Author's Note [September 18, 2011]

In November of 2010, I started Stars in their Orbits, Part One of Our Eyes to the Stars, as my project for National Novel Writing Month. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, from scratch. I decided that OETTS, a story which has been incubating in my head in some form or another since I was ten, would be a prime project to tackle for those thirty days.

I am happy to say that Part One reached that goal of 50k words this past November, as many of you know, and continued on after the month was over.

Now I'm here to tell you that I am taking a hiatus from Part One, starting now, to start Part Two of OETTS for NaNoWriMo '11. Part Two, which some of you may know as The Red Smog, was the original germ for the entire story, and I am beyond excited to get back in the saddle for it.

Rest assured that Part One will not be permanently abandoned—in fact, it's instrumental and pivotal for Part Two. It's because of this interconnectedness that I say this: No new parts of Our Eyes to the Stars will be posted until writing resumes where it left off in Part One.

I want to apologize for leaving you all in an indefinite cliff hanger, and also thank you for sticking with me thus far, especially those of you who remember The Red Smog itself—30-something pages written in (dare I mention this?) Comic Sans font.

So, friends and family, thank you for staying around, and for reading all of this for so long a span of time. I promise you that it will be finished... eventually.

Until then, keep your eyes open. You never know when it all might start.

Best wishes,

://Sarah (190513)

Part One: Stars in Their Orbits - Post 12

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Two weeks later, she sat with Milo and Zink at a table in the commons, still feeling that fine edge of tension that hadn't split yet. The masque was in less than ten hours, and she felt like they were all living examples of Murphy's Law: whatever could go wrong had gone wrong. The req program she'd rigged for the masks and costumes hadn't been sending the completed outfits to the right people, so the common space of the dorm was filled with splashes of glitter and color as people dropped off masks and dresses and cummerbunds that didn't belong to them and milled around in the hopes that theirs would show up. Zink's team was busy trying to get campus maintenance into the party room to replace a section of the stronglite floor that had gone out—Layme, who had been under the impression that the floor would be black anyway, was told by Zink in an annoyed tone that it was a surprise, and she should go do something outside of the room until they got it fixed—and Rye and Ell were up in Ell's room, trying to fix a batch of Deception that had gone wrong. Instead of casting a shadow around the edges of their vision, the bit they had tested only triggered mini-migraines. With muttered curses and musings about what the problem could possibly be, the two of them had withdrawn with a pack of aceta-slips and pH tests to figure out how much of the batch was worthless and if they needed to try and make more. She found herself being extremely thankful that they had scheduled the pulse for Saturday night and not Friday. At least they didn't have classes to deal with.

The only person things seemed to be going right for was Layme herself. Her dress and mask had been in her compartment in the req room. Milo's were in his too; she popped in to check, just to be sure, trying her best not to look at his mask and spoil the surprise. Shylo had informed her that the voice filter program was integrated into the room and should be working fine, and she had opted out of drink-testing, so there were no headaches promised in her future—except, that was, the one she was getting from all the last-minute stress. She found herself rubbing small circles into her temples with more force than usual as Milo and Zink argued across the table.

“I still don't see why we should push the start back to ten-thirty instead of nine-thirty!” Milo was saying for what might have been the seventh time.

“Because,” Zink explained again, the first threads of frustration finally seeming to show through his normal indifferent calm. “Rye and Ell said they need to cook up another batch of Deception, and probably another Red Death, just to be sure—they aren't testing that one, for obvious reasons—and maintenance hasn't fixed our floor yet. The guy I talked to said there's flooding in the staff block because of the rain last week and they have to fix that first. He said they'd be over here at six at the earliest.”

“That gives us plenty of time!” Milo argued. “That's almost four hours—”

“Three and a half, at most. To set up all the tables, chairs, and drinks, and our element.” Keeping to tradition, or so they said, Zink's team had added a flair to the decorations that they kept a secret from everyone else involved. They referred to it as “the element” and wouldn't talk about it beyond that in front of anyone else. “That's going to be cutting it close, Milo. Plus,” he added, raising his voice to cut across Milo's next objection. “Morpho's average time is running about forty-five minutes longer than we expected at this point, even with the buffer space we added into the math.” He tapped a finger on the touchpad on the table for emphasis; presumably it was showing something to do with the Morphological unit and how long it was taking each person with an appointment to go through.

“How did you get that?” Layme asked Zink, sidetracked. “That's not common access. Did you—?”

“It's not important,” Zink said—almost snapped, really. Layme bit her lip and let him talk. “The point here is that, with the way things are going, the last Morpho shift, the one that includes Layme, won't be done until nine thirty. Do you want your girlfriend to be late to her own party?”

“Ten-thirty only gives us an hour and a half before unmasking, though,” Milo pointed out, ignoring Zink's question. The timing was designed around the idea that the party-goers would stay masked for the part of the pulse that fell on Layme's birthday, and, at midnight, would unmask for Milo's half, as the pulse dissolved into an ongoing and much more informal sort of gathering.

Zink said nothing for a minute, only studied the touchpad he'd tapped earlier, apparently trying to figure out a compromise. “If we can get in touch with a couple people and get them to move their Morpho stints up to an earlier time, we can cover some of these blank spots. Layme, if you move yours up to five, it'll pretty much guarantee you're out of there by eight-thirty, right?” Layme nodded her agreement. “Would you be okay with that, then? If we move this all up as much as possible, we can start at ten instead of ten-thirty. That's two hours of masks. Does that sound okay?”

Layme only nodded again. She was thinking she wouldn't have minded a ten-thirty start—it was obvious that the idea of starting earlier than that was stressing Zink out, and if anyone would know the timing well enough to know what would work and what wouldn't, it was Zink—but one glace at the treacherous look on Milo's face told her it was probably best not to say so.

“Fine, I guess,” Milo grumbled grudgingly.

“Finally,” Zink said, only half-bothering to keep the word under his breath. “I have to go back in there—” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the door to the party room. “—to make sure the element is going up right. I might have to revamp it if we can't fix the floor, so I need to figure that out. Can you guys survive without me?” His question dripped sarcasm, and his rolled eyes gave no doubt to the fact that he wasn't really asking for their opinions, but Layme nodded anyway.

“We'll be fine, Zink,” she said quietly. “Thank you for figuring this out. I owe you one.”

He turned to look at her as she spoke, and for a second she was sure he was going to snap at her, but his expression softened just a little bit, and she thought she saw the corners of his mouth twitch into an attempt at a smile. “Good. I can't take care of you traggers all day; I have things to do.”

“Do you want me to move up the Morpho appointments, or...?” she asked, wanting to take one of his problems without stepping on anyone's toes. She thought his microscopic smile might have widened a little bit.

“Sure. Yeah, actually, that'd be great. Thanks Layme.” He flashed an honest grin for a split second, then tossed her the touch, which she caught with some difficulty. “Gotta work on those reflexes, Ray,” he said, and he slipped back into the big room without opening the door widely enough to let her or Milo see anything inside.

“Bastard,” Milo muttered. Layme ignored him. She had concluded that ignoring Milo's litany of names for Zink and Zink's obvious superiority complex over Milo was the only effective way to be sure that neither of them would kill the other. It seemed to her that as long as each one thought she agreed with them, the two boys were content to coexist. It was a fragile truce, but it would last until the party was over, at least, and that was the important part.

“Milo, honey,” she said, interrupting a grumble of insults from under his breath.

“Mm?”

“Go see if Rye and Ell need help. I bet they do, especially if they're cooking up.”

“Nah, they don't need me, they've got it under control,” he said. “I was hoping we could—”

“Milo!” Layme interrupted him, smiling. “This is my nice way of telling you to go away so I can go be a girl and get ready.”

“Get ready?” he repeated incredulously. “It's only twelve-thirty! You've got until three for your Morpho stint, and you sure as hell can't do makeup before that, they're micro-scrubbing you the whole time.”

“I have to take care of this first,” she reminded him, flashing the touchpad that Zink had given her. “And I was banking on having until four-thirty to finish my Morph sheet, which is now cut down to before three. And it's not just me getting ready. I'm sure they really would appreciate your help.”

“They can survive without me for one day,” Milo joked, wrapping an arm around Layme's waist and pulling her in towards him. “I was hoping I'd get to spend time with you today.”

“You will get to spend time with me today,” she pointed out, standing on her toes to kiss him briefly. “We're going to be at the masque all night.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts!” she declared, dancing away from him.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Nope! No arguing. It's my birthday. I get my way all day. You have to wait until tomorrow.” Milo put on a mock-sulk, but Layme just laughed again.

“Fine,” he relented. “I'll go help Ell.” He tried to make his voice sound grudging, but there was no hiding the gleam of excitement in it. Mixing really was what he loved to do.

“Go,” Layme agreed, laughing. “Say hi for me, and tell Rye I said her dress better not be prettier than mine!” Milo waved over his shoulder and took the stairs two at a time, and Layme turned her attention back to the Morpho appointments on the touch from Zink.

Wondering in the back of her mind where he'd gotten the information in the first place, she started to get in touch with the people with the latest appointments and tried to move them up. Two people couldn't—they were sitting tests for a class, or so the bounce-back said when she tried to blip them. Three other people wouldn't, claiming all manner of excuses. Layme hung up with all of them frustrated. It was evident, to her at least, that they were already drunk, and the only reason they didn't want to go earlier was so that they didn't have to sober up sooner than expected. Finally, after an hour and a half of re-arranging and getting in touch with various people, she managed to get the last Morpho shift out at eight-thirty. She sank back on the couch with a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about. Her eyes still shut, she opened a new audio blip and set it to send to Zink and Milo.

“Hey guys, I got the Morpho trag-jag figured out. I'm gonna hover down here in the commons unless either of you need me. My Morpho's at three, so if I don't see you guys before then, I'll catch you at the pulse. Ice out.”

She sent the blip out without opening her eyes, but she found that she couldn't sit still. Her fingers tapped an impatient rhythm on her thigh, and her thoughts wandered. She found herself coming back to Zink, and how he had managed to copy the schedule for the Morpho shifts. The Morphological Studies department was completely separate from the dorm and from the regular campus, and their information ran on a different local system. She would have said there was no way for Zink to gain access, but evidently she would have been wrong, so there must be a way. As to what it was, though, she had no clue.

“Well, there's a good way to waste an hour,” she said to herself. It was true; she had an empty hour or so with nothing to do. A small smile forming on her lips, she opened her eyes and pulled up her drive on her vis feed. Maybe she could figure out part of Zink's secret and use it to bother him later. She edited the access to the touchpad's programming and called up its raw code on her conscreens, reading through it and trying to find the source of the stream of information. From what she had been able to tell by using it to reschedule things, it was mirroring the information in the Morpho building, and vice-versa—whatever was changed on one was changed on the other. It wasn't a complicated thing to do in itself; what made her really curious was how Zink had gotten around the security traps. Morpho, like all the other separate departments on campus, was secretive and tried to keep its information to itself. Departments were fiercely competitive with each other and with their counterparts on other campuses, not unlike the Dragons and test-outs in other sectors.

After a few minutes of scanning, Layme thought she knew where the information was coming from. Zink had set up a fake call number somewhere and was tricking Morpho's system into thinking that the fake call had access to information. She let out a low whistle through her teeth. She had known Zink was good, but she had known it mostly by his speed. She hadn't known he was into anything this complicated. Of course, there was no way to be sure he'd been the one to set up the hack. It could have been another member of his team, or even a Tech-spec with nothing better to do... but something told her that wasn't the case. The ingenuity of it, the way the program seemed to be able to cut corners—it all pointed to Zink and his way of thinking about things. There was something else familiar about it to, something that nagged at the back of her mind, like deja vu, but she couldn't quite place it. After meditating on it for a little, she decided she was only recognizing Zink's style from working with him on masque stuff and went back to focusing on the info-stream program. If she could get access to the fake call's raw information, she thought she might be able to find the real call number that was broadcasting the fake frequency.

A few minutes into manipulating codes and trying to direct a flow of information into her own feed, a write-window popped up on her vis feed. Grinning, she pulled it forward, expecting the fake call's information to start filling the little square. Instead, a familiar line of X's marched across instead.

It was Spelter.

XXXX YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT, YOU KNOW XXXX he said, and Layme swore. He'd been watching her. She wasn't angry at first, only mildly annoyed—she had come to see him more as a nuisance than a threat—until she realized that it had been Zink's programming that had been on her vis feed when he must have been watching. Shit, she thought. Oh shit. Zink Is going to kill me.

Pull the fuck out, Spelter, she sent to him. She could feel herself shaking in anger.

WHY SHOULD I?

Because you're a father-tragger who has no sense of honor, she shot back almost immediately.

OUCH, RAYME, he responded. PLAY NICE. She could almost hear him laughing.

Who the fuck are you anyway, you tweak?

YOU NEED TO EXPAND YOUR REPEROIRE, RAYME. THAT ONE'S GETTING A LITTLE OLD.

Like hell it is. It's one thing to fuck with me, but if you start fucking with my friend's I

Before she could finish typing, he had sent a reply. That was bad; it meant he had a live connection to her vis feed. Once again, it seemed Spelter was holding the advantage.

DON'T WORRY, I HAVE NO INTENTION OF BOTHERING YOUR FRIEND. THOUGH HE CAN SPIN QUITE AN IMPRESSIVE PROGRAM, FROM WHAT I SAW.

Fuck you, she sent back, furious. She was seeing red around the edges of her vision.

SO VULGAR. DON'T YOU KNOW THAT UNBECOMING FOR A LADY?

Bite me. Who do you think you are?

YOU'LL SEE, he said, and she clenched her teeth. He had said that same thing before pulling out the last time. Maybe he had a plan that involved more than just popping up in her drive every so often.

What do you want from me, Spelter? she asked again. She wasn't expecting an answer, but the word surrender wasn't part of Layme's vocabulary when she was angry.

YOU KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTIONS, RAY. BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS A LITTLE. BESIDES, I THOUGHT YOU LIKED A BIT OF ANONIMITY.

What do you mean by

WHY ELSE WOULD YOU THROW A MASQUERADE FOR YOUR PULSE? HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BY THE WAY.

A chill slid down her spine. It wasn't the knowledge of her birthday that scared her—he had access to her call and therefore to her date of birth—but the knowledge of the masquerade. No one outside of the Dorm knew, not even Tessa. It was standard operating procedure for big-time pulses to be kept secret, a factor of cross-sector Dorm rivalry, as well as staying under the radar of campus staff and Govlies whenever possible. The only way Spelter could know about the masque was if he had been rotting through the archive files of her drive. Archives were temporary files that were stored in an electronic cache in the Campus, city, and sector systems, as well as the Federal System, as electronic backup for twenty-four hours after information was deleted from a soft-drive. If Spelter had access to arcs, he might be more dangerous than she had thought.

How did you get into my

NO MORE QUESTIONS, LAYME. TSK TSK. YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO ON YOUR BIRTHDAY.

Don't fucking try to

I DON'T HAVE TO *TRY* FOR ANYTHING, he interrupted. IF YOU WERE SAYING WHAT I THINK YOU WERE, I *DEFINITELY* DON'T HAVE TO TRY AND ANGER YOU. YOU PLAY RIGHT INTO MY HANDS.

You tweak. You're a tragging COWARD.

MAYBE, he answered, and she felt that deja vu again, almost as if she could hear the tone of his voice. But that was just nerves. She had no idea who Spelter was, let alone how his voice sounded.

HAVE A GOOD BIRTHDAY, LAYME. AND BEWARE. THE RED DEATH HOLDS SWAY OVER ALL.

The write-window wiped itself blank, like it always did after her encounters with Spelter, and Layme was left in the usual tangle of confusion, frustration, and anger that followed her conversations with the programmer. She was so keyed up that when her audio feed beeped to tell her she had a notification, she almost screamed. She caught herself just in time, biting down on her lip hard enough to leave the metallic taste of blood on her tongue, and then checked the note. It was Morpho's system, telling her that the appointment before her was almost done and she should be on deck. They must have finished her predecessor early. Still shaking, she closed her vis feed and collapsed the touch, slipping it into her pocket.

Her mind ran wild as she made her way across campus to the Morpho building. She had no way of knowing if she could trust Spelter or not; her first instinct was not, and that was a frightening concept. He had some sort of connection to her drive that she couldn't find, and, because of that, couldn't sever. He had her proggie handle, which enabled him to positively ID any program of hers that he managed to get his electronic hands on. He had seen Zink's program in write-raw form, which might mean nothing—or might put Zink at risk, depending upon when he had started watching her work her way through the code. He knew her plans for the night, and that was the worst part. It meant he had access into information in places other than her drive that were connected to her. It meant he was better than any proggie she had ever seen, or even heard of. If he had access to arc files, he was better than she had ever suspected was possible for anyone outside trained Govlies.

You don't know that he's a civ, Layme. He might have said that he's not, but he can say whatever he wants. It doesn't make any of it true. He might be baiting you, or even using information he gets from you to snag Zink or someone else on his team. He might have forced you to be his own personal real-life worm for him, Lay. You need to figure out who the fuck he is. Hack him back, or find a way to keep him out. Ask Zink if you have to, just get him out of your drive.

She found herself nodding in agreement with the line of thought. Yes, maybe if she talked to Zink, the two of them would be able to find a way to block Spelter. If Edda or Shy got involved, they might even be able to back-hack him and at least find out whether or not he was Gov. She made a mental note to talk to Zink about it after the masque was finally over with.

By the time she got to Morpho, she had calmed down. She didn't have to deal with Spelter alone, and he hadn't done anything to her so far. He was nothing she had to worry about today. Today was all about her. It was her birthday, and her friends were throwing her the party of her dreams. When she got to Morpho to give her design a final check, she was smiling, and by the time she stepped into the op-pod, she had forgotten all about Spelter.

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Part One, Post 13 >>

Part One: Stars in Their Orbits - Post 11

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Part One, Post 12 >>

“I cannot wait to see if this works!” Layme exclaimed, flopping comfortably backwards onto Zink's bed. The two of them had been simultaneously working on the blanket bounce for over an hour, Zink guiding her through the process as he understood it. She had expected him to take the role of instructor, but she had been glad to discover he was willing to work with her as a kind of tentative partner. When there came gaps in his knowledge or ideas, he would listen to her suggestions. Finally it seemed like maybe their program would work. There were no obvious blank spots, and if there were glitches, they wouldn't know until they tested it.

Zink chuckled. “It works,” he said.

Layme turned in a flash to look at him. “How do you know?” she demanded.

“I set it to run in here right after we saved it. Check your local registry.” The local registry was a list of all the call numbers in range of whatever network—micro or macro—the person who accessed the reg was signed in on. Layme pulled it up with a few mid-air gestures, and at first she could only gape at it. Zink must have set up a local in his room, because there were only two people on it. She assumed they were Zink and herself, but there was no knowing for sure; instead of displaying their six digit short codes or their twenty-digit full call numbers, the reg simply said xx1 and xx2.

“Jag. Zink, you're a genius!” On impulse, she sat up again so she could reach over and hug him. He seemed surprised, and he hugged back after a moment, but awkwardly. Layme hardly noticed. “Would the voice filter work with it?”

“Do you have the gen files uploaded for it? The voice blends?”

“Yeah, the file paths are already plugged in. I think it's pretty much done, and if we can tie it to the blanket for the local, I won't have to try to get it to snare people. The blanket hack will do it for me.”

“Good deal,” Zink said, but his feed was glowing in his eyes again, and his voice was distracted. He was already working on piggybacking her voice filter onto his—no, their—fluff hack.

Good deal is right, Layme thought, amazed. He's probably saving me another two or three days of work by piggybacking this. Maybe longer, she mused; it would have taken her a long time to figure out how to blanketize the filter from scratch. It might have been faster now that she had watched him prog his call-fluff... but then again, maybe not. Zink wielded a knowledge of programming and the inner-workings of a soft drive that she had never seen before. There were tricks he used that she never would have thought to try, and some of his code seemed to deal directly with the hardware he was trying to affect—the things broadcasting call signals and the things viewing them. She found herself wishing that she had ignored Milo's request—his demand, that little voice whispered—that she not work with Zink too closely. If she had been able to observe him earlier, she might have been able to keep Spelter out of her drive a little better.

“There!” Zink exclaimed, barely five minutes after he had started. “It should be hooked up. Want me to try it out?” Layme made the gestures that turned her sound feed and jaw chip on, then flashed a thumbs up. “How does this sound?” Zink asked tentatively, and Layme pumped a fist in triumph. His voice came through her traguses as a melded recording of Milo, Ell, another member of Zink's team named Roth, and Zink himself, all recorded and blended into one voice.

“Great!” Layme replied, and made another gesture of triumph. He had worked a loophole into his fluff-hack so that even with call numbers blocked, the filter program could still differentiate between gender. Her own voice came back through her feed as a mix of Rye, Shylo, Tessa, and her own voice. If everyone at the masque came with an audio pickup and a sound feeder, every guest's voice would come through to each other as the mixture voices, further obscuring identities.

“Zink, you are a jagging genius,” she declared, and she found herself looking around habitually for a glass to pick up and toast him with. Of course, since they were sitting in his room, there were none, and Layme felt a flare of annoyance at herself. Was alc really on her mind that much?

“My thanks, fellow proggie,” Zink said gravely, giving her a small nod. Layme felt the smile she'd been wearing trying to slide from her face.

“Why call me that?” she asked. “I don't prog that often. Just for stuff like this. That's just Tech trag, really. Hardly makes me a programmer.”

Zink only shrugged again. “You seem experienced,” he said. “Even before today, when I looked at the hacks you were doing to the req system. You just seem... practiced, I guess. Like you know your way around a drive.”

“Everyone knows their way around a drive,” she protested, unable to shake the defensive feeling that had lit upon her nerves at hearing the word “proggie” directed at her. “It's kind of how our lives work.”

“Maybe so,” Zink agreed, genial as always, “but you seem to know more than the average tweak. Hey,” he protested, holding up his hands in a calm down, step back sort of gesture. Layme felt her face flush; maybe her defensiveness had been more evident in her expression than she'd realized. “That's not a bad thing. Having control over your world is important.” He grinned then, and she thought that she'd never seen him smile quite so... honestly. That didn't make sense, not really, but it had a ring of truth in her mind anyway. “I'm a self-proclaimed proggie myself, and damn proud of it.”

“Call yourself what you want. But I'm not a prog, alright? Jag, I'm not even a tech-spec.”

Zink nodded, still smiling. “I forgot, you're staying general. Great minds think alike.”

Layme let herself relax a little, and she smiled. “Thanks.” The two of them sat in silence for a minute before she asked, “Do you ever regret it?”

“What, staying general?” Zink asked. She nodded. “No,” he said. No hesitation.

“Why not?” she asked, laying back and staring at the eye-catcher on his ceiling. It showed the Milky Way rotating around the center of the ceiling to mimic the Earth's rotation, sped up to time-and-a-half.

Zink thought about that for a moment before he answered. “It keeps me out of their box,” he said finally. “Like... Here, when you find out someone's a Chem spec, what do you think of?”

“Alc,” Layme answered promptly.

“Right,” he agreed. “How about an Ec-spec?” Short for economics specification. He pronounced ec to rhyme with speck.

“Govlie,” she said, again not having to think of her answer.

“Right!” he exclaimed, and for the first time she felt like she was seeing Zink, and not the iced-out half-character he liked to present. She had to bring a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle at hearing him sound so enthusiastic. “Whenever you hear someone's spec, right away you have this... this preconception of who they are and what they can do.”

“And you don't want that for yourself?” Layme guessed, but even while she said it, she felt like she was wrong. At least partly wrong. As if he had read her mind, she saw Zink shaking his head out of the corner of her eye.

“I don't care what people think of me. No,” he corrected immediately, “that's not right. I don't care what Dragons think of me. But if you and I can make those leaps, don't you think other people are making them too?”

Layme shrugged. “I'm sure all the Dragons think this way.”

“Not Dragons, Layme,” he insisted, and she heard the tone of his voice suggesting that she had missed some vital point.

“Zink, I think maybe I—”

“Forget it,” he said suddenly, waving a hand in midair as if to diffuse the unspoken words of the conversation.

“But I want to understand!” she protested, irked. It had been a long time since she had had a conversation like this, one so full of a sense of intelligence and importance. She and Milo, well... these days, they didn't have conversations quite as often.

“You will eventually,” Zink said dismissively, waving his hand again in that same brushing-away gesture. “For now, don't frizz about it, alright?”

“Sure,” she said, but even to her own ears it sounded like a sigh. Everyone seemed determined to keep her in the dark these days, or at least convince her to stay in the shadows. “I'm ice, I swear.”

Zink laughed, a short sound that was half sniff and half snort. “I believe you,” he said, and Layme couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. “In the mean time, go make up with your boyfriend.”

“We're not—” she said, and then Zink was shaking his head again. She had meant to say, We're not fighting, but the words, born of impulse and something that might have been shame, die in her throat.

“Lie to me if you want, Layme,” Zink said, and she noticed the grave, overly-serious tone in his voice again, like he was older than his years, or maybe he knew something she didn't. “Lie to me if you want, but don't lie to yourself.”

She opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it and bit back whatever quick retort might have spilled out. “Alright,” she agreed.

Zink sat up first and gave himself a miniature shake, his green hair falling in a layered fringe across his forehead. I hope his future girl sees him like this, Layme thought suddenly. Inspired and distracted and just entirely himself.

“Thanks for progging with me,” he said, and that half-lazy, half-smug grin was making its way back onto his face.

“Hey, no problem. I learned more from you in an hour than I learned by myself in like three years!”

“I thought you said you weren't a proggie,” Zink pointed out, and Layme decided to treat it like the joke it probably was; if she was so paranoid that Zink could be her enemy, she was in bad shape. She settled for flipping him the double bird and laughing as she left the room, his door sliding open by motion sensor and preserving the fake impact of the gesture. Once she was in the hallway and the door slid shut behind her, however, she felt a weight settle in her chest. Now came the unpleasant part: finding Milo and trying to fix things. Again. She would probably end up apologizing for things she wasn't sorry for and agreeing to things she would never follow through with, and the two of them would end the half-discussion, half-charade with sex that was becoming less exciting and more like an expectation. Or a duty.

“Trag, when did you get so bitter?” she muttered to herself, and she was not exactly surprised to find that she didn't really find the question to be a joke. With another sigh that only seemed to add to the weight of low-key dread winding itself around her shoulders, she turned her blip notifications back on and waited to see if she had missed any from Milo as she made her way up the stairs. Whether she ended up at his room or hers, both of them were a few floors above Zink's. She waited until she reached the floor of her room, but no missed blips, sent from Milo or otherwise, came in to her feed, so she continued her climb until she reached Milo's door. She was not entirely surprised to see the eye-catcher on it had changed from a slowly pulsing spiral, calm and almost sleep-inducing, to a pair of light-ribbons that bounced around the perimeter like caged animals. Milo's changes in technology always seemed to reflect his mood. With one more sigh—this one to brace herself—Layme pressed her thumb to the access panel by the door. Inside, she knew a notification came through either Milo's found piece, or the room's notification feed. She bit her lip, and the thirty seconds—maybe even less—that it took for him to answer the blip seemed like forever. Finally, though, his voice issue, small and distant, from the door panel.

“Yeah, whaddyou want?” he said, and his words seemed oddly stretched and blended together at the edges. She wondered what he'd been drinking this time.

“It's me,” she said, and for a moment she wondered what she would do—what she would feel—if he decided he didn't want to see her. She didn't have the luxury of meditating on that thought, though. A second later, the door to Milo's room slid open, just like always, and she came in. He was sprawled out on his bed, a gaming glove on one hand and what looked like a simple beat-the-clock game up on his wall. Her eyes flicked to his nightstand, taking stock: one empty glass, check; one mostly-empty bottle, also check. She wondered again what it was.

She turned her attention back to Milo, who was looking at her with a blank expression, like he was waiting for something. Unsure of what he wanted, Layme only widened her eyes questioningly and said nothing. Finally he seemed to break out of his trance, and he straightened up from his sprawl so he was closer to sitting than laying down. Layme stayed standing where she was, three feet in from the door, and about the same distance from the edge of his bed. She didn't want to say anything, not until she knew where his mind was.

“Where've you been?” he asked at last, his eyes narrowing as if accusing her. Behind the slitted lids, however, his eyes themselves looked confused.

“I was working on some masque stuff,” she replied, not quite hesitantly. But close. Close. Until she knew what he was on, she would step carefully. Sure, the use of a standard base meant eliminating category drunks, but every drink also hit its target with the intended effects. If he was on Smooth or Mellows, she might be fine. If he was on something else, he might end up more prone to being angry.

“With who?”

“Zink... and his team,” she lied. The words seemed to catch behind her teeth, as if they didn't want to participate in the deception. She hoped the pause was small enough for him not to notice.

“Don't fucking lie to me,” he said, and it was the word he used that made her realize there was no chance he was on Mellows. He only used the old slang when he was truly upset.

“I'm sorry, Milo,” she said. She wondered how many times she had apologized like this in the past two months. She also wondered how many times she had meant it.

“Why would you go off with that tweak anyway?” Milo asked. “What good is he?”

“He's good for plenty,” Layme said hotly, realizing as she said it that Milo would probably misinterpret the remark. Her luck was good, though—he didn't seem to hear. She saw that the anger was already draining from his face. In its place was a cross between resignation and sadness, like this was something he expected.

“I should never have told you not to work with him, should I?” he asked after a momentary pause.

“No,” Layme agreed softly.

“The tweak scares me, Lay,” he said, and it was the disjointed quality of Milo's comments that helped her place what he must have been drinking. Sliders were good when you had too much in your mind. They had a sort of intentional ADHD effect, sending the mind in different directions every so often. As an emotional regulator, though, they did nothing. Whatever emotions she was getting from Milo they were real. Fragmentary and disconnected from each other, maybe, but entirely his.

Unable to resist the sadness she saw in his expression, Layme moved to sit by Milo at the side of his bed. “Why?” she asked, twining her fingers with his automatically. Milo only shook his head, either unable or unwilling to explain. “I'm not going to leave you for Zink, Milo,” she told him, unable to think of another reason Zink Ehrman—two years younger, six inches shorter, and twice as skinny—would frighten Milo Tohls.

“From your lips to God's ears,” Milo muttered, a phrase he said he had learned from his grandmother. It seemed to mean don't believe everything you hear, or, like now, don't make any promises.

“The pulse is in two weeks,” Layme reminded him. “After we're done with it, you won't have to deal with Zink any more if you don't want to. And once we get to the masquerade it'll be worth it, anyway.”

It was Milo's turn to sigh. Layme leaned over and kissed him, and as he surrendered and kissed him back, the small, bitter voice in her head spoke up again.

So it's just how you thought it was going to go. You're both going to ignore it, and you'll jag him and fall asleep, and when you both wake up, you'll pretend nothing ever happened. Until it comes up again. Until you fight with him over alc or progging or Zink or specs. Then it'll happen all over again, and neither of you will talk about it. Then what, Layme? What do you do then?

But Milo was still kissing her, and she didn't have enough space in her mind to doubt herself while wanting him, so she chose him.

It was an odd, frantic sort of dance then. He was still Sliding, and his attention switched almost as soon as she grew accustomed to whatever he was doing. It was over fast, and it left her feeling jumpy and uncomfortable. Milo seemed to have no such trouble. He got out of bed only long enough to find a bottle of Mellow and pour them both a glass, and he made his way through two and was starting on a third as they lay in blank silence. She thought that to him, it must seem comfortable and quiet. To her, it felt almost like a sense of impending disaster. The same feeling that had driven her out of his room in the middle of the night began to make its way up her spine, prickling and jabbing, spreading sickly-hot tendrils of guilt into her stomach and tightening the muscles in her shoulders. She drew in a deep breath to say something—anything!—about it to Milo; it was too big now, much too big to try and ignore or hide,. But as she did, she heard him give a small, rasping snore. She looked over at him, and the words she had meant to say died in her throat. He was asleep, mostly empty glass dangling loosely in his hand and threatening to spill the last mouthful of green-apple Mellow onto the cool blue stronglite of the floor. Drawing in another shaky breath, Layme reached over and took the glass from him, finishing off the last gulp on her own. What could it hurt?

She thought about leaving again, going back up to her room, or even blipping Zink and jumping into another project, but in the end she couldn't bring herself to do it. She lay beside Milo instead, not curling up with him or even making an effort to hold his hand, but laying still and staring up at the ceiling. She thought maybe that prickling in her spine would leave if she didn't aggravate it. If she could just stop thinking about it...

She lay there without slipping in to sleep as she usually would have, and when Milo swam up from his doze, she made some excuse that she didn't remember after she had said it, and she left again, deciding that maybe her own room would make her feel less like a stranger in her own skin all of a sudden. She ended up on her own bed.

She realized that she was staring at the slow color-changing squares on her ceiling, but she was thinking of Zink's, and the Milky Way turning slowly above her head like time. No matter what, the Earth moved along its path through space. It never questioned itself, only moved implacably on its course among the stars. It passed them without caring what they were called or how brightly they burned, or how many light-years away they might be.

It just keeps moving, she thought vaguely. Maybe I should, too. Maybe my problem is that I'm staying in the same place for too long.

Still feeling restless, she called up her room's settings on her cons and found the ceiling eye-catcher options. When she had set it to the same visualization as Zink's, she felt a little better. Still, even looking up at the slow path the constellations made across the imaginary sky, Layme found she could not escape into sleep like she was so used to doing.

She was left alone with her misplaced feelings of discomfort, and the growing sense that something was about to change. After all, things only lasted in great strain until they finally broke.

She had a feeling that whatever was making her feel this way was under that strain, and it was going to break wide open.

Soon.

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Part One: Stars in Their Orbits - Post 10

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Part One, Post 11 >>

It was the sound of Milo's blip that woke Layme up in the morning, groggy but not hungover. It seemed that he'd been right about the Chröm not having an after-lull, but that did nothing about the lack of sleep she'd sustained during her programming spree and her second encounter with Spelter. She almost ignored the ping and went back to sleep, but before she did, a seed of logic wormed itself into her thoughts. He thinks you're still on Chröm. He'll be flipping out. Still, the idea of going back to sleep seemed lovely. The adrenaline and anger at Spelter that had filled her the night before had left her feeling oddly empty.

Answer the goddamn blip, Layme, she scolded herself, and with a resigned sort of groan she forced herself to open her eyes and call her drive up on her wall. After so many hours working from her cons the day before, the feed on her wall seemed unreal and far away. She forced her tired eyes to focus, and sure enough, the blip that had awakened her was flashing with Milo's call number. She opened it and his voice rose and fell along the spectrum on the wall.

“Hey, Lay, just blipping to be sure you're awake. The deadline for registering for class is noon today, so you've got about an hour to drop that off.” Layme swore under her breath as Milo spoke. The classes she had narrowed her choices down to were on one of the many touchpads she'd been working on at Milo's the day of their fight—had it really only been two mornings ago?—and she didn't remember where she had put it. More likely than not, it was still in the pile in Milo's room, mixed up with dec-specs and lighting programs for Zink and Shylo.

“Also!” Milo's voice continued through the hidden surround-sound in her walls. “No frizzing. Your reg sheet is in your rec. I sent it down this morning. Get in touch when you're back on Earth, and remember to eat something—Chröm takes a lot out of you. Ice out.”

Layme felt a rush of affection for him as the bars of the equalizer fell flat. There were times he knew her so well, she was positive he must be reading her mind. Sometimes that bothered her, made her feel vulnerable and less, somehow; but this morning it made her smile, and she made a mental note to do something special for him soon, just to remind him that she loved him.

She retrieved her reg sheet from where it sat in her rec panel, just like Milo had promised, and hastily made the last few decisions she needed in order to have the required number of classes on her schedule. She wondered with a small pang of regret if she should have chosen a specialization after all. It would have narrowed her options overall, true, but she would have had more choices in that spec to pick from. She could have taken a Technology specification with a Development focus... could have learned things about programming that she had only dreamed of... things that would have Spelter on his technological knees...

And declared herself a law-breaker, in essence; because who would want a Tech spec with a devo-focus if they weren't already interested in the programming that lay within it? It was a daunting thing to contemplate learning from scratch, though that's what any Tech-devo would be doing—in theory, of course, if they had kept to the unwritten rules and not touched a program before signing up for the spec—and the Dorm people, or at least the Govlies they must be required to report to, would know that. When stripped down the the bare bones of intuition and common sense, any Tech-devo was declaring that they had been programming for months, or even years. Who knew what that would do to you once you hit your twenty-ones?

“It'd jag you up is what it would do,” Layme said to herself as she put some perfunctory make-up on and ran a hand through her hair in preparation for leaving her room. “They'd have you then, wouldn't they?”

But who were they, anyway? And why would they want her?

“You're a nut-case,” she told herself under her breath, actually laughing out loud as she emerged into the hallway and began the trek down the spiral staircase. “You're not a wanted woman, tragger. They couldn't care less what you know or don't know, or what classes you're taking.”

They care enough to make you a Dragon, a voice in her head whispered, and she recognized it as the bitter voice that had guilted her into programming again. She actually rolled her eyes in frustration—apparently every time she pushed it out of her mind, it came back doubly persistent—but she had to admit, the annoying little know-it-all voice had a point. She was here, she was a Dragon. That must mean something.

She was immersed in her thoughts and reaching the bottom of the stairs that led into the commons when a hand fell on her shoulder. She was so surprised she nearly shrieked, but caught herself when she turned and saw Zink behind her.

“Hey, Ray. Ice, it's just me.”

“What did you call me just there?” she asked once she played back his greeting in her head, her eyes widening as she attempted to get her heart to slow down and her thoughts to fall back into some semblance of order.

“Your name?” Zink said, raising a skeptical eyebrow and laughing. “Trag, chick, what were you on last night? Rabbits?”

“You'd just love that,” Layme said nonsensically, rolling her eyes. In truth, she was hardly aware of what she was saying. She was still in the grip of a momentary panic. She could have sworn he'd called her Rayme, and if Zink had her handle, who knew what he would do with it? He'd probably turn me in, she thought with uncharacteristic meanness. If he can't handle a little alc, he's probably just waiting to turn someone in for something that actually matters.

“If you say so,” Zink agreed mellowly, and she instantly regretted her mental accusation. Zink really was alright, once you got past his idiosyncrasies—if you could get past them.

“Sorry. Just a little tired,” she said, turning towards the academic wing, but before she even finished her sentence, she saw Zink's jaw crack into a yawn that was big enough to remind her of the old crocodiles she'd seen in her old science feeds. “And I guess I'm not the only one,” she noted dryly. “What were you doing last night, Zinker?”

She waited him to flinch at the nickname—it was something he had mentioned hating in passing once upon a time, and she couldn't resist ribbing him with it—but he only grinned, his smile seeming smug while his eyelids tiredly slipped to half-mast. “Not sleeping” was his reply, and Layme knew it would be pointless to try and get anything more out of him. Excessive secrecy was one of Zink's specialties. Sometimes she found it oddly endearing; other times it frustrated her so much she wanted to tear his grass-green hair out.

“If you're so tired,” he asked, still tailing her as she searched the ed wing for where her reg sheet was supposed to go, “why aren't you asleep?” It was the kind of question he was always asking, as if he was trying to dismantle people by using annoying amounts of basic, kid-like logic.

“Because I have to drop this off—“ Layme held up the touchpad in one hand. “—in the next hour, or they'll ice me from the Dorm. Or something like that. I don't think they'd let me stay if I wasn't being an obedient little class-attending Dragon, what do you think?”

Zink shrugged, and that was all. Layme found herself rolling her eyes again; there really wasn't ever a chance for normal conversation with him. She found the panel in the wall with the words Registration Drop glowing a mellow purple above it. “This is where I drop this off then?” she asked absently, not really asking but unwilling to part with the thing that would possibly determine the rest of her life. What an inconvenient moment for that truth to sink in.

“You are—” Zink started, and then seemed to change what he was saying. “Yeah. This is where I put mine, anyway, and it does say reg drop on it.” Layme nodded, forced herself to take a deep breath, scanned her eye, and slid the touch into the panel, which made a series of muted whirring sounds, presumably as it verified her identity.

“Thank you,” a generic mellow voice said, and there was a small clunk as her reg sheet was deposited in with the others.

“Well, then!” she said, not sure if she was trying to sound cheerful or sardonic. “Food sounds good. You?”

“Sure,” Zink agreed, mellow as usual. “Food sounds fine.”

The two of them made their way through the commons again, to a door opposite that of the party hall with its bowl floor, and into the dining room without speaking. Layme decided that Zink might really get on her nerves sometimes, but at least she didn't have to talk when he was around, and that definitely earned him a okay-to-be-around point or two. As the two of them scanned their retina prints on the req screens and chose their food, Layme asked him, “So what am I?”

“Hm?” he asked distractedly, apparently entirely immersed in his late-breakfast options.

“When I dropped my reg off, you said 'you are' and then stopped. So what am I?”

She saw something in his eyes brighten for a second, and thought maybe there was a split-second pause in the way they were scanning the req screen. You're going psycho, Ray, she thought, giving herself a mental shake. She felt a stab of anger at Spelter—he was turning her into a paranoid tweak, and she'd only “talked” to him twice. How was that for being a choke?

“Nothing,” Zink said, but he was grinning.

“Trag. Spill it,” Layme demanded, but she was smiling too. She had a feeling that Zink could really rip into her—into anyone, really—if he wanted to, but she had never seen him do it. His teasing had always been light-hearted, almost brotherly.

“What I was going to say was that you're a Dragon, but the idea of simple signs confuses you? I knew there must be a reason you're staying general.”

“Oh, shut up!” she protested, poking him hard in the arm. They had reached the end of the row, where their food waited for them, tagged with their call numbers. Layme grabbed her plate—eggs, toast, and a tall glass of juice—and turned back to Zink again. “Eat here or upstairs?” she asked.

“Here's fine,” he said, and started towards an empty table. When they sat down she saw what was on his plate: a single roll, usually used as the outer part of a sandwich.

“Is that all you're eating?” she asked him, digging in to her own eggs. She was glad Milo had reminded her to eat. The Chröm had really wiped her out.

“All I need,” Zink said, shrugging. He picked a piece of the roll off from the rest and popped it into his mouth; he seemed determined to let it dissolve there.

“I have no idea how you survive,” Layme said, and in truth she was only half joking. She didn't think she had seen Zink eat a substantial meal in the two months she'd known him. “Seriously. You're bone-thin already, Zink. And I know you don't care about being thin to get girls, or guys, or whatever. Why don't you eat?”

Zink shrugged again. “Maybe I'll tell you sometime. But I've been meaning to ask you, how's the voice filter coming?”

Layme cursed mentally, effectively distracted from the topic of Zink's body weight.. She had completely forgotten she was supposed to have finished the filter hack for the local network the night of the masquerade. The idea was to create a generic voice that would attach itself to everybody's words, enforcing the anonymity of the party. “I haven't really done much with it since last time,” she admitted. “And there's still the issue of everyone's calls being attached to feeds and stuff anyway.”

“Leave that to me.” Zink waved a hand dismissively. “There just needs to be a blanket fluff-reassign on the room.”

“Explain this one to me again,” Layme said, trying and failing to keep the eagerness out of her voice. She and Zink never specifically sat down to talk shop about progging, but she had to admit, much of the knowledge she had tried to use against Spelter was gleaned from her conversations with Zink about masquerade details. She looked up to see an eager expression on Zink's face that must be a reflection of her own.

“It's pretty simple, actually. We can set something up that would blanket the room, fluff over each person's call, and assign them a temporary alias. So, let's say we set it up, and you were the first person to walk into the room. You call number would stop being what it is and turn to, oh, let's say a row of six ones. The next person might be five ones and a two. Something generic like that. That way, people could still direct-connect feeds so they can hear each other or whatever, but if they give themselves away, it won't be because of that.”

“How do you fluff out a call number though?” Layme asked, an eyebrow raised. “I thought your call was how you could function in any feed system.”

Zink was shaking his head before she finished. “Wrong. Let me ask you something—when you connect to a local sound feed, what are you using to connect with?”

“My call. Didn't I just say that?” she asked, confused.

Zink leveled a finger at her, almost like he was accusing her. “Yes, but you're wrong. You're not using your call to do anything. Think about it. Where does your call come from?” He waited a second or two for her to answer, but apparently realized she was lost, because he continued. “Your call number comes from your drive, Layme. From the System. You have a call so your data and medical records and all that trag won't get mixed up with anyone else's, true, but we had numbers like that before the System. Your number doesn't do a damn thing. It's your soft-drive that's making those local connections and registering on feeds.”

“But I don't have to be on my drive to be absorbed into a room's macro-local. I just have to walk in. And people can still tap my feed if I'm not online. Trag, Milo does it all the time.”

Zink shook his head again. “Just because you're not on the interface doesn't mean your drive's not online. Whenever you have a piece of technology on you that hooks up to anything else—cons, traguses, jaw-chips, touchpads, anything—it all uses your soft-drive's presence within the System to work. That's what does the sending and receiving. Without your drive, your number is useless. Without your drive, which is connected to your call number, you could walk in to a local feed broadcasting pulse-tracks and not hear a damn thing.” Zink smiled in a satisfied sort of way and tore off another piece of bread.

Layme sat in silence for a moment, finishing the last of her food as she tried to wrap her mind around the concept. She was always connected, that was what Zink was saying. Always online, in some way or another. Always open for communication. And for hacking. Was that how Spelter had managed to get in without her noticing? Had he struck when she was off the interface, but, as Zink put it, still sending and receiving?

“Is there ever a time where someone's drive is completely offline?” she asked finally.

“I'm not sure,” he admitted, shrugging one shoulder. “Maybe if there's someone with no techrings and no integrated tech—no cons, no embedded feeds, no jaw-chips, nothing—then maybe their drive would be offline when they weren't 'facing. But only until they were retina-scanned for something.”

Layme was about to ask what a retina scan had to do with it when she heard Milo's voice calling her name from across the room. She shut her mouth so abruptly that she thought if her tongue had been in the way of her teeth, she might have drawn blood. By the time Milo reached their table she had managed to drag a smile onto her face, but it felt fake and transparent there, as if he could look behind it and see the words that had been about to come from her mouth; words about programming, which she had promised to stop doing.

“Hey Milo,” she said, and she was glad that, to her at least, her voice sounded normal. “Thanks for the blip this morning, I would have been jagged without it.”

He pulled a chair up beside her and sat with his arm around her shoulders. It was something he did all the time, but something—perhaps it was her guilt—made it seem off, like maybe he was holding her more tightly than usual, and maybe if she looked at his face it would be angry and possessive, instead of good-natured and smiling like his voice. “No problem, love,” he said. “I figured you would be here when you weren't upstairs. You're ice after last night then?” The hand that was wrapped around her shoulder squeezed, and she knew Milo well enough to catch the meaning in that gesture—don't say anything about the Chröm in front of Zink.

“Yeah, I'm feeling better now,” she replied, her false smile widening. She thought that if she faked a smile any bigger, her cheeks would split. “Some sleep and some food, that was all I needed.”

“Good deal,” Milo approved. “So where are we with the masque, Zink? What else needs to happen? It's only a week away, you know.”

“Two weeks,” Layme corrected a little more harshly than she might have normally. Milo didn't seem to notice.

“Lay and I were just talking about that, actually,” Zink said. “Dec-specs are pretty much taken care of; they're not that different than anything else we do. What we need to figure out in the next week and a half or so is how to make it so that everyone is completely anonymous to each other. The masks will help, and so will the voice filter Layme and Rye are working on, but the last trick is to get everyone's calls to show up as something generic so feed-hacks can't give you away. Also, there's something to be said about recognizing people even with their masks on,” he added as an afterthought, sparing a glance at Layme's blue pixie cut.

“I can't help much when it comes to the calls, but for the rest of it, what if we just suggest that everyone hit Morpho? We can mass-blip the guest list today and everyone should have enough time to plan what they want. How many pods are there, twenty? And with an hour or two per person, assuming they all go in shifts sort of, everyone should be able to go through the day before the masque if they want.”

Zink was nodding. “Not a bad idea. I'm sure not everyone will go, but it's definitely a good plan to throw the idea out to people. I also think you two should definitely do it. I mean, it's your pulse, everyone will be looking for you. It would add a little drama if no one knew where to look.”

Layme grinned mischievously. “Wicked,” she agreed, “I love it!” Milo, however, was looking mutinous.

“It's our pulse. Shouldn't everyone know how to find us?”

“Aw, c'mon, Milo,” Layme begged, turning to look at him. “The point of a masquerade is to be anonymous! Plus, can you imagine what we could do with a Morpho stint and our theme?” She and Milo had decided to base their costumes and masks around the idea of Milo's Red Death—or, more aptly, Zink's idea, since he had been the one to name it. In truth, the idea of being anonymous even to Milo excited her. It would be like a challenge for him; he would have to find her.

Milo sighed grudgingly and relented, like she knew he would. “Alright, fine. But only because you want me to.”

“Of course,” Layme agreed, laughing and kissing him briefly. “Now, shouldn't you be cooking up with Ell? You have a trag-ton of Red Death and Deception to get right before the masque.”

“Rye claimed him for the day,” Milo grumbled. “Come on, Lay, we've been busting ass for this thing for weeks. Can't you just take a day off?”

Layme started to say yes, then shot half a glance at Zink. A day with Milo meant another day of stifling her inner programmer. If she told him no, that she and Zink had things to work out—

“Alright, fine,” she sighed jokingly, stomping a mental foot down to squelch the tech geek trying to fight for her time. She rolled her eyes at Milo and kissed him again. Maybe a day off wouldn't be that bad... Still, she felt a pang of regret when Zink rose from the table.

“I'll leave you two to it, then,” he said, flashing a smile and turning to go. Layme couldn't help one more pang of regret—but you never told me what retina scans mean, what do they mean—and then Milo's arm was squeezing around her shoulders again, and she was brought back to the present by a mix of annoyance and pain. He really was squeezing harder than usual.

“Ouch, Milo,” she protested, trying to squirm away from him.

“Little bastard,” Milo muttered, and Layme realized he wasn't looking at her, but across the room in the direction Zink had left.

“What's your problem, Milo?” finally succeeding in squirming free so she could turn to look at him. “He's helping us! The masque is actually going to happen because of him and his team.” Milo had begun calling Zink, Shylo, Edda, Ren, and the others Zink's “team” as a joke, but Layme had picked it up seriously, a fact which bothered him to no end.

“There are three dozen Tech Dragons who could do the same trag he does. I don't see why he gets a monopoly on it. It's not like he's some fucking celebrity. He's a dry-ass kill-joy is what he is, and the only thing he can understand is a soft drive and his goddamn Surge. I hope it fries his fucking brain.”

“Milo, stop!” Layme protested. “You know that no one else could integrate our specs into the ballroom like he can. He's talking about a blanket-fluff on all the audio feeds for the night. Stop worrying about your jagging prejudices for a second and use your brain. Who else do you know who would even think of people's voices giving them away, let alone of finding a way to fix it?”

“Use your brain, Layme!” he countered. “You have some... some God complex about this kid. Just because he can prog doesn't mean he's some jagging special snowflake for Chrissake! He's some paranoid tweak. There's a reason the kid stayed general, he couldn't handle being normal for fucking ten seconds.”

Layme was taken aback. “Zink doesn't have a spec?”

“Of course not,” Milo said, with an air of impatience. “He's a choke. A fluke. He won't even take one drink at a pulse, not even the ones he plans, did you—” He stopped then, having turned back to Layme and seen the stricken look on her face. He seemed to replay his last few sentences in hs head, then, realizing what he'd said, backpedaled hastily.

“Oh trag, Lay, I didn't mean—”

“Didn't mean to call me a choke?” she asked, and her voice was shaking.

“Lay, I didn't—”

“Stop, Milo, just stop, okay?” Now she was the one staring into space, clenching her fists and trying not to let him see the other half of her reaction. She could use the anger. All the hurt would do was make her cry in front of him and half the Dorm. Her voice had risen at this last, and she was acutely aware of people in the dining room stealing half-glances in their direction. She tried to get up, and when Milo grabbed at her to try and get her to sit back down, she lost the last hold she had on her emotions. Tears spilled from her eyes even as she shoved him.

“Get the fuck off of me,” she demanded in a trembling voice, turning to look him straight in the face. “Next time you decide to climb on your jagging high horse, Milo, think of the people you're trampling.” Before he could answer, she said, “I have things to do. I'll talk to you later.” She spun on her heel and half ran from the room, trying to think of where she might go. The last thing she wanted was to have Milo track her down and force her to listen to him. She knew that in an hour or so, when he had waited and decided it was proper to come looking for her, she would have lost the last of her anger, and when he tried to reason with her, her argument in Zink's favor would seem flimsy and wrong. She would relent, and right now she didn't want that. She felt like her anger was justified, and she wanted to hang on to it. Layme racked her brains for a destination as she reached the foot of the stairs. Her mind, still feeling stretched out from the Chrom the night before, succeeded only in replaying part of her conversation from earlier.

Maybe their drive would be offline when they weren't 'facing. But only until they were retina-scanned for something.

Acting on anger and hurt more than any sort of reason, Layme pulled Zink's call number up through her sound feed, and when the two-tone sound that meant he was open for calls came through her traguses, she dialed him.

“Zink,” she said when he had picked up. “Do you want a hand with that fluff program?”

“Sure,” he said, sounding bewildered. “I was just about to open up what you sent me last. But weren't you taking a day with Milo?”

“Don't worry about it,” she said, hoping her voice wasn't shaking as badly as the rest of her was. “Just tell me how to get to your room from the stairs.” She had never actually been up to his room, nor he to hers, in the entire time they'd been working together for the pulse. It had never seemed strange to her before, but confronted with the realization that she had no idea where it was, it seemed almost impossible that she wouldn't know.

And why? That small, bitter voice asked her, then spared her the trouble of answering. Because Milo told you not to, didn't he?

She was also spared the trouble of shoving the voice away again by Zink's voice coming over her feed, giving her directions with a confused but willing voice. When she reached his door, she was not at all surprised to find that it wasn't covered in eye-catchers and random movement like most Dragons, but instead a large Asian dragon that stretched from the upper left to coil around itself. It was quite stationary, and its red eye was the room's retina scan.

“Here,” she told Zink over the call, and a moment later the door slid open, hiding the dragon and its red gaze.

“Hey,” Zink greeted her, and she was absurdly pleased to see that he still had his vis feed up on his cons. She could see the shimmering in them that meant he was looking through his feed to see her. “did something happen with—?” he began, but Layme held up one hand in a stop gesture, and he fell silent amiably enough.

“Don't worry about it, okay?” She waited until he nodded and shrugged—she had noticed that a shrug was a characteristic gesture for him, uneven and fluid—before she walked in. “Okay,” she repeated, and she turned to face him as the door slid shut.

“So. Are you going to show me how to prog a blanket-fluff bounce, or what?”

Zink's concerned expression cracked into a smug grin.

“Gladly. There's an unused set of cons in the bathroom. Grab them, and make sure they're calibrated before you some back out. You're going to want to work without distractions, and that includes not being able to see right.”

She did what he asked, anger at Milo still thrumming through her, but before long, the shaky feeling faded. In fact, she forgot that she was angry at him at all. She forgot everything but Zink's instructions, and the lines of code building up on her screen.

I can't believe I told him I'd stop progging, she thought at one point. The thought wasn't angry, but almost skeptical. I can't believe he thought I was telling the truth! How could he think I'd stop this? I love this!

Then she forgot about Milo all over again.

She had better things to think about.

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