No amount of therapy or mind alteration would keep Zurri from being nosy. She was born nosy, she would remain nosy. In the early days of her career, she got sly at checking through the other models’ bags, checking for pills, cash or just juicy gossip. She learned that stealing a dollar or two never got her caught, and sometimes it was enough for one more rice ball before the money ran out and rent came due. Tokyo had almost wrung her dry so many times that she kept all her clothes neatly packed in the suitcase in the apartment she shared with six other girls.
Zurri never asked her dad or sister for cash. Point of pride. The second she did, they would pressure her to give up her career, take the L and join them on Tokyo Bliss. Dr. Iyanda, as he insisted on being called lest one be firmly reminded that he “had not put himself through ten years of school and earned three degrees to be called mister,” would even pay for her passenger fee and find her a job to smooth over immigration. Wouldn’t she like to work in a nice clinic as a receptionist?
Her sister, Eni (also technically holding a doctoral degree but more lenient about the usage), worked as an attorney and lived in the university district. She had been the one to teach Zurri how to frighten any man into silence with just the slightest squint of the eye and imperious tilt of the head. She also liked to send Zurri taunting pictures of her spacious flat, and all the ramen, mapo tofu and pizza she could afford now that she was angling to make partner at her firm.
When Zurri got her revenge by sending pictures of her first six-figure contract, it didn’t go over so well. Now they talked only on holidays, and Zurri had stopped inviting the family to her birthday parties. They never showed up anyway.
Senna’s birthday, as it turned out, was December 9, 2248. She hadn’t read Senna as a Sagittarius, but then, she had only known her two days. Three days? Zurri sighed. The console screen open behind Dr. Colbie’s shoulder was just visible from where Zurri stood, while the tall, untalkative doctor examined the back of her neck. With Dr. Colbie in heels, they were about the same height.
Wanting to snoop, Zurri turned just a fraction to the right, hoping to catch more of Senna’s patient records displayed on the screen. Something there might explain the hair loss, at least.
“Is this position uncomfortable?” Dr. Colbie asked.
Like most doctors Zurri had met, Dr. Colbie chose not to wear perfume. That said, the woman had an almost unearthly, inhuman lack of smell. Not even a whiff of soap or hair product. Nothing on her breath, either, not toothpaste or coffee or evidence of lunch.
“Um, well, my neck hurts,” Zurri replied coolly. “That is why I’m here.”
“Yes, and as I stated before, you have a known history of alcohol and drug abuse, Zurri. It doesn’t make me happy to say it, but this could all just be from a drunken accident. Try not to fidget,” Dr. Colbie instructed. She carefully pressed two fingers along the ridge of Zurri’s upper spine. “There is some moderate bruising present. Any tingling in your fingers? Numbness?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.” Her fingers were cool and dry as they ghosted along Zurri’s neck. The angle was no good. She couldn’t read much more of Senna’s file, just the header text, but the actual records and notes were too tiny to read from that vantage.
The headers, however, caught her eye. Family History, Allergies, Prescriptions and most tantalizing of all: LENG Session Notes.
“I can prescribe you a topical numbing gel,” Dr. Colbie said, taking a step back.
“Hm. Any CBD?”
“Nice try,” she sighed. “Stay put, I’ll get the gel from storage.”
Zurri painted on a placid smile, arms crossed while she waited for Dr. Colbie to disappear. The storage area was directly behind Dr. Colbie’s desk, guarded by two serious-looking doors with magnetic locks. Luckily, when she went through, it was large enough to hold a maze of shelves, and the instant Dr. Colbie vanished around a corner, Zurri hopped over to take a look at Senna’s records. It was even more tempting to try to find her own, but she was shit with consoles, and she doubted Colbie would be gone long.
Prescriptions actually were of interest. Zurri recognized Zolapro right away, a heavy-duty antianxiety medication she herself had tried a few months ago. It was fresh out of trials, marketed toward modern women with modern anxieties, but Zurri hated the way it made her hold water weight. It also, she saw, enlarging the text around it, in rare cases caused hair loss.
“Mystery solved,” she murmured. “But why are you on this?”
Better yet, why didn’t Senna know she was on it? With any medication that serious, a doctor would ethically have to warn about the potential side effects. But there was more, much more, as Zurri hurled a quick glance over her shoulder, listening to Colbie rummage among the shelves, before hurrying to check the LENG notes section.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, counting the individual session numbers. Something hard and hot and choking gathered in her chest as she took it all in. In the just under seventy-two hours of Senna staying in the Dome, she had spent twenty of those hours over nine sessions receiving the LENG treatment. That didn’t seem right. Twenty hours?
Behind her, in the storage room, she heard Dr. Colbie drop something and give a soft “Darn.”
Of course she didn’t swear. Zurri swiveled back to the notes. There would have to be an explanation for that length of treatment. Unless they were all spending that much time with the tech? Wouldn’t she remember that? Could she?
Sessions 1 and 2 seemed normal enough, the notes reading:
Encouraging signs of progress adjusting connections regarding neural markers 12 to 38. Demesne DW Crash likely absorbed. Further exposure required to loosen connection between markers 38 and 41.
From Session 3 onward the notes became scattered. Erratic.
Session 3:
Emergency exposure required after participant displayed acute signs of relapse. Emergency neural scan administered. Emergency termination of Demesne Dome Miscellany, Demesne A. Death, Demesne Recent Interpersonal Trauma. Six additional Demesne flagged for examination.
Session 6:
Further relapse. Participant proving resistant to termination of markers 67 to 89. Keep under observation. Prescribe 25 mg Zolapro to manage post-treatment reactivity.
Session 7:
Participant displaying resistance to LENG absorption, recommend moderate sedation throughout sessions.
PD: Zolapro resulting in marked difference, participant far more compliant, in and out of LENG sessions.
A cold finger ran down Zurri’s spine. What the hell is going on here? Trembling, she glanced over her shoulder one more time, hearing Dr. Colbie’s clicking heels coming nearer. She was returning. Zurri fumbled with her VIT, managing to quick-open the camera function and snap an image of the file before throwing herself across the desk and back to her original position.
When Dr. Colbie emerged from the storage room, Zurri was forcing her hands not to shake while she pretended to examine her nails. Dr. Colbie knew about the sessions. Dr. Colbie was taking these notes. Dr. Colbie, Zurri decided with a growl, was at best complicit and at worst actively shredding Senna’s mind with the technology.
One word glared in front of Zurri’s eyes as she held out her palm expectantly.
Compliant.
She had a bone-deep, gut-level, feminine hatred of that word. Even when she saw it used on dry instructional pamphlets on transports, she felt her lip curl. Compliance had never been her thing. She hadn’t become the most recognized face in beauty and fashion by complying with anything, and now, to see that word there, in that context, in a decidedly menacing and not-dry-pamphlet way, lit an inferno under her ass. They were drugging Senna, and, one could only assume, they were drugging her and the kid, too. Han did seem awfully content, awfully compliant. And it was out of character for Zurri to just accept a radical change to the rider she had submitted pre-arrival. Shit. Was she complying, too? Dr. Colbie placed the tube of gel in Zurri’s hand, and she almost popped it open with the force of closing her fingers around it.
“Don’t overuse it or it will give you a rash,” Dr. Colbie instructed. “Not ideal, I’d imagine, for someone in your profession.”
“Thanks bunches.” Zurri pushed away from the desk, striding with new purpose toward the door, smiling with a clack, showing Dr. Colbie her teeth.