Maybe my siblings didn’t see what our father was trying to say with those stories. Or perhaps they did, and they hated her just like Father did.
But I knew our mother wasn’t a fox in disguise. She was just a woman—a tired, selfish woman who was all too human. I could understand those flaws, at least.
In truth, the one who had the most cutting eyes, the most dangerous mouth, was the storyteller. Our father.
Sometimes I would dream my siblings and I were sitting at our family’s low table, and on one side was our mother, pale as a ghost, and on the other side was a fox with a wide mouth. “Come and serve me dinner,” he would call to us, and I would watch as first Shinya and then Asuka crawled onto his plate and offered themselves up. Then he would turn to me, the thirdborn middle child adrift between my elder siblings and the two I had cared for as babies, and ask the same of me.
Jun was at my back, pushing me forward, Hanako behind her in one of her best dresses. “Hurry, hurry,” they whispered as one. “You don’t want to upset him.”
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to go, I found the legs of the table had grown too high, like stately trees, or that I had somehow lost all the strength in my limbs and was stuck in place.
Then the fox would take off his mask and would become my father again. “Always late, Hiro,” he would say, and I would fill with such a shame that I would wake in my bed trembling.
That’s how I know. My mother was never the fox-wife of stories. If anything, there was a fox lurking in my father, wearing his face.
He’s always been a skilled storyteller. But that’s the thing about my father. He’s so skilled at telling stories that no one but me, it seems, has realized that his entire life is a story.
The man looks like a chaste and loyal husband, but he’s had his string of affairs. He acts like he hates politics, but he’s got all of Cytherea’s politicians in his pocket. He joins ethics boards and discussions on patient consent, but he experiments on Asters who don’t truly understand the consent forms.
And the worst truth of all, the one I think none of my four siblings wishes to hear: our mother is never coming back.
She can’t.
No matter how far I dug into the val Akira computers, I couldn’t find her. Father followed her for three years after she left, and then…
[A shaky exhalation.]
Gone. Disappeared.
Now, I’m not a detective or a hacker or anything like that. I can only extrapolate from the data my father collected. And to me, it seemed like Mother had moved on, found a nice life with some man and his children, and then stopped existing. No more health records to indicate she went to the doctor. No more drawing her annual salary. No more occasional featured picture of her as a Paragon influencer on the Cytherean streets. Nothing.
I guess I can see why Father did whatever it was he did. Why did Mother choose that other man’s family over ours when she had five kids and a hardworking husband at home? Maybe he just forced her to wear a new face and go by a new name and get a new citizenship number, something to help him avoid the shame of a woman who didn’t want him or their kids. Or maybe she left for Gean space, somehow took refuge on Mars, and hid away in a land where my father couldn’t touch her.
But I don’t think so.
My father doesn’t have it in him to be that forgiving.
Our mother was gone, and we would never dress her in a white kimono, light incense for her, or place her picture in the family altar. Instead, we would stare at her empty place at the table, never offering her spirit a scrap of food.
And that empty place at the table my father sets for my mother? Now I know the reason it exists.
It’s not to remember her. It’s not because he misses her.
It’s a warning to his children.
One I didn’t heed until it was too late.
CHAPTER 6
The human psyche is no longer an unknowable, impenetrable labyrinth; we have pried open its doors. With aid of the neural implant, we’re closer than we’ve ever been to the truth of consciousness. Under its lens, cognitive processes have been laid bare for us to objectively measure.
This is truly the Promethean fire: No longer will we be limited by subjectivity, blind emotion, or mental illness. Now, for the first time in history, humanity has broken free from the chains of its mind. The past of dissonance between the subjective and the objective is over. Now is the time for certainty and harmony, an era for collective logic.
Souji val Akira, CEO of Val Akira Labs
“Syncing in three, two…” Beron val Bellator points to me when the countdown ends, but I don’t need him to. I feel the connection snapping taut between Ofiera fon Bain and me. My new Dagger. My Lefthand. We’re bonded now.
After having my neural implant tied to Hiro’s for so long, being untethered to anyone was a bit like drifting in space. But having Ofiera here in Hiro’s place isn’t much better. I grew up with Hiro. I was used to them. And as much as I can feel Ofiera radiating confidence in our upcoming mission, her emotions aren’t the ones I want.
I force myself to calm. Lean into my implant. Stop fighting it. It whispers: Ofiera fon Bain is safe. Ofiera fon Bain is trustworthy. Ofiera fon Bain will help you accomplish your mission. Because you have to.
“Now,” Beron says, sliding his compad toward Ofiera and me so we can see the screen, “this is the most updated layout of the Val Nelson Mining station on the mid-atmosphere level that we have. We’ve spotted several notable faces on that level with historical ties to Dire of the Belt.”
I grimace. Dire has a criminal record longer than both my legs combined. He’s one of the outlaws who lives in the asteroid belt, a known thief, smuggler, and anarchist who spouts anti-Icarii views. Anti-Gean too, if I’m being fair.
“Latest intel shows that Dire’s men load the ships with contraband here in this hangar.” Beron points to a square building at the back of a cluster of four. “And here”—he points to another building set apart by thick lines half a kilometer away—“is the space elevator where you’ll enter the mid-atmo platform. As you can see, there are other mining operations surrounding Val Nelson’s. You’ll need to infiltrate their hangar specifically without being noticed by competition, Val Nelson’s own employees, or Dire’s men.”
“Val Nelson has offices on the bottom level of Cytherea as well?” I ask.
Beron nods. “For clerical duties and suiting up.”
I nod. While the space elevator is pressurized, the mid-atmo platform isn’t. “Then we need those suits.” I wish we had blueprints of the offices as well; I wonder if we could pull them before our mission.
Ofiera nods her agreement. “Wearing Val Nelson suits, we could enter like employees.”
“The smugglers will realize you’re not one of them quick enough if you’re poking around the out-of-bounds hangar.” Beron rubs a finger over his upper lip. “It would be best if you could do this without being seen at all. Just get in, plant the micro-EMPs, steal a grasshopper, and get out.”
“And the Val Akira Labs tech that we find on the grasshopper?”
“That’s part of the beauty of this plan,” Beron says, and when he grins, he looks like a much younger man. I wonder if he misses combat now that he’s stuck with a desk job. I know I would. “You’ll take the grasshopper on the same route to Ceres that the smugglers use, and whatever’s on board can be used as part of your cover story when pretending you’re an outlaw.”