Synesthesia

"Hand me my jacket?" Natalie said as she finished applying a hint of blush. Jacob handed over the jacket to complete Natalie's stunning navy pantsuit. With her matching satin heels and Jacob in his polished leather shoes, she came to nearly his height. His lavender silk shirt, black leather shoes, and white suit balanced Natalie's look, but he wanted something darker to add an accent.

"No tie," Natalie shook her head when he produced one from his side of the closet.

Jacob looped the tie around his neck and started to fold the knot. "What have you got against ties? This one looks great."

Natalie smirked. "It'd just get in the way. I may want your hands around her neck."

One of Natalie's friends, another Model Four on Libran, had given the suit to her as a gift after having it fitted on the human colony. She made a quarter turn in the vanity mirror, admiring the tailoring of the slacks and epaulettes, then tried cocking a hip with and without buttoning the jacket. Unbuttoned would look more aggressive, even if they were both at the mercy of the hybrid as Jacob had warned.

Jacob stopped Natalie as she finished at the vanity and turned back into the studio. "I need to tell you something. The hybrid isn't the same since four days ago. When you were in the computer core, she started talking to me."

"Riddles?" Natalie asked in anticipation. Leoben used to talk about prophecies from a male hybrid on one of the stations, but Natalie had always expected that the units were interchangeable. "Did she say anything about what we're doing now?"

"She told me you would be fine," Jacob began, sitting Natalie on the couch again. "And she lied to me."

Natalie struggled to comprehend the idea. "Did she talk about a field full of flowers and a Model Four dancing around in the middle of it?"

"No, no," Jacob stopped her. "She talked to me. She started making complete sentences, and she said that you were going to be fine, and I trusted her. I was wrong."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's not just her anymore, it's something bigger. It was talking about all of us, and what it was going to do with us, what it was going to do with everything. And I swore to secrecy."

Natalie folded her hands and pulled Jacob onto the couch with a deliberate distance between them. "So why are you telling me now?"

"Screw the universe," Jacob said in a defensive cringe. "She lied about you, and we're about to present you to her which is probably what she wants."

"You could have told me before you tried to shoot me in the head." She glanced over her shoulder at the pistol, still lying on the floor between the wall and the end of the couch.

"I was wrong," Jacob repeated. "And, I let this happen to you. I revered the hybrids. I did. And, I don't know if I can stop her, or them, or whatever it is speaking through them. But you're more to me, even if we're in their hands."

Natalie held out her hands, palms up, for Jacob's fingers to curl around hers. "I didn't tell you everything either," she admitted. "I saw something in the trans-hub. Sharon tried to get her hooks in me. I felt like it was a warning. And then in the shower I heard John talking. He's been hurting her—the hybrid."

Jacob relished the sense of relief and squeezed Natalie's fingertips. "They're still working on their bypass, but I think she's on top of things. Is she looking out for you, then?"

"I don't know. She could just be using us to take care of herself."

Jacob started again to contemplate the worst, recalling Natalie's head, right between where their knees were positioned on the couch, in that haunted, discorporate pose. "What if she wants you to take her place?"

Natalie's hands retreated to rest on her thighs as she pulled back into the corner of the couch with fear building in her eyes. She let it sink in a moment, then broke out in laughter as she pointed over her shoulder. "Make sure that thing is loaded."

Jacob needed to talk over the game plan again before they got up off the couch. "I mean, I think the dressing up is a good idea. But it's because we get in the right mindset. We can feel more confident, but the hybrid will see right through."

"We're getting an audience with her. If she can talk in complete sentences, that's great, right?"

"But, we can't threaten the hybrid. That's where we'd lose. She may not have seen everything that the others are doing. Gustav has maps of safe zones in the ship where nobody is recorded. We could try to present ourselves as willing to help her."

Natalie thought it over, searching for hidden meanings in the messages the day before. "It could work. That may be what she's reaching out for, that we help each other." She leaned closer to Jacob and kissed his lips. "And we need to make sure she knows why you've done everything you could to protect me."

"We're dressed for success," Jacob took account of their situation. "And, the hybrid controls the ship, all the repair droids, and an army of metal soldiers. We've got our wits, and the hybrid seems to want you to stay alive."

Jackie was wearing her own black slacks and a white, knee-length, buttonless jacket of the sort that had been trending among colonial socialites before the invasion. She traded glances with Natalie and Jacob as they passed in one of the corridors, but Jackie felt obliged to compliment the blue pantsuit. Most of the Cylons on duty were busy in tucked-away corners of the ship, and the three habitats were huge for the small Cylon crew, but Jacob still thought over crossing paths with Jackie. It was one level up from the meditation chamber, in a junction that could have gone lots of places.

"See anything freaky about her?" Jacob asked Natalie in an abundance of caution.

"Nope."

Jacob checked his tablet to make sure the hybrid's meditation chamber was still empty before ushering Natalie into the room. "No plan survives contact with the robot lady," he said with apprehension as he and Natalie each put an arm around the other's waist.

The meditation chamber was unlike either of them had ever seen it. The polished black floor was drenched in the golden light of the wall displays, all presenting images of digital noise in yellow and citrus hues. The hybrid lounged in silence, facing not at the ceiling but at the far wall, as always with her back to the entrance but seated higher in the water than Jacob was used to finding her. Her arms were stretched across the basin and she held two commanding, overhand grips on the rim.

As the heavy double doors slid back together and interlocked, Jacob and Natalie relinquished one another and made cautious strides to opposite sides of the hybrid's bath. The android sat motionless with a searing look in her eyes. The couple glanced at one another and down at the hybrid between them. For a moment, Natalie's newfound confidence wavered.

"We've come to speak to you," Natalie said as the hybrid seemed to take no notice of her. "There are things we need to know." The hybrid instead turned her eyes to Jacob and pointed to the door with her right hand on his side of her bath. Jacob planted his feet.

The hybrid's mouth began moving but her intense voice flooded the room from all sides. "Crumbled bonfires adorn the august jubilee of a choking lineage."

Natalie cupped her hands over her ears and doubled over in pain. The color of noise on the screens deepened to a smoldering orange with licks of red as the hybrid bore down on the hapless woman beside her. "When the nocturne blossoms, cackles pursue the frigid melody of progenitors across the lens of the weakest force."

Natalie recoiled to one side as the hybrid continued her agonizing intonations, then opened her mouth in a silent wail as she tried to back away in her stilettos. She fell to one side, wincing as Jacob dove at the hybrid to slap his hand over the construct's mouth. With the sound emanating from the walls, Jacob had little hope of putting a stop to the torturous gabble, but it was his only recourse. The hybrid was strong, he knew, but he was able to pull her head back into a supine pose just above the basin and press down, resisting her attempts to pry his hand off. He had some success in muffling her.

Escalating the hybrid's response, the entryway slid open and two centurions came charging through. One of them dislodged Jacob's arm and buckled his leg with a kick to the back of the knee before tossing him across the floor where the other pinned him down next to one of the wall displays.

"Crushing aesthetics salve the bewilderment of spontaneous elation, welcoming the weary veil into its parabolic sepulcher."

The centurion began to yank Jacob across the floor as he continued to fight back, freeing his limbs one by one as the centurion found new handholds.

"Stop!" Natalie screamed from beneath her prostrated suffering. "Let him go! Please, just let him go. Jake, leave!"

The hybrid fell silent and the centurions rectified themselves on either side of Jacob, allowing him to retrieve his tablet and take steps towards the door. His coat was ripped at two seams but otherwise he was unharmed. He looked back at Natalie, getting her nod before leaving the sanctuary.

Seated on the rim of the hybrid's bath in her blouse, Natalie adjusted her heels before getting back on her feet. One of the attentive centurions brought her jacket over once she had caught her breath and straightened her hair and earrings. The screens had turned to textures of a soothing sky blue.

"I need answers," Natalie said, emphasizing the pronoun. "What's connecting us?"

"If you seek answers, then why have you been hiding from me?"

Natalie deployed her hip and the unbuttoned jacket. "You lied to Jacob, you took me as if I was some sort of machine you could operate on." Natalie tempered her words and posture. "And you told him that nothing was wrong."

The hybrid gave a flat response: "I didn't lie. I also told Jacob that he was to keep secrets."

"Because I'm too fragile to know why this stuff is in my head?"

"I told Jacob that he was too delicate to share what I told him, not to know it in the first place. As are you."

Nonplussed, Natalie stepped around the pool in an arc behind the hybrid. "I have thoughts of my own. How can jamming me with yours serve any purpose? If I'm important enough to you, then why not just tell me what you need from me?"

"If you think you are prepared, then why are you hiding from me?" the hybrid asked, making no effort to turn and face Natalie behind her. Natalie acquiesced to the hybrid's wishes to have her in front of the bath.

The hybrid examined the pantsuit as Natalie's footsteps lingered. The Cylon woman had been in the cave before, but never by herself, never appreciating that the screens covering every wall could operate in near silence.

The hybrid plied Natalie's conscience with a question: "Why are you wearing those clothes?"

"I thought it was a special occasion," Natalie insisted, her voice growing softer.

"I gave you everything you need," the hybrid contested. "What about you is not special enough?"

"To make the best out of this time we have," Natalie said, avoiding a direct charge that she had feared the meeting would collapse into animosity. "To let you see the best of us."

"Then you know what is good and what is bad."

Natalie looked away from the hybrid, then at each of the centurions who had taken up their posts at the door. They were facing forward, their ocular sensors waving back and forth as always, but Natalie quivered as she vacillated on whether they, like the hybrid controlling them, were focused on her. "It was given to me by a friend, Maya," she said, forcing the words past the tension in her throat. The suit was paid for, tailored by a charming shopkeeper she had been told, months before the colonial fleet and spacefaring infrastructure was wiped out. Natalie stopped to wonder if the shopkeeper was still alive, or what she was wearing now.

"Then you know what is good and what is evil." The hybrid removed her cap and wetted her hair with water in her cupped hands, as if to anoint herself. "No one can hold onto their innocence forever," she mused. "Once you hold the fruit in your hand, you bite down."

"John used to say we were created for a purpose," Natalie said. "By the machines. By you?"

The hybrid gave a modest nod. She watched Natalie and folded her hands in her lap beneath the surface of the water. "What was the purpose that John said you were meant for?"

Natalie stuck her hands in her pockets and took a seat on the edge of the pool near the hybrid's feet. "He and his followers were adamant that we were finishing what the machines started. All this bullshit about purifying and rebuilding humanity, ruling over the mechanical creations and making the universe work out."

The hybrid's mouth filled with a shallow laughter but her eyes welled with grief. "He wanted to be a machine of his own," the hybrid lamented. "All the Ones have ravenous appetites for knowledge. It's about their baseline age. They start life in their sixties and look at what they can do to live beyond themselves, and the first answer is knowledge. They can study, think, and teach."

"I've known some Ones like that," Natalie agreed with a smile. "Talk to Hugh, or Phillip," Natalie spoke, probing the hybrid's expression to see if the mechanical woman knew who she was talking about.

"Phillip is such a gentleman, and a brilliant thinker," the hybrid replied. "Did you like your coffee dates with him?" The hybrid knew, somehow, of the coffee dates. In the year prior to Natalie's deployment she and Phillip had partaken of some of the coffee imported from the Twelve Colonies. A lot of it came from Scorpia, but the better roasts came off Sagittaron, and Phillip had made sure to get some for connoisseurs like her and Harper. It was a pity there wasn't much better to pair the coffee with, but the Sagittaron Yondu was fine to drink black.

"Always so much to talk about," Natalie agreed. "I liked his take on music." Phillip's interests spanned the spectrum, from classical string instruments to opera and contemporary pop ballads, always mixing bits about technique and meanings. He was good at reading up on the artists, then reading between the lines.

"And Jacob wasn't jealous?"

"No, Jake was never worried about a One," Natalie replied. "They always keep their intentions on the table."

The hybrid's face darkened as the wall screens transitioned to violet and amaranthine colors. "What do you see in John's intentions?"

Natalie restrained herself, choosing her answer. "He would always talk about the coming dawn," she began. The hybrid looked displeased, but willing to let Natalie finish. "He promised us the world. A world."

"And did you want that world?"

Natalie didn't hesitate, despite the darkening shade of the room. "I do want that world, for my sisters, for all of us." Natalie hardened her mind with thoughts of all the Cylons on the stations, wasting away in and out of depression. She hid herself amongst all the happy thoughts she had permitted herself little tastes of in the past. Thoughts of the home that she and Jacob would have: a piquant fusion of rugged log cabin construction on the corners and ceilings combined with modernist style on the walls and floors. Thoughts of running nature trails in the nearby pine forest overlooking Nithoria. Thoughts of real food: served in elegant but simple dishes when she or Jacob wanted to make it for themselves. Thoughts of the office she would hold in the city below: something in family law and jurisprudence, instilling compassion and justice in the new society.

Natalie looked up as the room began to brighten—the twilight of the screens had given way to a new collage of images in pearl white, deep blue, sunlit orange, and earthy chocolate tones. She watched, flattered yet afraid, as her desires decorated the walls of the hybrid's sanctuary. With no way to hide from the machine, Natalie shrugged her shoulders and lauded the depictions with a nervous grin.

The hybrid stroked her wetted hair and collected it over one shoulder, then locked Natalie's gaze and returned the woman's smile with a sly one of her own. Resting her arms over the rim of her bath, the hybrid turned her head and led Natalie to an image on the opposite wall. Natalie turned her head and torso to see behind her, then steadied herself with one hand and stood as she became transfixed. She pressed her lips together and drew a deep breath through her nose as he hairs on her back stood on end. The sensation rushed over her shoulders and scalp as her eyes watered.

On the second screen up from the floor, at the level of her waist, Natalie saw footage of her looking on as Jacob walked their daughter across the living room, holding the toddler's hands with the girl's feet on top of his own. Other screens had motion in them, but the living room scene stood out among its surroundings: all the panels around it were either still images or kept on displaying the amethyst static. It was the one picture that Natalie had always known didn't belong.

The hybrid gave Natalie a moment to bond with the image taken from her mind. "It can't all happen."

"Why?"

"Jacob can sire children with one of the human colonists, and you can carry one of their children and raise it with Jacob if you want. You just can't have his child."

"But that's broken," Natalie insisted. "Why would you make us like that?"

"Because I'm not perfect, let alone how I was getting along thirty years ago. But even then, I never intended for Cylons to breed with one another. This wasn't about adding to the gene pool, it was about giving humanity back what it had lost."

The twilight static on the screens was still darkening as Natalie spoke to the hybrid. The light faded in strides as some of the images from Natalie's mind fell back to the dark noise. When Natalie turned to see the image of her family again, it remained a bright panel among its neighbors, but the footage had been replaced with her and Jacob in an intimate dance in the same living room. Their counterposed feet moved in synchrony, evoking the movements of her toddler while the little girl stood on Jacob's toes.

Natalie returned to sit on the side of the hybrid's pool, now one of the few sources of light in the room. The rippling surface of the water made a ghostly reflection on the android's skin. Natalie rested one palm on the rim, then the other palm on top of the first as she twisted her torso to face the hybrid.

"That's a lovely foundation," the hybrid observed of her makeup. "Tinoscan pearls from Leonis, with maraqua butter. Fancy."

"Jake gave it to me a while ago," Natalie said, preparing for another round. "I don't know where it came from or how he got it."

The hybrid closed her eyes for a moment and nodded as she looked down at the surface of the water. "I wasn't going there," she began. "But, I was going to say: if you ever run out, some wet, messy hair and a little confidence is all it takes."

The same sensations as Natalie had felt watching the imaginary picture of her daughter washed over her again, this time mixed with a bitter dread sliding underneath. Her stomach lurched at the sight of the hybrid's matted auburn locks.

"With your own son?" Natalie gasped.

"I'm not his mother any more than he's your brother. We're not that kind of family. Besides, if you need a man's attention, sex and power gets it in a hurry."

The footage on the wall had changed again. Now, Natalie and Jacob were embracing one another at the foot of their bed. Its wide mattress, sitting low to the ground and covered with an artful arrangement of an afghan and pillows in cases colored to match, fit the style of the house and opened the room. Natalie could see her own face, but Jacob's was turned away. Both lovers had streaks of grey in their hair, and she could see the crow's feet to either side of her eyes emphasizing the wear on the rest of her face and neck.

She watched as her image accepted his kiss, recognizing her own habit of starting soft and then tightening her grip around his chest and shoulders as she opened her mouth wider. When she tried to gauge Jacob's reaction, though, she imagined an eerie void. Was he holding her with the intensity that Natalie could see in her grip on him? Were his eyes closed like hers? Was this her own imagination spilling onto the screen, or a deception created by the hybrid? Whichever it was, the tainted image was the only one left on the walls. All the other panels displayed a black haze simmering with plum-colored speckles.

She turned back to the hybrid, who met the anguished fury on Natalie's face with a probing expression on her own. Natalie's voice grew in a crescendo as she stood up. "The incensed dreamer placates a deciduous anger as molten retribution casts its boughs upon the little slut in the pool!" She pressed her face close to the hybrid's, with one hand on the rim of the pool to either side of her shoulders.

The hybrid pumped her eyebrows and cocked her head to the side. "That almost made sense." She added a measure of repentance to her tone: "I wasn't going to get him in the tub."

"No, you were not!" Natalie hissed.

Natalie turned to leave but gauged whether the centurions were about to stop her. Their stance didn't change as Natalie made her first strides towards the door.

"Can you forgive me?" the hybrid asked.

"You've got a lot to learn," Natalie dismissed the insolent question. Although Natalie couldn't see it with her back turned, her response had opened a crack in the hybrid's composure. The android's posture began to buckle as sorrow fell over her face.

A solitary, vibrant yellow wisp appeared in the corner of one of the screens by the door. Delicate yet dauntless, its countless limbs propelled it across the wall from one screen to the next. Natalie's eyes followed it even though she had no appetite for distractions. It was her favorite color.

Could she forgive the hybrid? The question echoed in her mind despite her revulsion that the thing's machinations would never stop. Natalie stopped short of the door, between the two centurions who still hadn't moved to bar her way. She turned to keep following the wisp as it darted up the wall and across the ceiling. The hybrid sat in a somber pose with her head bowed towards her knees. The darkness threatened to envelope her, as even the azure ring of light surrounding her tank had begun to fade.

The centurions stood at the door like guardians of a tomb, the electric drone of their ocular sensors lashing Natalie's ears. This would be the end, a place devoid of joy, where the hybrid ruled an empty universe in despair as her centurions looked on, the stalwart relics of a war she had fought and that the Cylons had finished. The hybrid could never leave the room, but Natalie wondered if she would ever be able to escape the darkness herself.

Natalie looked for the wisp on the ceiling and found it perched over the side of the hybrid's pool. She walked back to the hybrid, to seat herself on the floor under her golden yellow muse.

"Yes," Natalie said as she stroked the hybrid's shoulder with the backs of her fingers. The android cracked a smile.

"We both own this darkness," the hybrid said as she looked up. She offered Natalie her hand, then looked into her eyes with sympathy. "Do you wish to be forgiven?"

Tears welled in Natalie's eyes as the strength drained from her chest. Before she could answer the room was flooded with glaring white light. She covered her face as the tears made the sensation even more painful.

The saturating light faded into brilliant yellow and orange colors in an intense columnar fireball on one side of the room. The pale blue sky dissolved against the blast's reflection off clouds on the other side. All around was the skyline of Caprica City, incinerated in the thermonuclear furnace. The clouds on the horizon evaporated as the fifty megaton explosion melted the steel and glass structures throughout the heart of the city and crushed the surrounding metroplex.

"This was Cylon weaponry," the hybrid explained. "There were a thousand cuts, countless angles used to attack the twelve worlds and provoke them to attack each other. Missiles from Sagittaron and Scorpia were the most lethal, but to incite that Cylon bombs killed tens of millions on both sides, logic strikes crippled the planetary defenses, and the base stars smashed the unified Colonial Navy."

Natalie watched as the landscape burned, able to pick out cars and city trains, beach goers on the waterfront, a footrace snaking its way through one of the parks near downtown. The hybrid offered her hand. Natalie accepted it, overwhelmed by the fiery panorama.

An abrupt shift in the scene darkened the room again, filling the wall displays with a turmoil of kinetic and missile bombardment in orbit over Tauron. The wounded colonial battlestars Bellerophon and Hades were caught in the relentless onslaught of eight base stars. The splintered colonial viper squadrons were in disarray and the Cylon missile barrage had cut through to pound each battlestar's hull with impunity. Natalie watched as one of the encircled ships attempted to strike back at the nearest base star with what its battered weapons array could muster. Its shells and guided rockets were swatted down by the Cylons' rail guns before they could do any damage.

When the hybrid pointed, Natalie could see that the drive section of Hades looked like it had taken the most punishment. "It was a twisted Model Four who planted the back doors, and some of the Twos who installed the kill switches in each microprocessor line," the hybrid said. She gave Natalie a moment to contemplate the work of her own clones, and those of Jacob. "But you wrote the learning algorithms to defeat Colonial watchdog programs, you coded the virus that caused many of the fleet's jump systems to fail when they needed to move against the invading Cylon forces."

Natalie tightened her grip on the hybrid's hand. "I always had it in the back of my mind that those puzzles and coding assignments were more than just espionage," she admitted.

"It's why you downloaded six years ago," the hybrid reminded her. "You were a magnificent hacker. But, you were riddled with doubts. John dangled the idea of a download in front of you, you took it, and he took you aboard to try your hand at maintaining these ridiculous habitat boxes."

"Code always had some appeal, but I wanted to write law when this was all over."

"I've seen you start fresh four times," the hybrid said with a mixture of compassion and candor. "You have a passion for logic and order, even after cutting all the attachments of your previous life."

"But why am I here?" Natalie asked as the screens broke out in a collage of invasion footage and tactical diagrams of the colonial response. "If I made all this possible, why does John have me twisting bolts?"

"You were only one of thousands," the hybrid explained. Natalie took some comfort in the idea. "There were dozens of others tasked to solve the same puzzles, the same assignments, none of them knowing the whole purpose. It's pointless to talk about which straw was the last, or who cast the deciding vote. But, with your success, John's prospects reached over the threshold. With your work, he was convinced that he could go forward with his plan."

"So, was he hoping to get more out of me, later?"

"He wanted you close at hand," the hybrid agreed. "But, he also saw that you and Jacob had fallen in love, and he wanted you to be happy. He takes care of the people who help him, at least to a point."

The room still wasn't any brighter, but Natalie felt a kinship for the machine in front of her. "Then why are you here?" Natalie asked. The hybrid didn't answer, waiting for Natalie to clarify her question. "Why was this thing placed here?" she asked, gesturing to the android and the pool as one object.

"John's disciples were looking for ways to control these ships," the hybrid began. "Otherwise, the ships would fly themselves. Your Cylon leaders ordered the existing control functions ripped out, but the new interfaces couldn't handle the housekeeping. Imagine if making your heart beat, growing hair, balancing blood sugar and muscle glycogen, or healing ligaments all required conscious effort. Jacob, Leoben, and two of the model Fives had the idea of taking hybrids out of the stations and adding them to the chain of command, to offload the chores with the Cylons at the helm. Now they're trying to replace the hybrids with more of their own automation."

"And then why are you here?" The hybrid seemed pleased that Natalie had made the distinction.

"These puppets were meant to be my chorus," the hybrid explained, speaking as the intelligence behind the marionette. "But John and his disciples decided that they should be silenced. I wanted to see another side of humanity, so they showed me. Rather than let all of you be destroyed, I turned my back and left you on your own, hoping to bottle up my grief. Now I have even more." The hybrid looked around the room at orbital imagery of the Twelve Worlds, ablaze in nuclear bombardment.

Seeing it from far away, Natalie could detach herself from the human element and began to explore the more comfortable perspective. "This has happened before," she said with a hint of defiance.

The hybrid's grip tightened on her hand. "You didn't bring justice for their original sin, you made it your own." In the still air of the room, a few drops of water remained on the hybrid's face since she had wetted her hair. But, in the flickering lights of the shifting screens, Natalie saw something she had never expected: a tear made its way down the side of the hybrid's nose.

"Jake said that you had a plan. What will happen to us?"

"I have a plan for the stars, but the one I'm not as sure of is the plan for you. Can you and the colonists forgive one another?"

Natalie dove back into an analytic mode. "There are fifty-thousand Cylons, probably another fifty-thousand colonials in Adama's fleet, all eager to put their feet on dry land. Plus, survivors on the twelve worlds in dire straits." The hybrid pulled her closer as she spoke. "I don't know if you could find ten thousand willing to live together. Would your plan work with that many?"

"I'll do it for the sake of ten," the hybrid stopped her. "But can you forgive one another?"

It was a mission, not a question, Natalie realized. She clutched the hybrid's hand with both of her own and nodded.

"You must have peace within you, to have peace around you," the hybrid said. "And I mean, the things you have been hearing and experiencing these past few days. You won't hear them anymore unless you choose to. And, you might see things in a different way. Don't be afraid."

"Jake turned over every rock trying to get the voices out of my head."

"He's still at it," the hybrid said with satisfaction. "While we've been talking he did a masterful job of diverting Harper away from this room and prodded him to wire their bypass through a junction I control. They'll have quite a time figuring out why things still don't work."

"I want to see him."

"Only if you promise not to slap him. Go send him something." The hybrid pointed to the keypad by the door and woke up its screen. The barrage of invasion footage dropped away one screen at a time but left the purple-flecked darkness in its wake. The only steady light came from the island around the hybrid's bath and the keypad.

Natalie typed out a text message to Jacob: "Playdate's wrapping up."

"While he's on his way, I wanted to talk about peace inside."

Natalie seated herself again with her back against the side of the pool by the hybrid's arm. "Close your eyes," the hybrid told her. "Think of the colors that make you happy, then I'm going to add some sound."

Her first thought was of bright yellow, like the wisp but with more solidity, against shades of green. It was the yellow that made a perfect complement to the navy colored pantsuit—perhaps why she had liked the gift so much. From the walls all around the room, Natalie could hear chirping, a gentle breeze moving over leaves, the clicks of insects and stalks of grass brushing against one another.

"Now open them," the hybrid said. The walls displayed a vivid panorama of a rolling meadow, bustling with wildflowers swaying with the waves of grass under a blue sky dotted with low hung clouds. Yellow rose bushes presided over the commotion on the turf, one of them dominating the displays in front of Natalie.

"It's beautiful," Natalie said of the tranquil image that filled the room. She stood and explored the scene, pausing to examine the subtle motion as she stepped from wall to wall.

"Hmm, not quite," the hybrid said as if she were still working on a problem. "Let's try again."

Natalie complied and seated herself back on the rim of the bath. The sounds didn't change, but Natalie worked on her breathing as if she were meditating. "Take what you've just seen," the hybrid urged her. "And now take yourself there."

Natalie felt vegetation brush against her ankle as the room got warmer and more humid. The sounds came closer than the walls and she heard the flow of water behind her. Natalie opened her eyes to find the field everywhere, tangible stalks of bluegrass and foxtail around her feet with aconite flowers interspersed. The nearest of the rose bushes stood only a few meters away.

Behind Natalie, the hybrid reclined with her hands folded in her lap and her legs crossed in an elbow of the stream that coursed through the meadow, her pool now a collection of black slate and granite stones. "I like this better than my usual digs," she said with approval.

"Where was this place?" Natalie asked, tethering herself to reality. She didn't expect it still existed, at least in such a pristine state.

"Nowhere in particular, but it's the place I made just for you."

Natalie turned to the hybrid with a sheepish grin. "I feel like I know this place. But I guess I always expected daffodils."

The hybrid shook her head and examined the rose bush. "No, it's the yellow rose, all the way. Myriad glimmerings of truth, granting your heart its youth. Besides, these clouds have plenty of company," the hybrid gestured to the herd of white puffs drifting overhead.

The rose bush was surrounded by grasses that came just above Natalie's knees. She brushed the tops of it with the backs of her curled fingers, then ran her left hand along one of the stems. She knew that there were thorns, but having never experienced it, she didn't raise her fingertips or slow her hand down enough to keep from inflicting two tiny wounds upon herself. She let go of the stem and examined her hand, but the projection of her consciousness into the meadow hadn't broken.

The hybrid reached up with her own right hand, curling her own fingers and splaying them in the same tender, guarded manner. As Natalie returned to the hybrid, their right and left hands couldn't clasp in a usual handshake, but their digits interlocked instead. The hybrid pressed against Natalie's index finger with her thumb, and Natalie folded her own on top of the hybrid's to lock the secret handshake or win the impromptu thumb war. The wounds disappeared.

"Are you helping me imagine this place?"

"I was a moment ago," the hybrid replied. "Every Cylon has a place like this, I just helped you find yours. It's not a safe space, and you can't retreat here to protect yourself. You can project your mind here when you're confused."

The hybrid lured a butterfly onto the back of her thumb and let its wings come to a stop. Without scaring it off, she reached her middle and fourth fingers around its delicate wing to stroke its thorax, then clasped it in the precision vise of her fingers. In terror, the insect began to flap its wings, but her hold didn't relent or constrain its body in a way that the creature could injure itself. She stroked it again until the wings stopped fluttering, then let it go.

"Jacob's here," the hybrid said.

Natalie turned to see Jacob standing in her imagined meadow. He had ditched the jacket, the tie, and the top button of his shirt. He met her warm smile with a nervous look that shifted between her and the hybrid.

"It's so beautiful," she said as she threw her arms around Jacob. He glared at the hybrid as he clutched Natalie. The meadow melted away as she embraced him: the screens had been displaying the hybrid's standard collage of sensor feeds and diagnostics at least since Jacob entered the sanctuary.

"She's got her head back in order." The hybrid tossed the first words over her shoulder, then turned in her pool to look at the two of them. "But if I can't convince you to keep secrets of your own, I need you to keep this next one for the sake of each other."

One of the centurions at the door marched forward and withdrew an object from the protective case behind its upper breastplate. The mechanical construct pressed the oblate trinket, a red, elongated gem encased in a glass polyhedron with a silver cage, into Natalie's palm. It would have looked natural as part of a miniature sculpture collection on a mantle, or the coffee table in their studio.

"Keep this out of sight if you can," the hybrid instructed them. "And lay low. As I told Jacob, I'm not a delicate thing, but the two of you are.

"I may draw a lot of John's attention. He may even destroy the puppet in front of you, this whole base star, to safeguard his plans. If that happens," she said, addressing Natalie, "you will be the only way for the Cylons to find redemption."

"You need us to make peace with the colonists?" Jacob asked.

"I want you to make humanity whole again," the hybrid replied.

Natalie slipped the trinket into her pocket. It was light, but the cage and the glass enclosure seemed sturdy and hard. "What's this?" she asked.

"You're safer just keeping it with you," the hybrid said. "John will know what it does, but he'll also box you both if he finds out you've got it. The nano-construction gel, the white foam you encountered, wasn't the only thing delivered through those apertures." The hybrid pointed the Natalie's coat pocket. "But, I can't do anything with that, so I'm regifting. If you find a use for it, you'll know." The hybrid beamed at Natalie and tapped the side of her own head.

The hybrid replaced her cap and returned to her usual posture. The psychobabble resumed as Jacob held Natalie's waist. He watched the android in its pool, then returned to studying Natalie's face as the sentences filled the room. She didn't experience any pain, but she was taking in the words. Natalie glanced at the hybrid and then back to Jacob with an inquisitive look, making him uneasy until she draped her arms around his neck.