Therese stretched, her muscles all aching and stiff from falling asleep in a sitting position. Brynn had been sleeping off the effects of the Worked healing tools that had been used to stabilize her shredded upper back, and Therese had stayed the entire watch with her, sitting next to her bedroll and reading until she’d finally fallen asleep.

The City seemed determined to get her to stay that way, because the sun had finally decided to finish setting, and the sky was aflame with shimmering constellations that were barely enough light to see the outline of the roof. In the dark, countless years of evolution took over, and Therese’s eyes tried desperately to drift shut again.

She did some of the stretching exercises Brynn had insisted she use before each day’s travel, and then jumped up and down, trying to get her blood flowing. The City was chilly at night, and the sun had been down long enough that the heat was dissipating and giving her occasional chills from errant breezes.

Sofia spotted her, and came over with a cup of coffee from the camp stove.

“Thanks,” Therese said, holding the cup in both hands to keep her fingers warm.

“I wanted to thank you for, you know. Yesterday.”

Therese sipped, then shrugged. “If I’d been paying more attention, I would have spotted them earlier. I tried to tell Brynn I sucked at this field work stuff.”

“Nah, that’s bullshit. You warned me in time, I didn’t die. That’s what matters.” She smiled. “It’s not like we normally have Diviners along at all, most patrols. It’s nice to know that someone’s looking out for us, even if it’s only part time.”

Therese knew that Diviners went out sometimes with the Rangers for normal patrols. It never occurred to her that the Rangers saw her as anything but an annoying burden, but obviously they must want her department along. Of course they do, you idiot. You were advance warning for them, for the Banes. Imagine if you could do that all the time for them.

She nodded. “Yeah. Uh. I’m glad I could help.”

The conversation stuck with her as she crossed the roof to its far edge, coffee cup in hand. Could she be spending more time in a trance than she was? Could she somehow maintain a divination trance while hiking through the City? A kind of mobile early warning system, aware of nearby threats?

She didn’t think so, but it got her thinking about how Riley had left a demon in charge of her body while she was helping Therese inside her mental walls. If that was something that you could do safely, letting a demon steer your body while you worked… She was certain there were a dozen reasons this was a terrible idea, but it was still interesting.

Speaking of Riley. She gently poked at the empathetic link, just checking in.

Whoa. Where the hell is she?

The response was a distant echo, hollow and faint. Like she wasn’t even in the Tower at all. Or the— Right. She was probably visiting the Primary.

Why she was in the Primary, Therese had no idea. Novices weren’t supposed to go back there for their whole first year. But Riley was, in so many ways, an exception to rules that had seemed inflexible permanent laws when Therese was a Novice. If she wanted to visit the Primary, who would realistically say no to her? And she didn’t seem distressed, just… far away.

Therese sat down on the open space near the roof’s southern edge. This building gave her another hundred meters of distance from the edge of the previous one, which should be enough to get another position on Diviner Senai.

She set down the empty cup and then folded her legs under her, and within a few moments was in the trance, feeling across the surface of the celestial realm. Watching for those prickles, this time, she told herself.

Almost immediately, she felt the presence of the other Diviner. She was close. One more move, a little east, and she’d be able to make the link. She signaled to Senai that she’d found her, and then left the trance to go wake up Brynn.

A half hour later, the whole team was gathered inside the office building on whose roof they’d just camped, in the top floor offices. Moving inside made sense for a portal that was intended to be stable, for a base that was meant for mid- to long-term use. No reason to expose it to whatever passed for weather in the City, and the office space was open and relatively well-lit from the many paned-glass windows along its walls.

The Rangers had cleared a space, shoving ancient-looking roll-top desks out of the way, piling chairs against a wall, and finally marking a spot where Therese had pointed. She sat nearby, drifting in and out of the trance.

Diviner Lasalle. Are you ready in the Anchor? Senai’s voice filled her awareness.

She felt around the celestial world for anything like a threat or a change in conditions that might affect the portal, and finally, satisfied, she thought, We’re ready.

Out loud, she whispered, “Clear,” and Brynn, sitting with her, echoed it: “Clear! Everyone clear the arrival point!”

The Rangers were already out of the way, but they all took another few steps back.

Linking, Senai said, and Therese felt the woman’s mind reach out and clasp hers.

Interesting. You’ve got an empathetic connection to someone.

Therese had forgotten that the link to Riley would be visible to anyone in her head. Which was annoying, mostly, since the Headmistress already knew about it, but she still felt a twinge of worry.

Novice Riley Hawkins. Something left over from when I first made contact with her. It’s not visible to Workings, but it’s been useful for directed Divination.

Ah, I remember your report on the Tower visions, Senai thought. Worrying. I’m glad this connection was fruitful. Do you have any sense of how to break it?

None. Theory’s got some, uh. Theories. But it’s useful now, so we’re not testing them yet.

That makes sense. As long as it’s not distracting, and it seems not to be— ah, there’s the Working. Can you take the end of it?

Therese could feel the white-fire tail end of a Working being fed through the link between herself and Senai. She reached out, and the Sigil used to craft it announced itself as Phantom of a Truer Self. Not one she was familiar with, but it was easy enough to find its peculiarities, attach them to a terminating Working on her end — built from Both Hunter and Hunted, because if she could use a Pleiades Sigil, she’d always prefer to do so — and release the whole thing as a completed portal.

Excellent. Well done, Adept.

Thank you, Adept, Therese replied. See you at the next department thing?

Certainly. Good evening. Or morning; I can’t tell your local time from here.

And then the two released the connection, and Therese opened her eyes, in time to see the orange-fire pillar emerge from the floor and stretch towards the ceiling, then split into two, dragging the black void between them.

Next to Therese, Brynn relaxed. “That could have gone worse.”

Therese gave her a doubtful side-eye. “Your arm is bandaged to your side and you’re almost collapsing from exhaustion. It could have gone better, too.”

Brynn laughed. “I guess so. We got the portal open, though, and that’s better than any of the other teams have managed.” She bumped Therese’s left shoulder with her right shoulder, companionably. “Good job, Diviner Lasalle.”

Therese snorted.

The Ranger team was setting up the brackets that would hold the portal open on this side, little golden anchors driven into the floor to pin the Working in place. A Logistics agent had already stepped through to verify the location, and confirm they were ready for the team on the Primary end.

No point in walking back through the City, when we can take a plane to Bern, Therese thought. She was so very ready to get to the Mountain and maybe spend some time in the spa there, soaking in a very hot tub of water. The spa trip after the hike out into the City had been implied in Brynn’s offer from the beginning; travel in the Primary was so much simpler than in the City, and with the resources the Tower had there, it was also comfortable.

Brynn waved the team through. “Go ahead; we’ll be through in a minute.”

The Rangers nodded; Sofia gave Therese a little salute and a smile. Would I describe that as a smug smile? A knowing smile? She felt something like alarm start to settle in her stomach like a cold knot.

She sat in silence next to Brynn for a long few seconds, and then, finally, unable to deal with the tension any longer, she started:

“So, uh, did you want to—”

“Hey, um, I was thinking—”

They stopped, and laughed. Brynn palmed her face and shook her head.

“Go ahead,” Therese offered after a moment.

“Right.” Brynn took a breath. “I kind of figured something out during that fight.”

“Oh?” Therese had a whole lot of unexamined feelings after that fight, and she really wasn’t ready to add whatever Brynn was about to tell her to the mix. Not that she had much doubt about what Brynn had to say. Why me? I’m just some nerd who wants to do her divinations in peace. Why me?

“When the Banes all turned to go after you. It was, uh. It was clarifying.” She scrubbed her face with her hands, and then returned them to her lap, where they hung limply. “I thought about what I would do if right then, before I could react, one of them leaped on you and tore you apart. They were fast; it was really just luck that they didn’t.”

Therese hadn’t really known the scope of any danger she might have been in. Banes were largely mysterious to her, and whatever the Rangers did to fight them was as arcane as the Theory work that Nora did, from her perspective. They were close enough to do that? They didn’t seem close enough to do that.

“Anyway.” Brynn blinked, dismissing the bleak thoughts with a shake of her head. “I’ve seen people die. People I knew, people I’d worked with for a long time. It’s part of doing this. But this was… this was different, I realized. And not just because if something happened to you, it would be my fault, because I’m the one who dragged you out here. I mean, I knew you didn’t do field stuff. But I asked anyway.”

Therese started to object, but Brynn waved a hand at her. “Nah, come on, you and I both know I was pressuring you. Because, well. I wanted your company.”

“Not because I’m so good at my job?” Therese attempted.

“Sure, yeah, that too. I mean, I wasn’t going to jeopardize the mission or anything. But really I just wanted an excuse to spend time with you.” She looked down at her hands. “So yeah, when I thought ‘this is it, she’s dead, I have to watch her die’, well. I decided that there were some things I could live with, but that wasn’t one of them”

Therese was also looking down at her hands, not really ready to see whatever was in Brynn’s eyes. “I um. Yeah, I guess we both know why I agreed to come along. And uh. When that thing tore up your back, I just. I don’t know, I didn’t really think about what I was doing?” She sniffed accusingly. “You’re the one who gave me the pike. What was I supposed to do with it?”

Brynn barked a laugh. “Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t even think about it. That you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

Therese wanted to be indignant, and did her best to put her feigned outrage into her voice. “I knew enough to kill the thing attacking you!” She hesitated. “Because, I guess, I also decided there were things I couldn’t live with.”

Brynn nodded. “Yeah. The thing is, it’s all so fucking complicated.”

“What is?” Just say it. I just want you to say it. Just say it so we can get on with this. You’re going to kill me with this anticipation.

“You. How I feel about you.” She rubbed her temples. “So I’ve got a thing with Hyun-ji. I don’t know, we haven’t really tried to hide it, but we haven’t made a big deal about it, either. You probably already knew.”

“Nope.” With Hyun-ji? Jesus, the sex must be amazing, Therese thought, and then flushed red as the thought made its way out of her id and into her conscious mind.

“Oh. Well, anyway, the point is, I’ve been out in the field with her a half dozen times since we started seeing each other. I’ve seen her get cut up, smashed into walls, fall off buildings, and one time we had to bring back three of her fingers in a bag,”

Therese winced. “That’s um. I don’t need that much detail—”

“Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Anyway, I’ve cleaned up her messes plenty of times, and it’s never been— I’ve never—” Brynn looked away, and her face was flushed. “It’s never made me lose my shit like I did during that fight.”

“Because she can take care of herself, I get it. I’m not a fighter.”

“No,” Brynn said, and finally looked up to meet Therese’s eyes. “Because what I have with her is just fun with a friend, and what I feel when I’m around you makes me want more than just fun with a friend.”

And there it is. What I was afraid of. She’s right; this is complicated.

“Nora and I… I mean, we’re…” Therese searched for words.

“I know. Anyone who sees the two of you around each other these days knows.” The corner of Brynn’s mouth twitched up in a self-deprecating smile. “And I can’t exactly compete with Nora. You’re incredibly lucky, you know.”

Therese didn’t know what to say to that, so she just nodded.

“I guess the question is, what should we do about this? Because it kinda seems like you maybe feel something like how I feel, too?”

Therese looked down again, to not betray herself with the look on her face. “Y-yeah. I guess I do. I just thought, I mean, I thought it was just that I was noticing you more, because we’ve been around each other more? Since I started working with Riley’s cadre? But I keep, um. I keep thinking about you. And I don’t really know what that means. Nora and I are…” She trailed off.

“I know. I knew as soon as I saw you together. And I’m guessing that means she’s not, I mean the two of you aren’t, you know. Poly.”

Therese blinked slowly. “What do you mean?”

“Poly?” Brynn looked at her like she was an alien. “You know, a relationship where you’re open to dating other people, too?”

Therese’s cheeks flushed red, burning. She knew the concept, but she’d never imagined that it was something any relationship she might be in would need to discuss. But then again, I never really imagined being in a relationship at all, and here I am, two women both interested. What the hell is my life anymore? “No, I mean. Yeah, I know what poly means. I, um. I don’t know? We’ve never talked about it, I guess?”

“Huh.” Brynn seemed bewildered. “Guess it never occurred to me that anyone wouldn’t.” She grinned. “Talk about it, that is. Maybe it’s just that Rangers are all a bunch of horny sluts, so it kind of comes up a lot.”

“I could, I mean, when I get back, Nora and I, I um. I could talk to her about it?” Therese felt so tentative and out of her depth, and her voice had gotten very quiet and small. “I want to, if we could, I would like to see… what could happen? Between us, I mean?” Nervous and suddenly shy, Therese picked at her thumbnails, fidgeting.

“I’d like to see what could happen between us, too.” Brynn was still looking at Therese’s face, such that they kept making eye contact, and every time they did, Therese felt her cheeks burn with another blush.

“Um, but I was wondering,” Therese said, and inside a voice was shouting what are you doing, what are you saying, you idiot, just shut up before you fuck everything up. “But maybe we could, um.”

“Kiss?”

Therese didn’t think her gasp was audible. After a moment, she nodded.

Brynn caught her under the chin with one finger and tipped Therese’s face up to look directly into her eyes. “I think we can do that.”

Their lips met and Brynn’s skin was hot, so hot, almost fever-hot, but her lips and tongue were so paradoxically tentative. Like she was eager but also terrified of what might happen. But as Therese leaned eagerly into the kiss, she felt Brynn’s firm hand at her chin and then along the side of her face, and then curved behind her neck, cupping it, her strong fingers laced into Therese’s hair, pulling her. Therese slid her hands up Brynn’s sides, around to her back, and then clutched at her, eager, her lips locked with Brynn’s, and the woman’s strangely spicy musk filled her nose.

Then they broke apart, and their eyes met again, and they stared into each other for a few moments before slowly leaning back and away, parting. Their hands found each other, Therese’s left in Brynn’s right, interlaced, and they squeezed.

“Talk to Nora?”

Therese nodded. “I will.” I’m so fucking terrified of that conversation. I’m so terrified of hurting her. Hurting either of them. Fuck. Why is life so confusing and complicated when you’re an adult?

They leaned into each other for a few minutes. Then Brynn started. “Oh. They’re waiting for us, aren’t they?”

Therese grinned, nudged her with her shoulder. “I think they know what’s going on. Sofia gave me a look.”

Brynn groaned. “Oh hell, I’m going to get so much shit from the team.” She struggled, off balance, to get to her feet. “Wanna go to the spa with me, Diviner Lasalle?”

“I’d love to, Ranger Keelan.” She grinned and took Brynn’s good hand to pull herself up.

# # #

The Lookout, Riley discovered, was in fact quite cold. It was freezing. Literally; the digital display near the heavy airlock-style door that showed the time and temperature read ‘-2.3C’, and while Riley couldn’t quickly convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit in her head, the advantage of Celsius units was that you could spot that it was fucking freezing right away.

She huddled inside her coat, looking out over the wind-scoured glacial vista.

The Swiss Alps were gorgeous. She’d never seen anything like this landscape. Rainier’s majesty was largely due to its position in flat land far from any other peak, giving it the distinction of being the tallest thing in any direction, as far as you could see. It was impressive, but this? This was a movie set. This was a fairy tale.

Jagged gray rock cliffs rose around the little platform in a semicircle, an impassable wall that shot down into the mists below. Ice clung to the cliffsides, trapped in among the fangs of stone that gave the crags the appearance of being the maw of some enormous, world-consuming creature of elemental earth and cold.

But below, at the bottom, a crystalline lake shaded in improbable blue shone amid endless green hillsides rolling away to the north and west. In the creases and folds between the hills and the lower peaks, deep green trees clustered, with knots of orange and yellow and brown among them, giving color to the procession of seasons, the chill air of autumn in the peaks reflected in the fading colors of the forests below. And everywhere, scattered scree of the same stark gray stone that made up the cliffs around them. In the distance, the northwestern horizon was the same scoured-bare peaks, smaller and less ominous than those around them, but still showing the vegetation to be a thin veneer of life over cold and unforgiving rock.

The sense of unreality shimmered among them like a hypnotic trance waiting for someone to speak and break the spell. Himari had moved up close to Riley in the chill wind, clutching at her arm. The two of them, huddled together at the platform’s railing, looked down and out over the astonishing fairyland vista.

“Fuck,” Himari said, her words barely audible over the greedy wind.

Riley nodded. “Yeah. Holy shit.”

Marta had a broad, satisfied grin on her face. She’d handed them both tinted goggles to wear, and had her own stylish sunglasses on, and her cheeks were turning pink under the round frames. She gestured at the view again, as though she’d conjured it herself. “Worth the trip, huh?” She had to shout to be heard by them, even from just a few meters away.

Riley could only nod, which was more than Himari managed; she was still dumbfounded by the view.

“Anyway! Can’t stay too long. Wind burn!” She pointed at her face. “Hurts like hell!”

But they still stayed too long anyway, and by the time they went back in through the climate-controlled mudroom, through the airlock door, they all had throbbing aches in their cheeks from both the cold and the grinning.

“You… you live here?” Himari asked.

“Sort of. I mean, usually a Logistics team is out in the field working for Tower interests. Sometimes that’s in a nice place with a hotel bar, and sometimes it’s a dump in a little post-industrial shithole in eastern Siberia.” Marta grimaced. “Not that I’ve spent six months in a place like that anytime recently.”

They got back in the lift, empty cocoa mugs in hands, stripping out of the heavy coats and gloves and insulated pants they’d donned over their work clothes. The change in insulation left both Riley and Himari chilled and covered in goosebumps, and they scooted closer together, clasping hands again to keep from shivering.

“But at least a month out of the year, yeah, I get to live here. Development, training, and reconnecting with the other teams. And for another month, I cycle back into the Tower, just to stay current on Ranger training and tactics. Do some patrols, hang out with Novices and scare them, you know. Adept stuff.”

Marta’s tone swung from casual detached irony to earnestness with almost no warning, and Riley had given up trying to predict where she’d go next.

Himari still had questions. “Do you pick your assignments? What kind of things do Logistics teams do in the field? How much crossover is there between Logistics and the Rangers? How much Working do you actually do here in the Primary?”

“Whoa, hold on, one at a time. Also, we’re here. Let’s drop this shit off and get changed. I want to sit in a hot tub if I’m going to give the whole Logistics pitch.”

The lift doors had opened on the lobby for the fitness and wellness center, which Marta had described as ‘Club Alps’, and which apparently contained a spa and pools of various temperatures, including a bathhouse with a selection of hot tubs, with and without water jets.

Himari and Marta headed towards the door marked ‘VESTIARE/UMKLEIDERAUM’. Riley stopped, suddenly feeling awkward and caught out. The shared bathroom in their cadre suite was one thing; after all, of the three other people who got naked there, she’d had sex with two of them, and Himari wasn’t exactly shy about nudity around Riley, either. But a public changing room was a different thing entirely. She felt simultaneously cold with fear, and flushed with hot shame.

Himari figured it out almost instantly. “Oh, hey, right. Marta, is there like a private changing room?”

“Huh? Oh, sure, right through that door over there.”

Himari, still holding Riley’s hand, dragged her towards it. “Thanks. We’ll meet you inside?”

Marta nodded. “If you can’t find the bath-house, just ask anyone.”

In the small family changing room, Riley collapsed onto the polished wooden bench, and her shoulders began to shake with suppressed sobs.

I’m still a freak, aren’t I? I’ve managed to lie to myself about that, and I’ve let Suliat and Eve and Himari convince me I’m not, but the truth is right there, isn’t it? I know what some Logistics person I’ve never met is going to think if she sees me in the changing room.

A freak. A monster.

A man.

She felt a gentle pressure, and opened her tear-choked eyes to see Himari settling down next to her, one arm around her shoulders. “Hey. Hey bitch. Hey.”

“Fuck, this is how far I’ve fallen, that Himari Sasaki is going to comfort me.” She couldn’t hold it back, then, and started sobbing.

“Shut up.” Himari squeezed, pulling Riley into her side. “It’s okay. It’s okay. This is all new to you, and it’s all kind of getting dumped on you all at once, right? Like…” She waved with her other hand around the changing room. “Trans girls out in the real world get desensitized by having to deal with this wherever they go, right? Like, pissing when you’re out at the shops or whatever. A little bit at a time. Right?”

Riley nodded, and realized she was sniffling as tears ran down her face.

“You’ve been hiding out in a magical world with your hot girlfriends and your cool as hell suite-mate. You’ve been kind of sheltered. So yeah, you still have some shit to work through. But listen,” and she turned Riley’s shoulders to make them face each other. “You still have all of us on your side, okay? And Marta out there is on your side too. And the fucking Tower is on your side.”

Riley’s sniffle turned into a horrible snort as she tried to stop her runny nose, and Himari passed her a small hand-towel from a pile near the bench. She kept talking, though, her reassurances a continuous stream of consciousness.

“I’m not going to tell you not to worry about anything, because I don’t know these people here any more than you do. I mean maybe they’re all a bunch of cunts, right? Who knows. Half the people where I come from would be. Cunts, I mean. But like, who’s the one helping out with the whole ‘save the Tower and the world’ thing? Who’s the one with the direct line to the serious Diviner shit that’s going on?” She poked at Riley’s chest. “You, bitch. That’s you. You fucking matter, okay?”

Riley was nodding now, because at some point she realized that Himari’s relentless self-esteem-building assault wasn’t going to stop unless she gave some kind of positive affirmation. “Yes,” she said, through a throat clogged with snot and tears. “I matter,” she agreed.

“You’re fucking right you do. You matter to people. You matter to— to all of us.”

Riley heard the hesitation, but couldn’t make sense of it. Instead she just nodded and repeated: “I matter.”

Himari’s expression was intent, searching, evaluating. Finally, she seemed satisfied. “Right. Let’s get out of these clothes and into those cozy looking robes.” She opened her mouth as though she were about to say something else, looked back at Riley’s face, and after a moment’s pause, closed her mouth and went over to the open lockers to pull thick white robes off of their dark wooden hangers.

Riley wondered what she’d been about to say. Riley wondered if she’d ever see the real Himari under the layers and layers of self-defense and tough girl bullshit. Riley wondered if her face looked as fucked up as it felt.

# # #

Therese stretched extravagantly, reaching above her head and holding the pose until her arms started to tremble. She hummed a high-pitched “Mmmmmmm!” at the peak of her stretch, and then collapsed in a vast exhalation, slumping back against the wall of the sauna.

Brynn still wasn’t making eye contact with her after their conversation, but Therese trusted that ultimately they’d work things out. Her attention was flattering, and Therese wasn’t used to feeling wanted; regardless of how her conversation with Nora went, she was determined to enjoy the sensation.

She was nervous about that conversation, of course; she and Nora hadn’t talked at all about the boundaries of their relationship, whether it was exclusive, and what kinds of intimacy they were each comfortable with the other engaging in. Therese felt a kind of low-grade anxiety when she considered the possibility of Nora with someone else, kissing or cuddling or, really, anything. But the more she examined that feeling, the more it seemed to really be a worry that Nora would decide that poor mousy sad dumpy Therese wasn’t good enough for her — and that, she immediately told herself, was pure nonsense.

So how would Nora feel? About Therese, about Brynn, about what Brynn had said, about jealousy and relationships and, what even were the two of them to each other? They’d never really said. She tried out ‘girlfriend’ for Nora, and discovered it made her feel very, very warm inside.

“That must have been a really nice stretch,” Brynn said, and Therese knew that the way she felt must be visible on her face.

It turns out that thinking about Nora makes me grin like an idiot, she thought. Well, that’s not really a surprise.

“I think I want to go get in the hot tub soon. This is nice and relaxing but I’ve also done a whole lot of sweating over the past few days, and I kind of need to soak.”

Brynn laughed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that the hot tub is all you’ve talked about since we got here.”

Therese looked sheepish. “I don’t know why the Tower doesn’t have baths, but I miss baths. I like baths. They feel nice.”

“All right, let’s go. Come on, you look like a wet dishrag.”

Therese, in a loose robe bound at the waist, looked down at her alarmingly limp and boneless posture, and sighed. “I ache all over, though. You made me walk so far. Why can’t the hot tub come to me?” She looked speculatively at Brynn. “Carry me?”

Brynn snorted. “Go talk to your girlfriend, and then come back and ask again.”

Therese groaned, and pulled herself upright, pantomiming a deep and terrible ache, bent over double like a caricature of an extremely elderly person, one hand pressed to her lower back.

The pang of self-loathing that struck her then was almost enough to knock her over for real, and she hissed. What the fuck — Riley. Had to be Riley. She tentatively prodded at the empathetic link, trying to parse the rolling waves of misery and longing to vanish forever that were pouring from it.

“You okay?”

Brynn. Brynn knew about the link, right, it’s how she—

Another wave of self-hatred. Riley. Riley, what’s happening?

“It’s Riley.” Therese had to grit her teeth to clear her head enough to put words together. “Empathy link. She’s— wait, she’s here.”

“In the Mountain? She’s a first year—”

“No, yes,” and Therese shook her head as though trying to clear it. “Here, in the spa.” She pointed to a nearby wall. “That way. I want to go check on her. She’s crying.”

Brynn frowned. “You think someone here gave her shit about… you know?”

Therese let her eyes drift out of focus while she tried to get a better feel for Riley’s emotional state. “I don’t know. Maybe. If so, I’m going to put my foot up someone’s ass.”

“Yeah, I’ll hold them down while you do it.” Brynn’s frown had turned into a scowl. “That girl’s had enough to deal with already.”

Together, they emerged into the hot tub room, which was heavy with scented mist and clammy after the intensity of the sauna. Therese looked over to where she could feel Riley’s anguish, and breathed in slow relief as it started to fade. She was still in turmoil, but it had stopped feeling like the world was coming to an end, at least.

She sent a gentle wave of calm and reassurance, and was rewarded by an answering, startled gratitude. Moments later, Himari and Riley emerged from the door to the private changing rooms, and spotted Therese and Brynn immediately. They were also wrapped up in white terrycloth robes, and Himari had a half-smile on her face, like she was in the middle of telling a joke.

“Heya, Tee, Brynn!” She was at her usual levels of ironic amusement.

Riley pushed past her and wrapped herself around Therese, hugging her tightly.

“S-sorry. I’m sorry.” Her voice was thick with recent tears, and her face was puffy and red.

“Did something happen?”

Himari and Brynn stood together, a little apart from Therese and Riley, and shared a wordless look. Himari’s expression was concerned but only slightly, and Brynn’s frown   relaxed in reassurance.

“Not, not really. I just.”

“Did someone—”

Riley’s chin was on Therese’s shoulder, so she could feel the novice shaking her head slightly. “No. Just me. Just me being shitty to myself. I didn’t mean to, um.” Then she pulled back from Therese to meet her eyes. “Wait, how come you’re here? I thought you got tricked into another field thing?”

“Tricked?” She turned her head towards Brynn to shoot her an accusatory look. Brynn’s expression was either genuinely innocent or she was getting better at guile. “No, we just. I mean, yeah, I was out in the field, but we just finished up.”

“She killed a Bane, too. With a pike. Just fucking skewered it.” Brynn was enjoying telling that story, and it was getting more exciting each time she did.

“Whoa, really?” Himari was suddenly very interested.

“She’s exaggerating. I stabbed one in the butt while it was busy. Busy trying to kill her, I might add.” Therese looked back at Riley’s face, searching. Quietly, she said, “You’re sure you’re okay?”

Riley shrugged a little, releasing Therese from the hug. “I don’t know. Just emotional, I guess.” She gave a little laugh. “Estrogen, maybe.”

Therese held her gaze for a moment longer. “Maybe. Hey, wanna go sit in a hot tub with us? I hurt so bad right now.”

Riley’s answering laugh was somewhat more genuine. “Yeah. I was outside in sub-freezing wind like thirty minutes ago and I still feel kind of cold, even in here.”

Marta came bouncing out of the public locker room, and waved as she skipped over to them. “Therese! You look a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you. Gonna join us?”

“I was just asking Riley that. And thanks. You know Brynn?”

Marta grinned. “Oh yeah. I used to kick her ass in Battle Club grappling tournaments a few years back.”

“Bullshit!” Brynn said indignantly. “Anyway, grappling is for fake fights. You can’t grapple a Bane.”

The two of them continued to argue as they all made their way to one of the large tubs, with room for eight. It was unoccupied, and they all stripped off their robes and settled into the water.

Therese didn’t stare at Riley, not wanting to make her uncomfortable, but noticed how quickly she plunged in up to her neck, where the steam layer on the water’s surface would conceal her body. She won’t believe me if I tell her how feminine she looks already, Therese thought. She could feel the embarrassment through the link, but even without the magical help, she could read it in the deep blush on Riley’s face and the way she wouldn’t look up and meet anyone else’s eyes.

Kind of a shame, really. She’s pretty close to genuinely sexy, and I think both Brynn and Marta noticed it. Not Himari, though. Huh. Wonder if they’re doing okay? Therese was extremely aware of the time Riley spent with Suliat, and more recently with Eve; she had to fight to keep the girl’s emotions from leaking into her mind when she really didn’t need to be thinking about sex. But she’d never gotten anything comparable about Himari, and that worried her. If she’s the odd one out of their cadre, it could end up hurting her. Or them. Or all of them.

She fretted, but she couldn’t very well ask Himari why she didn’t want to fuck her bestie, so she just put the whole thing out of her mind. Riley’s relationships were only her problem in a tangential way, and only when she wasn’t actively blocking the link.

Brynn and Marta were sitting together on the bench in the water like old friends, and Therese felt a weird little pang of envy, which was deeply absurd given the conversation they’d had in the City, but attraction wasn’t known for being logical. Himari had positioned herself between Brynn and Riley, so she could stay close to her cadre-mate while still being able to hear the other two women talking about fighting and being tough and, Therese thought, jock shit.

Therese sat by Marta, where she could look across and keep her eyes on Riley’s face, because she didn’t yet trust the reassurances she’d been given, and Riley’s eyes still looked tear-swollen and haunted.

“The new portal gets us to within a day’s march of the Spike, so once the City end of it is fortified, we can actually make some progress on finding out what the hell it even is,” Brynn was saying.

“Where’d the Primary end come out? Since I’ll probably end up getting put on the Logistics end of it, now that I’m off assignment.” Marta’s voice had the sound of studied casualness — trying hard not to sound too invested in the answer.

“Antarctica.” Brynn’s deadpan lasted for all of three seconds, and then Therese splashed her, and she started laughing.

“Thessaly. Central Greece. Near a little mountain village.” Therese said, and splashed again. “You shithead.”

Brynn was still grinning at Marta. “Oh my god, the look on your face.”

Marta, quick to recover, sniffed. “I was just trying to decide which of my very sexy parkas I’d be packing.”

“So how do we get to someplace remote, anyway?” Himari asked.

“There were trucks and stuff there when we came through.” Therese shrugged. “So we drove about two hours to some tiny rural airport, and flew from there to Bern.”

“Sometimes we have to run our own roads, which takes a while. Greece is pretty developed, even in the countryside, so no problems there.” Marta was performatively ignoring Brynn. “We start with some modular buildings, and then if the base turns out to be a long-term thing, we build a facility. In a place like Greece, anyway. If it’s in Antarctica,” and she glowered at Brynn, “it’s just the modulars and whatever big fucking garage we can get together to park trucks in.”

“And it’s just luck, where you end up?” Himari seemed to be caught between the romance of being a secret agent, and the reality of putting together modular building work-sites in rural backcountry.

Marta pointed across the tub at Therese.

“Me? I don’t know how it works. I’ve never done the Primary side of a portal linking. They have some kind of math that turns a Tower-relative position into an approximate Primary latitude and longitude, and then we just kind of poke around the area until me and the other diviner find each other.”

“‘They’, in this case, is Ranger Surveyors,” Brynn added. “We have our own Theory department, kind of. Asking the big Ranger questions. Like, why is the City like that? And why is it so big? And what’s outside of it?”

“There’s outside of the City?” Himari asked.

“Sort of? You get like, five hundred kilometers out, and there’s broken rocky badlands, and there’s desert, and fifty kilometers to the north there’s the ocean, but anywhere you go, there’s also City. The farther out we get, the more worn down everything is, and eventually it’s just like, broken old bricks and rusty rebar sticking up.”

“We don’t know what’s past that,” Marta added. “And we can’t open portals too far from the Tower, and nobody knows why.”

In the pause that followed, Therese saw Riley move in the corner of her eye, and realized she hadn’t said anything at all, not since they’d gotten in the hot tub. She turned to check on her, and found her hunched forward, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders trembling.

She reached out to touch Riley’s shoulder, to shake her awake or just get her attention, and her fingers met Riley’s skin and it was icy cold.

Her empathetic link exploded in horror and despair, and her mind shut down defensively, and she sunk into whatever darkness Riley had just magically poured out into her soul.

# # #

Riley’s sense of self had been wavering since the moment in the locker room, and she could feel the impending dissociative episode. Then, unexpectedly, Therese reached out to her, and she was right there, so close that Riley wondered why she didn’t notice the aggravating electrical tingle of proximity earlier.

Her presence was stabilizing, the slow and gentle waves of reassurance and love a counterpoint to the self-loathing that kept trying to claw its way back up into her conscious mind. The empathetic link was, she’d decided, an enormous pain in the ass, and overall she’d still prefer that no-one have a secret back door into her emotions, but sometimes it was, she was forced to admit, a positive force in her life. When someone tried to reassure you and you knew they couldn’t lie to you, because you could feel every emotion behind their words, it was much harder to deny their love.

Therese’s presence buoyed her through the moment she’d been most dreading: dropping the towel to step into the hot tub naked. She’d fought with herself over it, over leaving her underwear on, over maybe getting in with the entire robe still on, letting the heavy terrycloth become a cement anchor on her shoulders. Her fear flickered up again and again, trying to lock her joints and freeze her muscles, but each time it was washed away by the protective, comforting mental presence of Therese.

And the far more physical and immediate presence of Himari, of course. Every time their shoulders brushed together, every time Himari grabbed her hand to tug her from place to place, every time she could feel Himari’s body heat in the space between them, Riley had the inexplicable feeling of home, of safety and family and care.

Maybe there’s something to this cadre thing, after all.

She quickly stepped into the hot tub, and then immediately worried she’d been overly dramatic, that she’d somehow made a big splash or otherwise called attention to herself, but no-one was looking at her. Instead they were dropping their robes and gingerly stepping in themselves.

Riley kept her eyes down on the water’s surface, because no amount of reassurance could easily overcome her sense that she was an intruder, and that any hint she was looking too closely or too long would be understood as creepy and fundamentally masculine. Unwanted attention. A threat.

Nevertheless she had glimpses of Brynn and Marta’s toned bodies, the former pale and the latter tanned. And she heard the slight intake of breath from Himari next to her as Marta stepped, all long legs and flexing muscles, into the water.

Which was baffling, of course. Riley had carefully schooled herself not to think of Himari in that way, and now she found that she was unaccountably jealous of Himari’s interest in the Logistics agent’s nude body. But, of course, she’d worked so carefully to keep her own body hidden, so even if she had some justification for her jealousy, she certainly had no-one to blame but herself.

It’s not like I own Himari. It’s not like anyone does. Of everyone I know, Himari’s probably the least tied down by anyone or anything. She still felt irrationally excluded, though, and self conscious about it, and so she let the conversation move around her and leave her behind. And soon, as expected, she began to dissociate again.

She sunk lower and lower into the water, until she was blowing slow and quiet bubbles from her nose, which perched just at the water’s surface, burning slightly with chlorine and the puffiness of her recent tears. Her hair was tugged one way and another by the push and hum of the water jets, now audible as the surface lapped up to her ears. Partially submerged, everything was a single throbbing hum, with no informational content, and she tipped her head back to put her ears fully under the water. It was like a blindfold for her hearing.

She closed her eyes.

The pull was slow at first, just a gentle tug, and then, abruptly, it wasn’t gentle at all. It was a vice-like grab, irresistible, dragging her down. She opened her eyes in panic, and tried to scream, and watched bubbles rise from her mouth to the surface, which was already meters above, and receding. She could see her friends’ legs up there, ankles drifting back and forth, over the bottomless black abyss she was rapidly descending into.

She looked down but there was nothing there, no monstrous hand, no grinning horror below her in the water. Just this pull, this undertow, sourceless and impossible.

Because, of course, the hot tub wasn’t bottomless. The hot tub was, at its deepest point, a meter and a half deep. And yet Riley was five meters down, into the abyssal darkness, and the little circle of light far overhead that sparkled with the surface ripples was growing smaller and fainter.

The panic struck then, and she thrashed and clawed at the water above her, and accomplished nothing, and exhaled the rest of her air in futile, inaudible screams. She seized on her empathetic link to Therese, trying to flood it with a cry for help.

Her link was gone.

She couldn’t feel Therese at all.

And then, finally, with involuntary certainty, her body gave up. Her mouth opened, and she tried to breathe. Her lungs filled, and the last shafts of light from above went dark.

In the stillness that followed, Riley found her awareness drifting untethered from her body. The ultimate dissociative moment, she thought, and wanted it to be funny, but she seemed to have lost the ability to feel anything but panic and resignation, and panic required energy she no longer had.

It was an eternity later that she decided she was no longer alone. She couldn’t identify what made her think that; nothing had changed about the darkness, or the soundless depth of the water. Maybe it was a drift of current near her, some kind of pressure change. Maybe it was a magical awareness.

Something was with her.

For the barest moment, she entertained the hope that the voice that spoke into her mind was the Tower, that this was a rescue. But this was not the Tower’s voice. This was not the alien, ageless voice that she’d been overwhelmed by before.

This voice, or perhaps a Voice, the capital letter implied in the noise of it, the way it overpowered everything, was not flat and ageless. This voice was profoundly wrong. It was the sound of breaking stones and falling rock and shattering glass. It was the sound of the shriek of twisting, tearing metal in a high-speed car accident. It was everything awful in one place, dripping with loathing and hatred, wet and organic, oozing, pulsing, speaking through a throat clogged with pustulent phlegm.

For all of that, for all that it sounded like it was produced by an avalanche of rotten meat, tt was almost expressionless, almost without affect. But not entirely. Not completely. There was an undertone of annoyance, Riley thought.

You’re who it [chose]?
You’re the [inheritor]?

The word was so pregnant with meaning that Riley couldn’t encompass it. Much further than the Tower’s layered speech had ever done, this single word ‘inheritor’ stretched Riley’s sanity to its breaking point. Whatever the Voice was suggesting gave Riley the sense of her belly full of lashing, squirming segmented creatures that wanted to burrow and tear their way out of her.

The Voice did not pause. It continued, inexorable, revolting. Riley would vomit if she could, but her lungs were full of water and her stomach was full of worms.

How odd.
Well, at least we finally have this opportunity to [talk].
You are much less prepared for this meeting than we expected.

There was a silence of some few seconds, and then:

Well? Don’t you have anything to say?

Riley’s mind was a small, frantic thing, battering itself against the trap it found itself in, and she was distantly aware that her inner walls, her defenses that she’d relied on against everyone and everything that wasn’t Therese, were gone. Brushed aside as though they were nothing, gossamer webbing rather than the impregnable fortress of her self-regard. Whatever was speaking to her, it could not be resisted.

Deep inside herself, she was screaming.

[She]? [Her]? Ah. That must be how it managed this. Hiding your [self] inside illusory [material] flesh. Cruel. We wonder if you’ll forgive it, once you understand.

Riley had been trying to find something to use as a voice, and finally she managed to gasp out: who—

Singularly useless question. We will show you, regardless.

The thing that resolved out of the darkness before her was a face. A face Riley knew. A face she’d seen in dreams: broken planes of shattered rock, reassembled fragments of human features indifferently attached, nothing in the proper place, and the whole lurid tangle of rock and meat twisting and shifting as it moved and Riley tried to focus on it.

In the ragged valleys of its sockets, there were eyes like hot fire slits in the face, oozing white celestial power, dripping down the cheeks in gleaming rivulets. The torn aperture of its mouth, more like a rotting wound than an intentional orifice, opened and closed absently, and inside Riley could see writhing tendrils licking at the walls of the thing’s throat.

The face made her remember the dreams, and remembering the dreams made her remember Therese, and remembering Therese made the slightest glimmer of something like a spark of a star flicker in her dark surroundings.

Oh fuck, Riley, where are we?

Therese?

What’s going on? What is this? Are you— Therese cut herself off, because she was about to ask ‘are you okay’ and that was stupid, because obviously she was not okay.

Face. From dreams. Riley was so overwhelmed by terror that the most she could manage was something like a feeble mental gesture towards the looming figure.

When Therese saw it at last, her mind refused to understand what it was looking at.

Diviner. You have been an excellent [conduit], the Voice said, and it was a torrent of sepsis in her mind.

Therese wanted to believe that she could will herself to die, to avoid having to hear this thing in her mind again, and she would have withdrawn into catatonia if it were not for the presence of Riley in her sensorium. Riley, like an anchor. Riley, holding her in the present. Therese’s mental voice was desperately clinging to some illusion of control. What are you? What do you want? What are you doing to Riley?

Only marginally more useful questions. We expected better from it.

Riley could feel Therese’s incomprehension and horror as an accompaniment to her own dread and panic. All she could manage, with whatever was left of her quickly fragmenting identity, was a shivering let me go, let me go, let me go—

The Voice thundered, and the thunder was its laughter.

Make your own [exit]. Or are you too feeble for even that? If so, we will be doing it a favor by eliminating such a useless [inheritor] early, so that it can start over with better material.

Riley had no context for this. It felt like she was supposed to do something or be something; it felt like she was being tested, and failing the test. The sense of being torn open from within by endlessly looping parasites intensified, sharpened into a searing cramp of explosive urgency.

Therese’s confusion had shifted to something more like fear, and that fear was itself sliding into fury. Riley could feel the snarling protectiveness rising out of her. You will leave her alone, Therese thought, and it was as though she was there, physically, holding Riley’s hand, squeezing it, refusing to let her drift away again.

need to escape, need to escape, escape, escape

A shape inscribed itself into Riley’s mind. Circles, two of them, and a tangle of lines. All in white fire. A Sigil.

The name came to her then, muted, as though from an impossible distance.

Torn Asunder by Taloned Wings

Riley! Can you give me that Sigil? Can you let me touch it?

Riley heard the voice named Therese, and as the Sigil swept into her and began to erase her identity, she cast out one panicky loop of sigil-fire towards the Therese-voice.

Something seized the loop of fire, pulled on it, and the thing that used to be Riley began to throb as celestial power coursed through the narrow aperture of its mind.

And then there was a Working in the darkness, and Therese and Riley tumbled to the ground, ten meters away from the hot tub, dripping and naked, coughing up water and shivering with cold and terror. From the direction of the hot tub, Riley heard shouting, as their arrival was noticed.

The portal that had dropped them, ragged orange fire barely keeping it open, convulsed and started to collapse.

Then the voice spoke into Riley’s mind, and Therese’s mind, and it was so horribly loud and left so little room for any other consideration.

Finally. Well done. We will take things from here, came the cacophony of a thousand pulsing orifices in their heads.

And the voice was so filled with malice and sneering hostility, so viciously satisfied, that Riley cried out involuntarily.

The edges of the collapsing portal stopped their collapse, and then held in place, and then abruptly expanded, ripping open into a broadening rift that grew in every direction, and then the first of the crawling bug-things birthed itself from the void of the open aperture, dripping vile-smelling rotten fluids as it came through.

Somewhere in the Mountain, an alarm began to sound.