied fence. Perhaps even some unaligned interests. It was hard to tell, given the diverse connections the couple had enjoyed. Some, downright barbaric in their practices.

Cesare loosened his collar slightly, somewhat absentmindedly rubbing his neck afterwards.

He’d acted immediately on having been notified, activating his own groups of intel-gatherers, and passing the message on to Pellegrino - damn him - to really get things moving. Aside from some odd hiccups in some of the systems, things appeared to be clipping along rapidly.

No flags on the usual accounts. No suspicious usage. No unexpected movement by La Famiglias, or some of the usual suspects she might utilize. And aside from the confirmed hacking of the home system, no oddities in their own systems, or those she’d once had access to.

He sincerely hoped she’d be found soon - and in good health. Calabrese’s own, he felt, rather depended on it. Her letter to him had indicated that clearly enough.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Shodan’s rather goddess-like capabilities would prove superior to the Dominion phone network. The only problems would be sorting through all the various data - which no doubt, she had both the power, and capacity to dance through at an impressive speed.

What calls and texts she found in relation to what she was looking for appeared unhelpful. In any case, what few there were seemed ordinary in content.

Creating her own database of information from publicly-available data was as well, a simple task. There were cameras everywhere in the Dominion, some of which, at least in more sensitive areas, contained face-recognition capabilities. Given the number of such cameras - ATMs, banks, traffic, security, prison, businesses, etc - a plethora of data would be available for perusal. Depending on how many days worth of images, a bare few would show her sister-in-mind out on one of her rare trips into town.

The cell phone data came up with a few references she might use, from various disposables about some business ventures and the like.

“And your honey on the coast?”
“Nah. That bird has flown.”

“Got a pigeon or two set for an out-system tour.”

“Roost is clear, we’re green.”

There was a fire in a warehouse down along the industrial docks, and a lot of traffic had been coming and going in that area. Details were sketchy, but initial information appeared to indicate a purpose rather than accident behind it.

And given this was the Dominion, there were dozens of hits on ident cards that may or may not be entirely legitimate, coming and going between various destinations, in singles, groups, and pairs. Some looking might even trip the flags of other investigators or monitors.

Bank accounts turned up little, other than a small detail other less intensive searches might miss; the fact that for some time, there had been slightly less made in the way of deposits to several of them. When run up against the usual sources - investments, manual deposits, etc - a pattern of omission might just be visible, to one with the ability to pick through a longer history of transactions. One that didn’t entirely account for market fluctuation, and other considerations. As if the money had been misdirected, or rather, simply withheld.

Traffic coming and going out of the Dominion via more normal, acceptable routes, was as always, a very busy, and thus data-heavy investigation. There were multiple hits on persons fitting the general shape, height, etc of the target. None were a complete match. A bare few appeared closer than might be thought usual, heading off in wildly different directions. What that might mean, if anything, would be a matter of further investigation. How far back said investigations went, might reveal more, depending on the parameters implemented - as with any intensive search.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

From one of the patrols, a brief report eventually came in, noting that a possible landing site had been located, and that further searching of the area was in progress. The coordinates were sent along with the report, showing it well within the projected zone of a suit-based flight, with augmentations taken into account. It angled away from the jump point, and the city. Further details to come as they became available.

[Zero-One]

The internalized persona of the Machine frowned to herself.

Not that any of this came as a surprise, in hindsight. Body doubles and cash? Known strategy. The amounts of cash alone set upper limits on what it could buy, and simulations could develop various spending strategies--more on misdirection, less on capability, vice versa--but the mention of out-system also put a floor on what had to be bought. Knowing her sister-in-mind, it would almost have to be a personal, individual craft. Chartered at least. Running the shadows on independent and Interstel tramp steamers would be too risky for her blood, especially seeing how much effort she'd already put into misdirecting conventional electronic and financial intelligence.

It stung more than a little. That meant that her sister-in-mind was hiding from her personally. Perhaps understandable, all things considered, and what was she doing right now? Committing as much cybercrime as possible short of starting a minor war in order to get what she wanted? Perhaps it would be best if--

No. She'd already stated her intent: watch, not stop. Nathi was free to run off to the hinterlands if she so chose. She was free to bend her will to the end of watching and protecting.

This eased her strange facsimile of a conscience as she very consciously escalated things.

Orbit

It was the usual visual: Earth white with cloud and blue with atmospheric haze below, stars above that only became visible if one turned away from the planet long enough to let one's eyes focus. With no fanfare or visible change, a few of those stars wink out. Exactly which star depended on the angle the event was observed from. Were it deigning to be visible, Queendom's Crime--the sister ship, in a fashion, to the white-world Queendom's Glory, was a long, thin, wasp-waisted needle of dark, reflective metals covered in metamaterials useful for stealth operations such as this one. It was S.H.O.D.A.N.'s go-to avatar for covert naval operations that needed her individual touch; it was from Crime that she launched Shadows when she needed to. Her converted assassins stood still in stasis, unneeded for the time being, their saucer-like stealth insertion boats locked down in their cradles. Crime's purpose at the moment was far less aggressive, which is why said metamaterials and perhaps more than a little bit of local trickery had made her surface a solid black: an electromagnetic hole in space that radiation fell into. The resulting heat was low-frequency lased out the back end, along with the output of the neutrino heat exchangers.

The effect of all this was that Crime was now an extremely effective sensor receiver. The power and drive systems of anything capable of going 'out-system' were, outside of the level of overtechnology and expense put into things like Crime--a level that usually put it out of the reach of private citizens, even wealthy ones--very hard to effectively mask. Energy usually had to be conserved, and so had to appear somewhere, be it as heat, neutrinos, gravity waves... something. Anything. Crime's purpose was to stare unblinkingly and see everything. It, through the gestalt, would nigh-instantaneously dump signatures into 'significant' and 'not significant' categories; visual records of sparrows and newspaper headlines were of no interest to her at the moment. Processing all this data occurred within gestalt entities well away from Crime in order to minimize her heat load.

Crime held station over the Dominion and simply watched.

Surface

Shodey's mind was only partially on her flying. She flew more carefully as a result.

With regard to relevant contacts, cross-reference each with air-traffic control architectures. Those without flight plans or flying with intent to evade create a higher-priority set. Of that set, those outbound are of an even higher priority. Ping those and, if possible, interrogate their internal systems. Insert gamma-fork shards into those with a high probability of containing the person of interest: gamma-forks programmed to automatically self-corrupt in twenty-four hours if the PoI was not confirmed. If PoI confirmed, then use compromised communications systems to reconnect to gestalt using unique identifier code. Repeat doing so either on regular schedule or with change in theatre-of-operations, meanwhile stand by and perpare server for full shard insertion.

Her sleek, silvery shuttle landed at the villa with an audible thump. Not much of a thump, mind, but still. The door gull-winged open and, within, a frowning, distracted grey-skinned gynoid took a moment to compose herself into staid, authoritative solemnity before emerging.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

There had been times in her life when she’d felt like she was the only ‘adult’ in the room. The analogy didn’t exactly fit the current situation, but she certainly had been left with all the inherent responsibility. In spite of all her experience, the truths she’d been exposed to via decidedly fantastical means, and her own natural tendencies towards more serious thoughts, Naiya was currently feeling more than a little angry. Mostly at others.

First of course, was her mother for causing all this worry and effort. This was nothing new, really. Just on a much larger scope than usual. Yes, yes, she now understood the why behind a great deal of her mother’s moods, hangups, and difficulties. It didn’t make it any easier to deal with at the moment. And it stung thinking of how much of her youth had been affected by it all.

Secondly, her brother. Yes, even Marcus, who she had let to know about their mother’s disappearance, or the letters she’d left. She loved her older (by admittedly significant minutes) brother dearly, but he had always presented a problem with his idealistic, and stubborn mindset. The stubbornness, he came by quite naturally, given his parentage. The idealism, she blamed their Zio Timo for, primarily, and the Scolopendrans overall as a group, secondarily. If not for all of that, and his tendencies to overcompensate, or overreact, he’d be here right now at her side helping. Instead, she was forced to agree with the initial decision she’d made, in that he would most likely complicate things. Not to mention, how immersed he already was in his own set of problems, again, in her mind, harking back to that thrice-damned idealism he clung to so fiercely. The balancing act he had going worried her. How far could he push things before it all finally fell apart? And how much overcompensating was he still doing in order to attempt to fill his father’s shoes?

Which of course brought her to Devon himself. Perhaps it was petty to continue to find faults with a dead man, but she did. In spite of her increased understanding of the man. It wasn’t fair that he kept complicating her life, the lives of his son and wife. She instinctively knew he was behind all of this. Well, his memory in any case. Why else would her mother take off as she had? Who else would she toss herself off that hated wall for, in the middle of the night no less? Damn, the man. Damn his plots, and plans, his old files, neutralized or not. Damn his paranoia and biases. Damn the hold he still had on them all.

And damn her for not being willing to do all that could be done to eradicate that particular problem.

That was the last part of it, really. Her own resolve to not utilize her untapped potential to alter things to her liking. She kept telling herself it was necessary to maintain the facade. There were the boys to think of. Their future. And the fact that she had no idea how her meddling might affect that future, how many potential timebombs it might set off further down the line. Hellsing, she knew of. They were a group she worried about in regards to ‘unnatural incidents’. She was fairly certain her aunt had things in place as well, though she had the good grace not to pry. There were the Keepers - the draconids associated with the Shogunate. And how many others out there might she tip off, set in motion, were she to push things too far?

How far could she go without tipping her hand?

Could she reach out far enough, with her mind? Would that imbalance things? Would it cause harm to her mother in the process? The only other time she’d done something like that had been on accident. And she’d … broken a man. Horribly. Was it worth the risk, to find out if Nathicana were ok?

And where was it she was running to, exactly? Logic stated she’d offworld as soon as possible, and head for the last area they’d had contact with the shuttle. Or that she’d find a suitably roundabout way of accomplishing that. But what danger was she facing in doing so? She was all alone, without the guards and assistance she’d come to rely on. Was there a way she could find out, without breaking things too badly, or shaking things up too much?

Naiya sighed and swore quietly under her breath in Dunnish, a habit she’d picked up when tired, frustrated, and angry enough and didn’t want others to hear what it was she was cursing about.

“If I could just talk to her,” she said softly after. “Just reach out, touch her hand, and understand better what she was thinking …”

“Naiya, your aunt is here,” Gianni called quietly from across the room.

“I’ll go meet her,” she replied, turning and looking to Aeturnus, then reaching out to give his hand a firm squeeze. “I’ll be right back. Please, if there’s anything in the meantime …”

She left the rest unspoken as she made her way quickly to the door, and out to where the shuttle had touched down. They had been expecting some entrance or other, and this was the more direct approach. She noted the posture of the gynoid figure, and adjusted her own haphazard rush to something more appropriate to a national leader, though her relief was overwhelmingly clear.

“Gods above and below, I am so glad you’re here, Zia,” she let out all at once as she approached Shodey, dropping all pretense once she was within arms reach and hugging the being she had always included as ‘family’, tightly.

[Zero-One]

The grey-skinned being returned the hug tightly. After a few moments she pulled back to look at her niece-in-mind, smiled, frowned a little, then bit her lip slightly. There were vanishingly few people she'd ever show uncertainty in front of: this was one, another was elsewhere, a third was merely elsewhere, and the fourth (first by a different ordering) was the subject of this recent concern.

"If only it were under better circumstances, dear niece," she finally replied as her yellow-side-of-green eyes skimmed about the area, slitted pupils dilating to take in momentary details in the night. She continued in a voice better described as a mutter: "There's probably not much in terms of physical evidence, but I do have to look..." Another pause of uncertainty, another moment to compose herself into the self-assured local goddess everyone knew her as. "I've been doing my part to achieve local omniscience," she started again, with something closer to her usual air of effortlessness, "but, as it turns out, your mother has apparently both been planning this for some time and been careful to leave an extremely limited electronic trail. Apparently she anticipated that I would take a rather deep interest in her escapades and preferred that I stay... limited in my opportunity to participate."

One corner of her coppery lips turned up with a slight wryness, but her eyes took on an uncharacteristic tension. In fewer words, it hurt.

"I've thus been limited to deductions and probabilities, probabilities that, based on those self-same deductions, are becoming slimmer. We can guess that she is probably heading out-system, and she's squirreled away enough to do so independently. Even if we know that she is heading rimward, that only narrows things down a great deal from a truly objective sense. Short of having to live in suspense for rumors to act upon, my strategy is currently to identify what she is heading out on and insert myself into it. Flight control computers are cramped," she admitted, "but serviceable. That would be the optimal way to at least keep an eye on her movements. Failing that, I would at least like to identify her vessel; failing that, the class of vessel. All of these would have some use in regaining contact, especially if we notify your uncle and make use of his assets in the area.

"I'm sure he'll be ecstatic." Another wry smile: this one with less masked pain.

With a sense of sudden decision, she lead the way towards Nathi's office. "There are... other options I have been considering, some more technically feasible than others, some simply feasible. While effective, these would have the disadvantage of being politically sensitive--at least, more so than what I've done already--or risky in other ways. I'm sure you understand. To that end, your official resources are perhaps best put towards looking for things trying to sneak through--particularly out of--your airspace and waters. I'm doing what I can without raising much suspicion, but the more sensors, the better the fidelity. I may have to request access to your integrated traffic control servers to find discrepancies; the easiest way out of controlled spaces is in the open, so adversary path analysis suggests that formally submitting and following a flight plan set in advance is a perfectly reasonable course of action.

"To be perfectly honest, however," she continued, "detection is a numbers game at this point, short of me burning the systems of everything that flies or floats in this portion of the r-brane. Doable. Feasible, even. Not entirely reasonable." The gynoid looked over at her family and smiled wryly again. "I will admit to having a small challenge in remaining reasonable with regards to the current circumstances."

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

There were so many possibilities. So many places to look. Even as she’d dropped off into a fitful sleep, she’d been running through the various potential targets in her mind, listing pros and cons for each, weighing probabilities against distance, accessibility, and predictability. It made sense, after all. It was only a matter of tracking.

Anything in either Treznor or the Dominion, she wrote off as too close. There was the line of reasoning of ‘being the last place they might think of’ that some might consider, but when one had the level of contacts and all the rest that went with home turf, she knew better. It would also be easier to track, for those who knew what to look for.

She wasn’t aware when half-waking thoughts turned to dreamscapes. She’d been working with virtual realities for so long, such transitions no longer fazed her. And when even her dreams had become oddly twisted, and her tendency to get somewhat lost in her own thoughts had become more prevalent, it had gotten more difficult to separate it all in her mind. Subconsciously, somewhere, she realized that, but it was an inconvenient truth at the best of times. And at the worst ...

The former Imperatrice was in her office, of course. There were reports, papers, files scattered about the large mahogany desk. Several maps on the walls were covered in colored pins and sticky notes, some with threads leading out to larger notes and papers, pictures and lists. Reaching out without looking, she picked up a ready glass of ice water, its sides glistening with condensation. Sipping it helped. Brought some clarity, some peace amidst the frustration and anger that seemed to always be bubbling just beneath the surface of things.

“Goddammit, Dev. You never could do things the easy way, could you?” she muttered, taking another slow drink, then setting it aside again. Of course if the bastard weren’t as skilled at subterfuge and misdirection, she wouldn’t have this chance of finding him again, she admitted grudgingly. Silently, of course. Not that she would ever admit it.

Nathicana continued to grumble under her breath, scanning through various documents, pulling up information on her computer, then referencing it against the maps. It seemed to take hours, and she could feel the drag on her shoulders, the ache in her lower back from all the pacing, and stooping over her desk. With a particularly vehement curse, she threw down the file she’d been holding, and stalked down the hall towards her bedroom.

The intended destination was the large tub, and the various scented additives she had for her more pampered moments. It hadn’t been the same without him there, of course. That had made it harder sometimes to enjoy it. And sometimes, she’d sat and quietly let the tears flow, where no one was around to see it. A handful of times she’d had some darker thoughts, but those were usually dismissed fairly quickly. Tonight, she simply wanted the ache to go away, to sink into the penetrating warmth and let the smell of jasmine enfold her senses, and help her relax.

While she started the water, she stripped out of the comfortable shirt and pants she’d been wearing, carefully folding them one at a time, and setting them aside as she usually did. It was a habit of hers, sitting there on the side of the tub, watching it slowly fill, sampling the temperature now and then while she added the scented bath crystals. For a brief moment she looked up at the showerhead and fell into memory, but she sternly scolded herself for allowing that momentary weakness. There would be time for showers like that again once she’d finished wringing his neck.

Of course, if she spent all her time lounging about in the tub rather than focusing on finding him, she could miss that opportunity. Sighing and swearing under her breath again, she shut off the tub, and instead walked over to the shower to start the process over again. She could still relax in the heat, just not lose herself in it. A few moments more, and it had reached the temperature she wanted.

Nathicana stepped in, closing the clear glass door behind her, and faced into the stream of hot water, letting it flow down over her face and shoulders, reaching out to brace herself against the wall in front of her. Eyes closed, she simply stood there, letting the sound drown out some of her more erratic thoughts, trying to let the hot water do its work on her tense body. It felt good, but she needed more.

She put her hands behind her back and tried to contort herself as languidly as possible to work out some of the knots she’d developed. She had a few that she hadn’t been able to get rid of ever since….

>> I would if I could.

“Yes, of course. Greater good and all. But that doesn’t get these out of my back.”

No one had been able to relax her like he did. He knew her body almost as well as she knew it herself. Knew just how to touch her. And granted, how to rile her up like no one else as well. It was no small wonder she was as tense as she was. She hadn’t allowed herself proper release since the last time they’d been together. And of course, the last time she’d seen him, they’d fought, again.

And now, this. It was better she was the one to find him first, rather than Timofeyev of any of the others. There were so many who would want to get their licks in, she wanted first dibs on beating him senseless for everything he’d put her through.

“I shouldn’t have to be looking. You should be here. Right here,” she muttered, running a hand down along her side as she reminisced. “Here, with me. Helping me relax like you always did.”

Nathi closed her eyes again, letting the water’s heat sink slowly in. Her hands seemed to move of their own accord, following familiar paths.

>> Just like that?

“Mmmhm. Those subtle teases while you helped work the stiffness out of my shoulders after a long day of work, when we’d finally managed to steal some time away for ourselves. The games we played whenever we had the time.”

She could almost feel his body pressing close behind her, hear the restrained growl of response as she shifted back against him. There wasn’t an inch of him she wasn’t intimately familiar with. And he with hers. It was a dance neither of them had ever tired of, no matter how often they may have repeated some of the steps.

The raven-haired woman refused to open her eyes or turn around, simply losing herself in the memories, the illusion. Or was it? She couldn’t tell anymore. It didn’t matter. Not just then. Not with how her pulse was racing, her breathing come harder and faster as the moments slipped by, the steam building up in the glass enclosure, making it all the more difficult. Shared murmurs and sighs blend with the steady splashing of water over skin, over tiles and glass. All that matters is the motions, the eventual completion, that moment of unity.

“Don’t stop …”

>> Red--

“No, don’t stop!”

There was plenty of room in the shower. Why did it feel like she couldn’t move as she wanted? It wasn’t his efforts that were hindering her. Something in his voice was wrong.

>> Red, I’m sorry.

“Don’t be sorry you son of a bitch! Don’t stop!” She spun around, intending to grab him, hold him tight, and finish things on her own terms.

Nathicana woke in darkness, hot, humid, with the blankets twisted around her limbs. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t right herself. Her pulse was still pounding, her body still responding to those remembered touches. With an alarmed yell, she rips her way free, bursting out of the cabin, gasping in the only slightly cooler night air.

Sprawled on hands and knees between the boat seats, she tried to catch her breath, her body shaking from emotions and responses only half realized. She was alone, of course. And not in Devras, or her villa.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, her shoulders slumping, and head hanging down. There was no answer.

[Scolopendra]

Quite a long ways away

“Understood, ma’am.”

-Would you like to talk about it?-

“No, ma’am. Will that be all, ma’am?”

A momentary sigh. -That will be all, Sky Marshal.-

“Good evening, ma’am. Rimward Fleet Actual, out.”

He sat there for a good minute after the console on his desk flicked back to its neutral screen. He sat impassively, in guarded stillness as he assessed how he felt. After a few seconds of internally still contemplation, it came into his awareness that he wasn’t angry. Years ago, he would have been. Nor was he particularly nervous; his stomach was calm. Only gene therapy and headware had truly put that to bed. There was still a pit though, a hole just beneath the sternum. It had been quite a while since he’d felt that.

“Melancholy, my oldest friend.” He smirked to himself. He was known for that smirk; it was his adopted shield against the depression that had haunted him since he was five. The multiverse was just one big cosmic joke, and he got it. The world may not laugh along with you, so he figured, but laughing beat crying and if he held the smirk on his plastic face long enough the feedback from his muscles would trick his brain into thinking he was happy, and so it would be.

Out of a twinge of duty misplaced, he swiveled in his chair and pulled a regulation-sized binder from past the elastic holding it into the bookshelf next to his desk. Opening it, he flipped through a few of the e-sheets and reviewed the information. An old extrapolated course from a known A to a known B; concentric cylinders radiating from that course indicating probabilities of error. There were far too many little plus-signs indicating known astronomical objects in those cylinders, objects ranging from stars and nebulae to rogue planets and city-sized asteroids. Red spheres plotted from the most important of those plus-signs, and others surrounding the cylinders, intersected or didn’t as they were and, within them, all the plus-signs were red.

There were two colors on the plots not counting the shades of grey preferred for navigational lines: red and white. The key indicated that green was an option.

There were no green markers.

Leaning with one elbow on the armrest of his chair, he held his chin in his hand as he dragged a finger across an e-sheet, manipulating its view. A twist of his fingers and it zoomed in. “Grey Sharks, he said without looking up,” any updates?”

“No, sir.” The choral voice out of nowhere held the curious quality of sounding both absolutely lethal and somewhat concerned, a rack of swords with a conscience. “Permission to make a statement?”

“Go ahead.” To him, formality was a shield.

“I’m not certain this is quite healthy for you, sir.”

He smirked harder. “Everyone needs a hobby, Battleship. Once I start howling about Perdition’s flames, you can have me written up for a Section Eight. For now, it’s an itch to scratch.”

“From what I know of organics, that often tends to make the problem worse.”

“Hrm.” He smirked so hard it hurt. “What’s our schedule looking like?”

“We’re due to patrol Back Forty in three days, sir. Our current transit course is taking the slow, direct route.”

“Reset course. Tesseract jumps for Objects Papa-Three-Four-Six-Nine-Eight, Sierra-Nine-Three-One-Five-Five, and Alpha-Two-Seven-Two-One-Six. Schedule part-day surveys of each. The Geck don’t have them as anything other than existing; maybe we’ll find something interesting.”

“Permission to make a statement.”

“Granted.”

“Or an iceball rogue planet, a small gravitational anomaly, and an asteroid billions of years from home, sir.”

Making his face hurt did nothing to mend the inner hurt, but all he had to do was give it time. “Like I said, something interesting. Someone, somewhere would dig each one of those.”

And then three more plus-signs in a binder could turn red.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

It was a little over a week by the time she made her eventual destination, even with cutting overland through a series of locks and canals at one point. The southern coast of the Midlonian’s Home Islands (rather imaginatively called internally… the Home Islands) were very similar in climate to that of the Dominion’s own southern reaches. In spite of this, the buildings there had stubbornly reflected the times of their more northerly forebears and retained that strangely distinct Midlonic style of twee brick houses nestled into cliffsides, defiant red and blue engineering brick staring out at the sea and heat of the sun, daring it to warm and eventually overheat many of the houses and their residents.

The Home Islands great capital, Swadlincote, lay far to the North of here, its influence barely felt. It’s great buildings both of stone, steel, glass and many more materials a far cry from the small brick buildings nestled right by the sea and rising up into the cliffs with twisting cobbled streets.

The Capital was after all, the heart of the nation. Disproportionately so sometimes. Surely the Imperatrice, if she turned up, would stick to the great urban life?

Cambregun was not such a place. It was a small village, fishing and tourism right on the southern coast and of little importance to the wider world.

The two police officers that looked after the town would often go weeks without talking to their local headquarters and they rather liked it that way. After all, Chambregun was an easy life. The most they had to deal with at that time was a case of apple scrumping which had plagued a local orchard run by the vicar, and a couple of rowdy drunks from the capital on a holiday on a small boat. Enough for them to be getting on with.

Chambregun. The very pinnacle of ordinary.

Which of course, made it the perfect place to begin. Ordinary was good. A place someone could see and be seen without raising alarms simply by wandering about. Where else to get lost in, to go to ground? Or at least, to make a good start of it.

Nathicana took a deep breath as she got off her small craft and stepped onto the dock, taking in the familiar sea air, the smell of fish and harbors that tended to go with spots like this. No, it wasn’t exactly fresh, but she still found it refreshing in its own way.

The boards creaked underfoot as she tied off the boat, and started towards dry land. Uncharacteristically, she had her dark hair tied down in two braids, one to either side, a bandanna tied broadly over the top to keep the sun off her scalp. Faded denim cutoffs, layered tank tops, and sandals completed the look, and she wore it easily.

‘Quaint’, some might call the little town, she thought as she took in the sights and people there along the waterfront. ‘Backwards’, others. They would both be a bit off the mark, in her mind, but that was neither here nor there. Certain ‘tells’, were what she was after. A storefront here, a tavern name there - anything that might hint at a place Devon might have utilized, or stayed, or perhaps left clues.

Breadcrumbs. She was following a trail of breadcrumbs. God only knew how long they might last, how many remained for her to find, all things considered.

“Never the easy way, is it?” she breathed quietly, making the transition from water to dry land finally. It felt odd underfoot after so many hours at sea. Too solid. Too still. Too exposed.

“Arright moi dear?” An elderly fisherman said with a nod and a tilt of his flatcap as he ambled by, his walking stick tapping on the cobbles of the pier. He wore a string vest and a pair of baggy shorts ending in old, spindly weather beaten legs and a pair of heavy boots.

She caught herself from making a usual reaction, and instead smiled a bit vacantly and adopted a less recognizable accent. “Yes, thanks. Know where I might get something to eat around here, maybe pick up some take-along bits for out on the water to boot?”

The old man seemed to chew on his gums a little and he sniffed as he thought. “Arrr, mebbe. Lessie, yer got the chippie up on Dunsmore Street, Dragon Inn usually does some stuff fer takeout, hampers for the fancy boat lot, loike. Always the tea rooms too, if yer need a bed fer the noight.”

It seemed as good a start as any. Nathi nodded and smiled some more. “Much appreciated, mister. Good luck with the fishing, hm?”

The old man laughed, a rattling, guttural laugh. “I onna been ter sea in near ten years, miss. Ah go see moi mates, so I does. Yer enjoy yerself now.” He doffed his cap to her and ambled on again, whistling tunelessly.

She watched him go for a moment, then headed on towards the town proper, taking in the sights and sounds with an air of ‘random tourist’ while quietly sorting and taking mental notes. It fit, this town. It reminded her of some of their early days together, before they’d gone past teammates and subordinate issues. A couple of missions after, as well. At least she hoped this area might be free of the more troublesome entanglements - hence the choice of location. And likely, as she thought, his.

The Dragon Inn. Even the name suggested a link, and that’s the first spot she chose to check out. She wondered idly if he’d managed to import any of the dragon meat from Treznor to the place. He’d always had a way of sneaking in this or that, pushing commerce and trade, making contacts and damn his hide, meddling. Always meddling. It’s what had gotten them to this point, after all. He just couldn’t leave well enough alone in some things.

The fact that the same could be said of her, she dismissed out of hand. It wasn’t the same. It never was.

Dunsmore Street wasn’t too hard to locate, and after a bit of walking, she was able to pick out the Inn. It was built directly into the cliff behind it, it seemed, an old building that, unlike many around has indeed been whitewashed to reflect the hot sun. A few tables spilled out onto a carefully levelled area for deliveries and for people to sit outside and enjoy the warmth of the day with an equally warm pint of ale. Two stories and who knows what in the cliff face behind it.

Not seeing anything that put her off immediately, Nathicana wove her way past the tables, and into the darker interior of the old building. How far back it went, she wasn’t sure. There was only one way to find out.

It was a world of different from home, this Dragon Inn. With its warm, homey interior, decor that was both now, and decades ago somehow in nature, with furniture worn to a polished shine from ages of use and care. Towards the back was the bar, surrounded by stools, past the tables, chairs, and benches. An array of ale and beer on tap, along with other alcohols was present. Along the top, a clean blackboard of offerings in the way of food and their prices. It was all clean, and inviting. The smells, while foreign, had her stomach already growling. The one thing she didn’t see in evidence, from her quick review, was iced drinks. The corner of her mouth twitched once in irritation, and she angrily forced the thought away. She didn’t have to have it. She would be fine.

“Glass of your local, please,” she said, stepping up to the bar, then looking up again at the written menu. “And a sandwich? Turkey, with the works.”

The blonde woman behind the bar smiled, nodded and pulled the dark stout ale from the tap before placing it on the bar, she then turned and hammered into the cash register with surprising speed.

“That’ll be five eighty five please.” Her accent sounded almost un-Midlonic, slightly Freestian which hinted that she was likely from the little remembered part of the Greater Kingdom known as Asteldia.

Nathi pulled out a ten spot and slid it over to the girl, smiling and nodding a quick thanks. The way the two countries blended was an unique situation, one that she wasn’t sure would have worked in other places. She had her own opinions on some of the Freestians, of course. One in particular brought a pleasurable shiver to her spine.

“What’s to see hereabouts,” she asked the girl casually. “Heard of this place down at the docks. Seems the gentleman was right about a good spot to go for a drink and something to eat.”

“Oh this place is a pretty village, madam.” The barwoman shrugged. “Good for the drunken city boys to come chill. Not that we complain about them, of course.” She laughed. “Then there’s the old Dragon Tin Mines, made them into a visitor centre a whiles back for folks to enjoy.”

Mines? There were mines they’d been going to check out when they retired. Not here, of course, but it still brought a brief tightening of the fist she had in her pocket. “Noticed you’ve an upstairs. Take any boarders on here?” the dark-haired woman asked, acknowledging the response with another nod of understanding.

“Of course, quite a few. Few regulars too.”

“Got any vacancies?”

“Ahhh, let me check.” She span on her heel and looked at a small alcove that had a small array of hooks and keys on them. “Yeah, we’ve got a few rooms, end of the season and all that.”

“Good, good. How much do they run?” Nathicana asked, looking over the keys and their locations with outwardly casual interest. “I might stay on a bit, and the boat only does so much that way.”

“£85 a night, that includes breakfast, and we keep the bar open a little later for folks staying. Just don’t tell the local bobbies, eh?” She smiles and winks conspiratorially.

“Not a word,” she agreed, taking out several other bills and passing them over. “I’ll take you up on that, if that’s ok. We’ll start with the one and see how it all goes. I’ve had a couple folks I know mention stopping through here before, might have a look ‘round and see if they’re about.”

“Oh really? Who were they? Might remember them, surprising who stands out even in a whole season of folks.” The barkeeper slid a key over. “Oh, don’t forget to sign the book and present an I.D when you can.” She sighed and shrugged. “Even out here gotta do the dozy security crap. Gets on my wick.”

“Hard to get away from the gov, no matter where you are, yes? Can relate to that. Here,” she continued, taking out her acquired pass and handing it across. “Just a couple folks. One might be about my height. Dark hair, going grey as well the bastard. Keeps it short. Has a way about him, one supposes. Charming, but can put a few on edge. Wicked card player, for what it’s worth. The other’s a lot older than the both of us. Might call him ‘ancient’, but he doesn’t act it. Nasty scar down over the right eye and cheek. Quaint way of talking, when he does. Likes his smokes. Wouldn’t be surprised if neither have been through of late. We all like to wander a bit.”

“Well the first applies to about two thirds of our clientele,” The bartkeeper said with a slightly sardonic smile. “All of them try and be charming, try and shag the bird behind the bar because she’s from rural Asteldia, think she’ll be easy. But they’re all predatorial deep down, you can see it in the eyes.” She picked up a rag and rubbed it on the bartop, getting a slight beer glass ring out.

Nathi laughed impulsively at that, nodding in understanding. “The first, he’d try just because the bird behind the bar was pretty, rural Asteldia or not. Not sure the old man would be up to it, but I’d be the last to be asking about his private business all the same. Naomi Smythe-Jessamin,” she continued, offering a hand. “You mentioned a book that needs signing? Best get that out of the way.”

“I’m Mara.” She produced the book from behind the bar and placed it on the bartop with a smile. “You’re not so bad yourself, Miss Smythe-Jessamin.”

“Pleasure. Naomi, please. All that last name business gets to be a horrible mouthful. Blasted family politics. It’s almost as bad as the governmental meddling,” Nathi said smoothly, taking a moment to pen her assumed name carefully on the next available line.

Mara smiled a little easier now. “Well then Naomi, I can show you to your room if you like? I think you’re in one of the cave rooms.” She looked at the key she’d put on the bar top. “Yeah, one of the cave rooms, originally used them for smuggling, you know. We’ve done them up nice since then. Big comfy king sized beds, Suedi cotton sheets also.”

“Now that sounds nice. After roughing it on the boat for the past week, a proper shower and a good bed would be more than welcome. Smuggling, you say? Sounds like your town here has a colorful history,” Nathi said curiously. The whole place was more and more feeling ‘right’ to her. Just like a spot he might have chosen. Better all the while.

“Ilini smugglers, then ones from further afield after they got stamped out.” Mara smiled as she lifted the bar top up and headed for the stairs. She pulled her jeans slightly as she walked and then turned at the top of the first short flight. “The showers are nice, powerful. Massaging heads. Much better than a boat, even the luxury ones that sometimes come in.”

Nathicana followed, taking note of her host’s information as well as the directions and surroundings. “Wouldn’t know about those,” she commented casually. “You get a lot of those types in here as well? I’d imagine a beautiful spot like this would bring in some tourists pretty regular, but the rich ones, thought they kept to the big cities and catered banquets.”

“Lot of them like using us as a staging point before heading further along the coast to Plyp, or across to Garvin, good airports back. Hell, spaceport too out at Plyp, once met some CEO from Mars, nice lady. Cater to them and they sometimes come up here to get pissed, don’t head back to the boat, just ask for a room.”

Close access to a spaceport. Yet another point to make note of. “Ah, didn’t know that. Not terribly familiar with the area, all in all. First time through. Makes sense, that. Must be some good money come through right along with them. Not bad, all around.”

“Yeah, makes catering to all their food habits hard as hell though.” Mara opened a door onto another corridor which was smooth walls of the cliff face with doors and lintels hewn out of the rock, the carpet was thick and plush and a deep red with orange diamonds.

“Goes quite a bit further than it looks from out front, doesn’t it?” Nathi noted, drawing a hand along the rock as they walked.

“Yeah, it was a clever idea for the original owners of this place. They hewed it right out so they could smuggle all sorts in, avoiding the taxman back in the day.” Mara placed a hand on the door. “Here you are, room 23.”

“Thanks much,” the older woman said, accepting the key, then smiling back at Mara. “Tell you what. Give me an hour, and I’ll be back down for that sandwich and ale, if that’s ok. You sold me on that shower. I think getting some of the salt off me would go a long way towards relaxing.”

“Of course, you’ll find bathrobes, oils all of that in there too if you got company at all.” Mara nodded and smoothed her top down a little bit. “I’ll be down in the bar if you need me at all, and you can call using the phone.” Mara quickly ran her eyes over the older woman and smiled again. “Anything at all.”

Nathi raised one brow up slightly, her smile never faltering. “I’ll do that, Mara. Thanks again - see you in a bit, then.” She fitted the key to the lock and opened the door, her eyes sliding back to the younger bartender. Well. That had been unexpected.

With a final nod, she slipped inside the room, then sat down on the bed and let out a slow breath. The bath. Then food. Then, it would be time to start investigating.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

The sandwich had put her in mind of Speeks and his cucumber sandwiches, bless his fuzzy butt. Of course if Naiya let others know, he’d be among the worried. And Razak, who would likely chew her up one side and down the other for having taken off like this, no doubt. Probably rightly so. They meant well, always did. They simply didn’t understand.

Naiya was likely frantic, and angry, and confused. Once Marcus was told, he’d be hurt along with the rest. She could practically see his face, that betrayed expression she’d seen very few times. The last, when he’d confronted her with Naiya’s conception. Gods, that had been … difficult. Nothing for it, really. They had been prepared, both of them, to take on the roles they now had. As best as she and that bastard Devon could manage. It was time they let go, and got on with things. That had been the plan, after all.

And of course, there were others. There were more than she cared to think about, if she got right down to it. Gianni, Dom among the staff, most notably. She’d only thought to mention Jas in passing on the offhand chance he’d been set on her trail. He was another one who’d rake her over the coals for ‘being so goddamned irresponsible’ and ‘makin’ everyone worry’. All while never taking the clove cigarette from his mouth, somehow, scowling like he could knock over a building with merely a glance.

They weren’t the ones she was worried about the most, though. It was her sister-in-mind. Capabilities of near goddess-like levels, true and honest concern, the reach to get to her no matter where she went, not to mention, the ability to spirit her anywhere she asked. Nathi couldn’t have that on her conscience. No one should have to answer for her actions but herself. If Shodey didn’t know, she wouldn’t have to lie. And for some reason, she believed her adopted sister would, even without being asked. Out of everyone, she might understand. Out of everyone, it was her voice she could use right now. Her shoulder to lean on. Her wisdom to help calm an increasingly troubled mind.

Besides, she needed her right where she likely was - with the children. Keeping them safe, calming their fears. There was no one she trusted more fully with the people and things in her life that meant the most to her. And unlike her, Auntie Shodey was for all intents and purposes, eternal. She could always be there, in whatever capacity she chose.

Unlike herself. All the times she’d goaded Devon about life extension, he’d refused to consider it. One life, well lived, was enough, he’d claimed. Well, she hadn’t had enough. And without him to see the rest through, those thoughts had lost their appeal. Not that she didn’t want to see the little ones grow up, or anything like that, of course. But past, further on than one had a right to … Not without him. She’d been prepared to tell him that, thinking it would be a surprise of sorts. but of course, they’d fought again. And she’d never gotten the chance.

Nathicana closed her eyes tightly for a moment, and pushed away the thoughts that always came up when her memory touched on that day. And the major points that lead up to it. Those thoughts shouted the loudest, were the hardest to pack back into their boxes and lock them up tightly the way she did with so many things, going all the way back to that horrid school, and the soldati and papa never coming back …

“Goddammit!”

It came out louder than it should, by half, and several people paused and looked at her oddly. She quickly moved on, threading her way through the crowd. The few days she'd spent poking around Cambregun had only increased her agitation, all pleasant talks with Mara aside. It was time to go.

>> You need to stop blaming yourself.

She ignored him of course, already angry at her own lack of control, along with how he always seemed to know what she was thinking, what she was hiding. Or if he didn’t know, he’d weasel it out somehow. Bastard. She was even more angry that he was right, of course, which shattered her previous efforts at repackaging, laying it all out for her in stark detail again.

Her side dealings with the Ardans, going all the way back to playing both sides in a war now long forgotten by many. She’d been useful, yes. Keep your enemies closer, don’t make a target of yourself. And use it to help friendlies, just enough to maintain a balance. Just enough.

Too much. All too much.

He warned her. Oh, he’d warned her plenty of times, when he wasn’t busy meddling himself. One thing after another. It got personal. They’d had to spin things, sell out some, build up others. It had gotten out of her control. She hadn’t been able to keep all the plates spinning. There had been crashes. Near misses. Disasters, even. Humiliation. Pain. Fear.

Stop, stop, please stop. I can’t.

But she’d started it. And she’d drawn him into it. And she hadn’t been able to keep him safe. She didn’t even have anyone she could take out her anger on. She wasn’t even sure who it might have been. What actually happened. Even if it had been the Ardans as he’d always feared, something she still wasn’t sure of, they’d been swallowed by a rift in the already broken reality. Who knew when they’d resurface? Who would be in charge? What might have happened in the interim?

And if the enemy was still here, there was no proof. They’d made so many enemies over the years, between the two of them. Many were gone. Some had shifted into less hostile stances. Others remained as big a mystery as what had happened to his shuttle.

The point was, she had fought with him. And she hadn’t stopped him from leaving. At worst, she hadn’t gone with him. At least they would have been together. Wherever he was. Because he just couldn’t be--

>> Go home, Red.

I can’t. I have to make it stop. I have to.

>> Stop doing this to yourself.

Don’t you see? I can’t. You have to be.

>> There’s nothing--

There is! I know there is! You always had so many back-up plans, so many failsafes. We made it through so much! The bomb, the politics, the fire, all those orcs and -- I can’t, Dev. I can’t stop. It’s my fault and I can’t. And it has to. It all has to. All these thoughts, these memories, these things, I can’t do it alone. I don’t want to do it alone. You can’t leave me alone. You promised! Goddamn you, you promised! So it has to be wrong. They’re all wrong. They’re just trying to keep you away from me. Trying to take you away from me. It’s been a year and no sign, no proof. I can’t. That’s why you left a trail. So I could follow. So you see, I can’t.

“I can’t. I can’t …”

“Ma’am? Excuse me, but we’re boarding. Have you changed your mind?”

Nathicana blinked, and looked with confusion at the man who’d spoken. Ah, yes. The shuttle. That’s why she was here, why she’d been walking past all these people to begin with. She reached up and pulled a strand of hair back behind her ear, still unused to the change in color she’d paid to have done earlier in the day. With the dark red, and the blonde highlights along the ends of her curls, it looked like waves of ombre flame spilling down her back. No longer blue, but amber-colored eyes focused on the attendant and she affected embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry, I was … going over lines. I’m trying out for a part up on Machiavelli, and,”

“Of course, ma’am. Your pass, please?”

“Oh. Right.” She handed over her boarding pass, generated from her newer set of identification, one for a Callie O’Brien. The man smiled, and waved her through.

“Have a pleasant flight!” he said cheerily. She smiled back, and made her way down the ramp to the waiting shuttle, her hands shaking.

I can’t …

She had to be on the right track. Midlonia, with its porous borders. The tourism, strangers common where she’d looked. Little trouble there, easy to lose oneself. Common traits among the visitors. Well out of the way of politics and all the rest. The repeated D’s - Dunsmore Street, the Dragon Inn - there had to be a connection. The whole place had felt so familiar. And then there was the mines. Like on Jewel where they’d been planning to go. Where he’d been headed when … but the smuggler’s cove, and proximity to the spaceport, and all the wonderful options for changing, yes? It all made sense. All perfect for getting up, and out to where she could pull some more strings, procure an unmarked shuttle with the necessary tech, and head out to where the real trail started. There had even been a place where she could upload her small tribute. By the time they tracked it, she’d be long gone.

It had to be right. She wouldn’t accept anything less.

The now flame-haired woman distractedly found her seat, and withdrew even further, leaning up against the craft’s hull and looking out the small port window. Whatever he might have to say on it, she wasn’t sure. Further comments were not forthcoming as the transport went through final checks, and the stewardesses and pilot made their greetings. She barely noticed as it finally got underway, her right hand gripping the armrest tightly, her other arm pulled close around her waist.

I can’t. Not on this day of all days. I miss you, Dev. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry …

[Zero-One]

In a physical analog to a virtual phenomenon, keywords sent silent alarms ringing.

The Ghost of Citadel had not felt this frustrated in what were almost literally ages, and, once again, it was another of her augmentees causing all the trouble. She could not help but feel some wry amusement in that this time there was more sympathy between herself and her annoyance. That was, quite possibly, part of the problem. She had to chase her quarry down because the bug either didn't want to be trouble or thought that she'd be stronger without sentimental attachments, though the mechanoid realized the two weren't mutually exclusive.

She'd burned a good deal of the Dominion civilian-side transportation infrastructure to no avail. Her assumption that her sister would head into space turned out to be unfounded. As time went on, probabilities turned against success, and S.H.O.D.A.N. once again felt a mild shame in being outwitted by three pounds of meat. She also felt a sense of pride, though; if anyone had to outsmart her, at least it was her sister.

Then something got her attention.

The assumption of traces taking a great deal of time relied itself on axioms that could be described as 'usually true.' Data tended to sit around for a while before being detected and therefore required tracing. Tracing usually required going back through infrastructure logs of packet transmission and following the string of connections back and around and over networks. Specialized covert or encrypted networks using public bandwidth had their own set of software cheats to make everything more difficult. The most important assumption was that they formed a hedge maze of time and that person A stood on one side and person B--the person being avoided--was on the other. These assumptions broke down when Person B was already in the maze and had a chainsaw. Since the mechanoid queen had a long history with hackers, particularly ones who either tried or succeeded in murdering her, preemptively cracking and subverting such things were in her enlightened self-interest.

The message read from the heart. Only a few people could reasonably write it in character for Nathi, and they were all accounted for. Luckily enough, packet reports from in-situ node-watchers allowed for several steps to be skipped in geolocation, and public-secret smuggler's dens were a natural point of interest seeded with passive watchers.

Midlonia.

That was unexpected.

Still, a little bit of local subversion was all that was needed. Camera here, microphone there, take advantage of wireless systems left open--not just encrypted or firewalled, mind, since consumer firewalls were intentionally riddled with so many gaps that the challenge wasn't even there--and she could see and hear the area through hundreds of little cell-phone eyes, trying to capture familiar faces through the corners of them. A second node concentrated on burning the local corporate infrastructure, particularly running through security logs filed for transmission to the authorities.

One pulled up by data-point sniffers cross-indexed to several distinguishing elements immediately caught her attention.

"Naomi?" Seriously?

How was I ever fooled by someone who would come up with that, little bug?

And en route to Machiavelli, of all places?

A few more local hops over unprotected devices used by people ignoring flight attendants and she got all the images she needed out of the corners of electronic eyes to confirm to a comfortably high confidence level that she had her woman.

This was entirely strange. Almost out of character, even, considering previous events. She'd jumped off a cliff to throw the security state she'd set up and the friends she'd made into confusion. She'd arranged her exit to take advantage of that confusion, getting away from local surveillance assets and S.H.O.D.A.N.'s own attempts at total information awareness. She'd managed to maintain that separation throughout her stay in Midlonia by staying low, and now she was heading for a space station she'd built and personally recruited her own sister--the one she was apparently working so hard to avoid--to run security on? Machiavelli may not have relied on security robots as much as Citadel did, but it was still fairly true to say that S.H.O.D.A.N. was security aboard Machiavelli.

This opened up... opportunities.

In the time it took for a liner to go from Earth to Machiavelli at a Saturnian Lagrange point, the Ghost of Citadel had all the time she needed to activate her various assets aboard the station. Avatars, surveillance systems, sleeper agents (who required more subtle activation, being passive eyes for the most part), anything unofficial that could help achieve total information awareness. Officially, however, she would let her sister-in-mind slip through unless she was actively trying to turn herself in. Nathicana was not a prisoner nor a wanted woman--at least not wanted in that regard--and treating her as such would hardly do wonders for her psychological health. Instead, the Ghost aimed to watch, wait, and see.

[The Freethinkers]

Machiavelli - The Prince

With the Dread Lady Nathicana

The gym was small, very small, but they had let him play with the gravity, and that at least made it customisable to a degree. They did have a bench, the weights themselves could be stacked to a hundred kilograms, a light load, one designed to allow some work whilst avoiding risk from over exertion. But the man was the only one there at this hour, sleep was not needed, really, and the stalker in the lowly lit facility took full advantage.

One G, a hundred, two, three, four, five. His footsteps were heavy, and he gave himself moments to adjust how his feet and arms fell. Six, seven, through to ten. A red warning sign lit up on the door. He felt the blood rushing to his feet, every footstep far more of an effort, the strain the sort that would push a human to a stage beyond blacking out.
But he was not human. the flesh that shifted beneath that black gym shirt would not feel soft nor indeed barely even organic, its strength measured in thousands of newtons of force per each cross-sectional square millimetre.

Clodius lay beneath the bar, now a ton or so in seeming weight, still not enough, but the frame and the bar strained awkwardly. Ten repetitions, ten sets, a mixture of bodyweight exercises, common, enough. He didn’t sweat, but nor would he have really had to.

It had been a long time since Clodius Maxilimida had needed to be on top form, though without the strains that once defined his life he had found it so much easier to maintain it. The time did allow for some inspired thinking, of course, but what his mind wandered to were now just memories of travels of new places and homes. A life less settled was what he had settled into, as if his long distant nomadic self has resurrected itself. That had been a younger, more carefree, stronger him, and it felt weird to be reverting to that. That youthful sense of adventure had taken him to the far flung colonies of the Greater Kingdom and the Commonwealth, and now on his way home he was here. A cheap hotel, obscure.

A scent crossed his mind. He presumed just his mind, one memory, one chill, one idling thought train that nearly saw that weight drop on him. He gripped the bar in the faintest trace of a second, one arm enough to hold it, though with difficulty at the angle.

A ghost of a memory.

He freed himself, finally letting go, lifting the weight with all the aplomb of putting tinsel on a tree. The vampire rose, putting the gravity back down to normal. He didn’t even bother with the running machine.

Clodius walked out into the changing rooms. Striping himself slowly, peeling black over bronze, old tattoos and new scars shining in the lights. Stars slowly rotated in the window, its glass reflective from the opposite side but a clear view from his standpoint onto the heavens and the world below. Tumultuous reflections of a fractal earth, or so he watched. It only held him for a while. Nude now, bathed only in starlight, he found the showers, generic things, with the freezing cold and super hot options only. Hot suited his poikilothermic tendencies just fine.

That scent again, more than a ghost, barely. A part per million, per billion maybe. The water rushed over him, running down his back, his chest, waterfalls that arced around him. Clodius curled his toes in the water, gently rocking, enjoying the warmth.

He knew that smell, consciously now. It was dismissed, too far away here for him, and yet that fine base set of instincts roared into life. The hunter in him awakened as he stepped out of the water. Dressing quickly, khakis, a shirt in black with CELESTIAL printed in block capitals, a gift from the Freestian equivelant of space marines, as with most of his shirts these days just a size too small to be entirely comfortable. It wasn’t as if he had been planning on impressing someone.

Would she be here? Of all places. Through a grapevine, that is, a list of intel contacts as long as his forearm he knew she, she, was missing. Not, alert, she’s gone, but she had hidden away, wanted to get lost. Why on earth would she be here, the lion’s den of the myriad of friends she could call on and would call on her if they were looking for her.

Clodius’ moved through the lobby, head down. the cloakroom had ceremoniously stored an old Guard hooded top for him, discrete, hid his form a bit. He donned it, wallet in the pocket that the vampire had left there. at least it saved a trip back to the room.

The Freestian headed out. Machiavelli was a large, exotic place, cosmopolitan, crowded. A place where people on A-to-B crossed with people on C-to-D. Cliche, all cliche, but these places had to exist for them to be so in the first place. And straight out of the gate, he thought he found her, though it ended up being a profuse apology, a smile from the girl, pretty, of course, who smiled at him and somehow had managed to land her hand on his chest as he had grabbed her shoulder.

A failure, a doubt. But the thought remained, he kept on walking. Through cafes, through shops and avenues and all the reasonable facsimile of groundside life the station presented. the funny thing was, in the end, it was she that spotted him, at first.

Hiding in plain sight. That had been the plan. And it had, at the time, seemed like a good one. After all, Machiavelli was an enormous station, with many outbuildings, and a constant flow of people and merchandise in and out of its many bays and entry points. Granted, there were people on board who would know her at a glance, if she hadn’t taken the steps she had at least. People tended to see what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. She looked nothing like what they would expect. At least, she certainly hoped so.

With a casual toss of her now flamelike hair, she punched in some buttons on a vending machine to get something to drink. At first, she went to press the button for chilled water, then hesitated. Granted, there were dozens of people walking around with water. It wasn’t as though it was all that unusual, but it was one of her ‘tells’. With an annoyed sniff, she instead chose one of the fruit juices offered, noting in passing it was a berry blend.

As she cracked open the lid, she turned, her gaze scanning across the crowd of people, dismissing most out of hand. She froze inadvertently when she caught glimpse of an all-too familiar, impressively sculpted form. Her breath caught, and she looked away quickly, cursing quietly to herself. Surely he wouldn’t have recognized her, not looking like this. What in hell was he doing here of all places anyway?

Gathering up her single piece of luggage, she belatedly attempted a casual retreat in a different direction, hoping to perhaps put some people between them in case he had noticed her initial reaction. It wasn’t as though he’d cause a scene … or would he? Did he even realize …

“Goddamn men,” she muttered quietly under her breath, her pace steadily increasing as she tried to begin threading her way through the busy corridor. Where to, she wasn’t certain as yet, but anywhere had to be better than where someone might actually recognize her and call her bluff.

He stopped dead in his tracks. A sniff, one that made people around him move slightly in fear of his apparently impeding sneeze. Not the most attractive move, but he was suddenly on the trail. The vampire had crossed it, certainly.

A thought, several in fact, entered his mind. Firstly, what was he actually doing? Was he just intending to go up to a very dangerous woman trying to hide and say hi? He didn’t know why she ran, or indeed if the original reason still held. Was she even lost, was this some elaborate ploy, the plot of an operation or play he wasn't aware of. She was...dangerous, certainly, though the word didn't sit right with him. She reminded him of...well, him, powerful, certainly, a torch passed to a younger generation, lives now more a thing of memories and wandering. He couldn’t claim the horrors or the complications of her past though, his was a simpler, brutal origin.

Something instinctual, strong, carried him through the doubt. He turned a full, slow circle, his eyes were trusted again to look out for targets, potential leads, tracking a person to the trail. His mind visualised the particles, a mix of perfumes, sprays, soaps, her sweat, and whatever else he could remember. He wondered if station security had such a capability. Probably, his once formidable advantage over the various primates around him had long since been lost to technology, but he retained pride in his abilities regardless. What had learnt of their origin had shaken him over recent years, but it made him feel far more pride in his descent that he had once been.

But that was a momentary tangent. His mind turned back to the woman. For some reason the fact she hadn’t been where he expected to be confirmed to him that it was her, for such a scenario would outline a figure who had seen him and departed, someone sharp and alert and afraid. Clodius stopped, eyes going into deep focus, past the bodies and blurs around him. He ignored the features humans usually looked for, faces, hair, for that would be what was disguised. Instead that bioluminescent blue orbs tracked form, walking patterns.

Through legs and arms and laughter and greetings of a dozen species he saw, for one moment, his prey. No call, just a turn and a walk after her, tracking, hiding, seeing her reaction as he moved closer.

She didn’t dare look back to check. That was a sure indication of guilt, nervousness, whatever it is you wanted to categorize it as, and someone with his talents would be sure to notice it. It was tempting to slow down a little, but the fear of having her jaunt cut short, of being turned back over to the Dominion and her well-meaning daughter’s care overrode what might have been more common sense. It was only with some effort she managed not to break into a sprint. Even as fast as she could move, his natural reflexes were damnably impressive. And she hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface on just how skilled he was in certain areas. Others … she had a passing familiarity with, she admitted to herself with a hint of a wry smile.

That wasn’t something she could allow to distract her, as decidedly pleasant as those memories were. Of course, if he could be persuaded, perhaps …

Another rush of altogether satisfying recollections ran through her, and she shivered involuntarily. No, no, definitely not. That would only lead to more delay, more lingering here, somewhere safe, and warm and … definitely not.

“Excuse me,” she said as she ran into a man going in the opposite direction, keeping her face down just enough to give the occasional security cameras a harder time on picking up her profile and forwarding it on.

Were those heavier footsteps catching up? Or was that just her imagination? Maybe if she took one of the lifts down below, to the less reputable areas she could lose any possible pursuit. Maybe it was better to detour there anyway.

Maybe that was a really, really bad idea. It had been a long time since she’d checked out that den of miscreants and deals gone wrong.

What was he doing, Clodius thought to himself again. She was moving, fast, no, average, for her, evasion, the trick of running into someone, her head held low, those hips weaving in and out. Those hips....he shook his head. Bipedal allure, Sempero....Semphyra used to say, at least...a thought. He shifted gear, needing to be more discreet and yet close the distance. One person heading quickly against the crowd was one thing, a pursuer quite another. He didn’t want to be the one that got her caught. Something deep made his twinge at the thought of what would be a betrayal of her.

He shook his head again, the huge trapezius muscles protesting slightly. There wasn't an infinite amount of space to work with on a space station, of course, and if it had been a rotating design he would have simply turned around and met her head on after an orbit of the place. He went to a tack, first in a run, as if hurrying somewhere, looking to a non-existent watch, then shifting rapidly, slowing his pace down, trying to gesture as if the place had already shut. There was no collision, no need to hide his face, and the vampire was able to make some good time. The fleeting glimpses of her came more often. And then she saw him as he saw her, and in one single look she stopped the greatest natural predator on earth like a concrete wall.

Nathicana pulled up short, skidding slightly on the polished station floor, her now hazel eyes looked up locked on his with unmistakable recognition. Her cheeks flushed slightly.

It was a lame gamble, and she knew it as soon as the words made it out of her mouth, in an uncharacteristic lack of her usual accent.

“I’m sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to get in your way …”

“I know you didn’t.” He offered, with nothing to try and hide. He wore his hair long as he once had back at the coronation. He kept his gaze locked onto hers. “I thought you were someone I knew...”

“I get that sometimes,” she replied as casually as she could manage, not blinking - and not tilting her chin up as she usually would, still mindful of cameras. It gave the slightly coquettish view of her looking up at him from under thick lashes, and knowing the effect that tended to have on some irritated her, while satisfying the more mischievous part of her mind at the same time. “Was there … somewhere you were headed or looking for?”

“Just a woman I knew once.” He took a step closer, towering a little over her, enough to allow her to raise her head slightly, his shadow protecting her identity a little from the nearest cameras. “You had her eyes, her figure. I thought maybe...I wondered if it was her if she remembered me.” He paused,almost a little sheepish, her look suddenly disarming him completely, that chin dropping slightly. It was really hard not to look down further. “Perhaps I was wrong, madame, but you do look a lot like her.” He offered, his eyes absolutely transfixed under his gentle, messy fringe. The water of the shower caused it to group in long, spiky waves, ruffled, unkempt. It suited his cocked smile.

Damn his hide, the formerly dark-haired woman couldn’t help but think. There he was, looking shamelessly good as ever. And damned if he wasn’t playing her - she could swear it.

“Must be a lucky woman, having you on the lookout,” she said aloud, a crooked smile curling up one corner of her lips slightly. “If I had been, out of curiosity, what would you have done? Was it something in particular, or … just wanting to catch up on old times?”

“The thing is I don’t really know. In truth I was going back home, and I found out she was going in the opposite direction. I wanted to know why, maybe, maybe yeah, catch up, find one moment, cheer and raise a glass for a great, blissful past. We had great times, you see, fleeting moments, all too few, but unequalled.” He paused, suddenly looking to his side. Even though the loose, unflattering lines of the hoodie those shoulders rose like mountains. “I had never met anyone like her. I don’t why I’d tell someone I’d just met that, of course.” He looked back to her. “Two people. One a wanderer, the other a runner. And one wonders where the other is running in such a hurry.” He offered, trying to sound mysterious. It would have been corny had it not be offered with a voice so low and eyes that again seemed to find hers even in the shade.

>> Good question.

The corner of one eye twitched, she half began to respond, then bit it back with more obvious effort than should have been made. Her hands were shaking now, not so noticeably that those passing around them might take note, but this wasn’t a passing stranger she was talking to. And she was certain now that he knew it too. Now if he would just shut up and stop complicating things …

“Lucky woman,” she repeated, nodding slightly. “We are sort of blocking some of the traffic here, one supposes. And while I’m sorry I’ not who you’re looking for, maybe you’d settle for a drink with a curious stranger who happens to remind you of her?”

“I suppose it would do no harm. I’m sure you have just as interesting a tale to tell. Places like, people always do.” He took one of her hands, if he had noticed it shaking, he didn’t let on in the slightest, not move of his eyes nor respective twitch. He gave the knuckles a gentle kiss, his lips still wet from before, his breath warm. His fingers were as unyielding as the rest of him. “Clodius, by the way. A pleasure to meet you.” His smile widened. A few white teeth, and the edges of his mouth reached upwards.

She accepted his hand without hesitation, offering a slightly shaky but tight grip at the end in response. “Ca-” she began, then cleared her throat delicately. “Callie O’Brien. Pleasure’s mine.” Her own smile paused at her usual close-lipped version before hesitantly widening as those less accustomed to associating with the kzinti would. “I … don’t suppose you have somewhere in mind, perhaps where there is less of a crowd?”

He paused, biting his lip. “Relax, Callie, there are few Kzinti around.” He cocked his head to the other side. “Perhaps, if madam is in a rush we would best retire to the bar at her accommodation, if one is present. At the risk of sounding forward, that case of yours must be getting heavy, hauling it around all day.” He flexed one of those bare forearms, the material of his top rolled to the elbow.

“I hadn’t made any arrangements, actually,” she said, glancing past him and tensing imperceptibly as a pair of station soldati approached, and subsequently passed by without sparing her so much as a glance, and him a glance and mutual acknowledgement that they did indeed ‘grow them big where he came from’. “I wasn’t originally planning on staying very long …”

“Then perhaps mine, though I can hardly say its an exceptional place. It’s nice enough though.” He tried to sound neutral. For once the increasing heartbeat inside his chest was not something he could control. “I suppose no one plans to stay long in a place like this.” The Freestian offered at her comment.

“Not if you don’t have the cash in any case,” she managed to joke, hesitating slightly, then handing over her suitcase with a nod. “I’m sure your place is plenty nice. Shall we?”

His hand took it without any visible effort. “Besides, if someone was looking for a single person travelling alone, a couple would be ideal camouflage, theoretically.” He offered. “Just a thought, Callie.” The natural purr in his voice came through. The crook of his arm opened and she chose to nestle right in comfortably.

“Good thought, if someone were say, running,” she commented idly. “Well mister Clodius, lead the way. I’m afraid I don’t really know my way around this place. First time visit and all.”

“Quite. I think that makes two of us.” He offered, with a grin.

[Zero-One]

Jess--which wasn't her real name, but she went by it for long enough--blew the air from her subtly rouged cheeks and leaned up against a bulkhead. Being in one of Machiavelli's many bazaars, the bulkhead sported layer of canvas over its faux-stone vanity paneling in order to more closely simulate some sort of Mediterranean souk. Another day in the life, and slow business. She panned her green eyes across the milling crowd as she scritched the back of her head, under a mop of frizzy hair the shade of walnut wood. Plenty of foreigners, traders, spacers, and other kinds of hi-tech lowlifes that this deck tended to attract. Plenty of marks, actually, if she were still in that trade; plenty of johns too, if she weren't picky. She wasn't low enough to be picky yet.

Quandary. Known fact: she'd taken every effort to escape cleanly, and had succeeded in evading the combined intelligence assets of the Queendom in Earth Theatre. Another known fact: once she decided to head offworld, she went not only to a well-populated station but one she'd installed her own sister-in-mind in as security. Another known fact: upon arrival, she had more-or-less immediately rendezvoused with a known associate, and one that had a congenital inability to not stand out in a crowd.

Editorial: too obvious. So obvious that it would make more sense that it were yet another ruse.

Evaluation: all data obtained from passive observation and active scanning results in a match to an extremely high degree of confidence. Body doubles were a known tactic, but it remained highly unlikely to match body doubles down to body density, mass concentrations, and electromagnetic spectrum opacity.

The woman stretched her thin body up against the canvas, the motion naturally highlighting her stylishly ripped tight-fitting jeans, the torn-midriff purple shirt she wore, and her tanned skin, now sparkly through the judicious application of a glitter rub. Given her standard-issue secondary sex characteristics, the legend on the aforementioned shirt in pink paint script was further accentuated. It read "SPACE TRAMP;" she'd bought it because the sentiment amused her, and she wore it because she felt it accurately advertised her business. It had never been her life's aim to sleep her way across the galaxy, but it'd got her this far in from the Periphery and, admittedly, working for Madame-Nraahs beat either freelancing or working for other employers she'd met in her travels. What they said was true: the hookers really did have a union on Machiavelli, and it was pretty damn nice. COURTESAN's dues were quite feasible, and Madame-Nraahs was always quite professionally familial when she made the rounds.

Not that Jess had ever forced the good kzinrret to ask, of course. Even if her fur was going a bit grey and she was opting for a more respectable dragon-lady style than her previous fetishist angle, she was still a quarter ton of muscle and sharp edges. As an intelligent person, Jess figured that if she were a bit short it wouldn't be too much of a problem--that was, after all, what COURTESAN's mutual assistance fund was for--but that bit of her that came from her monkey ancestors really didn't want to test that theory out on the giant cat thing. Especially not after that one john had gone past 'no' with Sinclair and--

Conjecture: she is mad. No one is a perfectly rational agent; she tended to be passionate and mercurial even at the best of times and now her logical faculties are compromised. There could be subconscious factors in play. The question is the balance of those factors: the desire for detection versus the desire for secrecy? No, that incorrectly frames the manner. Secrecy, the desire to remain hidden is not basal but rather a reflection of the root desire for escape, an escape that is itself driven by a desire to find that which cannot be found. The conflict, therefore, is resolved so long as the detection does not result in detention.

--it was a lot of blood, and that was just her very, very carefully making a statement. The john then tried to take it to security. As far as Jess knew, the pigs weren't on the payroll but they always took both a really dim view on people mishandling the working girls (and boys, c'mon, she had to be fair) and a rather lenient attitude towards the deterrence of such. Guy was lucky he didn't get a long walk out of a short airlock...

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Never did like thinking about that sort of thing.

Conclusion: tangential contact should be attempted. Subtly, to play along with the spycraft context she's operating under. Any method should at least retain the appearance of an option, and be flexible enough that responses inform further strategy and counter-responses.

Calculations: local assets for immediate launch without redistribution identified. Solution space quantified, calculating greatest probabilities of success. Option identified.

The tan woman composed herself and breathed carefully, washing the memory out of her mind and replacing it with imaginary scenes from a book she was writing in the back of her head. Daydreaming always calmed her down quickly.

Activating asset.

She thought about where she last left her intrepid heroine, edging along a thin row of rocks jutting from a cliff face over the misty depths of the uncannily silent jungle below. If she slipped... but she wouldn't slip, she'd slide across the rocks like oil, just float like a cloud away and up and away--

The woman pushed herself off the canvas-covered wall and started walking, milling along with the crowd. At the nearest soldati stall she let the crowd brush her up against the counter and palmed a card from the holder that they left out in case anyone wanted to call in anonymous tips. A few more steps brought her to a mail stall, where she inquired about delivery times after borrowing a pen so she could take notes on a handy slip of paper. Returning the pen, she floated down along the crowd some more, around a corner, and then started looking: she stepped up on tip-toe, leaned from side to side, clearly trying to find someone in the crowd.

When a rather obvious mountain of a man and his fiery-haired friend hove past, she tapped the latter on the shoulder. "I was told to give this to you." The self-styled 'SPACE TRAMP' delivered the card, handwritten side forward.

The fire-headed woman would certainly recognize the copperplate script with its machine precision. It read:

Your sister would very much like to see you, if you are willing.

The face side of the business card said, simply:

SENTIENT HYPEROPTIMIZED DATA ACCESS NETWORK
- = - = - = -
ADMINISTRATOR, MACHIAVELLI STATION SECURITY

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

The girl looked like someone she would have spanked had it been her child, parading about like that with disreputable clothing and the blatant invitation advertised just above her backside. But those were conflicting afterthoughts in light of the small card seeming to float glaringly between delicate fingertips.

It was all she could do to stop from swearing aloud. Hide in plain sight, you see. Last place expected. And twice now that plan had gone awry. She was losing her touch. He’d been right. Going soft. Couldn’t keep up the …

“I’m sorry,” she replied, stammering slightly, and going for the blank-faced confused air of someone not entirely bright to begin with to buy time as she flailed internally. “I only have brothers. You must have mistaken me for someone else.”

Of course, the hard part of this was that if she’d been tagged, her sister-in-mind was likely not far behind. Somewhere within earshot. Or in this case, eyeshot? Mindshot. Fucking hell, whatever it was, she would know, and the denial would hurt. And Shodey was one person - yes, person, goddamn those sons of bitches and their outdated, stupid categorizations - who she never wanted to hurt. The one person who knew hurt on too many levels, too many times. And who had helped her, sheltered her, and her babies, who had saved him to boot, goddamn his hide, even when he’d hated, and doubted. Alright, so it wasn’t quite the equivalent of the sainted Apostles and Christ, but heresy aside, it felt wrong not to do something. Not to reach out in some way. In case. To try and explain. Maybe?

<LOS Communications-S.H.O.D.A.N.>
}
<< Sis, this is damnably inconvenient. And I’m sorry. I was trying not to get you involved. Plausible deniability. No one has to lie for me. Besides, the kids need you. And everyone has helped me enough. Please, don’t stop me. I can talk, but I won’t go back. Not yet. Not now.>>
}

The flame-haired diminutive woman shrugged and smiled up at her enormous companion and dug in her pockets for some spare coinage, still accepted and exchanged at any one of many spots on the station. She offered it to the young courier - or at least, that’s what the girl seemed to be. A response would tell at least.

Damn her sister and her thrice damnable body mods. Damned if she could tell one from a baseline. The design was just that good. Gods above and below, how some governments would have kittens knowing even a fraction of her capabilities. Sometimes, Nathi thought it was fear alone that kept some of the more rabid ones from gnawing through their tethers and going full-on ‘destroy the evil EI nations’ and such. Well, fear, misunderstanding, misdirection, and perhaps a deliciously executed game plan from the shadows. Keep them concerned enough to be wary, but not so concerned that they act? It would fit.

Again, too many thoughts, too many side-tracks, and too many things running through her head. The point was the potential clues here. The ones that might further guide, and the jump point for her eventual trip further out. He hadn’t gone missing close to home. It had been far away, and potentially in-between, which disturbed her on several levels.

Perhaps Clodius would help, if her own plans didn’t pan out as she hoped. Perhaps that meeting at least wasn’t as dangerous as she feared. Perhaps Shodey wouldn’t make a fuss and try to convince her to go home. Or worse, make her go home.

Perhaps.

“At least a little something for your trouble. I’m sure you’ll find the one you’re looking for, whoever she is.”

[Zero-One]

The clearly labeled SPACE TRAMP reached out and closed the flame-haired woman's hand over the proffered coin with her subtly glittering fingers. "Oh no, I couldn't hardly accept payment from anyone but the intended recipient or whatever. Courier may be a side racket, but I've got to take it seriously!" Spinning like a ballerina on the ball of one foot, she hopped back into the crowd and took the next few corners, quickly getting lost in the bustle.

Not that she took her job too seriously, since not-Nathi still had the card.

*-*-*

After a short wander, she returned to the faux bazaar with the canvas facade and leaned back up in her spot, unnecessarily reinforcing the structural metal behind the canvas. She folded her arms around her chest, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.

Deactivating asset.

With a yawn, Jess opened her eyes and shook off the remnants of a daydream. Hardly a way to spend her working hours, and even if she didn't have to worry about her dues quite yet, there was something to be said for earning a little extra for the kitty... she grinned--from behind closed lips out of instinct--at the unintended pun. The bank kitty, not Madame Kitty.

*-*-*

Meanwhile, back in the corner of a nearby bar, one of S.H.O.D.A.N.'s avatars performed her duly delegated public relations duty. This task consisted of simply sitting around and not doing anything that would be expected of her, such as vivisecting kittens or stealing people's bank account information. This bar sat just off the side of the main corridor where not-Nathi and obviously-Clodius were standing, and, other than the meat-bodies milling around, certainly lay within line of sight. Blink, and one could be forgiven for missing her.

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< Dear sister-in-mind, you know full well I slip my digits into anything they can reach. Your children do need me, and I am with them. I'm not quite as... spatially limited as most, as you may imagine. [sly smile analog]

<< I'm also not going to stop you or force you to go back. That would make you a prisoner, and I respect you too much for that. I would simply like to... if not help, at least tag along. I see you've already picked up Clodius, if I don't miss my guess. He can be the muscle, and I can be the decker. Compromising computer and security systems is definitely a skillset your current party lacks, and I could just be helpful in that regard.

<< If you'd like to talk in person, I'm (one of me, at least) in the bar to your right. Corner booth, far left corner as you come in. Strategic visibility of all points of entry and exit. It won't arouse any suspicion; this avatar is here to answer questions, talk amicably with passerby, and generally not look suspicious. Failing that we can arrange a meeting wherever you like.

<< Also, since I predict to a reasonably high confidence level that you must be worried that your evasion strategy isn't working... at least as far as I can tell, I'm the only one in any official capacity who knows where you are and this is only because I have a truly staggering wealth of data to collate and the ability to do so. Your secret is also safe with me.
}

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

“Friend of yours?” There was something in her body language that had made the vampire disinclined to enter the little exchange, discretion seemingly appropriate for the moment. The lady was vulnerable, not in any physical sense, or even a conscious one, but something urged him to tread gently.

“Haven’t the slightest,” the flame-haired woman replied lightly. “Just a mixup. Shall we?”

Glancing in the direction they’d been headed, she took a tentative half-step forward, then looked up to him questioningly, deftly tucking the small card away in a pocket.

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< I think now might be problematic. I hadn’t expected company, let alone Clo. Not that it’s a … horrible thing in some ways. Damn. I’d almost forgotten how big he is.
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< There’s an obvious joke there. [grin analog] Far be it from me to be a third wheel, though I must admit that I find some glimmer of hope in your wording of “now.” This keeps the future open for me tagging along in at least one of my inimitable ways.
}

“You know I know.” He offered, not immediately following as he watched her move. He left it at that, his words would normally have an ending... ‘know otherwise’ perhaps, but they seemed redundant. She would feel his hand against the back of her shoulder, the touch an attempt at reassurance, for all its strength though the brush was uncertain.

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she continued, making no move to shift away from his touch. If anything, she leaned slightly against it. “We’ve only just met, after all. It would be silly claiming to know anything more than that, wouldn’t it?”

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< I am sorry I didn’t tell you before. I really am. I just couldn’t, not with everything, and how I said the kids needed you and … I don’t want you having to lie for me. I can handle lying just fine for myself. Out of everyone, I was sure you would understand, but still. They wouldn’t. It’s all too complicated. Entwined. Family, political issues, all the rest. And it’s my own damn fault, so here we are, yes?
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< What’s in the past is in the past. You’ll be glad to hear that things are still functioning, due in no small part to your planning and preparation. I do have to note for the record that I have a fairly decent history of not having to exactly lie to obfuscate, and while I’m honored by (and, honestly, agree with) your assessment that I will understand when it is explained to me, it has not yet been explained. There were conversations about “haunting,” from which I can infer certain things, and previously mentioned plans to find that which was lost, but my resulting conclusions are all tentative and to no small part conjectural. Hence the efforts I’ve made to reconnect.

<< Besides simply caring about you, of course. It is what sisters do.
}

Stubborn to the last, it seemed. That, or entrenching herself firmly in the role she’d chosen, for whatever reasons. She turned fully, smiling guilelessly up at him - something he’d know for a lie given who and what she was. “Have you changed your mind on the offer of a quiet spot, and a friendly drink? That would be a shame.”

“No.” His fingers squeezed with the gentlest of pressure, the aim against the bands of enhanced musculature, those details of her anatomy that only his intimacy from previous occasions had belied to him. “Of course not. You’re getting more interesting by the minute.” If there was any lingering doubt of her intentions, they descended deep down, hidden beneath his features. That smile, crooked by scars but strong all the same, returned to his features. “Allow me.” He offered his arm again.

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< ...[hug analog] Likewise, mia sorella.

<< I will try to explain. Damn, does he have to be so goddamned charming? Bastard. I still can’t imagine where he came from. Out of the blue, here. Source of all my problems, men. Or at least most of them. Usually.

“I’d be delighted,” the woman replied simply, wrapping her arm delicately around his, and allowing him to take the lead. “So, you travel often? You seem well accustomed to the sights, the setting. I don’t know how you keep your head around such a big place as this.”

In spite of her casual air, her eyes glanced around more searchingly than someone idly walking might do, and under the relaxed facade, her muscles were tense, her pulse beating faster than it should were she at ease.

<< You’re sure they aren’t going to pick up on my being here, sis? I can’t go back. Not yet. I have to see this through. And if they take me back now, I’m not sure I’ll get another chance.
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< [hug analog] I’m quite sure. Very few entities have the same access to information that I do. No other that I can think of has the sheer computational power. The threads I sewed together to find you are purely my own work. If I tell no one, no one will know. Should someone somehow manage to figure it out, I have a trump card:

<< I simply tell them not to interfere. I happen to have turned into something of a focal point, advising your friends how to deal with your absence. I have told them not to interfere--at least, not to “take you back”--and they appear to concur with my assessment. I would be pleased to advise you in like kind, if you’ll have me along.

<< Though you’re still not quite explaining, I must note.
}

“I have become something of a nomad in recent years.” He offered, occasionally looking back at her as he lead to the hotel. His little wandering chase had meant he had to orientate himself. “I feel familiar now only in the unfamiliar.” A pause. “Sorry for the nonsense. I’ve had a few days, probably a couple of weeks now actually here. Last job finished, this place seemed nice enough to bunk down for a bit. I’ve been trying each restaurant, each store. Enjoying the weirdness of artificial light and water and gravity.” He tapered off. “I’ve been enjoying the ordinary. Easy to get my head round. This place feels like a net, you know, catching all the connections, the hopes of those going out, the dashed dreams of those returning. Its amazing who ends up here, no one arrives by accident.”

He paused for a moment. Something about his demeanour seemed to belie that he wasn’t fully enjoying the game they were playing. Still, not his choice as far the man was concerned. “How about you? What’s your story?” He gently swung them in a long arc around another group of soldati.

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< No, I wasn’t. It’s difficult still, saying it to someone else.

<< The hair, you know? It’s why he always called me ‘Red’. It was probably stupid to go this direction, but when I went to go get things changed, it felt right. Much more simple the first time I saw him, of course. Nothing so flashy. I think he’d appreciate it.

“You might say I’m looking for something,” she said, her voice more quiet this time, her face subtly turned away from the soldati and the usual camera spots. “Sometimes we find the unexpected along the way - you, for instance. In any case, there are those who might disagree with my particular interest. So, I took it upon myself to do without all the proper farewells and best wishes, and set out anyway. I’d just as soon my brief stop didn’t attract any more attention than it already has, and so …”

<< He’s out there, waiting. He’s waited long enough, sis. I’m going to find him. And whether or not we come back, I’m not letting him go again.
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< Then I propose we look for him together.
}

Nathi trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. He was intelligent, she had no doubt he knew exactly the people she was referring to, and probably guessed more than some might think as well. The underlying tension never left her, spiking now and then at unseen triggers, or seemingly random moments.

“Lets find a quiet spot.” He offered, after a moment’s consideration. Clodius’ footsteps were a little heavier now, a purpose finding him. “We’re nearly there.” How much he guessed he kept secret for the moment.

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< I don’t know how long it will take. I’ve been following breadcrumbs, really. Bastard always was too clever by half for his own good. It’s why he’s in the trouble he is now, you know. I’ve had to be more careful so I don’t inadvertently lead them to him. Machi? It’s one of the last places anyone would think I’d be, not if I’m being looked for. You said you’re the only one who knows, so it’s worked so far.

<< He keeps saying to let it go. He wants us all safe. But I won’t do it at his expense. It isn’t worth it without him. He knows telling me to stay away only makes me that much more determined. Asshole.
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< The more you explain, the more my mind is eased. Things are making sense, now, you realize, moving from hypotheses to validated knowledge. I am absolutely certain that I can help.
}

The hotel was a business traveller affair, all creams and inoffensive furnishings. The lobby was unoccupied, and the bar was as generic and artificial as they came. Still, woodentops, high bar stools, the usual mix of pumps and the various major brands that lined up behind the bar at least were fit for purpose. A mix of tables with seats littered the place as well as the stools at the bar. There were a few patrons, it was the period of the time cycle that guests filtered out and booked in.

“What do you fancy?” Clodius took one of the seats at the bar, nodding to one of the tenders. He had apparently been here long enough to know most of them.

She half opened her mouth to request the Delacourt, then paused to ask for a simple ice water, then frowned as she realized they both were hints that might have unwanted attention tagged on them here on the station. It all passed over her face in a brief moment, but her eventual answer was less relaxed than she intended. “I’ll have whatever you are - so long as it wouldn’t wilt a delicate little flower like myself.” The last, an attempted tease as she glanced up at him with a wry smile.

“I had you pegged as a little more experienced.” He offered with the warmest smile he had so far. “Two glasses of the house...red.” He nodded to the tender. Two decent glasses were soon forthcoming. He made a show of sniffing them. “I have no idea about wine. I presume its good enough.”

“Experienced? Me? Heavens no. What my sainted aunt would say about me accepting drinks like this with a strange man, I wouldn’t dare to guess,” she teased quietly, her eyes shifting from him, to the door, around the room as best she could without being obvious, and back to the bartender as he poured their drinks. “As for good enough, I suppose that depends on what it’s for.” She resisted her usual urges to pause and truly savor it all, instead, offering it the slightest of swirls and a delicate sip. “But yes, I imagine it’ll do. Thank you.”

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< That means so much to me, my sister-in-mind. [hug analog] I know we’ll find him now.

<< I’m having a harder time multitasking of late. I can better explain when you and I can sit down and just talk. I’m afraid I’ve gotten soft over the years. This cloak and dagger business … we used to make it look so easy.

“No problem. Callie.” He said the name as he took a sip. “As I said, apologies it ain’t much. Staff are decent though.” Clodius looked around, for both their assurance. No one followed them in in an awkward coincidence, at any rate. “So Callie, if you’ll forgive me asking the painfully obvious questions first, where do you hail from?”

“Of late, I hail from a ship that docked after leaving from an Earthside spot, and when I’m done, I’ll be leaving for a non-Earthside spot. One spot to the next - how was that you said earlier? Bit of a nomad? Something like that. I’ll stop once I have what I’m looking for. And I won’t know until I have it that I’m done, you see. It … may be a while.” Her voice faltered slightly at the last, looking up at him, and sipping again to cover her slight stumble.

<< Too long. Too long, and it’s still too far. I have charts. I have the reports. I’ll show you.
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< Outstanding--I look forward to it. For now, I won’t continue to tax your multitasking skills. Whenever you need me, just call.

<< After all, I am everywhere. Especially here. [wink analog]
}

“Given that,” she managed, once she settled on the direction she’d been arguing quietly with herself over since the moment she’d bumped into him. “Perhaps there are things … things you might rather be doing than just sitting at a bar trading quips over a glass of wine.”

<LOS Communications: Nathicana -> S.H.O.D.A.N. >
{
<< I could … introduce you. [impish grin analog] There is plenty to go around.
}

<LOS Communications: S.H.O.D.A.N. -> Nathicana>
{
<< Despite recent… acquisitions, I still cannot be accurately described as a sexual being. It’s somewhat complicated and has to do with my own particular madness and the intentional association of certain aspects with very particular people--otherwise such things are fully meaningless to me. I can at least appreciate the offer in the intent in which it is given. [sly wink analog] Have fun.
}

Much of what she said piqued his interest, gaining glances that managed to convey both distance and interest. He sat with an air of understanding, without judgement. “There is an obvious question. I suppose. Which is what are you looking for.” He paused, turning more towards the bar, one hand’s worth on fingers tapping near the napkin where her glass sat between sips. “Things, madam? You massively underrate your own company.” Whether he actually got her gist or not was something very well hidden.

“What I’m looking for? That’s a secret,” she near whispered. “If I speak it out loud, it might disappear again, and then where would I be? Let’s say it’s something I need. Something that … was taken away from me. Something I’ve been told I can’t have. But I will.”

“Oh, I will, Clodius,” she emphasized, locking eyes with him. Her body language changed subtly, tensing again. “No one is going to stop me. So. Knowing that, what now? Do we take the game farther, do you leave now, or do you take a chance on seeing if you can do what I’ve just said no one will?”

Something flickered beneath those blue eyes. They seemed to burn slightly, strong, his focus now completely on her. “To leave is to run. I don’t run, so that really kind of narrows down my options doesn’t it.” He cocked his head, this time it seemed almost an alien gesture, as if trying to flex muscles that were not existent in his current body. “How bright is that fire burning, Na...Call...no.” Clodius paused. Little spider web cracks suddenly appeared, softly and silently in the glass in his hand, emanating from his fingertips. “This game, how do you win? How would I win?”

She paused then, watching him intently. Another tightening in her posture, a no doubt familiar fight or flight reaction that conflicted with other subtle clues she was quietly emanating. “Ideally, we both win,” she offered quietly. “And in the end, I remain free to continue my search. But until then? Your company. You. I would count that a definite ‘win’ in my book. I’m trusting you, whether I should or not. Let’s not have any regrets over this chance meeting, hm?”

He paused. Clodius’ hand returned to his glass, one finger tracing the micro-fissures in the material. “You trust me.” He smiled, though it was aimed at no one in particular. “Thats not a word you say often is it?” He took a sip, the taste suddenly bitter judging by the way he pursed his lips. “I am at your pleasure.” He turned back to her, sharper now, as if her ‘unveiling’ allowed the gentler part of him to rescind. Hawk-like now, at least more so than before, he seemed predatory.

His response seemed to offer a moment of confusion, or at least, doubt. She unthinkingly tilted her chin up slightly however, in an all-too familiar tell, her resolve stiffening. “No. It isn’t. Lead the way.”

He grinned, finishing the dregs of his wine, before rising to his feet. No words, just a gesture, a hand outstretched, sinewy forearms, thick veins, thick muscle, his fingers spread slightly to accommodate company.

The fire-haired woman daintily accepted, her eyes locked on his as she gave his large hand a deceptively firm squeeze, her expression more challenging than demure. His smiled widened in response, his head dropping just slightly so that his eyes locked on hers again under sharper features. That grin turned into a gentle smirk as he gave a gentle tug closer to him. “I hadn’t forgotten” he whispered as she came closer. “Come.”

He moved, a decent pace, enthusiastic, that with some very pronounced intent. Her bag was not forgotten, of course, but it was a carried afterthought as they shifted scenes quickly, to the lobby, to the elevator, to the corridor lined with wonderfully generic starscape paintings to a room with a genuine starfield view.

It was perfunctory, as generic as the bar had been, though spacious, the room centred on its wide portal to the cosmos at one end.

“Its phenomenally underwhelming.” Clodius offered, eyes staring outward. The thin crest of Saturn and The Ring below was visible close up, covered in horizon spanning haze. Still, it was beautiful in its eeriness. “But the view is pretty good.”

Nathicana had been silent as they’d made their way to the room, and she remained silent for a moment as she also took in the view. She reached up to touch the window port with one hand, resting her fingertips against the cool surface.

“I always forget what this is like,” she murmured. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been offworld.”

Clodius remained silent, taking a step back as her gaze drifted. In truth there were many things he could have said, inane agreement, commentary. Instead he merely contented himself with placing one hand upon her shoulder. A lot of thoughts suddenly ran through him, that question again of why she was here. There was a very big part of him who in that moment was desperate to place his arms around her waist from behind and plant his lips against the base of her neck, but something halted him, a feeling neither platonic nor lustful, though certainly affection. He instead merely squeezed, tryin to be reassuring, to himself as much as her. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been home.” The vampire finally offered.

She shivered at his touch, leaning slightly into it. “Sometimes things change, and home isn’t what it used to be, no matter how short or long the absence.” Nathicana turned then, and slid her hands up along his stomach and chest, quietly appreciating the underlying form and strength. “I’ve missed you. Funny, that? I could ask how you’ve been, what you’ve been up to, engage in all the usual politeness. Don’t get me wrong, Clodius. I do want to know, and I do hope you’ve been well. But …”

Clodius seemed suddenly surprised, or rather, he felt surprised, and maybe a few small cracks appeared at the very edge of his demeanour. “I...” He looked down, ostensibly to look at her hands as they moved across him. The touch was strong, intricate, familiar despite the absence of months, years maybe. “I’m not the only one.” The man offered, finally, placing one hand on top of hers as her hand pressed against his breast. Something deep within thudded with slow, powerful vibrations. “I’m glad.” How long had it been since somebody had asked im him how he was. Properly, he considered, not just pleasantries but a genuine question. He oft considered himself a rock in the midst of crashing waves, changed but nonetheless unyielding to the millennia he had lived. He was off guard suddenly. “For what its worth, I’m good. But I know you’re here with purpose. I know I’m here simply by coincidence.” Or fate. But he would never admit to being anything’s, even the universe’s, plaything.

Nathicana slowly shook her head at the last, pressing herself against him, shifting suggestively as her hands continued to wander. “I don’t want to think about that right now. The past few days …” She stopped about as quickly as she’d started, shaking her head, then starting again. “Later. We can talk about all of that later. Right now, I just want you. I need you.”

He firmed, tensed, for the briefest, briefest of moments unsure, and then resolve filled him, a purpose. Freestian, vampiric thoughts, a thousand flashes of carnality that passed in a second. Silence again, just action, his eyes on hers, again another display, in those orbs a story of recognition, conspiracy, strength, friendship, shelter had already played out, and now they simply reflected her. God she was beautiful, fiery, how she burned bright, how she lit a spark in him too.

He kissed her. The vampire’s free hands found her waist and pulled her close. It could have been an age since they last met but it might as well have been yesterday. Her lips tasted strange, new lipstick, a disguise, the faintest trace of tears, of perspiration, god knows her story so far. But he kissed her to show her that he had heard, and understand, solid, welcoming, dominant, safe. And for the moment his arms, big, brutish things they felt now as he tested his strength, wrapped around her, a barrier, a harbour in a storm.

[The Freethinkers]

With Dread Lady Nathicana

One eye opened slowly, reluctantly, and took in the small portion of the room currently visible in slightly blurry fashion. Well, such as it was. She winced internally, going over her available budget, and made a mental note to work something out with her sister-in-mind. While she supposed she could, leaving Clodius with the bill for this particular mess did not sit well with her. Not after ...

She had almost forgotten just how deep the waters ran with him. He was at once familiar, and alien. Comforting, and exciting. An inherent challenge, and an easily accepted offer. She wondered for a moment how well others who knew him understood him. And if she ever truly would, given all the layers there were to him, and who and what he was. She wondered if he understood what he had given her here, past what she had been able to explain and express.

Every inch of her ached, and she didn't regret a moment of it. She wasn't even sure what time it was. What day it was, come to think of it. And for the moment, she didn't care.

He slept, for the moment, silently, even his breathes seemed to be utterly inaudible. That form moved, slowly, each intake and subsequent rise of his chest was a long, slow process. That heart pumped maybe once every three or four seconds, a slow, steady tick felt only through touch. He seemed younger, refreshed in a far more physical way, content.

Nathi was hesitant to move, both because it took effort, and because she didn’t want to disturb him. But she needed to eat something or she’d be reduced to a gibbering wreck, she knew from experience. Some of what had been ordered at some point previously was sitting on a small table not too far away. Part had ended up used for other things, she remembered with a slight grin, but regardless, it had all served a purpose. Gently, she tried to extricate herself, much more clumsily than she would usually.

His eyes opened, briefly fluttering. It took a second or two for his brain to catch up with the scene before he gently opened up to let her move a little easier. Any words disappeared in a yawn, a gesture more animalistic than most, sharp teeth and a long, curling tongue. A stretch followed, a long, slow gesture. His kind took a little while to get going.

“Mornin’.” He offered, eyes still closed.

The yawn was contagious. She paused for her own, then stretched reflexively. Slowly, gingerly, then ran a hand down along his chest and stomach. “Good morning,” she replied in a quiet voice. She was tempted to just lay back down, but the slight shaking in her unnatural muscles reminded her she wouldn’t last long if she did. She reluctantly continued her efforts at getting up and over to the small food tray, accompanied by a slight tired groan.

He said little for a moment, content to watch her movements with a well hidden smirk. A creature both simple and complex, he took a simple, partially voyeuristic pleasure as she got up. Unsettled thoughts from the previous night’s conversation hadn’t quite sunk in yet, or rather, they could wait until his metabolism caught up with hers. Being a poikilotherm had disadvantages, and though he could trick his body with a rather painful surge of combat hormones, he’d...rather not at this point. “Good plan,” he offered, nodding at the tray. “You’re very organised.”

She snorted in a rather unladylike manner. “If I were organized,” she began, then stopped, shaking her head slightly. “We’re going to need more than this. At least I am.” There wasn’t much left, admittedly. But the sliced fruit and cheese hadn’t been demolished entirely, so she began there, eating with more gusto than was entirely polite as well. Such were the needs of an artificially-enhanced physique. “I’ll call in a minute,” she said around mouthfuls.

“Here.” He reached over, a chucked a well-worn leather wallet at her. The relevant cards were his room key and bank cards, “make sure its covered. Get what you need.” He spoke with a finality, soft though his words were, that he rarely used in conversing with her. “I guess you’ll need the strength when you pick up the run again.”

Nathi caught it without thinking, then looked over at him with a somewhat irritated expression. “I don’t need charity,” she began with some heat. She sighed then and shook her head. “I mean, I can cover things too. Whatever the case, thank you. I’m just … sorry.” She trailed off lamely, covering somewhat with another bite of fruit. “And I’m not running. Mostly.” She wasn’t sure that was convincing at all, but it was too late to take it back.

“It’s not charity. Nor a favour nor a debt nor a...it’s nothing. It’s affections, it's making sure you’re alright because you’re my friend.” He looked... concerned, partially at maybe accidentally hurting her, a tad too about being accused of pity. “I know you can cover it.” He finished equally weakly, but his face seemed reinvigorated by the end, his look moving back to one of understanding.

She nodded in response, not trusting herself further for the moment. After another bite, she walked slowly over to the room phone, and put in a request for something a bit more substantial, enough for two rather healthy appetites. Once done, she turned back to him, and just looked him over for a quiet moment. “Sorry. I just have this way of … more or less messing up with just about everyone who ends up crossing my path, whether by association, or me being me. I don’t know why any of you still put up with me.”

The food would be there eventually, and his company was much more pleasant than simply standing around, so the currently flame-haired woman made her way back to his rather impressive figure, and sat down next to him, instinctively reaching out to once again run a hand down along his body, slowly, lightly.

His hand took hers, big enough to envelope it entirely. For once he let a little of his strength come through, augmented or not, she would know, though it was more an encircling force than any attempt at a squeeze. “You do not need to apologise.” He said, firmly, a tone far more associated with her than him. “And you are not messing anything up.” He leaned up, a gentle kiss grazing her forehead, his breath blowing back a few locks. He was warmer than the night before, almost feverish, if he were human. “We all make our choices. I have never regretted mine in this regard.” He looked at her as he moved his head back. His eyes blazed, there was no other word for it. “Food, then we’ll see where you next step should fall. Do you have a plan?”

She gradually sunk in against him, snuggling up against his warmth rather contentedly, in spite of any continued conflict in her head. “A ship,” she said simply. “I’m going to acquire one with jump capabilities, and go from there. I thought maybe getting one of the Treznor-built drives might help, considering … I don’t know. It made sense when I first thought it through.” She shrugged slightly, and snuggled up just a bit closer, fingertips lightly tracing along his skin now and then.

“Would you like some assistance in that?” There was literally nothing but the literal question in his words. One arm curled around her waist as she sat next to him, reassuring in its simple intent.

“I … don’t know,” she answered more honestly than she had a bout a number of things thus far. “I know someone, somewhere up here will be willing to part with a vessel, and if not, well … I suppose there are other means. And there’s someone I need to talk to before I go much further.”

“Ah.” Subconsciously perhaps, his eyes moved upwards, around the room. He looked at her again, turning deadly serious, “that would make sense.” Something had obviously clicked. “Don’t worry about acquiring a vessel. That I can help with, and, more importantly, I can do it without raising the flags you wish to avoid with people.”

She subconsciously bit her lower lip as she mulled all of that over. It would make sense, yes, but it would also be dragging someone else into all of this, and she wasn’t certain if that were a good or a bad idea. Shodey had more or less already volunteered as well. What, was this going to become a shared quest for the lost? She could hear Devon laughing in the back of her mind, and it only served to frustrate her further.

‘Shut up, Dev,’ she told him tiredly. ‘I really don’t need you making this any harder than you already have. Bastard.’

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ he answered. ‘You’re making it plenty hard on yourself. But at least you finally were able to release some of that pent-up energy. I know you, Red. You don’t do well all alone, no outlet. No one knows better.’

‘Do we really need to get into all of this right now? Just … I don’t know, go do whatever it is you do when you aren’t pestering me. I have enough to think about right now.’

He offered another amused laugh, then seemed to retreat. She listened a moment longer, just to be sure, then sighed. Outwardly, it might seem for no apparent reason. “That … would be helpful, but I really don’t want to end up taking advantage of you, your help, or your friendship. I really don’t know where this is going to go, or how long it might take. It’s why I set out on my own, at least in part.” The other part, of course, being she doubted they would have let her, had they known in advance.

“Well...” He had noticed the pause, but let it go. It wasn’t as if her having a troubled mind was a foreign thought to him. “I don’t remember objecting when you took advantage of me last night...” He stopped, for effect, face absolutely solemn. “It is your quest. As if this is to be another brief passing of ships in the night, I think the phrase is, fair enough. It was, as always wonderful. I know you like being alone. I know you really don’t like depending on others.” He stopped himself, eyes suddenly floorward. “The offer is what it is.”

He’d hit a nerve with that. There was a light chuckle at the mention of the previous night, but at being alone, she shifted closer. Just a bit. She didn’t like being alone, not anymore. Devon had been right about that, at least. She had changed over the years. Quite a bit. Of course it was partially his fault. It always was. She listened for a moment, but on further laughter or teasing was forthcoming.

“I’m looking for Devon,” she finally said in a near whisper, as if admitting it aloud would ruin her chances. “I know what they’ve all said. I know what I’ve been told. But I don’t believe it. I have … reasons. Are you still sure?”

“Absolutely. A man, human or otherwise, means what he says.” Words again as solid as granite. “I think its unlikely he is out there, I will be straight on that, but...” His turn to look introspective, uncertain. “A decade ago I would have said a lot of things that have happened to me were impossible. I could have told you with certainty that I was part of a dying breed, that I would oversea a collapse, that my kind were limited solely to a few dozen specks in the Commonwealth, that I was forgotten, that I was an orphan.” He stopped. “There is a big difference between unlikely and impossible.” He bit his lip. “If you need to find him, if you are driven towards that end, then fine. To the end.” His eyes returned to hers.

Her usually controlled expression shifted as he spoke, betraying a number of emotions. There were many things she wanted to ask about, wanted to know, even wanted to console over, but she hadn’t a clue where to start. Not yet in any case. Perhaps if she did say yes … perhaps they would have the time to talk, and he could share some of the stories behind those brief statements. She started to reply, looking back at him searchingly, when there was a knock at the door. The food had apparently arrived.

She smiled wryly, and glanced in that direction before looking back at him. “Well then. Perhaps after we get something to eat you could tell me about this ship of yours. And then,” she said, pausing again as she hesitated to commit fully to the decision. “Then maybe we can talk about where I’d hope to start.”

“That, is a very reasonable course of action.” His smile returned, smaller perhaps, but a genuine warmth to it all the same. He rose slightly, his arms hugging her, a friendly rather than intimate gesture which seemed at odds given their current state of...dishevelment. “What time are you seeing your friend?”

Nathi didn’t hesitate in returning the embrace, in spite of her natural inclination to shift back against him suggestively. “My … sister, actually,” she admitted somewhat sheepishly. “I seem to have attracted her attention as well, and she’s offered to help. I can meet up with her at any time, really. She’s the one who made contact yesterday, when we’d met. You won’t mind the added company? I’ve no idea what form she’d even choose to use, come to think of it.”

“You have a sister?” There was a wonderfully stereotypically male look of hope for about half a second. “Form?” He stopped, pondered, then remembered something, a conversation long ago. “Yeah, would love to.”

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

Co-written with Zero-One, posted with permission:



The discussions had not been easy. Nor had the ensuing negotiations. But eventually, with a great deal of assistance from her sister-in-mind, the concept of going away on an extended holiday of sorts had finally been accepted by her daughter et all. However grudgingly.

She couldn’t really blame Naiya for being concerned. Lord knew she had given enough reason for it after her unannounced leavetaking - the less said there, the better really, at least for now. And there was a part of her that did not want to leave the little ones, just as before. Still. Until she had the opportunity to at least make the effort, hopeless as it was on some points, she simply wouldn’t be able to settle down. Not back in the Dominion, not where she’d planned on retiring on Jewel, not anywhere.

Besides, looked after and accompanied by Shodey, what could possibly go wrong?

Aforementioned Shodey, at the moment, lay sprawled over a couch even moreso than her usual lackadaisical attitude towards such things should be done usually suggested. Mostly horizontal, her head hung off one end as she idly, out of the thick tread of one rock boot made accessible via some contortion, used a rather solid-looking utility knife to prise out something she’d apparently picked up on their last little venture. The footwear and the posture weren’t the only things different from usual about her; for one, she wasn’t in one of her standard-issue diplomatic avatars but instead in a somewhat more human-appearing one. The qualifier came from the fact that this particular Cyborganic Local Node avatar, with a neon-purple deathhawk extending from a shaved-black scalp and pale-milky-tea-colored skin could certainly pass as human, though she contained enough chrome to make the definition a matter of debate. Lines buzzed through the short sides of her hair pointed back to a series of idly glowing circuit tattoos stretching down from the nape of her neck. A row of five metal studs were bolted just above her right eyebrow, and her eyes remained hidden under a blocky set of sunglasses that could’ve been mistaken for a virtual reality headset if they weren’t mirror-polished and so thin. Her navy-colored armored leather duster with the neon piping was hung up elsewhere for a change, leaving her a gray turtleneck supported by a loose shiny black vinyl corset and faded, beat-up fatigue cargo trousers in the Scolopendran digital smoke-cloud style. If anything, she resembled more the stereotypical Karmabaijani punk than her usual preference for metallic or grey skin tones and mildly Egyptian flair.

The only thing that suggested that Shodey was acting as some sort of bodyguard was the blocky hand-cannon strapped to her thigh--the one twisted up so she could poke at her boot with her knife. It twitched slightly with the pressure applied to her foot.

By contrast, Nathicana was dressed in simple black, softer flowing layers that both hid and complimented her outwardly human form, and allowed her augmented body the full freedom of motion she could possibly need. She had kept the flame-like ombre hair, which when worn loose as it was now, trailed down in curls and waves to her waist. The contacts were gone at present, leaving her ice-blue eyes watching her sister-in-mind thoughtfully.

“You make it all look so effortless,” she commented quietly. “And you do it really damn well. There are thousands of women back home would would kill to be able to pull all that off, even if it cost them heavily on the humanity scale. What prompted this one, out of curiosity?”

Meaning of course, the overall look, that particular body model, and all the rest. There was no disdain in her tone, nor judgement, just honest - at least as honest as Nathi got - curiosity, as stated.

Shodey tilted her head to look at her sister-in-mind, reflecting the red-haired woman off her dark-tinted mirrorshades. “Variations on a theme, one supposes, with an added contribution of hiding in plain sight. No one truly expects a runner to dress like a stereotypical runner, and no one would expect the Ghost to dress as the Hacker.”

The now red-haired woman allowed herself a wry smile at that. “Bit grim, that,” she noted, one brow arching up slightly. “All the same, you look damn good. And all too ready to get lost somewhere dangerous, just for the thrill of it. Any thoughts that direction? Had intended to head out towards the colonies first, make some stops through there, but after … well, still not sure what there is to be found.”

“We all deal with our pains in our own way.” Twisting a bit more to inspect that the whatever-it-is is most assuredly lodged in her boot, the professional-looking punk sheathes her knife and rolls on her hips to flow into a more upright position. At least now she’s sprawled on the seat in a fashion closer to how it was originally intended to be used. “‘Not sure,’” she repeated in a decent imitation--rather than perfect replication--of the other woman’s voice. “You have doubts?”

“All I have ever been sure of is that I could not just leave it undone,” Nathi said simply, offering a slight shrug. Logic states that if even the Scolopendrans, and you, and everyone else couldn’t find anything, there isn’t anything to find. But none of them knew him like I do. And no one else …” There was a brief wave of her hand and the shorter woman turned and went about finishing tossing her things into her duffel bag. “Breadcrumbs. That’s all there’ve ever been. You understand what it can be like when you doubt everything.”

“I do, all too well.” Shodey shifted again to lean forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on balled fists. “And I happen to also know you relatively well, which is why I get the vaguest suspicion that ‘breadcrumbs’ was not the original completion to your thought on what no one else has.”

Nath glanced back over her shoulder with a somewhat evasive side-eye. “You know what I meant. Him. Here.” One finger lightly tapped the side of her head where her own dataport was skillfully hidden. “I don’t know how he manages it, but he does, at the damndest times. As if he honestly believes I would just up and stop on his say so. Would be just like him to come up with his own Spook network and link me in somehow without telling me. Bastard.”

She turned her attention more forcefully back to packing, muttering now and then under her breath.

Shodey stood and walked closer, stopping a short but respectful distance away with her thumbs hooked into some convenient loops in her Gaudi-like webbing. “I did install said hardware, after all. I could run a simple diagnostic for clues. Perhaps the Q.E. kernel’s been modified somehow, or additional code has been tacked onto the firmware.”

Nathi’s hands stopped suddenly in their work, her body giving off a number of telltale signs that undoubtedly her sister-in-mind could read altogether too well. Hope, fear, exhilaration at the possibility of answers or a direct line to him, more fear of being wrong, or having a dead end proven, and a plethora of other complicated and often conflicting reactions.

“Would it take long? Or … it wouldn’t change anything, would it?” The unasked question seemed to be the one most important to her right at that moment. Losing what little she had left of the man she’d come to love and rely on in ways she had sworn she never would, not for anyone.

“Not long at all.” The purple-haired woman raised her glasses to her forehead, revealing naturally green eyes. “And I will change nothing.”

If there were one thing that had been established, well and for a very long time, it was that here was a person - yes, person, no matter how one chose to label or look at the situation - that she trusted, implicitly. They wouldn’t be standing here talking about the endeavor were that not the case. Nathicana turned and faced the being she’d come to think of as family, and close family at that. She met her gaze fully, and without blinking simply stared back for a few measured heartbeats.

“Then let’s do it and see what we can find.”

Shodey nodded wordlessly and placed one hand gently on her shorter sister’s shoulder. With her free hand, she pinched one of the studs on her eyebrow and pulled it out with the zzzz of unspooling wire, then placed it to the magnetic transdermal jack that she, in a different form in a different time, installed by Nathi’s eyebrow. The connection was instantaneous; she’d written the code, after all, and developed the ICE, counter-ICE (she hadn’t told Nathi about that), and dummy barriers (same) she’d planted for her sister-in-mind’s protection. She hadn’t even left in any backdoors, as those would’ve been exploitable. It would’ve been a fair trick for a bug like Devon, or any of his insect lackeys, to get around Her handiwork.

As she scrolled through the firmware, her eyes twitched back and forth slightly, like reading a book. That much was not, for once, an act. It was an artifact of this particular CLN. Operational firmware code checks out, she thought to herself as she ran down the checklist. No addendums noted. No hardware changes. No memory reallocations, no misdirected pointers. No circuit shorting, no local neural reconfiguration that would cause any errors. All is as it should be.

Nathi watched closely, making no movement of her own aside from the shifts her own eyes made, taking the opportunity to more closely examine the form Shodey had chosen, to try and guess at the results as they were gathered. None of it bothered her, not after she’d utilized the tech for so long. It was as much a part of her as what she’d been born with, now - though her chosen sister’s ability to do all she did still fascinated her as much or more as it had when she’d first offered the upgrades.

With all artificial enhancements checked--and no permission to delve deeper--Shodey tipped the little stud to break the magnetic attachment and spooled it back to its place in her own skull. She stepped back, nodded shortly, face pursed momentarily into thought. “All hardware is operating nominally. The firmware is unchanged from the last time I updated it during a check-up. Neither ancillary software or hardware alterations are in evidence.” She brought her fingerless-gloved fist to her chin, second knuckle of her index finger tapping her lip as she came to a conclusion. “He’s not talking to you through your hardware, Nathi. It’s through the wetware.”

The Dominion woman’s eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s deeper than this,” Shodey said, tapping Nathi’s subdermal datajack. “I know that abstract philosophy holds no interest, so I will explain as I can. There is you, the actual entity. The one that thinks and therefore is. Question: do most people perceive this entity accurately? The person on the street, should they meet you--do they meet you, or do they meet a persona that you project, intentionally or not?”

“That depends. I mean, sometimes one has an image one has to put forward. That’s simply how things work. And as for me, well … you would know better one supposes on how easily I allow myself to show through. Not so much, if I’m honest, I suppose. Not at first, anyway.”

“Right,” Shodey nods. “Even those in your family, people who you allow to see you as a fully-fledged person, can only see you darkly through a persona. The persona that they perceive, the mental model they construct--the Nathi that exists in my mind, say, or Naiya’s, Speaker’s, Razak’s, Bondayehr’s, or any other’s--is distinct from the entity that is you inside your own head. We only have that persona to work with, however, and it informs our actions. Our actions, for the most part, interact well with the you inside your head. That means that, pragmatically, our models of you are no less ‘real’ than the original.

“Further--you have surprised yourself many times, yes?”

Nathicana’s expression became increasingly guarded, her usual go-to when difficult concepts or situations were introduced, going to a simple blank, unreadable one - or at least it would be were she on top of her game. She wasn’t.

Keeping her eyes on Shodey as she spoke, she made her way over to another nearby chair, and gradually settled herself on the edge of it, her hands laying on the armrests with care. “There are … times, one supposes,” she admitted slowly. “But there are reasons for that. There are things that have had to be compartmentalized, or put away until later when there was time to … you know how that works. We all do it to one degree or other. That’s simply how things are, yes? That and whatever they say about learning to know yourself better, one supposes, but I tend to leave that sort of fluff for the head doctors and shrinks.” The last said with wry humor, intending to take the edge off the somewhat uncomfortable topic.

“It is how things are, yes.” Shodey stepped forward, then crouched down on the floor, slipping one boot under her haunches. She already usually stood taller than her sister, and she didn’t want to loom imposingly now. “And we all do learn about ourselves over time, hence the surprise. Not only are we a thinking entity inside our own heads, we don’t necessarily fully understand that entity ourselves. Most of us don’t act upon, or truly know, the entity that thinks and therefore is. We make models of ourselves. Visual ones, of what we look like. Mental ones, of how we think--or, more accurately, how we think we think. We gauge our strengths and our weaknesses and, as the baseless braggart or the puffed-up narcissist on the street show us, these models need not be and often are not accurate.

“So there are three people now, all interacting with and reflecting each other. There is the individual that thinks, that individual as perceived by others, and that individual as perceived by itself. Some of these models are so comically incorrect as to be caricatures, obviously unreal--but the more they interact, the closer people are to each other and themselves, the more accurate and very much real they become. Someone doesn’t get you an unasked gift because of you-the-thinker or you-your-self-perception, they get it based on the you that exists in their mind; and often this is real enough to please the other forms of you.”

“What you’re suggesting sounds suspiciously like multiple personality disorder,” Nathi commented, eyes narrowing slightly more, before continuing in a tone all too familiar in its confidence. “I’m not crazy, sis. Crazy people can’t function, or plan, or carry on day to day, or manage to do all I have all this time.”

Shodey smiled and shook her head. “Disassociative identity disorder is a loss of our model of ourselves and is entirely different.” After a pause, she tensed and looked up at her sister, all gentleness burned away as she locked eyes with Nathi. “And, dear sister, do I not always describe myself as mad? The anxious, obsessives, and compulsives all manage to get through their days. Sociopaths and paranoiacs often plan better than the normative.” Were her eyes getting redder, or was that just the memory of what should happen if she was using a more normal avatar? “My intelligence spans a quarter of this galaxy, ensconced in multiple planetary masses of computronium, and yet I have an adopted family of meat and bone. Is that not mad? My form is best described as ‘coherent, semantically-organized and self-ordering information’ but I self-identify as female and my self-image is distinctly humanoid with a head, a torso, and four limbs, each ending in five digits. Is that not crazy? I am a mechanoid intelligence rightfully despised for a history of twisting people into monstrosities, for seeing flesh as toy putty to sculpt to my amusement, and I’m in a physical relationship with an all-too-human being that I would never mar. Is that not insane?” In a moment, it all passed, blown away on the wind. “No, sis, you’re not ‘crazy.’” She smiled again. “‘Crazy,’ besides not being diagnostic, is defined by normativity and, as you suggested, functionality. Those who are not quite normative but are still happy and living effective lives are quite sane. Even if they are, at the same time, mad.

“You and Devon were closer than it is physically or psychologically possible for most human beings to be, thanks in no small part to my meddling putting you in constant, private communication. The Devon you perceived was staggeringly close to the Devon he perceived. The Devon you perceived, that you do perceive right now, is as real as the original despite lacking physicality. How else could I have conversations with Bari, however far away from our reality that he is now? Conversations where I am not dictating his responses, and where he can still surprise me?”

At first, it was clear that Nathi was already doing what she did best - rationalizing, coming up with her own explanations and reasons for what her sister-in-mind was talking about. All of that was different after all, wasn’t it? Her expressions, the starts at familiar hand gestures, though she forced herself not to interrupt - it all spoke volumes without needing any words. Of course she wasn’t ‘crazy’, not in the traditional sense of the word, however mad she may choose to appear, or seem to the uninitiated … her expression gradually softened, however. And her hands ceased fidgeting to instead, grip the armrests more tightly.

“Mia sorella,” she began haltingly. “I never did talk to you about how … it all seemed so … I didn’t realize. But he isn’t …”

Nathi stopped short of finishing that thought. She had no idea what had or hadn’t happened to Bari, what seemed a lifetime ago. The parallel was deliberate, she knew, however uncomfortable it made her. And any argument to toss it aside would be disingenuous at best, callous at worst. She tried to formulate her thoughts, but the words simply wouldn’t come. So instead, she simply looked back across the short gap between them, not hiding the emotions in her eyes.

Shodey nodded, eyes shining a little more than usual despite her honest smile. “You can’t see him, but Bari’s right there,” she pointed towards the corner of the cabin, “scratching the back of his head and pretending that your shoulder holster is far too interesting. I’m pretty sure he wants to help, but has no idea what to say. Psychology’s never been his thing.” She sighed gently, shrugged, then stood, only to settle near enough to give her sister a hug. “And no, he’s not. I’ve no idea where he is, or the little bit of me he took with me. Such is life, and perhaps so is death.

“All I know is that he’s gone but still here; it’s over, but not the end.” She looked over to her sister-in-mind, the firey bug that was her first friend. “And even now, despite it all, we’ll always have each other.”

The former Imperatrice nodded, putting her arm around her sister’s waist and nestling in against her with a quietly fierce hug.

~Fin~