Lanis spends most of the next day sleeping, curled up on herself in Mirem’s bed like an overlarge, hairless cat. Occasionally she wakes long enough to down a glass of water or use the bathroom, succumbing to her mostly biological body’s overriding need for the rest that it’s been denied for the past two months.

  Her sleep is seemingly dreamless, and she’s pathetically grateful for that, though each time she wakes there’s a gnawing worry that it can’t last. It hasn’t before, and she can almost feel the echoes of her trauma scratching at the edge of her psyche like a wounded pet, begging to be let in.

  No, she mumbles, head buried in an overripe pillow. Her lips move in a whisper of strange words, growing fainter, her breathing softer: a Navigator meditation mantra, plucked from Earth’s ancient religious texts. It all sounded a bit absurd when they were first drilled on them in Navigation training, but the ability to plunge into a state of transcendental meditation is an essential ingredient of Warp jumping, and the mantras actually do help. An instructor said it was based on the power of humanity’s cultural need for a higher helping hand, stamped into them from birth by near constant subliminal suggestions.

  Lanis isn’t entirely sure of that explanation. She thinks it might just be because they roll off the tongue well.

  The incomprehensible whispers grow softer, softer, until a snore escapes her lips.

  Mirem, for her part, is out for most of the day, whispering something about client relation meetings as she softly closes the bedroom door on Lanis’ sprawled form. She pings Lanis too, and leaves a physical note on the nightstand along with a spare keycard to the apartment. Her trust would be almost alarming if Lanis didn’t so desperately crave it. She unconsciously slides her legs to a cooler part of the bed, hugging another pillow.

  Much later, slowly waking, she can hear Mirem rustling in her office, then the kitchen. It’s the smell of food that finally gets her up.

  “Oh my god, that smells amazing,” Lanis croaks, shuffling into the kitchen. Mirem is frying something— onions, garlic, peppers. Steam wafts from a retro white bellied rice cooker on the counter beside her.

  Lanis belatedly realizes that she’s still wearing Mirem’s overlarge sweats, that her short hair is probably matted on one side and sticking straight up on the other, and that Mirem looks, if anything, better than she did the other night. It’s actually dismaying.

  “Why do you look so good?” she says, sitting heavily on one of the high stools across from Mirem and groaning.

  “Oh, you don’t look so bad,” Mirem says, laughing. “Not for someone who had been at the club all night, and for how many nights before that? In fact,” she stops, as if fully considering Lanis, and then waves a reprimanding spatula at her. “You still look positively good.”

  Lanis blushes and laughs.

  “So, are you hungry? Ten minutes. Nothing fancy, my meeting ran late. Do you like stir fry?”

  Lanis doesn’t know the last time she had stir-fry, if ever. She nods, and tries to stop smiling.

  It’s Mirem who suggests that Lanis could simply stay for a while, the next morning.

  "If you want. I enjoy your, um, company. You know, until you figure things out," she says, sipping her coffee in silky black pajamas while Lanis is perched on her couch, eyes still sticky from the sheer amount of sleep that her body is consuming.

  Mirem feels flushed as she says it, a hot feeling of impropriety and rashness coming over her as the words awkwardly spill out. She should have had this kind of behavior hammered out of her during Kaisho-Renalis corporate training a decade ago, she thinks, but then she isn’t a KR employee anymore, is she? The offer just… feels right. She imagines herself, a month from now, reading in a news feed about some ex-Fleet cadet found dead from an overdose. How would she live with herself?

  Right, it’s because I’m so noble, she thinks. If that’s what she has to tell herself, so be it. Enjoying Lanis’ company is more to the point, but is that the right word for being buried in someone so deeply that your gasps for air come out as half-muffled snorts? She’s simply glad that the apartment’s sound dampening is top of the line. Desire is only a part of it though. There’s both an element of being mildly star-struck, something that she hasn’t felt for years, and also a protectiveness that Mirem recognizes from past, perhaps less healthy, patterns.

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  Lanis takes a moment to digest the offer, letting the words settle in the perfectly air-conditioned air like a wayward gust of dust.

  She responds finally with a tentative "Thanks. I'll think about it?" and Mirem nods, raising the coffee mug to try to cover her expression.

  An older man in a Fleet-blue uniform speaks, his voice crisp.

  "Mirem Seto. Clean background. Eight years as a KR employee, two in training. Arena division, steady advancements. No links to any of the crime syndicates or KR shadow holdings. Though, you know, even Fleet can't get past all the KR firewalls, not without causing an incident."

  The man squints, scanning something Lanis can’t see.

  "Here's something interesting though; her uncle is vice-president of Corporate Security at KR. Very impressive, from a hierarchical perspective. Peter Seto. Not someone to be taken lightly. I imagine he still keeps tabs on his niece, especially given her change in employment."

  Lanis suppresses a grimace. She’s made a special trip for this call to one of the city's many red-light districts, a place closer to her hostel than Mirem’s high-rise. One nice thing about a place where discretion is paramount is that the privacy tech is very good.

  She sits in an Uplink cubicle, trying to touch as little as possible, not trusting the lingering scent of antiseptic wipes. Projected in front of her, instead of what she imagines would be the usual fetishistic experiences, is her Fleet liaison officer and psychologist, Lieutenant Tran. He has a face that manages to be simultaneously considerate and severe, and Lanis doesn’t believe she’s ever elicited a genuine emotional reaction from him.

  It isn’t yet time for her bi-weekly check-in, but Lieutenant Tran is seemingly always available. Fleet had assured her that she didn't have any tracking implants (not they would have needed any; they could probably just slide into the local Admin surveillance systems to find her if they needed to), but a non-negotiable part of her discharge plan is that she still needs to keep them abreast of her plans and relative well being. Technically, it’s for her own health. Right.

  In actuality it’s because she’s far too strange an asset to be left out totally unmonitored.

  "And her other family?" Lanis asks, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  "Sister, three years older, still at KR. A manager in acquisitions, chemical industrial division. Competent looking, slightly faster promotions than one would expect, but nothing wildly out of the ordinary. Father in PA, shipyard compliance officer. Mother is stationed at the docks as well, also in Planetary Admin, logistics officer. Both have efficiency commendations. Hm. Quite a family," Tran says, leaning back slightly in an unseen chair. His eyes refocus back to Lanis' face. "Is there something else you wished to know about her?"

  “Does it say why she quit? Kaisho-Renalis?” Lanis asks. Mirem has been evasive on the point, explaining that her separation pact includes a perpetual non-disclosure agreement. Let’s just say it was a non-alignment in values, is all that she’s revealed.

  The Fleet officer scans something. “Again, the KR firewalls are quite robust, but her resignation date aligns with several Arena test-pilot incidents. Yes, here it is: it looks like Kaisho’s newest AI models resulted in a few fried hippocampuses at the time. This is not publicly available data, but PA had to step in… looks like an Admin’s cousin was among the brain-dead. It appears that your Mirem was a recruitment officer at the time. Perhaps she took the incident to heart…” He shakes his head, as if in disappointment at the mega-corp’s clumsy incompetence. “Anything else?”

  "No," Lanis says quickly, "that's fine." She stops chewing on her cheek. "Thanks, Lieutenant." Does she see a flicker of amusement? Despite his best efforts to have her simply call him Tran, Lanis always addresses him by his rank. She thinks of him as something akin to a probation officer. The truth is probably much more than that, and she wonders how much of these interactions are over-analyzed; whether, if she were in danger, or showed signs of a psychotic break, some Fleet extraction team would rappel in through the ceiling and whisk her away. Yes, or no? She’s not sure which answer would unnerve her more.

  "Of course. We're glad you got in touch, and we're here whenever you need anything. I know this isn't our scheduled session, but would you like to talk about how you're doing? About any dreams you've been having lately?" the lieutenant says, lingering on the word ‘dream.’.

  "I'm fine," Lanis answers simply. "The dreams are the same. But... I spent the night with the woman I asked you about. Mirem. And they weren't quite as bad."

  Tran nods, his face coming together in a model of therapeutic encouragement.

  "Anyway. I have to go," Lanis says abruptly. "Don't want to give away too much before our next meeting, after all.” She gives a little wave, the facsimile of a salute. “Thanks."

  "Of course, Navigator,” Lieutenant Tran says, with a small, inscrutable smile. “Any time.”