9

I came down through the connector back into the top of the tower. Diego hovered nearby talking with another student. She floated below him looking up intently while he typed rapidly on a tablet. Even I was able to read her face: admiration almost to the point of worship. I wondered how many of the few dozen students on Galactic were fully part of the group Burton was assembling. If I factored in how many had seemed interested once word of my visit had gotten around, it could easily have been half. For that faction Isidro, or Diego, must have been a heroic captain. The pair looked up as I drifted down to them. Isidro had the same carefree expression as usual, but the woman reacted to seeing me with a hostile glare. I felt suddenly as though I was accused of some wrongdoing, but it was hard for me to feel anything else so I may have misunderstood her intent.

“Hello again. This is our most talented programmer, Rebecca Kashyap. Reb, this is Ashley Seidel,” Isidro said. I weakly waved in greeting, unsure of what was happening. Rebecca completely bucked the trend of keeping hair short in micro environments and had long, midnight black hair in a braid that drifted behind her. She continued to glare up at me. My guide tossed the tablet to her and made a comment about his enthusiasm for the next revision. With a hesitating glance over her shoulder she flipped around and kicked off down the chasm-like tower. It was a space so open when looking downward that I felt a faint sense of vertigo.

Isidro watched Rebecca leave and then sighed softly. He said, “I told William to rein in his abrasiveness, but he is stubbornly insistent on provoking you.”

“As if you’ve had no part in it?” I remarked coldly. He smiled broadly, a sort of half-grin where his laughter leaked through its seal.

“I expect you’d prefer to end our tour here,” he began. “So I’ll see you off at the shuttle. If you take that maintenance hatch you can go directly down to the docking level. It’s an ancient module from when they were first assembling the station.” He pulled himself up to the connector and keyed open one of the other hatches adjacent to the long passage up to the spire. I looked into the narrow, dimly lit shaft and then back down the bright tower where I could see people moving around far below. “It’s a straight shot down after you get past that bend, but I’d advise against speedrunning it if you haven’t done high momentum acrobatics before. Besides, there’s a sideroom about halfway down I’d like you to see.”

I nodded to him and pulled myself through the hatch. He called out that I should take my time and that there was no hurry. When I got past the corner I did have a certain desire to race down to the bottom fast and reckless, but I was also happy to lazily fling myself into the shadowy passage. I fell slowly through the quiet cylinder accompanied by the background noises of the station; I was grateful not to have to pass by any more people who were eager to catch a glimpse of me. I let my thoughts drift over what had just happened in Burton’s office as I fell.

Sebastian had clearly thought highly of the man to let him in on so many secrets, but what did his judgment count for in the end, so what was my assessment of him? He could have just been in it for his own gain. He could have been a genuine radical. I felt that I couldn’t understand the oligarch at all. What I did think was that he was arrogant and seemed to treat everything like a game. He was a schemer and I had to wonder if he cared about the lives of others. Finding no answers, I propelled myself down the tunnel until I nearly passed the opening to another section. I would have missed it had a light not switched on automatically. The space beyond the hatch appeared to be a locker room, probably used by those who had first built the platform.

Curious about what was so special inside, I pulled myself into the small room. Tied to the walls, locked into place on shelves, and secured under storage netting was an assortment of equipment I recognized. It was like a museum holding a collection of the homebrew tools, devices, and weapons used by freedom fighters back in the days of the Knights. Although I also thought it possible that the tech coming out of sprawl workshops and pirate conglomerates hadn’t changed much in seven years. There were hacker tools ranging from AI shells to drills for punching through datavault shielding; kevlar vests, plate carriers, and helmets for all sorts of dangers; a few examples of guns which had been machined rather than printed; smoke bombs, zap tacks, bug sniffers, cameras, and everything else you’d want to go toe to toe with mercs and special forces.

At the back of the room was a half-crushed cardboard box that I recognized with chilling dread. I swam over and opened the flaps. Inside were the damaged remains of the ultimate weapon we had created. The Hand of Glory, a device that used gravity waves to bend spacetime to the wielder’s will. Without one of Dr. Pavlita’s blackhole-like cores and an AI to control the release of its power, the gauntlet was merely an inanimate decoration. Harmless, yet I was distinctly afraid of it. I reached out to touch the Hand, tracing my fingers over shattered armor plates and torn fabrics. It was hard to tell if it felt like a short or a long time since I had painstakingly crafted each component that went into the glove. We’d had to knock over three military depots in the NATO hinterlands just to get enough aether batteries to finish the prototype.

If I had any doubts about how serious Burton and Isidro were, that room put them to rest. They were planning for a hell of a fight. It seemed possible that they really might be picking up where the Knights had left off, at least in terms of their methods. I left and finished my descent to the docking mod where Isidro was already waiting for me again, nonchalantly floating near the maintenance shaft’s exit. He waved but said nothing as he personally helped to prep the shuttle for launch. When it was ready and all that was left was for me to enter, he leaned in and asked in a resolute tone, “William told you who I really am, right?”

“He made a claim about it.”

“Whatever you think of him, he’s not lying about that. It might be arrogant on my part, but I feel that I can understand your position a bit. At the very least, I know that you’re someone I can trust, someone with a good heart. That’s why I’d like to offer this as a place you can stay and be accepted and contribute whatever you think is right.”

Most people couldn’t have said that without coming off as overbearing, but his empathy was genuine, or a monstrously proficient imitation. There was something I couldn’t help but ask before I left. “Do you know what really happened to your father?”

“I don’t. He didn’t tell me anything before leaving me with William. He could really be dead, but that’s not going to stop me. I feel I have a duty to find the truth for myself, about him and what he unleashed on the world.”

I noticed what might be a discrepancy between Burton and Isidro. Burton was looking at the long game; the younger man just wanted to know what had happened. His mind wasn’t made up yet and there was no telling what he’d decide if he ever reached what he was looking for. Pointedly, I asked, “Would you be willing to turn on Burton if what you learned convinced you that he was in the wrong?” His grin wavered and became grim.

“I’d say that I don’t think that would ever be necessary, but…” He trailed off with a pleading look in his eyes, wanting me to understand without having to say the words aloud. “I could leave him behind, but I don’t know if I have the courage to face him as enemies. He took me in and raised me; I would be crushed by guilt if I did.”

I didn’t think this was something that could be faked. I believed Isidro, but there was always the possibility that he was merely a fictitious pawn created by Burton. He’d had years to mold a child into whatever he wanted, assuming that much of their history was true.

He continued, “When I think about questions like that, I realize how hard things must be for you. Even if you decide to stay out of this, feel free to message me whenever. It’d be nice to have someone to talk this stuff over with. Everyone here is great, but there are still some things I can’t share with them. You really are the first person William has told about my identity.”

Temptations whirled in my heart. I felt like venting, laying out all of my frustrations, loneliness, and how stupid I thought what they were doing was, but I didn’t want to start because I’d probably end up staying so long that I’d be pulled into their orbit. I relaxed my guard and said, “I don’t think you have bad intentions, but good intentions drove my brother to bomb a space elevator as well. I can’t deal with any of this anymore; I don’t know what the right thing to do is. If I act now I’ll definitely end up in another situation where every option leaves me suffering with deep regrets.”

“For me, my regrets increase just a bit any time I’m doing nothing. I have all of this talent and these immense resources, this advantageous position that no one else has, and I’m doing nothing? That’s why I have to see this through to the end.” An intense look crossed his face, then he smiled gently and raised his fist. “Farewell, Ashley Seidel,” he said. I awkwardly bumped his fist with my own and mumbled a simple goodbye. I wasn’t even sure what name to call him.

Even though I managed to score some synthspikes when I got back to Polaris, the trip kept nagging at me over the following week. No matter how much I numbed myself and tried to put it out of my mind, I found myself thinking about what was happening on that station. What were the intentions of the people I’d met? What would they really do if I refused to participate? I also felt the dark temptation to transfer there so I could be around people who thought highly of me, who accepted what I had done in the past. I even felt the urge to go and enlist in their schemes, to abandon myself to the belief that I should simply let them decide what was right.

I found myself thinking over everything yet again while soaking in the mist of a shower pod. Beyond the enclosed bubble, the vastness of space stretched out as a dark sea with countless stars shining their light into the dim shower. Of course, this was merely a screen on the inside surface of the pod; I was nowhere near the exterior of the station. The space view was the most popular program to run in the pods, if you didn’t count when people hacked them to load porn onto the screens. Even though most of the students on Polaris had been raised within the neuro-suppressant fog deployed around corporate bastion cities, after only a few months in space they started to act like rebellious sprawlfolk. I wondered how much longer the Bohemia of orbit would remain unfettered before the bureaucracy and tyranny and nightmare dominating the Earth asserted itself there.

My focus shifted slightly and I caught sight of my own faint reflection on the screen like a ghost trying to get in from the void. My skin had become so pale that it was hard to distinguish the scarring that wrapped around my stomach and left side. I was gaunt, skinnier than I had ever been during the toughest of times with the Knights. Then I had been stout and athletic. I entertained myself with vain thoughts of going to Galactic Horizon just to train and restore the fitness I’d once had; missions and agendas be damned. Plenty of people were into the sickly look of a synthhead, but I felt a mounting despair for what I had become.

It wasn’t just my appearance; I had gone all the way down that path. Whatever I was doing, waiting for oblivion, clearly wasn’t right. Wasting away to nothing in obscurity when there was so much else I could do instead couldn’t be the most noble way for me to live. Something Isidro said came to mind, had never been far from it. I feel I have a duty to find the truth for myself. So much of what he’d said seemed like it was exactly how I had felt when Sebastian and I first started the Knights.

I pawed the shower’s control panel and waited for the drying cycle to run through. When I got back to my room, I pulled out my laptop and started typing an email to Isidro.