“Right.”
The room has no distinguishable door, but clothing has been set out for me. I pull on the black pants, socks, and green sweater. The fabric is softer than Liam’s cheek and smells like roses and pine. When I slip on the shoes, a slight hum fills the room and it rotates, showing more of the aquatic world outside the windows. When the rotation stops, one of the windows slides up. A stone path leads down a corridor of evergreen trees.
“Right.”
I follow the path. A night sky peeks through the gaps in the trees, stretching in all directions until the path leads me to a small grove of rose trees. In every direction, the stars and the darkness of space. Between the rose trees, a man waits for me at a table set for tea.
He turns from watching the stars to grace me with a smile. And it does feel like grace. The man is too symmetrical to be handsome. He is beautiful and fragile, with skin as smooth as the shell of a quail’s egg. His eyes are sunset pink. His hair long and white. I recognize him immediately.
“You are safe here, don’t be afraid,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“Safe or afraid?”
“Either. Is Fel dead?”
“Yes.”
I don’t approach the table. It worries me how accustomed I am becoming to death. “How did you sleep?” he asks.
“Badly, but I’m sure you knew that.” I look around the strange room wondering how many cameras monitor it.
“Nightmares can be such beastly refrains,” he says. I grunt. “I had nightmares as a child, and then I woke into one every single day. Such is the life of a Pink. I never could tell which I dreaded more, the nightmares or the reality. I suppose it was the waking hours. In the dreams, there was always the hope it’d be a pleasant one. That’s why I admire Reds so much. They dread dreams more. At least in the waking hours they can struggle instead of merely suffer.”
He gestures to a seat like I’m a long-lost relative come to visit, and he knows the long, bitter road I’ve traveled to reach his house all too well. The urge to fall into him is nearly overwhelming. I feel seen, but not seen enough to drop my wits. I don’t sit.
“I ain’t been out long. Nails haven’t grown much. We ain’t been on a journey. We’re in the asteroid. Ain’t we?” His smile warms my heart, but only its walls. “And by the fact that you’re not hiding your face, I know I’m already dead.”
“You know who I am then?”
“Doesn’t everyone? You’re Matteo Sun. So naw. No tea. I know who you’re married to.”
“For a corpse you’re certainly…vivacious,” he says, amused.
“I ain’t been in the Core as of late, but broadcasts make it through the jamming sometimes. Same with the holoNet. So I know there’s two things on the minds of every person in the Core. Is the Reaper dead? And where did that coward Quicksilver sneak off to?”
He strokes his chin. “It’s strange, being synonymous with someone who is not you. But I suppose that is marriage—writ even larger when you’re married to the father of the Rising.”
“Fitchner Barca was the father of the Rising,” I say, surprised by my own sharpness. If there’s one hero who never lost his shine in the mud of 121, it’s Ares. Eo too, but she was always the romantic part of the Rising. Darrow was its promise. But Ares, Ares was always its father.
“Ah, yes. But Fitchner would be nothing without Regulus. Surely you know that, or is it perhaps that you cannot conscience two fathers, Lyria of Lagalos?”
I swallow. “You know who I am?”
“I never forget a face, nor a dossier, especially not those of guests in our house. It was a lovely birthday, wasn’t it, when you visited our estate as the fox walker of the Telemanus entourage?” He smirks. “Lovely until the afterparty, I suppose.” I wince. That’s when Pax was kidnapped. “Oh no, don’t think I think you’re to blame. We’re well aware of the freelancer Ephraim ti Horn. Uniquely crafty fellow, at least when he got out of his own way. Performed a few jobs for us actually, not that he knew.”
He leans back, and he becomes so somber and sincere that the lights in the room seem to dim. “I know what happened at Camp 121, and my heart breaks for it. For your sister, your father, your nieces, and your nephews. I cannot imagine your pain, nor how it must shape how you see the world.”
He licks his lips, reflective, showing his own secret pain. “I know a little of suffering. The worlds are very big. The people in them…and the systems…well they are very cold and very uncaring. I know what it is to be small. To be…stepped on. There’s dignity in holding up your hands against the boot. But it crushes all the same.” He touches his breast. “On this fragile heart of mine, I promise no harm will come to you here.”
I feel love radiating from him, and acceptance. I take a deep breath. “The hardest thing about being a Pink must be knowing that you can never be trusted. You are made to lie so well that the rest of us can never be sure.”
“No,” he says with conviction. “If you think that, then you still wear the chains fashioned by our oppressors. It’s easy to break the chains on your wrists, but the ones in here linger.” He taps his head. “Please sit. Have tea. Trust me or don’t, your existence is at my mercy, and I gave you your hand back after those…brutes took it.”
I sigh, seeing his point, and sip his tea while watching him like a soldier behind a parapet. “If you know who I am, then you know how annoying it is to have Sun Industries tech in my head. Your husband cheated millions of Reds out of their mines.”
“No. That was actually demokracy in action. Each mine got to vote. Is it our fault they chose the immediate payout instead of maintaining their ownership? How can we promise freedom and then be the arbiter of a people’s choices? That is not freedom. That is social engineering. That is the long road to tyranny.” He pauses and looks around the room with a sigh. “Benevolent or malevolent, still tyranny. How is your tea?”
“Warm,” I say. “What is this place?”
“Let us play a game. For every question of yours I answer, you must answer one of mine in return. We must swear to be honest.” He spits in his hand like a Red clansman. I ain’t got much to lose. I spit in mine and we shake.
“This place is a self-contained ecosystem within an asteroid. A construction on a scale that has not been seen since the terraforming of the spheres. Why did you come here?”
I’m a little baffled by his question. “You already know that answer.”
“Play fair, Lyria.”
“The thing in my head brought me here.”
“Lyria.”
“This thing in my head, it came out of the Figment. The freelancer. It came out of her as she died. It crawled in my bloodydamn nose, man. Horrifying stuff. Sometimes it talks to me or shows me things. But then it went quiet, except to tell me it needed repairs. So, I followed this urge to get it repaired. Happy?”
“That’s how you’re here. Why are you here?”
“Play fair, Matteo,” I mock.
“Why are you here?” he asks, harder.