SolCorp’s Entropy-Controlled Kyiv Office.

  Anise had gotten very little sleep on the plane ride home and she just wanted to crawl into bed, but she did her best to hold her head high and made her way to Adler’s suite after dumping her bags. As strange as she felt, there was a certain satisfaction as she strode down his hall and knocked on Adler’s door that came from being someone, especially someone of her age and low rank, who could confidently go to the head of Kyiv Mercury branch’s apartment unannounced.

  She was used to him looking more pleased with her than he was when he answered his door, and it made her walk slower, seeing it.

  “I hear you did well,” he said.

  She bit her lip. “I didn’t run into any problems. You’ll see everything in the report.”

  “There’s no report on this. I’m proud of you for getting it done on your own.”

  “I…” Anise lost her nerve to speak at all and dropped her eyes to her shoes.

  “Anise.”

  She looked up. Adler gave her an appraising look and the pressure of his mind flooded through her head. She felt as though every fear, regret, and hesitation, every moment on the plane she thought back to the feeling of Ace's light going out, were being inspected and judged.

  Anise braced herself for his disapproval, lecture, or worse, but a sense of peace took root in her instead. Because of her, they’d be able to continue their agenda in the UK office so no one else had to get hurt. She felt like she was floating and closed her eyes, the pit in her stomach fading. The fear was gone, blotted out. Vanished. The echo of the gunshot in her head was just noise now, a testament to her ability. It was okay if she didn’t love every moment or understand every order. That was the job. And she was exceedingly good at it.

  Adler dropped his hand on the top of her head and she opened her eyes, feeling slightly punch-drunk from it all. He leaned down to look her in the eye. “Nothing in the world can stop you now.”

  She believed him, all tension gone from her body and mind. “Yes, sir,” she said in her most condescending tone. It felt like a risk but it made him smile.

  Adler held the door open for her. “Come in,” he said, voice warming. “I want you to meet someone.”

  She raised her eyebrows at him and followed him through the small foyer and into the sitting room where a man was standing, giving her the same confused look. He was in his late thirties, tall and well-built, with short, brown, pin-straight hair, and had slight bags under his eyes. He wore a plain, bordering on boring, grey suit. His jacket had been thrown onto an armchair, his shirt sleeves partly rolled up. Something about his serious face looked strangely familiar.

  “Anise,” he said, gesturing, “this is Penn Harris. Penn, Anise del Sol.”

  Anise’s muscles tensed up. Penn Harris was Neptune’s Fifth—head of Cleanup for the entirety of Sol. And she had just killed a Sol agent. A Neptune agent. Was he here for her? But Adler had said she’d done well, so, summoning her training to appear collected no matter what, she extended a hand. “It’s good to meet you, sir.”

  Mr. Harris flashed Adler an odd look. “It’s good to meet you too.” His voice was sincere despite whatever look he’d shot to him. This wasn’t about her.

  Anise felt a gentle nudge of Mr. Harris’ telepathy in greeting. It was electric and sharp, like a rope bearing a heavy load. He’d had it wound up so tightly in his head that she hadn’t recognized he was a telepath. It was so different from the loose presence that flowed out around Adler like a moat. Anise returned the greeting to Mr. Harris. She was self-conscious of how it must feel compared to Adler’s telepathy, but she held her chin high. Her telepathy score had improved dramatically since her Post Breathe. That was nothing to be ashamed of.

  “How do you like Kyiv?” Mr. Harris asked her, taking a seat. Taking that as a cue, she followed suit, sitting on Adler’s couch, trusting that he’d let her know if that wasn’t appropriate.

  “It’s very different from LAHQ but I love the freedom I have here.” Anise allowed herself a moment of awe for how quickly her life had gone from dreading a future of unexceptional tedium at a desk to sitting here socializing with some of the most powerful people in SolCorp, being spoken to not as a child, but almost an equal. She felt a hundred feet tall.

  Adler poured himself a glass of water. “Penn’s invested in our Pilot Program, its mission, and how it will affect Cleanup.”

  Anise scrunched up her brow and turned to the Neptune agent. “How would it affect Cleanup?”

  She caught a quick, subtle flash of his eyes in Adler’s direction that made her think this wasn’t public information and he was checking to see if she could be trusted. Whatever signal he got must have been positive, because he cleared his throat and answered her.

  “The ultimate goal is for a more seamless integration of knacked people into the rest of the world, in order to reduce the number of exposures as people become used to living with humans.”

  “I would think integration would lead to more exposure.”

  “Not the way we’re doing it,” Adler replied.

  Mr. Harris scowled at him. “And if it does, I’m going to be pretty pissed off. That’s not the deal.”

  She chuckled politely.

  “You see, Anise,” Adler said, sitting down on the arm of the couch near her, “Penn had it in his head to set some pretty hard-nosed parameters in order to come on board with us years back. Bless.”

  “Really?” She cocked her head at Adler as her mind raced. Secrecy was the core of Sol’s original mission and the reason Neptune’s Cleanup division existed—why had the head of it agreed to their shared goal when it would chip away at that secrecy?

  Mr. Harris cleared his throat again and regarded her. “You’ve been mentoring under Mark here?”

  It wasn’t exactly the neatest way to change a very interesting subject but she turned her attention to him nonetheless. “Yes.”

  “But you’re in the Post Breathe program?” He gave Adler a strange look.

  “Not that kind of Post Breathe,” Adler replied. Before she could open her mouth to speak, the wave of telepathy swept through her, taking that snippet of their conversation from her memory.

  Anise stared mutely into the uncomfortable gap before it was filled with a sense of welcome. She glanced down in silence, waiting for someone else to speak. As she did, Anise noticed there was a tattoo peeking out from the cuff on one of Mr. Harris’ forearms. Tattoos weren’t common outside of Mars, as you had to get special dispensation. Especially in Neptune.

  Adler must have caught her staring. “Penn used to be a member of the Children of God.”

  Anise blushed, kicking herself for being sloppy. It had been a long day. “Really?” She cocked her head at Adler, then blinked and shook herself at a passing moment of deja vu.

  Mr. Harris’ forehead creased as he lifted his sleeve, slightly showing off a portrait of a weeping Virgin Mary. “Just for a few years. They found me first, before Sol, when my knack showed up.”

  “What’s it like?”

  He tugged his sleeve down. “I don’t recommend it.”

  Something about his tone made her remember who he was and who she was. “I should let you talk.”

  “Yes,” Adler agreed, but with warmth, so she knew he hadn’t been annoyed at her showing up.

  “It was an honor to meet you,” she said, smiling at Mr. Harris as she turned to go.

  “Any friend of Mark’s…” he called after her.

  Adler walked her out.

  Once in the hall, he gave her a heartfelt one-armed hug. “You’re going to own Saturn one day.”

  Anise smiled too and let herself into her quarters, feeling light and a little dizzy.

  There was a vague memory that she had felt sick on her way back. She wrote it off as the airport food. Anise had the best sleep of her life that night.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  ---

  Alone in Marcus Adler’s apartment, Penn checked his phone for messages. A few updates had been sent to him regarding two minor Cleanup calls and one knack misfire that looked like it was toeing the line for whether or not he’d be needed there on the ground, but he wanted to give the team a chance to handle it on their own first. He slipped his phone back into his pocket as Adler came back in from seeing the young woman off.

  “You trust her?” Penn asked. He’d have preferred a heads up before meeting someone who’d be that surprised to see him there.

  “I do.” Adler sat back down. “I’m planning on bringing her to Paris with me on my next trip.”

  “You think she’s going to help you crack Saturn?” For as much covert work as they were undertaking, they’d hit a wall when it came to recruiting anyone out of LAHQ’s Saturn branch.

  “Yes. Now, I don’t remember—what were we talking about?”

  Penn cleared his throat. “You were about to explain to me why I shouldn’t be concerned about the overall increase in Phagi-related callouts.”

  “Right. Did you answer my question as to why you thought there wouldn’t be?”

  Penn cocked his head. “Because that’s the whole damn point.”

  “Well, yes, but what motivation would Sol have to adjust their stance on the Elders if they were suddenly less of a problem? What would push them towards helping if the pressure eases?”

  “Are you actively making things worse to force Sol to realize they need to act?”

  “No, but don’t think for a second that I won’t, if it comes to it.” Adler’s phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” he said, looking down at it. “It’s Gideon. I have to take this.”

  Penn nodded to him and Adler stepped into what Penn assumed was his bedroom. Sitting, he did the math to figure out how many years it had been since his first meeting with Adler. Four? Five years? It wasn’t a thing he’d ever felt at ease about, but it felt better than doing nothing.

  Penn could still remember the gut-twisting lurch of landing in Paris to meet Adler for the first time. He recalled the disorienting shock of finding himself in a bathroom after Gage teleported them. “He wanted to give you a second to recover,” Gage had told him. “Come out when you’re ready.”

  Gage had been a surprise. Well and truly. Penn became close friends with the teleporter not long after he transferred in from Kyiv. He was effective, funny, and shared a lot of Penn’s views on the future of Cleanup—how it was on a losing trajectory, how Sol’s isolationism ignored the hard and true fact that the Phagi, the Church, and Entropy had real effects on the world they all lived in. On reflection, he realized it was Gage who had first brought up the point that, by choosing not to step in to do something about the Phagi, especially with all the technologies Sol was capable of, SolCorp was allowing humans to be slaughtered in numbers that were entirely unnecessary.

  Penn had tried, again and again, year after year, to make Mercury and Neptune (back before Rich had retired) understand that Sol needed to do something to address the Phagi, but he was shot down every time. After a particularly spectacular failure of a conversation with Mercury and Rich, Penn had been ready to throw in the towel and start asking for forgiveness instead of permission; Gage had been there to listen. That was the night Gage confided in him that there were a lot more people that shared his views than he realized, people who were already acting to find a way forward. That he’d actually grown up in Entropy. He’d had his mind worked on by a powerful telepath, his childhood friend, in order to pass SolCorp’s rigorous security. The same telepath who was currently in the other room, fielding a call from the head of Entropy as Penn reflected on the past.

  Gage’s was a sad story. His mother had been turned when he was a small child. Entropy had taken them both in to keep them safe; her from the Church, and Gage from her. It was a way for Gage to stay with her, even through her beast night. All he wanted was a way to help his mom. Sol had the capability to do so, if they’d only take the step. He’d told Penn that Marcus Adler wanted to meet with him to talk. At the end of his rope, Penn had agreed.

  Penn recalled Adler’s telepathy looming like a deep base note in Paris. He hadn’t let himself ask all the questions that were pressing on the backs of his eyes. The whys, the hows. This was where he was, so he took the leap.

  The bathroom opened up into a stately office with a dark wooden desk designed to impress. There were bookshelves of darker wood covered in a scattering of books and curios. A window looked out over the city. Gage had taken up a post by the door and was watching him without expression.

  The man who sat at the desk appeared as he’d expected, but photos didn’t capture the way in which he could look at you. There was a menace there, beyond the surface, like a mousetrap waiting to spring.

  The man had stood and regarded him with a level of formality and respect that had taken Penn aback.

  “Mr. Harris.”

  Penn remembered nodding to him. “Mr. Adler.”

  He’d gestured for Penn to sit. “Thank you, Gage.” The teleporter stepped out and closed the door.

  They both sat and Penn looked at him, suddenly blank of all the things he’d considered saying.

  Marcus Adler got an amused twist to his face. “I’m surprised you didn’t take up my offer to meet in a public place.”

  “I have enough of an idea of who you are to know that meeting in a public place wouldn’t change anything.“ Penn glanced around, struggling to think. “How do you expect this conversation to go?”

  He cocked his head at that. “How do you expect this conversation to go? That’s the real question. You wouldn’t have come here, blind and without backup, if you didn’t already know where you stood.”

  Penn wasn’t interested in being forced to give up ground. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I don’t know you. Truthfully, Sol doesn’t know you. What we have comes in the form of boogeyman ghost stories. What I know, I know from cleaning sites with Entropy agents who weren’t quite dead yet and scanning their heads.”

  The subject hadn’t seemed to bother him. “That’s the issue, isn’t it? You have no idea what we do here, so how can you decide we’re enemies? Most Sol agents would have expected to be teleported into a damp dungeon or some cave where we all live in our own filth.”

  Penn had to give him that. There was a measure of surprise at how beautiful the room was and how many minds filled the building with perfectly peaceful and banal thoughts in their heads.

  “You’re saying Entropy doesn't have enmity for SolCorp?”

  “We don’t have to. Gage told you a little about us, that we’re already using Sol labs to work on our pet projects?”

  “A cure.”

  “A cure for the affliction, not the state of being. There’s nothing wrong with Elders at their core, except that which robs them of free will.”

  “Nothing wrong with them?” Penn schooled his face. “Mr. Adler, you know my history. You’re aware of what I do for a living. You know the bodies I’ve seen.”

  “I do. But you cannot fault a person for taking what they need to survive. Their only option is to eat or wait until they have no control and eat anyway. These are the facts that Entropy has been managing since before you or I were born. Before Sol existed.”

  “And how is that going?”

  “We have facilities across the globe where Elders can come to get portioned-out meals and be confined during their third night for others’ protection. Our cure, as you call it, also involves lab grown food for them. We’re taking every avenue we have at our disposal.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to get anyone in Sol to agree that they aren’t monsters.”

  “Then they can go ahead and have one of their animal-talkers ask a cow how it feels about us and our dinner. We’re all killers when it comes to our survival, and worse monsters when it comes to our comfort.”

  “Still.”

  “We’ve already convinced them, or started to. You must have assumed by now that Gage is far from the only person in Sol sympathizing with us.”

  “Gage was raised in Entropy.”

  “We have plenty of del Sol’s on board with our vision.”

  “So what’s your end goal? Install or convert enough people to bring the building down and institute a take over?”

  “No. You’ve gone back to the filthy cave perception. We want to join Sol, or rather join a Sol with a slightly altered vision. If all goes to plan, ninety-nine percent of SolCorp will never even know that anything has happened—only that there’s been a subtle ideological shift, followed by a Venus breakthrough to help the poor, primitive Phagi become more peaceful members of society.”

  “And Entropy would, what? Disappear?”

  “Yes. This isn’t about winning or ego. It’s about reality. You, of all people, must know you’re losing the information war. It’s admirable that you haven’t lost already.”

  “I can agree that it’s unsustainable. But hasn’t Entropy’s view always been that you’d rather break it wide open? Get us all killed?”

  “Let’s be honest here. There isn’t a soldier in the world who could kill you or me.”

  “I can’t telepath a bomb into not going off.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” He tapped on the surface of his desk. “Our corporate games office is twenty-five percent people like us and the rest are human, but they all know who they work for. Just because Sol hasn’t done it, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

  “How?”

  “A simple combination of good pay, a little fear, and exposure. It’s hard to be scared of a teleporter after you’ve had lunch with them. They’re disgustingly charming.”

  “I’ve noticed. That doesn’t hold true for telepaths, I’ve found.”

  Adler chuckled. “No. We’re not as easy to swallow, but humans have their own range of tolerable to less tolerable individuals, so why can’t we?”

  Penn could still feel the cold ache that had gripped him when he realized what was being said. “You don’t think you can prevent a war.”

  “Neither do you.” Adler had regarded him thoughtfully. “You thought I could. You thought I could be your answer.”

  “I want to prevent it.”

  “Of course you do, Mr. Harris.” Adler had extended a hand, palm up, his voice nonjudgmental. “That’s what makes you, you.” He closed his fist. “But some things are impossible. Whatever you may think of me and my methods, you should know that if we could prevent what’s coming in any way at all, beyond any doubt, that is the course my superior, Mr. Gideon Wright, would insist upon.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “No. Alone, Entropy as a whole won’t survive it. And no amount of organizational trees will keep Sol alive either.” Penn recalled the panic that gripped him, having no way to predict what would happen as Adler stood and made his way around the large desk. “Your politicians won’t save you. Humans love a common enemy to unite around. It wins elections.” Before Penn could stand to greet him, Adler took a seat in the other chair in front of his desk. It struck him as a goodwill gesture. “What I can promise you,” Adler went on, closer to Penn now, with nothing but air between them, “is that together we can survive and protect our people. We’re both what the other needs. Sol has the manpower, scientific advancements, and resources that we lack.”

  Penn had struggled to catch his breath. “And what do you bring to the table?”

  “Entropy has humans who will defend our right to exist, Elders who will fight for us, and a sustainable model of operation. But most importantly, we can see what’s in front of us and we’re willing to do something about it. Now. Without forming a committee or creating a five-year study and flashy line graphs. Your corporation is blind and, whether you realize that or not, it’s by design. They don’t want you to know who we are because if the del Sols ever understood their other options, they might not choose the hand that made them—but none of that will matter if we’re all dead.”

  Penn’s phone went off again, jarring him out of the memory. The knack misfire had gotten onto social media and his team was scrambling to track down witnesses. With a sigh, Penn stood.

  Adler walked back into the room. “Sorry about that. It looks like I’ll be heading to Paris sooner than anticipated. Are we good?”

  They shook hands. “We’re good. I have to run off to handle a Cleanup emergency anyway. It never ends.”

  “It will, Mr. Harris.”

  ***