The ambassador leaves the two of them on the terrace. Krissana cups her cocktail and studies the doctor. The night deepens, mentholated. Winter is not yet here but it is imminent, felt in the bite of the air, the strength of the wind. Soon a slick of frost will sheen the footpaths in brittle blue, coat the tram tracks and the exterior of the lifts. Ersatz season, ersatz planet.
“This is really a lot of trouble,” she says, navigating her drink. The cocktail is a convolution of ice pagodas, sugar windowpanes and sparklers emitting puffs of green and pink. “Good vodka, but not a lot of it. Care for a taste, Doctor?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Still? Not even a single vice, after all this time?” Krissana pushes the ridiculous glass away. She blinks: her clearance has come through. “Oh, looks like I’ve just been anointed with a title—Operative Krissana Khongtip. Very nice, I like it. It sounds important while not necessarily meaning anything. It doesn’t even indicate what department I belong to or what I do! What a delectable title.”
Orfea looks at her, appraisal direct. Krissana remembers her regard, the solidity of it, the way it rests like a talon on tender skin. “How much do they know?”
“About me? Some. Shenzhen doesn’t have much of an opinion on the Armada; it never destabilized any regime allied to the Mandate. Quite the opposite, but I shan’t bore you with anecdotes.” She leans across the table. “I’ve missed you terribly. Remember when . . . ?”
“I remember what you did to me.”
Krissana falters. Marshals herself, then gives Orfea an expression as blank as a burial shroud, as final. “I did you a favor, Doctor. If you’d died in the line of duty, the Armada would have held a classy funeral for you but they couldn’t have performed a resurrection. Even the admiral isn’t that powerful.”
“A favor,” Orfea repeats, softly. “By stranding me before a mission and making the admiral think I’d abandoned the Armada.”
And so deprived Orfea of the Armada’s protection due a high-ranking agent who leaves in good standing. Krissana did not quite take that into account—at the time Orfea’s survival was her priority. “It was a suicide mission. Trying to penetrate Pax Americana was never going to go well, I barely escaped with my life. I kept you out of harm’s way as best I could.”
“I seem to recall that, one night, we spoke of possibilities that we could be more than comrades-at-arms and that we might share a future. A charming fantasy, but in retrospect obviously infeasible. You and I are creatures of other persuasions. The two of us in domestic bliss? Hilarious. You must’ve been laughing to yourself all the while.” Orfea swirls her tea. She sips it with refinement honed through grueling instruction, part of the training for Armada specialists—the kind that went into the field to extract blood from stone, to turn people against their governments, to persuade soldiers against their commanders. “I woke up forty-eight hours later, thoroughly drugged. No way to leave the station we’d stopped at to rendezvous. No way to catch up with the infiltration unit. After that, I was given no hearing and summarily branded a deserter. You remember that part, I think. From my view, it seemed you wanted all the glory, all the admiral’s favor. You were always infatuated with her. Did it earn you a night in her bed?”
Krissana grimaces. “What glory? The operation was a fucking disaster, most of the agents were lost. It was stupid, it was greedy, one of the worst blots in Amaryllis history. The admiral would’ve shot me in the head if I’d commanded the unit—she personally executed the lieutenant who accepted that commission to start with.”
“Of course.” Orfea’s features are calm. “She’s a decisive woman. It’s not that I feel spurned, only that you betrayed me. And until you’re on your deathbed you will insist it was for the best, probably you even believe it, and that I have no debt to collect from you: no blame on your part, no apologies owed. We’re at an impasse and I should not have brought up such ancient history.”
“You’re being terribly cold.”
“We’re sitting outdoors. It’s twelve degrees.” The doctor cants her head, mouth bent into a remote smile: one that says she has finished caring, may never have cared. “And you’re wearing very little, though your temperature tolerance range is wider than most. You’ve done very well for yourself, exiting the Armada right into haruspex candidacy. Your talent can’t be disputed.”
“Fine.” Krissana heaves a sigh. “Let’s get indoors. You’re out of hot tea.”
The bistro’s inside is much warmer, offering private booths and privacy filters. Krissana requests a connection with Orfea; it is accepted, and she loads the data the ambassador sent them both. On their shared overlay, footage plays at half speed. The last moments from the perspective of a haruspex: churning waters, the ground rushing up, the muzzle of a gun approaching. Then impact, or an explosion of blood, or the shattering of bones. Haruspex implants continue to transmit a few minutes past bodily shutdown. Most of the AI halves didn’t survive. The singular one that did was corrupted and had to be disintegrated post-haste before they could infect the rest of the Mandate. No symptoms precede the act. A haruspex is well one day, and the next leaps from the highest spot they can find or decides a bullet will improve their cranial health.
Orfea dismisses the footage from her end. Krissana continues to view it a little longer than necessary. For the doctor it is abstract; for her it is a confrontation. What could be in store for her. She thinks of the AI, as yet unnamed and whose parameters are unknown, that will soon be transplanted into her. Aloud she says, keeping her voice bland, “Grisly.”
The doctor cuts her a sharp look. “What’s your opinion? Other than that.”
“The way a haruspex works is, you share your body with an AI. Sometimes one’s in control, sometimes the other is, depending on what’s optimal.” Krissana taps the activity logs attached to each death-record with her fingernail. “When they died, it was the human half in charge.” She imagines sinking into those tenebrous waters, trapped in a prison of her own flesh. The haruspices’ final thoughts were not collected: no way to determine whether it was their mind or body that was overridden.
“Tell me about potential infection vectors. You’ve got access to information I don’t.”
Neither of them brings up the possibility that it might be something else, some death pact: the suicides were synchronized too well. “That’s if you assume the human half can be infected, reprogrammed.” She snaps her fingers. “Which it can be, people don’t even have to be melded with an AI to be susceptible like that. Conditioning, a trigger. Except, how was the trigger sent? We have all the communication logs and there was nothing untoward. How was it possible that the human halves all happened to be in control? That should’ve made haruspices difficult to suborn. If the human part was in distress, the AI would take over. If the AI was infiltrated . . . and so on.”
The waiter appears with a fresh pot of tea and a second cup. Orfea thanks him, fills both cups, and pushes one toward Krissana even though she probably remembers Krissana doesn’t drink tea hot. “And if both are compromised?”
“A haruspex is under constant observation; every milliliter of carbon dioxide they produce is monitored. The Mandate has plenty of processing threads to spare, collectively. They wouldn’t miss even the tiniest aberration. Anything that tampers with brain chemistry would’ve been detected right away.”
“In other words, you have no idea.”
“No. Neither does the Mandate.” Krissana smirks and runs her hands down her arms where her most visible implants reside, switching on the chameleon veil. In an instant her skin fills out, erasing even the scar tissue of surgical sites: there is much to be said for Mandate technology. “I’ve got an idea where to start, however, though it’s best to hide what I am. Are you free for the rest of tonight, Doctor?”
“I am. You don’t have to keep calling me doctor.”
“I’m used to addressing you by some sort of title.” Agent, officer. “It’s tradition.”
Orfea makes a face, but lets it pass.
The trams are busy even at this hour; that is the kind of place Shenzhen is, relentless and unceasing in its march. Krissana imagines that if she lives here long enough, she’d be able to tell the time by crowd density at a given station—clocks would be obsolete. The mass presses them into the carriage. Up close Orfea smells faintly of honeysuckle. Krissana is accustomed to her exuding expensive fragrances, spiced, the kind harvested from impossible oceans and suspended in vials of nacre. She used to breathe in Orfea’s skin so much, back then.
They change trams, heading to the very edge of Luohu, where it abuts the waystation that contains each district and keeps the ecospheres distinct. Visible from here, disrupting at last the illusion that they are on a planet: the wall extends in all directions, deific in scale, from the distance a thin membrane. In truth they are impenetrable, their integument built to withstand ballistic pressure and implosive warheads. Even if an army successfully breaches one district, they would have difficulty piercing the next and the walls would seal around them, trapping them like ants in amber. So the theory goes: in Shenzhen’s short history, this defense has not yet been tested. Krissana has heard the Alabaster Admiral speculate on it, on the integrity of the waystations, but it remained conjecture—a fantasy, a logistic puzzle rather than any real desire to lay siege.
Their destination, Club Fantasia, nests deep inside a cavernous complex, unsubtle with its name and less subtle with its presentation. The entrance is an arch wound through with brass and enamel, a thick foliage motif through which a fox’s face or tail peeks then darts out of sight. Never quite there, never entirely absent. They need an invitation to enter. Krissana uses her clearance to moot the point.
They file into an auditorium with dim, dusky lighting. Cages depend from overhead, swaying to music heavy on strings: erhu, zither. Fox replicants move underfoot like ground fog, shimmering and russet. Sometimes they disappear, replaced by a woman in Tang dynasty silks whose robes are pulled down to bare a breast or an arm, to expose skin dusted in pearl and platinum. Gold lenses over their eyes, gold nail guards over their fingertips.
Lanterns slanted at irregular angles bleed livid scarlet light across the floor. Above, the cages are filling with spectators, some remote viewing and projecting avatars with starburst eyes and silver mouths, others here in person. Krissana leads the way to a mezzanine table. “It was fully booked,” she says, “but a seat happened to clear up. Aren’t we lucky?”
“I’m sure you walk in august fortune and incomparable auspices, Operative.” Orfea pitches her voice low. The music is growing louder, giving them cover. “This is an exclusive show, I presume.”
“And pricey to view, yes. They upsell it as avant-garde but it’s mostly pornographic.” She scrolls through the club’s surveillance, feeds of the public areas, the entrances and exits, and the private rooms. The third category gives view to acts much more explicit—women entangled on beds lined with frangipani, people in threes or fours furiously rutting on gloaming sheets or spreads of cerise silk. Now umbral, now strobed by neon flashes. “I’m looking for somebody. Zie’s a regular, spends most of zer paychecks here. An American.”
“Shenzhen takes in immigrants from Pax Americana?”
“Sometimes. Rarely. In this case—” A fox nudges her ankle, looking plaintive. She shoos it off. “Zie was an asset I recruited.”
Orfea sits up straight. “You’ve been working forthe Mandate. And you went back to Pax Americana.”
“Looks like zie’s here.” One of the cages has spilled down a cable. Krissana’s target takes hold of it and is lifted up to join an older, bronze-skinned neutrois. They will not be able to see Orfea and her clearly; the vantage point is wrong for that and the light is unreliable. “Zer name is Mina Quang, an AI architect. Pax Americana wanted to build autonomous intelligences of their own—who doesn’t—and add safeguards that’d prevent them from joining the Mandate. Mina was working on that but wanted out. I delivered, but there was some mess and gore along the way so zie and I aren’t on good terms these days.”
A young Chinese woman in white brocade is led on a slim, glittering chain to the center of the stage. She has been expertly made up, her eyes painted to look larger and more feverish than they already are, but on her own she wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. A customer, Krissana judges, rather than a performer: someone who has paid handsomely for the privilege, to be featured this night, maybe to lose her virginity in style. Foxes fill the stage. The light goes out.
When it comes back on, the stage has been overrun with grass, thick and gold and so high they half-obscure the girl from view. She is passed from one fox-woman to the next, kissed on brow and eyelids, then full on the mouth. The music climbs and the scarlet lights scythe across the performance. Gold nail guards graze across the girl’s neck, down her back; a layer of porcelain silk slides off. Out of view, an actor does something—a hand between her thighs, a finger crooked—and the girl arches, moaning, supported between three fox-women.
Krissana turns to the feed that shows Mina Quang in zer cage, looking on, avid. Zie is guiding zer companion’s hand to zer breasts. “The American project,” she goes on, “progressed pretty far. Their idea was not just to build AIs that couldn’t join the Mandate, but to also build one that would and infect the Mandate with something lethal. You can imagine why Shenzhen took an interest.”
Orfea has leaned back in her chair, politely disinterested, though Krissana catches her gaze straying to the stage. “How successful were they?”
“They’d captured a Mandate AI and were reverse-engineering it by the time I got Mina out.”
The doctor exhales in a hiss. “Was the AI recovered?”
“Not exactly, but it’s no longer an issue.” Krissana seeded the American network with scorched-earth protocols, courtesy of the Mandate. They decimated most things—fragments of the captive AI, military communication, administrative records dating back decades. Even their propaganda broadcasts were crippled in the process, splash damage. “Here’s how to handle Mina. Zer companion doesn’t look like they want to play, so zie’ll be looking for an aggressive stranger who can fulfill zer needs, a domineering beauty who’ll put zer in zer place and do wicked, bruising things to zer body.”
“Krissana.”
“I’m serious. But also offer zer the death of Director Georgina Whitten. She runs the American secret police and used to make Mina’s life hell. The Mandate will take care of it.”
On the stage, an empty cage has lowered, trapping the girl. Two fox-women hold her against the bars, one biting her neck, the other thrusting into her, though the act is disguised by heavy brocade. The music ends; the auditorium dims until there’s no more to see. In the dark, the girl cries out, the sound feral and high as a hawk’s.
What a thing, to offer a death: how potent it makes one feel, the rush of supremacy it grants.
To Orfea, Georgina Whitten is a name detached from face or context, from past or future or interiority—not a real person at all nor a human being. The Armada of Amaryllis is often hired to run interference against Pax Americana, whose forces periodically strike out against its neighbors. Krungthep Station, the Seoul Belt, the Diamond Republic of Da Nang. These skirmishes are meant to settle scores real or perceived, or to deliver judgment from God. In American eyes the inhabited universe is heathen, strayed from the path of righteousness and Pax Americana alone is the sole beacon of virtue, the final bastion.
From the inside, Pax Americana is by all accounts a violent dictatorship whose citizens live in mortal terror. Most likely this Georgina is a monster, and most likely Mina Quang has good reasons to despise her. An easy justification to reduce an entire human to a bargaining chip, a procedure that is like an old friend and a bad habit to Orfea. She sold and purchased so many executions or assassinations that she no longer remembers the names, they have shed from her recall like dead skin: tertiary to her own life, less than a footnote. She felt that way right up until Krissana did it to her, using her as currency in a transaction, offering her up to secure the Alabaster Admiral’s grace.
Once Orfea thought herself untouchable, and Krissana taught her she was a minor cog in a vast apparatus. Once Orfea thought herself in love, and Krissana lessoned her in the precise worth of sentiment.
Mina Quang stands outside a private room; as Krissana predicted, zer companion is nowhere to be seen. The American has hair dyed strident magenta; zer septum is pierced and zer throat is encircled by a black ribbon. By zer looks, some of zer grandparents were from Da Nang or Krungthep, depending on how surnames have intermingled.
Zie eyes Orfea as she draws close.
“You’re on your own,” Orfea says. She pitches her voice low, full of command. She doesn’t quite corner zer but she does step in, encroaching on personal space. “Did your friend abandon you?”
“Did yours?” Zie looks up—zie is petite, no more than a hundred fifty-five, if that. Slender to the point of gaunt, bird-boned face nearly overwhelmed by ruby ringlets. Zer English has a drawl like an engine’s, an accent that turns the vowels craggy and exotic. “I’m very bored, lady. The staff are fine, but I’m not in the mood for foxes. Do something different, entertain me.”
Orfea cups the androgyne’s chin in her hand and slides her thumb under Mina’s ribbon. Velvet and snug. “Isn’t someone like you more fit to be entertainment than the other way around? How unruly. You need a firm hand.” She pulls on the length of velvet, making zer stretch on tiptoes.
Mina exhales. Zer eyes are wide, long lashes fluttering fast, and zie slackens in Orfea’s grip, between her and the wall. Zer tongue darts out; zie smells, thickly, of whisky. “What do you have in mind?”
There is simplicity to this, rote almost. Every encounter may be unique but there are expectations and roles to fulfill, now that she has established what she is and what Mina will be: that duel of will is over. The rest is a matter of opening zer like a pomegranate. Nuances can be found out, later, through patient exploration. She is not here for patience or nuance. “Something public—right here. Entertain me. Show me what you’re made of, little toy, and I will show you what I am.” And she does thrill to this, even after all this time. Back in the day it was one of the methods in her repertoire, a well-worn tool ever close at hand. She presses Mina into the paneled wall and tugs at zer ringlets, tipping zer face back, baring zer throat. The trick is momentum, to build it, to maintain it so the subject is overwhelmed—blinded.
Perhaps it is the music beating with aphrodisiac urgency, perhaps it is the stage performance fresh in memory—the girl and the cage and that single wail. Or it may be that Mina’s companion did not satisfy and has left zer frustrated, on the brink. Either way zie parts zer legs, and Orfea pushes her knee between them as she wraps her fingers around zer throat. A delicate neck, constructed of even more delicate parts—the jugular, the windpipe. She keeps her grip steady, enough to be felt, not enough to pose a real threat. They are not there yet.
Zie moves against the knob of her knee, the bone there. Slow at first. Orfea whispers in zer ears what she will do to zer in a dark, silken place. With ropes, with knives. She tightens her hand, just a fraction, and it is as though she has found a key and turned it in the lock that is Mina. Zie jerks and moans into her palm, a keening breathy noise, as of rapture or incredible agony. Zer eyes screw shut.
Orfea feels light-headed, as if a knot in her muscles has been abruptly released, as if she’s been the one to meet climax. She keeps Mina upright—zie sags against her knee—and guides zer into the private room. “I’m not done with you yet.”
Inside there is only one piece of furniture, a broad shallow bed, meant for only one purpose. Mina spills into it, loose-limbed and giggling. “You want something from me,” zie says, dreamily. “I can get on my knees and eat you out. You can cut me up and fuck me raw. Anything you like.”
Orfea runs her hand along the line of zer hip and thigh, making promises with her nails. It has been years since she’s done something like this—she tries not to think of Krissana, who was once hers, or pretended to be. The rush is there all the same, the surge that comes after successful conquest: akin to what ancient warlords felt, she imagines, or what the Alabaster Admiral herself does. Her skirt is damp where zie rode and sweated and came. “I do want something from you.” She crawls up the bed, pinning down Mina’s wrists and straddling zer. “And I have something to give you in return.”
“Yes.” Zie trembles under her, arousal and anticipation.
She makes sure she has a secure hold on Mina before she says, “Let’s talk about Georgina Whitten.”
For half a second zie does not react. Then zie bucks, struggling to wrench zer hands free, trying to throw her off. Orfea’s no longer as fit as she used to be—all those compulsory gym hours—but she still has the advantage of sheer mass, Mina being so small and no fitter than Orfea. Zie kicks at her but there’s no real strength to it. She presses her weight down along the length of Mina’s body, lover-close, and waits for zer to tire out.
“Fuck you,” Mina says, panting.
“The mood is hardly appropriate.” Orfea grimaces. She will have scratches to show for this, superficial but livid. “I’d like your help. In exchange, I’ll give you Whitten’s annihilation. You pick the time and manner.”
Zie freezes. “You’re giving me what.” Then a snort. “That’s not bloody likely. You’re working for the Mandate, aren’t you?”
“Leave the details to me, Mina. Now are we going to talk like civilized people, or do I have to rip off your clothes and tie you to the bed with them?”
“There isn’t enough material. But I wouldn’t mind.” Zie’s muscles relax, a little. “I’ll be good.”
Orfea rises, placing herself between zer and the door. Zie watches her, trying to determine whether she is armed. If Orfea is a special agent, extrajudicial, the close contact would not have been informative. Guns can be miniaturized, and there are smaller things that can be as deadly. She makes a point of not touching or looking at where Mina has broken her skin. A show of invulnerability. “You’re an expert on AIs.”
A sluggish blink. “You’re here about the suicides.” Zie shakes zerself. “That’s almost funny. There are other AI researchers. Some more up to date.”
“Not many have acted against the collective.” Any that have, Orfea suspects, were assassinated: an AI’s proxy appearing without fanfare, ambushing them at home or work. A bullet or something else—she’s never seen the Mandate in combat, has no preconceived notions of what that might look like, beyond the knowledge that regardless of method they are efficient. That nowhere across the universe is secure enough to keep them out once one has their attention. Mina must have been spared on a clause negotiated by Krissana.
Zie draws up zer knees. It makes zer look even daintier. “I want Georgina Whitten found in compromising positions with another woman. Or to have footage that looks enough like it leaked to her administration. I’d say to their press, but that’s all state propaganda. So.”
Pax Americana does not look upon that kindly—from Orfea’s limited exposure to their doctrines, they consider non-heterosexual relations abhorrent. “You’ll need to hold up your end of the bargain first. We can hardly ruin her career one half at a time.”
Mina chortles, covers zer face, chortles harder. “I’ll send you all the data I have, though I’d be stunned if my old coworkers pulled this suicide epidemic off. However this even works. Not to brag, but I was much better at what I did than they were, and the closest I ever came to cracking this . . . well, you can see for yourself. Oh, just imagine, Director Whitten in a lurid tableau. Can I get a live feed when it’s distributed? Pretty please.”
“We will see.” It is no longer much of a haggling. She forwards the data Mina has sent her—there is a hefty amount—and Krissana returns with a short message, This is the real thing, the ambassador just verified it. Well done, Doctor. “Thank you for this. I’ll notify you once the director’s been dealt with.”
“The very second, if you could just.” Zie grins, all teeth. Bloodthirsty, no longer so fragile. “Do you plan to kill me off or anything? That’s fine too, but let me savor it first. Seeing that bitch put down like a dog will be worth everything.”
Orfea makes her exit. By now a new show has begun, different motif, different performers: spiderwebs above the stage and eight-limbed women crawling across. Illumination has gone from crimson to cobalt, flattening the spectators into shadow puppets. She weaves her way through briskly.
Out in the parking lot, the air is toothed and brittle. Krissana is waving at her from behind a bronze car. “Fantastic job, as usual. Georgina Whitten’s straight, but concocting believable footage won’t be too hard. They’ll turn on her right away. It’ll be the firing squad for her and they’ll exorcise the corpse, just to make sure the succubus of homosexuality doesn’t malinger and possess other godly women.”
“The way Mina wants her brought low is very specific.” And specifically humiliating.
“Gender heterodoxy, the Americans call it. They’re very particular about birthrates; they think gestating tanks are Satan’s technology and that gay couples can’t reproduce—recognize just two genders, you see, and even then under strict definitions. Breeding camps run by nuns, if you can credit the thought. They hand out little Bibles to every new intake.” Krissana’s mouth twists, as though reliving the taste of something foul. “Back there, Mina was thought to be a woman. Spared the camps since zie was brilliant with code, but mostly because zie isn’t fully Caucasian. Pax Americana is a special kind of hell. Never seen any place like it.”
Orfea’s thoughts snag on the idea, the image. “Was zie caught committing . . . heterodoxy? With you?”
“Something like that. I was deep undercover and it was a way to get zer out. Zie was safe, I made sure of it, and we spirited zer away while zie was en route to one of those breeding facilities.” Krissana shrugs. “Understandably, zie doesn’t want anything to do with me now.”
“These past twelve years you’ve been committing atrocities.” And Orfea was not the only victim.
“These past twelve years I’ve gotten things done in service to causes greater than myself. Results are what count.” But she laughs, loudly, as if she doesn’t mean any of what she has said. The burnished car swings open. “We’re both veterans at atrocities, Doctor, and I used to adore your hardness. The way you could leave people bleeding into a drain and step around them, like they were less than nothing and you were everything. But we should get going. We’ve got an ugly little mystery to solve.”