Aspect lifts their chin in a half-hearted show of potential defiance. They love making me happy. They’d probably let me remove all their limbs if necessary for one of my schemes, even if it were a much less noble goal than this. Mental note: Further encourage Aspect’s ability to set independent boundaries when the fate of the entire Pagonian population isn’t at stake.
“Aspect—approves.”
“Good,” I say, already prying the chest panel loose.
It doesn’t take long to modify the interface probe, even only having access to a few smuggled tools from Adria’s repair kit. After the deed is done, we make our way to the post office. It’s little more than a cubic hovel, sandwiched between a lunch meat stand and a digi-game store—I make a grand show of our entrance, intent on removing potential suspicion.
Arms crossed, staring down my nose at my robotic child as though they’re hardly more than a power tool, I loudly instruct, “Mech, check that my address in the database is up to date. Alter as necessary. I will go mail my letter and be back in a moment.”
Then I proceed to talk the bespectacled office attendant’s ear off about how this isdefinitelythe address for my friend Dolus, and his family hasn’t moved sub-settlements since we were barely toddlers, and can theypleaaaaaserun it again before I cry and make a scene?
I really play up the snotty sobs, too, just to make sure they come through the mask’s filtering. The stoically blank-faced postal attendantrubs his glasses, rubs his eyes, rubs his glasses again, and finally runs the address yet another time. The mail machine beeps in monotone protest. Fair enough, since Dolus is a straight-up lie, designed as a distraction.
The attendant releases the kind of long, measured sigh that can only be the product of many, many sleep cycles spent forcing smiles for visitors even worse than I’m being right now.
Somehow, his voice is even-keeled and compassionate when he says, “Let me see what I can do,” and runs my fake address again. Despite the fact that his tense forehead wrinkles visibly wish me death and an eternity of conscious torment. Another mental note: If we do save the planet, send an apology card and some flowers to this post office employee. Customer service, I am so sorry.
Address Attempt Number Seven is thankfully interrupted by a chilly, metal hand on my shoulder. “Operator,” Aspect says, deliberately inflectionless, “this unit—is expected—at the departure gate—for resource harvesting. Can this unit—proceed?”
Even their optical processors look duller than usual, not a spark of true intelligence to be seen. For once, Aspect understood the assignment.
“I suppose I can contact Doluslater,” I groan, guiltily glaring at the attendant while gritting my teeth behind the mask. I spin on my heel and stomp out of the post office with enough entitled swagger to ensure not one dayfolk citizen who was in line behind me will bother confronting or following me on the way out.
“You got it?” I whisper to Aspect as soon as we’re safely out of earshot.
“Sub-settlement B. Unit A2.”
B.An awfully high rank. Close to the settlement’s only entrance and exit, which means it’s not far. I can’t help but bristle anyway.
Sub-settlement A is literally my mother’s palace, the only home I’ve ever known, a towering conglomeration of hard edges and polished metal, looming above the other scattered cubic shapes and accessibleonly with a government-issued scannable permit at the front gate. It’s the only functionally gated community in the Daylands. Anyone can wander through the other areas, though of course individual abodes are locked to all but their residents.
Sub-settlement B, more well maintained than any of the others, is reserved for Chloe’s most trusted servants. Doctors like Ednit. Soldiers like Hyrra. And, apparently, Evolved like Jelza. She must have been richly rewarded for her involvement in the Evolution Project, but even so, her immediate regret in that encapsulated memory burned bright as a fresh brand.
Sub-settlement B is close, thankfully, so we don’t have to huddle in a rail transport while pointedly avoiding eye contact with other citizens. It doesn’t take long for me and Aspect to reach Jelza’s unit, and I’m about to stride right up to the sliding front door and knock when an all-too-familiar voice slithers through the gap beneath.
“You’re absolutely certain that you haven’t seen her?” The speaker is, unmistakably, Ednit.
My muscles tense from my shoulders to my toes.
Aspect is still happily half hopping, half skipping up the stairs to the door, about to hit the mic button themself. Grabbing them by their squeaky peg leg, I pull both of us into the nearest shrubbery, shushing them as I fill them in.
“But Ednit—is Kori’s—friend?”
“I thought so, too, but we can’t assume anything anymore.” I peer through the tangled leaves, spotting a broad window on Unit A2’s far wall. “Follow me to the window, Aspect, and we’ll see what we can hear. But stay low. If they see us, it’s all over.”
As it turns out, what we can hear is abjectly terrifying.
“I didn’t even know the monarch’s daughter was missing,” says a voice I immediately recognize as Jelza’s from her memory. “What makes you think she’s returned? Or that I’d know anything about it?”
Ednit huffs out a breath. “Mech 45P3C7 was just clocked on the settlement’s return log. The mech would never have returned without her, which means she must be here.”
I poke my head up just enough to glimpse Jelza knotting and unknotting her fingers in her thickly braided hair, clearly uncomfortable despite knowing nothing. She’s seated in a gorgeously stained, lavishly cushioned mahogany chair, the sort of furniture that anyone lower than Sub-settlement B could never afford. The matching kitchen table is just large enough for two place settings. But she’s the only resident of the home to be seen. A single door on the wall behind her is securely locked, but light slips underneath the frame. Is her daughter, Dawn, in just the next room over?
“I’m sorry, Ednit,” Jelza says. “I can’t help you.”
I spot Ednit then, flanked by two enforcers with long heatshot rifles. He rises abruptly from his seat at the kitchen table’s opposite end, its legs scraping harshly. “You can’t, or you simply refuse?”
“I know nothing.”
