Reflections

"Oh, I'm Helmi. I'm a friend of Pilot Roth's."

No.

Helmi Alpassi closed her eyes for a second, blew out a short breath.

"Oh, I'm Helmi. I'm a friend of Cia's."

She smiled, studied the smile in the mirror. Too cold. Fake.

There was a picture tucked into the frame of the mirror and she studied it for a moment.

A family group, all with the same fair hair, all grinning at the camera. Mother, father, brother and me.

Helmi looked from the picture to the mirror, pulled the corners of her mouth a little higher, squinted her eyes a little. Better.

"Hi, I'm Helmi. I'm a friend of Cia's."

Good.  The smile looked natural. Her voice sounded normal, casual, to her own ears. To be sure, she flicked a button on her comm and listened as the recording played back. Yes. Normal.

Looking down at herself, she smoothed her hands over her shirt. She'd chosen it carefully, taking so long with the catalogue that the XO had said dryly No-one needs you to be a fashionplate, Helmi.

Looking in the mirror again, Helmi thought it had been worth the time. The light blue made her look younger, and gave an innocent tint to her grey eyes. The cut was long and loose, covering the sidearm nestled in the small of her back. The fabric was heavy, its stiffness disguising the light body-armor beneath.

"Hi, I'm Helmi, a friend of Cia's?"

Perfect.

She'd practiced with the shirt and the holster a hundred times, but she made sure again now. Her fingers flicked the hem of the shirt up and away with the beginning of the movement that brought her hand to the butt of her sidearm. Yank and drag, barrel to the ground.  The gun came around her body angled so she wouldn't shoot herself with a misfire and snapped up to level on the mirror.

Over the fat black muzzle of the gun, her eyes held no innocence at all.

It was hard to tell just how fast she was, subjectively. Sarge said fast enough.

Fisk Hurun wouldn't have said it if he hadn't believed it.  No way he'd let anything slide on Pilot's security.

He didn't draw that detail himself, anymore. Helmi could guess why. She wasn't the only one who'd seen him, when Pilot was out in Rens Bazaar or on the Interbus or where-ever, muscle jumping in his cheek, looking at little old ladies like they were about to jump Pilot and beat her to death with their string bags full of oranges.

It was understandable, she supposed. More than.

But it was a liability, too. A weakness. In a man she hadn't been used to seeing weakness in, not when she'd been a raw cadet in Peace and Order's junior team at the Haadoken Summit and he'd been the last man down in Home Guard's final match against Ishukone, not when he'd been the first through the door into the disabled transport full of Peace and Order marines expecting Blood Raiders rather than rescue, not when ...

But she didn't know if she'd seen weakness in him, that time.

He remembered.

She didn't.

Helmi holstered her gun and ran her fingers down the edge of the mirror.  The edge of firmcopy was barely detectable, even knowing it was there. She scraped at it with a nail until she could prise it loose.

Not that I don't know it by heart.

A letter she would never have seen, not in this body, if her mother hadn't been concerned enough to write back.

A letter she couldn't remember writing, but that she had no doubt she had.

About plots and treachery, about danger to Pilot, about no-one to trust.

Sent from her account in that blank space between the land-car accident and waking up in the cloning vat to hear that she and everyone else on her team had been killed in action when Pilot was abducted.

They'd known it had to be an inside job, but no-one had known who, or how. Rumors of TCMCS, but who had fired, how it had happened ...

Helmi still didn't know how.  The letter in her hand, with its insane conviction that Pilot was in danger from someone, maybe everyone, on her crew, and its veiled references to someone who can help...

The letter didn't tell her how. But the woman who'd written that letter, the woman completely certain that the only way to keep Pilot safe was to get her away from her crew and her guards and her friends ... the letter told her who had pulled the trigger.

Me.


She folded the letter back up and slid it back into its hiding place, met her own cool grey gaze in the mirror and tested that thought.

Not the sharp edges of it, the fruitless speculation, the what-how-when.  That was there, yes, but it was irrelevant.

As irrelevant as understanding why Sarge had become a liability to knowing that he was.

No. She tested all the places the knowledge of that letter ran to, checking to make sure that what if it happens again and why didn't I know and did Sarge see me shoot him stopped where they should.

Stopped short of the job.

Yes.

The woman who had done that hadn't been her, in any way that she could tell. Had looked and sounded and walked and talked like Helmi Alpassi, no doubt, but the TCMCs had made her someone else.  If it was me, Sarge would never have let them tap me for this job. He knows it wasn't me. Knows it was someone else.


And now she's dead. And I'm here.  

She knew who she was, who she wasn't. What she had and hadn't done.

She wouldn't hesitate. Wouldn't overcompensate. Wouldn't think, when the time came.

Whatever the letter said.

Helmi looked at herself in the mirror again.

Smiled.

"Hi, I'm Helmi. I'm a friend, of Cia's?"

Perfect.

This Is Love

His name is Jemadar Abrastin, and he loves her. 


She knows he loves her because he can't stand being apart from her, not even for a little while, not even while she takes her classes at Urbald University.  He's not a student there but he comes with her anyway, sits up the back of the hall so they're together, every minute of every day. That's what love is, wanting to be with someone every single second.


That's what love is in the holos. 


Her name is Valhiri Akell. She is eighteen years old, a pre-med student with the shaman's mark curving over the top of her right foot and down to the arch, and she loves him. 


She knows she loves him because when he comes home after another fruitless day searching for work, downcast and sullen, she can't concentrate on the assignments on her desk or the dinner on the stove until she's managed to lift the frown from his face.  It weighs on him, the fact that he's not able to bring any money into the house, no matter how many times she tells him it doesn't matter, her scholarship is almost enough to pay the bills.  She's there for him. Finding ways to make him feel better becomes the most important thing in her life. That's what love is, when someone else's happiness is more important that your own.


That's what love is in the holos.


She's been Hiri since the day she was born, to her family. The first time he called her Val she corrected him. He said that nobody knew her as well as he did, and he could tell her name was Val. It's her special name, that only he uses, like she's a different person with him than anyone she's ever been before. It's romantic.


He's very romantic.  He wants to protect her.  He doesn't like it when she wears skirts that are too short, tops too low cut. You should have seen the way those guys were looking at you, he tells her. Dressed like that, you're telling the whole world you're available. 


She picks pants and loose, baggy tops, instead. It's romantic, knowing that no-one but him knows about the curves underneath the folds of fabric.  She's his, his only. That's what love is, when your body belongs to only one person, even to look at. 


That's what love is in the holos.


He hates it when people try to come between them. Her classmates, her family: he says they're always trying to interfere. It's better that she doesn't see them, certainly not without him there to make sure they don't try meddling. 


She misses sitting in the back row of the holotheatre with her sisters, the three of them giggling as bad actors pretend to be frightened of computer-generated monsters, but it's important to him that he knows he can trust her not to do something when he's told her not to, so she doesn't sneak off to meet them even when she could.  


He wants them to be together, even if her friends and family disapprove. That's what love is, isn't it? Defying everyone in order to be together.


That's what love is in the holos.


He worries that she'll leave him for someone better-looking, more educated, employed.  She tells him over and over again that she'll never leave him. He doesn't believe her. If you leave me, Val, if you ever leave me, I'll kill myself, you know I will, don't you?


One of her tutors puts in an application for her to a college on Pator, as a surprise.  It's a good scholarship, better than the one she has here, and it'll take her all the way through medical school, unlike her pre-med bursary at Urbald. She's still wondering how to persuade him to move with her when he finds the letter of offer tucked away in the back of her desk drawer.


I knew you were going to leave me! I knew I couldn't trust you!


She doesn't see the blow coming.  While she's still lying on the floor trying to work out what happened through the ringing in her ears, he slams into the bathroom and locks the door.  She can hear him through the door, swearing he's going to take every one of the pills in the bathroom cabinet. She begs and pleads and promises that she isn't going to leave him through the closed door for two hours. At last he says that if she can prove it he'll unlock the door. Feverishly, she scrawls a letter turning the scholarship down and pushes it under the door. 


He's sorry, extravagantly so, when he opens the door and sees her eye swollen nearly shut. It's because I love you so much, Val. The idea of losing you makes me crazy.


He posts the letter for her the next day.


She understands that it's hard for him to trust her after that, and so when he tells her that she has to give him her papers, her ID, her keys and her bankchip, she does. He gives her enough money from her scholarship to buy groceries, so long as she gives him the change and the receipts when she gets home. He buys her tokens for the shuttlebus so she can get to class, and gives her one on those rare mornings he can't come with her to the university.  If he's late meeting her afterwards she waits outside the library at the university, in the spot he's picked, careful not to speak to anyone in case he arrives and thinks she's flirting. 


He wants her, all for himself, forever. That's what love is, isn't it? Getting jealous when you even think the person you love is too close to someone else. 


That's what love is in the holos.


She keeps making mistakes. Sometimes she's not sure what they are, even afterwards, only that she did something wrong and he couldn't help getting angry. He never means it. He's always sorry. It's just that he loves her so much, he can't help it.


He always promises it will never happen again. She always forgives him. That's what love is, isn't it? Unconditional. 


That's how love is in the holos. 


One night she dreams that she is walking.  There's nothing around her but an endless plain of long grass, rippling away to the horizon in every direction. 


There are no landmarks, but she knows exactly where she is. 


She is on the first day of the three-day walk that will take her to the furthest of all the dancing grounds. The pack on her back holds enough food and water for the trip. She will sleep on the ground beneath all the stars in the Cluster at night, and walk all day, until she gets there. 


Hiri laughs aloud in her dream. A bubble of happiness fills her at the anticipation of the long hours of walking ahead, the dry rations for every meal, the blisters on her feet and the aching exhaustion she will feel by the time she arrives. She tilts back her head and looks up at the cloudless sky and for a moment feels dizzy and weightless, as if gravity has lost its grip on her and she is soaring up into the endless blue above her. 


Then she loses her balance and falls.


She lands, not among the tall, tufted grass, but in her own bed.  Jemadar is breathing beside her in the dark. Her mouth is dry, but he doesn't like having glasses of water by the bed and she can't be sure that slipping out of bed to go to the kitchen won't wake him. She chews the inside of her cheek to start a little saliva, enough to fool her body into thinking she's no longer thirsty.


In the dark, she hears a voice, a woman's voice, clear and soft as the wind rushing over the grass, a voice she has never heard before.


This is not love.


Her first thought is that the voice is too loud, loud enough to wake Jemadar.  She holds her breath, waiting, her heart hammering in her chest.  


He doesn't stir. 


The room is dark, and close, but she can feel the sun on her face and the great vaulting arc of the sky above her, the wide empty plain of the grassland and the breeze whispering against her skin.


Hiri, says the voice, a voice she has never heard, a voice she recognises, after a moment, as her own. Hiri.


This is not love.

Chemistry

It's only chemistry.

............................................

... neurotransmitters are endogenous chemicals which relay, amplify, and modulate signals between a neuron and another cell ...

............................................

It isn't Nerila's best subject, but that's just compared to anatomy.

She's still the top of her class.

And it's only chemistry.

............................................

... such as dopamine, a chemical messenger heavily active in the mesolimbic and mesocortical reward pathways ...

............................................

There are three spots in the program and fifty students who want them. Nerila's a scholarship student and unlike her classmates waits tables four nights a week to make up the difference between her stipend and her rent.

She can't afford to skip study sessions for an extra few hours sleep.

She can't afford to be too tired to concentrate on rounds, either.

And after all, it's only chemistry.

............................................

...the anatomical components of these pathways—including the striatum, the nucleus accumbens, and the ventral striatum - have been found to be primary sites of action ...
............................................

Nerila has good surgeon's hands, not too big, not too small, long-fingered and deft.

They've held thousands of scalpels, knotted tens of thousands of sutures, cupped at least two dozen beating hearts.

Four months shy of being finally, totally, qualified and licenced, she's had a lot of practice.

At cutting, at stitching, at finding a nicked artery by touch and instinct.

And she's had a lot of practice at something else, too.

The top of the vial pops off with the pressure of her fingernail, a flick of the wrist tips out exactly the right number of grains. It's gone again before anyone could possibly see it, even if they were looking right at her.

She splashes water on her face, hopes the chill will take some of the red from her eyes.

Looks in the mirror and tells herself this is the last time.

It's only chemistry.

............................................

... the interaction with serotonin is only apparent in particular regions of the brain, such as the mesocorticolimbic projection ...

............................................

Nerila curls into a ball on the narrow jail cot, shivering so hard the frame rattles against the wall like her own personal percussion section. Her cellmate mutters something about 'fucking junkies' and pulls the pillow over her head.

Nerila tells herself that she won't die from this. The jail medics know that, it's why she's been tossed in here rather than taken up to the infirmary.

They're not trying to kill her, or even torture her.

They just don't give a shit.

Not about one more fucking junkie.

Her stomach cramps agonisingly and she clamps a hand over her mouth to stifle a groan, swallows bile. If she throws up now there'll be no way to clean it up before morning, and she's determined not to spend the third night in a row lying shivering in her own vomit.

Each reaction of her body is predictable. She even got an exam question on it, once.

She knows exactly what's happening, and why.

She's not dying. A few more days and it will be over.

It's only chemistry.

............................................

... triggering the release of dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine, increasing pulse rate, reducing appetite and causing insomnia ...

............................................

He's late.

Nerila fidgets with her hair even though it's been a long time since it occurred to her to wonder if she looked all right. Her heart is beating so fast she's surprised the people at the next table can't hear it. She picks up an olive from the dish the waiter brought with her drink, puts it down again.

She fiddles with her hair again, doesn't look at the door.

Looks.

Feels a wave of relief so intense she's dizzy at the sight of him.

It's crazy, and she knows it. There's no way not to get caught.

She's absolutely, unquestionably old enough to know better.

And catches his eye anyway.

It's just once more. She can stop anytime she wants.

After all, it's only chemistry.

............................................

... is believed to depend on specific phosphorylating kinases. Upon phosphorylation, there is an observable conformational change that results in the transportation of dopamine from the extracellular to the intracellular environment ...

............................................

Nerila locks the door and checks it once, twice, three times.

A fourth.

The vial, the cap, the grains: none of it takes conscious thought. Her long fingers find the tiny glass shape in her pocket without her even willing them to.

She doesn't think about the vial, the cap, the grains, as she pops the cap off and shakes out just exactly enough.

She doesn't think about the fact that she doesn't have to think for her hands to know what to do.

She thinks about how many research papers she has to read through tonight, tomorrow, the day after. About the deadline that nature's set her, about how apt that particular word is.

She thinks about the monitor in the corner of the room and the alarm she's always waiting for.

And then, for three blessed seconds, she doesn't think about anything at all.

When the room comes back, it's all manageable: the papers, the DNA analysis, the monitor. It's under control.

Whatever fatal flaw is coiling through Pilot's DNA, there's an answer to it.

It's only chemistry.

Conversations On The Fortune's Fist: Fourteen

She has him pinned.

Arm around his throat, knee in the small of his back.

It's as close to an embrace as makes no difference.

She increases the pressure, cuts off a little more of his wind. If he doesn't tap out soon, she'll strangle him. She knows he knows it.

"Guess this isn't the kind of wrestling you're used to these days, is it, Sarge?" she whispers. "Do you miss it?"

He can't even breathe, let alone answer her.

She doesn't feel even a flicker of guilt at the fact that she has an unfair advantage.

There's no such thing as an unfair advantage, in the rule-book they both play by.

"Does she know you miss it?"

He won't give in.

She feels him shifting, trying for leverage. Forestalls him, once, twice.

The third time he flips her. They come down still locked together, her beneath him now. He's heavy, and she'd have to let him go to break her fall.

She doesn't.

Sees stars as his weight drives the breath from her lungs.

Holds on.

He lifts them up a little and drops back down on her. Something gives in her side with a stomach-turning crack. His hands are on her arm, waiting for his opportunity, waiting for her grip to ease.

She holds tight.

He taps her forearm, twice, lightly. It takes her longer than it should to feel it, and when she lets him go he rolls away from her and lies, heaving for breath. She stays on her back, looking at the ceiling, tasting blood and wondering how much it's going to hurt when she moves.

A lot, is the answer, as she discovers when she tries to sit up.

"You're fucking crazy, Alpassi," he says at last, not looking at her. "Fucking crazy."

She grins at the ceiling. "I won, didn't I?"

He gets to his feet and holds out his hand. "Fucking crazy," he says again.

She lets him pull her to her feet, chokes back a curse at the pain. "Takes one to know one, Sarge," she says. "Takes one to know one."

It really hurts. For a second her knees buckle, and he grabs her other arm to hold her up. Her eyes are watering, from the pain, that's all. Just from the pain.

She presses her face against his shoulder to hide the moisture on her cheeks.

It's as close to an embrace as makes no difference.

And she won't give in.