Chapter 15

Residential food-grade micro-teleporting assemblers cost about as much as a down payment on a really cheap vassal. Katorin picked one up to further deter Cube Head from his vassal-pushing tendencies (“No, Paul, I really can’t afford it now.”) and for its aesthetically pleasing paperweight properties as she “forgot” it at her workstation until nightfall.

Of course, back inside the following evening, she beelined for the maintenance panel instead. This time, she noticed handles on the panel’s back, which were perfect for setting it in place from within the hidden passage.

A weight lifted as she sealed herself and her host into solitude and set up her pocket light. She moaned in relief. Just you and me now. We can be ourselves. No more Beryl.

You and me and Khonsu’s notes, Setira answered.

Katorin smirked.

The passage was just wide enough for her to walk through and ran along the outer wall of the building, sloping down at a slight angle. As if it were too good to be true and she needed reassurance, she slipped her fingers gently across the passage’s even sides, though the roughness of the artificial stone caught at her fingertips.

It seemed like she had been walking forever, the walls sliding soothingly under her touch. If she kept walking all night, the passage would probably be safe enough to sleep in. She felt her eyelids droop and her host's rapt attention ebb.

The wall on the left ended in thin air, the one on the right at a wall facing her, and she turned to follow the corridor's bend, half hoping that she had arrived but doubting it.

On her next step, her heel slipped out from under her.

Her pocket light bounced free, cracked, and flicked out.

Scheiße!

Her back raced across the smooth floor—ramp? Slide?

Stop. Stop. Stop. Katorin pushed over onto her stomach and felt seams rushing along her body. She clawed at them, wrenching her nailbeds and snapping nails. We’re going to die!

We’re not going to die, Setira snapped. Haven’t you ever gone down a slide?

Her fingers burned. Nothing slowed her. Have you ever gone down a Kemtewet slide? We’re going to die!

Her panicked wheezes echoed back. She laced her fingers over the back of Setira’s neck, trying to protect both her host’s spine and her own tiny body. She curled tight. I love you.

No, this can’t— Setira's mind jolted from thought to thought, never finishing, then settled on I love you, too.

They splashed into a puddle at the bottom.

Katorin fought to sit up, even as they slid across a pool of oil. Finally stilled, she focused on breathing. They could have died. It could have ended in spikes or venomous snakes or a flat wall or—

Or cleaning bots.

Katorin couldn’t help it. She laughed aloud, monitors be damned. Stupid nerves. They were supposed to be burnt out by now.

This is going well, Setira commented. No one will ever be able to tell we were snooping around tonight.

At least they won’t know where. Katorin relaxed back against the slide, trying half-heartedly to keep her hair out of the slick goo. She didn’t think it worked. Okay, Mastermind, your age-old companion needs a few minutes off the hook and seeks your recommendation.

Setira didn’t return the sarcasm but focused on one point in their field of vision. Is that a light?

A dim strip a few stories above resembled light escaping from under a door. With all she’d seen, she doubted the trap’s designer had accidentally left such an obvious exit. Sighing softly, she carefully pushed herself to her feet and navigated to the wall below the light. When she tentatively placed her hands against the wall, she found one of the last things she expected: the wide rungs of an easy-to-climb ladder waited to rescue her from the goop.

Can we not go that way? Setira pleaded.

Whoever designed this, I don’t think he was the violent sort, just a prankster. Katorin mounted the rungs, taking extra time to make sure she had a solid grip on each one.

What will they say of us if we die by walking into a fellow Gertewet’s trap?

Considering they won’t know what happened, they’ll probably say we died bravely in battle. In Katorin’s experience, that was what they usually said, disregarding how rare battle was.

But I’ll know.

And who are you going to tell?

I’ll tell you that you decided to ignore the designer’s bright, flashing warning signs.

As she neared the top, Katorin rolled her eyes. When her hand settled on the ledge over the ladder, a large section of the wall above slid aside to reveal a relatively well-lit maintenance closet, half-empty of the nocturnal cleaning robots. Hip-high and squat, two of the machines flanked the door, floor-scrubber laser sensors crossing her path. Each blew out a continual breath of filtered air by their midsection grills and, on either side of the window-buffing top extension, held its high-pressure surface spray arm and empty fixture maintenance arm at the ready. The latter was especially startling, as the red lighting glinted off the extension’s sharp, slender, metal digits.

They were just bots. Every attachment had a designated, rational purpose. They cleaned. They fixed. They couldn’t be possessed—by dead Ger or even living Kem.

Katorin imagined that the red glint on the sharp maintenance extension had become blood slicked across its polished surfaces. She suspected the rogue killing bot problem hadn’t been solved.

Glad she’d climbed only high enough to peek over the edge, she withdrew her hand, and the door shut, leaving the tiny strip of faint light. She leaned forward to examine it, wondering why she couldn’t see the floor on the other side. The door did, in fact, lie flush with the floor; an extra lighting filament was embedded in the ledge. Too obvious indeed. She climbed back down.

And so she lived to fight another day and to maybe trust her host’s intuitions.

Maybe. But it hasn’t happened yet. As she placed her weight on the bottom rung, her shoe slipped on lubricant she’d left earlier. She scraped her chin on the wall on her way down, but caught herself on her elbows in the slimy goo.

Setira cringed as the lubricant seeped into another side of her clothes. Yup. No one could ever guess we did something out of the ordinary.

Then think of an out-of-the-ordinary reason for our appearance, and while you do, I’ll keep looking for any sign of Khonsu. Deciding she had nothing to lose while she was already goopy, she ran her fingers along the slide’s bottom and then started feeling the sides. She struck gold near the opposite wall, on the half of the slide that began her deceleration. A small portal in the slide opened moments after she applied a light pressure around the rim.

Here we go again, Katorin thought, stepping through. She passed the edge of a ramp formed by the open hatch, and it closed behind her, tripping a circuit that turned on a single light that faintly touched the far walls of the cavern.

The metallic curve of the slide jutted out from one of the cavern’s four straight, regular walls. In an artificial cave hollowed out of the food engineering facility’s foundation, the prize stood: a freestanding building.

Staring up at two stories with solar panels and small, round windows, Katorin collapsed to her knees, breathless. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t still exist. But there it stood, preserved exactly the way she remembered: a window on either side of the door, three windows unevenly spaced upstairs. And a tiny front deck, barely enough for the hostess and two guests.

Khonsu’s prize—the house where the Gertewet began.

Kitchell excused himself while the suspicious guards focused on Sarah—first to snap Davon’s neck, now that he’d played his role with Sarah, then to move the other girl to safety.

Couldn’t we have traded her for Sarah? Donn asked.

Why? Kitchell hit the bottom of the stairs at the teleport juncture, nodded to the operator, and blew through toward the holding room. She has no less value than Sarah. We’ve contributed to this either way, and we’ll have to live with that. At least Sarah had time to adjust to the idea.

They’d found her crying in a corner before trying to run away. You call that adjusted?

Of course not. Kitchell opened the anteroom. She hasn’t finished.

Neither have I, Donn answered.

Please. There’s a distinction between facing a change and continuing to develop a relationship.

The anteroom’s inner door opened to a deserted space. There was no sign of the other girl between the entrance they stood in and the back wall, where his men had cornered her and Sarah. Perhaps around the side? Behind furniture?

“Herr Kommandant?” The teleport juncture operator stopped behind him. “Are you looking for something?”

“The girl who was left here.” Kitchell rested Donn’s hands together at the small of his back and regarded the sandy-haired youth as if the answer barely mattered.

He shrugged. “Kümmel took her up to the mothership in preparation for our queen’s departure.”

“Already?” Kitchell half-closed Donn’s eyes, as if the news hadn’t spiked his host’s heart rate. “I thought she was going to celebrate with us longer.”

“A courier came in while you were traveling. You know what that means.”

The Empress had felt the need to directly involve herself on one of the lords’ planets, which she had explicitly farmed out to two other levels of management. She tended to respond aggressively enough to dissuade similar problems in the future. That was all well and good for her and the oblivious capital, but not as much for the locals.

Kitchell blinked away his surprise. “The queen can’t go back yet. She’s—”

“Not reincarnated, I know.” The operator eased into the doorway as if trying to fill it. “Lord Banebdjedet will protect us, right?”

Did your mother breastfeed you on propaganda? Kitchell checked that no one else was within sight and dropped an amiable hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Some things even Banebdjedet can’t protect you from. The Empress’s wrath and the queen’s…” Insanity. “…intensity are among them.”

The operator blanched.

“Our lord won’t risk his holdings.” One hopes. Patting the controller’s shoulder, he withdrew his hand. “He’ll comply.”

If he does, it may not help Vinnet. Donn thought of her upstairs with Sarah. Had Sarah started hosting her? Were they mobile? We need to know what timetable the courier demanded.

“Who received the courier while we were traveling?”

Even as the operator said it, he knew. “Setite’s steward.”

Of course: the one who managed the planet while the lord traveled, who maintained continuity on a world amid the chaotic flux of upstarting and deposed lords. “He should be at the banquet, right?”

“If not now, then soon.”

“Perfect. I’ll find him and see if he needs help.”

Kitchell edged past, but the operator caught his arm. “Herr Kommandant, you said you were going to come right back with the girls, but you didn’t. You didn’t even come back by the teleport juncture.”

“Of course, I did. You must have blinked.” Kitchell shook him off and pushed through. This is getting untenable.

The realization made Vinnet’s blood run cold.

This was bad. The girl didn’t know about Gertewet. She didn’t know Kitchell and Vinnet were undercover. She didn’t know they weren’t like the Kem.

Did it matter?

Vinnet was about to take her from everything she loved. She was too young. Vinnet needed hosts old enough to understand the consequences of their decision. She needed hosts old enough to be grounded in their conviction to fight the Kem.

She always had before.

But she’d rarely taken a host undercover.

The lord’s crude setup had almost no means of communicating with the host. No anesthetic. No way of stepping through how it should go or the most common complications. It was primitive: a framed neck. Have at it.

Stranded here alone, Vinnet could do nothing but her best. She tried to show the girl what she wanted. She tried to show her she didn’t have to, but the girl picked up on the truth. She did have to if she didn’t want to die. As much as she hated it, Vinnet couldn’t change it, either.

As she started Anjedet’s recording and lowered the girl into the symbiont gel, Vinnet’s blood pumped furiously, shaking her.

The girl didn’t want her.

She didn’t want to fight the Kem.

She only wanted to not die, and in a perfect world, she could have all three. If the Gertewet had finished eradicating the Kem, she could, but they hadn’t.

She couldn’t let the girl die, now that she had explicitly asked for Vinnet’s involvement, but it wasn’t going to be easy. No one should start an intimate relationship as a last resort.

Someday, no one would have to.

Vinnet set a timer for the restraints and the door, since she wouldn’t be able to control them from the new body. This is the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do, she repeated, still not believing it. Tewet were fashioned as predators to humans; it was her responsibility to take hosts respectfully. This girl didn’t want her. By all rights, Vinnet should leave her alone.

But Vinnet couldn’t let her die, even while the girl only paid lip service to wanting to host. Even though Vinnet was only a last resort. Vinnet was at peace with that. She could be here for the girl when no one else was.

Vinnet swam up to the pool’s new ceiling: a youth’s smooth, healthy spine framed between the halves of the chair. The girl had trouble staying still, and Vinnet couldn’t blame her. The symbiont certainly couldn’t stay still. Not right now.

She didn’t need her whole back; Vinnet wasn’t a queen. She needed only the neck. She paused under it, collecting her inner self, her rushing thoughts. This was going to be hard for them both, but it had to improve on the current situation. The computer had caught Kitchell whispering that it would be okay.

Vinnet wished the girl had listened.

Because it would. As soon as she got this over with.