I sit in the rec area, looking up at the trees beyond the compound walls, feeling the scratch of the coarse, blueish grass through the fabric of my cloak. I’ve got nothing on beneath it—Rathnam just dropped the cloak on the table when he was done. I don’t remember what questions he asked, but I remember my thoughts racing as I tried and failed to stitch together lies convincing enough to stop the surgery.
Rathnam ran out of questions long before the autosurgeon finished, but he made me sit in that room while Mookie’s entire skull was taken apart and replaced with metal. The autosurg installed glossy chrome implants into Mookie’s ocular cavities, then put his skin back in place, knitting the folds together with geneprinted epidermis in geometric patterns.
A few women wander the yard. Most are alone, but some walk in pairs. I thought prisons were meant to be filled with gangs, formed like diamonds under the pressure of surviving, but I haven’t seen anything like that in Homan. Maybe there are gangs in the farmlands—here in Max we’re all too broken. Who has the energy to fight other prisoners when it’s a struggle to hold onto yourself?
Kirino. My stomach quavers, and I want to be sick, but there’s nothing in my stomach: I left it all on the floor of the interrogation room. Is this what remorse feels like? Guilt? It’s different when you kill with your hands. I don’t know why, but it is.
I didn’t have to kill her; I did it because it was easier than dealing with her any other way. She had it coming, though. Did she have it coming? Or do I kill because it’s easy?
I see a woman approaching, her hands straight at her sides, keeping the hem of her shirt low as she walks. I put a hand up to shield my eyes and accidentally bump my nose, still tender from where the autodoc fixed it. With the sun out of my eyes I can see it’s Ali. They’ve given her a tunic, but still no pants.
“Hey, Mars.”
“Hey.”
“That’s a nice cloak,” Ali says. “The color really suits you.”
I laugh nervously, still waiting for the churning in my stomach to calm. “Thanks.” I rub a hand on my belly to feel the soft fabric against my skin. “When will they give you pants?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says as she sits beside me, “but this is better than nothing.” She leans her head on my shoulder and looks up at the trees with me. “Kirino was worse than the guards,” she says. “I’m sure there are women in here who’d thank you.”
I’m thrown for a second, thinking Ali read my mind, but then I remember that the last time she saw me was during the fight.
I shake my head. “It’s not a good thing I did.”
Ali’s head moves against my shoulder as she nods. “Yes, it was.”
Two women walk past speaking some dialect of Spanish I’m not familiar with. I only catch a few words, but it’s enough to know they’re also talking about me killing Kirino.
“Are you doing okay?” she asks.
“I don’t even know,” I say.
“What happened?”
“I saw my friend.”
“That’s good,” Ali says, brightly.
“They made him into one of them—they made me watch the surgery.”
Ali doesn’t say anything, but from her silence I guess she’s lost friends to the Legion too.
A cold breeze pushes through the trees and we both shiver in unison, half-naked in different ways.
Eventually, after the leaves have fallen quiet again, Ali asks, “Could you really break everyone out of here?”
That wasn’t what I was talking about when I said I could tear this place apart, but seeing her eyes—clear and wide with hope—I can’t say no. “I could,” I say. I break off a long blade of grass and run it between my thumb and forefinger, feeling its tiny fibers catch against my skin.
Ali sighs—I don’t hear it, but I feel the way her body moves. Faux sunlight falls through shaking leaves overhead. It’s serene, almost beautiful if I forget where we are. “Don’t you get lonely sometimes?” she asks.
“I’m used to being alone,” I say, though I can’t stop Ocho looming in my thoughts, followed by Mookie, Squid, and Trix.
Ali nuzzles into me, as if to emphasize the subtext of her question. I put my arm around her, and I feel her head shift off my shoulder. In the corner of my eye I see her looking at me, but I don’t face her.
I can sit here under a tree holding her, watching the accelerated approach of dusk, but that’s all. Whatever else she might want, I can’t give it to her. Not when I’m only here because someone else got too close, got caught up in my mess of a life.
She lays her head back down and sighs. If it’s contentment or resignation, I can’t tell.
* * *
Stockton comes for me before I’ve finished eating breakfast.
“Where is he?” I snap, but Stockton ignores me, grabs my arm, and lifts me from the seat.
Stockton marches me back to the central hub, room 203. He opens the door and shoves me inside.
Rathnam stands on one side of the room, accompanied by another envoy, headless, waiting for its rider. “Good morning, Mariam,” he says, not sounding quite as bright as usual. “Please take a seat.”
“Where’s Mookie?”
Rathnam turns to face the blank envoy, then says, “Excuse me.” His face blinks out.
I grunt in frustration, but put Rathnam from my mind. I stare at the woman in the mirror: the bags under her eyes are heavy and dark, while the rest of her skin looks paler than it should. Even at this distance I can see how greasy her hair is: shiny and lank. It’s long, but not uniformly. There are scars on her head from where they cut open her skull to do things to her brain. Mostly she looks small, even weak. I harden my features and she does the same, and that’s when I see the weapon MEPHISTO started making all those years ago.
Rathnam’s face returns and he takes up Stockton’s usual position in the corner.
“Who are we waiting for?”
“We must be patient a little longer, I’m afraid,” he says. “While we wait, perhaps we can continue our interview.”
“Where’s Mookie?” I ask again.
“Don’t worry, Mariam. Your friend Cadwell is right here.” Rathnam points at the mirror and I look back at my reflection. The image darkens by degrees until it disappears, replaced by Stockton’s envoy and Mookie standing behind the glass. They’ve given Mookie clothes, but his face and head are badly swollen, and slits of silver peek out from bruised eye sockets.
I nod, but Mookie stays perfectly still. I worry that he’s already interfaced with the Legion, but then he nods back, wincing at the movement.
“You could just call him ‘Mookie’; everyone else does.”
“And I could call you ‘Mars,’” Rathnam says, “but I don’t.” He begins reading from Mookie’s record: “Cadwell Amos Moreland—joined the imperial army at age seventeen, served in the 83rd Infantry Division as a combat medic. After five years of service, and thirteen tours, Moreland deserted his post while stationed on Scaraf. After a four-year gap he was apprehended by Commander Briggs. He has been languishing here for months now, abandoned by his friends; but he need never be alone again. Soon he will be Legion.”
“We never abandoned him. We never abandoned you, Mookie.”
Rathnam smiles. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you? I knew from the start that you could not have been captured so easily unless you allowed it. I know you came here to free Moreland, but now it’s too late.”
I lean back in my seat. “I’m going to get him out of here, and then I’m going to kill you.”
“Don’t threaten me, Mariam,” he says, finally dropping the veneer of politeness he’s maintained all this time. “If only you had talked, you might have gotten your friend back, but you refused to betray the insurgency.”
“We’ve been through this, doc,” I say, matching the venom of his voice with a little of my own. “I don’t know about any insurgency; if I did, I would have told you everything to stop you doing that to Mookie.”
“What about the riot you started on Aylett Station? Your show of force against the military has inspired other such actions throughout imperial space. Not only that, but you were clearly cooperating with Aylett locals.”
“I started that riot because I refused to let Briggs capture me, and the Ring One freaks joined in because they love any excuse to show off their mods. You see politics where the rest of us see survival.”
“Everything is politics.”
I roll my eyes and the doctor sneers. Standing behind the glass, Stockton just looks bored. Remembering his slap, I guess he’d rather be inflicting violence than hearing about it.
“Cadwell will leave here soon to join his siblings in the Legion; the only question remaining is whether you leave with him, or whether I throw you into a box and forget about you.”
“Leave with him?” I say, cautiously.
The other droid comes to life, holo-unit showing a woman’s face—strong nose, sharp jaw and cheekbones, dark eyes, and rich brown hair curled to stay off her face. I don’t normally pay much attention to hairstyles, but after weeks surrounded by unkempt prisoners and military-neat guards, her hair is sublime.
The woman doesn’t speak; she just rotates the torso of her android slowly as the eye lenses take in the cell and the two figures behind the glass.
“I see you’ve already performed the operation, doctor.”
“Yes; it was a complete success,” Rathnam says, sounding pleased with himself.
The woman grunts. “Both of you leave; I’d like to talk to Mariam and her friend alone.”
Stockton’s envoy goes blank first, but its hand stays wrapped around Mookie’s upper arm. Rathnam opens his mouth then closes it. After a few seconds, his face disappears too.
The woman paces across the room, momentarily obscuring Mookie from my sight with each lap.
She waves a hand in Mookie’s direction. “You’ve seen what we do here, then, with the prisoners we find suitable?”
I nod.
“And you’ve experienced Commander Briggs’s program firsthand; what a unique position to be in.
“Briggs was given children for his experiments, but we had to look elsewhere. A lot of prisoners died before we perfected the surgeries.”
I recognize the pattern of her speech, if not the voice—it’s the woman I spoke with before I arrived here; the leader of the Legion.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” I say.
“Yes, briefly. Commander Zoe Hamid,” she says, taking a seat opposite.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Things didn’t go well for the last MEPHISTO commander who came looking for me.”
She nods. “That’s precisely why I’m here. We didn’t take Briggs’s program seriously before. Over a decade of training to produce psychics of varying ability and questionable loyalty? It seemed preposterous, until we saw what you did to him, how you single-handedly tore his fleet apart.
“I was serious before, Mariam; I want you to work for me.”
I look past Hamid to Mookie and raise my eyebrows. I’m sure if his face weren’t so badly bruised he’d do the same.
She laughs. “You might consider yourself an enemy to MEPHISTO, but I see your value. You’ve already been an asset: after you killed Commander Briggs, imperial intelligence uncovered his conspiracy. He had positioned a number of his subjects close to positions of power and influence. We don’t know what his end goal was, but we can guess.”
“Sera was right,” I say, softly.
Hamid tilts her head, but continues. “Some of those women agreed to work with me.”
“And the rest?”
“I did what I could for them, Mariam, but in the end they were executed.”
“So now you’ve come here to make me the same offer? Be your pet voidwitch or die?”
“I’m giving you a choice, Mariam—”
“Just call me Mars.”
“I’m giving you a choice, Mars: join me and lead the five women I’ve gathered. I need someone powerful enough to neutralize the others if required.”
“You said I have a choice; what’s my other option?”
“Join your friend here, and we’ll see just what happens when a voidwitch joins the Legion. The likelihood of you maintaining your abilities is extremely low,” she says flatly, “so I’d rather not go that route.”
“You call that a choice?”
“I’m hoping you won’t force my hand.”
“What would I do, if I worked for you?”
“Mars, don’t,” Mookie says, sounding distant behind that thick glass. I shake my head subtly but don’t look at him.
Hamid continues. “The six of you would be deployed as a commando unit. I would give you objectives, but how you carry them out would be up to you. This would only be two, perhaps three missions a year—you’d be brought in for situations that call for more nuance than the Legion is able to muster.” I hear an edge of distaste to her voice when she mentions the Legion, but before I can press her, she continues. “You will be well paid, and in your downtime you can do as you like.”
“I’d be a mercenary?” I say.
“Yes, I suppose.”
“And my other option is to let you replace my skull and make me join the Legion?”
Hamid turns her android’s hands so its palms face up. “What do you say?”
I rest my elbows on the table and hold my hands together in front of my mouth; pretend like I’m interested. I need to figure out how to disconnect Mookie before the nanotendrils, or whatever they are, get into his brain. I can’t do that in here, especially not if they send Mookie to join the Legion.
“I’ll get to leave Homan?”
“I can arrange for you to leave immediately.”
“What about Mookie?”
“He will leave with you, of course. We still need to transfer him to a facility where the rest of the surgeries can be performed.”
“Then I’m interested,” I say, and Hamid smiles. “There’s just one thing, though: if you’re in charge of a fucking hive mind of cyborgs, why do you need me?”
Hamid shifts in her seat, and the chair creaks beneath the envoy as she does so. She purses her lips and rolls her head to one side. She sighs, then finally speaks, “The Legion is a hive mind, but I’m not its queen. I give them orders, but an amalgam of their minds decides how they respond to those orders. Most were military personnel before their transformation, or former military like your friend here. The one thing all those minds have in common is their military training—training that instills within them a fervent belief in the supremacy of the empire and the godlike status of the emperor.”
I’m not sure I get it, so I say, “Why’s that an issue?”
Hamid’s hand rotates in its wrist cuff as she motions to me. “Your situation is a prime example. I should have been informed of your capture immediately; your fate should have been mine to decide. Instead, the Legion assessed your crimes and brought you here, and only informed me when you’d nearly arrived. They mistreated a valuable asset because they’re unable to deviate from the letter of the law.”
I chuckle. “You’re recruiting witches because you’ve lost control of your toys? What happens if they catch you breaking the law one day?”
“I hope to never find out.”
“How long until he’s one of them?”
“It depends on proximity. I’ll be in-system shortly; he should connect to the others quickly once I arrive with the Legion.”
I keep my eyes on the commander. “Alright,” I say. “I’ll join you, but—”
“No!” Mookie yells, louder, pulling against the unmoving grip of Stockton’s envoy. “Kill her and run!”
“You’d die, Mookie,” I say, my voice wavering slightly.
“It’s too late for me anyway.”
I hold my eyes open wide and wait for the rising tears to dissipate. “I need to know something first,” I tell Hamid. “Rathnam said my friends died leaving Miyuki; do you know if that’s true?”
“I’m sorry, Mars,” Hamid says, and my heart sinks. “I haven’t heard anything about them.”
Relief floods through my veins and I smile, shake my head, and exhale, all at once. “Okay,” I say. “When do we leave?”
“I’ve ordered a shuttle up from Seward. It will take you down to the surface where you can meet the other five recruits and wait for me.”
“They’re already here?” I ask. That might make things more difficult.
“They were elsewhere when I dispatched the fleet to Seward, and they were not held up as I have been.”
“How long ’til you arrive?”
“Under a day,” she says.
I nod. Less than a day to ditch the space witches, contact the others—if they’re still alive—and figure out how to disconnect Mookie from the Legion?
Plenty of time.