Lanis meets Lieutenant Tran for her scheduled Fleet therapy session the next day. She takes the call on Mirem’s bed while Mirem is out, using one of Mirem’s own projection tablets rather than making the trip to a secure net-link location. She figures that if she’s going all in with Mirem, and by extension Versk, there’s no use in feeding into her lingering paranoia of being watched. It feels freeing to not care in this particular way.

  “Wait. You did what?”

  Lieutenant Tran has never shown much emotion—just a carefully calibrated set of expressions that Lanis suspects she would find if she searched for ‘therapeutic listening techniques’ on the net. Her weeks of drug use, depression and debauchery never seemed to rattle him, and she’s secretly pleased that she appears to have finally elicited a real reaction out of the man.

  “I interfaced with an AI at Versk Energy at their Armored Suit complex,” Lanis repeats, explaining the situation again, more slowly. “I had some trouble initially; a flashback, with the usual reaction. But all in all it went well.” She scoffs and shakes her head, remembering the Verk team’s reaction. “Everyone seemed stunned at how successful it was. You know, I had an inkling at how much more stringent Fleet training was, but I didn’t know we were that much better…”

  Lieutenant Tran is silent for a moment, and Lanis isn’t sure if his eyes are focused on her or on some other feed. He could be communicating with a Fleet psychoanalytic team, an integration hardware specialist, or an extraction team for all she knows.

  “So then… it went… well, you said?” Lieutenant Tran says carefully.

  “More than well, actually. I dream-walked with the AI. She told me her name. I think we’d make a great pairing, if Versk lets us. You could be looking at a new Arena pilot, Lieutenant. Not exactly Fleet, but it’s something.” Lanis chews on her nail. Breaking Lieutenant Tran’s unflappable demeanor was a thrill at first, but she’s suddenly uncomfortable.

  “No issues, then? No hardware glitches?” Lieutenant Tran asks.

  Lanis looks at her finger. She’s bit off too much of her thumbnail and drawn a small amount of blood. A bad habit, she thinks. Maybe I can meditate my way out of it. She meets Tran’s eyes, waiting until she’s fairly sure she has his full attention.

  “Interesting you should mention it. There was a point where I apparently overloaded their monitoring hardware. They said it should have auto disengaged, but instead they got an error cascade. One of the techs said I should have been fried. But, I was fine,” Lanis says, shrugging nonchalantly. “Guess all the Fleet wetware and training is good for something, hey? I mean, if it can handle ship-eating Warp entities, then a little dream-integration should be no big deal.” She gives her best imitation of a charming smile to Lieutenant Tran, whose lips are pursed. He does not look amused, and ignores her aside about the Warp.

  “Listen to me, Lanis,” Tran says, his voice low and urgent. “What you just did was extremely dangerous. We warned you against it when you were discharged. Those implants were altered during the incident.” Tran looks at Lanis beseechingly. “You could suffer an aneurysm, or worse, if you don’t take things slow. If you would just come back for a more extended period of convalescence—” he begins, but Lanis is already shaking her head.

  “Yeah, no thanks. Next time I’m back at Fleet will be in a black-bag, I reckon. Hah.” She barks a laugh. “Or maybe you’ll just extract me?”

  Lieutenant Tran shakes his head.

  “I hope you know that we wouldn’t do that, though we would attempt to locate you if you missed one of these sessions, as per our agreement. You’ve been discharged from Fleet, and have all the legal protections of a Terran citizen,” Lieutenant Tran states, his look of therapeutic listening returning. “Why this hostility, Lanis? You knew the risks of becoming a Navigator. You served in your duty to admiration. You saved the Demeter. Let us help—”

  “Hostility?” Lanis says, interrupting. “Maybe it’s because you discharged me with Status D. Maybe because you never told me what actually happened out there. Maybe because I wonder if you knew that thing was out there all along. For all I know, it’ll be waiting for me when I die,” she says, her voicing rising, heat coming into her face.

  “You know that’s all classified—”

  “Oh fuck off, Tran,” Lanis states, suddenly exhausted. She swallows, collecting herself. Lieutenant Tran is silent, watching her.

  “I’ll see you in two weeks,” Lanis says quietly.

  Tran nods, and opens his mouth to say something.

  “End call,” Lanis interjects, before he can speak.

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  She sits in the bed for a moment, staring blankly, then slowly lies back.

  “Lights off,” she says, and the bedroom is plunged into darkness. Just the fading memory of light, dancing as an afterthought across her altered retinas.

  Then she cries.

  Lanis wakes up to a crack of light, opening slowly from the bedroom door.

  “Lanis? Were you asleep?” An image of Mirem forms, fitted in a flattering corporate suit. “I didn’t want to interrupt, in case you were still in that meeting you said you had… but, it’s been two hours, and you didn’t respond to my ping. Can I turn the lights on?”

  “Lights, twenty percent,” Lanis croaks in answer.

  “Oh, are you ok? What happened?” Mirem says, coming quickly onto the bed to where Lanis is slowly sitting up. Wow, I must really look rough, Lanis thinks. But then, Mirem is an observant one. What did she say when she first met her? I do love to eavesdrop.

  Lanis feels Mirem’s hands stroke her face, and rests her head against Mirem’s stomach, breathing her scent deeply.

  She lies there for a minute in silence, reveling in the feeling of being coddled, perhaps even loved, Mirem’s hand running through her short hair, tracing the cool lines of her augmentations up from the back of her neck where they innervate, up across her head, to each temple.

  A series of thoughts flit through her mind, at first discrete, but inexorably forming into a necessary action.

  Lanis slowly sits up.

  “Ok,” she says, wiping the tears out of her eyes. “I’m ready to tell you everything.”

  So she tells her, much as she told Ether, though this time it has to be told in awkward words, with pauses and side explanations.

  She starts with navigator training, which makes Mirem swallow, though she hides her shock remarkably well otherwise. She explains the rhythm of taxing competition, meditation, the half-understood psychic training, and near-constant implant calibrations. She remembers, out loud, how she tried to hide her awe of Navigator Sanislav as he ran her through the jump protocols to Barrack, the years of training suddenly becoming real. The plunge into the Warp, the rest of the crew on ice, only she and Sanislav able to half-comprehend the tearing fabric of space through which the massive Fleet ship traveled.

  Then the incident. The Anomaly within the Warp, the frantic horror of it all, the alien Androvan ship being broken apart like a child’s toy while its weapons fired into whatever was crushing it apart.

  And the Demeter, pushing her mind up to, and then through, its breaking point.

  After she finishes Mirem sits for a while in stunned silence. Lanis squeezes her shoulder, and leaves her to get some water. She returns with two cold glasses, handing one to Mirem, who drinks gratefully, her eyes still slightly glazed.

  Finally, Mirem speaks, hesitant: “But why would Fleet ever let you leave? Not just because you’re a Navigator—God, I still almost can’t believe it—but I mean, because of what you know? Why not ship you to one of the colonies?”

  “I’m not a Navigator, remember. Still a cadet, according to Fleet’s discharge papers,” Lanis reminds her.

  Mirem snorts with disbelief. “Cadet. God, the temerity.”

  Lanis pauses, considering her questions.

  “My guess? Because they’re afraid of having me on one of their ships. You don’t understand, Mirem.” Fear creeps back into her voice. “It was like that thing could smell me, or taste me. I think it would find me if I was out there again. They wouldn’t risk having me on another Warp jump. As for my discharge, it was illegal for them to force me to stay once I’d been medically deemed unfit for duty. I guess even Fleet has to play by certain rules. But beyond that, I don’t know.”

  “And wouldn’t they be afraid of you going around and telling this story?” Mirem asks.

  “First of all, what I just told you is… confidential. To say the least. So please try to keep it to yourself,” Lanis says. For a moment, the heady reality of what she’s shared makes her scared, but the emotion is overridden by relief. It’s as if a weight has come off her chest. “But second, I mean, I doubt anyone would believe me. Would you have? Before?” Lanis asks, quietly.

  Mirem considers this, nodding, apparently immune to the fact that she’s just become an accessory to a breach of incredibly classified Fleet data.

  Lanis suddenly changes the subject.

  “Has Versk said anything?”

  Mirem still looks slightly shell-shocked, but she answers, “Yes, in fact. They want to schedule another interface. A trial integration, actually, this time with a proper sim.”

  “When?” Lanis asks, slowly rubbing her eyes. They feel like they have sand in them, and she can feel the beginning of a headache slowly forming.

  “In two days, if you’re up for it. But… nevermind.” Clearly, Lanis thinks, Mirem is coming to understand the force of will that she’s up against.

  “Right. I’m in,” Lanis says quickly. She looks at Mirem in the twenty percent illumination of the bedroom. She looks concerned, like Tran did. At least she isn’t faking it, Lanis thinks.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s what I was made for,” Lanis continues, waving a hand, trying to relieve some of that concern. “Though it would be nice to know what kind of sim they’re planning to run. Any idea?”

  Mirem rubs her face, still digesting what Lanis has told her. She looks at Lanis, her eyes not only expressing concern, but a tinge of awe, and Lanis hopes that she hasn’t irredeemably altered the dynamic of their budding relationship.

  “Obviously, they know about your discharge status. That, along with the fact that you’ve never piloted an Arena Suit before, means that, despite your ridiculous interface levels, the Versk Suit Division’s higher ups have their doubts.” Mirem pauses before continuing, and takes a deep breath. “They want to ‘stress test’ you, Lanis. If I had to guess, they’ll only give you a few minutes to integrate. And then they’ll go straight into a battle simulation.”