“Do you think he knows what we’re pnning?”

  “No,” Davon stuttered, “No, no, he can’t, there’s no way he could.”

  His pace increased, putting him a few steps ahead of Gerry.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Davon knows, Gerry, he knows because I made sure Magnus couldn’t.”

  Shanna’s pace became equal to Davon’s, putting her directly beside him.

  “What do you mean you made sure?” Orson anxiously asked, trying not to be heard by the crowd in the train station.

  However, he found that his question of ethics was ignored.

  “We shouldn’t even be talking about this out in the open.” Gerry huffed, boarding the train to Rome with the rest of the Warbound.

  Davon pced a hand on Gerry’s shoulder, a vain and frail attempt at comfort. “That’s where it is, though, Gerry, out in the open. That’s why we need to look out for each other now,” His hand slid atop Gerry’s fingertips. “The way we’ve always looked out for each other.”

  Davon locked eyes with Gerry, who quickly pulled his hand away from Davon to adjust his gsses.

  “Then how come you asked me to kill her?”

  Davon sighed and reached for a cigarette. “Why do you ask? Can you do it now?”

  Gerry shoved Davon, pinning him up against the door of the train.

  The gss cracked right as it closed and pulled away from the station.

  The judging yet revered gaze of the passengers and the concerned looks of Shanna and Orson burned into Gerry and Davon.

  “She’s carrying my child! What do you think?”

  The cigarette that was once in Davon’s hand slipped from his fingers, striking the floor with a surprisingly significant impact.

  The stain from it was never washed away. It remained on the train car’s floor for all to see for years and years.

  “Will you three attend the celebration today?” A passenger nervously asked to break the tension: “I’d love to get some autographs.”

  “Now isn’t the time.” Shanna sneered. The passenger fearfully backed away.

  “She’s walking into a trap,” Davon whispered.

  Gerry let go of him. “That’s why we’re going after her.”

  “So we’re going there?”

  “That’s right.” Nadeden coughs, acknowledging Granix, who carefully drifts just close enough to circle the pnet without being dragged into its orbit. “I can’t make pnetfall with you two, I’m not exactly a registered ship.” Nadeden nods at Granix’s booming voice.

  She looks at Smith, who is staring through Granix’s eye right next to her. “Hey, Smith,”

  “What?”

  “Which ship out there is your favorite?”

  Smith shrugs, unsure why Nadeden is asking something so trivial, but he nonetheless narrows his gaze on the rim of the pnet.

  A diverse range of ships enter and exit the pnet of various shapes, sizes, and materials, all of which are unfamiliar to Smith.

  Eventually, after a considerable amount of quiet observation, he points out a small symbiotic passenger vessel just exiting the pnet’s orbit.

  Nadeden is satisfied with the choice. “It’s not exactly luxurious, but not poor enough to receive any maintenance checks either. It won’t draw a lot of suspicion, and it’s a good size, too. Grab it, Granix.”

  “What wait?” Smith gasps, tumbling backward as Granix unches themselves toward the ship. They tackle it and quickly kick back to a less poputed area of space. Nadeden grits her teeth, fighting off the bile growing inside her cut stomach while she clings to the innards of Granix’s eye with arms that scream at her to let go.

  She only does so when Granix puts the ship in their mouth.

  “I got it,” Granix proudly informs the pair once the action is complete.

  “Nice work,” Nadeden mutters in exhaustion.

  She’s getting worse. Smith observes, regaining his bearings.

  She can hardly move, but she’s doing her best to hide it.

  Nadeden slumps on the stone, using it as a guide to work her way to Granix’s mouth. Smith follows her, wondering if he should provide assistance, only for Nadeden to gently slide her arm around his shoulders, breathing heavily.

  “I haven’t moved this much since I pulled you out of that ship. I didn’t realize…”

  She takes a brief second to find the words in her clouding mind. “I didn’t realize how much everything hurts.”

  The duo reach Granix's mouth. The teeth are sealed shut in such a way to prevent damaging the vessel, which is pinned down with their tongue. Nadeden pushes herself off Smith, carefully opening the symbiotic door that reveals the frightened human driver and passenger inside.

  “Lucky us,” Nadeden gives Smith a tired grin. “We get new clothes.”

  Tying up two people and stealing their clothes isn’t exactly an idea that sits right with Smith, but seeing no other option, he chooses to go along with it anyway.

  I’m just surprised she didn’t kill them, He thinks as he helps Nadeden strip and secure the occupants of the ship inside the cramped confines of the cargo hold. The pair is far too terrified and shocked to resist their capture.

  Nadeden slumps down to take a breath, gripping her wounded stomach again.

  “We’ll let them go when we get there, right?” Smith worryingly questions Nadeden, who simply tosses a hand up and nods.

  Smith returns the nod, reaching down to grab a shirt.

  Nadeden oddly chooses to stop this, pcing the hand she tossed up over the cloth.

  “That’s a woman’s shirt.” She corrects Smith, who is unaware that they needed correction.

  “Why does that mean I can’t wear it?”

  Nadeden gazes up at Smith’s confused face in disbelief, “Because you’re a boy.”

  The statement only adds to Smith’s confusion. He looks down at his body. This body that he is yet again reminded isn’t theirs.

  The thought of gender had not occurred to Smith until just now.

  Such concepts are so foreign to Machinists.

  Unnatural even.

  “No. I’m not.” Smith whispers to themselves in a voice Nadeden can’t hear, before deeply sighing and reaching for the clothes the man was wearing. Why does cloth even have to be gendered? Smith frustratingly wonders.

  Nadeden pulls herself off the floor of the ship and begins to change out of the ruined and stained clothing she’s been wearing since she left Terra-gilma. Blood-soaked holes litter the fabric, marking where Davon attacked her.

  Smith steps further into the ship at the sight of the scars, giving Nadeden her privacy.

  Smith holds out the clothes in his hands, feeling the rough fabric before noticing the small gss panel in the interior of the ship.

  Smith squints to view an image of a thin, bald, bare-chested, unevenly broad-shouldered, spindly young man with pale skin and bck paint around his eyes. Smith holds on the image for quite some time before moving. Interestingly, the image moves with him.

  This entertaining trick soon turns to horror as Smith realizes that the image of the man in the gss is moving with their actions.

  That’s not me. Smith states to themselves, dropping the clothes to the floor.

  That’s not me.

  The pale hand in the mirror is then pced against the body’s pale hand.

  That’s not me.

  Smith’s horror and shock become disgust as they turn away from the mirror.

  The nails of the body stab into the flesh of it.

  That’s not me.

  Smith panics as Nadeden steps onto the ship. He hastily slips the shirt over the bare chest.

  “Did you not want to change out of Hadel’s old pants?” Nadeden asks now, using the wall of the ship as a guide for her failing body to lean on, the same way she used Granix’s stone.

  “No,” Smith gasps, trembling, “I’ll be fine.”

  “Alright, suit yourself.” She dismisses him, crawling into the driver's seat to grip the controls of the symbiotic brain.

  Smith shudders. An icy chill runs down their prison of a body as it moves to sit beside Nadeden.

  However, before Smith is seated, Granix reaches inside the ship.

  “Wait,” A stone appendage bursts forth from Granix’s rocky tongue, pcing itself within the ship.

  “You didn’t expect me to just let you leave without first saying goodbye, did you?” The front of the appendage transforms into a smiling face.

  Smith smiles back at Granix. “Sorry, farewell, Granix, will you wait for us?”

  “Of course,” Granix warmly reassures Smith, chipping a pebble off of themselves that falls into Smith’s hands.

  “If you need me to come pick you two up for whatever reason, just call my name into that and I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you.” Smith tightens his fist around the pebble, stuffing it in his pocket.

  Nadeden contorts herself to look over the seat at Granix.

  “Goodbye.” She exhales with a heavy weight, almost having to shove the words out of her mouth.

  “Goodbye, I’ll see you both again soon and in better health, I hope,” Granix says in the most empathic and kind tone Smith has heard since meeting them.

  The doors of the Symbotic ship close as Granix’s mouth opens.

  Smith takes a seat, looking out into the dark of space, then looking over to Nadeden.

  Smith owes this debt to her.

  She cared for them, and now they care for her, and she for them.

  But there is a part of Smith that saw the body they’re trapped in reflected in that mirror and wondered, Should she have saved me?

  She spoke earlier like she didn’t want my help.

  Is she going to feel the same way I do now when she’s healed?

  The ship makes its descent.

  It floats gently toward the pnet and is pulled into its gravity. Nadeden’s hold on the controls loosens.

  Her hands shake fiercely, drenched in sweat.

  “You see that?” The hallucination of Gerry manifests again in the dark of space to point out the ”Division Bioship...” Nadeden mutters before losing consciousness.

  “I’ll be completely honest when I sent for you, there was a part of me, a fraction of me really, that doubted you would actually come. Yet somehow there was that other part, the part that always wins out, that knew you’d be here. Now, whether you would come alone or not is a completely different matter, but nonetheless, I knew. I always know. So, Nadeden, thank you for coming. Truly.”

  “What do you want, Emperor?”

  Magnus ughed at the edge of his office.

  The low glow of the morning sun slid in through the window he sat in front of. The colors and sounds of the celebration for the victory on Frax were already overtaking it.

  “Straight to the point, I like that. The way you hold yourself so at attention. The tone of authority in the way you speak. Why, you’re nearly the complete opposite of your handler. I can see why a man like him would view those qualities as attractive in a woman.”

  “Is this about him?”

  Magnus shook his head. The rge beard ingrained on his lower face grinded against his regal suit. “No, no. Dear. Gods no,” Magnus stood, pushing his hulking metal chair out from his desk. “I wish to discuss you. You see, Nadeden, you are a special case, and it truly, truly, pains me that I have not had the pleasure of speaking to you until now, my dear.”

  “Why now?”

  Magnus moved his way to the side of his desk.

  He leaned on it, pcing his hand on its fine metal. “Why now, indeed? That is the question. Well, my dear. I had a meeting with your handler and another one of your comrades just a few days ago, before you left for Frax, where I inquired if he could hypothetically accomplish a certain task for me. A task I’m sure you now know of. Now, the instant I asked this thing of him, I knew right as he lied to my face, the face of his ruler, that he could not do it. I also knew of the possibility that he would tell you that I asked him to do this thing.”

  “And he did.”

  Magnus stepped away from his desk, swiping his hand off of it in a carefully careless motion.

  “Indeed. It was the most likely scenario after all. Now I will admit to my mistake; let no one ever say I don’t admit my mistakes, I own up to them, and I learn as any good ruler does. I thought with absolute certainty that when you learned that I asked your handler to kill you, anger and rage and all those other feelings of battle you are known for would surge in you like a great fire, and that you would come right, straight to me with everything you had. Yet for some reason, you didn’t. So suspicion arose in me, and st night, frustrated with my miscalcution yet able to learn from it and adapt, I sent for you, and you came. You came with all that fire, all that boiling rage and hatred that I do so deeply admire. But one thing does still ail me, and it is the question of timing.”

  Magnus’s crown tilted down with his head as he knelt down to Nadeden.

  Her beaten body was held up by a pair of his guards. Their fallen comrades were piled up outside the office door with arrows in their hearts.

  Their blood was on the wall and on her face.

  She stared up at the Emperor’s wide smile.

  “Care to tell me why you waited, my dear?”