Chapter Text
Friday night on the glitz-soaked streets of Minerva quarter. She blew a breath into her gloved hands, watched it become a flowing white specter.
Under a blank sky with no moon, the snow beneath her feet became flavored shaved ice in the reflection of various neon vice outlets lining the roads. Intelligent constructs gyrated in waterfalls of red light against shop windows, proprietresses sucking at cigarettes between their fingers. Their forms were inky black, but for the halos of crimson around them. Music thrummed not in her ears, but through her skin, rippling through the air in a manner that told her it was bound somewhere, only leaking out in fragments. Thugs and loan sharks patrolled, steel boots crushing snow. A public security officer blushed under the attention of waifish things in large coats and legs bare but for fish netting. He was different from the one who was there last week, and she was sure he wouldn't be here the next. Someone seared flesh over a barrel fire, spicing it with the simulant flavors of tomorrow's next Big Food class-action lawsuit. She never let her gaze linger in any one place for too long, otherwise they'd think she was here to buy sex, or sell it.
Just a sidelong glance was enough to witness a man being wrestled into an alleyway, cloth over his face. She turned skywards—where next she'd see him—and watched the snow fall about her in curtains. That a schoolboy had navigated all this was jarring, to say the least. Perhaps there truly was divine providence for fools.
She wouldn't know.
A sign ahead of her proclaimed 'BLAKE'S'. Further lettering promised all things baked and caffeinated. A man trying very hard to blend in hovered near the entrance, smoking a cigarette under a wide-brimmed hat. This establishment was more squat and modest than its peers; the successful bowed crime matriarch amidst youthful knife-lickers and arm-breakers. It forwent the neon for pale yellow filament, and sheet plastic for old wood and brick. Anywhere else, it would've been comely, but it was just as rotten on the inside as all others. When she approached, the man's head raised. Under the brim of a hat glowed three blue dots where an eye should be. They spun as they read her face, growing, shrinking, insectoid in their twitching.
"Lovely evening, Kohl?"
"No one's died yet," he said. She let her eye travel down to his waist. A steel hand hung lazily in a pocket, and a new answer to too many questions sat in a holster at his hip.
"What happened to the Cordelia?"
"Got done dirty in the black."
"And you didn't go back for her?"
A chittering from his throat. A cold vocal module processing irritation. And a smidge of guilt.
"Maybe your little boy guest can help me out with that." His mouth curved into a sneer, cuts on his lips parallel with gaps in his teeth, "Knew I'd learn your poison eventually."
She decided to leave him to his misery. A bell tinkled as she pushed the door open.
Warmth shrouded her quickly, with it came the hum of conversation and the scent of baked sugar. A jukebox warbled in a corner; a man with a saxophone and a broken heart. She left her coat and hat on a hook, keeping her scarf about her person. The counter was unoccupied but for the pastry chef in whites sliding into view from behind frosted glass cases. He raised an eyebrow. She pointed out what she liked, and what she imagined her guest would too. With a nod, the chef vanished. She let her eyes roam the shop. Men in suits, women in dresses. Superior clientele. Every one of them a bird of prey. Liquor flowed freely. She counted guns under armpits and blades hidden in walking sticks. She found the night's engagements quickly; nestled into a corner near the bathrooms, in a vacuum untouched by the faux candle chandeliers.
The chef returned with a brown bag.
"Thank you," given with the sweetest smile. She earned a grunt for her trouble. Business must be spectacular.
With her suede steps as soft as they were, the boy didn't realize she'd approached until she was pulling back the chair. It was cute and a little pitiful watching him scramble to attention, beating back the seductive fingers of sleep that'd just about caressed him in their entirety. He tried to make eye contact, immediately found her to be the most beautiful woman he'd seen, and hid his face by pressing his chin against his sternum, blush coloring him strawberry. His scruff was evident, with grease slicking the tangled knots of slate-grey hair and fray at the hems of his meagre winter bundling. No one had kissed this one off to school in a while.
"How did you learn about me?"
All business, that was Venus.
"I..."
His hands balled on the table.
"I swore not to say."
Par for the course for their trade. At the end of every thread was rarely anything other than a shadow. A faceless silhouette. A voice with no owner. A Hollow.
"You want to be a Proxy?" she asked, though it was more a statement.
He nodded.
She had a bag with her. From it, she produced sheaves of paper. Diagrams filled it, script annotated it, spilled something—coffee? Orange juice?—marred a corner of it. His eyes lit up when he saw them.
"Are these yours?"
"Y-yes, I sent them."
"I don't believe you," she said easily. It crushed him, but not for too long. He smelled blood. He could tell his foot was in the door.
"Give me a drill," he said. The teal of his eyes caught a filament bulb somewhere. They glowed. "I can prove it."
She smiled. Then she slid a blank sheet across to him and a ballpoint pen. He snatched the latter up, clicking it and settling it in his hand. Next, she removed her watch.
"You get a reward if you finish in ten minutes. Bigger one in seven. The biggest in five."
He nodded.
"Assume an ideal Standard Hollow Model A6 with a Solin's coefficient of two-point-nine-three-eight. DNE is an uncertainty space of less than five-point-two and greater than eighteen-point-six. The Swirl and Strait systems follow Cromwell's architecture within their conventional bounds, and become Maximilian at ten percent away from expected points. Assume straits of five hundred meters, and steps of twenty each. FGC is negative point-three-six."
He scribbled frantically in his shorthand. She didn't recognize it; likely proprietary.
"Payload is a sphere one meter in diameter. Assume non-destructive interference with rift boundaries. Drop cone is ten meters across."
She clicked her watch. The arms began their steady path forward.
"Escape the black."
His pen was off to the races. She ignored him in favor of her pastries. But for the coming and going of cafe patrons, and the jukebox rolling one vinyl into another, time seemed to grind to a halt.
When he finished, his pen clicked. Stubby fingers slid the paper towards her. She clicked the stopwatch. Eight minutes and change. A glance at the sheet revealed... mania. Not discipline, no, the far scarier sibling; obsession. She slid him some pastries as she reviewed his work, averting her eyes and trying to harden her heart against how he set upon it like a jackal. Many things were clear from what she read; he was chasing something, or something was chasing him. He had someone to kill, or to save.
"Why did you take a second differential here?"
He paused eating to look. "Shortcut."
"And the drop cone topology?"
"Can't say," he said. But he didn't need to; the answer lay in the fact that it was there at all. If he'd been a little smarter, he'd have omitted it, because only a handful of persons knew the convolutions necessary to graph a drop cone in four-dimensional space, and there was only one the boy could ever have access to. He'd been smart enough to not wear his school uniform, but he'd forgotten his shoelaces, and the blue-yellow were as overt as the neon signs painting the snow outside. What was one of her students doing here?
She asked no more questions.
"What do you think it means to be a Proxy?"
He didn't think long. He was a good student, after all.
"Proxies find paths in Hollows and lead others through them. We are Hollow cartographers."
It was a textbook answer, and it betrayed him. She'd already made her mind to take him under her wing the moment he attacked the questions without need for clarification, but there was still more to learn.
"Now, your reward."
His eyes glittered. The poor thing.
From her bag, she produced square cards. Polaroids. Five of them. She arranged them in front, faces down. When his confused stare had bored deep enough holes in them, she flipped them over. One by one.
Two men. Two women. And a child.
"Choose."
"Choose?"
"Choose. Who lives," she said, watching his fingers close into fists. "And who dies."
What came next was a whisper.
"I wasn't fast enough."
She nodded.
"How many? Get to live?"
"Three."
It took him only seconds. With a shaking hand, he turned the photos of the two men over, scooping the two women and the child in his hand. Venus studied his face.
"Chivalry?"
"No," he said, eyes on the photographs. "The guys would come after me if I let them live. Get revenge."
The final bit she was looking for.
"Do you understand now? What it means to be a Proxy?"
He nodded. He was a good student, after all.
"You pass."
It brought him no joy.
"What did you say your name was?"
"Wise."
"Wise what? What's your last name?"
He looked up and at her now.
"I don't have one."
When they next met, she brought a basket of groceries. He had a sister he hadn't mentioned. A shrewd choice, and a point in his favor.
They met somewhere more upscale. He was harder to spot this time, having tuned his wardrobe in a few short days to fit in with the day's context. Chino pants and a sweater with the collar peeking out, to go with the uncracked sheet glass, marble, and wrought iron furnishings. A jacket slung over the back of his chair, and half a coffee steamed in his front, next to a croissant. He read a book on... monetary policy.
She sat across from him, pausing to catch her breath. Minerva's silver taxies did an endless carousel in front, crunching snow into grey slush as they ingested and spat out endless streams of bankers and brokers and their aides. The sky was dull and hung low, the sun replaced by a sky-spanning cotton glow.
"What do you know of the NEDF's Swandive Maneuver?"
He didn't look up, licking his finger, turning a page. His hair was neater too; cut close around his ears and treated about as well as hers. He cleaned up quite well.
"Aside from the fatality rates?"
A waiter arrived. She pointed at what he was having, dismissing him with a finger.
"Let's say yes."
"It's a good idea in theory. Gravity means ether is thick at the sides and thin at the top, so the safest way into a Hollow is by insertion from the top; Zandire's Rule," now he looked in her direction, but not at her. There was a lost look that overcame him when he was in his element. A way his eye twitched. He stared through everything.
"It runs into the problem of how the Strait system works. You don't want to move too fast in a Hollow."
"How come?"
Some puzzlement, then he pushed forward his cup of coffee. A white film of foam had formed above it, and with a quick drag of a spoon, it was disturbed. Creamy brown peaked out from underneath, while vortices formed in the pale.
"Do you get it?"
"Vortices?"
A nod. "Right. You move too fast, you form rifts in your wake. You'd be gone, but the guy behind you is gonna fall in. At that speed, and with the weird shapes of NEDF kit, you cause too many collisions in the rift throat. Destabilization is guaranteed, and where you wind up is a long chain of... bad dice rolls."
She paused to study him for a moment, before reaching into her bag and producing an envelope. With ginger fingers, she slid it across the table. A small knife fished from inside of his coat peeled it open. From it he withdrew sheaves of papers. He took one brief look and laughed.
"What's the matter?"
"Where did you get these?" he said, tapping them on the table with a finger. There was a joke here she was missing.
"That's confidential."
"Leaked from Diamond Division's flight school, I'm guessing. You don't have to tell."
He struck suspiciously close to the mark. "You've seen it?"
"Yeah."
The waiter returned with coffee and a croissant of her own. It was ignored.
"Well? Is it promising?"
His smile was awkward now. "I think so, but I can't prove it. It's a very experimental maneuver; everyone links arms in an onion ring and drops like that, instead of one after another in a line. In theory, the resulting vortices should spin in opposite directions, cancelling each other out," he looked away, face in a hand. "If I could have proven it, I'd have put it in the paper."
It took a second. Her face asked the question.
"Yeah, it's mine. I wrote it. Got snatched by an old professor looking for more tenure. I'm surprised it's made it that far. Is that all?"
She managed to rally from her shock. "What would it take to make it work? Why hasn't anyone done it yet?"
"It's risky for one. Needs a new training regimen. That means getting rid of orthodoxy. Military isn't a fan of that," a pause to flip through pages, before revealing sheets with expansive white space. "But it's also because I didn't submit the code or the math, just some of the results. They'll have to reverse engineer it, or trial-and-error their way."
"Do you still have it?"
"I might. But the paper is old. So is the code. It needs revising."
She clenched a fist. "What do you need?"
Not a second too long think, "A whole lot of GPUs. A cooling rig too, I could make do with aircon stuff but nitrogen would be better. And some HIA tech. And some WSI tech. It's all very illegal. And expensive."
With that, the meeting was over. He stood. With a leg, she moved the basket she brought from underneath her chair. He looked to it, then her.
"Extend my regards."
He took it. "I will do that. What will you do next?"
"Wait and see."
She sat in a streetcar. Across from her, the Helios Academy burned bright in winter afternoon sun, snow-capped roofs glowing gold. Her watch read half past six. Clearly he was the type not in any hurry to head home.
It took another ten minutes before the iron gates opened, releasing him and his sister. She was animated about something, gesturing wildly. It was terribly cute to watch. He had a smile on his face warmer than the coming sunset. In some bout of mischief, she ran ahead to the street corner. He took the moment to produce his phone, tapping something out on its screen.
A ding in her pocket. She looked down at her hip, then back at him. He stared straight at her. With two fingers in a 'v', he indicated his eyes, then pointed them at hers. It was accompanied by an affectation of roughness. A swagger earned from watching too many movies.
It brought a smile to her face.
The radio buzzed as it connected. The words that would follow would bounce a thousand times off a dozen independent access points, encrypted and decrypted with CPU cycles bankrolled entirely in the dark.
"Got a job for you, Proxy."
"Details?"
"Nakalele-23 breached primary containment and has begun gradual expansion. It's not a very dangerous Hollow, still pretty new. Its expansion has swallowed up a private firm's computer farm. I have clients interested in pinching some of the silicon."
"What's the sticky part?"
"Autonomous patrols. They use the rifts to maintain perimeter control."
"No blindspots. In space, or in time."
"A tough nut to crack. Think you can do it?"
"What's the comp?"
"An arm and a leg."
"And my cut?"
"An arm and a leg," she said, the littlest smile on her face. "Consider it your signup bonus."
If he was grateful, it wasn't immediate. "Hardware and personnel?"
"You got a data package inbound. How soon can you guide them in?"
"Where are they now?"
"Camping outside the Hollow."
"Tell them to suit up."
She knocked out a code on the door. Heavy, reinforced steel. It swallowed the sound of her taps and bruised her knuckles for her trouble. She was already reaching for her phone when the click of sliding deadbolts stirred her back to focus.
It opened a crack, then fully. He stood in overalls and an apron, a damp stain down his front. A welding visor covered his face, flipped up with a wrench in his hands. He wore a schoolboy's smile, admitting her in with quick handwaves. It'd taken a while to find this place. The rest of the building was an old skull, hollow and black, with holes where windows would've been like empty eye sockets. Wind and nature had eaten away the bare grey of concrete and seeded moss in the gap, lending the place the damp smell of earth after rain.
That changed quickly after navigating a smattering of halls, arriving at a door that needed a passcode to open, a camera off to the side. They passed under sheets of plastic, into a room under construction, mining floodlights illuminating chaos. Soundproofing lined the walls, tubes, and brackets, and plastic wrap covered the floor. A rack laden with pressurized gas tanks in parallel had to be rolled out of their way. In her pencil skirt and heels, she suddenly felt very overdressed. He produced a canned drink from a fridge she hadn't seen in a dark corner. Her eyes roved to the centerpiece of the installation: a wall lined entirely in cathode ray televisions, static buzzing on every screen. Bangboo scurried about with tools.
She stayed three hours and change. All of it was spent watching him bounce all over the place with a frenzy she couldn't have foreseen. What this tool did, what this tool would do. Demonstrations. Experiments. A pause of stilling self-consciousness, apologizing for his mania only to remember some facet of it that remained undiscussed, and diving back into it once again. He cut himself in some places, zapped himself in others, sweated until he was ragged, but never stopped. At some point, he'd dragged her next a computer screen, pointing out the beginnings of simulation of some aspect of Hollow dynamics. She understood enough to know she understood nothing.
But he sweated youthful zeal. It rolled off him like waters down a cliff. And there was a passion in him that stoked hers.
At the door, the zealot had been thoroughly wrung out, leaving only a shaggy boy behind.
"I hope I wasn't too much, Miss Venus."
She gave her polite smile, assuring him that no, it was quite alright. When the door shut, her hand rose to it, almost to knock, fist already clenched. Then it returned to her side, and she walked away.
If anything, it hadn't been enough.
She took him clothes shopping. He had a school event, and none of the taste necessary to navigate it. It was dawning on her that he truly knew little else other than Hollows. That much was fine. They were a few jobs deep, and he'd proven to be quite the little moneymaker. Whatever it was he did bordered on wizardry, and she'd long given up on trying to understand it. He had not, however, and so they'd begun spending quite some time together.
She found she enjoyed his company.
The ladies at the outfitters read them as mother and son. He flushed terribly, earning more chuckles thrown their way, and she didn't correct them. She followed as he wandered, sparkly-eyed, gaping at the digits he saw on the suits he did, before his shock morphed into a cold resignation as he realized they were no longer out of his breadth. He picked one, then another.
"You should get a green tie," she said. "Green, leaning towards blue."
"Why's that?"
"Would go good with your eyes."
He stared, just a smidge confused. "Is that how it works?"
"Sometimes, but I think it would be great on you."
He pondered it, then picked out a grey suit.
"So this one for my hair?" he asked. She laughed at how his face had contorted with the question, convinced he'd cracked the puzzle but still unsure. Ever unsure. And looking to her to right him.
"It's worth a shot."
They picked out a couple more and went to the changing rooms. They were private ones. He prompted her with his hands to enter first, but she laughed and declined. Once he'd gone in, she followed. And locked the door behind them. He didn't seem to notice.
The room was an octagon, cut into sections by bent metal tubing from which sheer curtains hung. One side had three mirrors at angles, for thorough scrutinizing of one's attire. She sat on a bench while he disappeared behind one set of curtains to change. She planned to spend the bulk of the waiting periods managing her affairs on her phone, were it not for noticing a mirror on a set of wheels, angled such that it gave her a view of... where she shouldn't.
She chewed her lip.
He removed his winter coat first, then a cardigan under it, leaving a plain shirt suited for worthier company. That followed soon enough, and she was allowed to glimpse a fair bit of skin broken up by white singlet. She looked away. For a moment. He was no linebacker, but he'd definitely spent some time on fields. Nothing intense, she wagered; tennis instead of football. The rest of his muscular edge seemed a product of odd jobs, little surprise for a student. He paused to test his joints for a bit, deliberate, practiced flexes of anatomical groups. Sore from his harder work, she imagined. He set about removing his belt, then his pants. Her finger picked at her thumb, nail digging at the skin there until it stung. There was a bit of guilt. Her eyes roved. Down. Down. There was a lot of guilt. But not enough.
He dressed and reemerged. She pretended to have been busy, looking up once he appeared in full.
"What's the damage?"
If he looked good nearly naked, he was doubly so in suit.
"Aren't you the cutest thing?" she said, standing. He blushed furiously, and further when she pulled at the creases and yanked at knobs of cloth. She was a foot taller and change, and it was an enlightening experience for her peering into his face as she did his tie. This work of theirs had given an edge to his mind but spared his body, and he still had the cupid cheeks she had to hold back from pinching.
He winced. "Please don't choke me."
Her mind wandered. She chuckled drily. She gave him a playful slap on the side of his face.
"My bad," she said, stepping backwards to survey him in his entirety. "It looks great, I love it."
"I still want to try the navy one."
"Keep the tie."
He stepped away, "Sure, sure."
He was back behind the curtain, and in the view of the mirror once again. He undressed and redressed again. About five or so times. When he finished the suits they picked, she asked him to try two of them again. Just to make sure. When that was done, she went to get another one. And another one.
Just to make sure.
Ether had dried her lips. She took a long pull of a drink from an insulated flask, shifting her lower half to get more comfortable in the little alcove she hid within. Staccato gunfire tore the air some meters away, followed by the heavy steps of ethereals. Someone uncorked a scream, silenced as quickly as it began. This job was going to shit. There would have to be a redo.
Her hand hovered over the radio.
She didn't want to call him. Despite everything, he still had something of a conscience. There was an overt kind of criminality he turned his nose at, amorphous lines he didn't cross. He fought to preserve that part of him. They'd butted heads over it, and she'd grown to respect him as a consequence. Those without such qualms—those who were more than eager—were far less capable, as she was now witnessing. She mimed pressing the buttons. Outside, an explosion rocked the Hollow. The glow filled her hiding place, casting yellows and oranges and filling her nostrils with smoke. She peeked through a small gap, tracing a line of crimson to a charred, severed arm. Burns ate holes in the cloth. It smoked lightly.
She pressed the buttons.
"Come in, Phaethon."
"Auth?"
She checked her watch and did a calculation. "Three-eight-two-six-one."
"Afternoon Venus. You are in a Hollow."
"I have a job for you."
"Sounds urgent."
"It's a mess. Did you hear of the debris collapse from Orvieto-7?"
"I did."
"It took out some Defense Force aerial transports. Deep in Pursenas. The cargo is spread out over five square kilometers of Euclidean space, far as we can tell."
"I'm guessing I'm not helping the NEDF clean up after themselves?"
A shadow fell over her alcove, kaleidoscopic light bathing her face. Pure black stared at her. She became very, very still. When the ethereal passed, she loosed the breath she held.
"No."
"Who are the clients?"
"At least six of them. I plan to work all sides."
"Flavor?"
"Gunrunners, black laboratories, rebel soldiers."
A long pause from the other side.
"I'm not interested."
A chuckle, though exasperated. "At least ask me about the money."
"I already know it's good. I'm not interested."
She squeezed her own leg. She was going to have to be ugly.
"January's in a month, you know."
"I know my tuition schedule. Don't bring that up again."
The undertone of static blunted much of the edge, but it bit all the same.
"Please consider it at least."
"Give me a reason."
She squeezed harder.
"It would mean a lot to me. Business has slowed this winter. More than usual."
No response.
A sigh.
"Data package?"
Two clicks on her phone. "Inbound."
"I'll take a look."
Hollow Zero breached final containment measures. The Defense Force was tested and found wanting. Eridu fell. All that once was, was now no more.
She peered out of a flap in her tent. Hundreds of others swayed softly in the wind. It bent the trees too, lending them a low, long whistle that gave her mourning a melody. Beyond, the ruins of all she once knew scored the horizon, the black, glitter-edged dome devouring the rest of it. Shiyu pillars peeked out of it, small as matchheads. Helicopters swarmed like flies over sections. A radio next to her read obituaries, interspaced with military broadcasts.
She clutched the radio. And dialed again. Static.
An hour later, she dialed again. Static.
An hour later, she wiped her eyes and dialed again. Static.
So it had been for days. The ground drank of those days and they bloomed into weeks. She was moved with thousands of others like cattle to a dozen places, always further and further from when last she'd seen him. She received snippets from old contacts, but the web was now frayed and filled with holes.
Perhaps the black had, as with everything, swallowed him whole.
She dialed again. Static.
A message had reached her. A letter, tossed flippantly by a soldier who dreamed themselves worthier of so much more. In it was a cutting of a film reel, and a map.
It took a week to procure supplies, and another to acquire transport. But she did it all the same. They dropped her and her gear off on thick forest outskirts, asphalt having long given way to mud. She unfolded a compact bike and took off.
She rode for an hour. Then another. She slowed when she felt the prickling on her neck. Something watching. She knew the feeling. She'd come upon a fence, and a figure emerged from behind a tree, shotgun level with her. They wore camouflage, belts binding foliage to their frame. They looked less a man, and more a pagan effigy. Something to which you offered sacrifice.
"Wise?"
The gun lowered, and the goggles he wore followed. The tell-tale green shone through. He was taller now, wrinkled around the edges. The world had taken away his schoolboy pudge, filed away his softness, hardened the look in his eyes.
But it hadn't taken him.
He stepped forward, unlocking the gate seemingly with his wrist, hovering above metal. A tap on a screen mounted to his other wrist followed. Clicks resounded in the trees around them. She turned her eyes to one of them, seeing the dull glint of parallel gun barrels, caught in shattered sunbeams.
"Evening, Venus. Got a job for me?"
Either he couldn't parse that she was stunned, or knew the best remedy for that was moving things along. She struggled for a question, opting for something that wasn't them.
"Did... did Belle make it?"
He smiled, full and beautiful. "She did; I made sure of it. You must've come a long way," with a hand, the gate swung open. She had to step back, before stepping in. "We're about to have dinner. Come inside."
"Phaethon to Advance-1, do you copy?"
Static.
Wise clutched the radio in hand. Infront of him, the wall of televisions charted a map of a Hollow. It flickered, tangled, writhed like something living. Computers stared back at him, geometric graphics swirling. Bangboo wrestled with equipment elsewhere. Venus stood behind him, hands clenched in front of her, beads of sweat down her neck.
"Phaethon to Advance-1, do you copy?"
Buzzing static. The map on the televisions seemed to right itself—Wise perking up in an instant—before immediately disintegrating. He parked the radio on the television, typing furiously on a keyboard. Venus could only watch. Some new model filled the screen. A wireframe semicircle, nodes annotated with numbers. He picked up the radio again, tapping in a code.
"You've reached Witoldevine," an automated voice stated. "Crossing over?"
"Solove, grid one-eight-six, node four-five."
"Stand by, stand by."
Buzzing. Clicks. A beep.
"Phaethon to Advance-1, do you copy?"
Harsh, sputtering static, like an engine falling apart.
Then—
"Phaet—you have to get—no!—you have to get us—Phaethon!!"
A roar, piercing and all-encompassing. It rattled garbled and loud through the speakers and covered them, heavy and thick like tar. Through the din, something sharp against something sharper, and the sickening squish of flesh. Red warning lights covered the televisions, the map collapsing into dots of light.
For a moment, Wise neither spoke nor moved. The radio remained in his grip, static spilling from it. He set it down softly on the table, tapping out new commands. An oval visual feed appeared on a single screen. A bangboo's viewport. It faced a fresh killing floor.
Venus watched for a moment and could watch no longer. Wise allowed himself—forced himself—to see more of it. It seared his mind, adding texture to his imaginings, teaching him lessons. She had her hands over her eyes, sinking against a wall to sit on the floor. She didn't know when he'd stood, just that he had when a far door shut, subdued vomiting following behind it, and the gargle of a toilet being flushed.
Rumors reached them of a New Eridu. Something that had risen from the ashes, across the chasm that had formed when the Heavens had fallen and the Earth had cracked to receive her.
They went to see it for themselves.
He was sitting when she arrived, tapping away at a laptop. She paused to study him, as it'd still not become rote how he had changed. Friends in a cleaner world than hers had testified to this effect; that it was scary watching something grow up. She'd had no frame of reference. That had changed.
She sat. It was winter outside. She produced a cigarette, searching in her bag for a lighter. None was found. Her eyes rose to him, finding his already on her.
"Got a light?"
He'd long since given up chastising her for it. She'd grown a little resentful of that. He'd... cooled. From his jacket, he produced a one. She held it out to be lit, taking a long drag as she did. Better already, for shorter than she knew she'd like. She blew a cloud in his direction, and grinning just a bit when he levelled a glare at her.
"I got a job for you, Mr. Phaethon."
He didn't look up from his laptop. "Is that why you had to come yourself?"
"Nah," followed by a long pull. She blew the ash towards the window, past the bent iron proofing. "Let's do a drill. Like old times."
What followed was a stare. She met it without issue.
"I'm busy."
"You'll like this one. Good client."
"Who?"
"I'll tell you, but let's do the drill first."
She watched his fists clench with a smile. From his pocket, he produced a pen, placing the end on the bare table. No paper.
"We're working with the Hawara Hollow. You're moving personnel and man-packable equipment. Sixty of the first and half as many of the second. They're split into parties, each leaving one hour after the other. First party leaves at noon, at grid twenty-three."
He took it all like a light snack. "Objective?"
"Drop cone convergence. Grid seven."
His brow furrowed. "In Hawara? Two parties landing in the same place? That's—"
It was then she smiled. All teeth.
"Not two. Convergence, with three angles of incidence."
He glared and said nothing as she stood, rounding the table. She knew what he'd say, even if thinking in a wholly different direction. When she reached his side of the table, a short hop put her on it, inches away from him. Her ankles touched his thighs where he sat.
"That's impossible."
"The client doesn't think so, and neither do I."
"The client is an idiot," he said, but was already scribbling invisibly on the table.
"So what does that make me?"
He stared her straight in her eyes. There it was. Embers.
"Optimistic."
"Someone has to be. A proxy should be."
"I'd rather be certain."
"So be certain."
His scribbling stopped.
"Masses and shapes?"
She gave a stream of figures. "Assume single-kilogram spheres, and minimal collisions down the rift throat."
"Not in Hawara, it'll never be that easy."
"I'm throwing you a bone," she said, chuckling at the immediate annoyance on his face.
"I don't need one. What's the big R for the frustrum?"
"Ten meters," a pause as she took another puff. "No, five."
A blank stare into space. More scribbling. A moment to pinch his forehead. A low, "Fuck." He wrestled with the question, and the doing of it pulled his face this way and that. There was a moment he paused to look at her, lips moving but saying nothing. Enraptured.
It was delightful to watch. She let her feet be a pendulum, tapping into his side. Just a little interference. Simulating real-world conditions. That was all.
"The first party takes the Hawaran Ring System. Grid Twenty-Three sits on a stable conjunction point, with good rift frequency. Ring Nine-Two and Nine-Four." A pause to think. "They send in the personnel with the gear first. Ring Nine-Two crosses the Eastern Strait, which will be more ether-dense by the time they reach it. They ride that until they reach Ring Four-Six, ride the arc," more scribbling, "Western Strait... but it's rotating... fuck..."
She kept her gaze on him. He looked to her, then away.
"They'll land in the drop cone. Maybe not all of them within five meters, but all within six. The rift will close behind them, and the rest of the party will have to...." he scribbled, "Ring Nine-Two, Eastern Strait, Five-Two, Northern Strait into Grid Three-Seven, then wait to take a errant rift to Grid Seven. This rift will follow the hypotenuse of a triangle, so they'll get there at the same time as the first ones."
She smiled. "And the second party?"
He followed suit. Empty scribbling in the air, followed by grids, rings, employments of rules. He tapped at his PC, running a sim. He stepped away to get more paper and brought her a drink when he returned. He tapped his shoes. He stared at the ceiling. His eye never stopped twitching. She burned through one cigarette and he lit her another.
"Second party has it easier than the first," he concluded.
"And the third?"
This one didn't take as long as the others. There was a moment, a flash in his eye as something he missed dawned on him. Just a bit of a smile crossed his face.
"Venus, how tall is the drop cone?"
"Assume a hundred meters."
The smile grew. "Did you come up with this one yourself?"
"Maybe."
"Party one reaches the drop cone, just about falling off it on the western side. Party two lands squarely within it, but roughly two meters up. And party three... either never makes it from the rift collapsing with them in it, or drops in eighty meters off the ground."
"Correct."
"One is almost fatal, the other just a smidge off. With W-Engine reinforcement, its probably survivable. But that's if they make it at all."
"Mmm."
"It's a coin flip."
And with that, she produced one. He stared at it.
"Heads or tails, Proxy?"
He exhaled, "Heads."
She flicked her thumb. The coin went spinning up, up, up, glittering as it caught the room's few lights. Then a slap as it landed in her palm, and another as she flipped it on the back of her hand. He watched her, expectant.
"What's it say?"
She smirked, pocketing it instead, basking in his confusion.
"Does it matter? The client is TOPS. They'll pay you before you even do a thing. All that's left is what you can live with."
For a moment, he stared. Then looked away.
"I thought being a Proxy meant being responsible."
"It does. About the things you can do something about, especially when you've already done your best."
"What's this about Venus?"
She reached out, grabbing at his hair. He whirled, but couldn't go too far. His eyes bore into hers. There was anger, and something else. Something old. Something she'd missed. He tried to pull away, and she yanked harder.
"It's been months. It'll soon be a year. And you've been here, miserable."
"Let go of me, Venus," he said, low. Threatening.
She did not relent. "Last I asked, you said you wanted to find Carole Arna. Are you any closer now than you were last year? You said so the time before that. And before that too."
He grabbed at her wrist. She felt the restraint behind it. Just a little more and he'd crush her.
"Venus..."
"How old are you, Wise? How long do you plan to stay here? How about your sister? How long will you keep her here? Chasing rumors? Have you looked at yourself lately?"
He gave no reply, hand falling away. She released her grip as well. When he began to look away, her hands cupped his face.
"You're the best Proxy I've had, Wise. Probably ever will. Keeping you here would be nothing but good for me, but..." she had to bite her lip to prolong the inevitable. "I can't stand to see you like this. You need to move on."
He was grabbing her wrists when the first sob came, ugly and ripping through her like a bad cough. He was standing in an instant, pressing her face against his chest, letting her fall to pieces. Through a window, Hollow Zero burned on the horizon.
"Are you sending me away, Venus?"
It was low, and quiet. "Yes. My last job for you. Leave and become something. Go be a boy again."
"I don't think I can."
"Try. Promise me."
"What does that even look like?"
She pressed into him, grabbing at his shirt. "I don't know. Build things again. Go on adventures. Do the things you want. Take care of your sister. Go back to school."
A pause. She looked up to peer at him. Managing a tired, pained smile.
"You're a Proxy, maybe the best there ever was; you'll find your way."
He placed a hand on her head. It soothed, unlike anything else.
"Am I allowed to fall in love, too?"
Embarrassment clouded her face.
"You weren't exactly subtle."
She turned away, back towards his chest, holding him close.
"I've always wanted so much, haven't I?"
"It's always been worth it."
When next she saw him, he sat behind the wheel of a van, the side splattered in decals, everything the world had seen fit to allow them loaded in the back. His sister rode shotgun, rosy-cheeked and without a care in the world.
They were waving. She blew them kisses.
And then they were gone.
On her way back, she fished out a cigarette, rummaging around her pockets for a lighter. None emerged. She looked back down the road, then to the sunset beyond. He'd taken it with him, the rascal.
She gave a long laugh, then flung the pack of cigarettes in the gutter.
She buried herself under the covers, impermeable dark around her but for the square screen of the radio cradled in her grip. She tapped out a familiar number. Static, then a click.
"Wise, what have you been up to?"
"Wise, got a minute? I heard the funniest thing..."
"Wise! There was an earthquake at Vulcan Quarter wasn't there? Are you doing alright?"
"Wise, I saw your profile on InterKnot, is it really all that wise of you to use the same name? Yeah that was awful, I'm sorry."
"Wise I... I don't really know what I wanted to say. I just wanted to hear from you..."
"Wise, how is Janus Quarter? I heard they've done a lot of rebuilding there..."
"Wise, do you remember after the Old Capital fell? What made you decide to live so far out in the woods? I mean I've thought about it too but..."
"It's winter again Wise. What are you two doing for Christmas? I wish I could get you a present..."
"Wise I..."
"Sorry for calling so late haha, how's your sister?"
"So Wise..."
"Wise, did you..."
"Hey Wise..."
She tapped out the number on the radio again. Static. Another winter blew against her, setting her clothes fluttering. She should've worn pants.
A click.
"Wise—"
"Don't worry, I see you."
She lowered the radio, looking around. There, emerging from the crowd. She grinned until it was embarrassing, but it returned once he was close. Then he was barely a foot away. He reached out to her face, taking a lock of her hair in his hands. He smiled his schoolboy smile, eyes glittering in the Christmas lights dotting the building on her side.
"Afternoon, Venus. Do you have a job for me?"
She had to look up to him now.
He'd gotten taller.