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. She figures that if she’s going all in with Versk, and by extension Mirem, there’s no use in being more paranoid than she already is. It feels freeing to not care in this particular way.

  “Wait. You did what?”

  Lieutenant Tran has never shown much emotion outside of a carefully calibrated series of expressions that Lanis thinks 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 seems to have finally elicited a real reaction out of the man.

  “I integrated with an AI at Versk Energy at their Armored Suit complex,” Lanis says, 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 shakes her head, still getting over the Versk 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 truly focused on her or on some other communication. 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, I gather?” Lieutenant Tran says carefully.

  “More than well, actually. I dream-walked with the AI. She told me her name, and, if Versk lets us, I think we’ll be working together.” Lanis chews on her nail. Breaking Lieutenant Tran’s unflappable demeanor was a thrill at first, but suddenly she’s uncomfortable.

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

  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.

  “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 would just come back for a more extended period of repair—” 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, eh?”

  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 says, 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 because you never told me what actually happened out there. Maybe because I think 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.

  “You know that that’s classified—” Tran says.

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

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

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

  Tran nods, and opens his mouth to say something.

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

  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 on her 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 slowly 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, shit, are you ok? What happened?” Mirem says, coming quickly onto the bed to where Lanis is slowly sitting up. Wow, I must really look like shit, 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’s pupils dilate wildly, 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, Navigator Sanislov and his competent demeanor as he walked her through the jump protocols to Barrack, Lanis nervously watching, impressed by the ease of which he helped shift the ship through warp.

  Then the incident, and the anomaly, 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’s finished 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, hesitantly: “But why would Fleet ever let you leave? Not just because you’re a navigator, I mean, but because of what you know? Why not ship you to one of the colonies?”

  “Not a navigator; still a cadet, according to Fleet,” interjects Lanis.

  Mirem snorts with disgust. “Cadet. God, those assholes.”

  Lanis pauses, considering her question.

  “My guess? Because they’re afraid of having me on one of their ships. You don’t understand, Mirem,” she says, fear creeping back into her voice. “It was like that thing could smell me. I think it would find me if I was out there again. They wouldn’t risk sending me out there again. And as for my discharge, it would be technically illegal for them to force me to stay once I had been medically deemed unfit for duty, and discharged a few weeks later. Beyond that little detail, 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 try to keep it to yourself. Second, I doubt anyone would believe me. Would you have?” Lanis asks, quietly.

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

  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 integration run, 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.

  “Tomorrow, if you’re up for it,” Mirem says reluctantly.

  “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. This is what I’m good at,” Lanis says, waving a hand, trying to relieve some of that concern. “Though it would be nice to know what kind of sims they’re going to run. Any idea?”

  Mirem rubs her face, still digesting what Lanis has told her. She looks at Lanis, her eyes not only slightly awestruck, but also tinged with fear.

  “Combat, navigator.” she says. “Just combat.”