Chapter 24: The Secret in the Embassy
The elevator was crowded. So crowded in fact, that Catra might have decided to turn around and go home had she not already been operating on complete autopilot. Instead, she headed inside, selected one of the highest floors on the control panel, and slotted herself between a chubby, pink fellow faintly reminiscent of a bipedal piglet and a slender alien with six arms.
The nightmares had returned fiercer than they had ever been in the past, and she had woken in a cold sweat earlier in the day, alone on Glimmer's couch. With her gone, Catra feared she was still in the midst of the nightmare still—one that had undergone a strange mutation, showing her a different reality in which, once again, her closest friend in this new life of hers had left her abandoned. It wasn't until Catra managed to peel herself from the tangled mass of sheets and find the note written in Glimmer's flourished princess-scrawl that she realized, no, she had already woken up. Glimmer had indeed gone, although she hadn't abandoned her.
Pulled away on a last-minute assignment, the note had read. Sorry I can't say bye properly, it's an emergency. I'll get in touch again as soon as I make landfall.
The elevator continued to rise, and Catra watched the ground floor of the Atrium get farther and farther away, continued to watch the people bustling among the trees and pathways and in and out of department stores and restaurants shrink smaller and smaller.
The elevator would stop with a pleasant ding. The doors would open and everyone inside would shift to let a subset of passengers off. No one got on. Catra remained lost in her thoughts.
What kind of emergency would pull Glimmer away from shore leave on such short notice she barely had time to scrawl a note to her? What did it mean that the nightmares got even worse after she left? Was she going backwards now? Losing the progress she had made since leaving home?
The elevator dinged again, bringing Catra out of her thoughts. Everyone else had gotten off already leaving her alone and on the highest level of the Atrium; only the Executive levels immediately above were any higher.
She stepped out into the Enclave Embassy and its spacious front lobby. Hand-carved columns of marble lined the sides and reached high to support a tall ceiling. The polished flooring made every clack of a heel or syllable of a conversation echo, giving the chamber a bustling atmosphere despite Catra only seeing a handful of people around. Two tall statues, one of Horde Prime and the other being yet another rendition of the Shaper Corynth, flanked another cherry blossom tree—the centerpiece of the room. Catra approached it, rubbing her shoulders and glancing about at everyone else as if she were afraid they might approach her. She didn't belong here.
Catra had only ever visited the Embassy one time. It was when she first came to the station and started her citizenship paperwork with Glimmer at Taline's behest. And regardless of the fact she'd get lost in the Atrium every time she went, Catra somehow always knew how to find her way back to the Embassies, despite never having gone a second time.
"H-hey, Hilda? You there?" Catra said, when she reached the statues. The holographic guide flickered into existence to Catra's left and shot her a cheery smile.
"Hello Catra," she said, tilting her head. "How may I be of assistance?"
"I'm looking for Taline's office. I've never actually been…can you point me in the right direction?"
Hilda bowed her head in assent and gave directions, and Catra declined when she offered to walk her there personally. Paintings of the Embassy Consuls prior to Taline lined hallway after hallway alongside other pieces of fine art and sculpture. Catra made a game of trying to make as little sound as possible as she traipsed along.
She rounded a corner and into the waiting room of Taline's embassy corner office. Several chairs lined the walls, each seat filled with someone either reading one of the magazines from the large center coffee table or playing on their PDA. One woman bounced an infant on her knee, trying to keep it quiet while entertaining a second toddler. More than a few people of various alien races and colors stood due to lack of seating.
The door to Taline's office proper was shut, and a small fountain hung from the wall behind the front desk, immersing the room in the sound of falling water. Catra approached, and the receptionist, sitting before a computer and amidst several high stacks of papers piled high on the desk, typed rapidly at the keyboard. She seemed to be copying information from the surrounding documents, because as soon as she finished a spurt of typing, she'd move the top page from the nearest stack to another one, only to start the process over again. Catra thought she had it bad with paperwork back at the precinct.
"Hi, sorry," she said, trying to get the receptionist to notice her.
"Consular Taline is busy with an important visitor at the moment," the receptionist said, not even taking her eyes off the computer. "All appointments have been postponed until further notice. You're free to take a seat if you'd prefer to see her as soon as she's available and in the order of your appointment, or we can set a new time and date for you to come back."
Catra turned and looked at the filled room. All these people wanted to wait for god knows how long just to see her? She knew Taline was popular on the station; she was the only member of administration who insisted on having her office somewhere other than up in the executive floors, and she was also the only member of the administration to hold open office hours. But Catra had no idea people would sit around waiting with no definite appointment time just to talk to her.
"Uhm, I don't have an appointment, but can I make one?"
The woman put another page on the finished pile, grabbed the whole thing and dropped it with a thump onto the ground next to six other equally tall stacks that Catra hadn't noticed before. Then she grabbed a third, unprocessed stack of papers and started working on those. Somewhere in that series of practiced movements, she had placed a palm scanner up on the desk platform for Catra to access.
"Hand on the reader, please. Bookings are filled for the next two months, but I can get you put in and on a waiting list. If someone cancels, we might bump you up. Just need your ID."
Catra placed her hand on the scanner. It flashed as it read her prints and biometrics, and the woman behind the desk suddenly paused and looked up at her.
"Catra?" she asked.
"Yeah, that's me. Is something wrong?"
The woman shook her head. "Nothing wrong, I just…" She didn't finish her sentence, and instead picked up the handset on her desk and put it to her ear. "Hello, Taline?"
Catra could hear the muffled sound of a man speaking frantically on the other side of the line. Then she heard Taline's voice, still muffled but louder and closer to the handset on her end, although she still couldn't make out the words.
"Yes, I understand you're still with him," the receptionist said, "but I thought it best to let you know that Catra is standing out here. She's asking to make an appointment to see you."
Taline's voice came through again, and Catra grew nervous. What was she saying?
"You want me to"—a pause, and a nod—"…yes, I understand. Okay." The receptionist hung up the phone and looked back at Catra. "She asked that I just send you in now."
Catra's ears flicked sideways and she took a step back. "Now? You just told me she was with someone."
"I know." She pressed a button on her desk and Catra heard the door to Taline's office click as the lock disengaged. "I have a feeling she'd much rather visit with you than with who's in there now though, so go right in. Also, it's nice to finally meet you."
"Uhh, nice to meet you too," Catra said, unsure if that was the right thing to respond with or not. Catra ignored the looks she got from everyone else in the lobby and walked over to the door. Laying a hand on the lever, she took a deep breath and pushed inside.
The voice of someone in the middle of a passionate argument assaulted her, and she scrambled to get inside and click the door shut behind her before it caused a commotion out in the waiting room. A man sat in a chair on the other side of Taline's desk. Catra recognized him—it was Diallo, the VIP she helped escort the previous day. His back was toward her and he gesticulated wildly as he spoke.
"No one just c-cuts budgets like that, Taline. Not that drastically. I'm telling you t-t-there's something fishy going on with him. I don't know if it has something to do with paranoia around his reelection, but I'm already at my l-limit as it is trying to keep my system in order."
"I understand," Taline said, sitting straight-backed and stone-faced in her chair. Instead of the black and silver Battlemage uniform Catra had seen her in when they first met, she wore simple Consular's robes. "But I'm not sure what you expect me to do about it. Moriarty is the Regional Administrator of our section of the mid-rim. He has thousands of planets, hundreds of systems, and thus hundreds of System Governors like yourself to make decisions for. He may use my station as his base of operations, but he reports directly to the Emperor. There is nothing I can do for you."
Diallo hadn't noticed Catra come in, and although Taline faced in her direction, she made no indication to him she was there. Catra pushed herself up against the far wall and tried to be as small and unobtrusive as possible.
"You are a Battlemage of t-the Enclave, Taline," Diallo said. "Moriarty doesn't answer to you, but he m-must take your counsel into consideration. I cannot protect the planets under my jurisdiction with such heavy cuts into my budget." He sat forward in his chair and put his palms together. "I became System Governor in the first place off y-your recommendation. I implore you to speak with him."
Taline sighed. "You know I am no longer a Battlemage. I am simply Consular Taline now and have been for the past three years. No matter how many times you come visit me and ask for my help, it will not change the fact my job right now is ensuring the safety and wellbeing of this station and of its people. That's it."
"And what of the d-drive?" Diallo asked, holding up a thin electronic device Catra hadn't noticed before.
Taline narrowed her eyes at him and lowered her voice. "That's an incredibly dangerous thing you have there," she said. "I have no idea how you got your hands on it, but if you want my suggestion, I would destroy it immediately and never mention it again."
"This is concrete proof of what I've b-been telling you for years," he said, practically hissing. "Every time you even caught a whiff of something like this on interstellar channels in the p-past you'd climb straight into a starship and leave me to manage your affairs until you came back. Why do you suddenly not even want to look at this now that I finally b-brought proof?"
"The Vestamid make up too large a portion of the GDP of the Empire, Diallo. Ignominite supply would be irreparably harmed if something were to happen to their production lines. I don't understand why you are pushing so hard for me to look into this. Do you want a galaxy-wide incident to occur? With everything else going on?"
"I don't remember when Taline, the Seraph of Archanas herself, would t-turn her nose up at an opportunity to investigate one of these ph-phantom algorithms."
Taline flinched and her eyes hardened. "My student has taken up that name. It no longer means anything to me, and you have no idea how that drive is encrypted. No idea at all."
"That's exactly my p-point," Diallo said. "The encryption is uncrackable. The best software I've run it through d-doesn't even know where to begin with it. The old you wouldn't have flinched and g-gone straight to investigate, but now you're p-protecting some militant sect of fanatics instead? Why are you suddenly refusing to even look?"
Taline pursed her lips. "Like I've said, my priority is this station. Nothing else. And believe it or not, if something happens to that ignominite supply your constituents provide, then the safety of everyone on this station, not to mention your own system itself, would be put at risk. I'm not getting into any more wild goose chases, Diallo. Corynth is dead, and for the sake of my own mental health I want to leave it at that."
Catra felt a tickle at her nose and, despite trying everything she could to resist, she sneezed. Taline glanced up at her with a smirk and Diallo contorted his body around his chair to look at her.
"I d-didn't realize I had someone secretly sitting in on a private conversation," Diallo said, irritated.
"This is Catra," Taline said, nodding in her direction. "She's the second person I sponsored into the Empire after Glimmer. You two have already met, believe it or not."
Diallo raised an eyebrow at her and Catra stepped forward, feeling exposed. "I'm a member of station security, under section chief Dax," she said. "I was there when you arrived yesterday, as a member of the security detachment."
"Oh?" Diallo looked surprised. "D-Dax is a good man. I like him."
Catra only nodded, not sure what else to say. Diallo stood from his chair and turned back to Taline. "Well, it seems I'm once again t-taking up time you would otherwise be using to sit with those who actually have appointments w-with you. I'm glad you've kept up that tradition, by the way. Keeps you well c-connected to the common person under your care." He held up the drive one more time before purposefully placing it on Taline's desk. "I'll leave this here. You can decide if you'd truly prefer it destroyed or if you want t-to see for yourself that I've finally brought your proof."
With that, Diallo headed for the exit. He nodded to Catra as he went, his eyes lingering on her a moment longer than she thought necessary. Then the door clicked shut behind him and Catra and Taline were alone.
Taline slumped forward and held her head in both her hands with her elbows on the table. Catra took tentative steps toward her until she was at the chair Diallo just vacated.
"Thank you for coming," Taline said, not lifting her head from her hands. "He's been here for an hour and it's felt like five. I don't know how much longer I would have lasted if you hadn't come along."
"I didn't do anything except stand there," Catra said, lowering herself onto the chair.
"He didn't want to talk in front of someone else, so you just standing there was enough to get him to leave." She combed her fingers through her hair. "Diallo is a good man. Would have joined the Enclave himself if he had just a little more aptitude for magic. He was a great help categorizing and accounting for all the things we found in my sister's second lab, but he's always had an eccentric side. It's almost strong enough sometimes to overshadow how meek and unassuming he seems."
She lifted her head off the desk and frowned, accentuating the three silver scars running across her cheek from when the Emperor backhanded her aboard the citadel. "Actually, I'm fairly certain that eccentricity has only grown worse the longer I've known him. At times it's merely off-putting, and at other times I feel like I barely recognize him."
"You're able to..." Catra trailed off, looked around, and lowered her voice. "You're able to talk freely about your sister in here?"
Taline nodded. "It's one of the few truly safe places to do so. No bugs, no hidden devices, completely sound insulated against the outside listening in. It's one of the reasons Diallo felt comfortable talking about this particular thing so freely in here." She gestured to the portable drive sitting untouched between them.
Catra nodded, remembering how loudly Diallo had spoken when she entered, and how she hadn't heard even a murmur of it standing right outside the door. Taline looked like she was waiting for her to say something, so she started to panic. Silences were always uncomfortable around Taline, though through no fault of her own. Catra just felt bare and vulnerable, like Taline could see right through her. She always tried to avoid letting pauses linger during their conversations as much as possible.
"Thank you for seeing me," Catra said, reaching for the first thing that popped into her mind. "You had a bunch of people out there waiting, but the receptionist just sent me in."
"Of course," Taline said. "I think this is the first time you've ever come all the way to my office, so it must be important for you to make the trip. What did you want to talk to me about?"
Catra cringed. Taline hadn't meant to guilt her with that comment, but she felt guilty about it all the same. They visited with each other plenty of times! What did she have to feel bad about?
"I uh…well." Catra deflated in the chair. "Glimmer left. And I was looking forward to hanging out with her. Dax turned me away when I tried to clock in for work because he already cleared me for PTO. Also, I guess I looked too hungover for him to feel comfortable letting me patrol."
"You do look like you had a bit too much to drink last night," Taline said nodding.
"Glimmer said I should come talk to you too since, well…y'know. The nightmares and everything."
"Have they been getting worse?"
"No. Well…yes, but not really?" Taline gave her a confused look, and Catra wondered why she felt so sweaty all of a sudden. Why was it always so difficult for her to just talk like a normal person?
"You're going to have to be a little more specific than that," Taline said. "I tried reaching out. I hadn't heard much from you since Glimmer was last on the station eight months ago. I was starting to worry…if the nightmares are getting worse and you've just been reticent to tell me, I promise I'm not going to judge."
Another stab of guilt. Catra realized that the 'plenty of times' she and Taline had visited together had only been when Glimmer came along too, since Catra always felt too exposed and in the hot seat if it were just her and Taline. With Glimmer gone on so many consecutive deployments, it really had been the better part of a year since Catra last saw Taline in person.
"I don't think they're getting worse worse," Catra said. "Maybe I just freaked out waking up and seeing Glimmer gone is all. I think it's fine."
"You wouldn't have come all the way up here if everything were fine though," Taline said. "Is this about your Sentinel application?"
"You know about that!?" Catra shot up from the chair. Her tail thrashed behind her and her ears pinned to her head. "How did you find out? Did Glimmer tell you? I told her not to say anything!"
Taline gave her an exasperated look. It only got Catra's hackles up further that she didn't look the least bit surprised at her outburst. "Glimmer didn't say a word to me. I found out from my other colleagues."
Catra forced herself to calm down before she collapsed back into the chair with a sigh. There it was, the exact thing Glimmer had urged Catra to come and talk to her about. Taline had taken a sledgehammer up to her walls and, within minutes, knew exactly how and where to strike to make them crumble fast. No wonder Catra hesitated to spend time with her—Shadow Weaver knew how to do the same thing. And while she didn't think Taline would ever use her weaknesses against her, she still hated how easily she unraveled. That wasn't all, but this whole meeting was still a mistake.
"Why would they tell you about that?" Catra asked, folding her arms. She was angry, both with herself that she hadn't built up the courage to broach the topic herself, and at Taline for not giving her the time to do so.
"Despite everything I told Diallo, I'm still well connected among my peers, Catra. This station may be my sole concern now, but the Enclave didn't excommunicate me like the Emperor asked because the other members of the High Council didn't want to do so. Seeing an application come in from you? One of the people I explicitly sponsored into the Empire? There's no way they wouldn't have told me about it. The very fact an application was sent in at all was news in and of itself."
"What do you mean?" Catra asked, brows furrowed and tail flicking. That last sentence alone threatened to upend any sense of calm she had won back for herself.
"How did you know how to submit an application in the first place?"
"I…I don't know. Glimmer looked into it for me."
Taline leaned back in her chair, mild surprise on her face. "Glimmer helped you? That's interesting. Is that why you didn't want her to tell me anything?"
"No…I mean, that's not why." Catra's heart raced. She couldn't slow it down. There was no doubt about it; something about Taline's tone and line of questioning had tipped her off. She had done something wrong with the application. "What's interesting? Why would you say it's interesting? Why would you say that it makes sense?"
Taline narrowed her eyes at her. "Are you okay? You seem—"
"I'm fine." No she wasn't. She couldn't get her breathing under control. "Just tell me. Tell me what's interesting."
Taline spoke as if she were coaxing a startled animal from its hiding place. "No one has sent in a physical application like you did for hundreds of years, Catra. It's an archaic practice."
Oh shit.
"Archaic practice!? What the hell does that mean?" She was spiraling. "How do you guys get new Sentinels if no one sends applications?"
"It's okay, Catra. It's not a huge deal."
It wasn't okay. It was a big deal. Massive. What was she going on about?
"Everyone kind of got a good laugh at it," Taline said. "It actually made them look at you more seriously because of it."
"You're saying everyone laughed at me? Laughed at the months of hard work they put me through, jumping through all those hurdles and all that red tape for them? That's what was going on?"
"No, that's not…" Taline trailed off, blinking rapidly in her surprise. "What's going on? Why are you getting so upset?"
"I'm not upset."
"You very clearly are. Just take a deep breath. It's not as bad as you think."
"I'm calm." Catra tapped her foot on the ground and her tail thumped hard against the chair.
"Why are you so worked up right now?"
"Because I'm not like Evelyn!" Catra screamed the words, tearing at her hair.
Taline flinched. She looked like she had just been slapped. Everything crawled to a halt, and ice flooded Catra's veins. She went instantly from not being able to get enough air no matter how quickly she breathed to holding her breath altogether, afraid of burning yet another bridge if she so much as opened her mouth to sip at the air.
"What does any of this have to do with Evelyn?" Taline asked, voice low.
Catra breathed out slow through her nose and counted heartbeats. "I'm not like Evelyn," she said. "I can't…I'm not…" She gritted her teeth. Why could she never find the right words? A thought occurred to her then: if she flipped the frustration on its head and asked a question instead, maybe then she could get a foothold into what she was trying to convey. "Did you only invite me off planet because I reminded you of her?"
Taline blinked, now looking taken aback. "No. Why would you think I did?"
Catra breathed a sigh of relief. She expected a different answer, but this helped put her mind at ease at least. "I just can't figure out why you invited me off Etheria. You didn't even invite Glimmer, she had to ask you to take her along. But you came and asked me, not just to come off planet with you, but also to advise you when you were negotiating with the Emperor. You came to me outside the castle that day I lost Adora. You brought food…encouraging words…you gave me your jacket. You encouraged me to turn my life around."
"And you thought I only did those things because you reminded me of Evie?" Taline asked? "Is that really what you thought?"
"I couldn't think of any other reason why! Why would you want to help someone like me?" Tears pricked her eyes and Catra strained to keep them at bay. She wouldn't cry. She refused to cry. "Why would you bring me here and walk me through all the paperwork to get citizenship? Why would you set me up with a freaking job on the station? Even when you were busy training Glimmer to be a Battlemage on top of all your other responsibilities, you always went out of your way to check in with me and make sure I had everything I needed. Why would you do that for someone like me? The only thing I could think of was…well…"
"That I did so only because I saw you as a stand in for my sister," Taline said, finishing what Catra couldn't bring herself to say. "Because you don't think you deserve any of it otherwise."
Catra swallowed. She couldn't deny it, even though she wanted so badly to.
"Is this why you turned down all of my help?" Taline asked. "Why you avoid me unless Glimmer is there with you?" She paused, suddenly looking horrified. "I've written glowing character references for every one of your performance reviews. Tell me that doesn't have anything to do with you rejecting all your promotions at work."
Catra hung her head.
"Dax came to me last week and asked me not to submit anything on your behalf this time," Taline said. "I didn't understand why at the time but…now I do."
Catra hated herself. She could hear the hurt in Taline's voice, could hear how hard she fought to keep it from showing. "I love my police job," she said, hands twisting in her lap. She didn't trust herself to look Taline in the eyes. "But a small part of me always felt like I was only given that because of you. I didn't want to take the promotions because I didn't feel I earned them if you were just giving them to me as well."
"Catra…"
"I asked Glimmer to look into the Sentinels," she said, not wanting to give Taline the chance to interrupt. She needed to get this all out before she lost her nerve entirely. "You ordered Narre and Miri to protect Glimmer's life, and then they did so against the freaking Emperor for crying out loud. I'm not stupid, I recognize how much you must have trusted them to give that kind of an order. I thought that, I don't know…maybe if I applied and got accepted without you or anyone else even knowing, and I got in, then that would be something I earned on my own."
She sniffled and dragged her sleeve across her face. "Then I could stand next to you and help you, not because you gave me a position but because I earned it—because I'm competent and worthy enough to hold it."
Taline gave a great sigh, and the sound of her chair squeaking filled the silence in the room as she sat back in thought. "Look at me, Catra," she said after a long pause.
Slowly, reluctantly, Catra edged her eyes up to meet Taline's. She looked so heartbroken and sad that Catra immediately knew her entire thought process for all this held no weight.
"It's true that in some ways you remind me of Evie," Taline said, weary. "But that goes just the same for Glimmer. Even Adora, for the short amount of time I knew her, reminded me a little bit of her. I absolutely did not choose to help you—any of you—because of that. You are Catra. I don't see you as anyone else. I chose to help you because of who you are and who I want to be, not because I'm trying to use you to replicate a relationship I can no longer have with Evie. Do you understand?"
Catra nodded and drug her sleeve across her eyes again. She had cried even though she promised herself she wouldn't.
"Good." Taline leaned forward and pressed a button on the phone on her desk. The receptionist outside greeted her on the other side of the line.
"Lyra," Taline said. "Please tell everyone waiting out there that I'm extremely sorry, but we'll have to reschedule their appointments for a different day."
"Is everything okay?" Lyra asked.
"Don't cancel all those peoples' appointments just for me," Catra said, mumbling. She was too emotionally drained to protest any harder, even though she did just inadvertently ruin everyone's day outside.
Taline only held up an open palm to tell her to wait. "Everything is fine, just…something came up I won't push off. Tell them that I will visit them at their homes for their rescheduled appointments as an apology for all the inconvenience."
"Alright, I'll get it done," Lyra said. "You'll let me know if you need anything else?"
"Of course I will." Taline thanked her, then cut the connection and ran her hands through her hair again.
"Why did you do that?" Catra asked, hoarse.
"I have something I want to show you," Taline said. She tapped a few commands into the computer at her desk before standing up and heading to a floor-to-ceiling display shelf behind her. Catra stood and approached to her left.
Taline pressed a section of the wall next to the shelves. It depressed, and then flipped around to reveal another palm scanner. She pressed her hand to it, waited for the scan to finish, and then stepped back. The entire shelving case and the section of wall it was fixed to suddenly jolted and slowly swung backward, revealing a pitch-black room hidden beyond.
"Aside from me, there is only one other person alive today who knows about this," Taline said, stepping through the doorway and into the shadows.
"Who's that?" Catra asked, following her in.
"You."
Catra couldn't see anything, despite her night vision. Taline flipped a switch to her right and Catra threw up one arm to shield her eyes against the sudden brightness. When she adjusted and looked around, a new room stretched out before her, completely at odds with the office behind them because of its sparse concrete design.
Wire-rack shelves stood in neat rows all the way to the back, filled with reams of papers, beakers, test-tubes, computers, and various dusty lab equipment. Wires, aluminum HVAC ducts, exposed piping and colorful industrial electric cords snaked through nearly every exposed surface. It felt like she had stepped into a room that belonged adjacent to the maintenance corridors of the station's lower wards, rather than up in the embassies.
"What is this place?" Catra asked, eyes darting everywhere.
"Do you remember how I once told you of the research black-sites during the last war? How the Empire and Enclave used them to run experiments on the Beast?
Catra nodded.
"And do you remember how I mentioned Evelyn had demanded I give her a lab of her own shortly after we rescued her and Corynth?
Catra nodded again. "You said she told you she needed to finish the breakthrough they came across before everyone else on her team died." Her jaw hinged open when she started to piece things together, and she looked open-mouthed at Taline, a silent question in her eyes.
"Phoenix Station's original purpose was to serve as one of those secret research stations," Taline said. "This is where she and Corynth first experimented with the Beast together. This is where they touched minds with it until she finally discovered ignominite. This is where the beginning of the end started."
