Episode 5 - The Tide Recedes, and What it Leaves Behind

  Chapter 38 - Opportunity

  “Adrian, what the fuck is this?” I demand, slamming down my tablet.

  Adrian twists sideways in his chair, rolling his neck languidly as his locs fall from his eyes and he glances at my screen.

  “Language please. Looks like a mission briefing?” he replies with infuriating nonchalance. “You got those maps I wanted?”

  “Oh, here, already done. But this! To Co-op City. In five days!?”

  “So?”

  “Let me go!” I insist. “Put me back in the field.”

  Adrian sighs, clearing his throat. “Not my choice-”

  “But it could be your choice. Talk to Regina for me,” I plead, I’d almost get on my knees before his chair if he wanted me to. “She’ll listen to you if you tell her I’m ready!”

  “But you're not,” retorts Adrian in a lazy drawl, his hand resting on the joystick of his chair like he’s going to back out at any moment and stop the conversation.

  “What do you mean I’m not?” The motor on his chair hums, and he reverses from his desk. I step after him to follow. “Where are you going? I’m not done!”

  “Kitchen.”

  “What do you mean I’m not ready to go into the field again? I haven’t done anything wrong in ages! I work hard. Why?” I continue, letting a childish warble enter my voice and keeping a brisk pace behind him into the corridor.

  It’s been a little over four months since I’ve been grounded and spent my days working with Adrian and the field support teams. We’ve grown close enough that I don’t feel any shyness playing with him like this.

  I ‘trained’ between missions before my grounding, but not like the routine I’ve settled into now. Nessa finally has me working in the gym - building ropey muscles and stamina that I never needed hunching in my father’s lab drawing or out on descriptive interviews. I’ve only vomited twice on the treadmill. Blake has been very slowly beginning to get me familiar with the armory and military equipment used on the more dangerous field operations. Time spent with Rishi has taught me more of the strategy of Aquila’s work, the operational planning and processes from client request to conceptualization, and the weeks-long organizational details that go into the regular, covert operations that make up the company's bread and butter.

  There is a proud competence that I sensed from everyone when I joined, that I can feel myself taking in the work now too. Every day is a complex puzzle, every mission a new challenge of sliding pieces and dramatic adaptation, every success ripe with the thrill of triumph when it all clicks into place. It just feels good.

  And I get it. I can almost feel the allure of Aquila seeping beneath my fingernails. And the pay, the things, the freedom. It’s intoxicating. The Velo keeps on coming in, every two weeks. I’ve bought a whole closet of new clothes now. There's a black synthetic leather jacket that is my prize, a baggy bomber fit with knitted accents and a high collar, and great pockets. Mia helped me track down some new pencils and some water-based inks. Shion introduced me to a day spa used by Directors and Executives and I got a haircut and manicure one afternoon that we both had off.

  You could drown here, and never know it. Memories of rationed supplies have a way of fading. I was never hungry, but I was hungry. And spiteful in ways I only understand looking back on. Now I own things to a degree and quantity that I could previously never imagine, and revel in personal freedoms and intellectual stimulus enough to keep rebellious temptations placid.

  “Junk said you’ve been putting together black market grade intercoms from half his spare parts.”

  Okay, well, maybe the temptations are… temporarily sobered. Fuck Junk. I’m gonna jumble the #6 and #8 screws together the next time he’s not looking.

  “Eh, they might be useful one day,” I quip back cheekily, tucking both hands behind me innocently.

  “And that your sticky fingers keep on finding ways to stick to new things.”

  “Rishi tell you that one?” I mutter.

  Adrian pulls into the elevator. “Get the button for me, would you?”

  I hit the floor for the kitchen and commons for him and continue my pleas while he’s trapped with me. “Please. Let me go home?”

  Adrian scratches at his ribs, stretching in his chair. “It’s not even going home. You won’t be in Murasaki district.”

  “I can slip out?”

  Adrian drums his fingers against the arm of his chair and gives an exasperated huff. “You’re kidding?”

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  “I’m not. You know what I’ve been working on since I confessed it to Rhett months ago. I’ve gotta take this chance.”

  “And if you get caught?”

  I pout. “You don’t have to protect me.”

  “But I’ll protect Aquila anyway. I’ll protect our client. You can’t possibly think I’ll talk to Regina if you plan on going rogue on your first mission in the field again. I’m not having it be my name that signs off on you, for both our sakes.”

  “What if I talked to her? Got on my knees and begged?”

  “Terrible idea,” warns Adrian. “She’ll see straight through it. Way too obvious.”

  “Please.”

  The door to the elevator opens, and Adrian pushes his chair forward. “No.”

  Fuck. Time to make a Plan B.

  “Oi, where’s Regina at?” I ask Rhett as I pass him in the hallway while he waters the potted ferns. He has a bandage strapped to the side of his face, and fresh purple bruising beneath his gym shorts starting at his knee and creeping up out of sight on one muscled thigh. The last mission was rough. I saw the notes and logs after. It’s not always my fault then; risky ones go bad just as often as they go well, which explains why so many folks have forgiven my own mistakes so easily. Improvisation is a key ingredient just as much as careful planning.

  He raises one eyebrow, flinches when it tugs the bandage on his face, but doesn’t take his gaze from the stream of water in front of him, replying dismissively, “Like I would know.”

  “She’s your mother.”

  “What am I twelve?”

  I gasp an exasperated sigh and march past into the common lounge space. No one is here today, the place is almost empty.

  “Is she even in town? I thought I saw her at dinner last night?” I call back up the hall hoping I’m loud enough Rhett will hear me.

  He strolls towards me and out of the halls from the elevator, tipping his plastic watering can over one last pot to empty the last few drops of water. “She was this morning.”

  “You’re useless,” I mutter, thoughtfully tapping my chin while I consider where I might be able to track her down. The building is only so big, there’s only so many places she could be unless she’s tucked up on the higher floors where my own biometrics won’t let me.

  “What’s up?” asks Rhett, somehow managing to make it sound like he doesn’t care about the question despite asking it.

  “Nothing.”

  “Getting awfully worked up for nothing. You’re not going to find her down here anyway.”

  “You think?”

  He rolls his eyes, sarcastically repeating after me, “You think? Yeah. I think.”

  “What do you know? Nepo-baby,” I reply defensively.

  I can’t help but catch the twitch of amusement on the edge of his lips at my rebuttal. He barks a single indifferent laugh, and begins to fill his watering can again at the sink by the bar.

  “Okay then, if you’re so smart, where is she then?” I snark.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asks, turning the tap off and watering a few of the plants by the floor to ceiling windows.

  I hesitate, suddenly shy to admit my real goals in a way I didn’t feel with Adrian. “I need to find someone who can approve a request…”

  Rhett pulls one of the dead leaves off a lily. “I can approve some things.”

  “Not you.” He’d be in the same position as Adrian. I can’t connect us all too much if I’m going to string the three of us into working together.

  His jaw tightens, eyebrows tense, but the side eye he gives me makes me think he’s playing and might still be talked into helping me. “Can’t help you then.”

  “I need someone more important.”

  “Everyone is more important than you,” he taunts again.

  “You’re a real ass. Five year olds have better insults.”

  He sniffs, emptying his watering can again and stretching his jaw against the tug of whatever injury is beneath the bandage on his face. “Ask Aster. He runs operations these days.”

  Oh, that is a decent idea. “Thank you!” I reply, throwing my hands in the air and marching from the lounge to track a new target down.

  The withering look Aster gives me when I ask could rend flesh from bone.

  “Why would I approve you for field work?”

  “I’m bored. I’ve been good. I swear. Please,” I beg, leaning over his desk. His tie is half undone, a peach fuzz of black hair regrowing on his head where he hasn’t been maintaining his clean shave. His painted black fingernails are even chipped in a few places.

  He cackles dryly, taking a draft of his vape stick and rocking back in his chair to appraise me. “Alright Squall, convince me.”

  My heart flutters with anticipation. “Let me prove myself to you. Something easy. Paper work only. Happy to support. There’s the perfect one that I saw this morning, the investigation for Bio-Vat Labs. No danger, just analysis. It’ll be better if I can be there in person to help.”

  Aster narrows his eyes, twisting his vape-stick in his fingers. Then without saying a word leans forward on his desk and taps into his tablet to bring up the job I mentioned. As he skims the details his bottom lip tightens. “Mmm hmm.”

  “What? It’d be perfect.”

  “Would it now?”

  I recoil, proclaiming innocence, “I have no idea what you are accusing me of.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  Aster frowns, drumming his fingernails on the side of his chair and crosses his legs, leaning back again to think about it. But eventually he seems to relent, a sympathetic softness coming to the corner of his eyes as he guesses some of my purpose.

  “You are lucky you are so adorable. And only because you seem to have a handle on that symbiont of yours now. And, you’re not going alone,” he finally says. That final thought in particular seems to amuse him, his thin lips cracking into a devious smile.

  “Of course!” I reply, picture of obedience.

  “And, don’t get caught. And, definitely don’t die.”

  “Why would I get caught?”

  “Mmm hmm.”