Kaoren's been in interface meetings ever since, but is very unkeen on letting me out of his sight. Another trap for me is not a good thing.
Friday, October 31
Little Gestures
Kaoren had Sight dreams about me all night. The same thing over and over – me falling and him trying to catch me but my hands slipping through his. Sight Sight isn't supposed to be prophetic, so it's likely a reaction to his awareness that there's an existing threat. He was a wreck by morning (and I wasn't that great, because he thrashed about and even kneed me in the stomach once), and when breakfast time rolled around, we came very close to having an argument because Kaoren wanted to arrange for someone else to take Siame home.
We were fortuitously interrupted by the delivery of a huge number of parcels – the results of my shopping spree – which certainly gave the kids some fun over breakfast. I'm trying to restrain the urge to buy them everything, but even things which are practical replacements in my eyes (like the endless amounts of bubble bath Sen gets through) also count as impossible largesse in their eyes.
To my delight, among the parcels was one which had been forwarded care of Maze, and I tore it open to find that Siame's book gift had been reproduced precisely as ordered, with my laboriously transcribed titles included. This was a serious distraction for Kaoren, who not only was very interested in the contents (and forced himself to not more than glance at it because it was Siame's gift), but also the fact that I'd managed to get it made without him knowing. I'd simply forgotten about it, which appears to be an excellent way to keep secrets from Sight Sight talents.
One of the things I'd ordered was some useful paper, a thick piece of which I folded and wrote on, and a big sheet I measured out against the (huge) book, then gave to the kids the assignment of drawing pictures to make a birthday card and wrapping paper. Kaoren I took off to the shower, to talk him into going with Siame. I don't want him not doing something which would normally be so important to him, just because he's afraid for me. I guess that might count as our first full and proper argument, because we definitely had the make-up sex.
He was pretty subdued afterwards, but quietly joined me in adding drawings to the wrapping and card – really exquisite pictures of some of the animals we'd seen on Muina, which he told me privately his parents would consider embarrassing just because they'd been done on something like wrapping paper. I think I'm going to struggle to like his parents, if I ever meet them.
But the present looked great, all wrapped up in embarrassing art: my little plan to convey to Siame that she's not lost a brother, but instead gained an extended family. But Siame's reaction, when we went down to see her off, was focused almost entirely on Kaoren's drawings. It was hard to tell if she was upset that I'd managed to break Kaoren's ban on drawing, or pleased that he'd drawn something for her. She was on her best behaviour otherwise, self-assured and very polite – despite being tremendously weak and shaky still. No wonder she's feeling down – being sick always makes you feel awful. Her birthday's the day after tomorrow, and I can only hope that the book wasn't just the thing to make her more annoyed with me.
Today was a rough day. Even though my move to Tare had been kept very quiet, and I was thoroughly guarded, being away from me for the seven hours it took to fly Siame to Unara, settle her in, and then fly back was not something Kaoren found easy to face – especially when it involved Siame being so ill, and having to talk to his parents. He ended up asking me to keep him permanently in-channel again, streaming what was around me to him, which I did (except for going to the bathroom) and of course nothing dramatic happened at all, but it helped.
Lira's warning has meant a higher level of alert on all three worlds. I was assigned to Twelfth for the day, and Zan simply incorporated me and the kids into their training regime, while ensuring I was thoroughly guarded at all times. She managed to make it seem almost natural that there were always at least two squad members within five feet of me. But the stress level among all the squads is high, and so many of the Setari look exhausted or are sporting injuries. We had the good news that all the malachite marble locations have been discovered, but the technicians at Oriath have made little progress with the ramp of crushing doom. They're experimenting with sonics as a way to 'keep the words out', but so far have only made it an extra foot or so down the ramp before the poor drone goes squish.
November Again
Saturday, November 1
Keyed Up
Another bad night for Kaoren. Beyond remaining notably unkidnapped, I don't know what I can do for him. It must be awful to have something like Sight Sight shouting at you that the person you love is in danger. Other than keeping tensely alert and taking all logical precautions, you can only wait and try and stop it when it happens. I'm less keyed up about it myself, but in a kind of determined way, because if I let myself think too much about it I'm going to have a few rip-roaring nightmares of my own.
Just picture me with my eyes shut, hands over my ears, going "La la la la la la".
Not exactly heroic, I know. But KOTIS has achieved what it needed from me, found what they think is a workable plan, and my role now is to just keep my head down until they open the way to the last of the marbles.
The rest of Fourth was back from leave today, and I could see that Kaoren's open exhaustion was a serious shock to them. Sen, oddly, isn't having nightmares, but I think her Sight has told her something because she's gone very quiet and wants to be carried about and held far more than usual. I'm not allowed anywhere without a guard, and a full squad within quick response time. Not even medical. Mori and Glade were with me today, and it was a relief to talk almost normally about the ads for the upcoming season of
The Hidden War.
They're hyping the hell out of the first episode as a major, history-making event, and showing the last few seconds of the last episode and then blackness and then a fragment of the actual audio from my log, ending in a huge splash and underwatery sounds.
I think if any of us have to wait any longer someone's head's going to explode from sheer stress.
Monday, November 3
Out from Underneath
It's over.
It's over and I'm not dead. Or trapped in a half-life or any of the things I halfway expected to happen to me. I've been quietly convinced for so long that I would end up dead that I can hardly believe it. Nor can anyone else, I think.
There's a good deal of cautious celebration going on.
Of course, I had to get through a lot of drama to reach this point. It started while I was still being a pin cushion in medical, when news came in from Muina that Second Squad had been lost.
Not lost as in dead: lost as in vanished. They'd been in-transit through Kalasa, hauling a fresh batch of sacrificial drones (now produced in Pandora). They stepped on the platform to the town nearest to Oriath – along with a greensuit and two greysuits who had been with them – and didn't arrive at the expected destination. As totally gone as I'd been when I vanished to Kalasa. All the scanners stationed by the platform could tell us was that there'd been a higher than usual power reading. The greysuits were guessing that the platform's destination had been diverted. That Second Squad had been caught by the trap meant for me.
There's a serious problem with using technology that your enemy understands far better than you.
They'd been missing about an hour by the time we heard the news, and we had to sit through way too much debate over whether to try and use me to visualise the missing. I desperately wanted to, not only because I've grown close to Second, but I just hated to think of Zee and Ketzaren, who would both be going out of their minds. But I was also scared spitless that I would visualise them and they'd be dead.
Before KOTIS was willing to risk a visualisation – particularly one which would require me going into the Ena – they sent every available squad out to scout multiple locations in near-space for any sign of Cruzatch, and then finally took me through a gate they don't normally use, with an escort of six squads.
The visualisation at least wasn't difficult to do and I felt a good deal of relief not to be seeing dead bodies. Nils was looking very captainly, quite unlike his usual self, talking to Jeh while unpacking one of the drones from a pallet of them. Jeh was trying to wake everyone else, all lying about on the floor of a rather familiar-looking doughnut-shaped room. The inside of one of the Pillars.
"The walls–" Halla began, and Kaoren said sharply: "Cut the projection!" and grabbed at me, but it was too late, and his hands went straight through me.
It's a little hard to describe what happened, even after watching several different logs of it. I guess it was the reverse of what I did when visualisating Inisar. I was sitting on the testing chair we'd brought with us, looking at all the symbols burnt into the whitestone walls of the Pillar, which had shifted from glowing mildly to vivid white, and from my point of view just sort of overwhelmed everything I could see and swept me away like a tidal force. I really thought I was in the undertow of a massive wave. The squads guarding me saw me just fade away, as if I was one of my own projections allowed to lapse. And to Nils and Jeh, off in the Pillar, the symbols began glowing and I suddenly blazed into existence, being pulled backward toward the central column of the Pillar.
Nils has Speed and excellent reflexes, and threw himself between me and the central column, which was a handy way to give us both a lot of bruises. I split his lip. The tidal wave kept trying to sweep me on, and he let out this low gasp of pain as he was crushed against the central column, but he managed to keep hold of me.
I felt like a super magnet was pulling me, and Nils was just a bit of squishiness temporarily between me and where I was going. The pressure made it very hard to breathe and Nils was even worse off, with me crushing into his chest, and his enhanced Telekinesis useless because it won't work on me. Even with Jeh's help they couldn't budge me at all, and my arms and legs kept getting sucked backwards around him and going straight through the substance of the central column into the aether stream. All three of us barely had the strength to haul them back, and it was obvious that if Nils didn't let me keep going both of us would suffocate.
"Get one – two – of the small drones," Nils gasped, then opened a channel for all three of us because he was barely able to talk. "Caszandra, open your suit and seal the drones inside it."
This wasn't difficult to do, though it did make me look ridiculously like I was pregnant with very argumentative twins, and spider drones aren't exactly something that are fun to put inside your clothes. Fortunately the legs folded away in non-dangerous ways or I probably would have ended up a drone-kebab.
Nils activated the drones, adding: "Sound your alert – it gives more people more ability to access your interface and suit controls," and gave me a little squeeze after I did, then with Jeh's help struggled out from between me and the symbol-covered central column. I promptly smacked into it and vanished, falling into a river of light.
I've watched the mission log from back on Tare, where I and my projection had both vanished at the same time. Kaoren stays frozen before my empty chair for all of two seconds, eyes wide and horrified, and then goes totally captain, ordering everyone back inside at double-pace and asking Halla for her Sight impressions during the brief trip back inside. His voice was maybe a little more curt than usual, and his eyes nearly totally closed, but otherwise he didn't show any sign of his feelings. He says he couldn't let himself pause until he'd made sure everything he could think of doing was being done.
Once back in real-space he was very absolute in his discussions with the bluesuits – though at that time he thought that I was trapped at the Pillar with Second, and didn't know I'd spent barely any time there at all. But knowing Second was at a Pillar, and with drones, meant they had a shot at finding them, since all the Pillar locations found so far open out into deep-space. Kaoren had a scanning ship which was stationed at the rift island sent into deep-space immediately to try and contact the drones, and then arranged for a second ship to take a mix of scanning technicians and some of the best Kalrani path-finders on a trip through to Muina. And the kids, because Lira has shown a marked tendency to speak to them, and the search would be coordinated from Muina.
I can only be relieved that he did that – and that the weather was good so that they could fly quickly and weren't still in deep-space when it happened. Fourth and Eleventh travelled to the rift island via the Ena – a route which has been included in the regular rotations ever since I got myself trapped the first time – and they joined up with the scanning ship as it came back from its initial survey.
There had already been a project underway to try and locate the Pillars from deep-space. They hadn't succeeded as yet, but then they hadn't had drones and squad sitting handily at any Pillar locations. Deep-space isn't a great environment for drones – the physics there aren't exactly helpful – but drones and ship instruments have a far greater range than the Setari. The scanning ship hadn't detected anything when it went in to hover around the rift entrance, but after returning to collect Fourth and Eleventh, they headed on the usual course to Muina, scanning madly all the way, and finally detected a signal just before the Muina rift. Whereupon Nils told them that I was no longer with them.
Since they were inside the Pillar and relatively protected from Ionoth, Second Squad (bruises and aether-drunkenness aside) weren't in immediate danger, so the ship continued on to Muina to let them know I'd been taken, only to find out that this was old news.