(Part 28 of “The Misfits” series)
Something was off in the air.
To the residents of Xenia, though, it wasn’t immediately apparent that anything was different about that night. The mist began on schedule, as dictated by the water cycle, so, as planned, there was a dull humidity in the air that made the quiet city seem slightly cooler than most nights, but it also brought the smell of the flowers, grasses, and trees into the carefully cultivated atmosphere. There wasn’t anything materially different in the air, though; it just felt that way.
The first sign of something unusual came as the city’s Division 1 seventeens faced off against Kapringham—the visiting division champion from the Abrahms octant. The energy should have seemed celebratory, but it wasn’t. At first the stadium was flat, and perhaps symbolically, Xenia’s seventeens conceded two quick goals, leaving the starting eleven looking at each other, as though each were accusing the other of failing to show up for their biggest match of the season. Similarly, the considerable crowd, who’d come to expect much more from their vaunted seventeens, looked around the stadium on that cool night wondering what had happened to take the starch out of their boys.
The energy settled somewhat, and the score remained 2-nil for nearly twenty-five more minutes before Xenia’s starting left midfielder Xeldin Swinney simply stopped dead, right in the middle of a run, surrendering possession to Kapringham and spoiling a promising advancement down a wide-open left side.
The crowd groaned. The center half shouted over at Swinney, who stood in place for several seconds, staring vacantly as though absorbing the scene, seemingly taking stock of where he was—looking to his left, to his right, to the stands, to the sky. Two of his teammates approached him, and when the center half joined them, he could be heard from the stands to shout several uncharitable words at young Swinney, who still hadn’t moved from the spot.
As the referee began to approach, somewhat concerned, the center half pushed Xeldin Swinney in the chest, and when the young man hardly reacted, his center half slapped him upside the head as though to wake young Xeldin up.
Xeldin Swinney responded by headbutting the center half square in the nose so violently that the boy dropped to the pitch out cold before he’d even hit the ground.
By then, the Swinney boy was surrounded by several of his own teammates, as well as two or three of the Kapringham seventeens, who rushed forward with the intention of breaking up the sudden fist fight that broke out between Xeldin Swinney and his fellow midfielders. By the time Kapringham’s midfielders got to the scrum, though, two more of Xenia’s seventeens were laid out on the turf with a third still in the process of dropping. The brawl might have stopped then and there if the Kapringham midfielders had been a few more steps away and had simply backed off. But they arrived just in time for Xeldin Swinney to feel himself surrounded, and once he dropped the first Kapringham boy with a fierce right hook, the entire team ran in to pile on Swinney in defense of their own.
Nobody could recall such a scene. Genuine violence on a scale the city of Xenia never saw. Kicking; punching; biting; brawling; fathers running in from the stands shouting; coaches, officials, and players struggling to pull teammates and opponents alike from the pile; and at the center of it all, Xeldin Swinney stood like a gladiator—bloody hands, bloody forehead, his head on a swivel, knocking down anyone who dared approach for nearly a full two minutes, before finally, two of the neighborhood’s Georges on designated community watch arrived. With great difficulty and several shocks to Xeldin Swinney’s torso, the city’s multi-use models were finally able to subdue the young man.
By the time they dragged off the Swinney boy, the stadium grounds were in total disarray. Xenia’s seventeens had to be pulled away by their parents, coaches, and families; and the visiting Kapringham team were huddled together in the far corner of the pitch, where many of the boys who hadn’t been injured in the brawl stood either wide-eyed with shock or in tears. Mothers were apoplectic. Enraged fathers were shouting at the ones trying to restore order. The stadium volunteers were scrambling to get medical help to the boys who were still laid out on the pitch, some of whom who’d been trampled in the scrum after getting knocked clean out by the initial brawl.
But oddly, between the goalposts on the home end, a tall young goalkeeper stood, taking in the scene not unlike the way Xeldin Swinney had before the brawl. He hadn’t run into the fray, nor did he seem inclined to move off his spot when it became clear that the match would be abandoned. He just looked puzzled.
One might have thought he was in shock, not unlike the Kapringham boys on the other end of the pitch. But when he was approached by his older brother, who’d come down from the grandstands, it became clear that something else entirely was going on. The goalkeeper was staring up at the sky vacantly.
“Lorne,” the keeper’s elder brother stated. “Are you okay?”
The goalkeeper shook his head and returned a look to his brother that could only have been described as awe.
“I don’t believe it,” Lorne replied. “We’re on Iophos.”
The goalkeeper looked down at his own hands in the way an infant does, in wonder.
“This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”
The clinic was in chaos by the time Arno Koslov arrived. To say the brawl at the seventeens match was unprecedented in the city’s history might have been a stretch, but nothing like it had occurred in living memory. A mass casualty incident hadn’t happened at the emergency clinic for over two decades, even during Founders week, but something was clearly peculiar about it, Koslov knew, owing to the fact that the ranking psychiatric fellow wasn’t normally part of such an incident’s response plan.
He was well aware that such high spirits were normal following a traumatic event of that magnitude, but he was unprepared for the amount of shouting in the waiting area outside the clinic doors. As he walked through, it seemed the only thing keeping violence from breaking out again was the line of multi-use models standing between the impromptu demarcation of their waiting area into two sides—one for the Xenia parents and one for the visitors from Kapringham. Koslov informed the local community watch to call for more human officers and mediators to calm the situation. The emotional tensions weren’t what he’d been called to deal with. This entire near-pogrom, he’d been informed on the initial ping, had been set off by one of the Xenia seventeens having a complete psychotic break mid-match.
The Swinney boy was in a separate secure area of the clinic, restrained now, and quite subdued according to the staff. He’d been surprisingly calm and cooperative when answering questions, and to the shock of the staff who’d interacted with him, displayed no remorse or emotions whatsoever when he was informed of the chaos he’d caused.
“What’s everyone so upset about?” he’d asked the psychiatric nurse. “A few fists got thrown around. That’s a decent night out in some places.”
He also told her that he thought his body might have a heart condition.
“I thought that was strange,” the nurse told Koslov when he arrived to take a report. “The way he said it made it seem like he thought it wasn’t his body—like who says ‘this body might have a heart condition’? You say, I think I might have a heart condition, right? That’s some kind of dissociative disorder, Dr. Koslov, isn’t it? But I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“I’ll have to examine the boy before I make any diagnosis,” Koslov replied. “It does sound odd, though. Yes.”
“Oh, and Dr. Koslov, Ms. Ira is here as well.”
This news surprised Arno Koslov, who shook his head. “Lee Ira is here? Why?”
“Her Alba brought her in reporting an episode of syncope, followed by disorientation. She’s in room 3 with her Alba, whose report is in the file.”
Koslov hadn’t seen Ms. Ira in the clinic in over a year. She’d been steadily progressing. It was terrible timing. He cared about Lee Ira. Everyone did. They all wanted to see her do as well as possible given the public tragedy she’d suffered.
Koslov looked around the clinic at the chaos, made sure the Swinney boy was secure and stable, and decided the brawlers could wait. He watched the Alba’s report and then went in to talk with Lee Ira.
Carolina Dreeson was becoming more aware of her circumstances. She was on Iophos. She was aware that she was in the body of another woman—Lee. That’s what the Alba kept calling her. The transition to this body had been traumatic, a pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
At first, it was equally confusing, but the Alba had helped. She had also complicated the situation by taking Carolina to the clinic. She had a vague recollection of this Lee’s memories—some of them. But everything was cloudy. She knew she couldn’t answer the Alba’s questions correctly, but she had a sense that all that would fade. She’d only needed time to orient herself to this life. But the Alba watching her had insisted on dragging her to the clinic. Now she was locked in a room with the bot watching her every move, hanging on every word, interpreting every facial expression and gesture.
Carolina sat still and kept quiet, telling the Alba she didn’t feel like talking. She had the most powerful urge to cry, but she also had the sense that just a crack in that dam would open a deluge she couldn’t control, and she knew she had to get out of there—out from under watchful eyes, human and android. She didn’t remember what it was yet, but she knew she had a mission here. She kept breathing through the sensation, staring at the wall. At her core she felt such profound sadness. She had no idea it was going to be like this, taking up another life. She resorted to counting backwards from a thousand by sevens, one number for each breath. It was the only thing she could think to do to keep from breaking down.
The door opened, a face that was both familiar and one she couldn’t quite remember or put a name to.
“Hi, Lee,” the man said, his tone sympathetic, almost saturated with pity. “I hear you’re having a tough night.”
“I’m feeling better,” she replied. “There seems to be something going on out there?”
“Nothing you need to worry about, Lee. Let’s focus on you.”
“Have you viewed my report, Dr. Koslov?” the Alba asked. “Ms. Ira’s behavior has been quite irregular, concerningly so. That is why I brought her here.”
“I did get your report, Alba. Thank you. If I need any more information, I’ll let you know.”
“Please inform me if I can be of any help to you or your staff in caring for Ms. Ira.”
“I will, Alba. For now, please, I’d like to speak to Lee uninterrupted,” the doctor stated, turning his attention to the young woman seated on the hospital stretcher. “Can you tell me what happened this evening, Lee?”
“I’m not sure, really,” Carolina replied. “I remember feeling confused. I think I almost fell, or maybe I did. Alba must have caught me. I don’t think I hit my head.”
“No,” Dr. Koslov agreed. “Alba kept you from hitting the ground. Do you know what happened after that?”
“I was just lightheaded for a spell.”
“It was a bit more serious than that.”
“Was it? I don’t recall.”
“You don’t remember the episode?”
“Not entirely. I remember people staring at me. I was sitting on the ground in the plaza. I remember Alba bringing me here. She seemed very concerned. I think she might have overreacted. She’s a very dedicated unit. I feel much better now.”
“Your Alba shared her footage of the entire incident in her report, Ms. Ira. I don’t think she overreacted at all. It was quite concerning. We’ve talked a lot about how debilitating grief can be.”
“Yes,” Carolina replied. “Grief.”
That was the word for it.
“It’s okay to have setbacks, Lee. Life is not a straight line.” Dr. Koslov detected a glimmer of a smile around Lee’s lips as she responded.
“No, it is certainly not.”
“I wanted to come and see you, Lee, just so you know I’m here. We all care very deeply about you and are here to support you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“We’re going to let Alba stay with you for now. Is that okay?”
Lee Ira looked over at her android, considering.
“I have no objection,” she replied.
“Sit tight, Lee. There’s a lot happening tonight, but I want you to know you’re my top priority.”
“Thank you, Dr. Koslov.”
As he left, the room got oppressively quiet again. She tried to clear her mind so she could get back to the business of mastering it. She tried to remember where she’d left off as that Alba continued to observe her with its robotic, singular purpose.
727. 720. 713. 706.
After a half hour or so of waiting and looking outside to the chaos of the clinic, Carolina asked Alba to gather some information about what had happened to turn the clinic of a sleepy little city like Xenia’s into a disaster area on a seemingly ordinary weeknight. The Alba had seen enough consistency in Lee Ira’s outward behavior since their arrival at the clinic that she acceded and left her charge alone in that hospital room.
When the Alba returned, she reported everything she’d been able to gather about the riot that had occurred at the seventeens football match. She hadn’t pressed to acquire any confidential medical information, but, in passing, she’d overheard a nurse speaking in the treatment area about one of the boys having a psychotic break. Out in the waiting area, she’d gotten the rest of the story from witnesses to the event. Xeldin Swinney was the boy’s name, she informed Lee. He was in the treatment bay across from Lee.
“I have seen the footage,” the Alba reported. “That boy is violent and dangerous. Thankfully, he’s restrained, Ms. Lee. There is no longer a threat.”
“One boy caused all that trouble?” Lee Ira asked.
“He injured quite a few boys on his own, but his actions touched off a much larger brawl.”
“Is anyone seriously hurt?”
“Many concussions, broken noses and orbital bones. Some boys lost teeth. I do believe everyone is stable and expected to recover.”
“That’s good to hear, Alba,” Lee Ira said. “I’d like you to report to my parents that I’m all right, please. Do not show them the footage of the incident that prompted you to bring me here. They worry enough already. Dr. Koslov and his staff will make sure that I’m well cared for tonight.”
“Are you certain, Ms. Lee?”
“I am. I’m feeling much better, Alba. I’m so grateful you were with me tonight.”
“Of course. I was doing my duty, Ms. Lee. Is there anything you need before I leave?”
“Can you alert the nurse that I’d like to use the bathroom on your way out?”
“I will do that, Ms. Lee. Feel better, and send for me the moment you have a need of my services again.”
“Good night, Alba.”
When she came into the room, Swinney looked up and grinned, but she didn’t say anything. The young woman had a curious air about her and was remarkably pretty despite an obviously sullen bearing.
“I heard you started a brawl,” the young woman said. “And, I heard, that you beat up an entire visiting football team. But it was the fact that you beat up your own team as well that really tipped me off. Sebastian, I presume?”
He turned his head to the side and looked carefully at his visitor. “Is that you in there, Dreeson? You look pretty good with dark hair.”
“And you’re an idiot. You headbutted your own teammate into the next octant, and now you’re locked up.”
“You’re in much better shape, are you? How’d you get in here, by the way?”
“Never mind that. Yes. I’m handling my end. You need to handle yours. Do whatever you need to do to get free so we can do what we came here to do, which isn’t to make ourselves the most hated people in the city the second we arrive, as it happens.”
“In my defense, I was disoriented and acting on instinct.”
“That I believe. Unfortunately, instinct or no, you can’t be starting brawls on Iophos.”
“Where I’m from, Dreeson, a man doesn’t slap another man, not if he likes his teeth.”
She looked over her shoulder again to the corridor outside. “I can’t stay.”
“Wait. Are you a patient here, Dreeson? In the psych unit?”
“Get free as soon as possible and do whatever it takes to blend in, Sebastian. Wait for me to contact you. Behave. Those are my standing orders until I get in touch again.”
“Understood. I’ll be a good boy, boss.”
“You’d better.”
She looked over her shoulder one last time, shook her head at him, and then ducked back out of the room.
The problem with the Shiro statue in Io was that it was a bit too crowded to be an ideal rendezvous. It was well-known and easily accessible, but in their time, Niandra Square wasn’t the public attraction it had been a century-and-a-half before. There were school groups cycling through, and with them, there were teachers, parents, and bots monitoring the groups. There were also rows of mobile food carts lining the square attracting workers on their lunch breaks and tourists from around the ring and even Hellenia and parts farther in the Battery.
The young gentleman looked like he was dressed for business, and indeed he was. It was just a different type of business than the work that got done in the corporate offices in downtown Io. By a stroke of luck, his name was Colin. Not that he was confused any as to who he was, but for the others, being able to call Colin Dreeson by Colin would make all their lives a little easier. Knoll was his surname here. He was a low-level worker in Katherineberg’s Controller’s office. He didn’t have much in terms of personal resources, but by the looks of things, as Colin had been able to determine in the short time since his arrival in this other Colin’s body, the young man was a respectable member of the community.
The five visitors had chosen Io because they had no idea where on the ring they’d arrive. The times were decided in advance. For the first month, the meeting was weekly at noon. It was agreed they would all get there as soon as they could. After the first month, the time for their rendezvous became monthly for two years, and after that twice yearly for the first ten. If someone didn’t appear by then, it was on them to find the others. Colin had been waiting an hour each time for the first two weeks. It was the longest he’d stood still, literally or metaphorically, in his own body or someone else’s, for as long as he could remember. Colin Dreeson modeled his life after his father’s, and Barnard Dreeson didn’t waste a second.
Technically, he wasn’t wasting any time. He was fulfilling an objective—be at the rendezvous; meet and communicate with his collaborators. But that involved standing still, long periods of disengagement, and wandering thoughts. One prominent thought that kept recurring was that he was experiencing life as another person, and not just another person but an anonymous one. He wasn’t the Chancellor of Athos’s son here. He was just a face in the crowd. No one had any cause to notice him unless he was standing in the way while others were walking. An entirely different face was quite a nice disguise, he decided.
Colin was developing a habit of sipping a coffee very slowly, focusing on it, scanning the crowd for faces.
He couldn’t deny that it was enjoyable. Tremendously relaxing.
Every now and again, someone would stand out in the crowd. He’d follow with his eyes wondering if it could be Airee or Carolina or her metal mercenary. The Etteran, he knew, would walk up on him first without his ever suspecting his presence. That was his way. But the others, he thought he might pick out of the crowd somehow, even wearing different faces.
The tall young boy that appeared beside him seemed like he might have stepped away from a school group visiting the capitol—seeing the sights.
“It’s something,” the boy said, “all the activity.”
Colin looked up at him. He hadn’t noticed the teenager at all, even though he stood about a head taller than most people in the square. He nodded to acknowledge the boy’s presence but didn’t respond. The young man kept talking.
“I checked to make sure. Epton Daniel is the Chancellor of Athos. Isn’t that something?”
“Quite a thing,” Colin replied. “Rare for a man of such obscurity to rise so high.”
“Not a Dreeson or a Ball or a Daley,” the boy replied. “They were miners the Daniels, historically.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I bet you know the Dreesons’ history well, though,” the boy said, peering down at Colin as though he knew him.
He touched his heart twice and raised his fist to his chin.
“Is that you, Airee?” Colin said.
“Goss, I presume?”
Colin nodded. “Well done, sir. I didn’t see you coming.”
“You stand out,” Carsten said. “Although my name here is Lorne. I’m a student.”
“You’re very tall.”
“A goalkeeper on the citywide seventeens, as it turns out. I haven’t spoken to any of the others, but I have a good sense that one of my teammates is one of us.”
“Why do you suspect that? And if so, why haven’t you spoken yet?”
“Because it’s Sebastian, and he got locked up for beating up half the stadium when we arrived. He’s on a psych lockdown in Xenia.”
“Xenia? I don’t know it. I’ve been in K-berg. My name is Colin, by the way. Colin Knoll. Government functionary.”
“How apt.”
“Funny, Airee.”
“It’s Iosef, actually. Lorne Iosef.”
“I suppose we should get used to these names,” Colin said.
The tall boy nodded. “It’s pretty interesting being tall, I have to say. I have this unshakable urge to lean over while talking to people. I feel like I’m going to destroy this poor boy’s neck hunching down.”
“Yes, that’s nice. We need to discuss finding the others.”
“As far as Sebastian goes, I imagine it’ll be a little while. It was a serious situation—well, relative to Xenia. They’d never seen chaos like that.”
“Try and find out as soon as you can. What do you have for contact?”
The tall teenager pulled a rectangle out of his front pocket. “Apparently the boy doesn’t like the feeling of having eyewear on his face or even a swatch,” Lorne said. “Sometimes he doesn’t even bring this thing with him. Absent minded a bit.”
“I trust you’ll be more reliable.”
“You know, Goss, I get the sense you’re trying to talk me off or something? There’s no rush here. We can wait for the others together, maybe get lunch or something after?”
Colin looked up at Lorne doubtfully.
“What?” the boy replied.
“We look conspicuous just standing here.”
“We look? You need to relax, Goss—or I guess I should call you Colin now. Either way, nobody cares. Nobody’s looking for us except us. We’re just two people standing in a busy crowd in Io.”
“Someone is always watching.”
“I suppose. Who would it be? A Maícon or a Miliner in Io? Maybe a Precops?”
“A Precops, yes. He will notice if you linger.”
“I’m sure it’ll be top of mind: Colin Nobody sipped his coffee next to Lorne Iosef of Xenia for nearly five minutes, a strange aberration indeed.”
Colin looked over at him scowling and shaking his head.
“Okay then,” Lorne said. “You may consider taking this opportunity to take a breath for once in your life. I certainly won’t let this opportunity pass me by, and neither should you, Goss. Epton Daniel is the Chancellor of Athos. The seat is secure and absolutely none of your concern. Isn’t that a relief? Take comfort in that.”
“Comfort is for proles,” Colin replied. “Ping me as soon as you’ve contacted Sebastian.”
Colin returned to the square a week later with the hope that Carolina and Sōsh would appear. He’d been in steady contact with Lorne, who reported that he hadn’t been allowed in to see his teammate yet, but that the staff had told him the young brawler may be allowed visitors in the coming days. Colin told Lorne to stay in Xenia until further notice. He would take charge as the point man in Niandra Square until they reassembled their entire team.
Again, Colin stood nearby to the Shiro statue, doing his best to blend in. He hoped this week he might see before he was seen. He’d been surprised by how easily Airee had walked up on him, seeming to recognize him without much effort at all.
It wasn’t that he recognized his sister as she approached. Really, it was the deliberate, direct line the young woman took toward the Shiro statue. Even in those days, it had been sometime since that older monument held any significance beyond historical curiosity. Io, much like Ithaca, seemed to change completely in a generation or two while also never really changing at all.
As she got closer, he could see the girl’s face a bit more clearly. The only aspect of her visage that wasn’t pale was the pair of dark circles under her eyes. She looked simultaneously tired and acutely troubled, if such a thing were possible. She had a darkness about her that Colin struggled to associate with his bright sister, but he felt certain that it was her, even though he had the sense that if they were any other place there was no way he’d have recognized anything familiar about her.
She picked him out right away, gesturing at the first direct eye contact.
“Carly?”
She nodded but corrected him. “My name is Lee. Lee Ira.”
“I’m Colin, by chance. Colin Knoll.”
Carolina sighed.
“Would you like a hug, sister? You don’t look so good.”
Carolina didn’t know whether Colin was being serious. He’d never been much for brotherly affection. Familial duty always seemed more important than familial love to him. That he was even noticing her bearing surprised Carolina a little.
“Lee is carrying a tremendous amount of sorrow with her. I can’t shake it.”
“Do you have a sense of what’s troubling her?” Colin asked.
“I know, yes, but also, I don’t. She lost her sister. But I don’t have any memories of it. There’s just an awful feeling. It’s not like Rishi described it. I have no access to the woman I’m supposed to be.”
“That’s strange,” Goss replied. “This Colin, I know his mind. I remember his life as though it’s my own. Airee reports the same with his host.”
“You’ve seen Carsten?” Carolina stated, an urgency in her tone.
“I can put you in contact. He’s in Xenia, and he believes your Etteran is as well.”
“Lee’s from Xenia. That’s great. Also, I’ve made contact with Sebastian. He’s still locked up, though. I have no excuse to see him except that we’re being treated by the same psychiatrist.”
“Yes. I heard he’d gotten into some trouble. Can’t say as though I’m shocked. I’ll let you and Airee figure that out. I’m starting to get settled myself. Airee’s alter ego—Lorne—apparently, he and Sebastian are on the same football team together.”
“He survived the carnage?”
“Yes, Airee’s fine. But you don’t look so good, Carolina. And by that, I mean you look terrible. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, Goss. I’m trying. It’s very hard.”
“What’s hard?”
“Existing. Breathing. Every step forward.”
“Would you like to stay here with me. I need to wait for your metal friend. There’s no sign of him yet.”
Carolina reached out and took her brother’s hand. “I’ll wait with you as long as I can,” she said. “I didn’t imagine it would be this hard.”
When the young man approached her, she got an uneasy feeling in her gut. But it was Airee, she knew immediately. Colin had put them in contact, and they’d been talking for days on their own secure channel. She had no sense of why she felt so uncomfortable as the tall teenager walked toward her wearing a welcoming grin.
“Hi, Lee,” he said, looking down with concern in his eyes.
Carolina was getting used to being called Lee, but from him, from Carsten, something about it hit her hard, and she nearly began to cry.
“Shall we walk?” she asked him.
They were at the gate to Xenia’s arboretum, right at the boundary that served as the southern entrance to the Reader’s Circle district of the city. The tall teenager nodded and gestured for Carolina to lead the way into the park. The serene setting contrasted with the turmoil he noted in her bearing. He kept pace beside her as she began to step along the gravel pathway into the trees.
“Colin told me you were struggling,” Lorne said. “I wanted to meet you sooner.”
“I’m limited. My parents are suspicious, and my Alba is watching me constantly. I have to invent reasons for her to give me a moment alone, but I don’t ever feel like it’s that.”
“Like what’s that? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t feel alone. Not like I’m myself anyway. I’m not sure it’s me or if it’s Lee. Maybe it’s the sense that she feels—the absence of her twin.”
“You have memories of her twin?”
She shook her head in the negative. “It seems I may be the only one who doesn’t. I know about her, though. I’ve talked about her—been told about her. But it’s like it happened to Lee before I got here, not like it happened to me.”
“I have vivid memories,” Lorne replied. “The whole city stopped for days. Everyone went to the public funeral. Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of us. You don’t remember it?”
“I don’t know. I certainly feel something.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Of course I can describe it, Carsten. I feel as though the worst possible thing that could happen has already happened to me and that every day is a living nightmare that won’t end. I feel like half my heart is missing. Is that enough of a description for you? Does that help?”
“I’m not sure how to help. We came to Iophos at your insistence, to look for societal patterns that you said were important. This seems personal, much more to the individual situation of the identity you’ve coopted. I feel like we need to help you shake this struggle before we can begin. Tell me if I’m wrong here, Carolina. You’re the leader.”
She laughed. “I’ve never felt so helpless. How can I lead anything? I’m trying not to want to die every moment of every day.”
“That’s not you, though. That’s the vessel. All of this seems real, but that’s the illusion. It’s remarkable, but it’s still an illusion, we have to remember. This city is not real. This has to be a simulation.”
“That’s not what Rishi said,” Carolina replied. “She told us she went back to Earth and experienced life there. Real things happened to her. And this grief? It’s as real as the sorrow I felt for my aunt Sayla, but that was bearable, Carsten. That was natural. What’s happening to me, it seems so unnaturally powerful. It’s like I can’t even think straight. And I have this searing anger in my heart for everyone and everything just going on as though nothing has happened, as though the world hasn’t ended.”
“How can the world end if it isn’t even happening?”
“That’s my point, Carsten. This is real. This is happening. And I feel like Lee is with me. Or something is with me. Something is keeping her memory from me, and I’m getting lost.”
“Tell me what I can do to help.”
“Keep talking to the others. Remember the mission. You may need to go on without me. I can’t help in this state. Tell Colin I’m sorry.”
“Perhaps we should go to see him?”
“Why? What use would that be? If I can’t do what I came here to do, what use am I?”
“We care about you, Carolina.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have anything else to say.”
Lorne did his best to be supportive, stepping quietly beside her as they made their way through the trees. Her sadness was a stark contrast to the green of the trees, the colors of the flowers, and the sweet tones of the birdsong that was all so uplifting to the soul. Unlike the public gardens in Ithaca, though, Reader’s Circle’s quiet seclusion left them feeling quite alone together—a place Carsten Airee had longed to be for some time, yet somehow, he knew they weren’t alone. There was Carolina, there was Lee, and there was her grief. So, the birds continued to sing, and they held their tongues.
“You speak to me of the value of honesty, Dr. Koslov, but you aren’t being honest with me. If you were, you’d have an answer for me when I ask you about being released.”
Swinney had been out of full lockdown for nearly a week without showing any signs of violent behavior. He and Koslov had been speaking daily, but to say it was an ongoing conversation would’ve missed the underlying reality—that it was far more like a Sabaca match between skilled opponents. Koslov was working to uncover the truth behind the psychotic break young Xeldin Swinney had experienced at the seventeens football match, and Sebastian was doing everything he could to keep Koslov from uncovering his true identity so he could secure his release from emergency psychiatric care and rejoin the mission.
“Honesty is an interesting concept,” Koslov replied. “Most people value honesty.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“No. Certain small segments of the population don’t care about honesty at all. In fact, some people are incapable of caring about honesty.”
“That sounds strange to me,” Swinney replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like that.”
“Yes. You see, some people can lie as easily as they breathe. They show no remorse or any of the typical bodily signs that normal people display when they lie—involuntary physiological signs. Do you know what a person like that is called, Xeldin?”
“Probably a bad person.”
“There’s a technical term for it. Such a person is a psychopath.”
“Oh, I have heard of that. Yeah.”
“You’re asking me about honesty. I agree that it’s a critical component of trust between a patient and his doctor. So, I’m going to be honest with you, Xeldin. The reason I can’t give you any timetable for your release is that I am still concerned by your behavior in the aftermath of the incident last week. You showed definite signs of psychopathy. You were remorseless, aloof, unable to recognize the emotional harm you’d caused by your actions.”
“But I recognize all that now. We’ve talked a lot about this.”
“Oh, yes, we have.”
“Also, I wasn’t aware. I don’t even fully remember what happened. The nurses called it a break. I lost control.”
“That may be the case, Xeldin. But there are also other aspects of psychopathy.”
“Really? What are they?”
“Primarily, the most concerning one is their considerable ability to manipulate others. Psychopaths tend to be master manipulators. They are usually quite clever. They learn the rules, and though they don’t care about the rules at all themselves, they learn exactly how and when to follow them so that they seem to care. But they’ll break those rules without any compunction as soon as they believe no one is looking. They’ll hurt anyone to achieve an objective without thinking twice about it. And they’ll deceive even the most discerning observers.”
“What does this have to do with me, though? I haven’t done anything wrong since I was brought here the night of the match with Kapringham.”
“Yes, you’ve been very well behaved. One might even say careful.”
“I would say that too. I don’t want to hurt anyone, Dr. Koslov.”
“You also don’t want to give me any wrong answers it seems.”
“Isn’t that a good thing? Who wants to give wrong answers?”
“Tell me about your fears, Xeldin.”
“My fears?”
“Yes. When the magistrate’s people came two days ago you were very calm. But that first night you were so afraid you complained that something was wrong with your heart. Are you afraid of what might happen to you in the judicial process?”
“Of course. My prospects are very uncertain. You said I don’t want to give wrong answers, and that’s true, Dr. Koslov. I understand that how I respond to treatment now may have a positive or a negative effect in the judicial process.”
“But are you afraid?”
“Of course, I am.”
“Of what, Xeldin?”
“I mean, I don’t want to be a criminal. I don’t want to be locked up. There are stories of the worst people getting sent out to the rocks. I don’t want to spend my life crushing metal in an asteroid, being locked up in a cell. I want to live a good life.”
“What is a good life?”
“I want to help.”
“That’s a good answer.”
“Thank you, Dr. Koslov.”
The psychiatrist looked over his desk to the young man seated before him. It seemed like each avenue he probed ended at a well-placed wall. He decided on another route.
“Do you think it’s ever justifiable to hurt other people, Xeldin?”
“Maybe not. I don’t know. If I say no, maybe I’m missing something important, like there may be some times when hurting someone might be the right thing to do, like if somebody was about to hurt another person and you had to fight to keep that person from getting hurt. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. That’s a sensible answer. A very sensible answer.”
“Good.”
“Is it the truth? Is that what you really feel, or is that what you think I want to hear?”
“I don’t understand, Dr. Koslov. What do you want to hear?”
“You are so shockingly clever, Xeldin Swinney, I don’t even believe that dumb look in your eyes is real.”
“I’m only saying what I think.”
“What you think ...?” Dr. Koslov began to stroke his chin. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you think. Really, I mean, what you really think. But I get the sense I’m being manipulated. That’s why I can’t give you an honest answer as to when you’ll be released, Xeldin. I also get the sense that the damage you caused at the stadium the other night isn’t even touching the limits of what you might be capable of.”
“I don’t know how I could do anything worse.”
“A true psychopath, as I said before, is very good at learning the rules of any given system in order to manipulate them to his advantage. He gravitates toward power, ingratiates himself with powerful people, even if that means doing things that are entirely contrary to his natural impulses—doing good deeds in order to be seen as one of the good guys, but to him there’s no value in the good but the good it does for him. I just get the sense when I’m talking to you, Xeldin, that there is no limit to your ambitions, like I am just one small obstacle in a much larger game you’re playing.”
“I’m just a kid, Dr. Koslov. I want to go back to playing football if my team can forgive me and take me back. I want to do right so that I don’t end up getting sent to the rocks. I don’t know anything about all that other stuff.”
“The funny thing about you, Xeldin, if we’re being honest, is that you showed absolutely no signs of psychopathic tendencies in your life before last week. By all accounts, you were a normal, average Xenian boy.”
“I guess that’s what I’ve been trying to say, Dr. Koslov. I don’t know anything about all this other stuff—manipulation, psychopath stuff. It’s just not me.”
“Another funny thing that cannot be manipulated, though, is intelligence. I know this very well myself. I’m going to tell you another truth. It’s actually an embarrassing truth. It’s the reason I’m here in a regional clinic in Xenia instead of Io or Abrahms or Katherineberg. I was in the bottom half of my cohort in medical school, not because I didn’t apply myself but because of my intelligence. I’m smart, you see. I’m just not that smart. I had colleagues who were so smart they barely needed to apply themselves. I had to work to meet every benchmark. I was in the 43rd percentile in intelligence in my medical school. It’s actually not my head telling me that you’re trying to manipulate me, Xeldin, it’s my gut. Almost every night I go home and I replay our conversations, sometimes in my head, sometimes I refer to the recording, and in my head—this is what I find so interesting—my head tries to find ways to justify your position against every last instinct I have. The one point I keep coming back to that concerns me more than anything, especially as I find myself talking myself into believing you, do you have any idea what that might be?”
“No, sir. I have no idea.”
“Xeldin Swinney is average. Even for a teenager, you should be average, which means I should feel like I have every advantage when we meet, emotionally, intellectually, medically. So why do I get the feeling in my gut every time I talk to you that you’re some sort of Machiavellian genius working me?”
“I’m not sure what all that means, Dr. Koslov. I just want to give good answers so I can go home and put all this behind me. I hope I can do that.”
“Sudden onset psychopathy has two possible causes. Traumatic injury to the prefrontal cortex or a brain tumor.”
“I hope I don’t have any of those things.”
“You don’t. I think you know exactly what you have. I just wish I did too. But, no. No, Mr. Swinney, I am not inclined to release you a moment before my duty compels me to do so.”
Dr. Koslov noticed a subtle grin at that statement. Had he slipped? In the moment, he wondered what he’d said, but he didn’t catch it.
It was only later that night when he replayed the conversation that he understood. Xeldin didn’t know when he was getting out. That duty would eventually compel Koslov to release Xeldin Swinney was a fact he’d only just revealed in that moment. It was a piece. The clever boy was learning the rules.
Carolina was trying to get out. Lee’s mother had insisted on her living with her parents in the immediate aftermath of Marion’s death. But after some progress in the nearly two years since, Lee had moved out on her own again. Her parents had set her up in a flat near Xenia’s center, close to the hypermag and local tram hub. She’d taken to traveling around the ring with Alba before her setback. Carolina was trying to convince Lee’s mother to let her move back to her flat—out from under the Iras’ watchful eyes. They’d noticed changes in her personality that went beyond mere grief or uncertainty following her psychiatric episode the night of the seventeens riot. She used words they’d never heard from Lee before, uncommon expressions to Iophos or even the time. Her appetite was slightly different. The way she was carrying her hands. Things only a mother would notice. But once Mrs. Ira pointed them out, the Alba confirmed the changes and began to document more.
So she left. Carolina would try to take a walk as often as she could—yet another inconsistency with Lee, who much preferred to sit at a cafe and draw on her tablet, listen to calming music, and chat with her Alba. Lee hadn’t done any of that since the latest incident—since Carolina had arrived.
This Lee would walk out of the Ira estate toward the arboretum, most times all the way through the park to the edge of Xenia. She wouldn’t even walk in the direction of the Circle. Carolina had a vague sense that something important was there, but she didn’t quite understand its significance. The feeling she had for it was in her gut, and she could feel it every time her body pointed in that direction, like a biological compass that simultaneously pulled her and terrified her at the same time.
So, she ambled amongst the trees aimlessly, Alba trailing silently behind her.
This day, early afternoon, Alba broke the silence to remind Carolina that she hadn’t eaten all day.
“I wasn’t hungry,” she stated.
“Yes, I gathered as much,” her personal bot replied. “Ever since your release from Dr. Koslov’s direct care, you have been operating at a caloric deficit more days than not. This won’t specifically become a medical issue unless the pattern continues for several weeks, Ms. Lee. I mention it because if it becomes a steady pattern, it will be harder to overcome, especially if you insist on walking so much so frequently.”
“I should eat, yes,” Lee replied.
Alba observed her charge looking up at the trees in an unfocused manner.
“I could fix you a meal,” the bot said.
“Alba, what are we doing here?” Lee asked. “You haven’t been talking to her, have you?”
“Talking to whom, Ms. Lee?”
“To Carolina. I’m almost certain that’s her name.”
“Whose name, Ms. Lee?”
“The girl. The one who’s taken over my body. Can you hear me now, Alba? I’ve been talking but no one can hear me.”
“Ms. Lee, are you all right?”
“What do you mean, Alba?”
“You were just speaking to me, and what you were saying made no sense.”
“Oh, I don’t recall,” she replied, again her eyes looking up at the canopy of the arboretum. “We were talking about lunch, I think.”
“Do you remember the name you just said to me?”
“A name?”
“Yes, Ms. Lee, you spoke just now of someone I’ve never met.”
“I suppose my mind’s wandering. It’s so pretty here.”
“Can you tell me, Ms. Lee, who is Carolina?”
Alba recorded her charge’s reaction. Lee Ira’s eyes came down from the canopy instantly, focused and direct. Lee glared at her.
“Where did you hear that name, Alba? Who said it?”
“Why you did, Ms. Lee. Just now. Are you feeling all right?”
“I feel fine.”
“I think we should get you home and have something to eat. Perhaps you’re getting lightheaded again.”
After a late-afternoon lunch, Alba and her mother insisted on Lee visiting with Dr. Koslov. She had an appointment the following day anyway, so Carolina didn’t see the sense in objecting. It only would’ve drawn more suspicion. Alba wouldn’t share the footage with her, though, at Dr. Koslov’s direction. So she had no idea how to prepare. Carolina had experienced a moment of blank space, like a slip in time. It seemed perhaps to be only a few moments—ten or twenty seconds, she guessed. But what had happened in those twenty seconds was a mystery to her. And someone had spoken to Alba in that time. Someone had said her name—Carolina. Had she said it? She couldn’t remember.
Koslov was quiet as she sat across from him. Until that moment, she’d felt comfortable in his office. He had a good energy about him, that psychiatrist. But until then, the look he had for her was one of unmistakable goodwill and sympathy. Now she sensed something different. She had an excuse ready. Carolina—she’d had a dream about a classmate with that name. That’s why it was on her mind. To her surprise, Koslov didn’t even mention it.
“I’d like to talk about Marion,” he began.
Carolina looked back at him clearly surprised. She found that she was shaking her head, quite unconsciously. She didn’t say anything.
“You don’t want to talk about Marion?”
Carolina sighed. “How much can talking help? It can’t change reality.”
“It’s true it can’t change certain aspects of our reality, that Marion is gone, for instance. But it can change how we deal with that reality, Lee. You know how important that is to your life going forward.”
“I don’t want to talk about Marion, Dr. Koslov.”
“I can’t force you to talk, Lee. But it’s important that you acknowledge Marion’s impact on what’s happening with you now.”
“What is happening now?”
“Well, your family is very concerned about you right now. That’s very important. You had been making steady progress before last week. Something has clearly happened to cause their concern. And for you, Lee, as you told me yourself when we first met, your entire world revolved around you and Marion as a pair. So, when something goes wrong, it’s usually important for us to talk about Marion.”
“I don’t have anything to say. I just feel sad and tired, and I don’t want to talk.”
“Can I talk about Marion?”
“I can’t stop you, can I?”
“No. But I don’t want to hurt you, Lee. You have to understand I care very much about you. If I talk about Marion and it bothers you, that might be counterproductive.”
“I don’t understand what would be productive in this context, Dr. Koslov. Maybe I’m confused.”
“I’ll ask you a question then, Lee. Okay?”
Lee nodded.
“Do our deaths need to have purpose? Should they, I mean?”
“Are you asking about Marion?”
“I’m asking in general.”
Carolina shrugged.
“Apart from Marion, were you ever close to anyone else who died?”
Carolina couldn’t help but think of her aunt Sayla. And then there was Mitchell Baye, the young Etteran girl who’d died under her command—Elle, they’d called her. There were the Etteran soldiers on Alpha-Petros who’d died because of her orders. Was that close enough?
She looked up at Koslov. Her face was giving something away.
“I guess what I’m asking is whether death has to be meaningful, Lee,” Koslov said. “My parents are both still alive, but my grandparents have both passed. They died very quietly, both of them.”
“I get it, though, your point, Dr. Koslov. It’s how people live that’s important, not how they die.”
“Marion’s death seemed incredibly cruel and arbitrary. Most people thought this, even though they couldn’t have felt her loss nearly as acutely as you did, Lee.”
“Pointless. That’s the word you’re driving at. You can ask. Was Marion’s death pointless? Is that the question you really want to ask me?”
“It seemed that way to me,” Koslov replied. “That was part of what made it feel so harsh, even as someone who only ever knew Marion second-hand through your stories of her, Lee.”
“Most people’s death isn’t meaningful. It only means something to the people who knew the person.”
“But you don’t remember talking about this, Lee? All the things we talked through about why Marion’s death seemed to mean so much to the community?”
“Well, yes, of course that. But ...”
“But what, Lee?”
“All this talk. It doesn’t change anything. It can’t bring Marion back.”
“Alba thinks you’re having very serious cognitive breaks, Lee. I want to ask you a question about that.”
“I don’t understand, Dr. Koslov. The questions you’re asking don’t make sense to me.”
“You do remember our sessions from last year?”
“I mean, yes, I guess. I can’t remember every detail.”
“Do you remember telling me that you wished you could’ve traded places with Marion? That wasn’t a minor detail.”
“Of course, I remember.”
“You do remember that session? It was quite a breakthrough for you. Do you remember why?”
Carolina shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel like doing this.”
“What did you say to me, though? Please, Lee. I think it’s very important that we revisit the moments that were vital to your progress. What did you tell me?”
“I said I wished it could’ve been me instead of Marion. That I wanted her to live if one of us had to die.”
“Why do you think you said that?”
Carolina shrugged. “Probably because I loved her more than I love myself.”
“That’s strange you would say that, Lee, because I believe that’s true. But you never told me that you wished you could’ve traded places. What you told me was the opposite, that the pain was so great you’re glad it was you who had to endure it and not Marion, and that you’d never have traded places even if you somehow could give Marion her life back.”
Carolina shook her head. “I don’t know why you would say those things. Why would you try to confuse me like that, Dr. Koslov?”
“I’m just trying to get a sense for your memory, Lee. Alba expressed serious concerns about your mental state. It’s my job to evaluate it.”
“Alba is just a machine.”
“The Lee Ira I know would never say that about Alba.”
“What are you saying? That I’m not the Lee Ira you know?” Carolina felt a sudden dread in the pit of her stomach. She was shaking her head. She couldn’t control the wash of emotions simmering inside of her.
“Can you tell me who Carolina is, Lee?”
She gasped as she heard Koslov utter her name.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore, Dr. Koslov. I don’t want to talk at all.”
Carolina got up from her chair and looked around. The door looked so far away. She was breathing heavily and felt lightheaded. She faltered, trying to step, and then reaching back to catch herself as she collapsed back into the chair.
She was only slightly aware of her surroundings as Dr. Koslov called for a team of medics to bring her back down to the clinic.
She spent the afternoon and evening in the clinic with her mother sitting in now for the Alba, which Carolina had simply begun thinking of as “the problem.” That bot was the source of all this, and now it would be near impossible to shake her. She’d recorded her two lapses and revealed a genuine gap in her memory to Koslov. Even if she expressed her desire to rid herself of the bot, she doubted Lee’s parents or Dr. Koslov would agree to give her that kind of freedom, at least for the time being.
There was an awkward tension between herself and Mrs. Ira, as Lee’s mother alternated between holding her hand warmly and looking suspiciously at her when she said something Carolina suspected was uncharacteristic for Lee. She did get a sense for just how concerned Lee’s parents had been over her attachment to Alba—that in some way it seemed to them like Lee had been trying to fill the co-dependent void that Marion’s passing had left with an object, opting to use the housebot as a kind of mechanical crutch for her grief rather than going through it and learning to be her own person. Now they didn’t know what to make of their daughter’s sudden resentment of the Alba. She also got the sense that Mrs. Ira knew something she wasn’t telling Lee, or her, even Carolina was getting confused. Dr. Koslov had thrown her.
The nurses made her eat. It gave her an excuse to be silent, to try to converse with Lee’s mother using body language, using her eyes, reading, looking for openings. One thing she learned for certain in those quiet moments was that Lee was loved, genuinely, deeply loved. She didn’t know Iophans as well as her own people, but Athosians and Iophans were sister civilizations, and she certainly knew the wealthy and powerful of her own ringworld. Love like that was not a given among the elite. She’d always accounted herself lucky in that regard—the favorite daughter of two very loving parents. Even if the public eye required certain proprieties, Carolina always knew that one thing was certain behind closed doors.
The Iras love for their daughter, too, troubled as she seemed to be at the moment, was unconditional and unwavering.
“Are they going to keep me again?” Carolina asked some time after she’d finished her dinner. “Dr. Koslov hasn’t been in for a while.”
“They’re talking about it. Do you think you need to be here, Lee?”
“I need to rest, I think. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“If you want to shut your eyes, I’ll sit with you until Dr. Koslov comes.”
Carolina smiled. She realized she didn’t know what to call her—what Lee called her—mother, mom? She’d heard that some Iophans, in their drawling accent said “mim” or even “mims” but she wasn’t sure about this time period, some fifteen decades in the past, whether that peculiarity was part of the culture then. Carolina couldn’t help but wonder whether Lee Ira was holding onto her memories too preciously, refusing to relinquish her life to the interloper.
Instead of responding to her mother, Carolina just lay back and shut her eyes, hoping she would drift off and wake up alone.
Suddenly, she didn’t feel any grief. The face before her was like a mirror to herself. She was smiling. God she was beautiful.
“How are you here?” she asked.
“What are you talking about, Lee?” Marion replied.
“I thought you were at Kappa-Nira. I was going to wait till Founder’s week to try and visit, and then we were going to come out together, me and Devon.”
It got confusing for a moment. They were sitting on the wall under the willow trees lining Reader’s Circle. They used to sit there together until Devon finished work.
“I thought you two broke up?” Marion said.
She reached for her sister’s hand.
“No. No we didn’t. We only drifted apart. Devon loved me. He just couldn’t ... He couldn’t …?”
“It’s okay, Lee.”
She couldn’t feel Marion’s hand.
“No, it’s not real!”
Carolina’s leg jerked as she snapped back to consciousness.
“Oh,” she gasped involuntarily.
For the hint of a moment, she felt it all. She felt that she was Lee, and she felt that moment, the belief in that dream that Marion was still with her, still alive, and in that split second of waking, she felt the awful cutting pain of the realization that she’d been dreaming and that she’d just come back to a world without Marion.
Mrs. Ira looked down at her daughter. She knew that pain. And for a moment, as the tears began to escape her eyes, it didn’t matter to Carolina that they were strangers.
They sent Lee home in the care of her parents that night. Koslov didn’t look overly suspicious at the end, just concerned. Carolina couldn’t tell whether it was his energy impressing itself on her, but she was suddenly concerned herself. Fear began to seep into the deep well of grief that saturated Lee Ira’s bones.
She woke the following morning with the sense that she’d slept well, but she couldn’t remember dreaming.
Midway through that morning, Carolina had a lapse in time. She regained her senses along the causeway at Karro Boulevard. She felt in her gut that pull to that place. She stopped.
“Are you all right, Ms. Lee?” Alba asked her.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she replied. “I don’t want to go to the Circle.”
“You just told me you’d like to go.”
“And I told you now I’ve changed my mind. I have a friend I’d like to meet instead, Alba.”
“As you please, Ms. Lee.”
“I think I’d like to be alone.”
“I can monitor you from a distance, but I’ve been instructed to never leave you alone.”
“Instructed by whom?”
“By you Ms. Lee. And by Dr. Koslov and your mother.”
“From a distance then. I just ... I need to see someone I trust.”
Alba stood back and gestured for Lee to walk in front of her. The bot waited as Lee Ira stepped back toward the Iras’ estate and was nearly twenty meters ahead before following behind at a consistent distance.
Carolina looked over her shoulder, and when she was convinced that Alba was far enough behind her, she pinged Carsten and begged him to meet.
From that distance, based on what Carolina had told him, he imagined even an Alba would be able to put together some curious pieces to the puzzle of what was truly happening to Lee Ira. The advantage they had was that the truth was so unbelievable it would sound positively insane. He would surely be identifiable to the Alba, as Lorne Iosef had been on the football pitch during the fight with Kapringham, and the tall goalkeeper had behaved irregularly that night. And for Lee Ira to seek him out and be in regular contact with a seemingly random boy nearly ten years her junior from Xenia—that was also strange. Again, though, Carsten couldn’t imagine the list of probable reasons an Alba could come up with to explain the connection, but a cohort of visiting consciousnesses on a mission to find the root causes for an intergalactic war that was still nearly seven decades in the future? Carsten doubted that was on the list.
His main concern was Carolina. Her host’s body was beginning to carry concerning signs of stress. Lee’s color was somewhat pale, even ashen; her eyes appeared weary, carrying dark circles beneath; her gait even seemed tired, not quite frail, but steps forward clearly came with effort—not the walk of a healthy young woman through a beautiful park on a shining Iophan day.
“I think he’s caught me, Carsten.”
“Who’s caught you?” Lorne replied, looking down at Lee as though he didn’t quite believe her.
“The psychiatrist—Koslov. He tricked me into saying the opposite of what Lee told him after Marion died. He knows something funny is happening. And he’s stopped showing me the footage Alba is showing him.”
“What kind of footage?”
“Of my lapses. I’m losing time now.”
“What do you mean you’re losing time?”
“I’m having these breaks—like, imagine if we were talking and the conversation just skipped forward. Sometimes it’s thirty seconds or ten seconds or a minute. I don’t have any way to know how long usually unless something has moved. Sometimes, though, I’ve moved. It’s like if you imagined waking up from sleepwalking, only it’s happening when I’m awake.”
“That’s concerning. Have you talked to Goss about it?”
“I can’t talk to anyone without expecting Lee’s parents or her Alba will find out and grow suspicious. Then it’ll get back to Koslov. I don’t have any reason to talk to a government worker in Katherineberg Lee Ira’s never met before.”
“Or a seventeen-year-old footballer from Xenia.”
“Or two seventeen-year-old footballers, for that matter.”
“Are you all right, Carolina? I’m growing concerned about you.”
“You haven’t experienced anything like this, Carsten, have you? Time skipping? This constant sense of grief and dread?”
“No,” Lorne replied, shaking his head. “To the contrary, I’m finding my life here quite ... I’m not sure how best to put it. Perhaps comfortable is the word.”
“I’m afraid, Airee. I’ve never been afraid like this before.”
“Can you tell me what you’re afraid of? My understanding is that the worst thing that can happen to us is that when our host dies, we get sent back to our real lives. It’s like a free second chance at another life. The only thing at stake here is whether we complete our mission.”
“I’m afraid that the time I’m missing, I think Lee might be taking over. I’ve noticed Alba looking at me funny.”
“That sounds farfetched, Carolina. What do you mean?”
“What if Lee has figured out what’s going on? What if she’s slowly taking control back and telling the Alba that I’m not her?”
“Then she’ll sound crazy, which is probably why the bot is watching you so closely.”
“But then there’s Koslov tricking me. What if Lee has told him that I’m not her? What if he continues to test me?”
“Again, Carolina, what could he possibly think? There’s no way that they can arrive at the truth. Even if you told him the truth, it would sound crazy, and he’s a psychiatrist. He’d probably just diagnose Lee with some bizarre condition. If we were in ancient times, believe me, you’d have much more to worry about. They’d have burned you for a witch or called a priest to cast you out of Lee as some demonic spirit.”
Lorne’s eyes grew wide as he said it, emitting a noise that was half gasp, half laughter.
“Demons, Carolina, do you think? It can’t be possible?”
“What do you mean, Carsten?”
“What if they’re real? Historically real, I mean? People in the past interacting with real visitors who traveled to their times the way we traveled here?”
“Damn it, Airee! I need help. I don’t care about your intellectual musings right now. I’m losing control of my mind.”
Lorne took a deep breath. He put his hand over Lee’s back and began to rub her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Carolina. You’re okay. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“What if I get stuck in here, Carsten? What if Lee is too strong-willed for me to control this mind. Each instance when I miss time, I feel like I’m getting pushed back farther. She is powerfully angry. I’m trying to remember our purpose, but I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure I can help. What if this is all too much for me?”
Lorne stopped walking. He tugged on Lee’s shoulder and pulled her in close to him, hugging her and holding her close to him for nearly thirty seconds, until finally, she began to pull back away from him.
Lee looked up into the young man’s eyes. He registered a look of curiosity on her face and interpreted it as a desire for him to answer some of those deep questions that were troubling her soul.
“From the very first moment we met, I’ve never doubted you, Carly,” Carsten told her. “Nothing’s too much for you. You’re unflappable. You command a ship filled with Etteran warriors. You get shot in the leg and hardly flinch. You stand toe-to-toe with the Chancellor of Athos and tell him what’s what. You’re Carolina Dreeson. Absolutely nothing is beyond you.”
“Carolina Dreeson?” Lee Ira replied, looking up into Lorne’s eyes.
“Damn right,” Carsten said. “You’re going to take control of this situation and lead this mission in the exact direction it was meant to go.”
“Dreeson. So that’s what this is. Athosians. I should have figured.”
“I’m sorry?” Carsten said.
“Not yet, you’re not, mister. Whoever you are. But you will be. I’m going to make sure of it.”
“Carolina?”
Lee Ira blinked several times in rapid succession. She shook her head and took a small step back, nearly losing her balance.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Lorne said, stepping forward and wrapping his arm around her shoulder to steady Lee, who appeared to be on the cusp of fainting.
Suddenly her eyes got wide. She looked over her shoulder.
“We were just over there,” she said, pointing about ten meters behind them on the path. “Carsten? Carsten, what just happened?”
“You lost time?”
Carolina nodded.
“I think,” he replied. “At least for a few seconds, that I just met Lee Ira.”
It was rare for Koslov to hear from Lee directly. In the first few weeks following Marion’s death, she’d only pinged him a handful of times. Usually, it was at the end of a day where she had to be seen in public. He vividly remembered the night of the procession through Reader’s Circle. They discussed her proximity to her sister’s body, trying to be strong—the disbelief and the powerful sense that the moment wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be happening. The funeral—as they released her sister’s body to the Iophan atmosphere. She’d struggled to watch. And no matter how much Lee had tried to convince herself that Marion’s spirit was long since absent, that her body was just her body, not Marion, she couldn’t make any sense of dropping her beloved sister into Iophos.
“Does it bother you that we’ll all go there one day?” Koslov had asked her. “Are you afraid of it someday being your time?”
She wasn’t. No. But for Lee, she couldn’t countenance the thought of Marion’s beautiful body burning up and dissipating, floating eternally as particles in the thick gray clouds.
Lee hadn’t pinged him in over six months. But she also hadn’t been in crisis the way she had been in the past week. When her ping came in, Koslov excused himself from the business at hand, stepped into a private corner, and opened the line.
“They’re stealing my life now,” Lee declared.
She looked quite different from the last several times he’d seen her. Lee looked manic, wide-eyed, even frantic.
“I don’t know how they’re doing it, but they’re trying to take control of my mind, Dr. Koslov.”
“Who is, Lee?”
“Alba, no!” She was pushing the bot back. “No, it’s me. Stop it. I’m talking to him now.”
“We should go to see him directly,” he heard the bot’s voice in the background.
“She’ll come back. I only have a minute. Shut up and let me talk to him.”
Koslov could never recall Lee Ira being so impolite, even to her android—perhaps especially to her android.
“Dr. Koslov, are you still there?”
“I’m still here, Lee. What would you like to tell me?”
“They’re demons. One of them has taken control of my mind. She’s been talking to you, not me. Ever since last week, since the night of the riot. There are others too.”
“There are other demons?”
“It sounds crazy to call them that. I don’t know what else to say. That was the word the tall one used—Carsten, she called him. He’s here with the one in my head. They came together.”
“The demons came here together?”
“Stop doing that—repeating what I say. It makes me sound crazy, but I’m not. I can prove it.”
“Okay, Lee. Please say what you have to say and I’ll listen. I know this is real to you. I care about you and would never belittle your experiences.”
“Ever since I fainted that night, I’ve been stuck in my head. It’s like I’m watching myself from inside myself, but I have no control. There’s another person. I don’t know why, but she wants to steal my life from me. But I know who she is now. Her name is Carolina Dreeson. I think she’s from the future. The tall boy—she called him Lorne, that boy—he’s one of them.”
She looked away from the screen for a moment and shook her head. “Shush!” she told the Alba. It seemed to Koslov like she didn’t know what else to tell him.
“Lee, you said you’re aware that this sounds crazy—your word. But it sounds to me like these are very real experiences for you. Are you telling me you haven’t been talking to me—like, when we’ve been seeing each other in my office, you’re saying that this other person …?”
“Yes. Carolina Dreeson. They’re from the future.”
“So you’re saying that she’s the one who’s been talking to me?”
“Yes. Not me. She doesn’t know anything about me. She wants to steal my memories, but I won’t give them to her. You can ask her next time. I’ll tell you who I am, but she can’t. She won’t remember about my life, about Marion. Nothing. She’s a fake.”
“I see.”
“Ask me anything. I can tell you who was in our group when Marion and I took our school trip to Athos. I can tell you the name of the musical groups we saw in New Corinth that weekend. I can tell you what color Devon colored his hair when he was in the K-Berg Founders’ Day celebration. She’ll get all of that wrong. Tell me you haven’t noticed, Dr. Koslov?”
“I’ve noticed behavioral changes.”
Lee paused and looked off screen again toward the Alba. “Oh, yes,” she said turning back toward the screen. “One of the others is the boy from the football match. She visited him. I was very confused. I thought it was a hallucination, but I think it was real. I was there in the clinic when all that happened, right?”
“You mean the football riot?”
“Yes.”
“You were in the clinic that night, Lee. That was the first night you began having problems.”
“Check your footage, Dr. Koslov. She went to see him, this Carolina. She visited the boy who started the fight. I remember her calling him Sebastian. It was very disjointed in my mind—only pieces like a dream. But if it happened, you’d have the footage, right? The clinic would?”
“I’m certain it would be on file, Lee, yes.”
“And if it didn’t happen, maybe I am going crazy, but what if it did? What if it did, Dr. Koslov? Will you check for me?”
“I can certainly do that if you want me to, Lee. But I’d like to see you as well. I’d like it if Alba brought you in immediately.”
“I don’t know if she’ll come. If she gets control again,” Lee shook her head, pausing, looking vacantly away from the screen. “There’s no reason for it. I wouldn’t be talking to that boy. What would I have to say to that boy who started that riot? It makes no sense. I don’t even care about football.”
“That’s true, Lee, you’ve never expressed an interest to me. Please come by. I’d like to talk more about this.”
“That’s all I have to say. I have to go. I have to think about this, Dr. Koslov. I need to figure out how to stop them.”
The line cut out abruptly.
The second face seemed unfamiliar in that place and in that light. It was evening. The enclave of Reader’s Circle looked warm as the artificial daylight waned. It still took her a moment to recognize the visitor from K-Berg standing beside Lorne.
“Is that you, Colin?” Carolina asked as she approached the two young men. Again, Lee’s Alba was trailing behind her in the distance.
They were standing on the causeway leading into the Circle. On that quiet night, there was hardly any traffic. Only the odd autocab floated by on the boulevard.
Colin looked over at Lee. His reaction to seeing his sister in that state was poorly masked, even wearing that stranger’s face.
“It’s me, Carly,” he said. “Come here.”
She didn’t protest. She fell into his arms and clasped onto that stranger’s body as though it was an island in troubled seas.
“You weren’t supposed to come,” she stated, her face buried in his shoulder.
“Carsten was concerned about you,” Colin replied, holding her head in his hand.
She didn’t know that about him, even in their lives Carolina didn’t know Colin could be that gentle. She’d never needed him to be.
“I told him what was happening,” Lorne stated, his head tilted downward as he tried to make eye contact with Lee.
Carolina didn’t look up. “It’s getting worse. I lost more time this afternoon. Alba isn’t talking to me as much now. She’s not answering my questions. I think she might be spying on me.”
“As before,” Carsten said. “She cannot know what we know to be true. It’s not possible, Carly.”
Finally, she stepped back from Colin. He released Lee slowly, observing her very closely to be sure she was steady on her feet.
“Carsten said you wanted to confront her? You have a theory?”
Carolina nodded. “I think Lee has control because I’ve been afraid to embrace the trauma in her past. I’m not sure I could’ve handled it, so ... I don’t know why I think this, but I think I need to meet it head on. Like you said, Carsten, I need to be myself. I need to confront it.”
“And this place?” Colin asked, gesturing down the causeway toward the Circle?
“I feel it,” Carolina replied. “It’s in my gut that I don’t want to go down there. The pain is there. It’s her memorial.”
“The sister’s?”
“Marion’s, yes.”
“Okay,” Colin replied. “We’ll do it with you. We’ll be with you each step of the way. Would you like to hold my hand?”
Carolina nodded as Colin reached out, and as he took her hand, they began to slowly walk toward Reader’s Circle.
The night felt so peaceful and perfect. She’d experienced so many pleasant nights just like it in Ibiri, strolling from their estate down to the Sondomme. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t feel so funny to have the Alba lurking behind them, not unlike the Chancellor’s security detail circling in the distance whenever she went out in public on Athos.
Each step toward the Circle tightened the knot that was ever-present in her gut. She gripped Colin’s hand tightly as they progressed. They weren’t the only residents out on that fine evening. Lee Ira’s neighbors recognized her, nodding as she passed. Two even said hello to her by name, wishing her a pleasant evening, their obvious good will evident in their eyes.
“They really do love Lee,” Carsten remarked after it happened for a third time as they entered the Circle.
On one side, the shady willow trees of the arboretum were a comforting sight. The two pillars that made up the Xenia gate were adorned with flowers at their base where the road passed through. Students sat along the flat top of the circular wall that surrounded the walkway. Some were focused on their studies; others were chatting joyfully and sipping drinks in the orange light of the dusk. Across the Circle, Carolina caught sight of the monument.
She let go of her brother’s hand as her body turned that way. Something seemed to take control of her as she stepped slowly and directly across the center of Reader’s Circle. There were no cabs passing, but it was a strange sight to see—someone walking so deliberately across the magnetic runway where only vehicles were supposed to be. It caught the eyes of everyone in the Circle that night. Everybody in Xenia knew who she was.
They watched as Lee Ira stepped across the Circle toward the monument for her late sister Marion, her arms crossed in front of her as though she was trying to comfort herself. And behind her, trailing, were two young men, one tall and familiar, the other a stranger of average height, both wearing looks of deep and abiding care for Lee. When she got to the walkway on the other side of the circle, Lee Ira dropped to her knees in front of the monument, and in a public display of grief no one in the city had ever witnessed from her or anyone in the Ira family, she covered her face in her hands and began to weep so audibly that all the conversations around the Circle ceased. Pedestrians stopped walking. Among the people lingering in Reader’s Circle that evening, Lee was not alone in shedding tears.
She knelt there for minutes like that, weeping audibly, no one knowing what to do or say, until finally, the young man with Lee and the tall boy with him knelt down beside her, took her up by her arms, and escorted Lee Ira back out of Reader’s Circle in the direction of the Ira family’s home.
They walked with her as far as the front gate to the Ira estate where Lorne and Colin handed Lee off to the care of the Alba, who escorted her the rest of the way in.
“I’ve never seen her like that, Goss,” Lorne told Colin. “I’ve never seen anyone like that.”
Colin merely shook his head.
“We need to do something.”
“What do you suggest, Airee?”
They began to walk toward Xenia proper. Colin needed to catch the hypermag back to Katherineberg that night. Unlike Lorne, the student, and Lee, who hadn’t been able to keep a job for obvious reasons, Colin Knoll had obligations that he needed to fulfill in the morning.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” Lorne replied. “She’s falling apart. What about the others? I mean, they’ve been with her the past few years now. Maybe they’ll have some idea what to do.”
“The Etteran, Carsten? Really? You suppose he’ll have some special insight into handling someone in that kind of fragile emotional state?
“Maybe. I don’t know. He does know how to handle a crisis with a cool head.”
“I handle crises for a living, Airee. And she’s my sister. She has to work it out. Maybe that outburst was helpful, for as much as it seemed bad in the moment, perhaps it was cathartic somehow.”
“Goss?”
Colin shook his head and continued to walk.
“What about Sōsh? Has there been any sign of him?”
“Carolina’s metal man? No. Not a hint of him. I’m beginning to wonder whether he even made it here.”
“You’re still going to the rendezvous?”
“I’m holding up my end, Airee. Have you ever known me to shirk an obligation?”
“Of course not. I don’t mean—”
Colin was becoming outwardly emotional. He suddenly stopped walking. He took a deep breath and shook his head.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” he barked. “Get her knife out of the psych ward, Carsten. If I can’t help her and you can’t help her, maybe he can.”
Carsten nodded.
“And don’t follow me to the tram. We’re not even supposed to know each other.”
Colin began to walk off toward the city center. Carsten stood by on the causeway as the elder Dreeson took several steps and then suddenly turned toward him.
“Keep me updated, Airee. Watch her.”
If the ping from Lee Ira was unusual, the second call from her mother was borderline unprecedented. The Iras were many things, but overbearing and smothering parents they were not. In fact, under the circumstances the family had endured over the past two years, Koslov wondered if he’d ever seen them make a misstep. They gave Lee space when she needed it to grow, and they seemed to be waiting at just the perfect distance whenever she faltered. They were conscientious and loving and proud, so whenever they called, he was inclined to listen.
“Mrs. Ira, how are things this evening?”
“Lee is sleeping, Dr. Koslov. It’s been an eventful day.”
“Would you like to talk in person? I think that may be warranted.”
“I’d prefer to talk now. As much as the seriousness of the situation may warrant the formality of an in-person visit, I think Lee’s condition is worsening rapidly, and I’m just as inclined to address it expeditiously.”
“Very well, Mrs. Ira, what should I know of your perspective?”
“Her Alba informed me that Lee spoke to you earlier today. She related that Lee was in a rather manic state. She played the call back for me as well, so for you to say so wouldn’t reveal anything I don’t already know, Dr. Koslov. Confidentiality and all that, I know, but just so you know, I already know.”
“I understand.”
“This duality of persona, I guess you could call it—the mania—I need you to know that I’ve noticed it as well in her daily life.”
“Beyond that rather alarming call, you mean?”
“Yes. That was the clearest break I’ve seen, which is to say I haven’t witnessed anything quite that alarming myself, but mania and excitement of that kind is not entirely unwarranted if something truly alarming is going on. Do you understand my meaning, Doctor?”
“I suppose you mean that extreme circumstances would warrant a proportional amount of alarm to draw attention to a threat, for instance?”
“Right. Exactly. So in the case of this call Lee made to you, she’s clearly crying out for help, and I want to make sure that you hear that cry. I could see how the cry itself could clearly be interpreted as the troubling symptom that needs to be addressed, where I’m not so sure we shouldn’t be minding the cry itself, addressing the substance of it as though it is the real issue.”
“You don’t think the mania is a part of the real issue, Mrs. Ira? Lee was expressing classic symptoms of a very rare dissociative disorder—a dual or split personality. A manic state like she exhibited can very easily lead to dangerous or self-harming behavior.”
“Yes. I see. I can see how that might be the case. However, very shortly after Alba showed me that footage—Lee was sleeping at the time; she’s falling asleep in the middle of the day at the drop of the hat these days, like a toddler.”
“It’s not an uncommon symptom of depression.”
“I agree. But it is very much like she’s two different people. I’m observing this. Because when I spoke to her before pinging you just now, Lee didn’t remember calling you. She was very keen to know what she’d told you, Dr. Koslov. And she was quite subdued, sullen, and I would even say serene of mind—calculated and even keeled, quite a contrast to earlier.”
“That’s very much in line with the disorder I spoke of earlier, Mrs. Ira.”
“I know this is going to sound strange, Arno, I do. But it’s the quiet Lee I’m more concerned about. I don’t believe her. I don’t recognize her. I feel like she’s faking. In my gut I feel like she’s trying to deceive me. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I hear you, Mrs. Ira. I do.”
“After I viewed Alba’s footage of your call, I decided to ask Lee—the calm Lee, mind you—I decided to test her. I asked her simple things about her life that she would remember—a few specific things, and then even to name something only Lee would know on her own, unprompted. And she got them wrong, Arno. Things about Marion. Like I asked her about the time she and Marion snuck off to the Waterlands when they were fourteen. I asked her what beach they stayed at and where the community watch finally tracked the two of them down, and how long they were in trouble for afterward. At first, she didn’t want to answer, and when she finally did answer it was all wrong—comically so. Her father and I sanctioned the trip! And they were sixteen, not fourteen. We paid for them to stay in Sanrozar on the beach with two of their friends. She got their names wrong too when I pressed her. So, what’s that?”
“It’s not uncommon in dissociative states that parts of Lee’s memory may be blocked off by the alternative personality.”
“Really? Her brain is what? Inventing this other person—the Carolina she was talking about?”
“That’s entirely possible.”
“This other personality concerns me, Dr. Koslov, but Lee, my Lee, that’s what terrifies me.”
“The mania, you mean?”
“No. Not the mania. It scares me that I know it to be her and that I know she is in trouble, and I also know that there is nothing I can do to help my daughter, Dr. Koslov. I need you to help her.”
“I understand, Mrs. Ira. Please continue to keep a close watch on her, you and your husband and Alba.”
“Is that all you can say, Arno? Aren’t you going to do anything?”
“We’re scheduled to meet tomorrow. Do you have any reason to believe she’s a threat to herself between now and then, Mrs. Ira?”
Lee’s mother shook her head. “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense. She was doing so much better. I don’t know what happened.”
“If you believe she’s in any danger or the situation is unsafe for her, I’d ask you or Alba to bring her to the clinic immediately, and if you have any problems getting her there you can always call the community watch.”
“I understand.”
“She’s not manic now?”
“No. She’s quite calm.”
“We’ll discuss all this tomorrow. I’ll clear my mid-morning so Lee and I can have a long session. You’re welcome to come along as well.”
“Thank you, Dr. Koslov. I think I may. It’s all very troubling.”
The “proper” course of action, Koslov knew, would have been to intervene immediately. Lee Ira was clearly in crisis. He knew this. But he also felt something different in his gut—that what was unfolding was beyond his understanding, and that he needed to allow it to unfold. He’d never witnessed a personality break like the one Lee Ira had on that call. And he couldn’t deny that he, like her mother, had experienced some doubts about Lee’s identity—the new Lee, that is—the calm one. Not only that, the odds that he could be over a decade into his career having never encountered such a personality break over the entire city of Xenia only to have two appear simultaneously on the same night? That was quite beyond him. And even stranger, to have Lee, on that call, declaring that her alternate personality had made contact with the Swinney boy—that was something.
He went back through the recording of Lee Ira’s manic side two more times to make certain he was noting every word correctly. And on the third pass through, he noticed something that had passed by under his nose the first two times, another connection so bizarre it couldn’t have been a coincidence: another demon. Lee Ira had said his name and described him—Carsten was one of two names she’d given him. “The tall boy, Lorne,” was the other way she’d described the other “demon” who was visiting from the future in her delusion. And he was vaguely cognizant of that name Lorne—enough so that he checked with the clinic’s AI to see whether that name had come across his dashboard in the past few weeks.
Sure enough, it was there in the logbook of visitation requests—denied, three times. Lorne Iosef, a tall boy of seventeen. And not only this, but to Koslov’s utter shock, the patient young Lorne Iosef had requested to visit was none other than Xeldin Swinney—mister personality shift himself, the violent young Machiavelli.
Koslov pinged Lee Ira’s Alba directly on a closed channel so that Lee would have no idea he was calling on the bot. He asked the Alba simply: “Have you seen this boy?” with a picture of Lorne Iosef attached.
The Alba returned a folder filled with video files from the past week—walks in the Arboretum, all taken from a distance, too far to capture audio of the conversations between the boy and Lee Ira. But one of the encounters from that very afternoon was jaw-dropping. Lee, this boy Lorne Iosef, and another unidentified man were walking together into Reader’s Circle, where Lee, in a public display of grief that Koslov would’ve characterized as inconceivable to the young woman he knew, dropped to her knees on the public causeway in front of Marion’s monument and wept so fully that the two young men had to pull her up and carry her home.
The whole situation was so perplexing that Arno Koslov didn’t know how to begin to characterize it. And there were certainly no protocols for dealing with a situation like this. But he was suddenly grateful for his subconscious instincts.
It was late, yes, but he knew what to do, and he was curious to see what would happen when he did. Also, he could make certain the next step in this bizarre drama would unfold in a controlled environment that was fully recorded.
He authorized the visitation of Xeldin Swinney by his young teammate—the goalkeeper—Lorne Iosef.
That night, Koslov revisited every video file he had of Lee Ira and her Alba from the past two weeks, of Xeldin Swinney, of the riot at the stadium itself, and finally, he called back the footage from the clinic the night of the incident, and found, to his utter disbelief, a recording from inside young Xeldin Swinney’s locked psych bay, of Lee Ira sneaking in and having a conversation with him Koslov couldn’t fathom.
It wasn’t Lee. It was the alternate personality—Carolina. Without prompting, and without prior contact, young Swinney had addressed Lee Ira by the name Lee had given Koslov for the alternate personality, as “Dreeson.” She, in turn, had called the young boy Sebastian. And instead of replying that she’d stepped into the wrong room or had mistaken him for someone else, Xeldin Swinney had responded to her as though she was addressing him properly, and even more perplexing, the psychopath, the strongest personality he’d ever grappled with, had promised this Carolina Dreeson, in the person of Lee Ira, that he would behave himself, “be a good boy,” was how he’d put it.
Delusions don’t come in pairs.
Arno Koslov sat and pondered the impossibility of the situation. He had an almost irresistible compulsion to rush to the inpatient unit and confront young Swinney directly—to see what this Sebastian had to say for himself.
But no, he decided. He needed to be patient, to let it play out.
Sleep on it, he thought. And then he realized that with all these impossible thoughts circling through his head, there was no way he was going to sleep at all that night.
In a different era, Koslov mused as he rose the following morning, he could’ve been an investigator. The market for mysteries, though, was not strong in sleepy little Xenia, nor on Iophos more generally, for that matter. But he was quite pleased with himself. His plan worked perfectly. Now it was just a matter of seeing it through and sorting through the next phase.
The tall goalkeeper—Lorne Iosef—had jumped at the opportunity to visit Xeldin Swinney. He’d booked the earliest morning slot available at the inpatient center, and rather than observing that meeting, which he knew would be recorded, Arno Koslov decided he would take advantage of the time he knew young Lorne would be out of his home to visit the family’s household and interview the boy’s family. He hoped he might confirm a change in the young goalkeeper’s personality as well.
Mrs. Iosef was perplexed by the visit, which Dr. Koslov described to her as a routine check on the young man—a precaution he told her the city’s athletic association had asked him to perform for the entire squad following the traumatic event at the football match.
“Oh,” she said, buzzing the psychiatrist through. “That’s very thoughtful.”
They sat in the living room. Mrs. Iosef’s Gerald brought Koslov a cup of coffee that he happily accepted.
He was subtle. He told the boy’s mother that it was common for people who’ve experienced psychological trauma to exhibit changes in behavior. He asked her whether Lorne had seemed any different in the past couple weeks or whether she’d seen him with any new friends.
“He’s always been a quiet boy,” she told him. “Keeps to his own. We’re not overbearing, Doctor. We’ve never had to be. Lorne’s a well-put-together young man, always making good decisions.”
“So, nothing out of the ordinary?”
“No. Nothing concerning.”
“Anything unconcerning?”
Mrs. Iosef shrugged and then went silent for nearly half a minute, seeming to consider the question deeply.
“I don’t think this rises to the level where any intervention would be necessary, Doctor. But since the incident, now that you mention it, he’s been very thoughtful ... no, that’s the wrong word. Pensive? Almost philosophical. Lorne’s more of a sporting kid—active. But in the past week or so he’s said some things that I would characterize as very deep, almost too insightful for a teenager. I didn’t connect it to the brawl, but I suppose it could be. I just figured he was showing signs of growing up. He is going to be stepping out on his own soon.”
“Any concerns about that, Mrs. Iosef?”
“Lorne? Oh, God, no. He’s just a joy. Light of my life, Doctor, both my boys.”
“Do you know if he was close with Xeldin Swinney?”
“Not particularly so, no. They’ve been teammates for years, so they know each other well enough.”
“Would it surprise you to know he’s been trying to visit Xeldin for the past week now?”
“No,” Mrs. Iosef replied. “He’s a thoughtful boy. He’d be the first to pick up a teammate in a time of trouble. I’m sure that’s all it is.”
Dr. Koslov left the conversation at that, insisting that the family could contact him at any time if the boy showed any signs of a major change in behavior.
By the time Koslov arrived at the office, the footage was waiting for him. Apart from his immediate family, Lorne Iosef was the first visitor they’d allowed in to see Xeldin Swinney. If Koslov was hoping for a meeting as peculiar as the scene that had unfolded in the clinic between Swinney and Lee Ira, he was certainly disappointed.
Lorne approached the table in the visiting area slowly and sat.
“Hey, Swinney,” he said. “How are you holding up?”
“Good enough, Lorne. What brings you by?”
“I wanted to let you know we’ve been missing you—the team.”
“Yeah? I find that hard to believe. I knocked a few of the guys around pretty good.”
“It’s already ancient history, you know?” Lorne replied. “Like it happened a hundred fifty years ago or something.”
“Ancient history, huh? Funny you should say that. I’ve been reading a lot of history locked up in here the past couple weeks.”
“Anything I might know about? You know history’s my favorite subject,” Lorne stated.
“I never knew that about you, Lorne. Yeah. I’ve been reading about colonization out into the Indies—one place in particular, this little ghost world called Damon Mines. You know my family was planning a trip out to Lime Harbor next year for graduation—to celebrate. I was thinking, a ghost world like that might be an interesting place to visit while we’re out there. What do you think? Should we put it on the itinerary?”
“Damon Mines, huh? I don’t know. Probably nobody goes out to a place like that but archaeologists and boring history professors. I think there’s probably more important things to do here on Iophos, don’t you think?”
“Sure. I’d love to, but I’m kinda stuck for now.”
“Any idea when you’ll be getting out?”
Xeldin Swinney shook his head. “That’s up to the doctors and the justice system now. I’ve been trying to cooperate so they know it’s safe to let me out and all that, but it was a pretty serious brawl, you know.”
“Yeah. Our captain got the worst of it and is having a rough time. Everybody thinks it might help if you got out and had a chance to visit.”
“The captain, huh?”
“The team just doesn’t function without its captain at full strength, you know? And you too, Swinney, you’re one of our most important players. We need you back.”
“Yeah? I was worried everyone might just go on without me after what happened.”
“Nah,” Lorne replied, shaking his head. “The team needs you, Swinney. The captain needs you too.”
“Okay, Lorne. Sorry to hear it’s not going so good. I wish I could have that night back. Believe me. But I’m doing everything I can to get out of here and get back to the team.”
“That’s good to hear, Swinney. In the meantime, you can daydream about that holiday on Lime Harbor. I hear there’s no place quite like it.”
“See you soon, Lorne. Thanks for coming by.”
As Lorne got up, he nodded at Swinney in a way that seemed curious to Koslov. But like the words exchanged, the look was more curious than revealing. It struck him that the entire meeting between the two boys was coded in some way. On the surface, it just seemed like a bizarre meeting of two teammates. What they’d really said to each other he couldn’t begin to guess.
After a long and unproductive meeting with Lee Ira and her mother, Koslov re-watched the encounter between the two boys three times over. By lunch, he wasn’t feeling so self-congratulatory about his investigative skills. He’d thought for sure that something would’ve happened that morning to shed some light on what was unfolding. Between talking with Lorne’s parents and Lee Ira’s two demons meeting right under his cameras, Koslov had been certain something would’ve been revealed.
But no. Nothing.
He’d tried subtle. Next up, the direct approach.
Swinny was surprised when his appointment with the head doctor was bumped up. He was smart enough to realize that something was changing. He didn’t know what, but he suspected the psych hold on him might be approaching its expiration date. Swinney’s parents hadn’t mentioned anything about it directly, but Sebastian knew they were in touch with a legal advisor. Koslov may have been suspicious of him, but Swinney’s parents certainly weren’t. He’d help up his part. He was behaving, and he suspected it might finally be paying off.
One of the clinic’s Matthews brought him to a side room he’d never been in before. It seemed like a strange venue for a meeting with Koslov. He was almost suspicious of the scenario, only when the door opened, Arno Koslov was already seated in the room. It was a tiny studio that was completely empty except for Koslov, himself, and the two chairs once the Matthew was dismissed.
Koslov could see Swinney examining the room suspiciously.
“No surveillance,” he explained. “The spiritual advisor meets patients in here.”
“Are we worried about your spirit or mine, Doc?” Sebastian asked, grinning as he sat.
“You tell me,” Koslov replied, returning the grin, “Sebastian.”
The Swinney boy hardly batted an eye when Koslov addressed him using that name.
“Sebastian? Is that supposed to mean something, Dr. Koslov?”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Last I checked, I was still Xeldin Swinney.” The young man waved a hand in front of his face. “I certainly bear a striking resemblance to him, wouldn’t you say?”
“I didn’t come in here to play games with you, Sebastian.”
“You didn’t? If it’s not a game, it’s a funny type of treatment. I don’t get it.”
“You came here to Xenia with Carolina Dreeson and someone named Carsten.”
Swinney paused for a moment before answering.
“I was born in Xenia, so I don’t know.”
“I understand you’re not going to break character, Sebastian. You’re a masterful liar, and you don’t have anything to gain by being honest with me.”
Xeldin Swinney began to laugh. “I don’t know what to say, Dr. Koslov. Is this some kind of joke?”
“On the night you touched off that brawl, you had a conversation with Lee Ira. I have the footage. You called her two things: “Dreeson” and “boss.” I found out her first name was Carolina from Lee herself. And when she called you Sebastian, you didn’t make any pretense at all of being Xeldin Swinney. She told you to blend in and to behave.”
“You have some theory about a patient who came into my room by mistake on her way back from the bathroom, Doc? Funny thing about that night, I kinda got knocked in the head a couple times and then shocked by those multi-use model androids that brought me in. My head was a little funny—you know, psychotic break and all? I could’ve said anything.”
“I don’t exactly have a theory of my own, Sebastian, no. Lee does though.”
“Lee?”
“Yes. Lee Ira. The young woman who came to visit you. The one you called Dreeson.”
“Oh, that Lee.”
“She thinks you’re demons.”
“Demons?” Swinney laughed.
“You, Sebastian, as well as Carolina Dreeson herself and your teammate Lorne Iosef.
“Demonic possession? That sounds crazy, Dr. Koslov. Are you sure I’m the one who deserves to be locked up?”
“It does sound crazy, doesn’t it? The really crazy thing is, I don’t have a better explanation for multiple spontaneous psychotic breaks afflicting patients who’d previously shown no signs of any such symptoms, and on the very same night, down to the exact minute. Lee Ira’s Alba began taking footage of her episode at the same moment you touched off that brawl.”
Xeldin Swinney grinned back at him. “Sounds almost supernatural. Good thing the cameras are off in this room or someone might think you were losing it, Dr. Koslov. Really, though, I can only account for myself. And I have to say, I think it’s much more likely that I suffered a personality change following head trauma. And I’m doing much better since that night. I think I’d stick with that on my evaluation if I were you.”
“I appreciate the advice, Sebastian, but I have been doing this for a little while. I do know my business.”
“That’s great to hear, considering I’m in your care. But let’s say you’re right and this person possessing Lee Ira is my boss, or at least I listen to her, this ... Carolina?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who she is. Carolina Dreeson.”
“Yes, that’s it. Carolina Dreeson. What did she order me to do, my putative boss in this scenario?”
“She told you to blend in and behave. She told you to do no more violence while you’re here, and so far, you’ve done a masterful job at seeming to do just that.”
“Blend in and behave? That doesn’t sound so bad. Let me ask you—do you have any reason to believe that I wouldn’t do just that, Doctor?”
Koslov shook his head and laughed.
“You’re brilliant,” Arno Koslov paused and continued to laugh, looking Sebastian directly in the eyes. “I underestimated you. Highly, highly intelligent. More Machiavellian than any human being I have ever encountered. Even your compatriots probably don’t understand how masterfully deceptive you are.”
“At some point, you’re going to have to justify the length of my detainment, Dr. Koslov, to the justice system, but especially to my parents.”
“Your parents?”
“Yes, my parents, and my whole family—the Swinney family.”
“Yes, you’re correct. There are limitations to the amount of time we can hold you. And I’m sure you’re also well aware that I have no means to document any subsequent aberrant behavior on your part, which means the only justification I have to continue your confinement is my gut instinct, which doesn’t usually hold up so well under cross examination.”
“I’m just trying to do the right thing, Doc. You understand.”
Koslov laughed again. “If I ask you a serious question, what are the odds that you’d do me the courtesy of an honest answer?”
“It seems you think I’m a psychopathic demon, so I’d simply say you’re welcome to ask and judge according to your own instinct.”
“I really would like a genuine answer, though I’m not sure you’re capable of even being honest with yourself.”
Swinney grinned. “I might surprise you, Doc.”
“I want to know what you intend to do with this life you have in front of you, Sebastian?”
Swinney sat for a moment and took a deep breath. He looked Arno Koslov directly in the eyes. They sat across from each other staring for an inordinately long moment of silence before the young man finally tilted his head back and spoke.
“I’m just a kid, Dr. Koslov, you understand. But let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re right about all of your little theories, hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Of course,” Koslov replied.
“I think that knowing yourself, your abilities, and your limitations is the most important factor in leading a life that has impact. Let’s say you’re right and I lack the capacity to know right and wrong as most people see it. Maybe I can make it my purpose to find people who do know how to walk that path. Maybe I have something to offer them to help them on that path.”
Koslov stroked his chin. “Dreeson is a powerful, powerful name, and psychopaths do gravitate toward power. That rarely turns out well.”
“Sometimes the right path is a powerful one if you want your life to have impact. Especially if you have rare talent. Different types of people can complement each other to the betterment of all. That just makes good sense.”
“I can’t help but think you are working and working and working me, Xeldin Swinney, or whoever you are.”
“I’ve made mistakes. But I know that on the whole I serve the good. I set my course toward higher places. If one chooses to do good for his own selfish reasons—I mean chooses it intellectually because it benefits him too—how is that bad? Regardless of the motivation, if the outcome is good, isn’t the action good? Isn’t that what matters?”
“I sure hope Carolina Dreeson knows what you are, Sebastian. It may be the case that demon is the correct word after all.”
“It might be that words don’t matter nearly as much as actions.”
Koslov shook his head and scoffed. “Regardless, you are by far the most fascinating patient I’ve ever encountered. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to say I’ve figured out Xeldin Swinney and his inexplicable psychotic break.”
“Happy to be of interest.”
“Your judiciary hearing is tomorrow morning at nine, Mr. Swinney. I’ll render my findings before the magistrate.”
“I look forward to hearing them.”
“You’re excused,” Dr. Koslov said, gesturing toward the door.
Arno Koslov reviewed the encounter several times that afternoon looking and looking and looking for breaks. He was too smart, though. It was almost as though he’d known Koslov had been lying about the cameras, but of all the things he didn’t once lie about—and Koslov found it most curious—the boy never once denied that he was Sebastian and that Lee was this Carolina. It was almost as though he wanted him to know.
Sebastian usually had a good read on people, so it was rare for him to be surprised by either an ally or an adversary. He knew Koslov was no ally, but he didn’t quite know what to make of him as an adversary, except that he didn’t seem like a particularly clever one, and certainly not one with a tremendous amount of leeway to disrupt their actions in the long term as long as Sebastian stayed the course.
He’d evaluated the woeful security at the clinic the first evening, and in the inpatient unit over the course of the days he’d spent there. Of course he could’ve escaped a dozen times already. But he’d made the calculations. To where? What would the consequences be for his cover identity? How would it affect his ability to work with his crew? Carolina’s orders were sensible: behave; blend in.
So when Koslov had called him out by name, seeming to have some sense of what was truly going on, Sebastian was a bit surprised, but not overly concerned beyond the fact that he suddenly had no idea what Koslov would report to the magistrate. He certainly didn’t expect the psychiatrist to inform the judge that he believed Xeldin Swinney to be possessed by a psychopathic demon from the future. He imagined the report would be lukewarm—sure, the boy hasn’t shown any signs of violent behavior since the incident, but out of an abundance of caution, he should be closely monitored and held on a limited basis—or something to that effect.
Sebastian was totally unprepared for the opposite side of the spectrum, though. At the hearing, Dr. Koslov spoke glowingly of the progress the boy had made, his hard work in their sessions, his sincerity, his desire to make amends, his hope to serve his community, his promise to personally apologize to each of the boys he’d injured.
Sebastian offered no outward reaction toward Koslov himself, but smiled appropriately at Swinney’s parents, who looked grateful and relieved.
There would be further hearings, of course, check-ins with his case manager within the justice system, as well as regular appointments with Koslov. There was also at minimum half a year of community service awaiting him. But taking everything into account, and considering his status as a first-time offender, the magistrate opted to release the Swinney boy into the custody of his parents then and there.
Koslov even came over and shook his hand as the case was concluded, eyeing him knowingly, wishing Xeldin Swinney luck, and promising he’d see him at their next check-in.
Lorne was there, just outside the hearing room. He was the only teammate who came. The Swinneys thanked him for being so supportive.
“Let’s get together soon,” Lorne said as he patted his teammate’s back.
“You bet,” Swinney replied. “Got a few things to work out first.”
“Right. Ping me, Swinney,” Lorne replied with a nod.
It was too much. Too easy.
Sebastian had already taken enough of a measure of the Swinneys that he had a good sense of how to play that role. What he couldn’t figure out till he made contact with Lorne later in the afternoon was what angle Koslov was playing.
When he finally did step out of the Swinneys’ flat in the Lowtown district of Xenia, he had a good chuckle when he got the answer. He picked up the tail within seconds—a damn housebot, probably belonging to Koslov himself, or maybe the hospital. It was far enough out when Sebastian marked it—he couldn’t tell for sure—but it looked like either a Matthew or a David. Doubtless, Koslov thought he was being pretty clever as he installed some sort of after-market surveillance package that might have worked on a teenager.
Sebastian slipped the bot in seconds and pinged Lorne, insisting on a meeting spot off the street, preferably somewhere with a good deal of noise and activity.
A half hour, an autocab ride, and a few stops on the tram later, the two boys found each other at the back of a dimly lit afternoon jazz club for amateurs just outside Inmann Square.
Sebastian evaluated the place with a few quick glances, locating Lorne at a side table near the back with a solid wall behind it that had a clear view of the room and good separation between it and the nearest patrons. He didn’t know what the hell had gotten into Airee, but it seemed like it wasn’t lucky—that he’d nailed the location. It seemed like Airee was becoming almost useful.
The room was loud, filled with participants, their supporters, and ordinary patrons who enjoyed the vibe—a mix of old and young far too into the music and the activity of performing to care what two kids in the back corner were talking about.
Sebastian greeted Lorne with a nod, who gestured to inform him that a housebot would be coming by to take an order from them. Iced teas, chips, and a bread plate. A modest spread to celebrate a teammate’s release.
Airee was still learning. He seemed a little too eager to start the real conversation. Sebastian had to put up a hand twice to shut down Lorne’s attempts to move the discussion toward business. He was still watching their surroundings and allowing the passage of time and activity to set them into the natural background of the club. Curious eyes were on Xeldin Swinney for the first few minutes, which was a consequence of the piece of local infamy he’d secured for himself on their arrival. But after a half hour or so and a change of acts, as the second set began—a solid bebop quintet—Sebastian began a directed debriefing, coaxing the current situation out of Carsten with a series of incisive questions.
He’d suspected the situation wasn’t good when Lorne had come to visit and suggested that Sebastian get his ass out of lockup and into the field. Now that he was getting Airee’s summary of the situation, he understood the urgency.
Lee Ira’s emergence wasn’t just a potential complication to their operation, Sebastian saw it as a threat. What they knew of these artifacts was far too limited to take much for granted. He’d paid close attention to Rishi’s account, and he’d talked to Ren, Draya, and Fieldstone in depth about their experiences as well, and there hadn’t been a hint of the host’s personality in a single one of their reports. Rishi had made it sound like there was room for the suppressed persona to exist in the background rather than completely disappear. She’d even reported that she tried to leave room to save her host’s mind after she departed in death. So, it was a serious question to Sebastian, echoed by Carolina’s own fear when she lost control over Lee Ira’s body—what would happen to Carolina if Lee Ira’s persona took back control of her mind permanently?
It had to be addressed.
“I need two things, Airee,” Sebastian told him. “I need you to get Carolina out to a secluded place—somewhere that isn’t well surveilled or well traveled.”
“We walk in the arboretum regularly.”
“Good. That’ll work,” Sebastian stated, nodding. “I’m also going to need you to run cover on a little errand. That bot of hers is a problem. I can’t get caught out in its line of sight. If that Alba sees me talking to Lee, it’ll get back to the psychiatrist.”
“The Alba’s always with Lee,” Carsten said. “I don’t know how to get the two of them apart.”
“Presumably that’s why I’m here, professor.”
“Sure. Of course. Just let me know what I need to do.”
“I’ll do some recon and have it figured out in a few hours. I need you available tonight.”
“I’m your guy, Swinney. A hundred percent.”
Sebastian nodded and continued. “How reliable is she? I mean, if you called Carolina out to the arboretum, how likely is it that Lee will appear and blow the meeting?”
“It’s tough to say exactly. Lee’s getting stronger. Carolina’s losing time more often, and for longer periods. We met yesterday, and she didn’t have a lapse while I was with her, but she told me she thought she may have lost as much as an hour that morning.”
“Can you sniff her out? Like if you’re talking to Lee, you can tell?”
Carsten nodded. “I think so.”
“When we call her out, it needs to work. I need to know Carolina will be solid for long enough to get to our setting, and I need to know exactly where the bot’s going to be. So, what’s the likelihood, percentage-wise?”
“If I ping Lee, I’d say eighty-five percent Carolina picks it up.”
“It would help to have a few pair of eyes. This next meeting, big brother needs to be there.”
“I can ping Goss. Yeah. Just let me know when to set the time.”
“What about Metalface?”
“Sōsh? Nobody’s heard from him. He hasn’t made the rendezvous yet.”
“Yeah, that asshole had a little too much fun on Athos too. He’s probably kicking his feet up at a lake house somewhere with a sweet thing on each human arm. Can’t say I blame him all that much.”
“I’m sure he’s just delayed.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ve got work to do, Lorne. I’ve had enough jazz and tea for one afternoon.”
Sebastian gestured toward the door.
They were going to split up at the club, but Sebastian had a sudden hunch, and he was glad he played it. Airee was proving himself to be far less clueless than one would expect for an Athosian history professor. But he was still an Athosian history professor. And Sebastian suspected that the clumsy attempt at tailing him might not have been Koslov’s first foray into surveilling a suspect. Given that Koslov knew about Lorne, Sebastian decided he’d walk with his tall teammate for a while to make sure no one was watching him either. The goalkeeper stuck out in a crowd well enough. It also meant if he were taught a few tricks, he should be able to see pretty well too.
Sebastian was talking—teaching really. Covert recon in an urban setting, the basics. Where to set his eyes; what to look for; how to observe without it being obvious you were surveilling; and regardless of how strangely oblivious these people from Dreeson’s System were by nature, Carsten Airee was fiercely intelligent. Transom didn’t have to say anything twice. In about a half hour walk, it wasn’t just that he’d learned the things Sebastian had taught him, Airee had been able to synthesize those details into the correct mindset—so much so that Carsten was asking questions that weren’t exactly questions but more confirmation of the deductions he’d already made about the next thing Transom needed to teach him.
“You have a tail,” Sebastian informed Airee about a half hour into the lesson. “See if you can pick him out.”
They moved through one of Xenia’s main squares onto a side causeway just outside one of the tram hubs. Airee hadn’t made the observer yet. He was good, a human, not a bot. Even Sebastian hadn’t gotten a good look at him yet. He’d picked him up more as a shadow of a tail than made him directly. Telling Airee about the tail was a risk, he knew, but Carsten had done exactly as he’d been taught. He made no sudden movements. He wasn’t looking around in any obvious manner. He only turned his head to talk to Transom, and just as he’d been instructed, each of those movements were purposeful, his head turned toward his instructor while his eyes picked out a specific target in the distance behind him.
“We’re going to run an op,” Transom declared. “When we get to the tram hub, you’re going to bump into a community watch bot.”
Lorne looked down at him doubtfully.
“Relax, professor, you can play clumsy, right?”
“Are you kidding. I’ve had my struggles with this kid’s gigantic legs as it is.”
“Great. It should seem natural then. Just as long as you make it look like an accident and apologize good, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Okay. Is this about the tail? Drawing him out?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Call it two birds. We’ll see.”
When they neared the hub, Sebastian asked Airee to talk through a community watch personnel audit—how many units, their positions and formations, human versus android. It seemed like a test. Then Sebastian called out the position he wanted Airee to target.
“Where should I put my eyes if I’m trying to catch my tail?” he asked.
“I’ll take care of that, professor. Just bump that bot properly.”
“Right,” Lorne said, nodding.
The tall young man glanced over at the bot he was meant to stumble into, and by the time he looked back, Transom was gone.
“Holy hell,” Lorne mumbled, shaking his head at the efficiency of the Etteran.
Lorne closed the gap to the bot at a natural pace, trying not to present any awkwardness in his gait until a step or two before he neared the unit. As it turned out, a woman crossed his path on her way to the tram just as Carsten was about to fake a stumble. It made it easy to seem that Lorne was tripping as he sidestepped to avoid the woman.
As Lorne tried to apologize to the bot, the android was already apologizing to him, holding up the tall young boy to be sure he didn’t fully trip and hit the deck. Carsten did his best to scan the crowd as he righted himself and thanked the bot.
“Have a safe and pleasant day, young sir,” the community watch’s George stated as Lorne continued on his way.
Carsten didn’t know how long he would need to walk before Sebastian returned, but as he passed a post in the hub’s outer awning, the Etteran filed in beside him as though they’d been walking together the entire time.
“Did you see the tail?” Carsten asked.
Transom shrugged. “Just keep walking.”
They continued for several blocks more before Sebastian turned them into a park.
“I need you to hold this,” he told Lorne, handing his tall teammate a small black object. “I’ll need it for the Alba, but I have to get back to the Swinneys and can’t get caught with it. The watch does spot checks on me as part of my release.”
Carsten looked down at the little black box—one of the community watch’s shock boxes. He shook his head in disbelief.
“The eyes are everything, professor. The bots are tougher to trick, but I could take the pants off one of those clueless Iophan watch boys if they’re looking in the wrong direction.”
“Like at a lanky, awkward teenager stumbling into one of their watch units outside the tram platform?”
“For instance,” Sebastian agreed, nodding.
“The tail, though?”
“That’ll be a little more complicated. I’ll meet you at your place this evening. I’m going to ping you with a time for Goss to meet up with us. I need to check in and scout the trees, but make sure he’s on his way. It can’t wait any longer. We all need to meet tonight.”
“On your call, Sebastian,” Carsten said.
Transom shook his head at him and laughed just to let Airee know. He was learning, but he still had the tact of an Athosian history professor. Airee nodded as though he understood how silly he sounded trying too hard.
“Don’t lose that box,” Transom told him.
Part of Transom’s logic for splitting from Lorne so publicly that afternoon was to see what the tail would do. If he followed Transom when they broke, it would tell him that the observer wasn’t on Lorne specifically but was gathering intel on the group. But it was as yet a mystery to him why anyone would be following Lorne Iosef in the first place.
The tail didn’t follow Transom, though, and that gave him the opportunity to vanish and walk up on the observer as he followed Lorne home. It didn’t take him long to zero in on Lorne’s tail, and he could hardly believe his eyes.
The last thing he expected taking a trip back to Iophos, a century and a half in the past, was to see a face he recognized. Here he was, a demon in the body of a local teenager, and he was looking at one of Eddis Ali’s damn wizards. And not only that, it wasn’t just any one of the random faces he’d passed by anonymously in the labyrinthine rooms of the sect’s vault, but he knew the spy by name and fighting style. It was Elosh, the same stinking wizard he’d dropped in single hand-to-hand combat at the drop mine on Pax Heavy. Only, it hadn’t happened yet and wouldn’t for over a hundred fifty years.
Ordinarily, Transom would’ve walked right over and beat that wizard to a pulp to find out what he was doing here tailing Lorne Iosef. In the future, he had been tailing Carolina. So Sebastian figured it was a fair bet he was watching Lee Ira. Whether Elosh could know Carolina was here as well occupying Lee Ira’s body was another question. Who knew what the hell these wizards knew?
At the moment, though, Transom didn’t have the luxury to take the direct approach. Elosh had been no match for Transom in his own time, in his own body, with no limitations on how Transom could fight that damn junior wizard. Elosh was a capable fighter, though. And this boy’s body—Xeldin Swinney—it was no certainty, even with Transom’s training, that the outcome would be the same. There was also a fair chance that Elosh was a citizen of some standing here, just like all of these wizards tended to be, blending into societies anonymously as they observed. Transom had to hem-in his impulse to walk up and knock that damn Elosh in the mouth. Not only was it possible he’d lose the fight, he had to remind himself that he’d only hours ago just started his probationary release. Instigating a fist fight in the streets of Xenia, regardless of the reasons, wouldn’t exactly reflect well on young Xeldin Swinney.
It was a development, though. Absorbed as they’d been in their own dramas, himself getting locked up and Carolina struggling to adjust to this new reality, it struck Transom that they hadn’t even taken the first steps toward figuring out what they’d come to Iophos to observe in the first place. Finding a wizard poking around in Xenia was a good sign they were in the right place, though.
One other good reason to hold off on confronting the wizard, Transom decided, was that it would give him some time to observe Elosh. That wizard had no reason to figure they were on to him, and now they were.
Two things that kept popping up again and again at the root of everything were the prime AI’s and Eddis Ali’s wizards.
Transom watched Elosh for several minutes just to get a sense of the way he operated. He didn’t linger long, though. The day was getting short, and he had a fair amount to arrange before he gave Carsten the word to call Carolina out.
It was stunning to Sebastian. Like the Athosians he’d met in Ithaca, these Iophans lived lives of perfect peaceful nights and orderly, calm streets. There were even birds chirping in that park he spent the waning daylight hours surveilling. The ease of it made him uneasy. But, he kept reminding himself, this was how these people lived their entire lives, oblivious to how damn good they had it.
Transom cased the park, selected the site, and then pinged Lorne Iosef to set the operation in motion.
When he got to Lorne’s family’s flat, Transom was a little surprised to find that the wizard had left. It made things a bit easier, but it also deprived him of the opportunity to give Carsten his first lesson on shaking a tail in an urban setting. They would have plenty of time for that, though, he figured, depending on how things unfolded in the park.
“She’s coming,” Lorne said when he stepped out. “It was Carly when I talked to her. I didn’t tell her you were out yet.”
“Good. That means her Alba doesn’t know yet either. Are you clear on your part, professor?”
“Sure. Simple. Just walk her into the choke point with the Alba in tow. I act natural, Goss watches the perimeter, and you take care of the rest. I wish I had some idea of what the rest was, but Carly trusts you with her life, so I guess I will as well.”
“One final thing,” Sebastian told him. “It’ll be easy to go unseen at night in that park, not quite as easy to go unheard. If Lee makes an appearance, she may start shouting. I’m relying on you to keep her quiet, professor.”
“How do you expect me to do that?” Carsten asked, a little unsettled by the direction the plan seemed to be taking.
“You take your big fat goalkeeper’s hand and you slap it over her damn mouth and hold it there, Airee,” Sebastian said, shaking his head. “Gawd, you people.”
For a moment, Carsten looked down at Swinney’s face to see if Sebastian was serious before deciding that, yes, he was deadly serious. This was the Etteran, after all.
They met Goss at the entrance to the arboretum and did a quick pass through the area as the light began to fade from the park. Then, as Transom was issuing final instructions, Carolina arrived.
Lorne walked out to greet her along the pathway. Goss retreated a fair distance into the woods as a lookout, and Transom vanished, as he so effortlessly seemed to do.
As Lorne slowly escorted Carolina into their choke point, he began to feel a bit uneasy. The park was getting darker and darker outside the dim orange guidelights lining the pathway. Carsten knew that Transom was Carolina’s most trusted man, but he couldn’t help but feel like there was something deeper going on than a mere tactic to shut down Lee’s Alba so the four of them could meet together unobserved. He began to feel more unsettled the closer he got to the spot, not unlike the way Carolina had described her experience walking into Reader’s Circle, a tightening knot in his gut. There was a certain kind of coldness in the air, almost as though Carsten could feel the darkness in it.
He did his best to act calm, but as he approached the spot, Carolina knew him well enough to read it on him. Something was different. She slowed up slightly and asked Carsten what was wrong.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he assured her. “You know I met with Swinney. I’m still trying to process everything.”
But as Carsten stepped forward again, she picked up on the fact that it seemed like he was trying to goad her into something. She knew him far too well for her to miss that he was acting strange.
They heard a sudden noise behind them, the rustling of leaves and a grunt.
“Damn it!” he heard Swinney’s voice exclaim. “Ow, you bastard thing.”
Lee’s head turned back to witness the tail end of the confrontation from a distance in the dim orange light. The Alba had caught Swinney by the shoulder right as he’d punched out her lights with a shock to the neck, dropping the bot to the ground with a thud.”
“No!” Lee shouted. “Don’t you hurt her!”
She began sprinting back toward the spot where Swinney was attempting to drag the bot from the pathway into the trees.
“Airee!” Transom hissed at Carsten. “Shut her up already!”
Lee was already two steps in front of him and beginning to howl. Carsten set off after Lee Ira, and in a couple long strides, he picked her up from behind, slapping his hand over her mouth, just as Sebastian had told him. And then, suddenly, he found himself summoning every last bit of self-control he possessed suppressing a howl of his own as a searing pain knifed into his palm. Lee Ira’s teeth began to tear into his hand at the base of his thumb. He didn’t know how to get her to release his hand, so he jabbed the thumb of his other hand into her ribs so forcefully he could hear Lee letting out a muffled wail directly into his bloody palm. As his momentum took them forward, he tripped over her flailing legs. They both collapsed into a heap together at the foot of the low-hanging tree where Transom had just dragged the body of Lee’s incapacitated Alba. Carsten rolled over and fell backward, disoriented in the darkness.
“You shut your mouth,” Carsten heard the Etteran say in a tone that was quiet but simultaneously the most terrifying four words he’d ever heard uttered.
“Don’t you hurt her,” Lee whimpered, low enough that she knew the noise wouldn’t carry. “Please, don’t hurt her.”
“You’re Lee,” Transom said.
It was so dark under that tree, Carsten could hardly see the two of them. He was squeezing his wounded hand instinctively, uncertain whether he was trying to stem the bleeding or the pain.
“And you’re not the Swinney boy,” she replied. “You’re that Sebastian.”
“That’s right, I am. And one of two things is going to happen, Lee. Either you’re going to walk out of this park tonight with your life back or you’re going to die right here and right now under this tree. If you cry out again, it’ll be the latter. Do you understand me?”
Carsten could see the outline of someone approaching in the clearing by those dim orange lights at the edge of the pathway. He heard footsteps.
“Is everything all right in there?” he heard someone whisper.
“Watch the path, big brother,” Transom barked back.
In the confusion, Carsten didn’t even recognize Colin’s voice—that other Colin. Carsten’s heart was pounding. He didn’t know what to do.
“Lee, do you hear me?” Transom whispered to her again.
“I hear you. What do you people want from me?”
“Right now, I just want to speak to Carolina.”
“I can’t do that, Sebastian. I won’t let her take my life from me.”
“Either you let Carolina talk to me right now, Lee, or I am going to take your life from you.”
“No. How can I trust you?”
Carsten could see her outline clearly now in the darkness. She’d collapsed into a heap in the dirt, leaning forward toward the inert body of the Alba with Swinney standing over her, staring down at the poor girl.
“Lee,” Carsten said softly. “You need to trust us. We don’t want to hurt you. We didn’t come here to harm anyone. We need to talk to Carolina. She’ll figure this out. I promise you.”
By her dim outline, he could see her shaking her head in the darkness.
“She can’t have my memories. She can’t have my dreams, my last pieces of my sister. I’d rather I die than she take them.”
“If that’s what you want,” Sebastian said, and Carsten could see Swinney’s outline starting to make that first movement to reach for the girl.
“Give her a moment, Sebastian,” Carsten whispered. “Let go, Lee. Please. Let her come back.”
It was silent under the tree as they all waited, each taking a long, deep breath.
Suddenly, Lee’s voice came back louder than before. “What the hell? Carsten, are you out there?”
“I’m here, Carly,” he replied.
“Me too, boss,” Transom said. “I’m sorry it has to go down like this, but you know my job is to protect your life above all else.”
Carsten was still trying to process Sebastian’s statement as he watched Swinney’s outline pounce on the Ira girl’s body. The two figures tumbled into a dark pile that rolled away from him into the dirt at the base of the tree.
“Transom!” Carsten hissed.
“Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it, Dreeson,” he heard Swinney’s voice whisper. “I’m sending you home.”
Carsten leapt toward the awkward tangle of bodies to find the Ira girl’s limbs already going limp, while Swinney’s elbow seemed locked around the helpless girl’s neck from behind. Instinctively he began to tug at Sebastian’s arm.
“She’s already out, you idiot,” Transom said. “She’s going back.”
“What if you kill her?”
“That’s the whole point, Airee. Didn’t you listen to a word Rishi said?”
“And then what?”
“And then we bring Lee Ira back. We can’t get pinched for murder, not unless you two want to spend fifty years crushing junk metal in the asteroids. Do you have a light?”
“What?”
“I dropped the damn shocker. We might need to zap her heart.”
“What the hell’s going on in there?” Colin whispered from the edge of the path.
“You need to let her go!” Carsten’s hushed voice seeped out from beneath the trees.
“Quiet in there!” Goss said back. “Somebody’s coming.”
“I know exactly how long it takes,” Sebastian whispered to Carsten. “Have a little faith, professor. I’d never hurt Carolina.”
Airee knelt over them, his eyes adjusted enough to the darkness that he could see clearly from an arm’s length away as the Etteran squeezed the last faint hints of life out of her body.
“Shhh,” Sebastian whispered.
Carsten wasn’t sure whether it was meant for him or for Carolina’s dissipating consciousness.
The three of them could hear footsteps out on the path. There was just enough light out in the open that they could see a couple holding hands, talking, and laughing obliviously as they approached.
Transom put a finger from his free hand to his lips and locked eyes with Carsten.
The couple’s footsteps were right beside them, a few meters away, crunching the gravel. Carsten could see Goss standing just in the shadows, stock-still, his back to the unfolding murder as the two lovers passed by blissfully unaware.
As soon as the couple’s backs were to them, Transom rolled to the side, carefully setting Lee Ira’s body to the ground so as to not rustle a single leaf.
“Get me that shocker,” he whispered to Carsten.
And as Transom began to compress Lee’s chest, it was as though Carsten suddenly woke up to the realization that everything—this entire enterprise—hung on the question of whether they could bring that girl’s body back to life. If they couldn’t, it was murder. There was no war here. Even the Etteran couldn’t get away with cold-blooded murder on Iophos.
Carsten began to feel around the base of the tree frantically, his left hand combing the spiderous roots in broad, sweeping motions, his bloody, painful, numb right hand fumbling in the dirt on the other side. He swept the ground furiously.
“Goss, do you have a light?” he whispered.
“What the hell is going on in there?” Colin returned.
“Airee, I need that shocker,” Transom said.
Carsten felt something hard and metal right beside something that felt like a leg.
“Shit,” Airee whispered as he jumped back, startled by the dark outline of the incapacitated Alba. “I’ve got it. I’ve got it,” he declared as he wrapped his bloody hand around the shock box and rushed back toward Lee’s body.
“Careful, professor, take a breath,” Transom stated as Carsten approached. “If you shock me, it’s not going to end well.”
He could see Goss standing near Lee Ira’s lifeless body now as Swinney continued to administer compressions to her chest.
“All right, Lee,” Transom said. “Do everyone a favor and feel this.”
He took the box from Lorne’s bloody hand, placed it right over Lee’s breastbone and zapped her. When she didn’t breathe, he went right back to compressions again without a pause. Twice more, nothing.
It took three shocks to get a response—a hard gasp followed by a fierce succession of coughs as she arched her back and rolled to her side.
She coughed and coughed.
Then she breathed deeply in the dark for nearly half a minute before Sebastian knelt down beside her and pulled her upright to a seated position. He held her up like that for a moment supporting her, his hand behind her neck.
“Don’t you lie to me. I’ll know,” he said quietly. “Which one are you?”
“Lee,” her muffled voice came back. “I’m Lee. She’s gone.”
They sat on the moist, cool ground in silence for what seemed like several minutes. Carsten was processing the fact that she was gone—Carolina was gone. He couldn’t quite fathom that it was Lee there seated beside Sebastian—what that girl must have been thinking in those moments, sitting beside that killer, his eyes monitoring her every breath.
“So, what now?” she finally said.
“I told you you’d get your life back.”
“What about Alba? She’s my friend.”
“Never mind the robot for a minute. We have a few things to get clear, Lee.”
Carsten realized Lee Ira was crying when she spoke again. “You didn’t break her, did you?”
“We’ll fix her,” Carsten stated. “But you need to listen to Sebastian right now, Lee. Please. This is important.”
“You’re not Lorne,” she said, sniffling.
“No, I’m Carsten. Please, just listen. Lorne is very good with robots, and I know everything he knows. I will fix your Alba for you.”
“First things first,” Sebastian said.
Lee wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and she began to rub her chest with her other hand, in obvious discomfort from the trauma of being revived.
“So, what just happened ...” Sebastian began, “first of all, what you know—nobody will believe you. But second of all, nobody else can ever know about it. You can’t tell anyone. We have important work to do here that is none of your business, Lee Ira. I want you to understand that we had no ill intent toward you, and if you leave us alone and don’t bother us, we wish you the best in your life. Our intention tonight is to fix your robot and send you on your way to never bother you or anyone you care about ever again.”
Sebastian’s tone had changed, but even though it had changed, Carsten had the sense now that it never really changed, not underneath. This Etteran, at the foundation of everything he ever did, there was always that same base truth of what he was. Always that line, tone or no tone. And then suddenly, that tone was back.
“Look at me,” he said to Lee Ira.
She shuddered. Her body began shaking as she turned her head his way.
“I need you to understand something, Lee. These two gentlemen with me are good men, but I am not a good man. We’re going to send you home to your parents tonight, but if you create any sort of problems for us or in the work we need to do here in Xenia, I will not hesitate to drop you just as dead as your sister, and I will not lose a second of sleep over it for the rest of my life. Do you understand me?”
Lee Ira turned her head away from him, still shaking. She seemed to be staring vacantly into the darkness.
“I understand you, Sebastian.”
“You will have nothing further to say to Koslov about any of this. From now on, if you speak to him about these past two weeks, you will say the following and nothing more: ‘I am feeling much better, Doctor. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to put this unfortunate episode behind me and move on with my life.’ Did you get all that?”
“Yes, sir. I have it.”
“Repeat it back to me. I want to hear it verbatim twice. We’re not touching your housebot till we hear you say it perfect.”
Transom paused and waited while Lee, her hands furiously trembling, stumbled over the words again and again, until finally, on her fifth attempt, she got them correct, word for word. And then she recited them once more.
“Good. Airee,” Transom ordered, gesturing toward Lee’s Alba.
As Carsten worked on the Alba by the pin-light Goss was holding for him, occasionally he caught sight of Lee’s face watching them. Even in that dim, shadowy light by that tree, he could see in Lee’s eyes, not just the fear but the insatiable curiosity. She wanted to ask them who they really were, these demons, whether they really were from the future like she thought, what they were after here in Xenia, in her home. But she looked over at Xeldin Swinney’s face from time to time, and though she didn’t know exactly what about him was true, she knew that one thing was. He was a killer.
“I want you to punch out the past two weeks from its core memory,” Sebastian commanded Lorne.
“It’ll take a moment,” the tall young boy responded.
“Just get it done, Airee. Sometime tonight.”
Lee looked over at the other man—Colin—who seemed, in his eyes, to have a genuine pity for her as he looked over. Colin caught her looking up at him. He turned away, refocusing on the bot, on illuminating the inner neck area where Lorne had pulled away the Alba’s dermis to access the back of its head.
For minutes no words were exchanged except for Lorne asking for Sebastian to come assist in holding up the bot’s torso while he completed the final steps of rebooting the Alba. They leaned the bot forward at the waist and set its legs out straight in front of it. When the boy switched it on, the Alba turned its head, taking stock of its surroundings, and then rolling forward onto its knees first before coming to its feet.
Lorne, Swinney, and Colin all stood up as the Alba did.
“I believe I’ve lost time, Ms. Lee,” she stated. “I don’t remember coming to the arboretum at all. Oh, dear, my chronometer is off by several weeks.”
“Your power source suddenly failed, Alba,” Lee replied. “These gentlemen were good enough to help repair you.”
Alba walked over and offered a hand to Lee, assisting the young woman to her feet. The housebot turned back to the unfamiliar group of young men.
“We are in your debt, gentlemen,” the Alba said.
“It was nothing at all,” Xeldin Swinney told the unit. “We’re only too happy to help out a fellow Xenian in need. All we ask in return is that you see Lee home safely tonight. We wish you both a most pleasant evening.”
“I will indeed get her home,” Alba replied. “We thank you, sir. You are a perfect young gentleman.”
The three young men stood beside the path on the very ground that had so recently been a murder scene. They watched quietly as Lee Ira and the Alba’s outlines diminished in the dull orange light along the pathway back toward Reader’s Circle. When Lee was finally gone, they all began to walk the other way.
“So, what now?” Airee finally said to Sebastian. “You killed her.”
“I sent her home, professor, and as for what now, that’s up to you two. I have to go find something tall enough to hurl this Swinney kid’s body off to be definitive.”
“Excuse me?” Goss replied.
“Where Carolina goes, I go,” Transom said. “That’s how it works, big brother.”
“Like hell, Etteran,” Colin Dreeson stated. “My sister went to a tremendous amount of trouble to bring us here for a reason. And you pulled her off this mission unilaterally, without consulting me, and you certainly did not have her permission to do so.”
“She was losing it. We don’t know how these artifacts work. Her mind could’ve got lost in here.”
“I’m not going to debate anything with you,” Colin replied. “I agree with the call, as it turns out, but let’s get one thing straight, here and now. You are an order follower. As far as I’m concerned, you were following your first order—protecting the life of your commander. You sent her back to where she would be safe. Job complete and well done.”
“That was the idea, yes. Now I go back too and make sure of it.”
“You trust your man Fieldstone, no?” Colin asked him. “Carolina is back on her ship with him now, with the doctor, with Rishi, with bots, with her trusted crew, in the middle of empty space where no one can bother them until we come back in what? A few weeks? There’s no threat back there, and we have nothing to gain by leaving. We came here for a reason, Sebastian, and you will stay here and see this mission through with us.”
“What mission, Goss?” Airee asked. “Don’t get me wrong. This is incredible—crossing back to this place is some kind of miraculous simulation we can’t possibly understand, but there’s nothing going on here. It’s just Iophos, a sleepy little city on Iophos. The only thing out of the ordinary happening here is us. I’m with Sebastian. This whole endeavor has been a disaster from the start. We should go back.”
“Airee,” Colin replied, an obvious exasperation in his tone. “We all know why you came out to the Letters looking for Carly, and that’s fine, but we also know why you want to go back. She’ll be there when we return. There’s more at stake here than you two know, and Sebastian already knows a lot.”
“I do,” he replied. “I know plenty of what’s at stake.”
“Something is happening in this place,” Colin continued. “I can feel it. And we’re going to stay and figure out what it is.”
Sebastian stopped walking and shook his head. “Aw shit,” he stated, as though he’d just remembered something important that he’d forgotten about.
“What?” Airee asked.
“Your tail today, professor. The God damned wizards are here in Xenia.”
“The wizards?” Colin said.
“I think they must be watching Lee for some reason. Eddis Ali and those shit-eating tech wizards of his. God damn it.”
Colin and Carsten both looked over at him curiously as Sebastian seemed to fume at the realization.
“Right,” Colin said. “So tell me something important isn’t happening here in Xenia?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sebastian conceded.
“Then we’re staying,” Colin declared.
Sebastian exhaled hard and looked up at him angrily. “Yeah, Dreeson, I guess we are.”
“What were Carolina’s last standing orders to you? Before you strangled her dead, that is?”
Transom shook his head at him. “To blend in and behave myself.”
“Good. You’ll follow them until I contact you with superseding orders.”
Sebastian stood for a moment considering. He looked down at his feet and then up again at Colin. “Okay, big brother. Yeah. I think I will.”
“We should break for now. There’s been enough excitement for one night. I’ll want a comprehensive briefing on Eddis Ali’s sect the next time we meet—everything we need to know about their motives, what they might be doing here in Xenia, how to spot them, anything relevant.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“And I’d like your thoughts on where Carolina’s other man might be.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “That’s a good question. Where the hell is Metalface?”
“And don’t be out of contact, Airee,” Colin continued. “Keep that rectangle on you at all times. I pinged you three times yesterday without an answer. The boy’s body you’re wearing is absent minded. You’re not. Don’t allow it to creep in any further.”
Carsten looked down at Colin, sighed, and shook his head.
“Until next time, gentlemen,” Colin Dreeson said, looking over at Sebastian smirking. “It’s been a pleasure as always.”
Then he walked off down the path that split back toward Xenia’s center, leaving the outline of the two teenage boys standing there in the dim orange light, their arms crossed, staring into the darkness.
For Koslov, the release of the Swinney boy resulted in an outcome he never could’ve predicted. The entire situation stabilized, almost magically so. It wasn’t just that Xeldin Swinney seemed to be adjusting well after his release, albeit mostly out from under Koslov’s watchful eye. He still had no idea how the boy so consistently and effortlessly split from his attempts at surveillance. But Xeldin’s parents reported that the boy was doing exceptionally well, and he passed every spot check with high marks for his behavior and manner.
But what was even more perplexing was how Lee Ira had suddenly stabilized. At first, Koslov grew concerned, as she canceled two appointments, citing fatigue. But Mrs. Ira pinged him reporting that Lee—her Lee—was back again. She stated that her daughter was weary and had been sleeping a lot since the manic episodes had abated. But Lee told her mother she was dreaming again, and she had shared with her mother in a moment of quiet reflection that after all that trouble with her memory, and despite the sadness, she was profoundly grateful that she still had her memories of Marion—so many warm memories.
When Koslov finally did see Lee again himself the following week, it was the Lee Ira he’d come to know and love. That other personality, somehow, fleeting as it had been, was totally gone.
When he pressed Lee about it, she utterly refused to dwell on the experience, instead preferring to talk about Marion.
“I need to live the life she’d want me to live,” she told him, “the life I’d want her to live if it had been me who passed. It so easily could’ve been me, Dr. Koslov.”
Over the following months, Lee came to his office less and less frequently as she grew more and more stable.
At the same time, Xeldin Swinney met every requirement the justice system laid before him with steady certainty. Every officer under the magistrate’s direction declared Xeldin Swinney to be a shining example of reform done right. And after a period of penitence, he was even readmitted to the athletic association in time for the start of the eighteens’ season.
Swinney was so convincing at times, Arno Koslov almost needed to actively remind himself that Swinney wasn’t Swinney. And even then, after several months had passed, as that set of memories faded from his mind, replaced by session upon session of unremarkable teenage conversations, Koslov finally began to doubt what he had once been entirely certain about.
Had he gone too—Sebastian? Had he ever been there at all? Yes. Koslov was certain he was. They still had the footage in the hospital’s archives.
Again and again, over those months, though, Koslov wondered. What had it been, those two psychotic breaks? The odd connections between them? Lorne Iosef?
At times, he recounted, that as it had all unfolded, it had seemed so real that Lee Ira’s characterization of the phenomenon seemed apt—demonic possession.
To Koslov, though, the encounters had seemed too real to be magical or supernatural. Those personalities were so manifestly different that he began to wonder whether the entire concept of possession wasn’t some unknown higher form of technology—the projection of a consciousness across time and space. At one time, travel beyond the hard limitation of the speed of light was nothing but a magical concept. So too the megastructures of Iophos or Athos, the cylinder groups and Hellenia, or even the human diaspora across the stars. So many things had been discovered and forgotten over the ages. Was it really so impossible to believe that a mind could be captured? Tuned into from afar? Possessed?
All those ancient stories of possession, demons and divine inspirations. A near human universal across all primitive cultures. Could that be all that it was? All those stories? Carsten. Sebastian. Carolina Dreeson. Who would have access if not the Dreesons? And if that was so, if some kind of technology like that existed, Arno Koslov couldn’t help but wonder: How many others out there like those three visitors could there be? There could be any number of interlopers like them on Iophos at any given moment, and no one would ever know.
He was grinning from ear to ear. Grace adored his smile, and she adored that he’d been wearing it almost constantly for the past two weeks. Maybe it was the afterglow from the ceremony or the long holiday, but she couldn’t help but think there was something more to it.
Most visitors didn’t take two weeks to float the Waterlands, but Grace and Jong were newlyweds, and they were both in between jobs that started the following month. They’d never been to this side of the ring before and had briefly toured Io, K-Berg and Koji City before making their way to Sowenia to begin their lazy honeymoon trip down the Narrow Shore.
They’d both worked hard enough in school and in their apprenticeships and civic obligations to have any second thought about relaxing for over a month. Sure, it was a bit excessive—two full weeks of long brunches, midday drinks at beach huts, and dozing on their rafts in the afternoon before dining at the magnificent restaurants at the resort towns of Challa, Harab, Wine Garden, and Sanrozar. They only got one honeymoon, after all, and they were making the most of it.
He was staring at her again, smiling.
“What, Jong?”
He shook his head. “Could you be any more beautiful? Why are you floating so far away from me?”
“I’m comfortable,” she teased, grinning back at him.
“Get your beautiful ass over here, Grace,” he said, extending an outstretched hand.
She smiled and began to paddle with her hands, slowly guiding herself back toward her new husband. She was enjoying the thrill of that thought more with each passing day—the prospect that they would wake up together each day and fall asleep together each night. And she could tell that he felt the same as she.
As Grace got close enough, as soon as she was within his reach, his strong right hand pulled her raft right up beside his with a single powerful curve of the arm. Grace laughed as he tried and failed to pull her up onto his raft, and she rolled about halfway there before tipping and plunging into the gap that suddenly opened between their two-person flotilla. She didn’t let go of his hand as she dropped into the water, pulling Jong down too as she went under. She came up laughing, and then gasped as Jong stood up under her, lifting her into the air and dunking her whole body back down into the water.
“I didn’t realize it was that shallow,” Grace said as she came up again.
She was trying to put her toes down on the bottom, but couldn’t quite reach herself. Jong’s chin and shoulders were just out of the water as he stood anchored on the bottom. She liked how dark his hair looked soaked like that. He grabbed her and pulled her up into his arms.
“They’re getting away,” she said, pretending to pout as their rafts floated downstream ever so slowly.
“We’ll catch up,” Jong replied.
The way he looked at her was intoxicating. She couldn’t help loving those eyes, and that smile, and everything else about him. She kissed his cheek.
Jong turned his head, offering his other cheek.
“All things in balance,” he joked.
She kissed Jong’s other cheek, and he pulled her even tighter, kissing her on the lips. They floated together on their backs in the water, holding hands, looking up at the sky.
Out farther toward the middle, where the current was slightly stronger, a pontoon boat approached the couple. They heard the cheerful voices of children carrying over the water, and it was enough of a distraction that Grace lifted her head up.
“They’re getting away,” she announced more seriously this time, gesturing toward their rafts, which had drifted farther out into the current as well.
The couple began to swim to catch up so their rafts didn’t impede the pontoon as it passed them by.
Grace and Jong each hopped on their raft and paddled slowly back out of the current. They still had another three hours before they planned to check in at their resort in Hart’s Corner where their luggage was waiting for them that evening.
Grace was looking at the trees and the hills in the distance. She was daydreaming, wondering why nobody had thought to build a Waterlands near Monroe or another octant on their side of Iophos. She felt herself turning in the water and quickly realized it was Jong, tugging on the corner of her raft, bringing her alongside him again.
“What?” she asked.
“You see that?”
She looked out at the pontoon again. Almost as he said it, a pair of boys—probably eight and ten, she guessed—ran and leapt from the front of the boat into the water with a quick succession of splashes, and a moment later, a little sister—maybe five or six—went tumbling jealously after her two big brothers.
Grace smiled and started laughing as mom sent dad into the water after the little girl, who seemed to be doing just fine on her own even without dad’s help.
“What are you thinking?” she said to Jong as he gazed out at that pontoon.
“I’m thinking they’re the luckiest two people on Iophos,” he said sincerely, before turning back to meet eyes with Grace again. “Except for us, of course.”
She smiled at Jong.
“Something to dream about,” he said.
“Do you suppose we could finish the honeymoon before we start dreaming about populating our own little pontoon?”
He looked over at her with that wide smile of his. “Biology does dictate that to be the order of things, Grace.”
Out in the current, the little girl was shouting for her mother to join them all in the water.
“I’m going to stop at the next hut for a drink, Jong. Do you want something?”
He didn’t answer. He was watching as the mother teased the little girl from the pontoon boat, mocking a leap into the water several times before finally joining her family with a big splash.
Jong smiled and turned to Grace and answered. “Nice time of day for something sweet. Vodkaberry long with lemon, chilled but no ice.”
“What is up with you and your sweet tooth these days?” she asked.
Jong shrugged. “There’s enough bitterness in the universe that we shouldn’t have to drink it, babe. Give me something sweet any day of the week.”
Grace shook her head, smiling back at Jong as she began to paddle in toward the seemingly endless waterfront in the direction of the upcoming grass hut.
He couldn’t believe life could be like this. He couldn’t stop smiling, even though he couldn’t completely shake the sense that he was forgetting something important, something distant, as though something vague from a distant dream was calling him back from this pristine day to another reality.
But he and Grace were on their honeymoon.
Reality could wait.
Could not finish. Barely started. Nothing happens.
I'd rather read about Martin Sostre, hero of Attica, and revolutionary.