Episode 4 - Cold Fusion

  Chapter 25 - Just Business

  “Adrian, this has gone on for too long. You have a reason that every pick is never the right one. I’m trying to be conscientious of how awkward this must be for you, but the reality is you need to sire offspring before you get too old.”

  I immediately press myself flat against the hall by the doorway, they have no idea the door is cracked. I hold the cables I was bringing for Rishi to the Operational Control desperately to my chest and almost will my body to stop breathing. I could walk away, go back down the hall and wait five minutes, pretend I wasn’t here. Pooka sits at my feet and lolls his tongue sideways out of his jaw, the moist purple surface folded between his pointed teeth. His ears prick towards the doorway, flicking once as he listens too.

  Adrian’s tired, slow voice responds, just barely carrying through the ajar door. “What woman would want me Regina?”

  “It’s not really about want,” Regina clarifies brusquely. “It's a job like any other. In the twenty six years you’ve been here we’ve not seen a single advertisement for another like you. You’re tired, it’s taking its toll. We need a second you and if we can’t find one the reality is we need to breed one.”

  “I just can’t imagine…” he trails off, a desperate strangle cutting his voice short.

  “You don’t have to imagine anything, you’ll barely have to do anything either. I’m not suggesting you take someone to bed against your own tastes or that I intend to force some poor girl on you. We’ll take a sample, artificially inseminate. You will have no downtime and these women are professional breeders, nothing distasteful about any of it. But the point is that the clock is running out. Twenty one years before any offspring you produce manifest and we’ll probably need at least three to ensure good odds one of them manifests another Vespa of the same species as yours - by that point you’ll be nearing retirement, if we get lucky enough that you are not dead from stress by then.”

  “You make it sound so clinical.”

  “Because it is clinical. You are the one insisting on putting emotion into this.”

  “Regina…”

  “Adrian, I know. I’d do it differently if I could. It breaks my heart. You give everything to Aquila. You give more than anyone ever could. You are everything, to everyone here. I’m insisting on this because of those facts. Aquila will break you one day, and we need to ensure your legacy.”

  Adrian’s voice takes on a sardonic twist. “My legacy? Not yours? Not Owen’s?”

  “Our legacy then,” admits Regina. “You are just as much Aquila as Owen and I are, your cut of the profits proves it.”

  He sighs so deeply I can hear it from the doorway. “And you want to use one of those incubator farms? Those poor girls are nothing but captives.”

  “They’re employees. It’s a job, like any other. You’re lucky Aquila now has the money to take advantage of these services rather than subjecting us all to the biological necessities of the process.”

  “Unlike your attempt at replicating Rhett’s father?” Heavy disapproval drips from Adrian’s words.

  There is a nasty silence, and the sound of Regina’s clicking heels against the laminate floors. “This isn’t about me.”

  “I’ll not be the only one who has my breeding choices questioned if this is the topic of our discussion.”

  “You’re out of line.”

  “And you aren’t?” The question ends in an ominous rasp from Adrian.

  “I’m doing business.”

  “And what, Rhett isn’t business? Isn’t legacy?”

  “I never said he wasn’t. But I’m not dwelling on failed ventures. We got our crypto in the end,” pivots Regina.

  Pooka’s ears twitch, a flash of flame sparks within his burning gaze. I feel his piqued interest just as easily as I feel his attempt at smothering it to avoid catching my attention.

  “Everything is business,” continues Regina. “Even motherhood. Even fatherhood. The budget I’ve written up is for three breeders, maybe four. We’ll get the children when they turn two and raise them at Aquila. They’ll know the ins and outs by the time they are old enough to manifest.”

  “And which of those girls will you pick?”

  “That’s what I want you to choose, the dams are all documented in the catalogue. I want ones that if they breed too close to the mother’s bloodline we can still get use out of them - we can’t afford girls with anything particularly rare in their bloodlines, so pick something useful like Blake and Nessa are. And preferable more invertebrates to give us some good odds you’ll breed true. You know how everyone functions together and where our gaps are. Consult with Rishi if you want.”

  “I have absolutely no desire to talk about this with Rishi,” groans Adrian.

  “Just get it done. And make a choice before the end of the week. I’d rather take this as an opportunity to ensure Aquila’s future for the next generation. I hate the thought of selling.” There is the clink of glass from within the room.

  “I don’t want to choose. I don’t want to know anything about it, Regina. I’ll go along with your plan, but I don’t even want the kids to know I’m their father.”

  “They’ll find out one day. You’ve got plenty of time to think about that. But you need to help pick, I’m not doing this without you.”

  There is a resigned pause. “You’ll be the death of me Regina.”

  “That’s why we are doing this.”

  Shit. I bolt up the hallway, crouching behind a large pot with a branching fern almost as large as I am just as Regina emerges, walking today in bright red heels, red scarf, and a suit in uniform off-white. She shuts the door to Operational Control behind her and marches off down the hallway towards the elevator, heels clicking against the smooth floors. On her shoulder, her familiar umber and ochre Chromatopelma wraps all eight of its legs around the shoulder pads of her jacket.

  I wait just long enough that the timing doesn’t seem too suspicious and step out into the hall again. I could still leave, I could come back several hours from now.

  I knock on the door, and Adrian calls from within permission to enter.

  Adrian sits within the center of the U-shaped table, an array of six syn-screens on the back wall with a central pedestal used by a symbiont that is absent right now. The room is mostly dark, lit only by the glow of red and green status LEDs. His wheelchair is turned so he has his back to me as I enter. Pooka thrusts his nose past my tentative push on the door to barge in and swing it wide open.

  I grab the door as it bounces off Pooka’s shoulders and shut it behind me. The screens are dark, and Pooka steps forward to sniff the metal tray with glasses at Adrian’s side. One glass is still mostly full, ice cubes half melting in the amber liquid, and the second drained.

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  “You want some lights on?” I ask, trying for levity.

  “No, I’m just finishing up. Nessa is in the field but should be done soon. It’s just me anyway,” says Adrian without even attempting to turn to look at me.

  I step round the table, holding out the cables in my hands. “Rishi sent me to have a look at the screens. Said his symbiont was having trouble with one?”

  “Top left.” Adrian’s chin is tucked into his chest as he looks at the tablet in his lap, his hand idly scratching at his collar bone on the edge of the wasp nest. Only a few Vespa crawl between the swirling burls and knobs of its mountainous contours today.

  I grab one of the chairs from the table and drag it over to climb on so I can take a better look at the screen. It’s mounted on a flexible arm, and I pull it from the wall to inspect the cables behind.

  “I know you were out there,” says Adrian suddenly, jolting me with panic. I turn over my shoulder and gape at him. He lifts one hand and points to his ear, and I remember with a start suddenly the feeling of six tiny legs grasping my ear lobe.

  Fuck. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out.

  “For what you overheard? Or the fact that you stayed to overhear it?” asks Adrian.

  “Both, I guess.”

  “For the first, it comes with the territory,” he says mildly, slumping sideways in his chair and continuing to scratch at where his skin is stretched taut by the weight of the nest. “For the second, well.. I don’t blame you, given what we do.”

  “Still, it’s kinda mank,” I remark, turning back to my work. I pull a few of the existing cables from the back of the screen and hang them over the rim of the screen below it to keep them in order.

  “That’s one word for it. Just you wait…”

  I pause. “What does that mean?”

  When I only hear silence I turn over my shoulder to look at Adrian. He’s looking up from his tablet for the first time since I entered the room and raises an eyebrow as I meet his gaze, waiting for me to figure it out on my own.

  “She wouldn’t?” I hiss incredulously.

  “She will.”

  “She had a kid herself, I-” my lip tightens and I cut the words off before I say too much, reflecting on the later half of their prior conversation. Everything is business, even motherhood.

  “Regina doesn’t ever do anything for a single reason. Faster you learn that the easier it is to adapt to her, ‘cause fighting her isn’t an option,” says Adrian blandly, like it’s just a lesson in office politics.

  I don’t really know what to say in response to his advice, so I quip a quick, “Sure, cob,” and turn back to my work on the cables. In the silence between us, all I can hear is a constant drone from the nest hanging on Adrian’s body, like a motor constantly hums within.

  There’s a rhythmic chaos to the susurration of the nest, as the gossamer wings of an uncountable swarm of Vespa within its center whisper in a constant hum. Adrian must truly never hear silence.

  “Do you ever get… quiet? In your own head?” I ask slowly, looking down at the cable in my hand and spinning the end between my fingers.

  Adrian pauses. His eyelids hang heavy beneath his brows, a few stray locs dangling in his face. “No,” he admits.

  “Do you get” - I hesitate, unsure of the exact word I want to use - “confused?”

  Pooka growls suddenly, bristling his mane and turning his glowing eyes to look up at me. Don’t test this idea. They’re the first words he’s directly spoken to me in days.

  I wouldn’t if you were easier to work with.

  I protect us. I protect you. I feel no guilt nor regrets for doing what must be done.

  He might be like us?

  No one is like us. He has the ear of the short-woman. We do not trust her, so we do not trust him.

  “Not necessarily,” says Adrian, suddenly scattering our conversation. Pooka spins his head and flattens his ears against his skull. Unaware of Pooka’s threat, he puts the tablet down and picks up the half filled glass from the edge of the table. “My symbiont helps manage a lot of the noise with her numerous bodies, filtering for the most necessary information. Most of it just trickles over. Things I suddenly know but have no knowledge of how I learnt it, sounds I can hear but know never came from my ears.”

  “Regina said you can hear their voices?”

  “Regina can, Rhett can. I think Shion can. Everyone here has an unusually strong bond, but it's rare it’s so complete that the symbiont manifests a substantial personality. As I said, if there wasn’t something holding back the sensory overload I suspect I’d be insane or dead,” says Adrian matter-of-factly.

  “And when you bond with them - with Everett and Regina - can you hear their symbionts too?”

  “It doesn’t work like that, only the envenomated target joins the communion. And they are a target for my bond, not a participant in it.”

  It is the chain. Not bond, not communion.

  The bond is one way normally, I'm sure of it. I think what they call 'the strength of the bond' is just a measure of how much they can feel of whatever is at the end of the leash. Why? Why are they different?

  Because they are not us. I am invited, I am not chained. They are chained, they are subservient. They shake their bars and scream for freedom with a voice that is not heard. They have never known masters who hear them clearly. They give up, and grow silent and dark, and become no different than they are in the hollow place. We are used to being parts of a greater, surrendering our bodies to another is second nature.

  But why are you invited and not chained?

  Because of you. Because you are precious.

  But they are in there? Like you are… and they just can’t be heard?

  The times when we once bayed for freedom have passed. Now is the quiet. There is no pull and tug, there is no cooperation. There is only control.

  I turn away from Adrian and grope behind the screen to find the last port for the cables I’ve been replacing. I’ve seen them, I’ve seen flicked ears and bared teeth. I’ve seen ruffled feathers and tipped horns. I’ve seen eyes watch me back with silent intelligence. They can’t all be like that, trapped in bodies at complete control of their host?

  Do you understand my hate now? I cry for blood when my brothers cannot.

  I always understood it, in my own ways. I just only really thought about myself.

  “Are you sure you’re not having any issues?” asks Adrian lazily, like he doesn’t really care about the answer.

  They can never know. We have made too many mistakes, let slip too many clues. I have spoken with your voice and our edges have blurred too much, putting you in danger. I am still chasing my lost memories of how to be this way, but I will know better once I find those thoughts again. You are but a pup. We must be quiet, we must be silent too, and nurture roots that grow strong and deep.

  “No, I’m just curious... Could you control whoever your symbiont stung?”

  Adrian freezes, his eyes widening. He glances at the doorway checking that it is closed. Pooka lowers himself, twisting his lips up over his teeth, and I can hear the rumble of a snarl beginning in his throat. Adrian spins his chair out of the central command position and comes around the table to me, gesturing for me to get down from my chair. I push the screen back into position and look down at him.

  “I hold onto many secrets that I inadvertently overhear, just like you did today. Some things we don’t talk about, some things we don’t even suggest their existence to others who might not know they are possible. I suggest you don’t mention that thought again, it's a dangerous one for people to know about some of us. Aquila is filled with secrets, do you understand me?” His voice is an impassioned whisper so unlike his usual lazy drawl it scares me slightly.

  I step down from the chair, dusting my hands on my thighs and mustering my own courage. “Stop asking me if I’m having issues,” I say.

  Surprisingly, Adrian smiles. A gentle expression which softens his hollow cheeks. “We understand each other then.”

  Pooka snaps his jaws shut, just missing a passing Vespa returning to the nest.

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  LORD OF THE SEAS

  The sea does not bow… it judges.

  Julien Fronterra, had everything—fame, legacy, and a shot at immortality in the world of combat sports. But in his moment of triumph, his body betrayed him. As his vision faded and regret swallowed him whole, he made one final plea—to live again, to find his own people, to carve out a life worth more than just titles. The gods listened.

  “A saga with mythic depth and tidal stakes.”

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