Because apparently my brain really needs it. BUT!
Today, Where There's A Will re-releases on Amazon/KU. If you like superheroes and excellent villains, consider picking it up!
OR, you can email me and I'll send you a copy as a belated Christmas gift. ONLY if you follow me here, ONLY if you email within the next 24 hours, because otherwise my attention span will just crumble, babes.
Happy Boxing Day--I hope you have time to read something lovely :)
Oooo....Christmas nails courtesy of my bb ;)
No need to celebrate the specific holiday to celebrate the fact that it's a time to be appreciative, and I appreciate all of you! Thank you so much for reading my work and my worlds and sticking with me in 2023. Hopefully in 2024 I'll be able to transition to a different blog host, and if I do I hope you come along. No matter what, though, I hope you're happy, healthy, and safe.
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!!!
Cari <3
I'm on day four of a sick kidlet, boooo all around. She's doing a lot better, but I've had--you guessed it--very little time for writing. *sigh* But the baby (ha, what baby, she's SIX oh my god) comes first.
BUT! I do have some cover art to share for a very fun prequel that I'll be putting out in 2024...
Like, HOLY WHAT, am I right!? It looks so good, Natasha Snow is an amazing cover artist and I'm really excited to write this booooook!
Have a safe and wonderful holiday if you celebrate, my darlins. I'll be in touch soon!
Notes: A little longer today, as we begin to delve into the plotty goodness. Enjoy!
Title: Chelen City: Chapter Eighteen, Part Two
***
Chapter Eighteen, Part Two
“Do I want to know why you’ve developed a shield that hides people digitally?”
“I don’t know, do you?” Elanus asked as he walked to the office of the chief administrator of Chelen City’s government-aligned hospital. It was a balancing act to go slow enough to speak with Kieron while still making progress, but he managed it. A few more minutes and he’d be there…but in a few more minutes, Kieron would be at the central service replicator for the hospital’s Regen system in his maintenance technician guise. “And you’re not hidden, in this case. Your digital imprint is changed into that of another person, that’s all.”
“But my physical appearance isn’t.”
“You’re the one who told me that short people in service uniforms are never remarked on,” Elanus said, pushing the button for the elevator down to the fiftieth floor. The woman next to him glanced over and smiled. He smiled back.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You absolutely did.”
“Not like that. I’m not short.”
“You are on Ganiaaa,” Elanus sang as he got into the elevator. The woman next to him looked curious, but he ignored her. “Short and stocky.”
“I’m above average height for Alliance planets.”
“And very far below average height for this planet, which is the only one that matters right now because it’s the one you live on.”
There was a pause, and then—“God, you’re obnoxious.”
Elanus grinned. He was feeling practically effervescent today. It was amazing what a good night’s sleep, some quality time with his daughters, and a plan of attack could do for him. “I know. But at least I’m not tiny.”
“This tiny man has and will kick your ass.”
“You would regret it,” Elanus said as the elevator whirred down. Gyroscopes prevented the feeling of movement, so his stomach stayed in place, but it seemed like no one was capable of making a completely silent elevator. “You’d break something and then you’d feel bad and end up waiting on me hand and foot for a month while you recovered from the guilt.”
“I wouldn’t feel that bad.”
“You did last time.” There was silence. It began to stretch, and Elanus wondered whether maybe it had been a bad idea to bring up old memories like that. “Not that you knew what would happen,” he amended. Still nothing. “Honey? Sweetheart? Light of my life?”
“Please shut up.”
Even being sworn at was a relief. “Don’t just go silent like that, you make me nervous.” The elevator stopped and he and the woman both got out. She turned left, while he continued straight ahead along the corridor toward the distant double doors. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, just…” Kieron grunted. “This casing is a bitch to get off.”
“Use the multi-tool.”
“Right, yeah, use the multi-tool, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, what’s this in my hand? Is it a multi-tool? Wow. How convenient.”
Elanus tisked. “If you don’t know how to properly use a multi-tool, you should have told me before I sent you in. I could have given you a basic tutorial.”
“I know how to use a damn multi-tool, I did maintenance on an entire space station for three years.”
“Not the same thing.” Elanus heard Kieron grunt again and felt a frisson of worry. “Be honest—do you need help?”
“No.”
“I said be honest.”
“I am being honest. I’m fine. I’ll have this done in a—”
“What are you doing in here?”
That wasn’t Kieron’s voice. It wasn’t someone speaking to Elanus either; this was happening on Kieron’s end.
“Just routine maintenance,” Kieron said, sounding bored. Elanus felt himself freeze inside, even as he kept walking—no one was supposed to be down there other than Kieron’s maintenance tech persona right now. “It’s on the schedule.”
“You’re not Feyodr.”
“Nope.” Kieron popped the word obnoxiously. “New management.”
“I didn’t hear anything about a change.”
“Not my problem, man.” No one did dismissive quite as well as Kieron, and for a moment Elanus thought it worked. Then—
“I’m going to need you to come with me to the security checkpoint.”
Kieron huffed a sigh. “Look, I’m almost done here. Can we just—”
“Now, sir.”
“Fine.” Elanus listened to him being led away from the service replicator and grimaced. Shit. This was a hiccup they didn’t need. [Are you okay?] he sent via his implant.
[Fine. Focus on you.]
[If you need me--]
[I’ll let you know, but I’ve got this. Pay attention, you’re about to walk into a door.]
Elanus looked up just in time to stop himself from walking right into the damn double doors. The secretary at the desk to the right looked at him with one raised eyebrow, and he smiled charmingly even as he sent [You’re getting better at accessing the connections, I didn’t even feel you do that.] All he got in return was a sense of smugness.
“Hello,” Elanus said, pushing Kieron’s situation out of his head and focusing on the person in front of him. “I’ve got a meeting with Doctor Kliir.”
“Name, sir?”
“Elanus Desfontaines.”
To their credit, the secretary didn’t seem surprised or interested by his identity in the slightest. “Go ahead,” they droned, and Elanus went back over to the doors and knocked once, then entered.
“Mr. Desfontaines!” Doctor Kliir, on the other hand, was very aware of who he was. She was heavyset for a Ganian, rounded and gray-haired, but her eyes were bright with eagerness. She had a presentation already pulled up on the holo-screen at her desk.
Oh, great. A sales pitch. Eh, it was what he’d let himself in for. Now that he’d invested in part of the hospital, she was going to want him to invest in all of it.
“It’s so wonderful to meet you in person,” Doctor Kliir said, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “I’m Doctor Corinne Kliir. Please, may I get you something to drink?”
“Anything would be good,” he said, fiddling with his own implant until he finally got a visual through Kieron’s. There was a bit of strange overlap for a moment, but then it resolved. Kieron was sitting in a small security office with two other men, both of whom looked rather squirrely.
“Here.” Doctor Kliir handed him a glass. “It’s just water, but—”
“Mind telling me why I’m here?” Kieron asked.
“Mind telling us why you’re not in the system?” one of the men replied pugnaciously.
“Look, all I know is I got tasked to work on this system today, okay? I’ve never worked here before, but my boss told me the paperwork was going through fine.”
“Well, it hasn’t.”
“How is that my problem?”
The guys looked at each other. “We can make it your problem,” the second one said. Elanus could practically hear the knuckle-cracking. Honestly, what the hell—
“—Desfontaines? Are you all right?”
Elanus pasted a smile on his face. “Forgive me, just getting some data in on one of my implant channels.”
“I see.” The administrator went a bit frosty. “If you could please turn it off for the duration of our meeting, I would appreciate that.”
“Of course.” Not, but he’d at least turn it down. He sat, and she beamed and launched into a discussion of how grateful they were for his investment in maintaining their technology, and how much better things could be if he wanted to help them upgrade some of the rest of their tech as well. Elanus forced himself to listen, but he turned Kieron’s conversation into text and continued to read it.
“Look,” Kieron said. “I get it. You guys had a deal with the last guy who worked here, right? Probably, like, a few free vials of Regen from the tank in exchange for not giving him shit?” Judging from the way the security officers stared at each other, he was correct. Bribery. Of course. I should have thought of that.
“I can do that,” Kieron replied. “Not a lot, ‘cause the levels are really strictly monitored, but enough to get you a few thousand extra credits. I get a third of it, of course.”
One of the guys scoffed. “You get to do your job, that should be enough.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“You’re not a native. Just like the last guy.” The man leaned in. “I’ve got a cousin that works in the refugee office. I can have her pull your approval to be here before you even know it. Get you sent back to whatever shit planet you came from.”
Oh, damn. If they’d been looking for a way to rile Kieron up, they’d just found it.
“And I,” Kieron replied frostily, “can report both of you for extortion to my boss.”
“You think whoever hired you is going to believe you over his own people?”
“You don’t know much about who I work for, do you.” The guys looked at each other. “Lifeship Enterprises ring a bell? Elanus Desfontaines? Richest guy on this rock, also dating a guy from another planet? Short and stocky, like me, but way more of a badass?” Kieron leaned in. “They’re stupid about each other, too. I’ve met the little guy, he likes me. He’ll listen to me if I tell him you’re trying to bust my balls here, and he’ll tell his boyfriend. Who do you think will get kicked off at that point?”
One of the guys bristled, but the other one shook his head. “Fuck it, it’s not worth it,” he muttered. “Fine. Split three ways, but it’s got to be at least ten milliliters per person. Got it?”
“Got it. You gonna let me do my job now, or what?”
“Which is why I really think it’s in everyone’s best interest to invest in the latest biobed sensor technology,” Doctor Kliir finished up. Elanus blinked at her. “Don’t you agree?”
Wow, he’d done a terrible job listening to that. Shit. “Absolutely.”
She smiled at him. “Wonderful! Let me show you my construction projections and we’ll get a contract pulled up!”
Wait. How much money had he just spent? Eh, didn’t matter. Not as long as Kieron was okay. Which he was, if the way he was fussing over the multi-tool again was any indicator.
“Sounds great.”
Notes: Yep, the numbers are right, turns out there's no Chapter 17 Part 2. On to the plotting!
Title: Chelen City: Chapter Eighteen, Part One
***
Chapter Eighteen, Part One
There was something exciting about analyzing important data. Elanus was well aware that not a lot of people would agree with him on that—there was a reason he enjoyed being a CEO, and a lot of it had to do with data analysis—but in this case it was not only exciting, it was crucial. He’d gotten his algorithms on data from Elfshot infections for the entire population of Chelen City, which was as broad a test population as he was going to get for now, and the results were in on when and where it looked like children were being infected.
“There’s a ninety percent chance that they’re given the mutation that starts the downward spiral at their ten-year physical,” he said, transforming the data into a graph and projecting it to share with Kieron. “You almost never see Elfshot in a child younger than ten, and the dissemination of the virus itself takes a while to get a foothold in the body and take over normal replication, so the disease itself doesn’t present until around twelve.”
“Sneaky,” Kieron commented as he stared at the graph. “And the ten-year physical is the last one required by law to be in person at the doctor’s office?”
“Not just a doctor’s office, the office of the city’s chief medical officer,” Elanus clarified. “Kids are centrally assessed at age three, seven, and ten. After that, the next physical whose data has to be shared is the fifteen year, but those are usually handled by the aptitude officer for whatever schooling route the kid’s been funneled into.”
“Why not just have physicians transmit the information digitally?”
Elanus smirked. “Because this is Gania, and we wouldn’t be Ganian if we didn’t try to cheat the system. Local doctors can be bribed to give elevated results for health and intelligence, but the city CMO is supposed to be above that kind of trickery.” Which they very clearly weren’t, in this case. “I think we should grab the doctor and—”
Kieron shook his head. “Too obvious. Even here on Gania, being a doctor is a highly respected job, one of the least assassinated roles in public service. If you send me after one, you’re not only giving Restaria a warning that you’re onto xer, you’re making yourself into a bad guy in the eyes of the public. No.” He stared at the data one last time, then flipped to a new set of numbers. “Show me how it’s being done?”
“I assume it’s in the Regen injection kids get,” Elanus said, turning the numbers into another visual. “It’s tailored to each individual child and meant to bolster their systems.”
“So each kid is given a shot, or…”
“Nothing so old-fashioned. The doctor inputs their parameters, the kid sits in the autodoc, and the medication is administered via absorption through the skin.”
“Huh.” Kieron crossed his arms. “Is the virus itself replicable from Regen?”
“Yeah.” That was one of the worst parts, how damnably simple the delivery system was. “In the end, it’s all just proteins and foldings. The autodoc is easily capable of formulating the nascent virus and including it in the injection.”
“So there’s got to be some sort of regular subroutine that the physicians are inputting that tells the autodoc what to put in. Some kind of code that reads one thing but actually means Elfshot Disease.”
“There is.” Elanus pulled up another visual. “They call it Vitamin E-3.” It looked like a Vitamin E booster, but the coding was subtly different. “Only kids who end up getting Elfshot get this one.”
“Okay.” Kieron nodded. “But the doctor, whoever it is doing the administering, might not know that.”
Elanus scoffed. “They have to know.”
“Not necessarily. It would be so easy to conceal this kind of thing in paperwork from the kids’ earlier physicals—in fact, the way you people pull every bit of personal information together into a whole, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a trigger flagged by a student’s teacher instead of their doctor. There’s a whole network of wrongdoing here, but we need to know more if we’re going to uproot it successfully.”
Elanus resisted the urge to pull on his hair. “We know who the root is! We need to take out Restaria, then worry about the rest of it.”
“Oh yeah?” Kieron stared up at him challengingly. “So you’re fine with this subroutine being administered for weeks or months while we work through Restaria’s crimes? Because xe’s the vice-fucking-president of the whole planet, Elanus, and like it or not, that means xe’s got a hell of a lot of power and influence over how this is going to go. We can have xer dead to rights on giving potential rivals Elfshot Disease and still get into the kind of legal fight that will have us battling it out in court for a long fucking time.”
Oof, Kieron was feeling strongly about this if he was using “fucking” more than once in five minutes. “So what do you suggest, then?” Elanus asked—not graciously, but he wasn’t outright rude about it either. It was the best he could do, and he could tell Kieron knew that from the way he smiled.
“We need to stop the delivery of the virus, first and foremost. That means writing some sort of code that will intercept the E-3 subroutine and turn it into a regular booster, without letting on that it’s happening.”
“I can do that,” Elanus said. “And it would be simple to get Catie to send it downstream to the medical offices where—”
“No!”
Elanus blinked, startled at Kieron’s fierce denial. “Why not? She could do it, you know she could.”
“We can’t take the chance that another virus will follow her back,” Kieron said, his eyes wide. “Remember last time? You were barely able to help her fight it off, and that was a virus taking largely unknown advantage—this time, Restaria’s been able to prepare, to learn from past mistakes. Let another one of those in here, and you might end up dead instead of just having a stroke. No.”
Ah. Well, when he put it that way…yeah. It was a dumb idea. Elanus had improved the girls’ defensive capabilities since then, but still, it was better not to test it if Kieron had a better idea. “What do you suggest?”
“Maintenance. Send in someone to do some work on the machines, let them get the code into the system, keep it quiet and calm.” Kieron looked back at the holograph. “Who owns the contract for maintenance on those autodocs?”
“I will, as soon as I’ve proxy-purchased it,” Elanus replied.
“You’re sure you can do it without tipping off Restaria?”
“Absolutely positive.”
Kieron smiled. “Then I think we’ve got our first step.”
First step of many. Elanus rubbed his hands together and grinned. This was going to be fun.
Notes: My brain needed a break from plot, so you get this!
Title: Chelen City: Interlude: Pol
***
Interlude: Pol
This home was too quiet. Pol didn’t like it.
Home home was never this quiet. There was always someone there—one of his siblings or parents, or a vid playing somewhere, or he was out with his friends in the garden, or something. Here, it was like there was no sound at all—the walls seemed to eat it up even from one hall to the next. When Pol called for his mother, it was the house’s AI that had to let her know he wanted her, because the doors didn’t let sound out.
His feet made almost no noise against the floor, not even when he stomped extra hard. Once, just to see what would happen, Pol picked up the tab that the Man had left for him and threw it as hard as he could against the carpet. It hadn’t made any noise, but shortly after that Mama came in to ask him why he was upset.
“I’m not,” Pol replied, but he was. He was, and he knew Mama didn’t quite understand why. This was a nice place for her, with grown-ups she liked and a kitchen she could cook in and a system she could use to talk to Szusza if she wanted to. Which she didn’t yet, and Pol understood that part just fine. He didn’t want to talk to Szusza yet either, not after she left him. He missed her terribly, but he was also so, so angry at her…
Mama like it here, and so Pol tried to like it to. He tried to like it for a whole week: a week of learning school from a new teacher, of getting a new doctor’s checkup and being assigned a therapist (which he didn’t like, and neither did Kieron, even though she was Kieron’s therapist too. “What does he need therapy for?” Keiron had demanded. “He’s just got settling in to do, that’s all.” “Settling in can go a lot better when you have someone to talk to about it,” Mama had replied, agreeing with the Man, and Kieron had given in).
So he had new school and new therapy and none of the other Traktans around, which was shitty. He felt a little guilty using that word, even if only in his own mind, but it also made him feel better. He used to hear his older siblings use it when their parents weren’t around, and they always seemed so cool. Pol wanted to be cool, but he knew he wasn’t. Catie was the cool one, and Catie…well. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her yet most of all, even more than the Man.
(He knew his name was Elanus but it was hard for him to say for some reason, the “s” always came out with a bit of a lisp and Catie had told him not to say her daddy’s name if he couldn’t say it right, so he said “Fine, I won’t” and started calling him the Man instead, and then Lizzie had gotten sad and withdrawn after they began fighting, and it was so hard to have friends sometimes. There were days that Pol wished he could be a computer—not a special computer like Catie and Lizzie, just a regular AI, the kind without emotions who didn’t have to worry about feeling at all and who everything made sense to. Then he wouldn’t be so afraid of letting his mama down, or making Kieron or Lizzie sad, or making sure that the Man and Catie at least liked him enough to keep him and Mama around, and… This was usually the place where Pol started crying, too overwhelmed by his thoughts and emotions to process them anymore. His therapist had helped him with that once, and Mama had helped too, but mostly he tried to bury his head in his covers and cry until he felt better.)
Anyway, so now it had been a week and Catie and Lizzie were playing a game of hide and seek, and Pol wanted to play but he kept getting found immediately because they were hooked into the AI and that was no fun at all. In the end he sulked off to his room, but that was no fun, and Mama was on an important phone call with a per-son-el…elle…al? With a personal explo-ra-tion agent or something, and Kieron was gone—he was gone a lot recently, so Pol decided to go and visit Ryu instead. Ryu couldn’t talk to him from inside the Regen, of course, but that was okay. Pol could pretend.
As soon as he stepped into the room, though, he saw the Man. Pol froze, then tried to back away, but the Man heard him and looked over from what he was doing. “Hey.” He took in Pol’s frightened posture and sighed. “Are you okay?” Pol didn’t move. “Do I need to get Xilinn?”
“No!” That was enough of a threat to get Pol to respond. “No don’t get her, she’s busy! I’ll go!”
“Whoa, calm down!” The Man held up his hands. “I won’t get her, I just…” He sighed, then glanced at Ryu. When he wasn’t looking at Pol, it was easier to be around him. He was just so tall, it hurt his neck to look up like that. “So. You like being around Ryu?”
“He’s quiet,” Pol said after a moment.
“Yeah, being stuck in a tank of Regen will do that to you.”
Pol tentatively crept a little closer. “Why is he in there?”
“Because he’s sick,” the Man said, still not looking at Pol. He was fiddling with the interface of the tank instead. “And we’re trying to make him better.”
“Oh.” Pol came a little closer. “How?”
“A couple different ways. One is medical—we’re doing a special treatment for Ryu that’s going to regrow his skeleton.”
“Oh, gross!” That was so cool! Pol looked into the tank, where Ryu was almost invisible in the thick blue liquid. “What else are you doing?”
“Well, Kieron is going to do some investigating and see if he can help find a cure, but to do that I’m making him a special shield to protect him from digital eyes.” The Man didn’t quite look at Pol, but he tilted his head in Pol’s direction. “You know…it might work for hide and seek, too. Or at least make it tougher for the girls to find you, if you want to help me beta test the shield.”
A special shield that hid him from computers? That was so amazing! “Can I?”
“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it.”
In Pol’s experience, adults offered all sorts of things that they didn’t mean to and ended up taking back. It had happened all the time at the refugee center. But…the Man might be too tall and kind of scary and a little grumpy, but maybe he could be trusted with this. “Okay. How do I wear it?”
The Man grinned, getting into it now. “There are a couple of ways. We can insert an algorithm right into your implant that project the shield in a variable radius, but that takes a few little surgeries to get the extended batteries and transmitter in place, so…” The Man shrugged. “How about a special hat?”
“Okay!”
He stepped away from the tank and rubbed his hands together. “Great, come to the lab and let me measure your head.”
Pol followed him, free from the paralyzing fear that had overtaken him a few minutes ago. The lab was pretty great, with real-time prototyping that he even got to pick the color for! It only took half an hour to make the hat, and the Man chatted to him the whole time about different projects and stuff he was working on and how the shield functioned, and Pol didn’t understand most of it, but it was so cool anyway.
Even cooler was sneaking up on Catie in her docking bay half an hour after that and making her scream when he shouted “Boo!”
