13 - Open Office

 

Lacuna’s second alarm of the morning - set to go off ten minutes after the first one - is beeping.  She estimates it’s been doing that for at least five minutes now but hasn’t opened her eyes to check her phone yet.  Stopping that second alarm would require her to get out of bed and cross the room to press the button on top of the small plastic digital clock, and she hasn’t been able to muster the will to do that yet.  It’s not that she’s too tired - really, honest, she’s gotten better about that this past year and slept pretty well last night, for real - it’s that she’s too busy beating herself up over a days-old minor conversational foible that no one else probably even remembers but for some stupid reason was the first thing that crawled into her brain upon waking up this morning. 

And so, minor distracting thoughts about turning off the annoying beeping or that she needs to stop doing this to herself aside, the question she keeps looping around is this:

Why was she afraid to say that she’s trans in front of Glassheart?

The obvious answer is that she wants new people (people in general really, but she figures it’s more realistic with new people) to think of her as simply a “woman” and not a “trans woman.”  The problem is that’s an awful answer and she feels like an awful, stupid person for thinking it.  It’s bad enough that she keeps catching herself almost mentally phrasing it as “real woman.”

She knows that this is the sort of internalized transphobia that her therapist would tell her - on top of the myriad of mundane problems with that kind of thinking - is causing her autogenesis to hold back her transition efforts.  But isn’t that the whole point?  To want to be accepted without a qualifying adjective attached?  She needs to stop using that excuse.  The thing to do is just think of it as a simple factual descriptor instead of as a qualifier.  As long as she’s doing the latter she’s either putting down other trans people or singling herself out as being somehow uniquely lesser, and both of those options are messed up and she’s a terrible person for thinking them who doesn’t deserve to get what she wants.  But that’s an irrational thing that’s wrong and she needs to stop thinking too.  And she knows that.  She knows all of that.  She knows what she needs to do.  She’s had this whole conversation more times than she cares to count, both with her therapist and in her own head and that’s the real frustrating part.  That for whatever stupid reason she can’t just simply make herself do what she knows she needs to do.

What she needs to do is get out of bed, turn off the alarm clock, eat something, get dressed, brush her teeth, and get on with her day.

And what’s even with Glassheart anyway?  It’s not fair that he’s (as far as she’s been able to tell) cis but passes femme better than she does.  And he’s so smooth and effortless about it.  Even exhausted and sopping wet from the rain he looked better than she does on her best days.  And, yeah, “passing” is kind of nonsense and reinforces traditional gender norms and all that stuff, but again, isn’t the goal for people to see you the way you want to see yourself?

It’s so stupid.

She’s so stupid for continuing to just lie here while the alarm keeps going off.

She goes through the whole conversation with herself in her head another time but with slightly different wording and still no answers or conclusions. 

The alarm clock gives up on beeping.  The whole reason she bought that thing and put it over there was so that she wouldn’t do what she’s doing right now.  It worked for a while but then she got used to it.  And she can’t change the alarm noise to something she’s less used to because she bought the cheapest model she could find.  Then again, she’s theoretically getting paid again so she can probably afford to get a better one.  But then what to do with this one?  Throwing it out feels wasteful.  One more piece of plastic junk polluting the planet.  Not that it’s even a drop in the bucket compared to corporate industrial pollution and - No.  No, no, no.  She’s not letting herself get on the environmental spiral this morning. 

She does another loop of beating herself up for being awkward in a conversation instead. 

Her phone beeps.  A text, not an alarm.

She rolls over to check it and winces at the way the stubble that’s grown back overnight scrapes across her pillowcase despite the past few years of hormones, lasers, electrified needles, and even some alchemical solutions.  So stupid.  Autogenesis should be a barely-dreamed-of blessing (and apparently is for most people in her position), but instead she’s worse off than if she’d never gone Backstage and stuck with mundane solutions all because she’s both too insecure and one of the “lucky” people who just happen to be particularly susceptible to its influence.

Why is she like this?

She flips the phone over on her nightstand and reads the text.

 

Ready to head out?

 

That’s enough to jolt her out of her loop and far past the point of wakefulness into the realm of spiking heart rate and shaking limbs. 

She’d gotten so stuck in her head she forgot what day it is.

Trembling, she taps out a reply.

 

15 minutes. 
Sorry.

 

Twenty-five minutes later Lacuna has gargled some mouthwash, shaved, dressed (pants today), flipped her mattress over to retrieve the box she’s still a little afraid to think about too hard from the hole she’d cut into the mattress’s underside, slung a messenger bag over her shoulder (like a purse but big enough for a laptop, she enjoys telling herself every time), stepped outside, fumbled with her keys due to trying to lock the door in a hurry, and is now descending the stairwell panting “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” over and over again until she reaches where Eris stands waiting at the bottom. 

Eris hands her a protein bar without comment.  

She gives a sheepish “Thanks” as she unwraps it while they walk.  She thinks of the taste as her penance for not getting out of bed sooner.  How Eris eats these things she’ll never know.  Probably without having mouthwash still coating her tongue.  Or does she only buy them specifically to hand to her at times like this?  Oh goddess, Lacuna hopes not.

“Late night?”  Eris asks after Lacuna’s managed to choke down half the bar.

“Rough morning.”

“The usual?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I’m still on for dinner Thursday, assuming we don’t end up out on a mission.  Got a new place in mind you might like.”

“Thursday?”

“First week of the month.”

Right.  First Thursday of every month.  Therapy day.  Followed by a night out with enough distraction so she can do anything other than keep thinking about herself for a few hours.  That’s been the routine for the past couple of years now.  Had been anyway.

“Yeah.  About that.  I might’ve…  Well.  I, uh, canceled.  The appointment, I mean.  Well, appointments, like, all of them.  Until further notice.”  

Eris gives her a look that she can feel without needing to raise her eyes to meet her.

“It’s just that the last several have all been rehashing the same thing over and over and it doesn’t make sense to keep going if nothing’s changed and it’s not like I’ve been legally able to talk about the stuff bothering me most anyway but I do plan to start going back eventually but it’s just that with the not having a job thing money’s been a concern and this new one came as a surprise so starting things back up slipped my mind and I don’t know what our schedule’s going to be like now but don’t worry I do definitely plan to go again and I’m doing the rambling justification excuse thing again aren’t I?”  She takes a breath.   “Sorry.”

“Huh, that sucks,” Eris commiserates after a moment’s consideration.  “Didn’t realize RevaTech stiffed you that bad on the severance package.”

Relief that that’s the part her friend chose to comment on briefly washes over Lacuna before curdling into awkwardness over the observation’s inaccuracy.  Thankfully they’re coming up on the abandoned lot serving as the bridge to Crossherd, giving her an excuse to go quiet for a minute.

“About that,” she speaks up once the sounds of city streets signal that they’ve passed into the pocket dimension and it’s time to start walking again.  “It was actually something like five years’ pay up front.  Combination of what they paid our team for the company buyout and compensation for the exit contracts, I think.  I just.  Spent it all.”

“You spent it all.”

“Yes?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Err…”

“You are the most irrationally frugal person I know, how in God’s name did you spend five years’ pay in a couple of months?”

“I’m not that bad.”

“Lacuna.  Sis.  Bestie.  Favorite neighbor of mine.  I had to talk you into buying a frickin’ bed instead of continuing to sleep on a patched air mattress while you were on a paratech engineer’s salary because you said it seemed like a waste to replace something that was technically getting the job done.”

“And my back thanks you for that.”

“But seriously, are you okay?  You didn’t get in debt to the mob or something when I wasn’t looking did you?  Do I need to break someone’s legs to get your money back?”

“What?  No!  Well, technically there was a kind of sketchy guy that might’ve been mob-adjacent that I took out a short-term loan from, but I paid him back in full three days later, so no debts.  No leg breaking.  You’re joking about the leg breaking, right?”

“I had been, but you’re not exactly making me worry less here, sis.”  Eris massages her forehead and lets go of a deep breath while they round a corner.  “Please tell me that you at least didn’t put up anything metaphysical as collateral.”

“No, nothing like that,”  Lacuna says.  “Not even I’m naïve enough not to get involved in anything like that.  I promise you, it’s fine.  Account’s closed, no lingering strings attached.”

She figures Eris doesn’t need to hear about the detail of how if she’d been late on the payment interest would have included an eyeball and a few parts she was hoping to get rid of anyway.  Besides, with everything having gone as planned she would’ve been able to regrow the eye if it had come to that.  Eventually.  Probably.

Between Eris’s concerned staring at Lacuna and Lacuna’s sheepish staring at her own feet the two of them nearly walk right past the ivy-covered brick alleyway that’s their bridge out of the city.

“Anyway,” Lacuna says so as to not think about the bridge transit and thereby accidentally stop it from working, “I was actually planning on telling you and the others what I spent that money on later today.  It’s related to the NDA contract though, so if I’m going to risk attempting to talk about it I’d rather just do it the one time in front of everyone.”

Eris puts an arm around Lacuna’s shoulder as they step out from in between two garden walls and onto a sun-dappled, tree-lined street some seven hundred miles from their apartment complex.

“Hey,” Eris says, “you don’t need to justify yourself to me, ever.  You say you’re fine, I trust you.  Maybe a little concerned, but impressed too considering the parts of Crossherd you would’ve had to go to for something like that.  Just, maaaybe give me a heads up the next time you go walking into the realized platonic ideal of a big city’s shady underbelly.”

“It was kind of a spur of the moment thing that I didn’t really think I’d do until it was done, but yeah.  Definitely want you by my side if I ever go back.  Not that I ever want to.”

It had been a spur of the moment decision by Lacuna’s standards anyway.  Meaning it was conceived in the middle of the night during a bout of insomnia, refined over days of frantic paranet searches filtered through an excessive number of proxy networks, and executed over the course of fifty-nine hours while under the influence of more caffeine and energy drinks than she’d previously consumed in her life.

In hindsight, she’s not sure if this is a sign that she needs to stop making life-changing decisions while sleep-deprived or an indication that she should do it more often.

“Hey, the place looks nice after the renovations,” Eris says a couple minutes later as they turn another street corner and their destination comes into view.

“Still looks more like a bed and breakfast than an office to me,” Lacuna says.  “All old-timey with those big windows and the fancy porch stretching around it.  It’s even got a tower balcony thing.”

“It’s called Queen Anne style and the phrase you’re looking for is ‘widow’s walk.’  I think it fits the adventurers’ guild vibe better than some modern downtown block would.”

“Don’t let Bridgewood hear you say that.  He might send it through a second round of renovations.”

Eris laughs.  “Speaking of Sully…” she says, nodding in the direction of the trio standing just inside the white picket fence surrounding the building’s small lawn before waving and calling out “Yo!  We’re here!”

“Hey,” Road waves back as Lacuna and Eris approach down the block.  “You’re right on time.  Ashan just finished his inspection of the property’s wards.”

“Indeed,” Glassheart says with a nod toward them before turning back to Bridgewood.  “As I was saying, your contractors do impressive work.  The perception filter should more than suffice for redirecting anyone without prior Backstage exposure and the underlying structure of the kinetic barrier is unusually stable for being on a command word toggle.”

“I should hope so,” Sullivan lilts, “I spared no expense.”

“That said, I have concerns about some of the retaliatory measures on the mid-layer defenses being overkill.  Intent detection is notoriously fickle and I have no wish to see one of our potential clients arriving in distress only to be exsanguinated upon setting foot on the lawn.”

Lacuna pauses mid-step, one foot on the concrete sidewalk and the other hovering midair just past the fence line.

“It’s fine, just look,” Bridgewood insists before grabbing Lacuna’s wrist and pulling her over the property line, twirling her around him despite the height difference, and letting her go to stumble backwards until Road catches and steadies her.

“See?”  Bridgewood preens while gesturing to Eris.  “Muscles here looks about ready to pummel me and yet all of her blood is still in her body.”

“Keep pulling shit like that and we’ll see how long we can say the same for you,” Eris says.

“Oh, I’m afraid that ship has long since sailed, but you -”

Road coughs pointedly, eliciting a put-upon sigh from Bridgewood.

“But you have my apologies, the both of you.  I recall now that you requested a warning in the future before engaging in practical japery, and you have my word that I will endeavor to do so in the future.”

It is perhaps the third least sincere-sounding apology Lacuna has ever received.

“All the same,” Ashan cuts back in, “I would like to make my own modifications and additions to these wards in the future.”

“But of course.  What’s the point of having a wizard on staff if you’re not going to let him do his job?  But enough of that, there’s a tour to be had and work to be done afterward.  My friend,” Bridgewood says with a nod to Road, “I believe it’s your place to do the honors.”

Road nods back, lets go of the now-less-dizzy Lacuna and stands in front of the porch steps.

“Everyone, as of today we are officially,” they sweep their arm in an arc over their head to gesture to the blue-and-white painted sign hanging from the awning above, “the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency!  I’m proud to count all of you as founding members.  All of you have done genuine good and made a difference over the past several days, not just with the initial mission, but with the aftermath; whether that’s been helping care for the rescuees,” a look to Eris and Glassheart, “handling the politics of getting them all back home,” a gesture to Bridgewood, “or readying our website and finding leads on the next group of people in need of our help,” a nod to Lacuna, “and I hope you’re all as excited as I am to keep making that kind of difference moving forward.”

Nice as it is to be included in that, Lacuna can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s a polite exaggeration of her contributions.  The website’s still a barebones work in progress, albeit a functional one that no longer looks like it was put together by a thirteen-year-old who just discovered animated GIFs.  As for the so-called leads, those were just a bunch of forum posts and tabloid articles that she’d sorted out from the list of resources Bridgewood had given her and then passed back to him and Road for further investigation.  Strangely, one of those tabloids had seemed oddly familiar.  She pushes the errant train of thought back down to keep listening to Road’s speech.

“Now, while I’m told that for legal reasons I’m supposed to call the building behind me our ‘office’ and not our ‘guildhall’ I think you all know by now the intent and spirit behind this venture.  As such, I’d like to do at least a little something to commemorate the occasion before we go in.”  They pull out a phone.  “A group photo of our founding party to hang on the wall.  Or, as Sullivan tells me it’s called when you use a phone for it, a ‘group selfie’.”

 

*******

 

By the time the tour leaves the gym, Lacuna’s barely listening to Road and Bridgewood.  Or was it a dojo?  There’d been regular exercise equipment, sure, but also a rack of blunted medieval practice weapons and some mention of sparring.  Something about Eris wanting to try to swordfight Road sometime.  And then the gym/dojo/room-she-never-intends-to-make-much-use-of was attached to a small armory’s worth of real weapons, both modern and archaic.  Given how excited Eris was to see it, Lacuna assumes that was part of her equipment requests just as much as the gym.

The garage with the armored van was apparently Eris’s request too.  Exactly how anyone’s supposed to get it out of an underground pocket dimension constructed beneath a bed and breakfast with no garage of its own, Lacuna’s not sure.  She was too busy nervously adjusting the strap on her messenger bag and fretting about how she’s going to tell everyone about the box she shoved in there alongside her new laptop.  How much of it seeming to get heavier was her shoulder getting tired and how much was just the mental weight of it?

They’re backtracking down the main corridor now, past the medical bay with its autodoc suite imported from off-world.  Another room she hopes not to ever need to spend time in.  They stop at a door they’d skipped earlier, across the hall from the breakroom that had struck her as redundant given the fully functioning amenities of the bed and breakfast upstairs.  Apparently the building had held some sentimental value to Bridgewood’s wife so he’d left fully intact save for converting the basement into a series of metal corridors that would have looked more at home on a movie set of a spaceship than the sort of adventurers’ guildhall that Road kept trying to imply.  At least the carpet makes it feel less stark.  It occurs to her belatedly that she’s missed the opportunity for a joke with Eris about the basement being bigger on the inside.

The sound of her name jolts Lacuna back to awareness of the here and now.   

“Sorrywhatwasthat?” she gasps in response.  She was doing it again, wasn’t she?  Letting her mind ramble on distracted to keep from thinking about imminent unpleasantness.

Bridgewood starts to open his mouth but it’s Road that speaks up first.

“This next room’s mostly for you after all.  Seems right that you get to go in first.”

Mostly for her?  Why would there - Oh, right.  That’s the whole reason she brought the cube with her this morning in the first place.

She shuffles away from Eris’s side over to the door, trying not to let herself get her hopes up too much for what’s in the room beyond.  Is that tremble in her hand as she reaches for the touchpad on the doorframe due to anticipation or because everyone’s watching her right now?  Or was the protein bar just not enough for breakfast?  Probably all three and that’s not the point right now get it together.

In her rush to make herself stop hesitating she runs into the door while it’s still sliding open.

What she finds on the other side once the pain-induced spots clear from her vision is enough to make her forget about her sore forehead and probably-bruised knee.

Immediately to her left is a glass wall through which rows of servers with alternating electronic and organic hardware mounts.  The bundles of wires coming off them are a dream of cable management and the chill of the cooling system is palpable from several feet away as Lacuna wanders into the more immediately accessible half of the room, eyes wide at the sight of two separate workstations with more monitors than she knows what to do with.  The corner of her mouth begins to twitch upward as she examines the wall of 3D printers.  She reaches out to touch one of the cases of printer feedstock before snapping her hand back, not quite willing to trust herself with handling something as valuable as powdered gold.  Her expression is properly classifiable as a smile - if a mildly manic one - once she starts reading the warning labels on the laser engraving stations.  By the time she’s running her hands over the shelf of drones of various sizes and modes of locomotion and throwing open cabinets full of parts she’s openly grinning.  Stopping just short of the frosted glass double-doors on the far end of the room, she turns around to look at the others, notices the small, purple-blossomed, potted tree she’d missed earlier beneath a sunlamp next to one of the computer desks, and bursts into laughter.  The laughter redoubles when she spots the white labcoat hanging on a hook by the door she came in from.

“Between your equipment request and the way you got on with Jero the other day I had a feeling you were planning on playing mad scientist,” Bridgewood chimes, “I figured you may as well look the part.”

“You did it,” Lacuna says once she manages to catch her breath, “you actually did it!  It’s even all configured and installed the way I outlined.  How much did this all - nevermind, I don’t want to know.”

“I may be deserving of no small number of disparaging epithets,” Bridgewood says, “but when I say I’m going to do something I do it.”

Lacuna slowly shakes her head, still in disbelief that things actually went according to plan when the plan had such an obvious gaping hole.

“So that room at the end…”

“See for yourself.”

It’s all Lacuna can do to keep from running to the double doors at the end of the lab.  Her lab.  Unlike every other door in this place however, the panel on the doorframe only seems to change the opacity of the glass doors.

“Allow me,” Bridgewood says as he strolls up behind her and presses a big red button situated above the electronic panel.

The doors slide open to reveal a very large, very empty, very white room room.

“The walls, floor, and ceiling all function as screens,” Bridgewood explains as the others catch up to peer through the open doorway.  “Projectors, cameras, microphones, speakers, and arcane spectrometers are built into the corners.  All of it blast proof.  All as specified, plus my own addition of a cleaning system.”

“Blast proof?” Eris asks.

“Would you like a demonstration?” Bridgewood asks in return.  

In any other circumstance Lacuna would be put off by that smirk of his.  Instead, not so much against her better judgment as in temporary absence of it, she says “Yes!”

“Well then, fire in the hole,” he says casually, now holding something dark and round that hadn’t been there a moment ago with one hand and pulling a piece off of it with the other.

By the time the sound of the pin clinking on the floor reaches Lacuna’s ears, Eris is already standing between her and the door that the grenade was just gently tossed through.

As strong arms wrap around her and protectively push her down Lacuna barely glimpses Bridgewood slapping the big red button.  The sound of the doors sliding shut is immediately drowned out by a muffled FWOOMP that she feels more than hears, accompanied by a bright flash dimmed by the re-frosted windows.

“Before anyone says anything, that was requested and I gave adequate warning this time.”

A series of mechanical humming noises activate and go silent in quick succession and once she and Eris disentangle she can see that the glass doors have returned to full transparency.   The testing chamber beyond is pristine.  Not the slightest hint of scorch mark or shrapnel scratch.

“As advertised,” Bridgewood states.

Eris shoots him a glare but otherwise remains silent.  She gives Lacuna’s shoulder a light squeeze before letting go.

“This is all very impressive, I am sure,” Glassheart says, speaking up for the first time since entering the office basement, “but what precisely is it?”

Oh right.  That.

“It’s… I,” Lacuna stumbles over the words she’s been trying not to think about all morning, “well, I suppose I do owe you all.  An explanation, I mean.  For this and about other stuff.”

Everyone’s staring at her again.  Glassheart with curiosity, Eris with concern, Bridgewood with bemusement (or is that hunger?), and Road with the same small, encouraging smile as ever.  She focuses on that last one.  Of course everyone’s staring at her.  That’s a normal thing people do when someone’s speaking.  No need to get worked up about it.  But they’re all so close.  It’s getting hot, crowded around the doorway like this.

“Hey, um, do you mind if I sit down for this?”  She asks while pointing with both index fingers at the workstation desks.  “I’m going to go sit down.”  It’s an effort not to go into another round of mentally berating herself for the awkward transition from standing at one end of the lab to slumping into the swiveling ergonomic chair at the other end.

She doesn’t make the mistake of looking back up at everyone when she starts her explanation in earnest.  The messenger bag on her lap and the ominous, wonderful box still hidden inside is enough to occupy the space in front of her eyes without really being seen for now.

“So, RevaTech, right?  Big paratech firm trying to get a monopoly on development by simply buying everyone else out when they’re on the verge of something big?  My last job before this was on one of those teams that got bought out.  I, well, I guess you could say I didn’t take it real well.  On the one hand I was invested - like really invested - in the project we were all working on, partly because it actually seemed like I was actually doing something good and worthwhile with my life and skills for once, and partly for… personal reasons.

“On the other hand, the more I thought about it the less I could stomach the idea of working for RevaTech.  Like, just on principle, screw big corporations, am I right?  And then in this case specifically you’ve got all the rumors that almost definitely aren’t just that about all the sketchy stuff they get up to.  And that’s outside of just outright having a weapons research division and that’s just not something I even wanted to even indirectly support.

“So I left.  I left and on the way out they made me sign contracts.  Nondisclosure and noncompete agreements, geas-enforced and magically bound to my Name,  so I couldn’t even talk about my work much less attempt to recreate it.  That’s why I’ve been… evasive.  About certain things.”

Lacuna lifts her gaze slightly, still not really looking at anyone - not truly looking at anything at all, really - but hopefully it’s enough to not be rude.  They’re all technically in her field of vision right now.  That’s what eye contact means, right?  That’s what you’re supposed to do in serious discussions, isn’t it?  Make eye contact?  She’s just splitting it up among four people at once.

“So how did you get around those limitations?” Glassheart asks.  “It is obvious enough that both whatever you did at the end of the mission the other day and our current environs are tied back to your old work.”

There it is then.  No more room to keep putting off trying to say something.  Now if only Lacuna’s throat weren’t so tight when she tries to form the words.  She attempts to swallow but can’t quite seem to remember how to make her muscles move in the right way for that.  Is this it?  Is the contract triggering and choking her?  It hasn’t before, but then again she’d always tried to just imply things, hadn’t she?  And what she did through the phones was just pre-compiled files she’d saved before signing the contract, not actually creating anything new.  That could be how it works, right?  The more she’s thought of it the less she’s been able to remember and the more she’s sure her memory was being messed with as she was reading the contract.  But now that Ashan said that, he obviously knows what she was working on which means the others know now which means she’s officially in breach now.  That’s why she can’t breathe now isn’t it?  That’s why her head hurts.  That’s why she’s dizzy.  That’s why everything’s going blurry.  That’s why her fingers and lips are tingling.  Oh goddess, she can’t breathe.  She can’t breathe.  She can’t breathe.  She’s going to - 

“Breathe.”

Lacuna blinks at the whisper.  Road’s there in front of her now, crouched down to be eye level with her.  Leaning in close.  Their hand on hers.  Their face filling her field of view.

Road breathes in.

Lacuna breathes in.

Road holds the breath.

Lacuna holds the breath.

Road breathes out.

Lacuna breathes out.

Right.  Breathing.  The throat tightening’s just a panic symptom.  Just like every other time she’s thought it was the contract.  She should know better by now, but here she is making a scene and wasting everyone’s time and making it all about her and her problems because she’s immature and selfish and -

“Breathe.”

Lacuna breathes.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I should get on with it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I think I want to.”

“Okay then.”

Road stands up but stays next to her.  She’s suddenly aware of the fact that everyone’s staring at her again.  It’s not quite so painful this time.  It seems like it ought to be.  But why should it be?  Eris and Road are here.  There’s nowhere that could ever be safer.  No one she feels safer with. 

Having a wizard on hand if something does happen doesn’t hurt either. 

“Sorry,” she starts, realizes she’s still whispering, and then tries again.  “Got a little stuck in my own head there.  Happens sometimes.  Thought it was the contract thing but it was a false alarm.  Obviously.  Because I found a loophole.  Probably.  Right now’s my first time really pushing it to try to test it so I’m nervous so I’m rambling again sorry about that just. Give me.  A second.”

One more deep breath and she dives in.

“So.  Loopholes.  I don’t know a lot about nominal magic but I’d done a little bit of reading up on it for personal reasons and then tried to refresh myself on the topic when I knew the contracts were going to be a thing.  Point is, I signed and swore the magic part of it with my deadname, hoping it would be me enough to let the contract seal but not me enough to be enforceable.  Magically anyway.  Legally, yeah, I’m still probably in trouble.”

“Clever,” Bridgewood says.  “That’s the sort of trick you can only get away with once though.  Twice if you’re very lucky.  More than that and you risk acknowledging it as a Name of yours once again and you’ll get any bindings you’d been avoiding that way snapping back on you at once.”

“Thanks for the warning?”

“I speak from experience.”  His tone seems genuinely sympathetic for once.  Lacuna finds it disconcerting.

“Anyway,” she continues, “that’s the loophole.  As for what my work actually was, we were developing a system that could automate and accelerate ritual casting via AI assistance.”  She winces in anticipation of the now unequivocally broken contract’s punishment.  

But nothing happens.

Nothing happened.  She talked about her work and nothing happened.  All the fear and paranoia of the past few months was pointless.  Everything’s gone exactly as planned.  She’s free.  She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry so she just goes limp in the chair, head lolling backwards staring at the ceiling and arms limply dangling.

“You okay sis?”  Eris’s voice.  Distant.

Laughing wins out over crying.

“Yes.  Ohhh… you have no idea how much yes.  ‘Okay’ doesn’t even begin.”

“As relieved as I’m sure you are right now, I do ever so hope you’re not telling me that I spent a small fortune on this lab so that you can try to recreate the work that a dozen people spent half a decade on from scratch.”  Bridgewood’s voice.  Barely registers.  He’s done his research though.  She’s too busy with her own calculations right now.

“Of course not.”  Lacuna lazily pulls out the bone-white cube from her messenger bag while still staring at the ceiling.  “Long story short, I spent my own small fortune on this before signing the contracts and backed up the entire project on it.  Glyph libraries, machine learning models, trained neural nets, pre-compiled ritual sequences, user interfaces, projector firmware, simulation programs, hundreds of hours of my own voice for synthesis sampling, the whole shebang.  It’s definitely the most illegal thing I’ve ever done. This drive is just storage though, no processing power, which is why I needed all this.”  She waves an arm in the general direction of the servers and laughs again.  “Give me a couple days and I can get the whole thing up and running enough to make what I did with Eris’s phone look like child’s play.”

She could probably do it overnight if she starts now and doesn’t sleep.  She should sleep though.  She already knows she won’t.

She laughs again.  ‘Playing mad scientist’ huh?  Yes, she could probably do that.

 

*******

 

It’s nearly midnight by the time Lacuna convinces Eris to leave her for the night.  She wants to keep working a little more and there’s a whole bed and breakfast upstairs for her to sleep in instead of walking all the way home.

It’s been a long day and she’s still wired.

Once the tour was finished Road had filled them in on the next mission they had lined up.  It was a haunted house.  The lingering ghost of someone who died on the property not liking the new owner.  Pretty bog standard stuff from the way Road explained it, but still a person in need all the same.

Once again, Lacuna had stayed behind to monitor communication feeds while Road, Eris, and Ashan went into the field.  Bridgewood apparently had his own separate mission that he’d be off on his own for quite a while on.  Something about following up on the cause of the dragon shipwreck.  Honestly, Lacuna hadn’t been fully paying attention.  Too busy running through a mental checklist of installation procedures.

And, once again, there really wasn’t anything for Lacuna to do to actually be useful.  The headset cameras were able to see the ghost, so that was cool, but Ashan already had a spell for revealing it ready to go anyway.  So mostly Lacuna just watched while he and Road set up a binding circle and Eris escorted the owner outside to keep him from getting pelted with furniture and cutlery.  Then once the ghost was bound, Road sat down and talked to it until it calmed down and they were able to convince it to move on.

It all would have been very exciting and fascinating to witness if Lacuna hadn’t been so distracted.  As it was, it seemed obvious that the others all had things well enough in hand that her remote presence was truly superfluous so she started multitasking with getting the AI ritual systems up and running.  Some part of her knows she’ll be hating herself for that later, but that voice is easy to ignore right now.

The one part that got her to fully stop and pay full attention was when Road turned off their headset to talk to the house’s owner at the end.  From the bits and pieces that Eris and Ashan’s mics picked up from a distance, she could have sworn it was nearly word for word the same speech he’d given her after saving her.  That hurt a surprising amount to realize, so she threw herself back into her work right away.  This guy took the amnestic though.

Once everyone got back they had that celebratory dinner Road had wanted to have after the first mission.  Lacuna excused herself from the upstairs dining right the first chance she got to go back downstairs.  Another thing she knows she’ll regret later once the excitement wears off.  She really should get to know Ashan better.  That’s twice now she’s had dinner with him and basically ignored him the whole time due to being too distracted.

How’d that happen?  He's so cool, and also a wizard, and she’s about to be… well not a wizard or even a real mage, but something closer to one than she ever would have dreamed a few years ago.

Maybe on more even footing she’ll be less tongue-tied around him.

But it’s midnight now and the installation is still underway.  Another twenty minutes to finish getting the program suite to recognize the testing chamber hardware and she’ll call it a night.

 

*******

 

It’s just past three in the morning when the ritual simulation completes.  All results within expected ranges.  Just like the last three dozen times she ran it with minor variations before leaving her old job.  Before she lost the chance to ever try running it for real because she couldn’t work up the courage.

But she has that chance again now and she’s taking it.  The part of her mind that would know this is a bad idea and would tell her to sleep before attempting anything has succumbed to exhaustion hours ago now.  Now she’s simply running on pure hype over her plan having worked flawlessly, relief that an opportunity she thought she lost forever coming back around, and an unkeepable promise to herself.

She sets the timer on the ritual activation and runs to the testing chamber.  A moment or two of hesitation born from a lifetime of ingrained shames and insecurities almost stops her from leaving her clothes at the door.  Stopping in the center of the testing chamber with the doors closed behind her, she spends the remaining minutes of the countdown focusing her mind on the target outcome of the ritual.  The AI assistance might perfectly draw all the circles and do all the chanting for her, but the magic still requires a living will behind it to function.

The countdown completes and the testing chamber plunges into utter darkness.  Six near-fractal glyph cycles snap into blazing existence.  Ceiling, walls, floors all covered.  All convening on her.

A voice begins playing over the speakers.  Her voice.  Sampled and rearranged into syllables her fleshy mouth could never hope to make and sped up a thousand fold.

The ritual begins.

 

*******

 

IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HURTS-IT-HU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*******

 

Lacuna lies curled on the blank white floor of the testing chamber, whimpering and tear-stained.

 

*******

 

It’s not quite five in the morning when Lacuna picks herself back up, slides her clothes back on, and calmly walks back to her workstation to analyze the test results.  

Duration of ritual: Twenty-nine seconds.

Duration of subsequent transmutation: Seventeen seconds.

Duration spent huddled on the floor overwhelmed by the mere memory of pure agony: One hour, forty-one minutes, thirteen seconds.

In retrospect, the flaw in the procedure is obvious.  One of the very first things Road told her was that small changes compounded over time are more effective than instantaneous full body transmutations.  Technically the ritual itself worked exactly as intended; it’s her body that rejected it.  

Autogenesis again.  Holding her back as always.  But also the single-word secret that Jero had whispered directly into her mind.  If she could only decipher what xe meant by that and circumvent the phenomenon somehow.

At any rate, this is still all useful data that’s been gathered tonight.  No, - she checks the clock again - gathered this morning.  

Lacuna looks at the face in the paused video on the screen one last time.  Her face.  The one she sees in the mirror when she’s dreaming.  True, it’s distorted from screaming in pain, but it’s still hers in a way that her face in the waking world has never been before.  It’s progress at long last.

She deletes the recording and sets the workstation to sleep mode.  No point in worrying the others with the sight of that.

A smile creeps across her face as she exits the lab and makes her way upstairs to at least pretend to sleep in a bed before the sun comes up.

Today’s been a good day.