Chapter 10

Nia, July 8, 3110 CE

I woke up wearing the shadows of the Ex-Sovereign, the Head, and Bevel. I had to sit up to feel the warm sun on the stitches on back of my neck. My log thumped against my chest from the pocket of the hospital smock. I lifted the half gold and half silver orb in three fingers, but it grew heavier under their stares, so I had to hold it with my whole hand.

'Benzene.'

The halves rolled over each other slowly enough that their colors didn't blur together as the log floated to hang beside my eyes like a third. The two colors gave away its spinning unlike Bevel's single, solid orb. Not two colors, half colors.

The three asked after me and wouldn't move to unblock the light until I promised I was well. The implant that let me use a log hadn't given me pain during the brief surgery and now braided with the fibers of my spinal cord was a part of my body. My body wasn't as strong as Enid's, but it wouldn't ever hurt me. It was too weak.

They finally stepped out of the way of the recovery room's curlicue window. The Ex-Sovereign leaned against the white wall that made her black hair blacker but her silver headband less silver. Bevel stood in front of the tan curtain matching the tan tiles. They were the only one wearing their smile in the open.

The Head wore their unmoving eagle's face as always, but they must've had a sense of humor to alway perch themself on the fixtures. They sat with one foot in an armchair's blue green seat, one leg crossed, and their butt on top of the chair's back. Only the wall kept them from falling. I would've like to take the Head's psychic reading, but they kept their whole body covered, unlike Bevel and the Ex-Sovereign.

The Ex-Sovereign clapped her hands for breakfast. The servants brought a low, wooden folding table and boxlike stools padded on both ends.

'I haven't set up the internet, yet,' I said.

The Ex-Sovereign laughed on the inside. 'Surgery's hard on the body. You should eat a little first, rehydrate at least.'

I didn't want to eat alone in the bed when my friends ate together in front of me, so the Ex-Sovereign sent for another stool. I sat across from her with my back bared to the wind of the AC. The oval folding table brought us closer than the Round Table ever did.

Bevel frowned around the toasted crumpet between their teeth and set it down leaving marks in the sponge without biting through. The brown paper napkin cracked as they wiped the crumbs off their fingers. The Ex-Sovereign laced her crumbless fingers around a mug of coffee and awaited the news. She always used utensils.

'Key mentioned-joked, really-about Alter having someone in their room last night.'

The Ex-Sovereign set the mug on the table and her hands on her top knee. The Head set down the unused porcelain plate they'd been holding like a steering wheel.

Bevel held their tablet flat over our breakfast. The Head accessed the security footage. Everyone leaned toward the screen. We watched Alter leave their room with Baozhu over their shoulder through a fisheye.

The Ex-Sovereign drew back to their chair wearing their inner smile on the outside for the first time I'd seen them. 'Excellent work, Bevel. Who do we know who can acquire evidence?' Quotations hooked themselves around 'acquire' without her fingers. She turned to me. 'Do you think your companion might be persuaded to testify against Alter?'

'That depends on what happens to Alter.'

'They'll be executed for breaking the terms of the Loegria-Wales peace treaty, of course.'

It went against my duty to let her kill Alter even secondhand but she had to be appeased. The hunger inside her sucked the fat and muscle off her skull so she looked like a skeleton wearing a coat of human body. I couldn't look directly at her caved in eyes.

'It might be easier to blackmail Alter.'

The Ex-Sovereign waited for the explanation but I had none I knew how to give. I didn't mean to pass the blame, but the Counselor had been very vague about what we could and couldn't tell about ourselves. It couldn't hurt to be guarded. I chewed the edge of a synthetic sausage patty that tasted more like animal than sage.

The Head snapped the fingers of both hands and pointed finger guns from an invisible shoulder holster. 'Cut Morrow.'

I understood less than before they'd spoken. The Ex-Sovereign understood more. A flash of joy briefly fleshed out her face and she was beautiful and then the hunger dragged her green eyes down the long corridors of their sockets. I looked away at Bevel.

Bevel explained the Head. The Counselor only supported the current Sovereign because they took their duty literally and spent all their time in the field. This left all other Sovereign offices to the Counselor. The Ex-Sovereign merely had to blackmail the Sovereign into leaving these offices to her. Cut Morrow, indeed.

The Ex-Sovereign asked me to find the Sovereign. I still didn't have internet so Bevel showed me the Sovereign's profile on the tablet. The photo looked forced.

The Sovereign sat with one foot on the calf of the other as though they scratched an itch. They gripped the arms of the minimal black armchair with both hands. Their tag dangled over the skin bared by their indigo robe's deep Y cut. Their log floated above one tensed shoulder. They faced the camera but their eyes strayed to some unseen target at the side.

The Sovereign leapt out of the chair and into my mind. They landed in the dark space on the balls of their bare feet. Their robes billowed out behind them like moth's wings. Their tag swung against their chest in time with their heart. Maybe mine. They turned their body at an angle and looked not at but behind me.

I looked but there was only dark and empty space. I looked backed. The Sovereign had already left a trail of stills. The stills began to dissolve before I'd reached the first. The Sovereign did not want to be found. I had to run through my own mind.

I chased the Sovereign out of the medical wing and into the hall. They'd taken the lift but I didn't have time. I ran to the stairwell and jumped off the landing. I fell through the square space at the core down to the very end. I couldn't see the lift but I felt the toll of its synthetic bell. I ran.

The Sovereign fled down the wide corridor of the Court's first floor in a run that flickered them through space. Only one foot of their stills ever touched the ground. They left through the Court through the door to the courtyard. They stayed on the path of lavender gravel between the trees until the edge of the small lake. I couldn't see the next still but I felt the beat of their tag like a heart.

I dove into the lake where there was no water, only cold. There was no light, only the dissolving stills of a person diving deeper and deeper below the surface. The last was the Sovereign. Their feet floated over their head over their arm. Their hand pressed against a surface in the dark.

The Sovereign looked over their shoulder. They looked at me for less than a second. Maybe they'd never looked at all. Their eyes only stopped behind me.

I didn't want to look at the cold and lightless space behind me. It would look no different from the dark else at the bottom of the lake. The ancestors promised that only one of us could feel a stranger in our mind, but it bothered me that their eyes were the last to dissolve.

I opened my eyes. The Ex-Sovereign, the Head, and Bevel faced me from around the oval table. The Head set their plate back on the table. It had a stain of red juice from a crushed fruit.

I crossed my arms and dropped them against my chest. 'You did that on purpose!'

The Ex-Sovereign and Bevel glanced at the Head who shrugged and shook their golden eagle face. The Ex-Sovereign and Bevel didn't have more than a glance to spare. Anticipation sent little tremors through a face like a hive of bees buzzed under its skin.

'They have a secret lair at the bottom of the lake in the courtyard.'

'Fishy,' said the Head.

I laughed so hard I spattered all over the untouched grapes and chilled, buttered toast on my plate. The anticipation died everywhere on Bevel's face in an instant flattening. The Ex-Sovereign was already on her feet.

'Nicely done, Nia,' she said. Her skeleton's grin stood at odds with her silky, fluid hair and the soft, slender hand she offered me. She helped me up but did not let go. Her thumb brushed the back of my hand. 'You've found our neutrois and doubled the blackmail. I'd really love to express my gratitude after this business is behind us.'

I was very glad for my dark skin because she couldn't see the blood and heat in my face. The Ex-Sovereign let go as though she had and folded her hand toward her chest before dropping it to her side. She reached out with the other and waved a full set of bright yellow clothes and flat-heeled sandals to me.

I tried very hard to ignore the Head's thumbs-up.

We followed the Ex-Sovereign to the Court Security Headquarters. It sat in a vertical slice of all three floors and the basement. We went to the barracks on the third floor where there were no cameras. The Head brought up fully concealing diving uniforms from the armory in the basement. One in each hand.

Bevel shook their head. 'Gaunt's right. Security travels in twos at most unless something's wrong.'

The Ex-Sovereign took one and handed me the other. The uniform was the same as the Head's in coloring and only differed in detail. Red flippers replaced the heavy boots and the gloves had webbing between the fingers. A fish's face replaced the eagle's. Two cords like whiskers from the bottom of the fish's face wrapped around to the back to a slim but heavy tank.

'Why does air weigh so much?' I complained.

'It's an ultra-saturated PFC, a liquid,' said Bevel. It filled the mask for better pressure control. 'Brace for a bit of discomfort when you submerge.'

The suit had a carbon dioxide scrubber but it had to reach the bloodstream directly. Many small needles pierced the skin and like a form-fitting coat of mosquitoes they also injected a superficial numbing agent.

'The PFC won't hurt, but if it's your first time, your brain might convince you that you're drowning. Just stay calm and it'll pass.'

The Ex-Sovereign and I took the Headquarter's lift to the first floor. We waited outside the double glass door to the Courtyard for a servant to pull up in a little solar-powered buggy. It looked a bit like a golf cart except solar panels completely covered its outsides. I'd never been close enough to see the snake scale pattern of trapped rainbows in their oil black cells.

The servant drove us to the lake's edge by a special path of cobblestones set in sand. I had to keep my eyes on the roof of the cart. The stones looked like eggs protruding from holes in a toad's back. Just the thought prickled my own skin.

The Ex-Sovereign showed me where to turn on the mask's light as the servant drove away. The button was at the base of the skull.

I didn't move my prickled arms from where they held each other across my chest. 'Would you mind helping me?'

The Ex-Sovereign approached until her flippers touched mine. She leaned forward and braced one hand on my shoulder. The other hand reached behind and up my neck. She did not mind.

We sat on the concrete bank with our legs in the water much warmer than my mind. Our feet did not touch any ground. The Ex-Sovereign pushed off the bank first. I waited the sixty seconds for her suit to adjust and followed.

I seemed to have left my skin back on the bank. I felt a chill not from cold but something like a draft when you were naked all over my body.

The PFC filled my mask from the bottom. I breathed from my nose with my head up for the longest delay. I imagined the PFC as a new fluid makeup. A full facial dye. I closed my eyes and stuck out my tongue. It tasted like like nothing, so I imagined it to taste like blackcurrant wine. The tasty primer took a while to set, so I went ahead and opened my mouth. The primer went down and down and down to burn and pool in my lungs, but it tasted like wine and a fine wine always had a little warmth.

I breathed and drank it with my mouth until it rose above my nose. I let my nose breathe. It went down all at once. The burn made my eyes water, but my throat had already adjusted to the new pressure from my mouth. I opened my eyes.

The Ex-Sovereign held out her hand. I took it. She did not move. She waited on me.

I swam forward and the ancestors helped us dive faster and deeper. All the water looked the same but the first spell guided my mind by a game of hotter and colder. I seemed to have swapped my hair for fire just before our light touched a curved wall.

The lair looked like a giant ball of dark glass half-sunk into the bottom of the lake. The glass was so dark that it cast back our warped and fish-faced reflections. I pressed my free hand against the wall as the Sovereign had. The ancestors phased us through the glass like a pair of touring ghosts.

The Sovereign in the white coat of a doctor swivelled around in a chair. Their eyes narrowed behind a plastic and transparent version of a welder's mask. Their gloved hands clenched the arms of the chair with the same tense strength that had ripped them out of the picture.

Baozhu stepped partially in front of them. They wore the same coat, gloves, and mask. I was relieved I couldn't see a single drop of blood.

Baozhu walked into our auras. They raised their mask and smiled. 'Nia-Mauve,' their voice sounded as though I'd laid my head against their body, 'look at that-not a drop on the floor.'

The Sovereign's hands relaxed. They folded them in front of their chest. They asked for an explanation. The Ex-Sovereign asked for a talk. The Sovereign and Baozhu waited for us to remove our flippers and tanks and fish heads.

The four of us sat on stools around an empty lab table. The Sovereign had put all the computers to sleep so every square of colored lights on the wall had returned to black glass. The gently curving tables on either side of us supported drawers and microscopes but more of other equipment that I wasn't familiar with. They'd pushed the machines up to the wall to save space. Everything was spotless and controlled at a temperature slightly under the Court's and a slightly drier humidity.

'What is this place?' I asked.

'Pride, an old ocean exploration vessel,' said the Sovereign. They only ever discovered that they hadn't needed it. It'd been placed in storage until the Sovereign asked the servants to set it at the bottom lake. 'Speaking of, you were about to tell me what you're doing here.'

I looked at the Ex-Sovereign and their gazes followed. She steepled her fingers under her skeletal chin. She looked more like the Counselor than she might've liked to hear. 'Help me cut Morrow out of the picture.'

'What?'

The Sovereign shook her head, with two manicured fingernails where her eyebrow should've been. 'My apologies. I'm having a hard time believing you're this obtuse.'

'I do spend most of my time avoiding Morrow and everything she's touched.'

'Right. Well, the offices of Sovereign have never been about fieldwork and all about ruling.'

'Ah, I see. I've no objection to naming you Counselor. Consider it done.'

The shock filled out the Ex-Sovereign's face so I could exchange a glance with her. We looked about at the Sovereign.

They smiled and shrugged. 'You've always been more suited to rule than me. I can't say how Morrow will take it, though. If that's all, we've got some experiments to monitor.'

'What kind of experiments?' I asked.

'Cellular, genetic,' said the Sovereign as they leaned back on the the legs of their stool.

'Are you going to take the gray out of the bots' skin?' I'd have loved to see if they were as green as the grass and the leaves without it.

The Sovereign's strong hands and arms lost their strength. They fell back. Magic flared from Baozhu and they caught the Sovereign and their stool before they hit the ground. Baozhu raised the two as though they were one.

'Eureka?' asked Baozhu.

'Eureka,' said the Sovereign.

They jumped off their stool and woke a square of computer screen. They pulled the square into a cube in the space between our table and the table at at the wall. They selected two terms from a dropdown and two 3D models appeared. They enlarged the one that looked like an underwater kelp tree with a massive gall between the slender trunk and fingerlike branches.

They glanced up at us who watched them intently. They bit their lip as they grinned. 'This is a human brain cell.'

They minimized the first and enlarged the second. It looked almost the same as the first but its gall sat in the middle of six main branches and their many little branches. 'This is an artificial cell. The axon and terminals and dendrites are all nanotubes. The inside is mostly organic but uses nanobots to support missing functions.'

'Where did the functions go?'

'They never organically existed because A.I. cells are essentially genetically modified bacteria that've been wired together.'

The three of us at the table were lost together. We waited.

'Horizontal gene transfer.'

Baozhu threw both hands over their mouth. Their 'OMFG' was almost too muffled to catch. They placed their gloved palms flat against the tabletop and turned to us. 'My-our genes. Myrddin's genes.'

The Ex-Sovereign didn't bother to keep her eyes from widening and her jaw from slackening. 'Counselor or not, Morrow can't find out about this. No one can. It'll get back to Mother Lake.'

The Sovereign had already taken their swivel chair to a desktop. 'Glitches,' they said without looking away from the square they woke above their head.

'And what happens when they melt?'

The Sovereign's fingers froze over the touchpad keyboard. 'Azhu, can you control your body temperature?'

'Carents says yes, but it wears off in about six hours.'

'That's long enough for the full recharge cycle,' said the Ex-Sovereign.

'No more melties,' said the Sovereign.

'But a whole lotta glitches,' said Baozhu.

I had nothing to say. I didn't understand anything anyone was talking about. I hadn't been using my powers in the field like a psiber. I only painted. Enid would've understood.

The Ex-Sovereign left her stool and gently pat the back of my arm. It was time to go. 'Keep me up to date, Alter.'

'Of course, Counselor.'

Her face glowed with happiness. It didn't matter that the Ex-Sovereign or Counselor or Mauve only smiled from inside her body. She was beautiful and it was a shame that we had to put on the fish heads again.

Mauve wanted to watch when the Sovereign dismissed the Counselor so the Head brought us to Surveillance on the first floor. Squares of light filled a whole wall in six rows of six. Every half minute the rows shifted down to let the top screen fill with the new fisheyes.

The opposite wall had only a single frame of light that stretched from floor to ceiling and edge to edge. Mauve sat in swivel chair in front of this wall. Her hands moved like a conductor's and flicked moving images in and out of being. She controlled many squares at once. They appeared and enlarged or minimized or disappeared like living patches on a vorpal quilt.

I was glad she had her back to us. Every time her hair swept too violently I caught a flash of skull.

Bevel helped me set up Benzene's internet. I didn't have the implants for virtual reality which limited Benzene to the most basic functions. Bevel called them basic but it was like having a PC for my brain.

All I had to do was think about going online and I would. The internet couldn't block my eyes or ears because neither could thoughts. I wished I'd had this during school. I asked if people even needed to go to school with this kind of tech.

Bevel tilted their head and tapped their cheek with their stylus. I could almost see the light of the internet inside their pupils. 'Oh. No. Our education system is more of a holistic thought training in peer groups.'

Their three main focuses were logic, ethics, and creativity. They considered them equally important. The workload was mostly research, projects, and debates for peer interaction in class rather than one and done homework. They had to use tech outside their bodies until age sixteen which was the minimum age to begin the implanting.

I wished I could've gone to school here. I'd worked so hard training my brain to focus that I hadn't had time for peers. Unlike Enid. Everything came to her so easily.

I checked with the ancestors and the internet. Only Myrddin knew the secret of reversing his age. The ancestors said it was a curse, but I didn't see why.

I left Bevel making notes on their tablet and walked across the room to the Head. I folded my arms on the back of their chair. They leaned their tablet against their chest and turned their golden eagle head over their shoulder. 'What?'

'Why do you need a tablet if you have a log?'

'Some things shouldn't go to the head.'

They pulled the tablet off their chest so I could see. The Head was reviewing security footage without the fisheye of the cameras. The images looked like they'd been taken from human eye level. It was log footage.

I asked if Security could hack any log. They could but it would've taken too much time to review all of it. Security prefered to review submitted footage. They required their officers to submit log reports just as psibers had to submit their field footage to Intelligence. Submissions also came from witnesses to crimes or especially dutiful citizens. The Head said citizen submission was the funniest.

I asked to see.

The Head minimized the current video and entered a nine-digit ID number into the search bar. It brought up a list of reports beside a profile on Agreeance. The Head selected the latest submission and passed me the tablet. They stood up and cracked their back with both arms bent like empty wings.

'Where are you going?'

'For a shit. Guard my tablet. That's confidential.'

The footage began in a dark room over a rising and falling lump. I scrolled through using the bar at the bottom of the screen. Agreeance hadn't edited any of the footage or even turned off his log at any time. I stopped. Enid.

Agreeance and Enid had a snack together before going to separate morning workouts. They met back up for breakfast. They were so chummy that they threw grapes at each other. They laughed whether they caught them in their mouths or not. They didn't choke.

I scrolled through. It was all Enid. She was everywhere. I fast forwarded through the video of the two good chums being chummy until the ball. I remembered that Enid had attended but Agreeance hadn't.

The video showed the lift and hall outside Morgue's bedroom. The footage never changed. I still prefered it over the Tale of Two Chums. I let the clip of the still room play.

I checked how much footage was left after a quarter minute. It was almost at the end. I changed the playback to three times as fast.

Agreeance turned around to the golden door of writhing vines. He entered the room and Manon was inside instead of Morgue. They talked. The frame jumped and suddenly Manon was naked. It jumped again and they were having sex.

I stopped the footage. I was glad it had been anyone other than Enid but I'd seen for myself Agreeance and Enid growing closer. I couldn't let Enid walk into a relationship with a man who had sex on the side while wooing her. That kind of man was a cheater. It'd break her heart to find out too late. It was better to warn her early while she still had the chance to put distance between herself and her new friend.

I rewound the footage. I turned on Benzene's camera with a thought.