"This is a terrible idea, and I'm going to die within the next ten minutes," thought Zircon.

After poofing Peridots 5XI and 5XU, she had messed around on the ground-level control panels, searching for any evidence of a rose quartz gem having been admitted for harvesting. But the logs said it had not happened. Surely, however, Rose Quartz was somewhere. The Diamonds wouldn't just let her go. Well, Zircon reasoned, if Rose Quartz wasn't shattered, she must have been detained again, and that information would surely be in the criminal records attached to Zircon's own records.

And to get those, she needed access to the building's main database.

Which led to her predicament now. For one, she had little to no idea where she was going. The building was an unsightly conglomeration of architecture, likely built in Era One but renovated with new technology. The main body, the mostly-renovated part, was shaped like a cone, with the tip being the ground floor and the wider base being the top floor — but the wings and tunnels were older, as if the main body of the building had been driven like a stake in between them.

These, in turn, led Zircon into hallways that wrapped in circles, across catwalks that began in the well-lit main building and ended in a dim dead end, up ramps that somehow put her on a lower floor than she'd begun on. For a terrifying few minutes, all of the signs said that she was in the west wing — the exact place she'd told Shadow Agate to be as a diversion — until she made a left and realized they were mislabeled. She was actually in the east wing.

In Zircon's opinion, it was irritatingly impractical; and yet, there was a sense to it. Of course they wouldn't invest money to rebuild the old wings. The Harvester didn't exactly expect visitors.

It would definitely expect an escaping prisoner, unfamiliar with the labyrinthine corridors.

On top of navigating the maze, a constant fear remained. There were peridots everywhere. At first, Zircon put too much effort into avoiding eye contact with them, only to realize that none of them seemed to care. Half of them stared at screens as they passed; the other half expressed only the same vaguely-irritated boredom. The thrill of the alarm and escaped prisoner had long since worn off, and work continued as usual. Still, occasionally Zircon would pass one who didn't wear a visor, and who if she looked up would see that Zircon was clearly a vivid blue, and not as green as she wanted to be. Or one would walk to her side, able to see Zircon's gem if she just glanced over, and Zircon found her shapeshifted visor fogging up from her own sweat.

And worst of all, she knew she was late. It was only a matter of time before Shadow Agate realized that 5XI and 5XU weren't in the west wing to meet her, and that the "treasonous zircon" might not be as disposed of as she thought. It was only a matter of time before she exhausted her shapeshifting abilities (she was already getting fatigued, and sweating even more than usual). And it was only a matter of time before the barrel, which held a sloshing liquid that was gradually heating the metal to alarming temperatures, did something painful.

The last straw came on a lift. Zircon had taken to not liking the lifts — the little attention she got was because of them, mostly peridots telling her that there was no room for her cargo. But this time, it was her only way out of a dead-end corridor. This one was older, and the doors rumbled when they opened, revealing a tiny chamber with faded walls and a flickering light. A single peridot stood inside, tapping on her screen.

Guess this would do. Wiping the perspiration from her cheek, Zircon inhaled and pushed her barrel into the lift.

"What exit?" said the peridot suddenly. Zircon jumped — she hadn't been expecting conversation, and the peridot's voice was surprisingly gravelly.

"Oh, uh...2E."

The peridot pressed 2E, the lift doors closed, and she turned back to her screen. Phew. The risk was over for now; for a few seconds Zircon could relax her shoulders.

Then the peridot turned around, her single eye narrowed. Her gem, set where her right eye would be, glinted yellow in the dim light.

"Now what would the clods on 2E want with superrefined trinitrotoluene?"

Zircon literally felt her gem go cold. "Wh...what?"

"The stuff in that barrel. Does it get hot when you move it?"

"Yes?"

"2E's the quartzite furnace and that's a hypersensitive, heat-triggered liquid explosive. If you crack open that barrel on that level, we're all poofed for sure. Who gave you these orders? Which cut are you?"

No. No no no no no. "I, ah, I'm...Peridot Facet 2F5L, Cut 5XU. I was told by, ehem, my coworker, Cut 5XI."

The lie worked. The peridot's expression shifted from suspicion to mild irritation. "Noobs," she muttered, and then said louder, "It's understandable. Your cut hasn't been here long enough to understand basic combustion, clearly. But I won't let you off at 2E, and next time someone tells you to handle anything that you can't spell, tell your cut manager. Did your noob coworker mention where the trinitrotoluene needs to go?"

An opening! Yes. "I'm, ah, making an exchange with someone from the main database. We were meeting, ah, near Shadow Agate's office."

"Hmm. Well, that's 1N. Sound right?"

"Yes. Thank you."

The peridot gave her a weird look, but pressed the button for 1N. The lift stopped and opened at 5S, where she got out, and the last thing Zircon saw of her was her reopening a screen to a live call feed.

"That should probably make me nervous," Zircon said softly when the lift doors closed. She dropped the peridot disguise long enough to dab her forehead with her cravat, then shapeshifted back. "Then again, I'm…almost always nervous."

Though fatalistic, it was true. She had likely done a hundred things wrong earlier in this half-massed escape. There was nothing she could do except push through.

The lift stopped moving, and the door slid open.

Unlike the other hallways Zircon had visited, 1N was not artificially lit at all. There were only diamond-shaped skylights, lined in even intervals on the ceiling. But it was by no means well-lit. The natural light that came in was grey like smoke, as if the thick glass sucked all the color from it, and it hardly reached the black marble walls pressing in on either side. Stepping into the hall gave Zircon the unsettling feeling that, besides the squares of light, she was stepping into total void.

There was one door at the end of the hallway, and one glowing screen. The screen showed a generic error message, and when Zircon tapped experimentally on it, it screeched an error alarm and glitched blue. But nothing came swooping in to arrest her, and the alarm seemed to be only limited to this screen.

A few seconds later everything stopped and the door opened.

Well, that was easy.

She peeked her head into the dark office, saw nobody, and with a great sigh pulled herself and her barrel inside. Only once the door closed behind her did she shift out of the peridot disguise — and in fatigue collapsed onto the floor.

"Great stardust," she muttered to herself.

Even though she hadn't been wearing it, the armpits of her suit were completely soaked. Sighing again, she wriggled out of the jacket, tied it around her waist, and wiped her forehead with her already-rumpled cravat. If she had to look nice, she could just shift on a new one…she didn't know if she had the energy to shift a new jacket. Her sleeveless jumpsuit would suffice for now.

After a few moments of rest, she stood up and found a light panel. But instead of the gentle hum of plasma lighting, there came the awful sound of stone scraping against stone, and the ceiling peeled away to a skylight. The ghostly grey light illuminated the only furniture in the room — a desk and chair on a raised dais. The surface of the desk glowed red.

Gulping, Zircon stepped up to the desk (trying not to stare at the carved steel tapestries on the wall, many of which displayed hyperrealistic eyes that seemed to follow her). Curiously, there was no login page, no password needed; when she flicked her hand up, the screen expanded easily in front of her. Right there on the desktop was a file reading " ADMITTANCE RECORDS (E 2-5101)". The file size was 84 gigabytes.

Great. She didn't know how to sort quickly through this on Shadow Agate's system, and it would take her forever to read through. And quite honestly Zircon wasn't in the position to sit in this office forever.

"Well, I don't have a external storage unit," she muttered to herself. Of course, it wasn't like Shadow Agate would leave an empty storage disk out on her desk for any hooligan to take and use. "And my Libra account was probably archived when I was sent to be harvested."

Her monocle-screen was still in working order, but when she checked, she couldn't access anything except its basic offline functions. Libra — the system that all Zircons used in court, encompassing her communications, personal database, and case files — was locked. The only thing related to it was the "Add account" option —

Of course.

Zircon would speak for all nesosilicates when or if she admitted that she had multiple communications accounts. One for work, issued by the Diamonds; the other(s) for private recreation, downloaded and curated by an online black market. In Zircon's case, she had one private account. Stars forbid she ever reveal what she used it for, but she was eternally grateful that she had remembered it now.

It was downhill from here. All she had to do was send the admittance records to her private account, then she could use the search tools in her screen to look for Rose Quartz's file, and if Rose wasn't in the Harvester then Zircon could leave and be free. Of course, she would be a fugitive, but she would be in one piece, and she wouldn't be suspended in a permanent state of disjointed, incoherent suffering…

The door opened. Under Zircon's fingertips, the computer system went dark. Her mouth went dry.

In the doorway was the silhouette of an agate.


i am reluctant to say that i am posting this in lieu of petri dish, but in my defense (as i have complained about at much length) my computer was out of order and the petri dish chapter stuck on a hard drive, which contains about 400 other files. i have yet to sort through them all because executive dysfunction is a bitch sometimes. so until i can, and trust me, it is making me feel VERY guilty that i haven't done it, as well as finding and polishing my piece for amedotzine, i'll likely keep posting chapters of this. i may also try to finish the adagio for three chapter that has been in progress for quite a few months now.

like i said: executive dysfunction is a bitch.

please lmk what you liked and whatever