by J P Waters
“It helped me when I was down. I thought it might help Mona. You were right, the underground flower market is incredible.”
“I’m glad you liked, it, we’ll go together sometime. I think Mona is... sleeping? Or in recovery mode? I’m not sure what you’re supposed to call it,” said Lane.
Raquel nodded and looked up at the women. “But she’s going to get better.”
Olie smiled.
“Are you a professional roke hunter now?” Raquel asked. “Mom said you were.”
“Am I? Yeah, I guess I am in a way,” said Olie.
“That’s so hyper-real!”
“What about you, Olie? How are you doing?” Lane asked.
Olie was about to answer when Mona began to stir. Lane moved so Olie could get closer, allowing Olie to approach the side of the bed.
“Mona?”
The Seba opened her eyes halfway. “Olie, is that you?”
“Yes, Mona. It’s me. How are you doing?”
“I’m a bit disoriented but okay.”
“Hi, Mona!”
“Hi, Raquel,” Mona said as she sat up from the bed.
“Now can we get some sugar ice?” asked Raquel.
“Let me ask Mona,” said Lane. “Do you feel like eating anything?”
Mona glanced at Olie, then back at Lane. “Specifically, sugar ice?”
Lane nodded and smiled.
“Yes, I’d like that.”
Lane and Raquel agreed to fetch the Seba whatever sugar ice they could find nearby. The two left the small hospital room hand in hand. Olie watched them go before turning back to see Mona examining a large bandage on her abdomen.
“What happened?” Mona asked.
“You were struck by some kind of crazy weapon.”
Mona pulled the bandage back to reveal that she had been burned badly.
“It fried your skin and some of your organs,” said Olie. “They can repair your appearance, though.”
“They can?”
“Yes. You’ve more than earned a couple of transplants.”
Mona nodded again. This time she seemed to be lost in thought.
“What’s the matter?”
“I was just thinking it might be nice to not be perfect.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’ll only be near-perfect.”
“Oh,” said Mona. “I’ll have a scar?”
“It’ll be slight, but it will be there.”
“Do you have any scars, Olie?”
Olie nodded. “Lots. Most of them are healed though. Not all, but most.”
“I’ve never noticed them.”
“Well, they’re mostly in places people can’t see. I guess I hide them pretty well.”
“I see,” said Mona.
“So, you’re feeling better?”
“I don’t necessarily feel anything.” Mona pushed the blanket off herself but Olie placed a protective hand over her.
“Maybe you shouldn’t get up.”
“Have you forgotten I’m a Seba?”
“No. Well, maybe a little.”
Mona went to the window and stared down at the street below.
“Have you checked your messages today?”
“No, I’ve been at the coast on a mission. I rushed to get here.”
“You should check your messages.”
Olie looked down at her band and punched a few buttons.
“I can’t believe it. It’s an interview request.”
“From Deep Dominion Enterprises, a corporation that purports near-transgalactic capabilities. I would know—I sent your application.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Olie was so excited exiting the hospital room that she almost crashed into someone who was waiting outside Mona’s door.
“Olivia?” the stranger asked. “Olivia Manning?”
“Umm, yeah. Olie,” she cautiously replied. An unfortunate side effect of her going public and leading some of the roke missions was that she was becoming a small-time media persona. Hopefully this wasn’t a reporter trying to ambush her. “Who are you?”
The young Indian woman extended her hand to Olie, who hesitantly took it. She was dressed to the nines in smart business attire, and Olie could see top-of-the-line biomods built into the back side of her hands.
“I’m Helene Kaif,” she said. “I believe you were one of the last people to see my sister alive.”
“Oh,” Olie replied, momentarily at a loss for words. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
Following the incident, Infinite Water Systems’ involvement with rokes, as well as Anushka Kaif’s death, had gone completely public. IWS lawyers were fighting it, but most of the IWS facilities has been seized by Government forces and public opinion was at all time low. The future of IWS was bleak. The detail that had not been made public was the exact circumstances of Anushka Kaif’s death, and Olie wondered how her sister had come by the information.
“Thank you. Truly,” Helene said, weakly managing a smile as she dropped Olie’s hand. “I apologize for surprising you like this, but can I have a moment of your time? It isn’t legal. It’s more, well, personal.”
Olie glanced back into Mona’s room. She was uncomfortable going into the conversation alone, but these days she knew all too well what grief felt like. The Kaif family was another in a long line of victims of the rokes.
“Yeah, sure,” Olie replied, following Helene to a pair of seats in one of the nearby waiting rooms. “How did you find me?”
“Connections. Favors. But waiting, mostly. I knew you’d visit your Seba friend. Or at least I hoped you would. It’s been nice, though. The waiting, that is. It’s quiet here, and things are tense in my family right now.”
“Do they know you’re meeting with me?”
“No,” Helene said, “and I don’t plan on telling them.”
“What’s this all about, then?”
“My sister… when you met her, did she seem strange at all to you?”
Olie hesitated. The obvious answer was yes—she’d tried to kill them—but it still felt strange to disparage the dead woman to her sister’s face. What was she fishing for?
“Strange how?”
“Dark… unhinged. No, not unhinged. Resolute. Fanatical. Violent.”
Olie paused. It seemed to line up with her experience, but still.
“Are you sure you want to know? Our experience wasn’t pretty. It might be better to focus on the good times you had together instead of revisiting her death.”
“I’m sure,” Helene said, resolute. “The police have given us vague answers, but I fear they’re sparing us details because of our family’s political power. I need to know.”
Olie sighed. She’d fixated on the details of her father’s death for long enough to know how crippling uncertainty could be. Truth was the least she could offer.
“Then yes, she was strange. Very strange. She imprisoned and starved us, and when it became clear we were a liability, she tried to kill us.” Olie shuddered, remembering it. “In the end we were saved by a friend who sent a Seba to find us. He fired on your sister to defend us. I’m sorry, Helene.”
Helene stared at her lap for a long time before looking up again. Wiping a tear with her sleeve, she looked Olie in the eyes.
“Thank you, Olie. I’d feared as much, but I needed to know. She had to be stopped. I hold no grudge against you or your friends.”
“Wait,” Olie said. “What had you feared?”
Helene sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You’d be surprised what I’d believe,” Olie said. “Please, go ahead.”
Helene looked around the empty room as if checking for spies before returning her gaze to Olie. “Do you promise not to tell anyone? Regardless of her actions, I don’t wish to tarnish my sister’s memory further. Memory is all I have left of her.”
“I promise,” said Olie.
“The Anushka you met was a different person than the woman I knew. Something changed in her w
hen she started that company. No, the change happened before that. She withdrew into herself, refused our family’s counsel, cared only about work and-and-and… water. IWS was not the problem. It was a symptom of a larger shift in my sister’s heart.”
“Did you know about the rokes? Did anyone?”
“No!” Helene looked away in shame. “None of us did! We never would have condoned such a risk. But Anushka no longer consulted the family. She spoke only with her investors; she told us that those investors saved her company. She would often call them her saviors. Our saviors. That’s what she called them. Our father refused to support her madness. IWS bore the Kaif name in name alone. All her money… her blessings… came from those strangers. In those final days she’d cut us all off. The Anushka I knew died the day IWS was founded. That’s why I had to come to you. To know for certain that she had abandoned us—that I hadn’t abandoned her.”
Helene’s words triggered something in Olie. Blessings. Anushka had mentioned them to her too. But the blessing wasn’t a collection of investors—it was the rokes themselves. Had these saviors given Kaif more than just money?
“Did you ever meet any of these investors, the saviors?”
“No. Only snippets overheard. It was always saviors or the visitors or something like that. No matter how much the family pushed her, she refused to share their names. Eventually she cut off contact entirely. Our last conversation was arguing about it. I never spoke with her again.”
It was then that Helene broke down and sobbed. Olie gingerly reached out and put her arm around the stranger, allowing her to cry into her shoulder. She wished she could do more but knew she couldn’t.
“It’s okay,” Olie whispered, rubbing her back. That was enough for today—this was clearly too fresh. Olie just hoped the woman had found what she was looking for. “It’s going to be okay.”
Chapter Forty-Five
A week later, Olie had all but accepted her new job. The interview had lasted more than three hours, but Olie had been offered a position on the spot. It was a part of a larger mass hiring push for a group of colonists heading for Proxima Centauri. Still, Olie had asked for more time to consider the offer. There was still so much to process in the wake of the roke discovery and taking the job would mean dropping her current way of life entirely, not to mention immediately.
Olie couldn’t stop thinking about her interactions with the Kaifs either—both Anushka and Helene. She’d finished her conversation with Helene over tissues and apologies, with the two young women promising to meet for tea sometime to chat about more pleasant things. Olie knew the meeting would never happen. Helene had wanted closure, and Olie had given it to her.
Anushka’s words, on the other hand, wouldn’t leave her. After learning of Kaif’s mysterious investors and even more mysterious behavior, she couldn’t help but dissect the meaning behind her monologue over and over in her head. There was also the issue of Kaif’s appearance as she attacked them on their way out—an image so strange Olie had convinced herself she must have been seeing things in the heat of the moment. Now she wasn’t so sure.
She was meeting Jayson that night, and despite everything they’d gone through, she still found herself nervous about seeing him. She’d shared the news of her offer already over band message, and he’d congratulated her, but she knew there was more to his feelings on her departure. The question was whether he could bring himself to say what he felt.
Thankfully Mona would be there, too. That was the reason for their gathering—to celebrate her release from the hospital. Both the doctor and the Seba technician had still advised against too much movement for another week or so, though, so they were gathering in Olie’s apartment for its close quarters. It would be a simple affair, and the first time the three of them had been together as a group since IWS.
After Olie put some Hard20 on ice she walked over to Gerry’s new and improved cage, which Jayson had printed. The creature had a new scar on two of his forelegs where another roke must have bitten him, but otherwise he was his normal calm and curious self. Olie felt like a hypocrite keeping him there—especially as the state’s premiere roke hunter—but she could hardly bear with the idea of parting with him, either. Especially after their miraculous reunion and her sparing of Jayson.
It wasn’t long before a notification of the pair’s arrival appeared on the sphere. Olie watched as Jayson wheeled Mona to the elevator in a sleek, translucent wheelchair. When they arrived on her floor, Olie opened the door to let them in.
Olie bent down to hug the seated Seba.
“Welcome back to your home-away-from-home, Mona,” Olie said with a grin.
“Thank you, Olie. It’s good to be home,” Mona replied with a near-human smile.
Next, Olie stood and hugged Jayson. He welcomed her, but she could feel a stiffness in him. Not that she blamed him. She’d probably put up walls, too, if someone she loved was about to shoot into the stratosphere.
“Who wants a drink?” she asked, breaking away.
“I do,” said Jayson with a laugh, wheeling Mona over to the couch. “I have a brand-new respect for you, Mona. It’s exhausting being the assistant for once.”
“Really? I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, Jayson. It’s probably twice as hard dealing with you every day,” Olie jabbed, filling a pair of glasses.
“Incorrect,” said Mona. “Caring for Jayson is at least three times as hard.”
Olie nearly spit out her drink. “Mona, was that a joke?”
“Yes. I’ve been practicing. Was the joke good?”
Olie burst out laughing. “Yes, very good.”
“Mona…” said Jayson.
“Did you not like it?”
Jayson chuckled. “No, no, you’re right. Truth in comedy,” He let out a laugh. “I guess all this time with Olie really did rub off on you.”
“I do not believe any part of Ms. Manning is attached to my body, despite its recent re-build.”
The evening continued like that—sometimes laughing at each other, but more often laughing with each other. As Olie filled her glass again, she realized just how much she’d miss them despite everything. Despite the past she shared with Jayson. Despite Mona’s early standoffishness and Olie’s initial jealousy. These were the friends she had, and it would hurt to leave them.
Before she left, she needed to tie up some loose ends.
“Jayson,” Olie asked, far enough into her drinks so she no longer felt hesitation. “Do you remember anything unusual about Kaif that day?”
“Which day?”
“At IWS, during our escape.”
“Oh.” The mirth drained from Jayson’s face. “Other than the fact that she tried to kill us?”
Olie frowned. “Yeah... When she attacked us. I can’t get her face out of my head.”
Jayson placed a hand on Olie’s shoulder. “There was nothing we could have done, Olie. That roke got her.”
Olie shrugged the hand off. “No, not that. I literally mean her face. Do you remember anything strange about it?”
“Oh, she was bleeding pretty badly? Why?”
“There was something off about it. I think—I think I saw fangs. And scales under her skin.”
Jayson smiled and put his glass down. “Ms. Manning, just how much have you had to drink tonight?”
“I’m being serious!” Olie said, punching him in the arm. “Mona, do you remember?”
“I regret to remind you that I was without power at that time,” Mona replied, having wheeled over to observe Gerry during their drinking.
“Still,” Olie said. “I met Kaif’s sister – well not met really, she found me. She said Kaif was involved with some bad people. Some mysterious investors, people she called saviors. Maybe there’s something more going on here. Maybe that was part of it.”
“Well, if there is, it’ll be exposed soon,” Jayson said. “You’d better believe the government won’t leave an IWS stone unturned. And besides, what’s it matter to you?” A bitterness
entered Jayson’s voice. “You’ll be gone soon anyway.”
“Yeah, about that,” Olie said, refusing to take the bait. She didn’t want to have an argument that night, and it was clear Jayson wasn’t taking her seriously. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Shoot,” Jayson said, still cold.
“Look after Gerry for me?”
Ollie had thought long and hard about whether there was any way she could take the roke with her into space, but no matter which way she sliced it she just couldn’t justify the risk—to Gerry or to her crew. If she escaped, there was no telling what the roke would do. She trusted him not to attack the trio after his sparing of Jayson, but strangers contained in a sealed vessel for months on end would be a different story. Besides, she still understood so little about the animals that she had no idea whether Gerry would survive the change in atmosphere. Human scientists hardly knew what kept the rokes going to begin with, other than a near-constant supply of food… organic matter. And most of the available organic matter on the voyage would be human.
“I’d love to…” Jayson said, his eyes shifting away from her, “but I can’t.”
“What? Why? You can’t possibly still be afraid of him. You rescued him!”
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just, well, I’ve re-enlisted.”
“What?”
“Not interplanetary—terrestrial only. I’ll be consulting on the global roke exterminations. They send me abroad next month. I don’t know when I’ll be back in Washington.”
“So, take him with you!”
“Really, Olie?” Jayson said with a light grin. “A pet roke for a roke hunter? How long do you think I could keep that secret? And he needs to feed. You know that as well as I do.”
“But-but-but—forget Gerry! When were you going to tell me this? This is dangerous!”
“With all due respect, Olie,” Jayson said, “you’re leaving, too.”
A silence filled the room. Olie was fuming. At Jayson, but even more at herself. She hadn’t even considered how Jayson’s life might change once she was gone. She’d forgotten that the crisis would have changed him too. And she hadn’t expected herself to still be so afraid, so protective. She wouldn’t be there for him. She couldn’t be. For any of them.