The next morning, Zerjic sits as close to Recadat as ey can. Reconciliation must be possible—ey cannot afford to let her out of sight, and ey has been cursing emself for letting emotion get the better of em. There’s no way to monitor the isotoxal virus—its rate of saturation—outside of observing the woman who bears it, and even then it is a matter of pinpointing physiological signs that can be easily missed. Less code words than code phrases, the sort to emerge from delirium; best practice would have Zerjic watch her every time she rests and listen to her sleep-talking.
And Zerjic should have known better than to take offense. Recadat is more taut wire than woman, and by right should be in pieces; that she is as functional as she is constitutes its own miracle. But what she said struck too close to home, dangerously proximate to the truth. The thought that ey sees in her nothing more than a tool, even if the purpose she intuited is different from the real one. The thought that ey sees her helplessness as a point of attraction.
Ey intones eir part in the orisons. We stand to receive cleansing. We gather the days of glass to make a mirror in which our hearts may be seen. The words have the cadence of religion but lack actual connective tissue to any extant doctrines, barely convey a cohesive message, almost as though they’ve been designed for the sound and rhythm rather than meaning. After a time rote learning numbs the brain. No one cares if they are chanting gibberish. It matters only that it is chanted in sync with others, that it folds each voice into a chorus of belonging.
The prayer ends. Mahiravanan’s great proxy closes its eyes.
Zerjic makes eir way through the crowd, which seems to resist em, congesting where ey needs passage. Ey is pushed back; ey cannot get ahead without shoving bodies out of the way, without bruising other inmates. Recadat is several paces out of reach, and she moves quickly, as though she knows ey is pursuing and she means to get away.
Vishrava steps in front of Zerjic. Xer smile is beatific. “I have a task for you, Zerjic.”
Ey tries not to let frustration show. Recadat will be at dinner, in any case. “Yes? I always love to help.”
By now the crowd has filed past them, stage-directed to make themselves scarce. Recadat is nowhere to be seen. The warden leans close to Zerjic. “There will be an evening prayer tonight.”
“Who’s my opponent?” Victim, rather. It will not change eir plans—plenty of free time between now and then.
“Not anyone you know. I’ve transmitted your schedule for the day.” Vishrava gives her a small, ironic bow. “This time I’m letting you customize the arena. It shall be good for your creative muscles. We must keep our charges well-rounded.”
Ey is to attend several classes that were never required before, and several hours have been blocked out for em to edit the arena. That leaves almost no time to speak to Recadat, who might opt to eat alone in her room. As if Vishrava is intentionally keeping em from her. It does occur to Zerjic that Recadat might have asked the warden to do precisely that.
Tomorrow, ey thinks grimly. An opportunity must be snatched or carved out one way or another.
Recadat appears in none of the classes ey’s made to attend. Ey sits through appalling lectures on existential philosophy, speculative civics, and a sanitized history of Shenzhen: how the Dyson sphere was failing when the AIs came to stabilize and augment it, and thus began the Mandate’s benevolent rule. Ey can almost feel eir brain recoil from the vapidity. All at once the weight of the months spent here crashes over. The monotony, the infantilization, the farce. The gradual erosion that makes em surer and surer that ey will not leave here with eir sanity intact.
Zerjic takes a deep breath. The arena will provide relief.
The hour to prepare for evening prayers comes. Ey arrives at the hall to find the area entirely barren, devoid of the usual uneven terrain and maze-paths. Meaning ey has free reign to set it up how ey wants. Just as well—ey has finds what the wardens choose a nuisance; all those obstacle courses, the ramps and high walls, the dips and depressions in the floor. The slippery, shifting tiles and whorls of slick sand. They hinder em as much as eir opponent.
It becomes almost soothing, plotting out the logistics, imagining the choreography, slotting emself into this entrance or that exit. Charting where eir opponent will be, which spot shall serve as their starting point. Ey prefers it clean, an even arena with dramatic shadows and sudden spikes of light. This may not be a pastime of choice but ey enjoys adding small touches of artistry where ey can, pieces that’ll make for compelling tableaus suspended in memory. A few obligatory walls to make a short labyrinth, easy enough to navigate. A few ledges and ramps. For projections, ey chooses a black waterfall on the far end, a few magnolia trees.
Once ey is done, ey sits aside to wait. The warden would have em meditating, but ey’s never been any good at that. Calm comes easily to em in any case, especially before a fight, the finest and most absolute sort of calm there is: as clean as the water of a Mahakala brook. The surety that ey will move like a gale; that whoever eir opponent is—even Vishrava’s best—will not be eir match. Perhaps a challenge, though, a diversion and release valve.
Vishrava informs em that the evening prayers begin in ten minutes.
Zerjic picks a higher spot where ey can crouch, like a predator in wait, overlooking the low walls and the approach of eir opponent. Five minutes. Ey draw eir blade, a machete with a long grip to accommodate eir preference to sometimes strike two-handed. Nearly a sword. It amuses em to wield a tool so barbaric-looking when ey was classically trained; eirs was a specific education.
Another minute ticks down. Ey’s notified that eir opponent has entered the prayer hall. Shadows spill across the expanse of floor, some actual and some holographic, moving like currents. It will hide em, and for a time it’ll hide eir victim too. The unveiling shall be a surprise to both participants. Ey does pity eir opponent—to be admitted to this place is to be subjected to unthinkable cruelty. But ey is here for a purpose, and ey will survive at any cost to fulfill eir duty.
The opponent makes their way through the dark, through patches of dimness. A figure more shadow than substance: shorter than Zerjic, narrower of build. They draw ever closer, marching toward their execution.
Light falls on eir opponent. Ey goes cold.
Recadat looks up, meeting eir eyes. She is clad in dark clothes fringed in violet. A knife at her belt. A hawk’s smile on her face.
That she is combat-capable Zerjic knows; Deficit Control wouldn’t have sent in an asset who is not at least conversant with fieldwork—too much of a liability otherwise. In absolute terms ey would have no trouble defeating her. Everything that’s been done to her has reduced her both in physique and psyche. Yet now there’s a steadiness to her, a force of intent to her gait, that has not been there before.
Something is wrong. Vishrava favors Recadat; xe would not send her to her death. Is the expectation, then, that Zerjic would forfeit out of sentiment and let Recadat murder em instead.
There’s no more time to ponder. Recadat has drawn.
She closes in fast, faster than she has any right to be, without caution or regard for eir greater reach. Ey catches her knife on eir own. The noise of metal on metal is never pleasant—a protest against friction. Her weapon is nearly as long as eir machete, serrated, the edge of it pure white.
Zerjic defends, surprised at her strength when her blows connect. She fights like someone in her prime, without hesitation, without uncertainty in the engine of her own synapses and sinews. Someone who has been waiting for this, and who means to carve open the vault of em, to expose the ivory and the gold, the garnets of eir arteries.
“Why this?” Ey neatly dodges a kick. Murderous intent or not ey remains a superior fighter.
Recadat answers with a feral grin. “Why not, Zerjic?”
The voice. Close but something in the enunciation, the cadence. A few words are all ey needs.
Ey watches more closely. The clothing has disguised her figure by its cut and coloring. Hiding that her shoulders are marginally wider than they should be, that her throat is a little thicker, that her biceps and calves are more muscled. The height is about the same, the build so close and yet a few centimeters off. The most minute of differences that ey could easily have failed to notice.
Not Recadat at all. An AI proxy would have copied her precisely, not a single detail misaligned. This is an inmate chosen for her physical resemblance, and whose face was modified to mimic Recadat’s. Briefly Zerjic wonders what that cost this woman, what she was promised in exchange for having her features altered beyond recognition. Vishrava’s favor. A faster exit from the Garden of Atonement.
The rest comes easily: no need to show restraint or mercy. Ey strikes and thrusts through the doppelganger’s flimsy parries. The woman who wears Recadat’s face recoils and retreats, grasping now that she’s lost the advantage of her face.
Over in minutes. Blood on the stone, the same smell and color it always is—there is never much variety. Zerjic is breathing fast, and not because the fight was a challenge. This is not Recadat but ey knows she must be watching—has been watching, from the start. No one in the Garden of Atonement is permitted to avert their eyes from evening prayers. It overrides any entertainment feed, forcing entry into every inmate’s overlays.
Ey leaves the hall. No warden stops em.
On the way ey anticipates being stopped, Vishrava telling em once more that ey has lectures to attend, a compulsory meditative or therapeutic session. Instead ey makes eir way to Recadat’s quarters without incident, not even Ceres appearing to deliver a taunt.
Against all odds, Recadat answers when Zerjic knocks. She slides her door open a sliver. The light makes her eyes glint and ey remembers why ey thought her a feral thing when ey first saw her, back then not yet sure if this was Deficit Control’s asset.
“Recadat.” Ey keeps eir tone precisely even. The way one handles a zither’s strings worn to the point of snapping. “May I come in?”
“If you want.”
The door widens enough to admit em, not a centimeter more, and shuts as soon as ey’s through.
Black walls, white everything else. Entirely monochrome and entirely bare: she has not customized the place at all, has left it the blank default of the warden’s choosing. Lightly rumpled sheets on the bed.
She stands, tense, watching em. And now ey notices she is flushed, her shirt opened partway, her nipples dark points against the satin. Not from the cold—the room is a pleasant temperature, far from chilly. Zerjic opens eir mouth but thinks better of teasing her, saying instead, “I’d like to talk.”
“You just executed someone who looks exactly like me.”
“Yes. I knew it wasn’t you. I could tell.”
Recadat’s gaze is a scalpel. For a moment it is possible to forget she’s been broken and poorly put back together. It becomes imperative to recall that she must have been dangerous, a survivor of the Septet game who verged on victory. “How? From the outside there’s hardly any difference.”
“The expressions weren’t right. The way they moved wasn’t you. We might not have known each other long but I’ve memorized every part of you.” All this ey says quickly, and the last part exits eir lips before ey can refrain. Too committed. Too honest. Deficit Control soldiers don’t let libido overcome sense.
But then, Deficit Control would require Zerjic to hold on to their plant at any cost.
Recadat moves to button up her shirt. Stops. “I want to know what went through your head then. Before you knew. After you did.”
“I didn’t—I don’t think when I fight, Recadat.” Combat is a matter of reducing to reflexes, tunneling decision-making to the immediate, the tactical. That was easy once it became clear the other inmate was not Recadat.
“Do you think,” she says, “when you fuck me?”
Zerjic finds eir eyes drawn to the glimpse of skin offered by the parted fabric; ey wrenches eir gaze away. “No. I fuck you the same way I fight. If I think, it’s only of your body. The scent of your skin. The taste of your cunt.”
Her tongue darts out, licking across her lips. Her breasts rise and fall fast. “Come show me. We haven’t broken this bed in yet.”
“We haven’t.” Are you in your right mind, ey should ask, but then that is not the point. The point is to regain her, to keep her close, to bind her inextricably to em. Love is impossible; lust is nevertheless nearly as potent, a weapon to wield, a red thread to tie between their wrists and draw taut.
She pulls em into bed. Ey lets her, and brushes stray hair out of her face, wanting to make this tender—wanting to make it an apology. “No,” Recadat says, catching eir wrist. “Translate what you did to my doppelganger to what you do in bed.”
“Without the killing part, I assume.” All the same ey kisses her brow, soft. Eir fingers stop at her throat where there are healing scabs. “What happened to this?” Ey did not break skin, ey made sure of that. Bruises yes. Bleeding no.
“Vishrava dressed it.”
Which is not an answer. “Did xe . . . ” But that is the wrong question, beside the point. “Did you want this to be done to you?”
Recadat looks up at em, eyelashes beating slowly. “Yes.”
Ey strokes the site of injury with eir thumb. Even if she wants em to hurt her, ey knows emself capable of vast harm; a thin trembling line of control stands between eir instincts and a lover savaged, safeword or not. To em bed and battle must be kept apart. “Did you do this to make me jealous?”
Her throat works as she swallows. “Yes.”
Salvation in annihilation. The purifying that comes when a body is driven to its limits. Combat or coitus brings much the same result, in the right context. Zerjic presses eir lips to hers and considers the parameters of owning another human being, of owning this woman in particular, possessing her not because she is Mahakala’s instrument but for her own sake. Ey kisses her until she is gasping as though ey’s stolen her oxygen, has asphyxiated her by the sheer ferocity of the act.
“Still Sturnidae?” Ey caresses her jugular, feeling the pulse there, its leaping and untidy rhythm.
“Still Sturnidae.” A breathy pause. “You know I’m not going to use it.”
“Won’t you?” But ey laughs and reaches for the nightstand controls. Inmate beds have built-in restraints—ey’s seen the wardens use them—and they extend once ey has found the right toggles. More accessible than ey would have thought. Perhaps exactly for this use: the wardens allow them to fraternize freely, to fuck and use each other in search of oblivion or a semblance of human bond.
One by one ey kisses Recadat’s wrists, then places them into the cuffs. Ey does the same with her ankles. As each limb is secured, she breathes a little faster; by the time ey clicks the restraints shut, she is trembling.
Zerjic rises from the bed, leaving her spread-eagled and clothed; ey intends to change the latter soon. Her gaze tracks em, though she stays mute. Every muscle in her tenses. Ey imagine she wants to struggle, on instinct.
Ey finds the first aid kit that’s present in every room, and takes eir time drawing eir knife: the slow slide out of the sheath that gives Recadat a full view of the blood browning on the blade. Fastidiously ey wipes it clean, sanitizes both blade and hilt, and turns it so that the metal would catch the light. Recadat’s eyes follow every glint.
“Did you enjoy it?” Her voice is soft. “Thrusting that inside a woman who looked like me. Twisting it until you found a fatal spot. Watching her hemorrhage.”
“Would you like it if I did?” Zerjic returns to the bed, straddling her. Slowly ey moves her shirt out of the way.
She does not respond, but her body yields its own answer. Those fine shivers.
“She didn’t last, Recadat.” Ey licks her collarbone. “You, on the other hand . . . ”
Ey runs the blunt of the machete across her stomach, between her breasts, meticulous with each stroke—it is a weapon, and even this could break skin with enough pressure. Recadat clenches her hands into fists as ey cups her breast and moves the machete down her flank.
“Ceres,” Recadat murmurs, “called you a sadist.”
“Am I?” Eir second mouth purses around her nipple; ey makes the teeth graze it, parallel sensation to the blade. “Or rather is that what you want me to be?”
Her eyes meet eirs. “I want to be savaged.”
“By me in particular, or by anyone?”
“By you.” A small stuttering exhalation. “You already knew that.”
Ey didn’t, and it is flattering to hear. Briefly ey wishes the second mouth’s sensory arrays had been wired differently, but it would distract when ey sings. Maybe one day ey could have it modified—the advantage of the limb being prosthetic from the elbow down. “I adore the way you look at me.” Ey peels off her trousers—they are drenched—and runs the blade over her inner thigh, slow zigzags. “The way you beg with your eyes. I’ll make you plead with your mouth too, before long.”
The most careful of boundaries to walk. Zerjic passes the machete’s point over her nipple, once, a quick contact. Her mouth parts; her entire body goes rigid with the effort of keeping still. Again ey brings the steel to the inside of her elbow, the inside of her knee, all those sensitive spots full of arterial roar. In truth the blade is far too large for this use, but the size of its hilt will come in handy shortly.
Ey sheathes the machete, sets it aside, and bends to her hip. Easier with the knife, but ey’s seen how she reacts to teeth. Though she’s been well-fed in the Garden, she has not regained all she used to be: there remains the sharp jut of pelvis, the atrophy of muscles. Beautiful, all the same, the anatomy of a starling.
The second mouth lacks jaw strength, and so ey uses eir primary one, catching skin between eir teeth. When ey presses down with incisors, her knees jerk; when ey bites hard, Recadat arches, or tries to. Over and over ey ensures the mark will stay on her hip, imagining as ey does her other lover—human or AI—finding them; wondering whether they will attempt to overwrite Zerjic’s imprints again in Recadat’s blood, whether she’ll let them.
Her arousal fills the air. Ey wants to descend on her, drink her in, finish her off. Instead ey strokes her with eir thumb and watches her face as ey grips eir machete by the sheath. Ey checks that it is secure and will not slip off; once satisfied, ey carefully positions the hilt and slips it into her, making her jolt. She bites her lip then says, “Deeper.”
“Impatient.” Ey palms her stomach, nibbling at her navel with eir second mouth. Then ey obliges, inserting the grip one centimeter at a time—it is too slender to fill her, but there’s much to be said for the handle’s curve. When ey finds the right angle, she clenches her jaw, hips twitching to meet it.
Zerjic brings her close once, twice. By the third time she’s bucking against her bonds, her nails digging into her palms.
“Zerjic,” she rasps.
There is something about hearing her utter eir name like this, in this exact tone, with this urgency. Ey flicks eir thumb against her clitoris—she tosses her head, whimpering. “What is it, Recadat?”
“I need—let me . . . ”
Ey sinks the machete’s grip into her, as far as it is safe to. Keeping it in place, unmoving. “Say my name again.”
“Zerjic.” The entirety of her is shaking; her desperation moves through her like tectonic tremors. “Zerjic .”
Ey thrusts the hilt against the spot ey knows will push her over as eir second mouth latches onto one of her breasts. All at once she breaks, her release sweeping through every ligament; she thrashes against the bed, against the restraints. The noises she makes are high and jagged, bestial. The midpoint at which agony and its opposite meld.
Zerjic removes the handle—it comes free wetly—and undoes the cuffs on her ankles then her wrists. They’ve been designed to hold an inmate safely, the inside silicone-soft, but she must have struggled so much that they leave faint marks on her skin regardless.
Recadat sprawls limp, trying to recover her breath. A solid minute goes by before she says, “Do your lovers tell you that you’ve ruined them for anyone else?”
“Occasionally.” The machete’s sheath has left its own imprints on eir hand—ey was clutching it harder than ey thought. “It depends on how special I find them. How much I want to make them forget anyone else. How much I want to make them mine, permanently.”
Her hands twist weakly in the sheets. “You shouldn’t imply things you don’t mean, Zerjic.”
Still potent, the way she shapes eir name. Ey wipes sweat from eir brow, and when ey draws in a breath discovers that eir pulse too is just coming down, gradually returning to resting rate, as though she wasn’t the only one to reach climax. “I mean everything I say. To have you for myself. To keep you safe.” Approaching that point again where it is too forthright—too confessional. Not love, of course, how preposterous. Care, then.
She maneuvers herself into eir lap, propping her head against eir stomach. “You should let me gratify you.”
“I’m well gratified.” Zerjic plays with the peacock-green strands in her hair. “You’re a filling meal.”
“What are you, a cannibal.” Her mouth quirks—simple joy that ey’s never seen before on her face, as though she is finally freed from what was done to her in the Shenzhen prison. When she opens eir shirt, ey doesn’t stop her. She touches her nose to eir abdomen. “When we first met, I didn’t think I would like you much.”
“Oh? Should I take offense?” Ey cups her chin, lightly licking it with eir mouth implant. No tastebuds and limited sensation, but ey is pleased when she laughs. “What was your first impression then?”
“That you were incredibly attractive but flighty.” Her hand slots into the small of eir back, beneath the shirt, her fingers drumming on eir skin. “That you were Vishrava’s pet.”
“Well, I am. That’s why ey chooses me for the entertainment.” It takes a few seconds for em to register that her fingers are tapping out a Deficit Control code. A simple message. Fifty-five percent. Ey stiffens and quickly masks the reaction.
Recadat continues to smile up at em, expression not changing at all, as though she hasn’t just conveyed a dangerous secret. “Do you suppose Vishrava will let us share a room permanently?”
“I don’t see why not.” Fifty-five percent. The viral saturation rate must have been rapid. Ey remembers that it needs at least seventy percent to work, eighty-five is better. “Anything to make you happy. Xe favors you.”
“I don’t know about that.” Her hand stops.
“Worried Ceres will get jealous?” No, Zerjic realizes, she was barely aware of having tapped out the code. The conditioning again, subliminal actions, like her choice in safewords.
“No.” A small pause. “My other—the person who left those marks on my throat wasn’t Vishrava.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Days—it could be mere days before eir work here is complete. Days, after years of infiltration and working undercover that led em here, close to four months in the Garden of Atonement itself.
Days until ey has to decide whether Recadat is to be sacrificed. Eir own escape or extraction has never accounted for the asset’s survival.
“Zerjic?”
Ey takes her hand, kissing her knuckles. “I’m sorry—here you are in my lap and I’m thinking of something else. But it’s nothing important. Shall we shower together? You deserve a little pampering.”