As Mookie and I watch the movement of planetary bodies out the shuttle viewport, our two MEPHISTO minders eyeball us, guns held across their laps. The local star hides on the far side of Seward while the shuttle disengages from Homan Sphere and takes us down toward the planet’s surface.
The capital city is a distant twinkling mass that slowly takes shape as we approach. Street lights form concentric rings joined by an axis of wider highways, the whole city laid out like a gargantuan crosshair.
“It’s huge,” Mookie says, leaning his head on my shoulder as we watch the city coming into focus.
I nod. “I was just expecting a base.”
The troopers look odd at the edge of my vision—real faces, real skin, bodies that aren’t uniform in size and shape—flesh and blood instead of android steel. They’re standard grunts, lacking the scarring of the Legion, but they still sneer at us like we’re subhuman.
The shuttle keeps descending until we’re close enough to make out individual structures—towering skyscrapers dwarfed by the barrels of two cannons reaching into the night sky. Near the center of the city, a column of solid light illuminates the surrounding buildings as it points to the firmament.
We come in low near this beacon, flying toward a huge ziggurat. The top of the building is stepped, with the highest floor jutting out like a squat head, and two more steps down before the rest of the building drops uniformly. There’s a massive opening in its middle, and the shuttle’s engines lower in pitch and spike in volume as we head into this central hangar.
The dock is vast, large enough for ships triple the size of our shuttle, and lined with dozens of vehicles. The largest of the space-faring vessels looks like it could hold a hundred passengers in a pinch; I’ll need something bigger for the Homan breakout.
The shuttle lands with the gentle touch of an expert pilot, either human or AI, and the soldiers stand. They wait for me and Mookie to disembark first, playing it like the deferment is a courtesy. Really they just want to keep their weapons trained on our backs as we walk clear of the ship.
A man is waiting for us, young, attractive in a plain way, and dressed in a navy-blue suit. It has the sheen of fine spider silk, with the name “Ken” visible across the breast in shimmering threads of maroon.
He pretends to not notice the armed escort and says, “Mariam Xi, Cadwell Moreland, it’s my honor to welcome you to the Hotel Benway.” His is a clean, upper-class accent, from one of the planets in the Interior where Mandarin is spoken just as much as English.
Someone’s a long way from home.
“Where are your bags?” Ken asks, with furrowed brows.
Mookie shakes his head. “We don’t have any bags.”
There’s a pause, then Ken says, “In that case, please follow me.”
* * *
It’s a tight squeeze with five of us in the elevator car, but it’s only a short ride to our floor. Walking the hotel corridors, the carpet feels lush beneath the thin soles of my prison shoes. It’s patterned in maroon with large diamonds, intricately detailed with gold and indigo, and my feet sink with every step.
“Your accent’s from the Interior, right?”
“You’ve got a good ear, Miss Xi.”
“Spent a lot of time travelling, is all.”
“What are you doing working here?” Mookie asks, and I can’t help being surprised at his amicable tone. Starved, tortured, and skull taken apart in pieces, but he’s still himself. For now, anyway.
Ken turns so he can look at us, but keeps walking, stepping backward. “I’m not sure what you mean; this is the finest hotel in all of New Tangier,” he says, offering a polite smile.
“Kids from the Interior don’t usually end up working service,” Mookie says.
“Especially not at the ass-end of nowhere, beyond the empire’s borders,” I add.
Ken’s eyes flicker to the soldiers walking behind me and Mookie. “I’m sorry, I can’t really comment,” he says, then turns to the front.
“These two don’t care,” I say.
“And you’ll get no judgment from us,” Mookie adds. “We just came from the Sphere; shit, we’re still in our prison get-up.”
Ken stops. His shoulders rise then fall in a sigh and he pivots back to face us. He speaks quietly. “I did some things I shouldn’t have. My family is well connected, and if it were not for that fact, I too would be residing at Homan Sphere. This,” he says, turning his hands out to encompass the hallway and the hotel and, well, everything, “was the compromise.”
“Are there many like you?” I ask.
Ken turns and resumes leading us down the corridor. “I’ve met a few. Most of the workers on Seward, though, are here because it pays well.”
“Gotta give people a reason to come all the way out here,” Mookie says.
“I was just expecting a MEPHISTO installation.”
“I think it started that way,” Ken says, “but it expanded when the officers brought their families here. Having a civilian population leads to commerce, education, infrastructure. Here we are.”
Ken stops at a door and presses his palm against a panel embedded into the cherry-tinted wood. The door beeps and Ken pushes it open then steps back from the threshold. “You should find everything you need in your suite; if not, please contact room service.” Ken watches the guards as they take up positions on either side of the door, smiles at me, and departs.
I follow Mookie inside, half expecting the guards to push their way past us, but they wait in the corridor. The door closes with a blunt thud, and the voices coming from within the suite fall silent.
It’s a wide room, walled on one side with floor-to-ceiling glass, showing the city skyline beyond. Lights glimmer all across the metropolis—streetlights, ship and nav lights, adverts, and a thousand other types. Above, the sky is a thick haze, glowing orange. The room is crowded with black leather couches around a squat coffee table. Five women sit, drinking red wine, pausing in their conversation to inspect me and Mookie.
I don’t need to see their tattoos to know that these are the women Hamid was talking about. They have the same look as Briggs’s voidwitch honor guard—disdain written in the set of their eyes and the curve of their lips; the certainty that they are special, powerful, feared. I’d probably have the same look on my face if I hadn’t spent most of my life on the run, feeling hunted, alone, and vulnerable. Well, maybe not vulnerable, but definitely the first two.
I step forward, leaving Mookie behind me, and level a cool gaze at each of the women.
One of them stands. “You must be Mariam.” She looks as though she’s the youngest by at least a couple of years. Her skin is almost black in the dimly lit lounge, her hair in fine braids that coil and stack atop each other.
“Mars,” I say. “And you are?”
She bows her head. “I’m Phoenix.” She motions to the others and says, “This is Ortega, Minus, Anaya, and Lin.”
Before I can speak, Ortega puts her glass down on the table and says, “You don’t look like much.” Her voice is deep and rough, like she gargles with booze and broken glass every morning. She’s small but toned, with angular features and all-black eyes. There’s an inch-thick line of emerald-colored hair down the middle of her scalp while the rest is shaved.
“And yet, I’m the one who killed Briggs, while you lapdogs were ready to do his bidding.”
Ortega sneers, but Phoenix speaks up again. “You really wiped out his whole operation?”
“Yes,” I say, not taking my eyes off Ortega.
In my peripheral I see Phoenix’s eyes go wide as she mouths something like “Wow.” Lin nods appreciatively while the other two sip at their drinks.
Ortega walks over and stands close enough for me to smell the wine on her breath. “If you’re so powerful, prove it.”
Oh, I will. Not yet, but soon.
“I don’t answer to you,” I say. “I seem to recall Hamid putting me in charge of this little gang of turncoats.”
“What did you say?” Anaya speaks through gritted teeth. She and the one called Minus get out of their seats and round the coffee table, coming right at me.
“Just say, how will you walk?” I say, and both Anaya and Minus stop dead in their tracks. The words are an echo of memory, carried across decades from our shared childhood to the now. In my own voice I hear the intonation of the caretakers that hypnotized us and planted these seeds of control. The other women have all gone static too, Lin with her glass tilted, burgundy wine dribbling over the edge and splashing onto her blouse.
“The man is dead, but you’re still on his leash.” I poke Ortega’s shoulder forcefully and she blinks and shakes her head. “Go sit down,” I say, and she goes back to her seat, eyes tight with confusion, distrust, or both.
Anaya returns to the table and helps Lin mop up the spilled wine. Minus follows, sits down, and finishes her wine in one gulp. She doesn’t speak.
“Do you trust Hamid?” I say to the room, not expecting an answer. “Do you think she doesn’t already know about these hypnotic commands? Do you think she won’t use them?”
Lin says, “How can you do that?”
“Listen,” I say, ignoring the question, “we understand each other. We all went through the same shit when we were children. MEPHISTO has beaten and starved us, they’ve fucked with our bodies and minds. We’re useful but expendable, and that’s all we’ll ever be.
“Take orders from Hamid, but don’t trust her, and maybe—just maybe—one day we’ll get out from under the empire’s thumb, we’ll be free.”
* * *
“That was some speech,” Mookie says, sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the window. “Isn’t it dangerous to provoke them like that, though? There’s five of them, and only one of you.”
He takes some of the anti-inflammatories they gave him on Homan, as well as some painkillers. The swelling on his face has gone down, and I want to say he looks like himself, but his new eyes are off-putting in their unnecessary artificiality—silver sclera around the darker irises of the ocular lenses.
“When I found my sister she, uh, opened my mind. Those women aren’t a threat.” I exhale sharply. “I just hope I don’t have to kill them when I turn on Hamid.”
I’m sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed, glancing at Mookie’s reflection in the glass. Even the bedrooms have a whole wall of window, that thin pane the only thing between us and the city, close enough to touch.
“You probably shouldn’t talk like that,” Mookie says. “The whole Legion might hear.” There’s quiet for a few moments while, outside, shuttle lights zip back and forth.
“We’ll figure something out before it’s too late; there’s still time.”
Mookie shakes his head. “Just, talk to me about the others; how were Trix and Squid when you saw them last?”
“Trix has been struggling,” I say. I don’t tell him it’s because she feels guilty about wanting to leave him. “She blames me for what happened to you—rightly, I guess.”
Mookie exhales loudly. “There was always a chance the authorities would find me.”
I don’t argue, but we all know that chance multiplied a hundredfold when I came along. “Squid’s okay,” I say. “They held everything together for the rest of us.”
“Like they always do,” Mookie says with affection. He lies back on the bed, still dressed, and within a few seconds he’s snoring.
My implants haven’t been properly disabled in years, so it takes some prodding for me to find the subdermal reset switches—one behind my ear, the other along my jaw. I press them both down and count three full seconds, then my HUD comes to life with diagnostic text scrolling too fast for me to read.
I lean my head back against the mattress and close my eyes, flickering orange text imprinted on the back of my eyelids. My leg jolts and I sit forward, forcing my eyes wide. I can’t sleep, not yet. As soon as the reset is finished I can contact Squid and the others. Then I can sleep, only then.
* * *
I wake lying curled up on the floor, my head resting on my arm. After sleeping on hard polycrete, the carpet feels as soft as any bed I’ve ever slept in.
“Fuck.” I can’t believe I let myself fall asleep.
I sit up and wait for my eyes to adjust to the rich dawn light. The sun peeks over the horizon and New Tangier looks distilled, hyper-real. The sky is a gradient of light blue through to the darkest gray. Homan glides across that expanse of void; it looks peaceful in its slow meander, but it’s speeding through space—a hollow hell for the poor fucks we left behind.
A small icon blinks in the corner of my vision: a new message. I open it and it’s just one word: Ping.
I check the message info and see it’s a direct burst, meaning it came from in-system. My first thought is that it’s Hamid keeping tabs on me somehow, but then I see hundreds more waiting for me, all saying Ping, all time-stamped an hour apart, going back weeks.
I burst back, Waren? and wait. A vox request appears in response.
When I open it, the line is dirty and there’s a few seconds of static before Waren says, “It’s about time. Do you have any concept of how boring this system is?”
I make a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, then I get up and jump on the bed. I grab Mookie by the shoulder and shake. “Mookie!”
He opens his eyes and peers at me, quizzical. “Wha?”
“Ignore the AI, Mariam,” Squid says. “Do you have him? Do you have Mookie?”
“Yes, I’ve got him.” Mookie sits up and I grab both his arms and say, “It’s Squid and the others.”
Mookie bursts out crying-laughing, grin stretched across his face and tears running down his cheeks. Tears well in my eyes too, and I rest my hand gently on the side of his head with my thumb curled around his ear.
“How is he doing?” Squid asks.
Mookie pulls away from me. He gets out of bed and stands, hugging himself.
“It’s bad, Squid, really bad.”
Mookie glances at me, and wipes his eyes with a knuckle.
“What did they do to him?” Trix comes on the line and spits out her question like it’s an order.
“They make Legionnaires at the prison,” I say. “He’s—”
Trix makes an anguished sound and cuts me off. “You lost him.”
I look over at Mookie, standing in the corner, running a hand over his bald, scarred head.
“I’ll get him back,” I snap.
“How?”
“He’s alive, Trix, that’s all that matters,” Squid says.
There’s a few seconds of noisy silence on the line. “They have to die,” Trix says, cold. “The doctors, the guards, everyone that did that to him.”
Including me?
“I need to be there. I need to help,” she says.
“Later, Trix. Squid, are you close by?” I ask.
“As near as Waren can get without their scanners picking us up.”
“Can you get long-range images of New Tangier?”
“Waren’s already done it,” Squid replies. “What do you need to know?”