There was a low buzzing in her ears, which she realized was coming from the bright white lights overhead. The thoughts in here were nothing outside the ordinary for a workplace. Someone had eaten Denise’s salad and it was probably Frank. Evelyn was in a foul mood and Terrence desperately needed to get laid. Could Stephen believe that Maria’s mother-in-law wasn’t dead yet? Come watch this outrageously specific ad. (Medeian technomancy was such a marvel it might as well have been telepathy.)
“Miss Kamali?”
Parisa had heard the woman coming from where she sat in the waiting room, but politely looked up as if she’d only just been made aware of her presence. Because yes, she was capable of being polite. “Yes?”
“This way, please.” The woman was terribly distracted and had her third straight migraine in a week. (Parisa could relate.) Her favorite was her oldest daughter, Maggie, and their problem child had kept her up all week. Rosie was prone to ear infections, Georgie had been misbehaving in school, Georgie was a biter. Still there was no point in wishing for more wishes, so the woman wished for Maggie’s health and Maggie’s health alone. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m glad you could find the time.”
Parisa took a seat at the woman’s desk. Sharon, her name was. Sharon’s attention flicked warily from Parisa to the lamp at the edge of the desk, and Parisa calculated that Nico had been there weeks, possibly months before.
“Okay,” said Sharon, opening a paper version of Parisa’s file. “Now, as I mentioned, this is intended to be a collaborative process.” This was not the first meeting Sharon had had with a member of Parisa’s cohort. Callum had definitely been here. Reina and Tristan had not. “We understand that you likely have some career goals or personal ones to attend to, and the question is how we can help you elevate your—”
“I don’t want career counseling,” said Parisa. “You have a headache. Don’t waste your breath. I’m only here because I want to know what happened to Nasser Aslani.”
Sharon gave Parisa a dull look. “Who?”
Parisa felt her mouth tighten, then tried not to make it obvious. Making an enemy of Sharon wouldn’t make any of this any easier. “Nasser Aslani. My—” She cleared her throat. “My husband.”
Sharon’s initial hum of disinterest was instantly drowned out by a sea of irritated thoughts, including but not limited to a vision of stabbing Parisa with her own stilettos. Fair. “This office does not handle domestic disputes, Miss Kamali. If you have an issue with your husband—”
“Two weeks ago, Nasser asked me to meet him. He was worried I was in trouble. He knew people were trying to hunt me down, which I assume you also know. Then he never showed up.” Parisa crossed one leg over the other. “Nas doesn’t not show up. Something happened to him, and I know it has to do with the hit put out on me by the Forum.” Or worse, though Parisa wasn’t going to mention Atlas by name. Not yet, when she might still need him to lose badly. Or win.
She could feel the thundering ache of Sharon’s migraine like she was suffering it herself. “Miss Kamali—”
“You have a headache,” Parisa repeated, her voice clipped. “Your daughter is dying. Let’s not waste time you don’t have.”
Sharon stared at her.
“I know you track us,” Parisa said plainly. “I’m fairly confident that tracking goes beyond your initiates. Nasser’s a medeian; he was educated at the magical university in Amman. I know you know how to find him.” Parisa could feel Sharon’s brittle waves of spite, her disdain for Parisa’s entitlement, for the perfection of her skin—but there was also a little respect in there, a kernel of it. Not enough to qualify for sympathy, obviously, but enough to acknowledge they were both the victims of a ticking clock.
This was the most Parisa had spoken about Nasser in years, and maybe it didn’t take a mind reader to know it. “Just tell me where he is,” Parisa said, “and I’ll tell you whatever answer you need to hear to call your file closed. Job done.”
Sharon was clearly underpaid. A consummate professional. She didn’t sigh or even blink before turning to the desktop screen that wasn’t even top of the line. She clicked a few things, frowned—she was initially denied access; even without reading her mind, Parisa could see the glare of red from Sharon’s glasses—then she flicked a glance at Parisa before typing in her password (Maggie’s birthday) and clicking something else.
Parisa saw it, her answer, before Sharon spoke anything aloud.
“Fuck,” exhaled Parisa in the same moment Sharon said, “I’m sorry.”
Parisa rose to her feet, wishing she were Nico de Varona. Wishing she could break something and laugh, walk away. “You knew where to look,” she remarked after a second to collect her thoughts. Regret lived heavy in her chest, but it would have to wait. “You knew where to look when the database denied you access.”
“We know about the threats against your lives,” Sharon said to Parisa’s tacit accusation. Sharon was thinking something else now, empathy maybe, the pity kind. She didn’t dislike Parisa. How wonderful for them both. “We have active files open on your family members and known associates.”
Parisa thought about Libby’s family, her mother and father and ghost of a sister. Nico’s mother who had taught him how to dance, his uncle who taught him how to fight. Callum’s family could fend for themselves, they deserved an investigation, and anyone who knew anything knew that going after Tristan’s family was a waste. Reina would probably stab her own parents if she hadn’t already. “Has anyone else’s—?”
Another click of Sharon’s mouse. “There has been one possible breach involving a creature, which we are not capable of tracking. Tristan Caine’s father and sisters are self-protected. The Ferrer de Varona family are friends of their government and private by nature. The Novas—”
Sharon’s voice faded out, dissolving into the rush of blood in Parisa’s ears. She didn’t know what to do with this amount of sadness in her stomach, this ballooning up of anger in her chest. She didn’t usually allow herself to feel it, this kind of bitterness, this mottling rage. It was purposeless, fruitless, pointless—she wasn’t the kind of person who could afford to be wasteful. Every thought in Parisa’s head was powerful, every moment of her time something that others would kill to have. What was anger except setting fire to the possibility of clarity? What would fury do aside from cloud her judgment?
But now, oh now. Parisa Kamali was fucking mad.
“How did they know? About me. About Nas.” It doesn’t matter, Parisa’s brain said in a quiet, unhelpful voice. It doesn’t matter how. “Was it the Forum?”
“Yes, we think so. A task force, probably, something privately arranged, but certainly the Forum at an operational level.” Atlas, Parisa thought instantly. This was Atlas’s fuckup. This was his fault, he’d said so himself. That motherfucker. Even if he didn’t come after Dalton—even if he didn’t come for Parisa himself—she’d absolutely kill him first. “This looks tactical,” Sharon continued, “possibly an intelligence operation. I have to assume your husband chose not to cooperate.”
Oh, of course. Something faded in Parisa’s mind, or loomed. Never mind. It could never have been Atlas, he knew her too well, he would have known that harming Nasser wouldn’t end with anything remotely beneficial to him. Of course it was someone infinitely dumber, for a reason that was laughable, nonsensical. Absurd. Because of course it was some American or British person single-handedly deciding that Nasser was dangerous—of course that’s what it was.
Ironically the rage was too big to carry at that point, too cerebral. The tips of Parisa’s fingers went numb.
“I always thought there would be time,” she said, wanting to laugh. “I thought there’d be a time when I’d finally figure out how to tell him what he did to me. To explain it to him in a way that he could understand. I was so young, he had no right—”
She looked away, realizing she was still standing in the middle of the office.
She kept talking anyway, because once she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
“I needed help and I knew he would help me, I needed him and I knew he’d say yes. But it wasn’t right, what he wanted from me, what he made me feel I owed him. I know he was good, I know he was kind, but it still wasn’t equal, it still wasn’t right. It wasn’t—it couldn’t have been—love.” She was breathing hard, like she’d been running. Or crying.
Sharon removed her glasses, staring at the lenses in her hand before beginning to polish one surface. Parisa wanted to thank her for the indignity of it. The necessary reminder that the world did not revolve around her personal pain.
“Anyway.” Parisa carefully returned to the chair, smoothing down her dress. “Fair is fair. You gave me what I needed. What do you need from me?”
Sharon considered the pair of spectacles in her hand for another long moment before gradually raising the pads of her fingers to the lids of her eyes, pressing down on them. Right, yes, the headache. “Sorry,” Parisa said, leaning forward. “Let me just—”
She reached out. Sharon balked, which Parisa disregarded. She pressed a clammy hand to the other woman’s forehead and picked it like a lock. Pain receptors were easy to fool. It would come back if Sharon didn’t get some sleep, which she wouldn’t, but better that she didn’t. She’d consider it a waste given how little time her daughter had left.
“Is it hopeless?” Parisa asked in a low voice. “For Maggie.”
If Sharon was bothered by the invasion of her thoughts, she didn’t show it. She merely shook her head. “There’s a new magical trial,” she replied with her eyes closed. “It’s in the States. But they rejected her.”
“It’s probably very difficult to choose which patients can be helped.” Parisa hadn’t yet removed her hand. It felt good, being useful. Temporary, probably pointless, and yet oddly peaceful. It felt like having somewhere to put her anger down and rest. “Cancer is unpredictable. Biomancy isn’t much of a science, it’s more like an art. Mutations like that, they’re—”
“Nothazai is a biomancer,” Sharon said, taking Parisa by surprise. She supposed she hadn’t been paying attention. She’d been using some unpracticed organ in her chest in place of her magic or her thoughts. “He’s the chairman of the Forum’s board of directors,” Sharon added, though Parisa knew exactly who Nothazai was and did not initially see the relevance. “He was considered for Alexandrian recruitment but denied. They picked someone who could spread illness virally instead.” Sharon’s eyes opened.
Was that … bitterness? Against the Forum, or the Society? Parisa realized the precariousness of her own position, the plausible expectation for this shared moment of vulnerability. She was keenly aware of social transactions, the expectation of give that followed every take. This was what came of feelings, which had always been a waste.
“If you’re thinking there’s a cure in the archives somewhere—” Parisa paused. “The problem is institutional. It’s greed,” she said bluntly. “The inability to separate human existence from the necessity of profit. Even if a cure for Maggie existed in the library—”
“You think I blame the Society? Or you? I don’t.” Sharon pulled away to give Parisa a hard look of sudden hatred. “Do you think I’m angry about capitalism?” Sharon asked in a tone of condescension that Parisa was unable to parse, briefly short-circuiting. “You think I wouldn’t willingly go into bankruptcy, sell my own organs, if it meant my daughter could have even one more day on this earth? It’s not about what magic can’t do for me, or what Nothazai won’t. The point isn’t even what I’d do that they wouldn’t. It’s not the injustice, Miss Kamali, or Aslani, or whoever the fuck you really are—it’s the absurdity.” The whole thing was crisp, like a well-articulated spell. “It’s the privilege that I was given to be able to know her at all, which you’ll never have. The fact that I’m going to be one of the very, very few witnesses to the sound of her laugh—it’s criminal. And I feel sorry for all of you,” Sharon concluded with an honesty so unfaltering, so absent its own agenda that Parisa wasn’t sure how to feel except for small. “The way that none of you will ever know.”
Parisa didn’t understand the thoughts in Sharon’s mind. She could see them, feel them, taste the hot tears burning a hole in Sharon’s throat, but she couldn’t make sense of them. It was too much; it was everything all at once.
The most dangerous person in the room. Hollowly, Parisa almost laughed.
“I’m putting in your file that you’re going to consider an entrepreneurial venture,” Sharon said abruptly, the din of her thoughts escalating to a sharpened stake of task-oriented lucidity. She typed quickly on her keyboard and then turned her attention back to Parisa, closing the file that bore Parisa’s name. “We’ll follow up with you in a year or so. Best of luck until then.”
Parisa left the office shortly after. She walked to a café and sat down alone, phone still in her hand. She dialed a phone number and listened in silence while it rang and rang and rang.
“Who are you calling?” Eventually Dalton slid into the seat across from her.
“No one.” Parisa put the phone away. “Nas is dead. The Forum killed him.” She wondered how public that news would be, how they would spin it. Whether he would be considered a criminal by his association to her.
“Wasn’t he a naturalist?” Dalton had ordered drinks for them, a cappuccino for her, tea for himself. It was so very picturesque, the two of them. A pair of clandestine lovers in bistro chairs, sitting close enough her ankles brushed the leg of his trousers. “What a waste.”
What a waste. “Yes.” Someone nearby was looking at her legs. Parisa took a sip of her cappuccino, then looked at Dalton. He was so refreshed, had slept in and showered. He faced the world with a sense of purpose. She envied that; needed it.
“What would Atlas do?” she asked.
If Dalton was surprised, he showed no evidence of it. He shrugged. “You know what he’d do.”
Destroy the world.
No, but that wasn’t it, was it? Not really. It was the world that was already dying, or maybe it was already dead. Maybe it was something like Maggie—the writing on the wall, pain and loss inevitable, and so what Atlas had done was much more proactive.
Gather all the pieces. Derive a plan. The answer wasn’t to destroy the world.
It was to make a new one.
“What do you need?” asked Parisa.
“I told you. The two physicists, and the battery. And the other one to navigate.”
“It’s distinctly unsettling when you don’t call them by their names,” Parisa sighed.
“Fine, sorry.” Dalton gave a small bark of a laugh. “Tristan Caine,” he said clearly, “is unavoidable. He’s the only one who can captain the ship, so to speak.”
Parisa nodded, unsurprised. “You’re sure you don’t need Atlas?”
“Atlas needs you,” Dalton said. “He doesn’t trust himself.”
Dalton had skirted the same point before, but as usual, Parisa didn’t see anything alarming or cryptic in his maelstrom of thoughts. It felt as clinical as everything he usually did or said, more so than other things they’d recently discussed. “Doesn’t trust himself to do what?”
“To … gauge the situation. To read it, understand it.”
“What’s to understand? I’m not a physicist.”
“It’s not that. He doesn’t need you for the magic. He needs you for … for clarity, for—” Dalton frowned in sudden, warped frustration. Parisa recognized an older version of him inside the motion; a younger Dalton punching a castle wall. “Atlas Blakely designed the code,” he said, straining for the right vocabulary. “He found the pieces and he built the computer. But he can’t do it anymore, he’s lost his objectivity. He’s afraid the algorithm is wrong.”
Dalton’s thoughts blurred. It was a metaphor, clearly, but Parisa didn’t entirely grasp its purpose. It wasn’t a very good day for her, intellectually speaking. Nothing seemed to make any sense. “What?”
“He’s running too many programs at once. He needs someone there who can test and debug. Someone to be the human.”
Maybe it was the loss of her husband or the conversation with Sharon or the pointless shards of envy from seven tables away over Parisa’s stupidly expensive shoes, which were pinching her feet. Maybe she’d always been this angry; maybe now that she’d become aware of it, she’d never be unaware again. Maybe now she’d be this stupid forever, which would frankly serve her right.
Parisa felt a wave of annoyance that made her brush aside her failure to grasp Dalton’s argument and say, very brusquely, “So your point is we don’t need Atlas. Is that it?”
“No, we don’t need him.” Dalton looked relieved to be putting his prior efforts aside. “No, if anything Atlas is the weakness in the whole design.”
“Right. Okay.” Parisa paused and typed a message on her phone, then a second one, then a third, trying to decide which one would ultimately be the longer project. (Nico was pleased to hear from her, of course he was—he was convalescing by the sea for the time being but would call her later, kisses. She hadn’t expected a reply from Reina and four days later, still hadn’t received one. But that was okay for now, she had time; it was Dalton who’d noticed Callum in the background of two separate press conferences alongside glimpses of the same black boots and hoodie, so it didn’t take a genius to realize what Reina had been practicing over the last year to do. If Parisa knew one thing about people, it was that they were disappointing, and soon enough Reina would be disappointed. Parisa would know how to find her when she was.)
The reply from Tristan, however, had been instant and surprising.
Tristan’s in the shower, this is Libby. Where do you want to meet?