Chapter Seven
There isn't a choice except to stop
Thinking there isn't a choice
-Built to Spill 'Forget Remember When'
The summer sun shone down on Astral's falsely tanned face as she looked out at the waves of the Baltic Sea crashing against the shores of Jutland. Sunlight bounces off the cresting waves and, glittering, beckoned to her. Astral wondered if time passed in the Matrix the way it did in the real world. Had it been this warm when she left? She had come out before winter, that much she knew. It had been a long while since she had gone to see Inger that first time. Four months.
She had been out of the Matrix for more than half a year.
When did she stop missing it?
Astral's hands absently went to her belly, drawn taut by the magic of the Matrix. In the real world, her belly had started to swell with the life that grew inside her.
Mouse sat beside Astral on the public bench, fiddling awkwardly with the cellular phone he held in hand. "We should be quick," he said in Danish, the file having been incorrectly labelled Norwegian.
"I know," Astral answered, her arms crossing instinctively over her belly at the thought of Agents.
"She'll be here," Inger said on Astral's other side. "She promised. It's a long ride from Karrebaeksminde."
"Why'd you choose this spot?" Astral stared at the statue of the Little Mermaid and the flocks of American tourists around it. "I hate it here."
"I know," Inger replied, smiling. "You haven't changed at all, Astrid."
"How come you told Greta where we were going to be? I thougth you hated her." Mouse's knowledge of Inger's life had all been what Astral told him- which wasn't much except that she loved Inger almost as much as she loved Mouse.
"She's not that bad.Astrid's disappearing really smartened her up. I used to hate her. But somebody had to take care of me after Astrid left."
There was a silence after that, when Astral closed her eyes and both boys instinctively moved towards her.
"Inger?" A familiar voice called out. Walking across the parking lot was Greta, no longer an image of the plastic cellophane-wrapped Gap world in which she once lived. Untied sneakers and knee-high striped socks, and with blue floods and a thrift tank top with a Polish slogan. Astral's heart broke when she noticed Greta's face no longer occupied with the self- possessed petulant pout, but instead her ashen face was cast gravely at the ground, her once shining blue eyes now distant and dark, with the old wise look that used to trouble Astral's mother. Greta had her thumbs hooked under a backpack, to which was strapped-
"Is that my skateboard?" Astral asked no one particular.
"Greta didn't want it to go to waste. She met some skaters at school, and learned pretty quickly."
"Astrid?" Greta was looking up, staring at her sister, shocked.
"..Greta." Astral realized what Jolix had been talking about when he spoke about how hard it would be to see family again, and to let go all over again after that.
Greta stared at her for another moment, then burst into tears.
--
Back in the real world, Cypher stood watching the screens in the Construct while Tank stood guard over the two youngest crewmembers.
"I think it's disgusting," Cypher finally said after a moment.
"What?" Tank didn't look up from the screens or his typing, tossing the word over his shoulder.
"They're teenagers, for chrissakes. Where I'm from in the Matrix, if I knocked some girl up, her father would've shot my head clear off my shoulders. Or made me marry her."
"Well, this isn't the Matrix." Tank smiled. "And Zion is infinitely more enlightened. I think it's cute. Look at them holding hands like that."
Mouse and Astral, in their terminals, lay with one arm each strapped in and the others clasped in his lap.
"I hope I can find someone like that one day," Tank smiled softly, staring intently at a row of green symbols falling down the black screen.
"Pfft," Cypher's lip curled, pulling his goatee into a sick array. "Doesn't exist."
"Then what's that?"
"That is two hormonal teenagers who like to fuck," Cypher said bluntly.
"God, Cypher!" Tank still didn't look up from his screen. "You're going to hell, you know that?"
"I'm already there, man," Cypher muttered, but Tank didn't seem to hear them.
"You just can't stand to see people happier than you, can you?" Tank asked.
Cypher stopped. Perhaps that was the truth. Perhaps he wandered the halls of the Nebuchadnezzer in the day and see everyone else in some semblance of a family unit or a circle of friends, with himself as the weasel-like jerk. Then he'd stay awake and night and watch the people in the Matrix, blissful in their ignorance, happy. Not like him.
Of course, he didn't watch the sweatshops of Thailand or Malaysia or India or Bangladesh, or the displacement camps in the former Soviet, or the slums of South America, or the broken homes of the first world. He watched the blondes, the brunettes, the redheads, anything that gave him an excuse to feel sorry for himself.
"We have to support them," Tank was still talking, breaking Cypher out of his reverie. "It's tough. I mean, I want to have a family some day, but.wow. Like, they're seventeen. I don't even think Astral is that old. Morpheus can't do the father thing all by himself, you know."
"I think they should abort it," Only now did the clicking of Tank's keyboard stop. Cypher went on. "Morpheus can't dote on Mouse forever, you know. We can't afford to feed another mouth."
Tank still didn't answer, and stared stoically at the screen in front of him, ignoring the other man.
Eventually Cypher sighed and turned around, and who should he find himself face to face with but the Nebuchadnezzer's big captain.
"Uh.oh hey, Morph, how's it going?"
Morpheus didn't answer, the way he did when he was to come off as intimidating.
"Um, what I said just now.I didn't really mean it, you know? I mean, I wouldn't expect anyone to take me seriously, okay?"
Abortion went beyond a religious or personal thing in the real world of the Now. The human population being dangerously low as it was, every human life was sacred and if someone were unable to take care of a child, the orphan was lovingly raised by someone else who was more than willing. The way Morpheus was more than willing to lovingly raise Mouse, however well he did that. Besides that, the lack of medical knowledge and materials led to high rates of maternal death and handicapped or deformed children, in the few instances that it was actually attempted.
"Um.I'm just gonna take off, 'kay?" Cypher didn't wait for a response before he brushed past his captain and slipped into the darkness.
Morpheus didn't turn around to watch him go.
--
The sound of skateboard wheels scraping against the wood of half-pipes and ramps brought back a familiar unease to Astral. She sat with her head on Mouse's shoulder, Mouse who never knew homesickness, to whom the only familiar unease would be the sound of a little girl screaming in the aftermath of rape, the smell of sweat and blood in the workhouse.
Inger, Greta, Astral and Mouse sat on the lip of one such ramp, huddled together, sad and silent.
Mouse and Astral still didn't tell neither Inger nor Greta the truth. That made it even worse.
"Um.well," Astral said eventually after the silent stretched too long, almost a full half an hour after the four had finished their tears and hugs and apologies. "I.We have something to tell you guys."
Inger looked up curiously, the tiniest bit of bruise under one left eye. He still wouldn't leave Sören, he said, not even for Astral's sake. Just as she wouldn't leave Mouse for his- that was his reasoning.
Greta remained staring at the sun, setting over Copenhagen's skyline, her eyes still sad and distant.
There wasn't a lot of hesitance this time. Astral looked at Mouse, who nodded, and said it. "We're pregnant."
Silence.
"What? We?!" Greta broke out of her depressed silence. "You? And-and him?" Greta stepped forward and slid into the bowl ramp, propping herself over the lip on her elbows with agility that surprised Astral. She wondered fleetingly if Greta ever started raving. She'd be a good dancer. "But.but how?"
"Well, Greta," Inger started with a confidence Astral hadn't yet seen in him. "When a Mommy and Daddy love each other very much-"
"Shut the hell up, Inger," Greta furrowed her brows and, to Mouse, looked startlingly like her sister. "When? .You, Astrid?"
"Yes, I know, it surprised me too." Astral sighed. "I've known for maybe a month. Mouse."
Mouse shrugged. "Two weeks. We just told-" He broke off and he and Astral shared a frightened look. ".my uncle. I- I live with my uncle."
"Yes. In Germany," Astral added, hastily. "A suburb of Hamburg, they let me move in with them."
"Well, this is.this is just mind-blowing." Inger slid into the bowl ramp with Greta and the two looked up at Astral and Mouse.
"Um," Mouse started. "Astral- Astrid wanted to ask the both of you to be the godparents, but." He looked at the soon-to-be mother of his child (and that just sounded odd) who sighed. He slid his hand under hers reassuringly.
"We.we don't know if we're ever going to come back to Denmark." Astral said in a small voice.
Greta and Inger looked at each other. "Well that's all right," Inger started. "I mean, I understand. We can go visit you. Sören drives the Autobahn across sometimes to make deliveries in Austria-"
"No, uh." Astral tried to grasp at straws. "Some people there are still.you know, upset about that whole." Oh god, think. "Schleswig thing." She stopped, awkwardly.
Three sets of eyes stared at her. "What?" Greta said.
"Look, forget it, can.can we just hang out for today? And enjoy it?" Astral looked down into her little sister's eyes, pleading.
"Yeah." Greta said, in a casual tone that Mouse recognized as one Astral used to speak with. "We can do that."
--
"How long have they been in there?" Morpheus asked Tank, easing himself into a terminal across from the two children.
Tank had lost track of time. He had been too busy staring at the screen, watching the boy that Astral used to know. He was captivated. The only other time he had felt this way was when he knew a certain Canadian with the funniest accent he had ever heard when he first came with Dozer to work on the Neb. And then Jolix had left to captain his own ship. And Tank was alone.
"Oh." He glanced up, finally. "Oh, Jesus, hours. Way longer than is safe. I tried calling them in maybe an hour ago, but Mouse turned the cell off." Tank looked up at his captain. "It's a really personal time for them and all, you know."
"I know," Morpheus sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, remembering how Tank and Jolix would stand watch while he spent hours in the Thailand of the Matrix with Supatra.
You have to let them grow up at some point, he figured.
But damned if he was going to let anything happen to Mouse at this point.
The boy had spoken to him, actually to him, for the first time in a long while, that morning in the kitchen.
"I've been thinking about it," Mouse said as he helped Morpheus clean up. "And I want.I don't know, I think it would be nice if I had a proper family. And I really do love Astral, I think." He stopped short, suddenly unsure of himself, and, head bowed, had said in a child like voice: "I think I want to marry her."
Morpheus settled himself back in the terminal and positioned his neck over the crucial spot. "Let me in," He commanded, in his deep fatherly voice that demanded respect.
--
Greta hadn't laughed so hard in her life, for as long as she could remember, anyway. It was around the time her sister had disappeared, when she spent her time putting up posters and calling police stations, and helping her mother with all the things she had never thought needed to be done before, that her trendy, convenient, fair-weather friends stopped supporting her, stopped looking for her sister, stopped letting her cry on their shoulders. Around that time when she started saving money so she could make a clean break and get out of Karrebaeksminde, when she went to look in on Inger in memory of Astrid, and took up skateboarding, and found something she truly loved, as opposed to something the magazines told her to do.
It was around that time she stopped laughing at things. Around that time she started doubting everything she saw, began suspecting that there was something else, something bigger. Then one day, after she and her mother began to realize that Astrid was not coming back, she ventured into her room for the first time- and saw something on the computer she was sure she wasn't supposed to see.
She started talking to people, her skater friends, the rave kids, she eventually met Europe's most notorious hacker, a woman calling herself Mycroft, and started to see things she never saw before.
But she didn't say anything. She didn't want to put Astrid in anymore danger, and she definitely did not want to say anything in front of Inger.
So now the four sat, in the large apartment Inger shared with Sören, drinking sparkling white wine (except for Astral, at Inger's insistence) and eating lobster the way Astral learned at a party across the straight in Helsingor.
"No, you have to suck it out," Astral instructed Mouse.
"What the hell? It's impossible!" Mouse bickered back and forth with her and Inger saw that they were truly in love. Maybe in a way that he and Sören weren't, but that was a matter for another day.
"Here," Astral sighed impatiently, and ripped off an arm for Mouse, holding it to his mouth. "Now," she commanded.
Mouse sucked the meat out and choked, spluttered, and made a face. "God, fuck that's fucking salty!" He protested, wiping the salt water from his mouth and downing another glass of wine.
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
The four straightened up, and Mouse instinctively blocked Astral, just in case.
"Um, come in," Inger called, wondering who it could be. The door opened, and there stood the biggest, blackest man he had ever seen, dressed impeccably in an Armani suit.
"Oh my god!" Greta said, boldly, amusement on her face. "Are you the rent collector?" There was an air of sarcasm in her voice that Mouse knew could only have been taught by Astral.
Morpheus cocked an eyebrow.
"Uh, no, that's." Mouse and Astral glanced at each other.
"That's.our driver," Astral supplied. "Uh.Mouse's uncle's really rich, see, we drove here. Now.we have to go," She stood, abruptly, sighing.
"Wait," Greta called after her, joining her by the door. "Am.am I ever going to see you again? Are you sure I can't come down to Germany?"
"I'm sure," Astral said. "Please, Greta, don't make me explain.just trust me?"
"You know I will." Greta said sadly.
"And.remember.I.I'm proud of you and I'll always be watching out for you. I love you, you know?"
".I know."
The sisters remained silent, looking sadly at each other, for a moment. Astral pulled Greta in for a hug, blinking back tears. "I'm sorry," She said. She thrust a paper, conjured up in the white room, into Greta's hands. "Will you give this to Mom? Tell her I'm sorry, too."
"I will."
Astral kissed her sister quickly on the cheek, then one for Inger, and she, Mouse and Morpheus left.
And Greta never saw her sister again.
--
Cypher lay in his cabin, staring up at the impersonal, dark, cold metal wall.
He hated it here. He was hating it more every day.
Then and there, Cypher made up his mind.
He would go back.
No matter what.
There isn't a choice except to stop
Thinking there isn't a choice
-Built to Spill 'Forget Remember When'
The summer sun shone down on Astral's falsely tanned face as she looked out at the waves of the Baltic Sea crashing against the shores of Jutland. Sunlight bounces off the cresting waves and, glittering, beckoned to her. Astral wondered if time passed in the Matrix the way it did in the real world. Had it been this warm when she left? She had come out before winter, that much she knew. It had been a long while since she had gone to see Inger that first time. Four months.
She had been out of the Matrix for more than half a year.
When did she stop missing it?
Astral's hands absently went to her belly, drawn taut by the magic of the Matrix. In the real world, her belly had started to swell with the life that grew inside her.
Mouse sat beside Astral on the public bench, fiddling awkwardly with the cellular phone he held in hand. "We should be quick," he said in Danish, the file having been incorrectly labelled Norwegian.
"I know," Astral answered, her arms crossing instinctively over her belly at the thought of Agents.
"She'll be here," Inger said on Astral's other side. "She promised. It's a long ride from Karrebaeksminde."
"Why'd you choose this spot?" Astral stared at the statue of the Little Mermaid and the flocks of American tourists around it. "I hate it here."
"I know," Inger replied, smiling. "You haven't changed at all, Astrid."
"How come you told Greta where we were going to be? I thougth you hated her." Mouse's knowledge of Inger's life had all been what Astral told him- which wasn't much except that she loved Inger almost as much as she loved Mouse.
"She's not that bad.Astrid's disappearing really smartened her up. I used to hate her. But somebody had to take care of me after Astrid left."
There was a silence after that, when Astral closed her eyes and both boys instinctively moved towards her.
"Inger?" A familiar voice called out. Walking across the parking lot was Greta, no longer an image of the plastic cellophane-wrapped Gap world in which she once lived. Untied sneakers and knee-high striped socks, and with blue floods and a thrift tank top with a Polish slogan. Astral's heart broke when she noticed Greta's face no longer occupied with the self- possessed petulant pout, but instead her ashen face was cast gravely at the ground, her once shining blue eyes now distant and dark, with the old wise look that used to trouble Astral's mother. Greta had her thumbs hooked under a backpack, to which was strapped-
"Is that my skateboard?" Astral asked no one particular.
"Greta didn't want it to go to waste. She met some skaters at school, and learned pretty quickly."
"Astrid?" Greta was looking up, staring at her sister, shocked.
"..Greta." Astral realized what Jolix had been talking about when he spoke about how hard it would be to see family again, and to let go all over again after that.
Greta stared at her for another moment, then burst into tears.
--
Back in the real world, Cypher stood watching the screens in the Construct while Tank stood guard over the two youngest crewmembers.
"I think it's disgusting," Cypher finally said after a moment.
"What?" Tank didn't look up from the screens or his typing, tossing the word over his shoulder.
"They're teenagers, for chrissakes. Where I'm from in the Matrix, if I knocked some girl up, her father would've shot my head clear off my shoulders. Or made me marry her."
"Well, this isn't the Matrix." Tank smiled. "And Zion is infinitely more enlightened. I think it's cute. Look at them holding hands like that."
Mouse and Astral, in their terminals, lay with one arm each strapped in and the others clasped in his lap.
"I hope I can find someone like that one day," Tank smiled softly, staring intently at a row of green symbols falling down the black screen.
"Pfft," Cypher's lip curled, pulling his goatee into a sick array. "Doesn't exist."
"Then what's that?"
"That is two hormonal teenagers who like to fuck," Cypher said bluntly.
"God, Cypher!" Tank still didn't look up from his screen. "You're going to hell, you know that?"
"I'm already there, man," Cypher muttered, but Tank didn't seem to hear them.
"You just can't stand to see people happier than you, can you?" Tank asked.
Cypher stopped. Perhaps that was the truth. Perhaps he wandered the halls of the Nebuchadnezzer in the day and see everyone else in some semblance of a family unit or a circle of friends, with himself as the weasel-like jerk. Then he'd stay awake and night and watch the people in the Matrix, blissful in their ignorance, happy. Not like him.
Of course, he didn't watch the sweatshops of Thailand or Malaysia or India or Bangladesh, or the displacement camps in the former Soviet, or the slums of South America, or the broken homes of the first world. He watched the blondes, the brunettes, the redheads, anything that gave him an excuse to feel sorry for himself.
"We have to support them," Tank was still talking, breaking Cypher out of his reverie. "It's tough. I mean, I want to have a family some day, but.wow. Like, they're seventeen. I don't even think Astral is that old. Morpheus can't do the father thing all by himself, you know."
"I think they should abort it," Only now did the clicking of Tank's keyboard stop. Cypher went on. "Morpheus can't dote on Mouse forever, you know. We can't afford to feed another mouth."
Tank still didn't answer, and stared stoically at the screen in front of him, ignoring the other man.
Eventually Cypher sighed and turned around, and who should he find himself face to face with but the Nebuchadnezzer's big captain.
"Uh.oh hey, Morph, how's it going?"
Morpheus didn't answer, the way he did when he was to come off as intimidating.
"Um, what I said just now.I didn't really mean it, you know? I mean, I wouldn't expect anyone to take me seriously, okay?"
Abortion went beyond a religious or personal thing in the real world of the Now. The human population being dangerously low as it was, every human life was sacred and if someone were unable to take care of a child, the orphan was lovingly raised by someone else who was more than willing. The way Morpheus was more than willing to lovingly raise Mouse, however well he did that. Besides that, the lack of medical knowledge and materials led to high rates of maternal death and handicapped or deformed children, in the few instances that it was actually attempted.
"Um.I'm just gonna take off, 'kay?" Cypher didn't wait for a response before he brushed past his captain and slipped into the darkness.
Morpheus didn't turn around to watch him go.
--
The sound of skateboard wheels scraping against the wood of half-pipes and ramps brought back a familiar unease to Astral. She sat with her head on Mouse's shoulder, Mouse who never knew homesickness, to whom the only familiar unease would be the sound of a little girl screaming in the aftermath of rape, the smell of sweat and blood in the workhouse.
Inger, Greta, Astral and Mouse sat on the lip of one such ramp, huddled together, sad and silent.
Mouse and Astral still didn't tell neither Inger nor Greta the truth. That made it even worse.
"Um.well," Astral said eventually after the silent stretched too long, almost a full half an hour after the four had finished their tears and hugs and apologies. "I.We have something to tell you guys."
Inger looked up curiously, the tiniest bit of bruise under one left eye. He still wouldn't leave Sören, he said, not even for Astral's sake. Just as she wouldn't leave Mouse for his- that was his reasoning.
Greta remained staring at the sun, setting over Copenhagen's skyline, her eyes still sad and distant.
There wasn't a lot of hesitance this time. Astral looked at Mouse, who nodded, and said it. "We're pregnant."
Silence.
"What? We?!" Greta broke out of her depressed silence. "You? And-and him?" Greta stepped forward and slid into the bowl ramp, propping herself over the lip on her elbows with agility that surprised Astral. She wondered fleetingly if Greta ever started raving. She'd be a good dancer. "But.but how?"
"Well, Greta," Inger started with a confidence Astral hadn't yet seen in him. "When a Mommy and Daddy love each other very much-"
"Shut the hell up, Inger," Greta furrowed her brows and, to Mouse, looked startlingly like her sister. "When? .You, Astrid?"
"Yes, I know, it surprised me too." Astral sighed. "I've known for maybe a month. Mouse."
Mouse shrugged. "Two weeks. We just told-" He broke off and he and Astral shared a frightened look. ".my uncle. I- I live with my uncle."
"Yes. In Germany," Astral added, hastily. "A suburb of Hamburg, they let me move in with them."
"Well, this is.this is just mind-blowing." Inger slid into the bowl ramp with Greta and the two looked up at Astral and Mouse.
"Um," Mouse started. "Astral- Astrid wanted to ask the both of you to be the godparents, but." He looked at the soon-to-be mother of his child (and that just sounded odd) who sighed. He slid his hand under hers reassuringly.
"We.we don't know if we're ever going to come back to Denmark." Astral said in a small voice.
Greta and Inger looked at each other. "Well that's all right," Inger started. "I mean, I understand. We can go visit you. Sören drives the Autobahn across sometimes to make deliveries in Austria-"
"No, uh." Astral tried to grasp at straws. "Some people there are still.you know, upset about that whole." Oh god, think. "Schleswig thing." She stopped, awkwardly.
Three sets of eyes stared at her. "What?" Greta said.
"Look, forget it, can.can we just hang out for today? And enjoy it?" Astral looked down into her little sister's eyes, pleading.
"Yeah." Greta said, in a casual tone that Mouse recognized as one Astral used to speak with. "We can do that."
--
"How long have they been in there?" Morpheus asked Tank, easing himself into a terminal across from the two children.
Tank had lost track of time. He had been too busy staring at the screen, watching the boy that Astral used to know. He was captivated. The only other time he had felt this way was when he knew a certain Canadian with the funniest accent he had ever heard when he first came with Dozer to work on the Neb. And then Jolix had left to captain his own ship. And Tank was alone.
"Oh." He glanced up, finally. "Oh, Jesus, hours. Way longer than is safe. I tried calling them in maybe an hour ago, but Mouse turned the cell off." Tank looked up at his captain. "It's a really personal time for them and all, you know."
"I know," Morpheus sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, remembering how Tank and Jolix would stand watch while he spent hours in the Thailand of the Matrix with Supatra.
You have to let them grow up at some point, he figured.
But damned if he was going to let anything happen to Mouse at this point.
The boy had spoken to him, actually to him, for the first time in a long while, that morning in the kitchen.
"I've been thinking about it," Mouse said as he helped Morpheus clean up. "And I want.I don't know, I think it would be nice if I had a proper family. And I really do love Astral, I think." He stopped short, suddenly unsure of himself, and, head bowed, had said in a child like voice: "I think I want to marry her."
Morpheus settled himself back in the terminal and positioned his neck over the crucial spot. "Let me in," He commanded, in his deep fatherly voice that demanded respect.
--
Greta hadn't laughed so hard in her life, for as long as she could remember, anyway. It was around the time her sister had disappeared, when she spent her time putting up posters and calling police stations, and helping her mother with all the things she had never thought needed to be done before, that her trendy, convenient, fair-weather friends stopped supporting her, stopped looking for her sister, stopped letting her cry on their shoulders. Around that time when she started saving money so she could make a clean break and get out of Karrebaeksminde, when she went to look in on Inger in memory of Astrid, and took up skateboarding, and found something she truly loved, as opposed to something the magazines told her to do.
It was around that time she stopped laughing at things. Around that time she started doubting everything she saw, began suspecting that there was something else, something bigger. Then one day, after she and her mother began to realize that Astrid was not coming back, she ventured into her room for the first time- and saw something on the computer she was sure she wasn't supposed to see.
She started talking to people, her skater friends, the rave kids, she eventually met Europe's most notorious hacker, a woman calling herself Mycroft, and started to see things she never saw before.
But she didn't say anything. She didn't want to put Astrid in anymore danger, and she definitely did not want to say anything in front of Inger.
So now the four sat, in the large apartment Inger shared with Sören, drinking sparkling white wine (except for Astral, at Inger's insistence) and eating lobster the way Astral learned at a party across the straight in Helsingor.
"No, you have to suck it out," Astral instructed Mouse.
"What the hell? It's impossible!" Mouse bickered back and forth with her and Inger saw that they were truly in love. Maybe in a way that he and Sören weren't, but that was a matter for another day.
"Here," Astral sighed impatiently, and ripped off an arm for Mouse, holding it to his mouth. "Now," she commanded.
Mouse sucked the meat out and choked, spluttered, and made a face. "God, fuck that's fucking salty!" He protested, wiping the salt water from his mouth and downing another glass of wine.
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
The four straightened up, and Mouse instinctively blocked Astral, just in case.
"Um, come in," Inger called, wondering who it could be. The door opened, and there stood the biggest, blackest man he had ever seen, dressed impeccably in an Armani suit.
"Oh my god!" Greta said, boldly, amusement on her face. "Are you the rent collector?" There was an air of sarcasm in her voice that Mouse knew could only have been taught by Astral.
Morpheus cocked an eyebrow.
"Uh, no, that's." Mouse and Astral glanced at each other.
"That's.our driver," Astral supplied. "Uh.Mouse's uncle's really rich, see, we drove here. Now.we have to go," She stood, abruptly, sighing.
"Wait," Greta called after her, joining her by the door. "Am.am I ever going to see you again? Are you sure I can't come down to Germany?"
"I'm sure," Astral said. "Please, Greta, don't make me explain.just trust me?"
"You know I will." Greta said sadly.
"And.remember.I.I'm proud of you and I'll always be watching out for you. I love you, you know?"
".I know."
The sisters remained silent, looking sadly at each other, for a moment. Astral pulled Greta in for a hug, blinking back tears. "I'm sorry," She said. She thrust a paper, conjured up in the white room, into Greta's hands. "Will you give this to Mom? Tell her I'm sorry, too."
"I will."
Astral kissed her sister quickly on the cheek, then one for Inger, and she, Mouse and Morpheus left.
And Greta never saw her sister again.
--
Cypher lay in his cabin, staring up at the impersonal, dark, cold metal wall.
He hated it here. He was hating it more every day.
Then and there, Cypher made up his mind.
He would go back.
No matter what.
