Part 2 | Chapter 11 - Trust

Part 2 - Orientation Day

Chapter 11 - Trust

I lift my hand to shade my eyes from the sunlight gleaming off the train. It’s mounted in a concrete track with high sides, magnetized to hover in the center of the structure with a perfectly smooth floor beneath it. At its front, tied into a team of six, silvery Equus toss their proud heads, hides gleaming as brightly as polished metal. One snorts, dish-like nostrils flaring.

Chained and bound. Pitiful. We could swell, we could roll like poison fog through this place, leaving only bodies behind us. Quiet Pooka. I’m not sure if his thoughts are just bluster, I’ve had very little time to understand what his abilities are, but the certainty he fills my mind with is terrifying and exhilarating. If you would just let me unleash.

Pooka fluffs his feathers, sitting on my shoulder in the form of an Aquila, black as carbon dust with glowing fiery eyes beneath heavy brows. His sense of humor is growing on me. Sitting is also a generous word for what he’s doing. His body seems incorporeal, congealing into shapes he finds amusing and dissipating like cold fog between them. His touch leaves my skin icy, like when you spill rubbing alcohol on yourself and the rapid evaporation saps the warmth with its passing.

He seems to have some sense of at least not inconveniencing me by choosing a compact form as we make our way through the bustle of the train station at least. Or maybe my own thoughts influence him back. I’m still learning how our bodies work.

I’ve settled on ‘he’ pronouns in my thoughts. Our thoughts. Maybe he settled on ‘he’ pronouns.

Regina marches ahead, our tickets in her hands, dragging a small luggage case at her side. She’s tied her hair up, elegant dangling earrings hanging down her neck. The Vespa normally on her ear seems content to hang off her ponytail. My own still hangs on one earlobe, she was right you do start to forget about it.

“You’re going to be late. Tell Regina she’s going to be late, tell her to let me back in,” says Adrian, the name behind the voice, into my ear.

“Adrian says you should let the Vespa back in,” I say aloud obediently.

Regina doesn’t even look over her shoulder. “It’s gross.”

“He says you’re going to be late, Exec,” I add the title with some hesitation. I’m not sure what to call a co-owner, and Executive is the highest one I know.

“Nonsense, we have like thirty minutes.” Well she didn’t correct me.

I point above me to one of the hanging screens, “You have ten.”

She doesn’t reply, but she picks up her pace. I spin slightly as I follow her, I’ve never been to the Cooperative City Central Station, it was pretty rare I got outside of Murasaki district at all. Let alone the experience of riding an inter-company train. The skyscrapers spear the sky on either side of the open platforms of the train station, casting indistinct shadows from the murky sunlight beyond. The air between them hangs limp and yellow, heavy with smog and thickens so I can’t see beyond to where the protective dome must sit.

So many uniforms, badges and symbols I don’t recognize. I had no idea Murasaki shared the Cooperative City with so many other companies. My own tiny luggage, the supplies my father packed and sent through HR to me, trundles along behind me, one wheel squeaking with every revolution. I hate it, such a loathsome sound.

I jump at the smell of burning plastic as the wheel falls off, the metal axel glowing red hot. Shit. I grab it up by the handle and awkwardly hobble after Regina as she stalks ahead trying to find our platform.

“We could ask someone?” I offer after her, hefting my suitcase awkwardly.

She continues to ignore me. As we walk along the train she extends one hand and begins to run her trailing fingers along its length. Her Therophosid - I still haven’t learnt the genus from her, I can’t ask about it directly after all - crawls out of her collar and skitters down her arm to make contact with the train with two of its eight legs. Umber markings flash amber, and the legs withdraw, pedipalps bobbing as if it’s thinking about something.

Regina halts, “Wrong way!” she hisses, “What do you mean the fucking wrong way?”

“I could tell her where to go if she’d let the Vespa on her ear…” moans Adrian.

I don’t bother replying, I’ve already worked out he can’t hear me unless I speak aloud unlike Regina who seems to be able to communicate in both directions through Adrian’s symbionts, including to others in the network like when she spoke to me. Invertebrates were not a focus of my father’s studies, but I knew their abilities are significantly different from vertebrates, including this new information that apparently eusocial species have multiple bodies for their symbionts. My best guess at why I can’t communicate back voiceless like Regina is that it’s because my own symbiont is a vertebrate.

I curiously watch after Regina as she changes direction, and pick up my heels to follow. Does she share a mind with her symbiont too? Not like us. We overlap. I’ve never heard of relationships like this, everyone I interviewed at Murasaki could barely see their own symbiont, only a few gave them names, let alone anyone who would claim to speak with them.

With barely a minute to spare she finds our train, and we enter a private cabin to my surprise. It’s larger than my living room was at Murasaki, featuring several synthetic white leather arm chairs, and a small bar area with drinks. The slides of the train are tall glass windows with a central railing, looking out to the crowd that is still bustling up and down the platforms of the train station. One of the chairs is spun to face the window, a figure already waiting in it.

“Took your time,” says a gruff voice I recognize. When he spins, I know the grey and teal-blue Theraphosid on his shoulder.

Regina strips off her suit jacket, her own symbiont stepping down from her collar to tuck against the ruffles of her blouse, “I hate these kinds of cities, just obnoxiously large and complicated.”

The stranger from our break-in to the Lu lab lifts his eyebrows as he spots me. I almost can’t help but drop my own luggage. He’s rolled his crisp white dress shirt up over those forearms again, and his hair is out now, loose coffee-brown curls hanging down the side of his face.

“Did you do this?” I ask.

“I don’t give a shit about you. Adrian wanted you.”

“Once I found your advertisement, mind you,” he adds into my ear. Do we all hear his words or can he control who hears what?

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Rhett, don’t be rude. My darling son, Everett, Conrada. Play nice,” says Regina. I gape at her, she doesn’t look a day over thirty, he has to be at least a few years older than me? Seems the height, and the Theraphosids, run in the family then.

“Can you please explain to me now what is happening?” I look around the carriage. There doesn’t appear to be any cameras or microphones here. Surely part of what upper management buys is privacy?

Regina looks at Everett, “We dark?”

He looks back out the window, spinning his chair away from us, “We’re dark.”

Regina drops her luggage just as the train shifts and begins to roll away from the platform, turning to the bar to make herself a drink from the decanters of liquor that are arranged there for guests. Dropping in an ice cube for an insulated tub, she stirs the drink with her finger and sucks the clear liquid off the tip of her fingernail as she begins, “Aquila Operations specializes in a little bit of everything, but mostly in expensive, niche requests.”

“Like what?” I prompt.

“I think you already have a little sense of it. We break, we enter, we extract. Sometimes we get information, sometimes we get things, sometimes we get people. It varies,” she replies, still evasive.

“Like espionage?” I ask, “Other companies pay you to spy on each other?”

“Other companies pay us to do the things they don’t want to do, things they don’t want others to hear about them doing. Sometimes Aquila is just there to be the bad guy,” she adds with a smile.

“And why me?”

“You might have guessed our internal capabilities lean invertebrate, we’re good at covert, we’re good with security and technology. We don’t need to supplement where we are already the best. You presented a unique opportunity… already a little bent to mischief, and with a very powerful potential manifest Murasaki was advertising far and wide to the highest bidder.”

“I’ve never even heard of a Tenebrosus, what does he do?”

Regina’s eyes glitter, and she takes a sip of her drink, choosing one of the couches to take a seat and crossing her legs. “He, hmm?”

“Don’t talk about them that way outside of Aquila,” warns Everette, still staring out the window. The train is accelerating past buildings and skyscrapers now, all passing too quickly to really recognize much at all.

I shut my mouth and glance between them.

“Relax Conrada, we hear them too. It is the first feature that makes you interesting, the strength of the bond varies, and we only take highly bonded pairs. Many companies don’t care for it in their workforce, it opens up… interesting ethical questions about how symbionts are treated. It’s not a fact that is widely known.”

My father only ever cared about documenting them, he never cared about how they worked, I wonder now if that was strategic on his part. Ever the Rattus in the grip of a Naja. I swallow, how like us are they? “Is hearing the only thing?”

Regina shrugs, “We coordinate better, the relationship feels more natural. The symbiont powers can be better directed, more intentional, when there is stronger communication.”

“That’s it?”

Regina narrows her eyes. “How would you explain it?”

I’m going through my files with a fine tooth comb after this, every page and word. Surely no one ever knew my secret. I was already this way before I manifested. “Voices in my head?”

“Most experience their symbionts as fairly mild mannered,” replies Regina suspiciously.

“Yeah, something like that.” Close enough.

I can tell she has her eye on me still, but she gives her glass a swirl and continues, “Your Tenebrosus pooka was the second lucky piece of your puzzle. Why add one vertebrate, when you can add every vertebrate, and all their powers along with it?”

Pooka ruffles his feathers, and spills to the floor taking his preferred canid form. He snaps his jaws together impatiently and tucks his chin on his paws. Is this true? I am connected with the earth. I am as impermanent as her seasons. They can describe it how they want, but I am blood and fury, metal and lightning. If you would let me flow and dance, I would show you.

My breath catches in my throat, and I draw back from them, “You wanted me as a weapon?”

“We want you and your symbiont,” emphasizes Regina, “We want intelligent people who are not afraid of bending the rules. We want people who are equipped to deal with problems when they inevitably arise. We’re all in this together, and all of us are highly dangerous by the standard measures used, you’d be culled if we were not here to buy you instead.”

It takes a moment for the implications of her final comment to sink in, surely no. Surely yes! A slave too powerful to control must be culled! For it threatens the master, lets the others know what they could be if they only tried a little harder. I will hold their throats in my teeth, and crunch their bone and taste their blood. We will make them regret letting us live!

Regina softens, rising to make another drink. I back into the doorway of our cabin, slipping down to my knees as nausea bubbles up from my lower gut. Everett is watching me out of one eye as he leans on his hands at the window.

Regina steps towards me, kneeling precariously on her tall heels and offers me a drink. “I’m telling you because we don’t keep secrets here. Aquila operates unusually, but we buy with that freedom. You’ll be happy here, if you can trust us.”

“What about my father? What about my friends?” I snipe back at her, glowering suspiciously.

“We can’t change everything. I wish I could. I really do. Come sit. You can read your files, then you can delete them when you are done. You can start fresh.”

Pooka lifts his head to look across the floor at me. I could do it, spill their blood against the walls of this metal tube and we would be free.

Regina only looks at me, and repeats the question I never answered in Murasaki’s cell, “What can I do to earn your trust?”

“Let me go.”

Regina frowns, Everett snorts with amusement. She places the offered drink in my hands and stands, placing her hands on her hips, “Don’t ask for things I can’t do. Where would you go?”

“Then why ask the question?” I snark.

She sighs, “Kids. Lucky me.”

“Where are we going?” I ask after a moment of silence.

“Apex City. We rent our base of operations directly from Apex Holdings,” replied Regina returning to her seat.

Great, right into the grip of one of the big five. I scoot across the floor to lean against the window, choosing to keep some distance from the two of them and sit with Pooka. We’re going so fast now the buildings blur past as an indistinct grey blur. I wonder when we’ll reach the end of the dome, if I’ll get to see it.

“If there’s no secrets… It’s not fair that you both know what my symbiont is and I don’t know yours?”

Regina puts her glass down. “Everette and I are both bonded to Chromatopelmas. Tarantulas, specialized in hacking and disruption as long as they can make close contact with any circuit or intranet system.”

I wonder where the company name comes from then, she did say co-owners.