Protective Custody felt like a totally different Cabinet. The curving walls made her feel embraced, enfolded, protected. Light panels pulsed in pleasant colors. Huge screens showed waterfalls, horses, slow-motion waves breaking on beautiful beaches.
Fyodorovna, on the other hand, was agitated. Her eyes blinked and twitched; her hand was tight on Ankit’s. She was looking for the Victorian asylum horrors, the screaming and the laughter, the gibbering lunatics finger-painting masterpieces in shit on the walls, the rusty torture devices masquerading as therapeutic tools.
“They’re at the spot now” came Soq’s voice through her implant. “Masaaraq will dive soon. Could take five minutes, could take an hour. Or more.”
Ankit tapped her tongue to her palate to acknowledge. A sky-blue arrow slithered along the floor, moving at precisely the same pace as they did, just the slightest bit ahead. It seemed to flicker and twitch, a tiny carefully programmed bit of animation intended to make it seem alive, trustworthy, and Ankit rolled her eyes—but almost immediately after that she saw Fyodorovna smile faintly, looking down at it, making Ankit feel even more impressed and safe in the hands of the kind and wise machines that ran the Cabinet. And all of Qaanaaq, really.
A sudden lurch caused her to stop, grasp her chest.
“Are you okay?” Fyodorovna asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “sorry. I just—”
No big deal, she thought. The monkey that I’m now nanobonded to is climbing this building, that’s all. So it feels like I’m swinging through space. Like gravity just comes and goes.
A door opened, and a nurse came out. He smiled, recognizing Fyodorovna, and saluted. She gave an impressive slow nod, every inch the monarch. Delusional even in her despair. Ankit caught a glimpse of the room he’d left—the bookshelf, the window, the curtain fluttering in the breeze from the heating vent.
She wondered if Martin Podlove was in here somewhere, and decided she doubted it. He was on the attack, in temporary sociopath mode, and he’d want to be in the thick of it. He’d have his own protection, people he paid for, people he’d have had on retainer for ages without ever once needing to call on, whom he’d trust a lot more.
And he wouldn’t want to chance a run-in with the woman he put here so long ago.
The blue arrow curled around on itself, became a circle. Rotating swiftly; the universal signal for Wait just a second. A door opened where there had been only wall.
“Hello,” said a stout staffer who wore the badges of both Safety and Health. “Body scans.”
Ankit raised her arms—the instinctive, familiar posture of someone prepared to be scanned or crucified—but Fyodorovna did not budge.
“I fail to see how this is necessary,” she said.
“Rules of the ward,” the Safety woman said. “Everybody gets scanned. No screens, no trackers, implants sealed.”
Implants sealed? Ankit felt panic rise. She stammered “I—” but the woman had already touched the wand to her jaw. The tingle told her the pulse had been successful, her implant would be bricked until she could get a revival pulse.
“Welcome,” the woman said, and gestured for Ankit to enter.
This was a problem. Without the implant Soq couldn’t find her, couldn’t talk to her. Couldn’t relay her location to Kaev and Masaaraq before the building killed internal comms. Ankit’s hands dampened. The fear again.
Their plan was fucked. They were fucked.
The nurse waited wordlessly. After less than a minute, Fyodorovna complied meekly. The blue circle became an arrow again and walked them the rest of the way.
Fyodorovna’s room was astonishing. A salvaged-wood floor, shiny with age and use, something that could have spent a century in a Paris bistro. An earthenware pitcher on a squat dark hutch beneath the window.
“Here we are,” she said, and Fyodorovna startled her with a sudden fierce embrace.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice more human than Ankit had ever heard it.
“Hey,” Ankit said, uncertainly. “Hey.”
“I’m so scared,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t be,” Ankit said. So am I. “Here is where you’re safest.” Her boss’s arms didn’t loosen. “I’ll stay with you. Okay? For a little while?”
Fyodorovna nodded gratefully.
Ankit went to the window. They were eighteen stories up. Down below, it looked like any other day in Qaanaaq. Fyodorovna poured out two glasses of water from the pitcher. Fyodorovna told her to make sure to call this person, file this document, all of which Ankit was already planning to do, and could not focus on. All she could think about was the chaos on its way, how helpless she was without her implant, the hundred million ways this could go down wrong.
She closed her eyes and she was standing in the wind. Giddy. Happy. A tiny helpless unstoppable primate. None of the million things that had made her sad or scared an instant ago had any meaning, anymore.
“What’s that?” her boss said suddenly.
Ankit opened her eyes and came crashing back into her own body, her own life. Her monkey’s wild joyous freedom was gone. She ached for it. Had to fight to keep from shutting her eyes again.
“What’s what?”
Ankit heard nothing. And then she realized—that was the problem. Something you almost never heard in Qaanaaq. Silence.
“The heat,” Fyodorovna said, getting up and putting her hands in front of the vents. “It stopped.”
All her life, everywhere she went, Ankit had been hearing the low rumble and purr and hiss of the geothermals. And now there was nothing.
“Perfectly normal,” she said, but she could see that Fyodorovna was not convinced.
Time passed. An hour, two? There was no voice in her ear telling her what time it was.
The plan was idiotic. They were idiotic. All of them. How could they not have anticipated that the implants would get pulsed, that they wouldn’t be able to communicate through this crucial phase?
A shout from the hallway. More shouting in the distance.
People are panicking. Health’s response software will be collating all this information, plotting out scenarios, issuing a decision.
“You said I’d be safe here,” her boss said, sniffling.
“And you are.”
“Not safe from freezing to death.”
“Shhhh,” Ankit said, and sat on the bed beside her. Took a blanket and draped it over her shoulders. Fyodorovna pulled it tighter, gratefully.
The poor woman. She couldn’t help what she was. It took a special sort of insanity to run for public office. A fragile megalomania; a delusional ego.
I’ve let my contempt for her become contempt for the office, Ankit realized. I came to share her crazy mistaken idea of what the job of an Arm manager could be.
But there had been a time, almost forgotten now, when she’d enjoyed her job. What it had been for her originally. When she’d gotten something out of it. Something positive—not the energy and stress and urgency and self-importance, the negative things, the things she became addicted to. The fact that she could solve problems for people. That she could help them get through something bad.
I could do this, Ankit thought, and almost choked on the realization, the suddenly seeing that she could do the thing she swore she’d never do. I could be the Arm manager.
Someone ran past the door. A whole bunch of someones followed them.
“Thank you for your patience,” said a voice from the ceiling. “We apologize for the sustained inconvenience.”
Fyodorovna grabbed her hand.
The voice continued: “Health has made the decision to evacuate the facility. The floors below have already been emptied. Please exit your room and follow the red floor arrows to the nearest exit.”
The door swung open. Someone howled. Someone else joined in.
“I’m not going out there,” Fyodorovna said.
“Come on,” Ankit said, standing, feeling just as frightened.
“Anything could happen to us. All these crazies running around? I’ll take my chances here. They’ll come for us eventually.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Ankit said, and tugged on her hand. “We’ll freeze to death if we stay. These walls are so thin. They hold no heat. It’ll be arctic in here in less than an hour, and who knows how long it’ll take for them to come find us. We’ll be fine out in the halls.”
Fyodorovna looked up, her eyes frightened and trusting. She nodded.
If I can help this hopeless creature, I can help anyone.
“Should I leave the blanket?” she asked.
“Keep it,” Ankit said. “It might be cold for the next little bit.”
The door shut behind them. An explosion shook the floor beneath their feet. They began to move with the flow of other frightened people.