The Worst Of It: Two

You can hold onto pain, like it's a physical thing, curl yourself around it like the little sister you'd die to protect, if you want to.

Put your faith in it like the ancestors you don't have and the spirits you only pray to in foxholes.

Hold it close, so you can't feel shame or guilt past the fire of your cramping muscles, can't see the endless chain of sleepless nights ahead past the jangling colors spiraling across your field of vision, can't taste the copper coin of despair past the sour bile burning in your throat. Fill yourself with it until the hum of it in your veins drowns out everything else, until it coils through your body like smoke through a crematorium.

Amieta clung to the pain, clenched her fists on it until the servos whined and the joints grated in protest.

No more than I deserve.

There were voices, sometimes. Sometimes they were voices she knew. A woman's, soft and tender as the hands that smoothed her hair, that wiped her face. Ami? Can you hear me? Ami?

More often they were harsh, Amarr-accented, voices that went with blood and screaming and everyone dead, every single one of them but me.

The voice she thought she knew, her sister's voice, told her It isn't real, Ami, what you see, it isn't real. You're safe, with me, I'm here, Ami. Gentle fingers tried to prise open her fists, but flesh-and-blood was no match for Zainou's finest work. Cia gave up and wrapped her own hands around Amieta's, fingers tucked against the crook of rigid metal joints. I'm here, Ami. You're safe.

That might be true.

It might not be.

From moment to moment Amieta wasn't sure which of those was the worst of it.

The pain was true, the jagged edges of it in her gut, the burning cold that washed over her in waves, the hot ache in her bones.

The pain was real.

She wrapped herself in the pain like a blanket, drew it over her head and curled under it, fists clenched in its edges.

You can hold onto pain, like it's the most precious thing you have.

If you want to.

Drown yourself in it, let it wash away the knowledge that you've hurt the ones who love you, the fear you'll hurt them again, let the acid bath of it etch away the lies you told. You can let the pain eat away the shame.

And the reasons for it.

If you want to.

Even through the pain Amieta could feel Cia's hands curled around hers. She cracked an eyelid to see her sister's honey blonde head leaning on her arm, the edge of her face, one closed eye.

You can hold onto pain.

If you want to.

A new pain, different, signals firing from the machinery of her hands. Metal ground on metal, joints abused past tolerance.

The blonde head lifted. Cia blinked, eyes still cloudy with sleep. "Ami?"

Voice rusty with disuse, Amieta cleared her throat and then again, croaked, "I'm here."

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Amieta opened her hands.

Conversations on the Fortune's Firefly: Twenty Six

The instruments were laid out on the tray.

The needles and the knives.

Cia tried not look at them, but they were there, glinting in the corner of her eye.

"Are you ready, Captain Roth?" Dr Sanik asked.

No. No. Never, not ever.

"Yes," Cia said. She looked away from the tray and sat down on the examination table. "I'm ready. I think."

Metal clinked against metal. "This will only take a few moments."

"Thank you, doctor," Cia said politely. Something cold touched the skin behind her ear and she was -

falling away as fast as she can from

                                                               needles and

                  knives

and -

"Captain Roth."

Dr Sanik was on the other side of the room.

No, Cia realized. I'm on the other side of the room. Crouched in the corner, back pressed to the wall.

"Captain Night said you wanted this procedure," Dr Sanik said.

Want. Wrong word.

"I have to have it," Cia told her knees. "I have to."

Metal clinked on metal again. Cia stole a glance at Dr Sanik and saw her hands empty, the needles and the knives on the tray. "Did he explain to you that it is nothing like - the surgery you had before?"

"Yes. He said - " Cia closed her eyes and tried to make Silver's voice real, tried to make it sound as if he were there and not the other side of the cluster. A fairly minor operation, Cia. Very safe. "He said it was safe."

"It is safe," Dr Sanik said.

Cia nodded, and told her knees "I know."

"We can give you something to make it easier. A mild sedative, if you want."

"I want - " Not to have to do this. "To have -" Silver here, really here, not just a memory of a voice. "I could, if -" Ami were here, holding my hand.

"Captain Roth," Dr Sanik said. "I understand that you may feel some anxiety. I did, after all, perform the reconstructive surgery, after the ... incident."

"I know," Cia said. "I am sorry about that. I mean, I'm sorry about the - the fuss I made. I know, I knew, you weren't ... I did know. It was just the -"

              Needles

                                                                 and the

                           knives

                                                                                   and the dark.

"I understand from Captain Night there are some time constraints," Dr Sanik said.

"Yes." Cia took a deep breath, and forced herself to get up. The room spun, and then steadied. "Yes, there are. I can't afford to - I'll need to be sharp, later. I don't think, a sedative, I don't think it's a good idea."

"Then if you'll take a seat?" Dr Sanik indicated the examination table again. "We can begin."

It was a long way across the room to the table. Cia took a step, then another, keeping her gaze away from the tray, from what it held.

The last time Dr Sanik had held a scalpel and touched its blade to her scalp, Cia had held tight to Ami's cool metal hand, held on even in the dark, through the needles and the knives, until it was over.

Cia opened her mouth to say Wait, wait until Ami gets here, I'll be all right when Ami gets here.

Closed it again. If Ami was here, it wouldn't be necessary.

She heard metal scratch against metal, felt the cool touch of it on her skin. Someone was whimpering. Cia was too frightened to open her eyes to see who it was. Please, no, she thought, please, stop. Please.

The words stayed unspoken in her throat.

For family, you do anything.

Go anywhere.

Even into the dark.

Not Quite The End of The Universe

The station smelt.

Even in the hangar, Cia could taste the tang in the air: oil and grease, metal glowing under the heat of welding torches, something unrecognizable cooking at a food stall nearby.

Out in the corridors, the smells were stronger. A sickly blend of perfumes drifting from a gaggle of girls clattering and chattering past with their gazes sliding over the off-shift deckhands and dockhands slouching towards the bars and clubs on Recreation Row; a warm wave of fetid stench from the waste-cans as they were dragged through the access alleys; the thick simmer of spices poured over food protein to give it some illusion of flavor.

There was no reason the station cyclers should be weaker in Syndicate than in Heimatar. No reason at all, Cia told herself.

The station still smelt.

She swallowed hard and tried to ignore it. "Anything, M'ser Burke?"

Tanith Burke, dressed in a faded jacket with the shoulder patch that marked him as a Mordu's veteran, shook his head. "Couldn't find anyone who said they'd seen her."

"But that's just Mordu's Legion, isn't it?" Cia asked. "I mean, Ami was with the, the ... 'Bunnies'. Did you ask them?"

"It's not," Burke said, "Quite so simple."

"That's not a good enough answer, M'ser Burke." Cia turned on her heel so fast her head spun and she had to stop for a moment.

"Maybe we should go back to the hangar," Helmi said quietly.

"I'm not going anywhere until we find - " A gust of air carried the smell of sweat and onions and beer from a couple wandering past with their arms entwined and Cia stopped, gagging.

"They're not going to be faster with watching over you at the same time," Helmi said.

"You mean I'm in the way," Cia said. "Am I in the way, M'ser Burke?"

"I wouldn't put it precisely that way," Burke said.

"Well, how would you put it?" Cia felt her eyes sting with tears and blinked hard. "She's my sister, M'ser Burke, my sister and I can't just sit around and - " A sob escaped, despite her best efforts, and she covered her face with her hands.

"Perhaps you should get some rest," Burke suggested. "We are professionals, Captain Roth. Do you know the old saying about the man who buys a dog and barks himself?"

Wiping her eyes, Cia shook her head. "But I think I take your point. I'm sorry, Tanith. I didn't mean to shout at you."

"I'm sure it's been a very trying time for you," Burke said noncomittally.

Cia sighed. "Do you think you'll find her soon?"

"We know she's on this station," Burke said. "But things aren't quite as straightforward here as you might be used to. People are very wary of strangers, especially strangers asking questions." He offered his arm, and when Cia took it, tactfully turned her in the direction of the hangars. "It may take some time to build up the neccessary contacts and trust."

"How much time?"

"I won't mislead you, Captain. Months, rather than weeks."

"Oh."

They walked in silence a moment, and then Burke cleared his throat. "Of course, there is an alternative."

"Oh?"

"You could hire the local knowledge. In the person of a local operative, of some description. Of course, that would mean expanding the group of people aware of the situation, by one, at least."

"Oh," Cia said. "I don't want to ... but, months?"

"At least, Captain."

"Oh." She looked up at him. "Do you think that's what I should do? Hire someone?"

"I do," Burke said.

"Oh. Then, will you find someone for me to hire?"

They reached the hangar entrance and Burke stopped. "I'll look into it, Captain."

"Quickly, please," Cia said, having to blink back tears again. "I don't ... I don't like it here." She made herself smile, made her voice light. "It smells terrible. Like ..." Welded metal and cheap perfume, bulk spices and liquor and sweat. "Like the end of the universe."

One of Burke's eyebrows went up at that. "Sydnicate is not quite the end of the universe, Captain," he said. "There is still Solitude. And the Outer Ring."

"Well," Cia said. "We'd better hurry, then. I don't think - " She bit her lip. "I don't think it's a good idea."

To let her get any further away.

Conversations In Debreth: Twenty Five

Mathilde Leclerke ran the cloth over the already-spotless kitchen bench one more time and folded it into precise quarters. Easy to keep house when the house has no-one in it, she thought with a glance at the couches never-sat-on by the fireplace-never-lit. Change the flowers, dust ... open and close windows.

Not that it should be anything to complain about, not for a woman of her age. A nice quiet life with no crying babies and no toddlers smearing honey on the walls, no adolescent boys tramping mud through the house, no dinner parties for twenty at an hour's notice.

Most housekeepers would envy her, Mathilde knew. I'd have envied myself, fifteen years ago.

Never thought I'd miss cleaning M'selle Camille's handprints off every surface less than three foot off the ground.

She sighed. Can't hold on to your own forever, let alone the others.

What was it her own Maman had said? First they make your arms ache. Later they make your heart ache.

And she was old enough to know better, too.

Still, it would be nice to -

As her thought had bespoke Fortune herself, the front door banged open.

"Ami!" It was M'selle Roth's voice, Captain Roth as she was now. "Ami? I'm home." Rapid footsteps in the hall, and then the girl herself appeared at the door.

"Ami? Mathilde, where's Ami?"

"M'selle Invelen is not here," Mathilde said.

"Did she go out?" Ciarente asked. She crossed briskly to the chiller and opened it. "She'll be hungry when she gets back, Ami's always - ugh, Mathilde. Something's gone off in here."

"No, M'selle," Mathilde said.

Ciarente began to pull things off the shelves, sniffing them cautiously. "Well, something smells terrible."

"I am quite sure I would not let anything spoil," Mathilde said. "But I meant, no, M'selle Invelen has not gone out. She has not been here."

"Oh." Ciarente paused, and then said brightly, "She's probably stopped in to see Alain on her way from the shuttle. She'll be here soon. I wonder if she'd like some - oh, this is it." She held a bowl out at arm's length, grimacing. "The vichyssoise. Ugh, it stinks."

Mathilde took the bowl. "Made fresh this morning, M'selle."

"I don't think so, Mathilde. Get rid of it, please, it's turning my stomach."

The only odors Mathilde could identify were onion and chicken, but she turned to pour the soup away. "You are expecting M'selle Invelen today? She did not call."

"I'm sure she'll be here soon," Ciarente said. "Do we have enough eggs? Ami does like Pierre's omelettes."

"More than enough, M'selle," Mathilde said. "Even for M'selle Invelen."

"Good." Ciarente took a handful of mushrooms from their storage bin and then put them back with a sigh. "Fortune, I'm tired. More jumps this week than I like to think about."

Mathilde studied Ciarente a moment. "Would you like some tea, while you wait for M'selle Invelen?"

"Coffee, I think," Ciarente said. "It's been a long few days."

"I think we may be out of coffee," Mathilde said.

"Well, tea then. Thank you." Ciarente pulled a stool over to the counter and sat down with a sigh. "It is good to be home, Mathilde. I miss this place, you know."

"We miss you also, M'selle, and M'selle Camille." Mathilde set the kettle to boil and took clump of ginger from the root cupboard.

Ciarente looked out the window at the garden. "I've all but missed summer this year. You're well? And Pierre?"

Mathilde grated the ginger and tipped it into the teapot with a handful of lemon rind. "We are both well, yes. A little creaky, these days." She poured hot water into the pot. "And M'selle Camille? And yourself?"

"Oh, Cami's Cami, as always," Ciarente said. "And I'm fine. That tea smells lovely."

"I thought you would like it," Mathilde said, pouring a mug and setting it on the counter by the pilot. "You do look a little tired."

Ciarente wrinkled her nose and sipped the tea. "Ah, worries, you know how it is? But things will be fine, now." She turned on her stool at the sound of the door opening again. "Ami?"

"No, Captain Roth." It was a man who answered, and when he came into the room Mathilde recognised M'ser Tanith Burke from the times he'd visited to check on the security arrangements. "I'm afraid not. It seems now that Commander Invelen changed shuttles on station."

"Well, of course," Ciarente said. "Interbus doesn't do planetary runs."

"No, Captain Roth," M'ser Burke said. "Changed to a different interbus line. With a ticket to Reblier."

Ciarente set her mug down with a click. "I'm afraid you're mistaken, Tanith. Amieta wouldn't buy a ticket for Reblier when she was coming down planet."

There was a little silence in the room. M'ser Burke looked at Mathilde and she made her face expressionless. She'd had decades to practice that, in this household.

"Well," Ciarente said decisively. "When she gets here, she'll be hungry." She stood up. "I think I might make a cake, Mathilde. Do we have any candied oranges? I think with a vanilla base that might be quite nice for a warm evening."

"Captain Roth," M'ser Burke said. "Commander Invelen has, we are almost certain, left the system."

Ciarente opened a cupboard energetically. "That can't be right, Tanith. It simply can't."

"If we move quickly, we may pick up her trail in Reblier," M'ser Burke said.

"She's on her way here right now." Ciarente took the flour down and set it on the counter with a thump that raised a little white cloud from the bag.

Mathilde looked at M'ser Burke, and then reached out to put her hand over Ciarente's. "I think you should listen to M'ser Burke, M'selle."

"I would like," Ciarente said a little shrilly, "to make a cake for my sister."

"I know," Mathilde said.

"So when she gets here, she'll have something to eat." Ciarente's fingers tightened on the bag until her knuckles were white.

"M'selle. If she were here, right now, what would she tell you to do?"

Ciarente stared at the flour. "She - she ... "

"M'selle."

Ciarente let go of the flour suddenly and put her hands over her face. "She said ... stop hiding, she said. Before. Stop hiding, and do something about it."

M'ser Burke cleared his throat. "The shuttle off-world ..."

"Yes." Ciarente lowered her hands, tears tracking lines through the dusting of flour on her cheeks. "The shuttle. I will tell the crew to prep the Firefly."

Mathilde picked up the cloth from the counter and began to wipe Ciarente's face, just as she had so many times before.  Baby, toddler, child ...

There had been a time when she had had a solution for any problem Ciarente could bring to her. Long past, now, that time. 


Long past.

Mathilde dusted away the last of the flour.

"Bring M'selle Invelen back to visit," she said. "Pierre will make her as many omelettes as she likes. D'accord?"

Ciarente sniffled, and nodded. "I will." She hugged Mathilde quickly, and then turned to M'ser Burke. "We should hurry, I suppose."

They went out together, Ciarente looking very small and young beside M'ser Burke.

But not so young, anymore.

Mathilde sighed, and began to clean up the flour. When they are little, they make your arms ache.

But she is not so little, anymore.

The Hope Of His Heart

It's a story told a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

Micha Krenshaw's Folklore Compendium records seven different versions in the system of Luminaire alone, and another forty in Crux. His students, and their students, have heard it told in Domain, in Heimatar, in Solitude, in Syndicate.  Different, each time.

And the same.

A girl, or a boy, it doesn't matter which, but human, that's the point of the story. A human girl, a human boy.

A door in the hill, or a gap in the hedge, or a mirror that reflects more than the face of those who look into it, or a pool of water, or a grove of trees. Whichever it may be, or something else entirely, it's always a gate - a gate from this world to another.

From the human, to the ... not.

Sometimes the human boy or the human girl finds a way through the door or the gap or the mirror.

Sometimes something else finds its way out.


They're always beautiful. More beautiful than humanly possible.

Because they're not human, that's the point of the story.

They stay a night, or two. Perhaps they come back, if it pleases them.  Only if it pleases them, though. It's for mortals to take care of the feelings of those around them.

Those from beyond the hedge or beneath the hill or behind the mirror take their pleasure and their leave.

Sometimes there's a child. A human woman left with broken heart and swelling belly, a human man woken by a midnight knock at the door nine months later to find a squalling bundle on the doorstep.

A changeling child, a half-breed, to raise and love but not to keep.

Not that the human mother or father weeping by the cradle need any reminder. They're beautiful, the ones from beyond, more beautiful than humanly possible, and even the sight of them condemns a human man or woman to pine forever, that glamor forever between them and the deed of their hand, between them and the hope of their heart.

It is possible to make them stay. Stay for a time, at least. Find the animal skin they shucked to take a more human form and hide it, or slip a rope woven from a single hair around their neck, or mark their forehead with a holy symbol in oil, or ash, or blood.  Lay cold iron on them.

Put a gold band on their finger.

They will stay human then, live and love in human form, at least until they search out their skin or pick apart the rope with a thorn from a rosebush planted by the light of the first full moon of spring, or gather  dew on the last day of the year three years in a row to wash away the mark.  And they will, always. That is one thing the stories all agree on.

They will love you, and stay with you, if you compel them, but they will never stop trying to be free.

Charles Etay watches the girl in his kitchen as she whisks a sauce and tastes it, pulls a face and adds salt. She is playing at being normal, here in his tiny apartment.  She's good at it, too.

The neighbors have no idea she's a pod-pilot and Charlie suspects they wouldn't believe him if he tried to tell them the truth. That nice young Cia Roth? Never!


She is playing at belonging in his world, with more success than he has when he's a visitor to hers.

And tomorrow, or the next day, she will leave. Return to her home between the stars.  Come back, as and when she choses, or summon him to her side.

He will wait, for the knock at the door, for the call, for the Interbus ticket in an envelope or the sight of her at the end of the street as he turns the corner for home.  He will wait, until the time comes when she stops calling, stops coming.

And then he will still wait.

It's a story told  a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

It always ends the same.

This Is Who She Is.

The patient was holographic and the wounds were computer generated to test her abilities, but Nerila's focus didn't waver.

This is what I do.

"How are you feeling?" Pilot asked.

Nerila blinked sweat out of her eyes, staring into the surgical field, and considered a dozen answers to that question.  Busy came to mind, as did none of your fucking business. 

She concentrated and pressed down with the holographically-generated retractor, sliding the illusory forceps past it and into the computer-generator incision and deciding on, "Fine. I'm fine."

A light flashed at the edge of her vision, the computer's warning that she's using too much pressure with her left hand.  Correcting made her fingers shake and she had to pause. 

This is what I care about.

Footsteps behind her told Nerila that Pilot had come into the room. "Maybe you should take a break."

"A real surgery would go for a lot longer than this."  The tremor in her left hand stopped and she moved the holographic liver aside and looked for the bleed beneath.

This is who I am.

"But you're still recovering."

There. Nerila clamped the leaking vein. "That's the point," she explained to Pilot. "The chip is still learning what it needs to compensate for. I have to push it to its limits."

It took her a little longer than it should have to tie off the bleeder but the scrolling counter told  her that she was still well within her margins. As Pilot pulled a stool over to the other side of the table and sat down, Nerila started to put her holographic patient back together, guts, muscles, skin.

"I need to talk to you, Nerila," Pilot said.

Nerila kept her eyes on the hologram. "So talk."

"About your son."

The light flashed, a low tone sounded. "Fortune fuck."  Her left hand shaking too badly to keep its grip, Nerila only just managed to get her right thumb on the forceps before they disappeared inside the 'patient'. Pilot reached out to help and Nerila snapped "Not sterile!" as if it mattered, as if it was real.

"Sorry," Pilot murmured.

Nerila  shook her hand out, made a fist, shook it again, and took a deep breath. "It's fine." When she took hold of the forceps again her grip was light and steady. "Go on."

"It's time for him to leave medical."

"Okay."

"He needs ... " Pilot hesitated. "He needs to be with someone. I mean, he needs ... care. Maybe if you ... well.  There's a family, I found. The mother is crew, here. They're both Gallente, like you, like Mitch.  They have two little girls already and they'd love to take care of ... your son."

Nerila closed the last of the incision. "Okay."

"But not just temporarily," Pilot said. "Manina - that's her name - she said it would be too hard. To love him and know she might have to give him back to you." She pauses again. "Nerila. They want to adopt him."

"Okay," Nerila said. The holographic patient shimmered and faded and she looked at the readout. Still a little slow there, but not so bad, all things considered.


"There's papers to sign."

"Got them there?"

Pilot blinked, looking taken aback. "Um. Yes."

Nerila held out her steady right hand, and after a moment's hesitation Pilot took out her datapad, tapped on it for a moment and handed it over.

"If you want to take some time to think - "

Nerila pressed her thumb to the screen and then signed her name. The datapad registered her thumbprint and recorded her signature, beeped once. She handed it back to Pilot. "There. Anything else?"

Pilot shook her head, eyes sad. "No. That's all."

"Then I need to get back to work."

Pilot took it as the dismissal it was meant to be. Her footsteps were still fading down the corridor when Nerila called up the next program on her list. Twenty-two year old made with penetrating wound upper thoracic ...


Cut. Clean. Mend.


This is what I do. This is what I care about.


This is who I am. 


Without thinking about it she got up from her stool and turned away from the patient bleeding out his computer-generated blood on her table.  Her feet carried Nerila down the hall and to the left, third door, through the decontamination lock.

This is not what I want to do.

Her legs moved without any instruction from her, under someone else's control, someone who could imagine there being anything more important than a bleeding patient on the table.


That someone could not possibly be her. It's the chip, Nerila thought, as the blast of antiseptic air died down and the doors to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit opened for her. Dr Sanik and Captain Night lied. It is a mind-control chip.


The chip walked her across the room to the incubator, lifted her hands to open the plexiglass lid, reached in to the baby inside.  So much bigger already than the one other time she'd seen him, most of the tubes gone, only a few wires left connecting him to the monitors by the incubator, and his eyes following her movements now, no longer blank and blind.

This is not what I care about.

He fussed as the chip used her hands to pick him up, and Nerila heard her voice crooning soft soothing nonsense as her good right hand held him securely against her shoulder, her less-reliable left detaching the wires that led to the monitors.

Not only should she not be doing this, not when there's a patient, even an illusory one, open on her table, she doesn't have the right to. She signed the papers. He's somebody else's son.

Someone else is his mother.

Not Nerila.

This is not who I want to be.


The baby's head was soft and downy against Nerila's neck as the chip made her pick up a blanket from the chair by the incubator and tuck it around him, then turn to the door.  Her feet carried her across the room, through the door, down the hall.  Someone called out to her but the chip wouldn't let her stop, kept her moving out past the entrance to medical and into the main hangar.

She turned towards the exit and saw security heading her way, turned the other way and saw three medtechs hurrying after her. The chip sent her forward, diagonally across the hangar, to the huge secure container that housed Pilot's hab unit.

Nerila reached it seconds before security and the medtechs reached her. They were talking to her but the chip wouldn't let her hear, wouldn't let her hear anything but the pounding of her own heart and the little grumbling sounds of the baby breathing.

"Pilot," she said to the marine on duty at the door. "Pilot."

That was all the chip would let her say.

One of the medtechs reached out for the baby and the baby started squalling.  Nerila's arms tightened around him, her body curled forward to shelter him, her head bowed over his.  Her voice whispered "Don't cry, sweetling, don't cry, don't cry."  Hands touched her and she crouched away. "Don't cry. Hush, don't cry." They were all around her now and the chip had no more instructions except Hold on and keep safe and don't let go.


Then space around her and another voice. "Nerila."

"Don't cry," she whispered to the baby, who was grumpy now with bemusement at the hot salty rain falling on his face. "Don't cry, please don't cry, don't cry."

"Nerila," Pilot said again, her hand gentle on Nerila's arm.  Nerila raised her head to see Pilot swimming in a blurry haze, crouching beside her on the deck.

"Something's gone wrong," she told Pilot.

"I know," Pilot said quietly.

"This isn't me," Nerila explained. "It's the chip. It isn't me!"

"It's okay, Nerila," Pilot said. "It's okay."

Nerila shook her head. "No. It's not okay. It's not okay! I - "

This is not who I want to be.


This is not what I want to do.


This is not what I want to care about.


"Nerila?" Pilot prompted softly.

"I can't - " she blurted. "I can't - " I can't let go. "This isn't who I am!"

Pilot's arms were around her and her son, holding them both, holding them together, and her voice was very gentle. "Yes it is, Nerila. This is who you are."

Nerila looked down at the baby in her arms and he looked back at her with his father's brown eyes.

She took a deep breath and held it until her lungs burned for air.

Exhaled.

Numb

It's an arm.

It's her arm, in fact.

It doesn't feel like it, lying on the covers of the bed, numb and immobile. Nerila reaches over with her right hand and takes hold of it, the lump of insensate flesh that she knows, intellectually, belongs to her.

She lifts it up and lets it drop.

Nothing.

Not that she expects anything.  Just about everybody on the medical staff remembers when she was CMO Janianial and it didn't take too many orders in her new, slurring, voice before someone put her patient records in her hands.

Hand.

In the hand that works, still.

Her mind works. That's in the file, but Nerila doesn't need the file to tell her that. She was running through cognitive tests before they took her off the ventilator, checking the areas she came up short again and again as the fog of post-anesthesia diminished until she could say to herself Okay, honey, you're all still here.

Her mind works.

Her brain, not so much. That's in the file, but it's something else she doesn't need to read to know. Her left hand, her left leg, useless; the right side of her face numb and slack.  You don't need to be a doctor to know what that means, and Nerila's a doctor.

The file has all the details. How long she was technically, clinically, dead for and just what parts of her brain are actually dead, now.

She knows what that means, even as her former staff are talking about therapy and rehabilitation.

Nerila's a doctor and she knows there's only so much functionality you can get back.

I was a doctor.  She makes herself say it, silently, over and over. It'll sink in, soon. It won't hurt so much. Or maybe she'll just go numb the way her left hand is numb, and she won't feel the bruising impact of those words. I was a doctor.

Nerila's looking at the ceiling saying those words to herself when they come in, the three of them. Not medical staff, she can tell from the way they stop just inside the door. Not family, because hers is disowned or dead. Not friends, because she's a  fucking junkie and junkies don't have friends. 

She wants to tell them to Fuck off, whoever they are, but pushing words out of her slackly lopsided mouth takes more effort than it's usually worth, these days.

"Nerila?" It's Pilot's voice, the soft Gallente slur of it and the hesitancy equally familiar.  Footsteps come to the left side of the bed, and Nerila turns her head in time to see Pilot gently take her left hand. Saying Don't bother, I can't feel it would take about five minutes, so Nerila lifts her right hand instead, waggles the fingers at Pilot in a silent It's this one that works gesture.

Pilot takes that hand as well. "Nerila, Dr Sanik is here to talk to you."

Sanik. Nerila knows Sanik, not in a have a drink together way but in the way that really matters, as far as the doctor Sanik is and Nerila used to be is concerned: she's read  Sanik's meticulous case notes and she's seen the tiny, immaculate incisions left on Pilot's scalp by Sanik's surgery.

Nerila has always believed that you can tell a lot about someone by the way they cut.

Sanik comes to the bed, the other side to Pilot. The third visitor joins Pilot and Nerila recognizes him as well, Invelen's boss, former Sansha or current Sansha depending on who you listened to, Mr Happy Chip himself, Captain Silver Night.

Naqam Heavy BioIndustries.

It's not numb, the place she's been battering with I used to be a doctor.  There's a flicker of hope there as  Captain Night comes to stand behind Pilot and Dr Sanik starts to talk.  Nerila can't crush that hope, although she tries, as Dr Sanik uses words like neural bridging and repair and functionality, as Pilot's face goes pale and paler. Trans-Cranial Micro-Controller, Dr Sanik says finally, the word that's been in the air since she started talking.

Pilot's Sansha friends want to put chips in my head.

The thought holds not even a tinge of apprehension when it's set beside And I could be able to use both my hands again.

"Do you understand, Nerila?" Pilot asks quietly. "It's not, it isn't, what, not like, it ..."

The hands holding hers are cold and sweaty and shaking. Captain Night says something Nerila can't hear, not more than a word, maybe two, and Pilot nods and swallows and falls silent.

"Dr Janianial," Captain Night says, "As Ms Roth was saying, there will be no behavioral control component to this T.C.M.C. No perceptual distortion, or personality modification. It will be purely a therapeutic device designed to replicate neurological functions that are currently impaired, and it will be locked against any tampering. You have my word on that."

There's something Nerila needs to ask, not about Captain Night's promises because right at that moment being a True Slave would be a fair trade for being able to get up off this bed and pick up a scalpel and do the one thing, the only single thing ever, that she's always been absolutely, unquestionably good at.  The question she needs to ask is a different one, but heaving it up off her tongue is heavy lifting, the words sliding around her mouth.

Pilot tries to help, Fortune fuck her, she always tries to help. "Your son, Nerila, Dr Sanik can help him too. It's more complicated, but he could - "

Nerila shakes her head. I don't care about the brat.  Do what you want to it. 

"It's your choice, of course, Nerila, as his mother. If you don't want, well. But Dr Sanik says - "

"Shut. Up." The words are slurred but clear enough to make Pilot blink, her wide blue eyes showing hurt, and Nerila knows she's being unfair.

Fuck fair. Fair isn't that bastard Mitch sweet-talking me into bed and knocking me up, fair isn't Pilot's bitch friend deciding she knows what's best for me, fair isn't seven months of vomiting and backaches that ends with the brat trying to kill me.  


Fair can go fuck itself.


The words come out eventually. "How much. Fuction?"

"With therapy and rehabilitation, you could be looking at close to one hundred percent," Dr Sanik says.

"And your son, too," Pilot said.

Close to one hundred percent. 

There's a lot that can fall into that gap that close describes.  The fine motor control that can slip an ace out of a deck of cards, for one thing. Or keep a scalpel steady.

But close is better than this. Close is a chance.  

"Yes," Nerila says. It sounds more like esh, even to her, but Dr Sanik nods.

"There is a team on standby," Sanik says. "We can start as soon as you're prepped for the surgery."

"And your son, Nerila?" Pilot asks.

"Don't care," Nerila says.

"You don't mean that. He's - "

"I. Don't. Care." Her right hand answers her will, pulls free of Pilot's grip. Her left lies limp, and Nerila closes her eyes against the sight.

Pilot, though, Pilot doesn't quit things when she thinks she's right.  "Well, medically, though, Nerila. What would you say, as a doctor? Do you want to see his ... chart, is that what it's called?"

"No." She's seen the brat's chart. Seen the brat, too, wheeled down the hall to the N.I.C.U. they have set up for it, by med-techs who couldn't imagine she wouldn't want to and who couldn't understand her attempts to protest.  Hooked up to wires and monitors and feeding tubes and oxy-mix.

No, Nerila doesn't want to see the chart. No, she doesn't want to hold the baby. No, she doesn't want to make the decision.

"Nerila?"


Pilot's not going to leave this alone, Nerila can tell.  She's going to sit there holding the hand that doesn't feel like mine asking me to make a choice about the baby that doesn't either until she hears what she needs to.


Fine.

"Yes," Nerila says. Esh.

The answer makes Pilot smile, happy, and let go of Nerila's hand so the techs can start prepping her for surgery.

That makes it the right answer, as far as Nerila's concerned.

As far as the brat's concerned ... ?

She can't find it in her to care.