The intelligence in charge of the lobby reads my neural implant, checks scheduling, and opens a gold-trimmed elevator door in less than a second. It’s not quite AI; it doesn’t approach the Marian Threshold—not after the Dead Century War, when the Synthetics left the inner planets because of Gean abuses—but it’s smart enough, following yes/no protocols with ease. Beneath my feet, a red arrow points toward the elevator. “Please proceed, Lito sol Lucius,” a genderless voice replies.
I enter the elevator, and my stomach pitches at the descent. While the Command division holds offices on the top floors of the Spire, Beron prefers to assign missions below. But the dark, plantless basement and its incessant pressure can drive someone stir-crazy even with the sunlamps and fresh air pumped through the vents that line the hallways.
I remind myself I won’t be stuck here this time, that this visit is only temporary. I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, picturing the ocean to calm the nervousness that tightens my chest. There’s something about Earth’s seas, something I’ve only seen in vids, that soothes me. The rhythmic lapping of the waves, the sound of the water…
“Refreshment while you wait?” the intelligence in the elevator asks, pulling me from my attempt at meditation. But before I even have a chance to refuse, I arrive at my destination and the doors part.
The basement levels are a nondescript gray, long tunnels of concrete and sharp turns. Only Beron, a slender man of average height with close-shorn brown hair and cutting blue eyes, serves to differentiate the space.
“Lito,” Beron rasps, standing poised with a thin black compad tucked beneath his arm, the red phoenix with wings displayed pinned on his chest and the crossed rapier and dagger pips on his shoulder denoting his rank in Command. I have a hard time believing that he wasn’t waiting for me. The harsh lighting from above deepens the soft scarring of his face, something he had his geneassist leave when he rewound some years. I suspect Beron is in his eighties, since his neural implant has been removed, but I can’t know for sure, since he looks not a day over forty.
“High Commander.” I salute him with two fingers. “You summoned me?”
“I did. I have a new assignment for you. Follow me.” He turns before I have a chance to drop my salute.
I trail him down the identical corridors, unsure how he navigates this place where everything looks the same, or why he even wants to. The building regulates the temperature so that it matches the lobby, yet I can feel the change in the air. The basement seeps into my skin and permeates my lungs in such a way that I just know that I’m in the lower levels. Underground and trapped, just like I was as a kid. Just like I was after Ceres.
Beron opens an unnumbered red door seemingly at random and motions for me to enter ahead of him. Did he choose this room on impulse, or is there something here we need? I aim to sit in one of the two chairs when I realize that it’s already occupied. Coming here was clearly part of his plan, then. With nowhere else to sit, I remain standing as Beron takes the chair on the opposite side of the metal desk.
“This is Ofiera fon Bain,” Beron says, motioning to the sitting woman without even looking at her. Fon, indicating she comes from a lineage of government workers and politickers. It doesn’t matter what her family does now; the title remains. All of the titles, from the lofty scientist val to the lowly maintenance worker sol, can be traced back to the first Icarii who left Mars during the Dead Century War. The three letters were a code that our ancestors used to denote their jobs aboard the Icarus, and while the titles don’t restrict our movement through Cytherean society, the prejudice remains.
I fear in my core why he’s introducing me to another deulist when I am currently partnerless, and my stomach twists into a horrid shape when she stands. I command my neural implant to neutralize my nervousness so that I can objectively measure this Ofiera fon Bain.
She is slender with willowy limbs, good for fighting, and of average height for a woman of her age and build. From her musculature, I determine she would be quick in combat. The crossed dagger and rapier pips on her shoulder denote that she’s also Special Forces Command. Strangest of all, she’s plain. If she’s ever seen a geneassist, I can’t find their work. Her eyes are hazel, one slightly darker than the other, her hair a chestnut brown. But normal. Someone you would absolutely look past in a crowd even if she has pretty features, like well-formed lips and dark brows that keep her face in a perpetually serious scowl.
“Ofiera fon Bain,” I say, and salute.
She salutes in return. “Lito sol Lucius.” Her eyes flick over me once, as if she’s unimpressed with what she sees; or perhaps she has already sized me up and finds me lacking. Maybe it’s that sol in my name. That feeling assaults me again: I don’t belong here. Her eyes dart away as if she would prefer to look anywhere else.
I straighten. I’ve earned this. I do belong here. How much more must I do before I prove it?
“Good, then.” Beron reads something from his black compad. “As you know, Lito, after the Fall of Ceres, the Geans have much to celebrate. They’re currently planning something to honor the Mother, whom they credit with the idea that wrested Ceres from us.”
Beron’s eyes come up to meet mine, hard and full of anger. As if it’s personally my fault that Ceres fell. And since I was there on the ground with Hiro, he does blame me… at least partially. Me and every other duelist who was surprised by the Gean coup, who lost a battle that could turn the tide of the entire war.
Hell, I don’t know that he’s wrong to blame us. The weight of that loss has dragged me down every day for the past year.
Because we lost Ceres, Hiro was sent on assignment away from me, punishment enough, and I was confined to the lower levels of the Spire for six months until Beron let me out to teach kids…
For a moment, I remember waking in the cold, stale air of the basement, my shoulder aching and bandaged, reaching out for Hiro with my neural implant, and finding nothing but silence. The fear that Hiro was dead overwhelmed me so quickly that I couldn’t send it away, and I screamed and screamed, flailing against the vast ocean of fear like a drowning man, until nurses came to sedate me. The next time I woke, it was only Beron’s explaining to me that Hiro was alive and on assignment that calmed me enough to allow the doctor to patch the wound I had reopened.
But that emptiness has remained with me, and the fear still clings to me like a shadow.
It rises now, burning like bile in my throat, and I command my neural implant to do away with it. Save it for another day. I can’t use that emotion here, now, just as I can’t openly miss Hiro when the man who took them away from me is sitting across the table with a smug look on his face. I’m lucky Beron isn’t one of the commanders who utilizes an implant to sense what his inferiors are feeling. I’m sure he’d notice the wavering emotions rising and falling within me like the tide.
But Ofiera—is she watching for that?
“We have several operations already in place regarding the Mother’s Celebration.” Beron drops his gaze to his compad. The faint wrinkles of his forehead smooth as his judgment dissipates. “We want you on the ground for one of them.”
“On Ceres?” I’m sure the surprise filters into my tone. “We lost Ceres only a year ago.”