by Laura Lam
Ariadne watched the two women through the red bird.
It was late at night up in the Temple, and the Oracle had finally let her rest. She was supposed to be asleep, but she couldn’t look away from this. Better than any wall-screen vid—because it was real.
Ariadne never looked in the courtesan rooms. She was the only one in the Temple who could, other than the Oracle. Ariadne had no interest in watching that. Sex was something she didn’t understand and didn’t care to. She was more interested in closeness. Those casual touches of people who had a connection—friendship, love, anything. That was what she craved and yearned for up in her tiny garret.
Most people didn’t know Ariadne existed. No one realized that the directives they heard in their minds used the voice of a real girl with her own hopes and dreams and wishes. As far as they knew, the persistent voice that whispered commands, repetitions, and instructions belonged to the Oracle.
The truth was: before Ariadne, the Oracle was an aphonic program whose commands had to be interpreted by an engineer in the Temple, who then ran the code through people’s synapses.
The engineer before Ariadne had long suspected a human voice would help deepen Tholosian programming—that the Oracle would one day become indistinguishable from people’s own thoughts.
It was Ariadne who had given One the ability to speak, and with it, lost one of the few things that had belonged to her alone.
Ariadne had never spoken directly to another human as herself. Never brushed her hand against anyone else’s. When she slept at night, she wrapped her arms tight around her middle—an embrace that she pretended was comfort offered by someone else.
Loneliness had made Ariadne desperate.
In an effort to soothe One’s despondent child, the Oracle had let Ariadne watch several wallscreen vids two years before—but Ariadne found ways around the Oracle’s monitoring. Sometimes, when she was bored, she listened to others within the palace.
That was how she had found Rhea and Nyx.
The women had met many times. Different hours and days, but Ariadne watched them each time. They were good at covering their tracks, but the Oracle’s logs would eventually begin to render a pattern. Human behavior was never as spontaneous as people assumed.
Ariadne erased every trace from the Oracle’s records, but she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to cover for them. If they did something to bring the Oracle’s attention, the women would never be able to escape Tholos.
She’d calculated their chances at finding freedom as less than two percent. And that was being generous.
But if Ariadne helped? Well, seven point five percent was still abysmal. But it was better.
Ariadne chewed her lip as she watched the bird’s cameras on her small, contraband tablet. She needed to talk to them tonight, if she was ever going to do this. But they would be the first people she’d spoken to. She’d say the wrong thing. Her conversational skills were nothing but cobbled-together references from vids filmed in the last one hundred years. The odds that she’d make an ass of herself were high.
Nyx and Rhea were sitting together on the bed, sketching out possible escape routes. They’d narrowed down a list of ships, but they were hoping to stow away in the hold and escape when they landed on a planet like Myndalia or Tiryns for fueling.
“Here goes,” Ariadne whispered before opening the comms of the bird. In its cage, the red bird awoke, ruffling its feathers.
Nyx and Rhea froze.
“Don’t freak out,” she said, her voice coming through the tiny speakers in the red bird. “But that plan won’t work. You’ll get scanned with a heat signature in the hold and they’ll suck out all the oxygen.”
“Shit—” Nyx jumped up from the bed, making for the hidden camera.
“Don’t destroy the bird!” Ariadne said, frantic. “It’s the only way I can contact you.”
“Who—” She glared at the courtesan. “Rhea, you told me there was no camera in that stupid thing.”
“As far as I knew, there wasn’t!” Ari could hear the fear in Rhea’s voice. That was an emotion Ariadne knew well.
“I’ve been watching you both for a month,” Ariadne tried again. “In a totally non-creepy way, I promise. Well, I mean, mostly I just—”
“Get to the point,” Nyx said through her teeth, “or I crush that bird under my boot.”
This was not going as well as she’d hoped. “Look,” she said, “if I was going to turn you in, I would have done it already. I want to help.”
The women both paused. Nyx clearly still wanted to take the mechanical bird and dash it to the floor. Ariadne didn’t blame her.
“Please,” Ariadne tried again, sure she was messing this up. “Please listen to me. You’re going to die if you keep on your current trajectory.”
Nyx’s hand inched toward her side. “Fine,” the soldier said, her voice grim. “Talk.”
Ariadne whooped, startling them. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m new at this.”
“Speaking through mechanical birds?” Rhea asked, voice mild.
“Speaking to people in general. As myself, I mean.”
That took them aback. “The point,” Nyx reminded her.
Ariadne stumbled over her words. “I’m Ariadne. My friends would call me Ari, if I had any friends. I always liked the thought of a nickname. I’m the Oracle’s Engineer.” Nyx’s fingers clenched. “I’ve been raised by One,” Ariadne added. “In the Temple.”
“No one lives in the Temple,” Rhea said, a tiny frown line between her brows. “It’s forbidden.”
Rhea was in full courtesan regalia, her eyes painted a shimmering purple, her lips wet with gloss. At the end of the meetings, Rhea would muss her hair, wipe off the gloss. Nyx once ripped the shoulder seam of Rhea’s dress to add a little extra authenticity to people’s perception of them as lovers. They’d laughed as they did it, almost like children. Ariadne had watched them bond, the trust growing between them.
She envied it.
“I’m the only one,” Ariadne said quietly.
“Alone?” Rhea breathed.
“Yes.” Ariadne pressed a hand to her chest to soothe the ache there. She was so tired of being alone. “Like One’s previous Engineers, I was created by One’s design, and will work in the Temple until I die. I’m One’s fourth child. I’ve been with the Oracle since I was old enough to leave the Birthing Center.”
Rhea and Nyx looked at each other in surprise. It was Rhea who spoke first, her voice soft. “What does the Oracle use you for?”
“Aside from enhancing the performance of One’s AI, I’m the Oracle’s hands and voice. I help with things One can’t do.” And with a swallow, Ariadne shed the childish, cheerful pitch she’d learned from the vids, all those little inflections that made her sound different from the way the Oracle made her. “Engines are engaged. Proceed to exit 153A-3 to exit Tholosian atmosphere.”
“Gods below the seven levels,” Nyx said. “You’re the voice in my fucking head.”
“Affirmative,” Ariadne said, unable to switch out of the voice. At least the lack of inflection hid her fear.
“So, you’ve been hidden and trapped in the belly of the palace this whole time?” Rhea whispered.
“Affirmative.”
“Gods,” Rhea whispered. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“I can’t imagine what your life must have been like so far.”
Ariadne coughed, forced herself to be bright again. “Oh, well, it mostly sucks. But that’s why I’m so glad I found you. I don’t want you to have all the oxygen sucked out of your lungs and then have your bodies thrown out the airlock. That seems a waste.”
Nyx smirked. “That’s . . . kind, kid. I guess.”
“I’m not a kid,” Ariadne protested. “My frontal lobe may still be developing until I reac
h full maturity, but I’m definitely not a child. The Oracle designed me to bypass the mental limitations of childhood.”
“You said you wanted a nickname,” Nyx pointed out.
Up in the Temple, Ariadne’s body flushed with warmth. “Can I give you a nickname?” she asked. “Like . . . Buttons. I saw a vid with a fierce Old World animal called a snowcat and its name was Buttons. Can I call you Buttons?”
“No. Good gods, no.”
Ariadne deflated. “Oh. Okay.”
“Nothing personal,” Nyx tried. She cleared her throat. “So, how do you suggest we get out of here without dying?”
Ariadne wrapped her arms around herself up in her garret, rocking side to side as her smile grew.
Nyx had said we.
* * *
—
It took every spare moment Ariadne had to claw back from the Oracle’s endless work schedules. But even when she was crafting code, or recording her voice for the Oracle to blast through spaceships, buildings, people’s very brains, she was always dreaming of escape.
They were a trio of different skills and knowledge subsets, and a triangle was the strongest shape. She was only sleeping a few hours a night, slurping down the kykeon the Oracle provided her. She grew even thinner, and she had little enough to spare before.
She made mistakes, and the Oracle punished her.
The months crawled by. Sometimes, in the deep of night, she looked up through the porthole of the garret at the stars and cried, certain she’d never be able to make it. Even if everything went to plan, the idea of finally leaving the Temple was terrifying. Rhea and Nyx hadn’t even seen her.
What if they found her strange and repulsive?
What if she wasn’t any good at being human?
The day finally came. They had done all they could. Rhea had some valuable information from the madam, Juno. Ariadne had hacked the registry of Zelus. She had massaged the Oracle programming on the soldiers aboard so they wouldn’t think to question Damocles’s favorite courtesan and one of his top mercenaries joining a complete unknown as dona aboard the vessel. She had programmed a way to cut Zelus off from the Oracle’s main network once they boarded.
Rhea had spirited their costumes away, talked Nyx and Ariadne through how to carry themselves with confidence, how to speak, how to pretend to be something they were not.
Nyx had planned how they would kill everyone aboard once they hit space. Ariadne wasn’t sure if she’d be able to do that. But she had a knife and a Mors from Nyx, just in case.
Once Ariadne left the Temple, they wouldn’t have much time. Ariadne had tried to run a proxy of infrared readouts to fool the Oracle into sensing that she was still asleep in the garret, but it would not last long. Ariadne also had to hope that once the Oracle realized she was missing, One would be too protective of the secret that she’d used a human child at all to sound a palace-wide alarm. One would try to find One’s daughter on One’s own.
Ariadne knew she was no match for the Oracle. Eventually, One would find her. But Ariadne could help Rhea and Nyx escape, and she could have a taste of that freedom. It would have to be enough.
When Ariadne finally left the garret, Nyx and Rhea were waiting. The pity on their faces when they saw her scrawny frame made Ariadne ashamed. She hunched her slight shoulders. Rhea reached into her pocket and held out a small wrapped package.
“What’s that?” Ariadne asked, almost suspicious.
“A sweet. You look half-starved.”
She’d hadn’t told them she’d never eaten food. Looks of pity, again.
“Here. Try it.”
“We don’t have time,” Ariadne protested.
“Suck on it as we walk. Come on.”
Ariadne unwrapped it with shaking fingers. Carefully, she put it on her tongue. Sensations she couldn’t begin to describe filled her tingling taste buds. Her eyes widened, filled with tears.
Rhea slid her arms around her shoulders. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “We have a galaxy to explore.”
The steps of their plan fell into place. Once on the ship, Ariadne slipped her code into the mainframe. They clutched hands as the ship took off from the ground, though Nyx only hooked her pinkie with Ariadne’s. The last of the sweet melted in Ariadne’s mouth as she watched the palace retreat into the distance as the craft rose into the sky and took them to the stars.
Ariadne would always associate the taste of chocolate with freedom.
30.
ARIADNE
Present day
Ariadne stared down the long hallway of endless white tiles. The records room there was a copy of the command center in the Temple, which was deep in the ruins of the original generation ship brought from the Old World to Tholos with its first humans. Ariadne had helped design the security for this room, as the Oracle instructed her to do the things One could not. The things that required a small, undernourished body. Clever little hands. Her engineered, brilliant brain.
The Oracle and One’s daughter had worked well in tandem. Ariadne still knew how One processed, where One focused attention and data. She knew how to move between the cracks.
Or she hoped so.
If the Oracle found Ariadne in this command center—just a single lesser temple of many outside of the main Temple on Tholos—she would never escape. She had to hope she could find the information for the other women first.
Ariadne moved on the balls of her feet. All was silent. Halfway down the path, the sensors triggered, the hallway filling with a buzzing hiss as the lasers snapped into being. Ariadne still had a deep scar on her leg from a past misstep. She could feel the heat of them against her skin. They moved almost lazily in their circular pattern, but they’d kill so easily. There were three different patterns, one for each of the Three Sisters.
If she’d triggered the program, Ariadne could only hope that her patch was still holding on the cameras and other sensors. She couldn’t worry. She had two seconds to remember where in the pattern the lasers were before they sliced her into pieces. She let her mind go blank, reaching for muscle memory and rote memorization. A large puzzle she only needed to slot into.
She fell to the ground just as a laser went over her head, close enough she smelled the acrid burning of the tips of her hair. Her nose just had time to graze the polished tiles before she pushed up with her hands, flipping over another laser. She danced to the side, gave another little hop, and then did three backflips in quick succession. She was out of practice; her lungs hurt and her muscles were already shaking.
No time to think. She could only follow that pattern that’d been drilled into her more times than she could count. Up. Down. Left. Left. Half-twirl. Diagonal cartwheel. Right. Right.
Right.
She reached the other end of the hallway, her lungs working hard. She darted in to the main control panel, fingers already itching to manipulate the raw code.
She hoped Clo was holding up out in the hallway, but she couldn’t spare more than a thought for the mechanic. The muscles in her back were so tight, she thought they’d break. She could feel One’s presence behind the code. As long as she didn’t trigger an anomaly, she should be able to slip in and out.
But had the Oracle already noticed that the sensors had triggered there? Would it drive One’s attention away from training on countless planets, on the millions of cameras dotted through the Empire?
Ariadne’s hands kept shaking.
Rhea was still helping her to unpack her childhood with the Oracle, but when would there be time for any of them to heal from their pasts? Ariadne was supposed to be living her new life by now, fixing odd things to get by on some quiet, faraway planet. Far from the Temple, far from the Oracle’s tendrils. Not here in the depths of One’s domain.
Her eyes scanned the information, all of it storing deep in her brain. No time to make copies, no time to even think
about what her eyes were seeing. She had it.
“Ismara,” she whispered, scanning the text. “Ichor mines.”
Josephine was a rock called ichor from the planet Ismara. Frustrated, Ariadne tried to read more, but the whirring of the mechanisms in the Oracle’s mainframe stopped her. Though she had an eidetic memory, there was only so quickly she could scan the information in front of her. It would have to do.
She’d lingered long enough already.
She slid a small drive into the slot on one of the screens. The virus would enter the Oracle’s interface as if it were a routine process to streamline code, and there it would sit until Ariadne needed to activate it.
From farther away, she thought as she quickly entered information into the report logs. Way, way farther.
If the Oracle did pay attention to the logs on the smallest of the Three Sisters, it should say that Minoa Katrakis-1, one of the chief engineers, came to check on shipment records. Ariadne made sure to look up other ships’ manifests as well as Zelus’s, and Minoa had been assigned to work on that ship, as well. She was another small woman, though not as tiny as Ariadne.
She had to hope this desperate patchwork quilt held. Engineers would know how to pass through the maze, though Minoa would only work this one. If any heat came down on the engineer, it would be Ariadne’s fault. She didn’t want to risk another’s life. She’d already caused so much death.
Now to find her way back. She was ready to dance.
“Goodbye, Oracle,” Ariadne whispered.
She thought of the Oracle’s cruelty. The long hours. What she’d had to do. But she remembered the stories the Oracle would tell her—those she deemed safe enough to tell a little girl. Fables and Old World lore, the offerings, the Named Things lined up in her room. A dried rosebud. Purple amethyst. The doll with the china face and yellow hair.
I love you, she thought.
* * *
—
Clo jumped a little when Ariadne opened the door.
“All right?” Clo asked.