“They suckered Sandy right in, you mean. They made her believe—Mustafa made her believe—that ISO wanted to force League to intervene in New Torah. Instead, he knew League were already involved in New Torah, he just wanted to force them to let ISO in on the action. And in coming here, and causing all kind of chaos as Sandy is so good at doing, suddenly League and maybe even New Torah get worried, and tell Mustafa, ‘hey, that’s enough of your troublemaking, we’ll let you in on the deal, but you gotta ditch your new Federation buddies.’”
“So Mustafa betrays Sandy,” Rhian said quietly. “In exchange for getting the ISO a slice of the action.” She slapped her pistol back together, with ominous intent. Chambered a round.
“Makes sense,” Vanessa agreed. “There isn’t much he wouldn’t do for ISO. And he knew how important it was to Sandy, that she’d fall for it more easily than most.”
“Yes,” said Rhian. “But now he’s going to regret it. They all are, you watch. Sandy’s still alive down there. She’s dangerous enough on normal days, but now she’ll be really angry. They’re all screwed.”
“Even Sandy can’t take out all the corporations in Droze single-handed,” Ari murmured.
“No?” Rhian looked dangerously sceptical.
“If you’re right,” Cai interrupted, looking at Rhian, “then we have a problem. Cassandra seems very effective and determined. But I warn you—if she were ever to stand a realistic chance of compromising Chancelry HQ on Droze, League would never allow it.”
Vanessa frowned at him. “League would never allow it? You mean New Torah would never allow it, surely?”
“Either,” said Cai, with certainty. “But if Cassandra were successful in spite of New Torah’s efforts, League would intervene. If necessary, they’d destroy Droze from orbit, whatever New Torah thought of it, and no matter how many died. With this League ship at station dock, they could actually do it. New Torah has orbital defences, but this ship is fast, and already in close orbit. Droze is relatively defenceless against it.”
“Destroy Droze from orbit?” Vanessa stared at Cai, incredulously. “Ari, help out this poor head-kicking grunt for a second, does this make any sense to you at all? Ari?”
Ari said nothing. Vanessa looked at him. Ari was staring at Cai, open-mouthed. His long face seemed paler than usual in this cold, dark against his beard. He raised a finger and pointed at Cai. The finger appeared to be shaking slightly.
“I know what you are,” Ari whispered. Cai stared back, with hard, unblinking eyes. Ari raised a hand defensively, as though to protect his uplinks, one covering his ear. “No, you stay out of my head! I won’t tell anyone, I swear!”
“Ari!” Vanessa barked, now utterly lost. “Ari, tell anyone what?” Ari thought himself completely vulnerable to Cai? Ari was an uplink wizard—he was vulnerable to no one. Her hand clasped the pistol in her thigh pocket. “Would someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
“I can’t tell you,” said Ari, a little calmer now, but no less astonished. “We’ve got recon to do, we’re in enemy territory, and if these guys captured me they might find out that way. Cai’s identity needs to remain secret. Cai.” Very sincerely. “Trust me on this. If you are what I think you are, I’m on your side, too. And Vanessa, Rhi, you don’t need to worry. I don’t know if it makes him a good guy, necessarily, but he’s certainly not on their side, I guarantee it. League, ISO or New Torah, no way.”
“New Torah least of all,” Cai murmured, seeming to relax. “I thank you.”
“No way!” said Vanessa, getting to her feet. “There is no way I conduct an operation like this. One of you will tell me what’s going on!”
“So, things being what they are,” Ari said to Cai, ignoring her completely, “we need to find a way to help Sandy. Perhaps disable that ghostie, certainly find out what her captain is talking to New Torah about.”
Cai nodded. “It will be nice to have some assistance. I am capable, but I cannot do it alone.”
“You’re the only one?” Ari asked, an amazed smile breaking through.
Cai smiled back. “Yes. For now.”
“Wow,” said Ari, leaning back against the wall, both hands in his hair. “Wow.”
“But I warn you,” said Cai, “what we can find up here is limited. The true secrets are in Chancelry HQ. Only Cassandra can uncover them. And those secrets, I am entirely sure, League would rather nuke the city than have revealed.”
Anya looked around. She couldn’t remember coming here. She couldn’t remember where “here” was. There was nothing really to look at, just a giant blank, no colour, no texture. Beneath her was something that might be a floor, but her hands felt nothing as she pressed upon it. She seemed to feel weight, though. And thus, balance. Though it would help if she could see a horizon.
Someone was walking toward her. She looked up. It was a woman, though she wasn’t sure how she could tell. It just moved like a woman. The clothes were indistinct, as was the face. As though obscured by some kind of static.
“Hello,” said a voice, and it was a woman’s voice. She squatted alongside. “Do you know where you are?”
“I think this is some kind of VR,” said Anya, puzzled. “But I’m not very good with VR, usually. How does it work?”
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “That’s my fault. I brought you here. I found you hooked into the main network here, and I wanted to talk to you. This is the only way I could do it without the corporation seeing. The VR matrix hides all our activity here.”
Anya knelt upright. Then, carefully, she stood. She looked herself up and down. She wore her tracksuit, standard clothes. Though of course in here, the tracksuit wasn’t actually real.
“What’s your name?” asked the woman.
“Anya,” said Anya, still looking herself up and down.
“I’m Sandy.”
“Why can’t I see your face?”
“Well, the VR doesn’t know what I look like.”
“Can you see my face?” Anya asked.
“I can. And your hair. I like that haircut.”
Anya put a hand to her hair. It was dark, cut straight about at the jawline, and straight across at the fringe. “Oh. I haven’t had this haircut for a while.”
The woman nodded. “The VR produces an image of how you’ve looked recently. Most people have those images in their memory implants.”
“Where did you find me?” Anya asked. “I can’t remember where I was.”
“What can you remember?”
Anya thought about it. She remembered the usual routines. She remembered not passing tactical. The monitors hadn’t been happy with that. They’d told her she had to take herself off the roster for more procedures.
“Not a lot,” she admitted. “That’s weird, that must be something to do with the VR. Are you from Chancelry, or Heldig? I mean, you are a GI?”
“Yes.”
“Well I remember failing tactical, but I didn’t believe them,” she explained, frowning as she tried to piece it together. “I didn’t think I’d done that badly, but the monitors insisted I had. I wanted to get onto active duty roster—I needed to do something. I was getting tired of waiting and doing all of their boring routines. But they said I had to do some procedures, and I hate those.”
“Medical procedures?” asked the woman.
Anya blinked at her. “Do they do procedures differently from where you’re from? You never said where you’re from.”
The woman looked aside, hands on hips. Anya wished she could see her face. “I’m not from any of the corporations,” she said.
“You’re from outside?”
A nod. “I’m here because I promised someone I’d come to find you. Someone who said he was a very good friend of yours. He said his name was Eduardo.”
Anya gasped. “You met Eduardo? How? Where?”
“He came to where I live. He told me about you. He said you were his very best friend.”
“He is!” Anya agreed. “Where is he? Is Eduardo okay?”
A pause from the woman. “He’s fine,” she said then. “But he can’t be here right now. I said I’d look for you when I came here, and I’d try to bring you to him. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” Anya breathed. “Oh yes. We were different. Did he tell you we were different?”
The woman nodded. “But I’d like you to tell me, too.”
Suddenly a room appeared about them, replacing the blank space. It was a hospital ward, with rows of empty cots. Anya blinked at them.
“This place is taken from your memory,” the woman explained. “And from some local schematics. I can’t bring any of my own information in here past the barriers.”
Anya took a seat on one cot. The woman sat opposite . . . and suddenly Anya could see her face. Blonde, pale blue eyes, both pretty and strong.
“Your name’s Sandy?” she double-checked. Sandy nodded. “Well, Eduardo and I came through development together. And there were lots of others, and some of them were okay, but we just always got along better. We liked the same books and we liked the same games. Did you have any special friend when you went through development?”
“I don’t remember very much of development,” said Sandy. She made a self-deprecating smile. “I’m kind of old. But I’ve checked my files since, so I know some of my records from then, even if I can’t remember.”
“I’m not very old,” said Anya. “I’m four. I think I’m quite a high designation, because some of the others got out of development much earlier than me. They went straight on to active rosters. But I was still struggling a lot with some of my lessons, although those lessons were more complicated than some. The monitors say high designations take much longer to get through development.”
“They do,” Sandy agreed.
“And my attention kept wandering. You’ll tell me if I start wandering here, won’t you?”
Sandy smiled. “I certainly will. But you’re doing very well now.”
“Yeah, but I can’t remember where I was!” Anya exclaimed in frustration.
“Is Eduardo high designation like you?” Sandy pressed.
“Yes! We’re exactly the same age. Eduardo thought we might be based on each other, you know? Our designs? We always thought alike. We could just sit and talk for hours. And sometimes we’d be doing something, and we’d both have exactly the same thought at the same time, and then we’d laugh about it.”
“You’re very lucky,” said Sandy. “From my files I saw that I had a few friends in development, but no single close friend. I was always the highest designation, so I never had anyone to talk to. My best friend was a dog called Goldie. He used to come and visit, and I’d play with him.”
“We have a cat,” said Anya. “Her name’s Ralph.”
“A girl cat called Ralph?”
Anya laughed. “We didn’t know that when we named her! That Ralph was a boy’s name, I mean, not that the cat wasn’t a boy. Eduardo called her Ralph, and then we got used to her being Ralph, so that’s what she stayed. That’s interesting that you had an animal to play with, too.”
“They like to give animals to GIs in development because it helps with socialisation. Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah, it teaches us to play nice with other people,” said Anya. “Even though Ralph’s not a person. Although, I suppose she is really, isn’t she?”
“GIs are very strong,” Sandy added. “We can hurt people if we’re not careful. Animals are very trusting, so the monitors figure that if we can be nice to animals, and not hurt them, then maybe we’ll be nice to people, too.”
“I’d never hurt Ralph,” said Anya with certainty. “She’s our friend. Though sometimes she hurts me. She scratches!”
“Eduardo said that the two of you like a TV show called Rinni and Pasha,” said Sandy.
“Oh, yes!” Anya exclaimed. “That’s our favorite. It’s really funny. There’s these two children, and one’s a boy and one’s a girl, and they’re best friends, even though for straights girls and boys aren’t always supposed to be friends. But they don’t care, they’re best friends anyway no matter what anyone else thinks. And they’re always getting into trouble and stuff . . . did you know, our monitors didn’t want us watching it?”
“Really?” asked Sandy. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a show from the Federation. I think it’s made on some place called Callay, and none of us are supposed to like the Federation. But I said that’s silly, because you wouldn’t know it’s from the Federation, it’s just a show, it could be from anywhere. Eduardo learned to break into the data storage on the network. He found lots of episodes in the library, and we watched them in secret together . . . we can do that. We make tacnet just between the two of us, and use the visual function to watch vids.”
“That’s clever.”
Anya beamed and nodded. “It was Eduardo’s idea, he’s so smart. He said we were just like Rinni and Pasha, always doing things together and getting into trouble. Sometimes he called me Pasha, and I’d call him Rinni. Those were like our code names.”
“So you’re good at using the local network without monitors knowing about it?” Sandy asked.
Anya nodded again. “Eduardo’s a little bit better than me, but he showed me lots of things. It’s quite easy when you know how.”
“Do you think you could find people here in the Chancelry buildings?”
“Yes. It depends where they are. Some places are more difficult than others, but usually I can find them.”
“Okay.” Sandy leaned forward a little on the edge of the cot, looking serious. “Anya, I’m here looking for two of my friends. One is a high-designation GI. I think he might be hurt, so it’s possible he’s in medical. His name’s Poole. Another is a little boy named Kiril. He’s six years old.”
Anya frowned. “A child here? I can’t remember ever seeing a child in Chancelry HQ. I mean, I know all the monitors have children, but they’re all in the accommodation sector. HQ’s only for adults.”
“He was taken from his brother and sister. They’re children too, though they’re a bit older. The eldest is about the age of Rinni and Pasha, and they’re friends of mine. They’re so upset that their little brother was taken away, and they want him back. Can you imagine if Rinni and Pasha were taken away from each other?”
Anya stared at her. “Chancelry did that?”
“Does it surprise you?”
Anya took a deep breath. She looked down. “No.” In a small voice. “It would have surprised Eduardo even less. He said bad things about them. He said only high designations like us seemed to think bad things about Chancelry, the lower designations never did. Why was he taken?”