Lanis receives a ping back from Fleet in under fifteen minutes, a gentle light appearing at the edge of her mind’s eye. Incoming connection query. Source: Terra Fleet Relay.

  Across from her, Mirem is already snoring.

  Glad one of us can sleep, Lanis thinks, as she slips out of bed and softly pads to the bunk room’s small bathroom.

  She accepts the connection, and is immediately met by Lieutenant Tran’s voice.

  “What is it?”

  There’s no holo-cast image this time, simply a slightly gruff voice on the other end of the call. Lanis tries to imagine him. He probably looks like Ash, tired but still immaculate. Or maybe he, like herself, is taking the call away from some sleeping lover, having been woken by some higher-up that his troublesome patient is demanding a therapy session. It’s a bit funny, to know nothing about a man who has so intimately probed her own mind.

  How to explain? Lanis thinks.

  Directness seems to be the simplest answer.

  “The Anomaly. It’s here, on Terra,” Lanis says, her voice faintly echoing in the glowing darkness of the bathroom.

  There’s a moment of quiet breathing on the other end of the call as Tran absorbs this statement.

  “That’s…” he begins. Lanis closes her eyes. She can tell that he’s searching for a word that doesn’t demean her, and yet grounds her in reality; something that doesn’t destroy his therapeutic relationship with his most important patient.

  He’s not going to believe me, Lanis suddenly realizes.

  “Where is this coming from?” Tran interjects. “What do you mean that the Anomaly is on Terra? And I don’t mean this in a derogatory manner, but have you been taking your medications?”

  Lanis remembers the bag of pharmaceuticals that Fleet foisted on her at her discharge. It seems like a lifetime ago that she flushed them down her hotel toilet. She ignores his last question. She responds in a fierce whisper.

  “Peter Seto—Do you remember him? Mirem’s uncle?”

  “Of course. Vice President of Kaisho-Renalis corporate security.”

  “Right,” Lanis continues, hunching over in the bathroom, as though the unseen tension in her body can somehow telegraph the truth.

  “He came to Mirem’s apartment tonight, alone. He said that Alain Renalis, the son of Michael Renalis, recently returned from a colony trip on a Fleet ship. He said that Alain was… changed, when he returned. And that Alain knows about me somehow.” Lanis realizes that she’s speaking very quickly, and tries to slow down.

  “Alain told his subordinates to find a navigator on Terra named Lanis. So they did. Peter found out that I was staying with his niece, and came to the apartment to warn us, Tran. He said that something’s not right with Alain, and not right with the other board members who accompanied him on the Warp jump to the colonies.” She pauses for a breath, but then begins again, forestalling Tran’s rebuttal.

  “Look, the best case scenario is that Mirem’s uncle, the VP of Kaisho-Renalis security, has, out of some strange calculation or goodness of his heart, warned me and his niece that KR is going to try to recruit me. In a hostile fashion. That makes no sense! That’s the sort of thing that can trigger a corp war, not to mention getting Fleet involved, even if I am just some ex-cadet,” Lanis says, spitting out the last word.

  “Tran, I saw the look on Peter’s face. He knows Alain Renalis, and he was scared. The Anomaly—whatever it is, it’s still out there. It somehow infected the ship that Alain and the KR delegation were on. It got to Alain, and it’s here, and it’s still hunting me. All of Fleet could be in danger.” She tries to swallow, feeling beads of cold sweat form on her forehead.

  “Why would it still be hunting you?” Tran says after a moment’s pause, like a patient parent speaking to a child. Lanis grits her teeth in frustration.

  “Because it has my psychic scent! Because I escaped! I don’t know, you tell me! You’re the ones who actually know what it is!” Or do you? Lanis suddenly thinks with a jolt of fear. She wonders, not for the first time, if perhaps Fleet is just as in the dark as she is about what has occurred in the unfathomable Warp.

  She can almost see Tran thinking, lips pursed, on the end of the line. I’m not crazy! Lanis wants to yell.

  “I encourage you to consider Occam’s razor, Lanis. Which is more likely: that the head of Kaisho-Renalis security has found out who you are simply by means of their vast intelligence gathering apparatus, or that the Anomaly has infected Alain Renalis, and is still, for whatever reason, hunting for you? I agree that it’s unfortunate that your identity has been deduced by someone outside of who you’ve chosen to share it with, but this was a risk we discussed. It was fairly inevitable once you decided to expose yourself by working for Versk.”

  There’s a small pause.

  “You are, of course, still free at any time to return to Fleet, where we can continue your rehabilitation.”

  Lanis wants to scream in frustration; instead, she lets out a low groan.

  “Don’t you get it,Tran? Even if there’s a chance that this is true, then Fleet needs to consider that their ships might be infiltrated.”

  She hears a sigh on the other end of the call, and then a drawn-out silence.

  “Tran?” Lanis says, a tinge of despair in her voice.

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  “Yes, Lanis. I’m here.”

  “Tell me that you’ll tell Fleet what I’ve said. Promise me. Please.”

  There’s another silence. On the other end of the call Lanis can picture Tran, his lips pursed, rubbing his forehead. He clears his throat.

  “I’ve already relayed the essence of this conversation, and your concerns, to my superiors. You know that I cannot tell you any more than that. But promise me something, Lanis. That you will consider who Peter Seto is: A man of considerable talent, who, as a head of corporate security, has run counter-intelligence operations his entire life. It’s extremely unlikely that Kaisho-Renalis could, or would, breach Fleet’s medical records. However, once your presence was somehow found out, he must have deduced that a Navigator cadet would only be discharged onto Terra due to extenuating circumstances.”

  Lanis feels the nagging tug of doubt. But if only Tran had been there, and had seen what Peter was like, she thinks. Tran continues.

  “He has likely used that knowledge for this ploy. I don’t pretend to understand planetside corp politics, or what sort of game he’s playing, but I would take his word with extreme caution. Remember, Lanis, this is Kaisho-Renalis we’re speaking of, a corporate entity that rivals Planetary Administration and even Fleet in its power, at least on Terra. Even among the megacorps, their methods are… unsavory.”

  Could the man really have been that good of an actor? Lanis thinks. Nothing about what Tran says makes sense, but the analytic portion of her mind reluctantly begins to re-probe the idea that Peter’s whole story is a farce.

  “I’ll consider it,” Lanis says grudgingly.

  Tran’s tone of voice changes from firm to empathetic as he continues. “Lanis, there’s a pharmacy fairly near to the Versk Suit complex. I’m going to send in a refill of your medications. Please start taking them again.”

  Now it’s Lanis’ turn to shake her head, unseen by Tran.

  “Tran?”

  “Yes, Lanis?” Tran asks.

  She takes a deep, rattling breath.

  “Take care of yourself.”

  She ends the call.

  In the end, Lanis does manage to snatch a few hours of sleep from the jaws of insomnia. In her case, this means jerking awake at 3:30 from a nightmare.

  She slips out of the bunk room and into the small lounge. Ash wasn’t lying about the fridge being well-stocked, but she opts for a simple staple, a bowl of oatmeal and some milk, with a few random pieces of dried fruit. She smiles as she spies a jar full of Murkata-Heisen protein packets, and stuffs a few of those in her pocket for good measure.

  She chews slowly, poring over what to do next. Mirem is supposed to meet with Renfol as soon as he gets in, which is usually at six. Her scheduled Suit sessions with Ether start at five, so there’s still more than an hour to kill. She could ping one of the technicians to come in early, as she sometimes does… but a more interesting idea occurs to her.

  She looks for the gym.

  Not the pilot training gym, where she trains with Versk’s other two pilots, Fornis and Vallicent, who increasingly treat her with a certain resigned respect. That gym is full of technical equipment to measure their oxygenation and metabolic stress levels. She wants to find the real gym, where Versk employees can let out some steam. Or, more importantly, where she imagines security personnel might get in a quick workout before change-of-shift. She accesses the complex’s public-area map; it’s only a few minutes away. She’s fairly certain that one of the shift changes occurs at four, so she quickly changes into her Versk uniform, careful not to wake Mirem, and sets out through the quiet halls.

  She isn’t disappointed.

  The Versk gym, more than any other part of the complex besides maybe the auto-turret emplacements, is pure functionality. There are a few treadmills and bikes, but the small concrete-floored gym is mostly devoted to pushing and pulling heavy objects under a harsh fluorescent glare.

  In the center of the small gym, around a bench press, are gathered three large men and a woman. One of the men, his shirt off, is straining at lifting an amount of weight that noticeably bends the barbell.

  Lanis edges closer. The man straining under the weight has a bald head that gleams with sweat under the fluorescent light, and a thick yellow beard that has a healthy amount of spittle from his heaving grunts. A thin ridge of silver traces down from his neck and across his shoulders before exploding in a constellation across his massive arms. She doesn’t immediately recognize the implant, but clearly it’s something military grade or equivalent.

  The man manages one last rep with a final, grunting heave, clattering the bar and its eight plates onto the bench press rack.

  “Legend,” growls the man behind him.

  Sitting up, the weight-lifter and his companions eye Lanis as she approaches.

  “You want a go?” the man jokes, grinning as he wipes his face with a towel.

  Lanis eyes the weight.

  “I think that’s about my max, to be honest,” Lanis responds, trying to smile. Something about the easy companionship of the guards relaxes her.

  “Hah! I’d like to see that,” one of the other men laughs, though not unfriendly. Besides the man with his shirt off, they each have matching blue shirts with “Versk Security” stamped in blocky letters across the left chest.

  “Ok then, let’s see it,” the first man challenges, standing up from the bench and giving it a casual wipe. He bows slightly, and extends his arm to the bench. “Don’t worry, I’ll spot you.”

  Lanis pulls off her jacket and tucks it under the bench before sliding in under the weight.

  “Hey, you know I was joking right? What weight do you want to start at?” the man says, chuckling again, but also a bit of concern creeping into his voice.

  “Just give me a second,” Lanis says, gripping the bar. She pushes into it a few times, gently preparing her muscles while she triggers a portion of her mind, as if the Demeter’s inertial dampeners have failed and she’s preparing a high-gravity burn out of Warp space.

  She pushes, lifting the weight off the bar. Ok, that is pretty damn heavy. But doable. She glides it down, then back up. One. Two. Three.

  The four Versk Security guards watch her silently as she manages a fifth repetition. She probably could go for more, but she’d rather not be sore for the rest of the day.

  She sits up slowly, breathing hard, a few beads of sweat beginning to form on her forehead, hot where the old drops of fear-sweat felt cold. One of the men hands her a clean towel, and she stands up, admittedly a little shaky.

  “Well shit,” the first shirtless man says into the silence, folding his arms over his chest.

  “What kind of hardware are you rocking?” The woman says, her eyes narrowed.

  “Joint articulations, muscle enhancements. Fleet alterations,” Lanis replies, wiping her face. The security guards’ postures shift slightly, as if an undercurrent of respect has nudged each of their bodies. The shirtless man waves a finger at her.

  “I’ve heard of you. You’re one of the pilots. Lanis, is it?” He extends a bear-like hand.

  “Name is Booker.”

  Lanis’ hand is swallowed up in the man’s grip.

  “That’s me. Lanis. Nice to meet you, Booker.”

  He must be 6’5, at least, Lanis thinks as she watches the man consider her.

  “Haven’t seen you in here before, Lanis. You should hit the weights with us more often,” Booker says, smiling. “But I guess they have you in the pilot gym, hey? I reckon all that fancy equipment is overkill. Give me a squat rack and a bench any day.” There’s something in his grin that Lanis likes. “So, what brings you in this early? Just decided to show off?”

  Lanis picks up her jacket and puts it over her shoulder.

  “Well, truth be told, besides working off some steam, I was hoping to find you here,” Lanis says. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few security questions...”