The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Exterior | 3:06 PM | Third Day

Though Linos had been firing distractingly bright beams of golden light from his pistol for some time, it was ultimately Kam's voice which broke the silence and snapped me out of my reverie.

"Mehit," I saw her call out in the corner of my eye, across the pit. "We're a little exposed on our right flank. Could you please take up your pistol?"

The older woman didn't seem to respond. As earlier, she was fixated on her daughter's sleeping form, her face distant. We'd given them both the spare masks we'd retrieved from the third floor. A fairly plain theater mask for Mehit, with an exaggerated frown, and a floral-themed one for Lilith, that only covered the eyes and nose, adorned with artificial blooms of various types. (There were a lot of lilies - I wasn't sure if whoever had grabbed it was going for an intentional pun, if it'd been unconscious, or if it was just a coincidence.)

"Mehit," Kamrusepa repeatedly, a little more strictly.

She flinched slightly in a response, then let out a slight sigh. "...yes," she eventually said, reaching for the gun. "Pardon me."

Maybe it was just me, but I felt less safe with Mehit armed and out of my natural line of sight, not more. I looked down at the pistol in my own hands, slowly biting my lip.

"You don't have to keep watching her like a hawk, you know," Kamrusepa, who probably carried a stick around to wake sleeping dogs with, said. "She's not going anywhere, and the incantation won't wear off for another two or so hours."

Mehit was silent for a few moments before responding. "...she is my child, and we are all in mortal danger. It is my responsibility to make sure she's safe."

"And I'm saying that responsibility hardly requires you to stare at her unceasingly," Kam replied, pushing the issue. "You'll do a better job of seeing to her safety by keeping your eyes on our surroundings, I should think. She's not going anywhere."

"Her not 'going anywhere' is precisely the issue," Mehit retorted sharply. "I have no idea what that girl even did to her. For all I know, she could start choking on her own tongue at a moment's notice."

'That girl', as she'd put it, was in reference to Ptolema, who as a surgeon had the best incantation available for non-hostile incapacitation. (Well, technically Anna did too, but she couldn't be bothered.)

"It's perfectly safe, Ms. Eshkalon," Kam stated matter-of-factly. "I understand that you might have some distrust of incantations, but try to be rational. The Nerve-Depressing Arcana is a well-tested technique."

"'Be rational'," Mehit echoed. "How am I supposed to 'be rational' about something I don't understand, in a situation like this? When anyone could be acting with malicious intent? Or everyone here, for all I know."

Kamrusepa didn't respond to this, simply giving a very slight shake of her head. Linos watched the conversation uncomfortably as he continued with his task.

"You're an arcanist, and too young to be a mother yourself yet, so you wouldn't understand," Mehit went on. "What it's like to have that degree of responsibility, yet no power over the situation at all."

"Who says I'm planning to have children at all?" Kamrusepa cut in, raising an eyebrow. "Rather a regressive presumption."

"There is nothing in the world more frightening than loving someone even more than you love yourself, and feeling as though their life or death is completely out of your hands," Mehit continued, stiffly and bitterly, ignoring Kam's interjection. "It feels like being devoured alive. The fear, the sense of hopelessness--"

"Alright, alright," Kam said, holding up a hand. "There's no need to get upset. Forget I said anything-- Keep an eye on her if it makes you feel better."

"'Feel better'," Mehit echoed again, quiet and bitter. "You know, I heard what you said about Lilith and I."

I understood what she was talking about instantly and looked away awkwardly in response, but Kam didn't pick up on it quite so swiftly. "What?"

"You're not as quiet as you think, especially since you were barely standing two meters away, and I'm not the type who tunes out the world when I'm preoccupied, whatever you might think." She inhaled and exhaled sharply. "For whatever it's worth, you have no idea what Lilith and I have been through over the past few years, and how much I've come to understand. I'm not some ignorant fool clinging to a delusion. I know what's happened to her, and what she did tonight." I couldn't see her face, but I could hear the expression of contempt. "But even so. She is my daughter. And I see that in her every single day, regardless of how her mind has been distorted. No matter what happens, what she does, I will never give up on her."

Kamrusepa's mouth hung slightly ajar, her expression increasingly uneasy as Mehit continued.

"So pity me if you like," the older woman almost spat. "But keep your condescending remarks to yourself."

After that, awkward silence prevailed again for a few moments. Linos scratched the back of his neck, his face flushed, while Kam looked at first shocked, then put-off, crossing her arms. Ran was doing her best to pretend she was sitting on the other side of the bioenclosure and not about a meter and a half away, her eyes attentively scanning the area beyond the graveyard.

'Loving someone more than you love yourself'. It obviously wasn't the first time I'd heard the phrase, but it was a frightening idea, and I wasn't sure if I could relate to it or not. There were people I cared about immensely - in at least one case, possibly more than my own life - but at the same time, the way that Mehit had spoken those words felt different. That sort of absolute devotion to something wholly external to oneself, something you didn't even fully understand, felt alien to me. Harrowing.

At my core, I was probably a bit of a solipsist. Not in the strict technical sense, of course; after all, I had extremely intimate proof that other people were both real and conscious. But rather that I couldn't see things outside my head as quite as real as things within it. I couldn't place myself in them. See them as core to my identity.

I had a feeling I'd probably be a really awful parent.

My eyes drifted back to Mehit. She was holding the pistol carefully, her cone of vision split between her daughter and the distant entryway to the guest bioenclosure. Despite her emotional state, she gripped it firmly and with confidence, her gaze sharp. And I remembered the military-grade golems that she'd dispatched before Lilith had ambushed her.

Just who was she, anyway...?

Time continued to pass excruciatingly slowly, while I tried not to imagine someone leaping out of the shadows and firing at us. After a couple of minutes, Linos finished with the signalling process, rubbing his eyes as he lowered his pistol.

"That's ten full cycles through the code," he said tiredly. "That's enough to reasonably expect that he'll have seen it, I think. From here, it's out of our hands."

The tone was one that seemed to imply a shedding of responsibility. What he was really saying was that he was washing his hands of the issue, if we ended up leaving him behind to near-certain death.

"What message did you end up sending, specifically?" Ran asked.

"'Leaving through gateways soon. Join us,'" Linos quoted. "I thought about trying to emphasize the danger again, but I thought it better to keep it short in case he struggled to understand. And, well..." He sighed. "At this point, it does feel like he's made his decision already. We've done all we can."

Ran nodded, then spoke a little more grimly. "What do you think his chances are, if we end up going without him?"

Linos pondered the question. "Hard to say. If I know Anna, she'll probably instruct Sekhmet to open gateways continuously rather than leave it at just the one. So he'll probably have a good shot... But at a certain point, with all the obstacles it sounds like the system is going to start throwing up, it might be almost impossible to make it from the research tower to the guest bioenclosure, especially now that the arboretum has been destroyed." He bit his lip. "Again, there's a lot of eris in there, so assuming there aren't any more nasty surprises, he could hypothetically batten down the hatches until the sanctuary is recovered... If it's recovered."

"Seems like a pretty big if," I said, looking at the grass. "Based on the messages, it sounds like this whole place will probably be destroyed at midnight."

"Gods." Linos shook his head. "I know it's a foolish thing to say after everything else has happened, but... What a waste of money."

"Money?" Kam raised an eyebrow at him in confusion.

"Well-- The money we spent when we built it centuries ago, I mean," Linos clarified.

"Oh," she said. "I see."

Another lull came, lasting another minute or so, but this time I noticed something. At some point after we'd finished talking to Anna, Ophelia - being the only person without an obligation to keep an eye out - had hunched over where she was sitting, and I realized that she seemed to be muttering very quietly to herself.

"Uh," I said, hesitant. "Are you alright, Ophelia?"

She blinked, looking up at me for a moment. "Oh... Yes, I'm alright, thank you."

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Don't be dumb, Su," Ran chided me flatly. "She's praying, obviously."

"...oh."

That was dumb. To the point that I felt a little insensitive for even asking.

I didn't really know very much about Ophelia's religious beliefs. I knew she was a Principist, which was the largest monotheistic school of Inotian-Ysaran religion, interpreting the old gods as emanations of an abstract 'divine principle', while retaining most of its fairly straightforward moral system; don't kill, don't steal, don't eat X type of meat on Y day, that sort of thing. But it had schismed so many times, both before and since the collapse, that laypeople couldn't keep track of it; there were denominations that were extremely ritual oriented and behaviorally prescriptive, others that were largely philosophical and bordered on agnostic, with a laundry list of quasi-messianic figures.

Ophelia was a quiet person who didn't really discuss her personal life, so it'd never seemed appropriate to inquire about the topic. Plus, I didn't really know anything about religion anyway. Even my dad, who was the closest thing to an actual believer in my family, had only ever really paid lip service. I went to the Jainist festivals, but that was about it.

I did wonder how someone from the Lower Planes - from one of the reservations left for the human cultures which remained in the wake of the Tricenturial War - had ended up a member of the faith. As far as I knew, they had their own religious practices based around the pseudo-hive mind which had been eradicated in the invasion. But then it wasn't like any of her circumstances were average.

Linos chuckled, though there wasn't much mirth in it. "Not a bad idea," he said. "I should probably be doing the same thing, really. Not much else to do, at this point..."

"I thought Postsideron's didn't pray?" I said, looking up at him curiously.

"Ah, well... We're not supposed to, really," he replied, with a frail smile. "But any port in a storm, as the saying goes."

I tried to laugh, but didn't manage much either.

"To my eyes, it seems almost a little bit of a self-flagellating act at a time like this," Kam said. "After all, it's in the gods' names that we're being hunted down as we are."

Ophelia glanced at Kam uncomfortably, but at this point, the latter seemed past caring what other people thought of her. Ran rolled her eyes.

Kam glanced over at Linos. "You know, sir, I wanted to ask when we first met, but didn't feel it'd be appropriate. But I've wondered, how do you reconcile your belief system with your work with the Order? Isn't it contradictory, to want to extend life to the greatest degree possible, while not making any changes to one's body outside of the realm of strict necessity?"

Linos double-taked a bit at this sudden questioning of his value system, blinking and leaning back a bit. "I'm... Not sure this is the right time for a conversation like this, miss Tuon."

"I don't see why not," she replied. "It's not as if we're preoccupied with anything else, is it?"

Gods, I thought. She really is out for blood.

He frowned as he looked at her, making a disapproving groan. "You've misunderstood the tenant of 'necessity'. Postsideronic stocism is about finding strength and identity through embracing natural limitations instead of trying to change them. There's nothing prescriptive about how you should approach aspects of your health specifically."

"But by following a philosophy like that, even to a limited extent, you implicitly risk your own health," Kam retorted. "Rather, the body is not a series of discrete systems, but one system. To let one plod along deficiency forces others to compensate over the long term. I'm sure you know as much. And that's only focusing on the medical aspect of things." She frowned. "With due respect, sir, I don't know what condition keeps you wheelchair bound, but you must be aware that a lack of mobility impedes your safety from accidental or malicious death. If I am being honest, it is a liability at present."

Linos crossed his arms, his voice became a little more cold. "Miss Tuon, it's not polite to interrogate other people's beliefs. When I met you, you seemed like a very cordial young lady. This is unbecoming."

She scoffed, shaking her head.

"It is kind of weird to pick a fight like this right now, Kam," I said flatly.

"I just don't even understand the appeal. It feels like madness to me," she went on, avoiding the crux of my observation. "What 'strength' can you even find through something like that? Through choosing to do yourself harm? At least with deism it's founded on a belief in some kind of reward, even an irrational one, but without that? It's flatly bizarre."

"I've got bad news for you, miss Tuon," Linos told her, with a little more sass than his usual register. "Maybe you're too young to have thought about this yet, but everyone does 'bizarre' things to give their lives some sense of meaning. When I was young, there was no easy cure for paraplegia, and I wouldn't have been able to afford it if there was. It was a struggle to pursue a career in spite of all that. There were times I wanted to give up, days I sat in the tiny room I could afford in Altaia and screamed into my pillow. It would have been easier, more 'healthy', to have pursued something lower-stress and settled into a comfortable life." He looked at her sternly. "But I accomplished what I did in spite of those limitations. They're a part of those successes - something that made me who I am. And if I 'fixed' them, a part of me would disappear, too."

Kam's expression grew a little more conflicted, softening slightly. "It's not as if I don't understand being sentimental. But surely you can see that an attitude like that isn't fundamentally different to the detractors of the order, who treat aging as something vital to humanity? From all opponents of progress, throughout history?" She wrinkled her nose. "Identifying with one's suffering, finding nobility in it, is what prevents progress. Imagine the situation were backwards. Would you choose to limit yourself, if you had no such limitations to begin with?"

"Probably not," Linos said. "But that's not what we're talking about." He sighed. "Look, Kamrusepa. I don't think anyone should have any limitations on their quality of life imposed on them by biology - that's why I took this position. But as individuals, we all have to find ways to ground our sense of self and stay true to the identity we've built. That's human nature, whether it's choosing to bake bread in an oven instead of just replicating it, or choosing a career that might not be the most optimal for your skills, or, or--"

"--or choosing to risk one's long-term health out of sentiment?" Kamrusepa cut in.

"...well, yes," Linos concluded. "We make choices like that every day, even when it's little things, like what we decide to eat." He gestured towards her. "Think about it this way. If I offered you the chance to - perfectly safely - transfer your brain to a body optimized for survival, would you do it? Regardless of what said body looked or felt like?"

Kam made the rare sneer that accompanied her having to concede a point. "I suppose I wouldn't."

"Exactly." He nodded a few times. "We all draw that line somewhere, even someone like Zeno. Where we put something we find valuable for some hard-to-explain reason ahead of our own best interests as living organisms. That's what separates us from something like-- I don't know. Bacteria."

"Would you apply that thinking to someone who wanted explicitly to grow old and die, though?" she asked, her legs dangling over the edge of the pit as she looked up at him. "In spite of your mission?"

Linos nodded. "I would. Even if I think someone ceasing to exist is horrifying and tragic, people have a right to make that choice."

She narrowed her eyes. "How is that any different from abetting suicide, which we call a sign of unsound mind?"

I glanced at her uncomfortably for a moment.

Linos hesitated briefly. "...it's a difficult question," he eventually said. "I suppose there are conversations about death which we aren't really willing to have as a culture, yet, both in terms of extending life and ending it. It's tempting to say that there's an inherent distinction between someone making a choice that brings harm to themselves and letting nature take its due course, but..." He flattened his lips, looking downward. "I'd be more inclined to say there is no difference, not fundamentally."

"So you are approving of suicide?" Kam asked, with a confrontational eyes.

"Well, I didn't say that," Linos remarked, resting his head against the side of his fist. "What I mean is, people - human beings - like to think in terms of absolute answers. Things are either right or wrong, permissible or impermissible... That sort of thinking is the foundation of our legal and medical systems, and gods know what else." He gestured outwardly. "But the reality is, almost everything is better judged on a case-by-case basis. Obviously - just as an example - I think it would be a tragedy for someone like a teenager to end their own life for some circumstantial reason, and I think we should always question our loved ones if they express a desire to die outside of circumstances like painful and terminal illness, but..."

"But?" She regarded him quizzically.

"...but we're material beings, Kamrusepa. Finite things of flesh and blood." He slapped his palm lightly against his chest as if to illustrate the point. "Even if we make death completely optional, we don't want to be around for, I don't know... Billions of years. At a certain point, it'd get a little, well, dull."

"What makes you so certain?" she asked him. "I don't think people think about the scope of potential human experience in this world. As a society, we produce distractions - media, activities, whole frames of experience - far faster than we're capable of consuming them--"

"--Kamrusepa," Linos tried to interject.

"And It's not as if human beings don't manage to derive plentiful pleasure through repetition in the lives we have already. Gods, one could argue that's the lion's share of what we do with ourselves--"

"--Kam!" he insisted. "...really, that's enough. I take your point. Maybe some people genuinely would want to exist for an eternity, or at least, as close to it as possible." He sighed slightly. "What I'm trying to say is that a lot of people wouldn't feel that way. And in the grand scheme of things, forcing people to keep existing indefinitely is barely better than deciding they're obligated to stop. I was flippant a second ago, but it's not just about boredom. Life can wear you down in a way you can't come back from."

She gave a slightly condescending snort. "You know, it's occurring to me that you never gave your own opinion. Between the dragon and the phoenix, I mean."

Oh, I'd almost forgotten that conversation.

"That's not what this is about," he said, rubbing his eyes. "My preferences aren't even important. What I'm trying to say is that issues like this need to be approached from a perspective of personal liberty first and foremost. It may well be the case that there's a difficult conversation we need to have as a culture about the circumstances in which it will become appropriate to discourage someone from suicide assuming lifespans continue to increase, and how far to go with that discouragement... But in my opinion, that has nothing to do with the crux of the matter, which is that ultimately, it's an individual decision." He spoke seriously. "People have the right to decide what they value, up to and including their own lives. That is a fundamental truth."

Kamrusepa eyed him back critically. "Even if it leads to people snuffing out their own, despite still having a long future ahead of them?"

It was a sneaky way to put it. 'Still having a long future ahead of them'. The turn of phrase brought to mind someone in their teens or twenties having suicidal thoughts, but the point Kam was obviously trying to make was, in a world where people truly lived forever, that could just as easily apply to a 1800 year old as an 18 year old.

'Youth' was relative, as was what was considered the natural time or circumstances in which to die. In the early days of human culture, adulthood had been considered to begin at around the advent of puberty, while in the modern era, you didn't have total legal autonomy until 30, and weren't entirely considered a non-kid on a social level until you hit triple digits.

Even so, I wasn't sure if she had a point or not. Discussing a fantastical hypothetical like this to a real problem in the contemporary world felt flippant.

He considered it for a moment, but nodded. "Yes," he said. "Liberty is liberty. That's all there is to it."

"Would you say that even if it were your own son?" she asked.

I'd expected him to hesitate at the absurd boldness of this question, but instead he just frowned slightly, speaking firmly. "Yes," he repeated. "Obviously I would try my very best to talk him out of it, and probably enlist just about everyone I could to the effort, but ultimately, it wouldn't be my place to forcefully stop him if that was truly his decision."

Kamrusepa's eyes widened with surprise, and she looked at him with a complicated expression, seeming to lose a little of her thunder. "...that's a more extreme outlook than I would have expected from you, grandmaster."

He snorted. "I'm not sure whether or not you mean that as a compliment or not." He clasped his hands together around the handle of his pistol, a little anxiety visible in the gesture. "...in truth, it's not as if we have control over what people do with their lives as it is. What it comes down to is just a question of passing judgement. That's what I think really matters the most-- whether someone wants to live a hundred or a million years, we should try to make that possible, and then understand that what people do with that choice is ultimately not our business."

Kam frowned. "You don't think people have a responsibility to one another, when it comes to their own existence? To their friends, their families?"

It was strange to hear Kam use an argument like that, since she was normally all about personal autonomy. She didn't even sound completely sincere making it - the haughty confidence in her tone had faded to an ambiguous stubbornness.

This time, Linos barely took any time to consider the words. "...no," he eventually said. "At least, not one that surpasses that fundamental right."

Kam frowned for a moment, her upper lip stiff, like she was being forced to eat a meal she didn't care for. Then, reticently, she glanced away. "Well. I suppose you're consistent. If nothing else."

I thought I heard a little more respect in her tone, which was probably the closest you could expect to a concession from someone like her. She turned her head back in the direction of her watch, and for about half a minute, I thought that was the end of the conversation.

But then, she spoke up again.

"You know what?" she said. "I think it's cowardice."

Linos looked to her, puzzled. "Cowardice?"

"Everywhere you look in culture," Kam ranted, "people exalt death, even when doing so contradicts their other values. Everyone calls a child dying of a rare illness or a young person choosing to end their own life a tragedy, but when they hit the right age or set of circumstances, a switch flips, and suddenly it's something beautiful and necessary. The idea of wanting to live forever is seen as perverse." She looked towards me. "What was it that you said back at the academy, Su?"

I blinked, thrown off by being suddenly a part of the conversation. "What?"

"About people believing in having to die, or sleep, or eat..."

"Oh," I said, remembering. "Uh... Well, I was saying that people rely on their being things that are fundamental and unavoidable to give their lives a sense of structure. Like I always say, everyone crafts a narrative about the world... I guess that's a similar point to the one Linos was making just now." I hesitated, scratching my head. "Though I guess that's really only half of it. The other element is that, if people thought death really could conceivably be avoided in the future, it'd probably make the fact that it still happens now that much more bitter."

She nodded several times, like I'd said something profound. "Yes. That's it exactly." She exhaled. "It's cowardice. People are afraid of death, so they try to turn it into something it isn't. Something beautiful and cathartic, something symbiotic with humanity, just like Grandmaster Melanthos was talking about. So they don't have to face the truth that it was all for fucking nothing. That being mortal is an accident of material circumstance, just as much as hunger or, or-- I don't know, going bald." She looked towards me. "You know what else I think people are afraid of?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Of a world without death," she explained. "Human identity, culture, the stories we tell ourselves for why we do the things we do every day-- They're all so fragile. They can only survive because their employment is finite. We put off finding definitive truths like a child delaying their homework, knowing that sooner or later, the universe will put us out of our misery and spare us the need." She smacked her rifle into the palm of her hands idly, hopefully with the safety on. "What is the purpose of living when nothing is eternal? How do we reconcile our fundamental differences in a shared world? How do we balance our desire for happiness with our selfish natures? We can avoid truly examining reality because we're only guests, and fob these questions endlessly off to the next generation. We can make vacuous pronouncements about 'working towards a better future' because we know we will never have to see our failures."

I blinked a few more times.

"But the truth is as a culture, a people, a species-- We have no vision. No conception of a sustainably better world at all. All we do, over and over again, is survive and compromise." She curled her lip. "When people think of truly eternal lives, of sticking not just a few more centuries on the pile but outlasting the lifespan of stars, the scope of the proposition is harrowing. What would we become, in trying to achieve true stability as creatures of chaos and change? Could we?" Her voice grew a little quieter; solemn, almost. "What would we do, without that option to simply fade away?" She looked towards me. "What do you think, Su?"

I went for a third round of blinking, just to emphasize the point.

Why does she always single me out in these conversations?

"Uh," I said. "Well, like we talked about on the way here, the laws of physics mean that eventually, anyone would--"

"You're dodging the question," she criticized, seeming strangely emotionally invested. "I'm not asking you whether it's possible. I'm asking you what you think a world like that would be like."

I looked at her. Behind her mask, her eyes indicated an expression of complete sincerity.

Why was Kam so interested in the idea of immortality?

It wasn't the first time I'd wondered about it, even just over the weekend, but I'd never given it much in the way of deep thought. Kamrusepa was young - I didn't know the exact number, but she couldn't be any more than 59 years old, since only people born in the second half of the 14th generation had been eligible for our term of the Exemplary Acolyte Program. Even though she'd dismissed questions on the subject with an affect of far-sightedness back in the transpositioning chamber, the fact of the matter was that people our age getting stressed out about their own mortality was freakishly rare; I'd literally never met another person quite like her.

After all, we had a pretty tremendous amount of years ahead of us. The current mean lifespan was just over 500, but it had been rising almost faster than the passage of time since the reinterpretation of the Biological Continuity Oath, and that was before you considered that the basis of that statistic was people who were dying right now; people who were likely already old, and past benefiting from many of of the leaps. When you discounted accidental death and considered how medical scholarship would likely progress in the future, most professional estimates placed the lifespans of people our age in the 700-800 range. I was cynical about the issue compared to the lofty hopes of people like Kam and Zeno, but that seemed a reasonable guess even to me.

In other words, we'd lived something in the range of 3-8% of our lives. Dying against our will wasn't even on the horizon.

So what would drive someone to think about it so much, to the point that she could start ranting about it even in a situation like this? It wasn't like she secretly had some terminal illness or anything; we'd probed each other's health a few times in class prepping for presentations, and about the only physically odd about her was that she had the tell-tale signs of the anima script tweaking they used in communities who lived really high up in the mountains of Rhunbard, where the atmosphere was thin, giving her faster circulation and slightly abnormal lung and muscle structure. But that didn't affect lifespan.

Could it have been some kind of personal trauma? ...or was that over-analyzing it?

I realized I was staring without saying anything, so I brought my thoughts back to Kamrusepa's strange question.

"...well... I feel like everyone would probably go crazy," I told her honestly. "If they really couldn't die, no matter what. I mean, I've only been alive for a little over 30 years, and I already feel all the mistakes I've made have just piled up and up without anywhere to go." I pulled my legs inward a bit. "If that kept going for... I dunno, thousands of years... I feel like my brain might explode."

Kam raised her eyebrows. "That's a little more personal an answer than I was expecting."

I shrugged. "You asked a weird question at a weird time."

"You're only 32, Su," she said, frowning. "It's a little early to making world-weary statements like that, don't you think?"

I didn't say anything, my eyes wandering to the middle distance.

"You know," she said. "Perhaps it's inappropriate of me to say, but I really do feel you ought to have a little more respect for yourself."

The compliment felt so out of nowhere, especially in tandem with the foul and erratic mood she seemed to be in, that I was a little taken aback by it. I glanced at her, befuddled.

"You always act as if you're somehow a failure or not worth very much, but you'd do well to remember that you're one of the most competent young arcanists in the entire world. Near the top of the most esteemed educational program for one of the most prolific vocations." She didn't turn to face me, but her tone was level and earnest. "More than a billion people in our generational bracket, and you're likely in the top thousand in terms of raw intellect and academic achievement, at minimum. The absolute cream of the crop."

My face flushed. She obviously meant it kindly in her own particular way, but I didn't like to be thought of as somehow special.

"And your life has only just begun," she went on. "I can't speak to your own experiences, but I've made mistakes myself. Done things that feel irreparable to me, and that I hate I cannot undo." She folded her arms, gazing upward again. "But those things are nothing compared to the scope of what is on the horizon. Of all the years I could live, could thrive, until all those regrets are nothing more than a single drop in a vast lake. I'm sure the same is true for you, too."

This really was out of character for her. I felt a complicated feeling in my chest. "That's, uh... Kam..."

"Is this really the right time for this?" Ran asked flatly. "The philosophy was one thing, but this is getting weirdly romantic."

Kam scoffed, making a gesture of distaste. "Don't be peculiar, Ran."

She shrugged in response.

"All I'm saying is that you shouldn't write off your own potential so flippantly," Kam declared, once again addressing me. "Time doesn't have to be something that makes you ever more frail. If you let it, it can be something that makes you stronger, until everything that holds you back falls away." The sophisticated affect to her voice seemed to have diminished somewhat, and a little of what felt like a more rural Rhunbardic accent was coming through. "All it takes is enough of it to realize that potential. That's why I'm going to survive this. Why we're going to survive this, no matter what."

I didn't know what to say.

It was a bittersweet. On one hand, I really wanted to feel genuinely comforted by Kam's words. But on the other, there was the sting of dissonance I always felt when someone without understanding tried to equate our experiences.

Was it possible to let go of one's past failings, and move forward? Perhaps it was for people like her. If the core of your self remained pure, then maybe no matter how blemished you were, no matter how much grief and sorrow and self-loathing you accumulated, it could always wash away so long as you had time. Like Neferuaten had said: An eternal future promised an eternity of new beginnings.

But that was only true so long as you had something to default back to. That your sin wasn't part of your very nature.

The transmission from the logic bridge came back abruptly into my mind's eye, making me jump slightly. Once again, we could see Anna and the others, though this time everyone else was standing over by the door for some reason. Some equipment also seemed to have been moved around, with several containers of biological matter that must've been part of Sekhmet's system sitting near the control panel.

"It's time," Anna spoke bluntly.

"Right then," Kam said, hopping to her feet and clapping her hands together. "The moment of truth."

"Are you prepared?" Anna asked impatiently.

"Just a moment, your ladyship," she said. She looked between the various members of our group. "Right then: We need to pick who's going to do the honors. Obviously this needs to be whoever is least likely to be a conspirator - even if we link hands, the backlash from sabotage would wreck the runework and leave us stranded here. Though it would expose them, it would be folly to rule out a suicide attack."

Linos nodded. "Tricky choice," he said. "As we talked about earlier, it seems likely the remaining accomplice is a member of your class. ...but that's just a hunch, and I've not exactly done a fantastic job earning everyone's trust."

"You may be the best candidate all the same in this instance, grandmaster," Kamrusepa said, with a conspicuous lack of protest. "Your son is here, after all. I doubt you'd make a move which would also sacrifice him."

"That's assuming the culprits don't have another escape route set up," Ran said, then glanced towards Linos. "No offense, sir. Just trying to keep the logic tight."

"None taken, miss Hoa-Trinh," he said flatly.

"I, um, would like to rule myself out, please..." Ophelia said, from her spot. "I know that what happened back in the security center made people suspect me, and I'd be afraid of messing something like this up, too."

Kam frowned. "It's not exactly a complicated process. It would be hard for an arcanist of our skills to botch it."

"Nerves can fuck up the best of us," Ran said.

"Y-Yeah," I said. "I think I'd rather pass, too."

Kam raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you putting me forward as the candidate, Su?"

"Er, actually, I was thinking it'd be best if it were Ran," I said. "She already played middleman back when we went looking for Hamilcar, and could have easily sabotaged us then with false information if she'd wanted to. And the two of us are both a little more suspicious than her because of how we handled the situation with Vijana's body."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Linos stated.

Kam clicked her tongue. "You're just saying that because she's your friend, then coming up with post-hoc reasoning after the fact."

"This arguing is infantile," Anna's voice echoed in our minds. "Hurry. We're short on time."

I turned my head. "Are you okay with being responsible for it, Ran?"

She shrugged. "I guess so."

"Miss Hoa-Trinh seems a good choice to me as well," Linos said, nodding. "She's kept her head cool throughout the night, and hasn't been involved in anything the slightest bit irregular. Plus, she's already used to coordinating with Anna."

Kam sighed. "Alright, then. I concede." She looked to the hole. "We're ready to begin, you're ladyship."

"Move into position," she instructed.

"Get us outta here, Ran," Seth said, weary.

Ran hopped off the edge of the hole and down to the unearthed runework, rubbing the dirt off her hands. Kam reached down to pass her the sheet of metal with the runes.

"I'm ready," Ran said, kneeling down. She held up a free hand, and I grasped it, Kam taking mine in turn.

"Place your hand at the beginning of the incantation sub-segment where the damage is present, Anna instructed. "Then prepare to bridge the arcana."

"Understood," Ran replied. She placed the plate down on the according spot, her fingers locked tightly in space.

"Let's pray to the gods this works," Linos said, his teeth half-clenched.

"AI, are you prepared to send the gateway request?" Anna inquired.

I am! One hundred percent! Sekhmet declared cheerfully. Though, I wish you would call me by my name--

"I will count for you to send it," Anna said. "On five. One. Two. Three--"

I clenched my fist, my stomach churning with anxiety. Mehit had broken her watch to turn and idly look. Ophelia held her hand to her chest. Kamrusepa bit her lip so intensely I could see a drop of blood.

"Four. Five!"

Ran closed her eyes.

We couldn't even see anything physically happen. Just the pulse of an incantation.

We all held our collective breath. And then...

Transmission successful! Sekhmet reported. Upcoming transposition scheduled at the Gynikean Gateway at 3:52 PM. Outgoing location will be the Fhara Plateau Secure Site.

"Thank fuck," Ran said.

I heaved with relief.