by Tania Hutley
“Wait. Did you just pay me a compliment?” I jerk back with my hand to my mouth, exaggerating my surprise to hide the fact that I’m actually flattered.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” He’s as deadpan as ever, but I swear there’s a glint of amusement in his eyes.
I’d take it further, but just because I’m joking with Sentin for the first time ever, I can’t let myself get distracted. “Let’s talk about the knights,” I say, perching on the edge of the enormous desk.
He tilts his head back to look at me. “Go on.”
“Morelle made sure the knights would be loyal to her. But they’re loyal to you too, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are.”
I blink at him. “But… how? Did Morelle know? And why did you do it?”
He’s silent for a moment, as though considering my questions. Then he answers in the slow, precise way I’ve become used to. “I told you I assisted her scientists with some complex calculations in order to win her trust. The calculations were related to the way Skins can stimulate areas in the brain.”
“You mean, you helped control her soldiers’ minds?” My good feelings toward him disappear, and my voice rises. “How could you?”
He lifts both hands in a calming gesture. “I assisted with certain aspects of the technology. That answers your ‘how’ question. The answer to whether President Morelle knew the knights are loyal to me, is that she did not.”
“I also asked why you did it. You weren’t controlling them, were you? You didn’t tell them to terrorize Old Tritoners and attack innocent people?”
The knights killed a lot of sinkers. If Sentin’s to blame, I’ll have to do something. Maybe order my guards to arrest him. But fighting Morelle together has made us a team, and even if I don’t know whether I can trust him, I still think of him as a friend. Besides, I’m not sure I can pull off being the president without his help.
“I didn’t give them any orders.” His tone is as calm and as matter-of-fact as though we were talking about the weather. “My motivation for influencing the knights lies in the fundamental principles of probability theory. Although I calculate the most likely outcome of any event, the nature of predicted outcomes is that they may not necessarily occur.”
I cross my arms. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I set a number of contingency plans in motion. Being able to command the knights may have become necessary. Fortunately, it didn’t.”
“You shouldn’t have messed with those kids’ brains.”
“Noted.” He waves at the chairs on the other side of the desk. “Sit down, and we can talk through the changes you intend to make.”
I puff out a frustrated breath. Arguing with Sentin reminds me of trying to handle magnetised vReal gel. I couldn’t get a grip on that either.
“You know my brother is one of the kids you helped brainwash?” I demand.
He blinks slowly, giving nothing away, but clearly waiting for me to get to the topic he wants to discuss.
After a long moment, I let out another exasperated breath and ease off the desk, sinking into the chair opposite him instead. He’s in the president’s seat, and I’m in the one reserved for visitors, but I refuse to let that annoy me.
“I want to stop building new Knight Skins and destroy all the ones we have,” I tell him.
Sentin links his fingers, his elbows on the arms of his chair. His palms tilt toward me and I notice a deep wound in the fleshy part of his hand, running all the way from his index finger to his pinky.
“The knights are under your command,” he says. “It would be counter-productive to destroy them when you can simply order them to do your bidding. If they’re doing things you don’t like, just tell them not to.”
“I don’t want to order them to do anything,” I say. “Not when they’ve had their free will taken away.”
“The conditioning has already happened. You can’t reverse it.”
“I won’t use those kids like Morelle did.”
“If the soldiers have no Skins, they’ll lose their sense of purpose. Consider how you felt when you were forced to give up your Leopard Skin. There are over a thousand young people who’ll feel the same way.”
If Sentin would lose his temper, he’d be easier to argue with. But it’s impossible not to doubt myself when he’s always so damn logical.
I shake my head. “I won’t let you talk me out of this. I know what’s right and wrong, even if you don’t.”
“Most of the Knight Skins have already been destroyed by the Fist.” Ignoring my barb, he pulls up some numbers on the holo screen. “Only forty-seven remain. Even if you insist on halting the production of new Skins, you must retain the few you have. They’ll be necessary for our visit to Deiterra.”
“Our what?” The green fields I saw from the window flash into my mind, and my heart speeds up.
“We’re still officially at war. I’ve opened a line of communication with the Deiterran imperator to resolve the issues between us, and we must meet him face-to-face.”
“In Deiterra?”
He nods, and I catch my breath.
The thought of getting to walk through those fields makes me dizzy. But meeting with the imperator and having the responsibility for stopping the war rest on my shoulders? That’s not so appealing.
“What about your father?” I ask. “He’s the ambassador. Can’t he meet with the imperator?”
“My father was killed in the bombings.”
I rock back in my chair, shocked by his matter-of-fact tone. “I’m sorry, Sentin. I didn’t know.”
“It happened while you were unconscious. I didn’t expect you to know.”
“I’m still sorry.”
He gives me a nod. “Thank you.” His gaze flicks down to the desk and his eyes cloud over. For just a moment, I catch a flicker of pain that’s both raw and deep. Then he turns his face away, pushing his glasses further up his nose.
My heart contracts. Sentin isn’t emotionless after all.
He clears his throat, and when he looks back at me, his armor is locked back into place. “Our priority must be to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty. We’ll need to take the remaining knights with us to Deiterra, both to ensure your safety, and to create a presence that will help the imperator decide it’s in his best interests to be reasonable.”
I nod, resisting the urge to tell him it’s okay to grieve. It hasn’t been that long since the bombs went off, but Sentin’s better at hiding his feelings than anyone I’ve ever met. If he wants to pretend he has no heart, that’s up to him. At least I finally know the truth.
“I missed quite a lot of the war,” I say instead, with a casual shrug. “Were we winning?”
“Our knights came close to defeating the Deiterran army. If the Fist hadn’t wiped the chips of most of our soldiers, the imperator’s regime would have fallen by now.”
“Really?” I gaze up at the ceiling to give myself time to think. There’s so much to do here, I’m reluctant to leave. On the other hand, I never dreamed I’d get to go to Deiterra.
Funny to think that if I’d waited a few days before breaking into the Meat Locker to rescue William, or if I hadn’t wiped all those soldier’s chips, I might now be the interim president in charge of Deiterra as well as Triton.
“Can I travel in this Skin?” I lift both hands, as though showing him my palms will somehow help him answer my question. “My human body is being fed with tubes, right? And this body seems to be working like a real one. I’ve been testing it. So far, everything works like a real body. I’ve been eating and sleeping, and… doing everything else a real person would.”
His lips twitch. He knows what I mean by ‘everything else’ without me having to spell out how I nervous I was the first time this Skin needed the bathroom.
“Your Skin was created from Felicity’s DNA,” he says. “It has identical biological functions, and you need to fuel the Skin with food, just as she fuels her human body. The
only modification is its ceramic composite skeleton, and fiber-optics that mimic the function of a spinal cord.”
“But it’s stronger and faster than a human would be.”
He inclines his head. “It was grown under laboratory conditions, so those traits were easy to enhance. But although the scientists improved on nature, genetically speaking, your Skin is a copy of the real Felicity. The only reason you don’t look more like her is because the Skin reflects a tweaked version of her, to fit with New Triton norms.”
“And if I take it to Deiterra, being such a long way from my human body won’t matter?”
He shakes his head. “The technology uses quantum entanglement. A close proximity is required for the initial consciousness transferal, but subsequent communication is instantaneous, and distance becomes irrelevant.” He blinks at me, probably registering my blank expression. “Just be aware that if you transfer out of the Skin, you won’t be able to use it again. It will appear to be unconscious until you get close enough to transfer back into it and resume control.”
“Okay.” I make up my mind. “Let’s go to Deiterra, and I’ll wait until we get back before I destroy the last of the Knight Skins. But before we go, I want to help the people of Old Triton. I’ll start by increasing the amount they get paid for working in my factories.”
He blinks slowly, and I can almost see the cogs spinning in his brain.
“You have over a million employees,” he says after a moment. “Lifting wages across the board will be prohibitively expensive.”
I gesture to the deactivated holo mechanism on the desk. “You were looking at some big numbers when I came in. The profit column looked particularly impressive.”
“If you bankrupt your company, your employees will have no jobs at all.”
Restlessly, I get up from my chair and pace to the opaque windows, still a little wobbly in the high heels I haven’t quite gotten used to.
“You’ve analyzed the numbers, right? How much of an increase can I afford to give them?”
“That’s not the only consideration.” He swivels his chair to face me. “Everything in Triton is interconnected. You’re part of a consortium of factory owners who work together to protect their mutual interests. They set wages to maximize their profits. Upsetting that balance will turn them against you.”
I snort. “So Triton’s factory owners are a group of sharks who like to steal from goldfish? I’ve seen that plenty of times, and they don’t scare me like they used to.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Goldfish? Stompers? You need to be careful not to use Old Triton slang when you’re in that Skin.”
Dammit, he’s right.
“What if all the factory owners had to raise the wages they pay?” I speak slowly, making sure I pronounce each word like a New Tritoner would. “I could make it a law. As the acting president, I can increase the legal minimum wage, can’t I?”
“The industrialist consortium is powerful. Its members will fight you.”
I frown at him. “Of course the factory owners don’t want to pay more. That’s why it needs to be a law.”
“The presidential election is in a few months. You should wait until you’re officially elected.”
“You want me to run for president?”
A crease appears in his smooth brow, which in Sentin-land means he’s shocked I had to ask the question. “Of course.”
It makes sense that Sentin wants me to hold onto power. But the election is almost a year away, and I can’t let millions suffer in the meantime without trying to help.
“There must be some middle ground,” I say. “We could give workers a small wage rise at first, with a plan for more after the election. Even a tiny increase will help. For some Old Tritoners, it could mean the difference between life and death.” I have no idea if he cares about dying sinkers. “Besides,” I add. “Won’t giving them more money mean Old Tritoners will be more likely to vote for me?”
“Perhaps.”
At least I’m making a little progress. “I also want to get rid of second child taxes, and make shelters safer for the grunts who have to live in them.”
“Workers,” he corrects. “Not grunts.”
Silently cursing my slip, I keep going. “Eventually, I want to give them their own houses to live in, instead of shelters.”
“Change always comes with a cost. I’d rather not have to pay it now.”
“Old Tritoners need things to change. The longer we wait, the more they suffer.”
He studies me for a moment, his eyes the color of steel. “Why are you so concerned with Old Triton? You don’t live there anymore. You’ll never need to live there again.”
“You think I can just forget about everything that happened to me there?”
“You don’t need to forget it. Analyze it, and learn from it. But holding onto old emotions and attachments will only weaken you.”
I think of Tori, and the all the Fist members who went to battle, risking their lives against the knights. If they’d decided that emotions and attachments weren’t worth fighting for, the knights would probably still be tormenting Old Tritoners.
“Is that what you do?” I ask. “Cut yourself off from everything?”
He rests his elbows on the arms of his chair and laces his fingers. “It’s the only sensible option.”
“How can you not care about anyone?”
He hesitates. “It’s not that I don’t care. But the fact is, a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m concerned with the community as a whole. The future of Triton matters far more than what happens to any single individual.”
“That’s great,” I walk back to the desk. “Unless you’re the individual who’s getting shafted.”
“Leaders can only be effective if they remain detached.”
“Maybe that’s true, but I’m not detached. Too many terrible things happen every day in Old Triton. Those things happened to me. I can’t walk away and pretend I don’t care.”
He doesn’t reply, and I stop in front of him, wishing for the millionth time that he were easier to read. Even sitting down, Sentin has a restrained elegance that probably comes from having such long limbs. His facial features aren’t as even as most floaters’, and I’m starting to think of that as a good thing. His dark hair is short, his eyes are sharply intelligent, and I recently discovered that on the rare occasion he smiles, the way his face lights up takes my breath away.
I can’t help but like Sentin. But I’d give my right arm to know if I can trust him.
“You cut your hand?” I ask, noticing it again.
He lifts his palm to give me a good look. The wound is deep enough to make me wince. “When I collected the chip scanner from Felicity’s bedroom, I cut myself on a piece of broken glass. My own impatience was to blame. I should have let her androids clean the room first.”
So he’s not infallible after all. Just a regular guy who occasionally makes mistakes, like the rest of us. I was starting to wonder. “Doctor Gregory said you studied military tactics at university,” I say.
He inclines his head. “Military tactics, statistics, and probability theory. I have an aptitude for mathematics.”
“I’m determined to make things better for Old Triton and could really use your talents. I don’t want to have to do it without you.” I shoot him a smile to take the edge off my words, but hopefully he can see how serious I am. He has no reason to want to improve conditions in Old Triton, but if I let him talk me out of it, it’ll be on my conscience. I’ll have to think about all the people I let suffer, when I could have pushed for change.
“That Skin gives you absolute power,” says Sentin. “But now is when you must be most careful. You know what they say about power.”
“I have no idea what people say about power. I never thought I’d have any.”
Only a few short weeks ago, I was living in the shelter, solely worried about surviving. Everyt
hing changed the night I watched two shiny goldfish swim in out of the rain.
He blinks slowly. “Be careful, Milla. The changes you want to make will upset some powerful industrialists, and change Triton in ways you can’t foresee.”
Though a warning from Sentin isn’t something I’d be wise to ignore, I nod calmly. “It’s better than not changing things at all.”
Chapter Four
Ma looks every bit as weary as the last time I saw her, and I have to clench my fists to keep myself from hugging her.
She stands stiffly in my luxurious private office, her forehead creased with confusion, and fear in her eyes. “You wanted to see me, President Morelle?” She’s so overawed by the woman standing in front of her that her voice is barely more than a whisper. I wish I could tell her who I really am, but Sentin warned me against it and I figure I should follow his advice.
“I have something for you.” I extend my arm, offering her my band.
It takes forever for her own arm to slowly extend. She looks as though she’s expecting a trick, as though my band might contain some kind of deadly weapon.
I tap my band against hers, activating the transfer function. “I’ve just given you the key that will open your new home. The apartment’s not large, but it’s in New Triton. And it’s all yours. Paid for. The only thing you need to do is move in.”
“I don’t understand.” She frowns at her band, her arm still stiffly extended.
“Congratulations.” I take her work-roughened hand in mine, and shake it for longer than I should because I can hardly bear to let it go.
But her hand stays limp in mine, and she looks at me with such wariness, I can’t stand it. She won’t pull away, she’s too afraid of me for that. But she doesn’t welcome my touch. And why should she? I’m the woman who owns the factory where she slaves for endless hours, and the shelter where she fears for her life each time she closes her eyes.
I drop her hand and clear my throat, trying to get rid of the lump that’s formed. “I know it’s a lot to take in, so let me say it again. You now own an apartment in New Triton.”