“Imagine the universe as something extreme large, with definite boundaries, okay? Something really big, but finite. You understand the distinction?”
“Imagine a big universe, but not an endless one, I got it,” Alex muttered. “Just answer the question, Vivik.”
“I am answering it,” Vivik countered happily. “So, our universe is actually in a stack of universes, layer upon layer. The farther down you go, the older they get, and therefore colder and less energetic. Further up, it’s the opposite, newer and faster, okay? With me so far?”
“Big pile of universes,” Alex said, nodding tiredly.
“The best part is listening to Alex summarize Vivik’s lessons,” Anastasia said quietly, nudging and startling Emily. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m actually losing my ability to comprehend things I already know.”
Vivik glared at Anastasia, but Alex refused to acknowledge it. Anything else he did only encouraged her.
“These universes are discrete, right? There can’t be any overlap, because every particle, the very nature of matter, is fundamentally different in each of these universes, and any kind of contact would be mutually destructive, so there has to be a mechanism to hold them apart, right?” Vivik continued on without waiting for any input from Alex, his face flushed with excitement at the subject. “Well, the ideal boundary mechanism would be some kind of superfluid. Something dynamic, something that could expand and contract to deal with vast volumes and massive thermodynamic variations. But whatever serves as a barrier, it would have to be energetic in nature, because matter, any kind of matter, couldn’t possibly survive the conditions involved.”
Alex put his head down on his desk in despair.
“Not only did you lose me,” he said, his voice muffled by the book his face was planted in, “you actually made me hate the idea of knowing the answer. Thanks to you, I now despise this subject, which I still know nothing about.”
“The Ether, Alex,” Vivik said, gripping Alex’s desk, “that’s what the Ether is. It’s what holds the universes apart. It’s the barrier that keeps the colder subverse below and the more energetic superverse above separate from our own.”
“Or so he says,” Anastasia offered primly from where she sat, one seat over from Emily. “Vivik is very persuasive, but he can’t prove any of this. Besides, subverse is a made-up word.”
“True,” Vivik allowed reluctantly. “But, the majority of the theoreticians at the Academy subscribe to this notion.”
“And before that, they were always talking about entropic energy and waste heat accumulation and alternating frequency vibration,” Anastasia said, rolling her eyes. “Go ahead and tell Alex the truth. Nobody knows what the Ether is. We live right next to it, but we understand it about as well as you understand, say, geometry. That is to say, we know it exists, and that is about it.”
Alex nodded slowly, and when he spoke again, he sounded almost hopeful.
“Then it’s like everything else with science. Lots of rules, but nobody understands it. Right?”
“Exactly,” Anastasia said, grinning.
“Not at all,” Vivik protested, flustered.
“I don’t think either of you is helping Alex catch up very much,” Emily said disapprovingly. “I’m not even sure if you’re trying, or if you just like arguing with each other.”
“Our universe is like a drop of water suspended in oil,” Eerie said quietly, surprising Alex, who had not noticed that the girl was still there in the classroom. She wilted when everyone turned toward her, looking down at her desk and clearly regretting saying anything. When she spoke again, Alex could barely hear her. “You know what I mean, don’t you? The universes are the drops of water, and the Ether is like, well, the oil? Does that make sense?”
Eerie looked over at him hopefully, while Anastasia appeared to laugh quietly behind the hand that discretely covered her mouth.
“Is this going to be on a test of some kind?” Alex asked despairingly, clutching his head in his hands.
Emily laughed and patted him on the back comfortingly.
“Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “It’s not like you can fail homeroom, no matter how bad you do.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“Evaluation,” Anastasia said, working her nails over with an emery board. “To gauge our interests, our aptitude, and most importantly, our sanity and durability. They throw everything at us, not because we need to know it, but because knowing it might help us not turn into lunatics. Where do you think Eerie learned about knitting, anyway? They do it for the same reason that everyone has to go see Rebecca once a month — because as badly as Central needs us, they are even more frightened of us.”
“Why?”
“Because of people like you,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “Unpredictable students with combat-grade protocols that exceed their own ability to control or understand them. At best, you are a wild card. At worse, you’re a threat to everybody around you.”
“Some days I really hate you,” Alex said, putting his head back down on the desk. “Does everybody go to see Rebecca?”
“Everyone except for her,” Emily said, pointing at Anastasia. “But, nobody goes as often as you do, Alex.”
“Why don’t you have to go?”
Alex seemed more impressed by this than by anything else he had learned about Anastasia. She held up her nails to the light, inspecting them critically.
“Because they are even more afraid of me than they are of you,” Anastasia said, without a trace of modesty or sarcasm. “Furthermore, I simply don’t want to.”
Mitsuru was battering a heavy bag when Rebecca came into the staff gym. There was no way for anyone to mistake what was going on for a workout. Mitsuru had left bloody knuckle marks all over the leather of the bag.
Rebecca suppressed a sigh at her friend’s self-centered display of melodrama, and went to go pay her the attention she obviously needed. It was why she’d come to the gym, after all.
Like hell she was doing the stupid cardio-kickboxing class.
“Hey, Mitsuru, sweetie, what’s wrong?” Rebecca was careful, putting her hand on Mitsuru’s shoulder, slick with sweat. Even a tame dog can be dangerous. “What’s got you so worked up? Did something happen in the field?”
Mitsuru stopped her assault, her shoulders heaving as she caught her breath.
“You saw the report?”
The question was rhetorical. Rebecca saw every report, even the ones that were marked for Gaul’s eyes only. That was her job. Everyone knew that.
“Sure. It went well. Alice even gave you a few compliments, and that means something, coming from her. What do you have to be so upset over?”
Mitsuru finally turned around, her red eyes wet with intermingled sweat and tears. Rebecca was taken back despite herself.
“I saw Alice’s protocol.”
“So? She ports. She’s an apport technician, M-Class, the very best. What’s the problem?”
Of course, Rebecca already knew what the problem was. She’d known from the moment she’d read Mitsuru’s field report, before she’d had a chance to edit it. After all, she had to make sure that everyone who came saw Alice’s Black Protocol firsthand received her personal attention. Otherwise, they would notice it didn’t make any sense.
They had nothing to talk about, at least, nothing that Rebecca hadn’t heard a dozen times before. Everyone knew what a protocol looked like, after all. And Alice’s little displays looked nothing at all like one.
“What did she do to Tung? What was that?”
Mitsuru’s voice shook, but Rebecca was already inside her head, soothing, reinforcing. Creating little spaces for doubt to erode away.
“I’m not sure, hon,” Rebecca said with a tired smile. She was actually glad to have the opportunity to tell the truth, for once, since Mitsuru wouldn’t remember a thing. “Nobody knows. Alice Gallow has been here longer than we have. Whatever Alice Gallow does is a secret, even to her. Even to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No one does.”
“I don’t like it. It makes me nervous.”
“It made you nervous,” Rebecca corrected cheerfully. “It doesn’t anymore.”
“But, it could be dangerous…”
Mitsuru barely managed that, in a dreamy, half-removed voice. Rebecca pushed a little harder.
“That’s what everyone thinks. But, it’s not. Not while I’m here. You see, I know something about Alice Gallow that no one else does.”
Mitsuru’s eyes fluttered closed. She barely moved her lips when she spoke.
“What?”
“It’s our secret, silly. I can’t even tell you. She’s my best friend, after all. Now,” Rebecca encouraged, patting Mitsuru on the arm, “you go wash up, and go back to feeling good about the operation, okay?”
She stood there in silence, her eyes fluttering, before she was animated by a sudden internal signal. Mitsuru stretched like she was waking up, and smiled at Rebecca as if she hadn’t seen her in some time.
“Hey ‘Becca,” she said fondly. “Are you here for cardio-kickboxing?”
“I never understand the point of his lectures,” Alex complained. “I tried to take notes today, but how the hell can I take notes when I’m hearing all of this stuff for first time? I don’t even know what the important parts are. This is the dumbest class I’ve ever taken.”
Vivik laughed, peeling his orange in the shade of one of the massive HVAC units that had been crudely grafted onto the stone building. It was warm today, up on the grey slate of the roof, and Alex was glad to be outside. The three-hour long class had felt endless.
“It’s only been a few days, Alex. Did you take a look at the study guide I made you?” Vivik squinted up at Alex, half-blinded by the afternoon sun. “And do you have to keep pacing like that?”
Alex stopped, and realized that Vivik was right. He had been pacing since they’d come up to the roof for lunch. He sighed, and then sat down next to Vivik in the shade.
“Sorry — and no, I, um, haven’t had time yet,” Alex said guiltily. He’d tried looking over the guide the night before last, and he’d ended up falling asleep before he finished the first page. It wasn’t that Vivik’s study guide was bad, or even that the subject matter was boring. Rather, since arriving at the Academy, Alex had been extraordinarily tired, falling asleep not long after sunset most evenings.
“It’s not a big thing.” Vivik popped a section of orange into his mouth. “I think it might help you get up to speed…”
“Ha. You are worried about homeroom, when you should be worried about next Friday,” Anastasia smirked at him, around her the straw from her juice box. She was flanked, as always, by Edward and Renton, who were not eating. “Mitsuru is going to make hamburger out of you.”
“That isn’t helpful, Anastasia.” Alex grimaced at the reminder of ‘Applied Combat Fundamentals’. “I’m not exactly overflowing with confidence right now.”
“Well, you seem like a nice enough guy, Alex, so I’m sorry to see you go.” Renton gave him a toothy grin. “But, you had a good run.”
“What was good about it? I must have missed that part.”
Emily produced a number of sealed plastic containers from her purse, divvying them up between her and Alex.
“What did he ever do,” Vivik complained, looking enviously at Emily’s cloth lunch sack, “to deserve you making him lunch? I’ve been helping you with your biology homework since I got here, Emily.”
“And I fixed it so that Steve and Charles can’t seem to remember that you are in our class,” Emily said cheerfully, peeling a hard-boiled egg. “We are square. Alex is new here, and anyway, the poor thing is an orphan. It would be irresponsible of me not to look after him a bit.”
“There is a cafeteria, you know. He doesn’t need you to make him lunch.”
Anastasia scowled, looking angrily at her own lunch, which as far as Alex could see was made up entirely of raw vegetable slices.
“I was at my sister’s last night, so I had a kitchen available. And you brought your own cook to the Academy with you. When did you start eating up here with us, anyway, Anastasia?”
Emily smiled sweetly. Anastasia made a face in return. Renton laughed quietly to himself. And Edward didn’t react at all, which was par for the course, as far as Alex’s experience with him went.
“Well, I do appreciate the lunches,” Alex said quickly, trying to prevent the daily fight between the two. “But, how’d you make Steve forget about Vivik, Emily? I thought you were an empath.”
“Most empaths have some telepathic ability as well,” Emily shrugged. “I have a little bit myself.”
“Emphasis on the little,” Anastasia said acidly. She pointed at Emily with her nibbled baby carrot. “It’s a good thing that you can cook, Emily.”
“That’s mean, Anastasia,” Emily complained, unwrapping the plastic around her sandwich. “I’m doing the best I can with what I have. We can’t all be child prodigies.”
“You are only one year older than me,” Anastasia protested, waving her carrot in outrage. “I am hardly a child. As for being a prodigy — well, it would be foolish to deny it.”
Alex decided to focus on the turkey sandwich Emily had given him, which turned out to be unreasonably delicious, despite the fact that he’d never like turkey much.
“I have to get going to the Science building,” Anastasia announced, standing up and gathering her things. “I have lab to finish. Are you coming, Vivik?”
Vivik nodded and stood up, collecting the trash from his lunch in a paper sack for disposal. He’d told Alex the night before that he was a Sikh, from someplace in India, where his parents owned land. Alex wasn’t sure exactly what a Sikh was, though he thought it was a religion, sort of. Vivik’s explanation had been unclear. But, it did explain the turban he wore all of the time.
“Yeah, I’ll walk with you.”
Vivik looked over at Alex, who realized he was staring openly, and found something else to do.
“You want me to help you go over the homeroom lecture, later on?”
“Maybe,” Alex shrugged, staring off into the woods that bordered the building, for lack of a better option. “I was thinking about talking a walk or something. I’ve been feeling really cooped up today.”
“That’s perfect,” Emily said, looking at Alex hopefully. “Do you feel like taking a trip into town with me? I have something I want to show you.”
“And what would that be?” Anastasia demanded, suddenly face-to-face with Emily, glaring up at her. Alex had to stifle a laugh — Anastasia never looked younger or shorter to him than when she was near Emily. “Don’t you ever have to go to class?”
Emily glared right back, tossing her head indignantly.
“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with. It’s none of your business what I do. You’re always going on about how clever you are, so figure it out for yourself.”
Emily turned to Alex, and put one hand lightly on his shoulder.
“Is it okay, Alex? I’d really like you to come, if you’re not too busy,” she said sincerely, her expression anxious.
Alex was stunned by the realization that she expected him to reject her. This girl, who was obviously nice, smart, and beautiful, had gotten so used to rejection that she anticipated it even from a brand new student. It must be a very bad thing, he thought solemnly, to be B-class.
“Sure,” he said, trying not to sound resigned. “I didn’t really have any specific plans, anyway.”
Anastasia shrugged, exasperated, and then stomped off down the stairs, followed by a smiling Renton and an expressionless Edward.
“Be careful, Alex,” Vivik whispered as he walked by. “Think about what you’re doing.”
Alex nodded amiably. But he didn’t really feel like it was any of Vivik or Anastasia’s business. Particularly since he wasn’t entirely sure what it was he was doing.
“Do you want me to — ”
“Hush,” Anastasia commanded, hustling down the stairs. “When I want you to do something, Renton, I will tell you as much.”
Ten steps. He was quiet for ten steps. She counted them. An old habit.
“But, don’t you think that Emily is going to try and, well… seduce him?”
Her laughter echoed back up the stairwell, no doubt confusing Vivik, somewhere above her. But, it wasn’t often she managed to make Renton feel uncomfortable.
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
She laughed again, quietly, this time. She couldn’t help it. The idea was just too funny. It was easy to forget that Renton was much older than he looked, most of the time. But it would occasionally shine through in his speech.
“I wish her the best of luck, then,” she said honestly. “And I do think that she will need it.”
She hurried ahead, so that Renton had to rush; and poor Edward, as well.
Anastasia liked to make them run after her, occasionally. It was a good reminder of place and role, she felt. For everyone involved.
It wasn’t far to the front gate, where Emily wanted to meet him, though Alex had never made the walk previously. She’d wanted to change out of her uniform, before they left for Central, so she’d given him directions to the front gate, and headed back to her room, telling him to meet her in about half an hour.
The Academy’s grounds were enormous, it was true, but most of the classrooms, faculty offices and student dorms were clustered near the front gate. It only took a few minutes for Alex to get there with the meticulous directions that Emily had given him, on a piece of off-white stationary, each step written out in lovely flowing cursive. It was so elegant that Alex found himself reluctant to fold it or throw it out, and he was still trying to figure out what to do with it when he rounded the last of the staff buildings and saw the Commons, and beyond that the front gate.
The Commons were like a bigger version of the quad between the student dorms; a large open space with carefully maintained green grass, a handful of stately old oaks and willows, a few strategically placed benches and tables, and a motley collection of students and faculty enjoying the weak afternoon sun. It was a nice scene, bordering on idyllic.
The gate behind it was impressive, an ornate piece of stonework that looked to Alex to be ancient, and though he wasn’t sure he could tell decades old from hundreds of years old. Like all of the major structures on the campus, it was made of tightly fit angular blocks with no obvious mortar, the same dull grey stone as the Academy walls, which stretched off in either direction for miles, perhaps twice as tall as Alex and thick, but in poor repair. In many places the wall had partially collapsed, and in numerous other places the wall was bowed and bent. The gate, however, had either aged more gracefully or seen more consistent maintenance. Some of the carvings appeared to have fallen off or been worn away, and a few of the capstones were gone, but as a whole the great stone arch was intact. Alex could not decide if the inscription on the gate arch was a language he didn’t recognize or simply a collection of abstract scribbles, but he found the whole thing a touch foreboding.
All of this paled in importance for Alex, next to seeing Emily in her street clothes for the first time.
Emily was pretty in the uniform, Alex wasn’t about to deny that. But in a simple white dress that looked a bit light for the weather she looked amazing, even with a sweater pulled over it, her blond hair curled and radiant in the late-afternoon sun. Then she smiled at him, maybe a little bit shyly, and he got very nervous indeed.
“Did you make it okay?”
She was anxious, leading him out of the gate and to the road outside, as if she wasn’t beautiful. As if she had anything to worry about.
“Were the directions alright?”
“They were very, um, accurate,” Alex said lamely, realizing he was still clutching the scrap of paper, and shoved it in his pocket. The dark grey hoodie he’d worn seemed a bit incongruous with Emily’s dress, but it wasn’t like he had any clothes that would have been appropriate.
The road itself appeared to be one uniform piece of worked stone, but when Alex got closer, he realized that it was made of the same tightly interlocking blocks as the walls of the Academy, worn smooth with age and traffic. In many places the stones had begun to buckle slightly, and the road’s surface was not nearly as even as it appeared to be from a distance.
“Who built all this?”
“No one knows,” Emily said, shrugging and leading him toward what appeared to be a totally conventional bus stop, with a colorful route sign, and a glass and metal enclosure complete with system map. Alex felt a profound sense of dislocation as they walked toward it. “Supposedly, it was all like this when the Founder discovered Central, empty and waiting. The road and the wall, the Academy Main Hall, Analysis and Operations, all the major structures, they were all here already. At least, that’s what they tell us in class.”
“There is a bus?”
Alex ran his fingers across the plastic covering a small system map, showing three separate lines, each with half a dozen stops.
“Well, yes. It’s pretty hard to get anything big through the Ether, and it’s not like we have a factory here or anything. We’ve got a few diesel buses. I hear they had to disassemble them, and bring them over piece-by-piece.”
He knew that Central was located somewhere in the Ether; Alex had gotten that much from Windsor’s lectures, and had somehow been found, rather than built. He couldn’t tell if it’s location was a secret or a genuine mystery, but without an apport protocol, he knew there was no getting in or out, something that caused him a certain amount of late-night anxiety akin to claustrophobia. But, even if he knew that, it was jarring to hear it said out loud, the casual practicalities of an abnormal way of life that he barely even noticed he was living, most of the time.
Alex studied the map. The area depicted was not really large enough to be called a city, more like a town, in a rough half-moon. The built-up neighborhoods were clustered in an area just to the east of the Academy. Alex was surprised to see that the Academy and its grounds constituted a full third of Central, and that a good portion of the remaining space appeared to be open.
“There aren’t that many of us,” Alex guessed.
Emily shook her head sadly.
“No, and there seem to be less every year. Only a few people live in Central full-time. But yes, there just aren’t that many of us. We could all move to Central, if we wanted to, and there would still be space to spare. I would swear there were more people here when I was a kid…”
Emily seemed sad, so Alex hunted for something else to talk about.
“What’s here?”
Alex tapped at the grayed out area that surrounded the town on the map.
“Wait and see,” Emily said, smiling playfully.
The bus arrived a few minutes later, a green-painted diesel that reminded Alex vaguely of pictures he’d seen of Europe. Emily refused to say anything about where they were going, responding with a smile and a ‘wait and see’ every time he asked. Alex eventually gave up, but it didn’t turn out to matter much — he had his eyes glued to the window the entire trip, while Emily amused herself by playing tour guide.
It took a few minutes of winding through the hills around the Academy before they entered Central proper, while Alex tried to remember the last time he had been in a motor vehicle of any kind. Only a matter of weeks, but it felt l
The Academy was set two-thirds of the way up the peak of a massive hill, and Central sat in a partial ring around it, about halfway down the slope. Below the city, at the base of the hill, there was only a great grey space, the vastness of the Ether stretching out like an endless lake in all directions, Central rising out of it like an island. After a few minutes of descending down the windy road, they crossed an invisible line and the sun disappeared behind the pea soup-thick fog that covered the town. Emily told him that the skies here never cleared, unlike the Academy, which was set high enough on the hill that the fog broke. Central itself started as a series of low grey buildings, no more than two stories tall, each set slightly apart and surrounded by small, neat yards and clusters of elm and oak trees.
“We think they were probably houses to begin with, though the proportions are a little strange,” Emily commented, leaning over his shoulder. “Some people still like to live in them for the privacy, but they get wretchedly cold in the winter.”
The road curved to follow along the bank of a moderately large, fast-moving creek, both sides of the road surrounded by the individual stone homes. Electric lines and various utility cables had been added to the structures, he realized, rather haphazardly in some cases, and he wondered again at the difficulty and logistics of transporting materials here. For that matter, he wondered, where did the electricity come from? He hadn’t seen anything that looked like a power plant.
After a while, the structures gradually got larger, and then started to fuse together. At first they grew closer to each other, but they rapidly started to include points of interconnection, and by the time they descended into the city proper, the buildings began to meld into gigantic structures. They grew taller as well, some five or six stories tall, though Alex was starting to notice the proportions issue that Emily had mentioned — the stories appear to be a bit too tall, as did the windows and the stairs.
“People live here in apartments they carved out for themselves,” Emily explained. “They knock out walls and put in dividers and create some sort of congruent living space, then build in kitchens and bathrooms. Even though the walls are old, it takes some effort to bore through them so you can install chimneys, plumbing, and the like. But the advantage of the big buildings is that they have central heating and a sewer system to plug into. If you live in the outlying areas, you’re on your own, so to speak.”
The buildings they passed continued to grow larger and denser, with more ornate detail work and filigree appearing on the buildings as they drew closer to the city center. The road was no longer singular; a number of different roadways, all paved in the same ubiquitous grey stone, intersected and then separated again in what Alex could only describe as a downtown. Their own route was circuitous, passing by buildings which were now almost level with each other at around ten stories, forming solid urban walls that the road wound around and through, sometimes in the form of brief mossy tunnels, at other times using crude breaches in the structures that clearly had been created with explosives.
Alex found the whole scene oppressive — the monotony of the stone, the lack of sun in between the walls of buildings, damp and cold under the weak light that filtered through the fog. If he hadn’t had Emily with him to point out the sights, Alex wasn’t sure he would have known that there were any, every structure appeared so monolithically uniform. They passed the main business offices for Central, set on a rare open plaza, each great building surrounded by an interconnected warren of smaller sub-buildings. It was bleak, under the perpetual fog, and Alex found himself unsure of this strange city and of his own place in it, amongst the great grey stone buildings that seemed so foreign to anything human. It appeared to have been built to hold hundreds of thousands, maybe more, but he barely saw anyone at all.
But then, as they passed through the center of town and on to the western tip of the crescent that Central described, he discovered that people did in fact live there. It started with a few lone pedestrians, and gradually expanded until there were crowds of people, and even rudimentary traffic made up of bicycles and motorcycles. The area had been selected for inhabitation by the first cartels to arrive in Central, and as Emily explained, it remained the choicest and most exclusive area. Only those connected to the larger and more powerful cartels could afford to keep offices and accommodations in this neighborhood, locally referred to as the Ring, for the circular edifice that towered over the rest of the neighborhood, almost a third higher than any other structure in the area.
The bus ground to a halt just outside the Ring, and Emily led him out on to the street besides the giant round building. Up close, it was almost impossible to tell how large it was, as it simply appeared to be a gradually curving exterior wall, encompassing whole blocks in its bulk. It’s most striking feature was not its size, however, but rather that it had been painted — a white lacquer had been applied to the surface of the stone in a thick, moderately uniform coat, and in contrast to the grey buildings that they had passed, it practically gleamed. The buildings that surrounded the Ring on the three sides that Alex could see were similarly coated in varying shades of cream and brown, as well as a scattering of more brilliant blues and greens. The scene was practically cheerful in contrast to the depressing monotone vastness of the rest of Central, and Alex had little trouble understanding why anyone who could afford to lived here.
“This way,” Emily said, taking his hand gently in her own and leading him along, around part of the Ring and then a few blocks further west, down a side street where the buildings had been subdivided into smaller living quarters, each painted a different Easter egg pastel.
“I know,” Emily said, seeing his look, “it isn’t exactly the most tasteful street. But, we are — I mean to say, that the Raleigh cartel — well, it’s just that,” Emily gestured haphazardly, and blushed furiously, paused on the lower steps of a baby-blue staircase, “we aren’t exactly wealthy. Not anymore.”
“Seems like you’re doing okay.”
“Well, I suppose it’s all relative. Never mind. Why don’t you come up?”
Alex followed her up the stairs, which seemed unreasonably steep and high to Alex. The ironwork that bordered the stairs was a later addition and clearly handmade. The apartment door was made from a red wood that Alex did not recognize, with tarnished brass fixtures and knobs that looked ancient to him. Emily fished in her purse briefly, then used a bulky set of keys to open the door, ushering Alex through and then closing it behind him. This left them almost face-to-face in the cramped quarters of the entry, under a flickering light, surrounded by a jumble of coats and umbrellas. For an instant, looking at her freckled cheeks and small, coy smile, he was certain that their faces did not actually need to be so close together, that the space was not as small as that. Then she stood up on her tiptoes to tap the light bulb, fixing the lighting and ending the moment. She hung up her sweater and he found a hook for his hoodie, full of regret and confusion.
Following her up the stairs into the apartment, Alex couldn’t help but watch her perfectly shaped calves flex underneath the fringe of her white dress — and then, for some reason, he remembered what Rebecca had told him about how he would be received here. He somehow managed to be simultaneously hopeful and embarrassed.
“So, you live here?” he asked, as they emerged into what was clearly the living room, a fairly large space with white stucco walls and an unusually high ceiling. The room was crowded with a table and a number of wooden chairs, a couple of couches, a large entertainment center, and a number of bookshelves. It looked homey and oddly approachable to Alex, like he hadn’t really expected for Cartel families to have books lying all over the kitchen table, or half-dead houseplants, or a sink filled with unwashed dishes. “I mean, I know you live at the Academy right now, but this is where you grew up, right?”
“Mostly,” Emily said, as if she was admitting to something, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the disarray. “Right now, only my sister lives here full-time. Which explains the mess, I suppose.”
Emily sighed and marched toward the kitchen.
“Go ahead and grab a seat, Alex. I just want to straighten up a bit. It won’t take a minute.”
Alex glanced around skeptically, thinking that it might take quite a bit longer than a minute, then looked around for some place to sit, eventually settling on an uncomfortably high chair, set on the other side of the long kitchen counter, opposite the sink. On the other side, Emily made a face at the accumulated dishes, then turned on the hot water and reached for the dish soap. It took Alex a moment to realize that she was furious.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a few minutes later, after she’d managed to clear enough room to get to work. “My sister can be quite… inconsiderate. She’s lived here a long time now while the rest of us haven’t been around quite as much as she’s made herself very much,” Emily grimaced, “at home. As you can see.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex reassured. “I lived in a damn trailer, my standards aren’t that high. Um, so, I was wondering… not to be rude or anything, but why did you invite me here?”
Emily glanced up at him momentarily. Alex wasn’t certain, but he thought she might have been annoyed with him.
“Well, you hadn’t seen anything of Central outside of the Academy for one, and clearly no one was going to make time to take you,” Emily said over the clatter of washing dishes. Alex had to admit that what she said was true — they had been so busy trying to get him into fighting shape that they had pretty much neglected to cover any of the fundamentals. He’d had to hit Vivik up for help finding the laundry room, earlier in the day, and he still hadn’t figured out who to talk to about getting his hair cut. “And, I thought I might make you dinner, since you’ve eaten at the cafeteria pretty much every meal since you got here. I cook, you know.”
“I didn’t know that. Well, I mean, I did, because of the lunches, you know, but…”
Emily laughed.
“Well, I do. Actually, I was raised with the full suite of domestic skills — something my parents seem to have neglected when it came to my sister,” Emily said, her arms elbow deep in soapy water. “Different children have different functions, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
Alex folded his arms on the counter and then leaned his chin on them, staring over at the girl washing dishes, totally puzzled.
“Why would they treat you differently from her?”
“They would have told you about me, I’m certain,” Emily said plainly, her smile rueful, her eyes vague and faraway. “The Academy staff, I mean. Someone would have, before we ever met.”
“Yeah.” Alex nodded, feeling slightly guilty. “They warned me about everyone.”
“Of course. Still, because of my… circumstances,” Emily said, blushing, “they would have warned you about me, specifically. Because it was so obvious I that I would have to approach you. Because I’m an empath, but an exceptionally weak one, and because my family is part of the Hegemony. It’s a bit embarrassing, honestly, to have it be public knowledge.”
Alex didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Emily didn’t seem to require a response from him. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even seem like she was talking to him specifically. She continued to dry the plates with a hand towel, and then set them carefully in the drying rack.
“My father is a powerful man, and my family has been among the elite in the Raleigh Cartel since it was founded, though the cartel itself has seen better days. My mother is a diplomat and a powerful empath. My older sister graduated from the Academy with honors, and now handles the cartel’s representation in Central. Which is why she’s always here, not cleaning.”
Emily spoke without a trace of bitterness, her smile fixed and brittle.
“The old families — and the Muir family is very old — still use marriages to establish alliances. It’s very feudal, like medieval Europe,” she joked mirthlessly. “To a man like my father, there’s only one possible use for a daughter who is such a weak empath — my talents aren’t good for much, Alex, but I’d make some important man a very satisfying wife, wouldn’t I? Don’t you think I’m pretty, Alex?”
Alex nodded slowly, his mind reeling. He’d assumed, when he met her, that Emily would be one of the popular girls at the Academy. She was obviously upper crust, and yes, pretty — but this…
“That’s good, because that’s what I was raised to be. I talked my mother into letting me come to the Academy,” Emily continued sadly. “I told her I wanted the chance to develop my abilities, to learn useful skills that could aid me in my marriage later on. I think that she felt sorry for me more than anything, but she talked my father into it anyway.”
Emily smiled at Alex, but the smile was painful.
“Do you know why I wanted to come to the Academy, Alex?” she asked, continuing on before Alex could have even attempted an answer, had he any. “I wanted some time, before I had to become a bargaining chip for my father, before I got bartered off to someone. A few years before that happened, to be myself.”
She was so accustomed to counterfeiting it that her smile hardly even looked false.
“I actually got to the point where I thought I’d accepted it,” she said lightly. “It didn’t bother me that much anymore. And then, a few days before the start of second session, I get a message from my father, and I have to go rushing back home to learn all about you.”
Alex could only stare at her in shock.
“Do you know how weird it is, Alex, when you’ve only seen your father at family events, to have him suddenly pulling you into his office for little chats with the cartel advisors? When they act like you’ve always been there with them, as if you’ve always been important?” Emily paused, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was more composed. “But, I’m not saying it was all bad.”
She put the dish down in the rack with more force than she intended, and the clattering made Alex jump.
“All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, my father is taking an interest in me.” Emily laughed as if it were funny, sponging off the water on the countertop. “Now I have my mother doing my hair, and confiding with me about whether to seduce you, or to try and make you feel sorry for me, or both.”
Alex felt numb. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“It doesn’t really matter how I feel about you, or how I’d feel about doing something like that, or how you’d feel about it. Not to my parents. That’s the world I was raised in.” Emily shook her head sadly. “None of that really bothers me. But, because you showed up Alex, now everything is different for me. I thought I had at least a few years, here at the Academy.”
The bottom fell out of Alex’s stomach. He hadn’t realized until now, but it was obvious — Emily had come to the Academy to put off her inevitable arranged marriage. But, she hadn’t even gotten a full year of school before he’d arrived, and…
“I’m really sorry, Emily,” Alex said quietly, ashamed.
“That’s sweet,” Emily said brightly. “But, what do you have to be sorry about? It’s not like you had any choice in the matter. You’re like me, Alex, do you realize that? We’re both pieces in a game that someone else is playing. Maybe I’m only a pawn, and maybe you’re something more useful. But we won’t ever get to make our own moves.”
Alex looked around at the living room around him, not sure what to say. Emily looked up at him expectantly a few times, but after he failed to meet her eyes or respond, she went back to finishing up the kitchen. After a moment, she leaned across the counter and handed Alex a half-full watering can.
“Can you water the plants for me, Alex?
He nodded and took the can gratefully, heading across the living room to the first bunch of very dry houseplants. In the cluster, he was fairly certain that the two nearer unidentifiable brown plants had given up the ghost, but he watered them anyway, gratefully to be doing something. The rubber plant and the ferns behind them appeared to be in somewhat better shape, and he gave them a more generous drink to reward their tenacity. He was still leaning over the last plant, tugging off some of the dead leaves, when he heard the front door open, and saw Emily go stiff as a board, her hands full of trash, hovering just over the garbage can.
“Emily?” The voice that drifted up from the entry way was unmistakably similar to Emily’s, but there was an edge to it that Emily’s voice never had. “Did you come home today?”
“I’m in the kitchen,” Emily called out to her, “and we have a guest, Therese.”
“Who’s that?”
The woman who emerged from the entryway stairwell was a bit older than he expected, probably somewhere in her late twenties. She had the same blonde hair as Emily, but she cut it short and had it tied back in a rather severe pony tail. She wore glasses and a well-tailored pant suit, and looked very much as if she might have just come from working in an office somewhere. Alex couldn’t help but find her appearance incongruous with their surroundings.
“This is Alex Warner, from my class. I told you about him. Alex, this is my sister, Therese,” Emily said, standing beside Alex and drying her hands with a kitchen towel. “Who, I might add, has abandoned all pretenses of housekeeping.”
“Nice to meet you,” Alex said, offering his hand and getting a polite handshake and a terse smile in return.
“And you too. You haven’t been at the Academy long, right? How do you like it?” Therese wandered into the kitchen, ignoring Emily’s work, and started digging through the refrigerator.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said reluctantly, “but do you know who I am already?”
“Sure,” Therese said, “didn’t Emily tell you? I’m the cartel liaison. I work in Operations. We’ve all heard about it, that incident with Aoki. Must have been a rough introduction. I’ve heard stories. People say she’s nuts.”
Therese emerged from the refrigerator with a can of coffee.
“What’s for dinner?”
“You can starve for all I care,” Emily said cheerfully, gathering the papers that covered much of the open space in the living room into one giant pile. “I’m definitely not making you dinner.”
“Don’t let her attitude fool you. She’s really an excellent cook,” Therese said to Alex conversationally. “You should try and get her to make us dinner.”
“I am making him dinner, Therese, not you,” Emily said huffily. “You’re on your own.”
“That’s mean,” Therese complained. “You’ve always been a mean sister.”
Finding no sympathy, she turned to Alex.
“Hey, Alex, you smoke?”
Alex shook his head.
“Well, I do,” Therese said, looking around for the purse she had dropped on her way in, “but when Emily is here, I have to go out on the balcony. So, come keep me company.”
Therese found her purse and started up the stairs, with Alex following, a bit reluctantly.
“Therese…”
Emily trailed off questioningly, the papers she had collected held bunched to her chest. She looked to Alex like she expected to be disappointed.
The look Therese shot Emily was disapproving.
“Don’t you worry about your big sister.” Therese’s tone was curt, dismissive. “I’m just going to have a quick smoke and a little chat with your friend here, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”
Alex was sure Emily would protest. He was certain that the fight that he’d felt coming since Therese had arrived was about to start. But Emily just watched, looking more frightened than anything, and then hurried back into the kitchen. Therese headed up the stairs, totally nonplussed. Alex looked after Emily, wondering about the fear he’d seen in her eyes, and then shrugged and followed Therese. He hadn’t known her very long, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person it was a good idea to argue with.
There were four rooms upstairs, but only Therese’s had the door open — or Alex guessed that it was hers, by the pile of clothes that covered the floor and spilled out into the hall. Alex followed the hall between the rooms, surprised at how small it all was, though the ceilings were abnormally tall. Despite the size of the buildings in Central, he was coming to realize, livable space was still at something of a premium.
He found Therese at the end of the hall, through a set of ornate glass doors and out on a wrought iron balcony that overhung the street below. She had shed her jacket, purse, watch and belt, all left in small piles that marked the route she had taken through the hall. Alex stepped around them carefully, but Therese didn’t seem concerned, seemingly enthralled by the view below her, her unlit cigarette dangling from one hand.
“Come on out here,” Therese ordered, her face composed and serious. Alex decided that heading out to the balcony was the diplomatic thing to do. “Let me get a good look at you, Mr. Alexander Warner.”
The way she lowered her glasses to look at him made him wonder if she needed them in the first place. Another thing that he’d noticed during the handshake — Therese was strong. Oddly strong for someone who dressed like they worked a desk. Unless, of course, they didn’t always work at one.
“Do you work for that Alistair guy? Is that how you know about me?”
Therese’s jaw dropped, and then she laughed, hard, but not exactly unkind.
“That’s actually not too bad of a guess,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she ushered him out next to her, leaning on the balcony railing. There wasn’t much view to speak of — the Easter egg colored street stretched out before them, and beyond it, just the tip of the Ring and then the monotonous bulk of Central beyond. “But you’re exaggerating your own importance, and you’re mixed up on who my boss is.”
“Yeah?”
Alex did his best to sound nonchalant.
“Yeah,” Therese said, smirking. “Everything I told you was true. I heard about you as an anecdote to the Mitsuru Aoki situation.”
“There’s a Mitsuru situation?”
“Mind your own business,” Therese said, staring out at Central moodily. “I don’t work for Central, Alex; I work for the Raleigh Cartel. I most definitely do not work for the Chief Auditor, thank you very much.”
Alex shrugged and then nodded.
“Okay, I got it, you work for the cartel. Can you please tell me why we are having this conversation?”
Therese glanced over at him, her expression unreadable, and then went back to staring off at the city.
“Do you like her?”
“What?”
Alex was puzzled by her timing, not the subject. He was pretty sure he knew who she was talking about.
“They brought my sister back home for coaching, because the precognitives said that you would probably like her.” Therese’s tone was dull, and she spoke so quietly Alex had to lean forward to hear her over the wind that whistled through the channel between the great stone buildings. “They gave her a sixty-six percent chance, depending on circumstances. So, do you?”
Alex tried to formulate a response, while she finally remembered her cigarette and lit it.
“She seems cool,” he managed, after several moments of thinking. “We met pretty recently, and everything, so it’s not like I know her that well…”
“It took you a very long time to come up with ‘she seems cool’.”
“Sure, okay,” Alex said, running his hands through his hair. “So, are we all done here? Because I don’t really need to have one of these weird conversations right now.”
“What weird conversations? Who are you having weird conversations with?”
Therese looked at him sincerely. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?”
Alex wasn’t sure whether he was demanding or begging. Therese tilted her head to look at him over the top of her glasses again, and then smiled, and she didn’t seem all that different from Emily after all, for a moment, and Alex wondered why in the world she kept her golden hair tied back that way.
“It probably seems like I give her a pretty hard time, right? And I do,” Therese said, her elbows resting on the iron railing, her smile a little sad. “I do give her a hard time, because the world is always going to be hard on my poor little sister. She got a bad hand, right from the start, and there’s never been anything I could do about that. I’ve tried to make her as tough as possible, because I can’t make her life any easier.”
Therese paused for a while, and Alex let the silence be, not only because he couldn’t think of anything worth saying.
“Did you ever date a girl with a big brother, Alex?” Therese asked, not waiting for a response, sparing Alex the embarrassment of admitting that he hadn’t dated anyone, ever. “Emily doesn’t have a big brother. All she has is me. And normally, I would be doing the big brother thing right now to the boy she brought home from school. Do you know why I’m not doing that, Alex?”
Alex shook his head, too confused to try and guess.
“Because I got a call a few weeks ago from my father, who was extremely excited at his tremendous luck regarding his most disappointing daughter.” Alex was starting to realize that though Therese seemed calm, that she was actually quite possibly angry, something he didn’t particularly want to experience firsthand. “Never mind that it’s my baby sister, because I work for the cartel and it’s all about what the cartel wants. So I can’t be the big brother, and tell you to keep your hands off her.”
“Because it’s in the cartel’s best interest?”
“For all I know it might be in Emily’s best interest. Lord knows that nothing I’ve done or will ever do has made things much easier on her.” Therese looked gloomy. “So father says that I have to be nice to you, and stay out of Emily’s way. Actually, when he finds out that I came home anyway tonight, he’s going to be furious.”
“I kinda wondered if you did that on purpose,” Alex admitted. “Did you leave stuff all over the place to upset her?”
Therese laughed unexpectedly. When she laughed, Alex noted, she looked even more like Emily, but not nearly as reserved. Therese was prim and serious, Alex realized, but also much less timid than her younger sister.
“No, I’m just a slob,” Therese said, wiping her eyes and then replacing her glasses. “But you’re a funny guy. Let me say this,” she said, flicking the remainder of her cigarette onto the slate grey road below. “I hope that you can help my sister, and I hope that you join the Raleigh Cartel, I really do. And I promise that if you decide to do that, you will find yourself enthusiastically welcomed by everyone, myself included. But until that point, Alex, you had better be nice to my sister. And, if you decide you don’t like her, then you better make that very clear. Because if you string her along, well, I can and will make your life miserable. Do you believe me?”
Alex stuck with nodding. It seemed like the fastest way to put an end to the conversation.
“Okay, then,” she said, brushing past him on her way back into the house. “Let’s find out what we’re eating.”
Sure enough, Therese stayed and ate, ignoring the icy stares that Emily aimed in her direction, chatting away casually and not seeming to particularly care that neither Alex nor Emily had much to say in return. The meal was excellent, and Alex was particularly surprised at the pan-fried fish, not something he normally ate, which was moist and delicious and not at all, well, fishy, but the atmosphere left something to be desired. When Therese put her napkin on the table and made to leave, Alex practically wanted to embrace her in gratitude, but to his surprise, Emily grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the kitchen.
“Therese, help me with the dishes before you go,” Emily said, her grip on her sister’s forearm tightening.
“Aw,” Therese moaned, collecting the plates and then shuffling half-heartedly after Emily into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Alex wasn’t certain what was said in the moments that followed, because someone had turned the kitchen sink on full blast before the conversation started, but from the tone of the voice, he guessed that there was some disagreement. He stared into his empty wine glass as heated voices turned to shouting, and then eventually escalated to what sounded like dishes breaking on the tiled floor. Alex thought about getting up and going to check on the girls, maybe try and broker some kind of peace, but then his sense of self-preservation kicked in, and he decided to remain where he was.
Alex jumped in his seat when the kitchen door swung opened and Therese stalked out.
“Why do you have to ruin everything?”
Emily’s shriek came from somewhere inside the kitchen, her voice full of tears.
Therese winced and quickly shut the door behind her, then leaned against it, taking a deep breath and then giving Alex a shaky smile.
“Alright, I’m off for the evening. It was nice meeting you, Alex. I’m sure that I will be seeing you around Central.”
“Right,” Alex said, half-standing up from the table. “Uh, do you think I should…?”
Therese waved him off, wedging her feet into the shoes she’d discarded by the front door and collecting her purse.
“Don’t worry about it. She’ll feel better as soon as I’m gone,” Therese said curtly, as she reached for the door. “You think about what I said.”
She shot him a warning glare as she closed the door behind her. Alex decided not to notice that she was crying. He sat quietly at the table for a while, and then when nothing happened, he decided to clear the rest of the table. Alex entered the kitchen cautiously, his hands filled with glasses and silverware.
“Emily, are you okay?”
He eyed Emily carefully as he entered the kitchen, ready to turn around if she was still a mess. She was crouching down with a broom and tray, sweeping up the remains of what looked to be a broken plate, her face streaked with tears and her makeup smudged. She smiled thinly at Alex and nodded, then returned to sweeping. He suppressed an urge to give her a hug, and headed to the sink instead.
He rinsed off the dishes methodically, trying to give her time to compose herself. It felt a bit strange to him, being back in a kitchen. Even though it had only been a few weeks, he had gotten used to having access the cafeteria. Of course, he’d never cooked for himself as much as he had warmed food in a microwave, and there was a certain familiarity with the institutional feeding scheme.
“Dinner was good,” Alex said, keeping his attention on the dishes in the sink. “Those little potato things…”
“Fingerling?” Emily offered, sniffling.
“Right, the fingerling potatoes were great, and the fish was, um, very… great. Also.”
Alex heard Emily’s muffled laughter from behind him and felt a little bit better about the situation. Watching her cry made him feel weirdly helpless.
“Did she tell you things about me? Was she at least nice to you?”
“Who’s that? Your sister?”
Alex glanced over his shoulder at Emily, who appeared to be more in control, though he had a feeling that the wrong answer could well prompt another crying binge, if he wasn’t careful.
“She was pretty nice, yeah, in a weird sort of way. She was way harder on you than she was on me. We didn’t talk about anything in particular — I think she’s just being protective of you.”
Emily smiled half-heartedly, picking up a drying cloth and starting work on the dishes that Alex had finished cleaning.
“She seems to think I’m in imminent danger of having my virtue compromised,” Emily said, a tad bitterly, “if I’m left alone with you. That is a bit unexpected.”
“Oh?”
Alex tried not to get his hopes up.
“She’s always known,” Emily said, blushing and looking down, “what would be expected of me. My father has been very clear on what role I would eventually play in helping rebuild the Raleigh Cartel’s fortunes. I don’t know why she’s acting like she would bite your head off if you touched me.”
After a moment’s consideration, he decided that probably wasn’t a veiled invitation.
“I’m not sure,” he said hesitantly. “Therese seems… capable.”
Emily giggled.
“That’s one way to put it,” she said more cheerfully, shelving dishes. “And you’re right. Therese is one of the top Operators in the Hegemony, and certainly the most, how should I say… capable in our cartel. But, if you were to compromise my virtue, I wouldn’t be that concerned with Therese’s reaction.”
“Really?”
Alex braced himself, wondering how much worse it could get.
“No, I’d be more worried about my father,” Emily said, her smile unhappy. “He might collapse in sheer joy and disbelief.”
Alex didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. They finished up the kitchen in silence, and then moved to the living room. Alex was careful to sit down first, on one end of the couch, so that when Emily decided to sit down next to him, rather than leaving a buffer between them, it wasn’t awkward. He took a sip from his wine glass and hoped that it looked like he’d done that before, and ransacked his mind for something to say.
“You must think I’m a mess,” Emily said, sighing and leaning back into the overstuffed leather cushions. “My plan was so much cooler than this.”
“Really? Because this has been pretty cool. I’ve never really been over to anyone’s house before.”
Emily was openly skeptical.
“Never?”
Alex shook his head. On the balance, he figured it could be worse — he didn’t really want to talk about himself, but even more than that, he didn’t want them to sit in silence.
“Well, I mean, I’ve been inside other people’s houses, obviously,” Alex explained, frowning as he tried to remember. “But, I don’t think I’ve ever really been invited over to hang out like this. I’m sure that no one except my grandmother ever cooked me dinner.”
“That sounds sort of lonely,” Emily said, looking at him with what he desperately hoped wasn’t pity. “Though maybe things haven’t gone too well tonight because I’m sort of in uncharted territory myself. I don’t normally do this sort of thing.”
“Can I ask what your plan was?” Alex asked, looking away, cheeks burning.
“Oh. Uh, well, I thought you’d be all over me as soon as we were alone, so I didn’t think I would have to do that much,” Emily said nervously, her cheeks tomato-red. “I guess I didn’t realize how weird this would feel. I’ve known it was coming for years, since I was little. And I worried about it, all sorts of things, really, but now that it’s happening, I can’t even tell if you like me or not.”
“Do you like me at all?”
Alex evaded the question, still unable to look at Emily directly.
“I don’t really know you,” Emily admitted, after a short delay.
“Well, same here.” Alex shrugged in relief. “It isn’t that I don’t like you. I just don’t really get what’s going on, yet, and it seems really important that I figure things out. That, and,” Alex said, instantly regretting having continued on, “I’ve never, that is to say, well, this is all new to me. All of it.”
Emily looked stunned. Alex was fairly certain that she reached for her wine glass to buy herself time, rather than out of thirst.
“Are you being serious?”
She leaned forward when she asked, trying to look him in the eyes. Alex blushed, and wished he’d been able to turn invisible after all.
“Yes,” Alex said, hanging his head.
“All of it?”
Emily’s expression was somewhere between incredulous and pitying.
“My upbringing was not exactly conventional,” Alex said morosely, “and I was not quite as popular at my last school as I appear to be at this one.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Shit,” Alex said softly, rubbing his palms against his jeans, “this is exactly what I didn’t want to talk about out.”
Emily reached over and patted his hand, her expression pained.
“Don’t worry about it,” she urged. “We can talk about something…”
“My family died in a fire,” Alex said quietly, staring at the floor. “The general consensus was that I set it, though I can’t say that I remember doing anything like that. I guess I can’t say that I’m sure I didn’t, either. Anyway, I spent a long time in various institutions, because of that. The overall opinion of me back at home was, well, understandably low.”
Alex waited for a moment, and then when nothing happened, he snuck a look over at Emily. She was lost in thought, absently brushing her hair back behind her ears.
“Should I go?”
He didn’t want to. That had to be obvious in his voice, to say nothing of empathy.
“You knew, right?” Emily asked, speaking slowly, her eyes unfocused. “About me and my situation, I mean? And you came anyway.”
“Sure,” Alex said with a shrug. “I was hungry.”
Emily laughed and slapped his arm playfully.
“It doesn’t really matter to me, what you did or didn’t do before you got here,” Emily said, with what appeared to be sincerity, or a perfect facsimile thereof. “And I’m not planning on asking any more questions that you don’t want to answer. But, I do want something from you, Alex.”
The wariness must have been obvious, because she flinched.
“Oh?”
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing bad. I wondered if you’d consider coming to an arrangement with me. Maybe we could help each other.”