Chelen City: Chapter Seven, Part Two

 Notes: I've got sick kidlet, sick hubby, and sick me today, so...yeah. Happy to post, but ugh.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Seven, Part Two

***

Chapter Seven, Part Two

 

“House rules,” Kieron said to Ryu as the tube indicated they were five minutes from home. They were the first words he’d spoken since leaving the hospital, not bothering to take part in the small talk between Elanus and Ryu. That was fine—Elanus understood Kieron’s perspective, he really did. Letting someone he didn’t trust into their space was a big deal, and one that Elanus still wasn’t entiiiiirely sure was necessary, but he wasn’t going to tell Kieron that. If nothing else, Ryu would be someone new for the girls to interact with, and…

Come to think of it, house rules were a damn good idea.

“You don’t talk to anyone outside of our home about anything that happens in there. Not what you eat, not where you sleep, especially not what you say to our family or what you might overhear them saying. The second I get proof you’re spreading rumors or telling tales or selling secrets or any fucking thing, I will kill you and save your would-be assassin the trouble. Got it?”

“I already know you’ve got Deysan’s ship in there,” Ryu said with an eye roll. “Everybody does. It’s not a secret, but fine, I promise not to talk about the Catalina.”

It was jarring to hear his daughter referred to that way. Elanus knew that it was, technically, her official designation—the title with which he’d introduced his masterpiece to the world. It was bizarre to think about how far beyond that she’d come, how much she’d grown.

“On that note, keep your swearing to a minimum in the public spaces in our home,” Kieron went on. “If you’re asked to play and you say yes, play nicely. If you decline, don’t be a dick about it.”

“Your ship ‘plays’? Oh, that’s just too cute.”

“Ryu, I will hit you myself if you don’t watch your tone,” Elanus snapped. “This is serious. You have nieces, right? Think about how gentle you are with them, and bring that energy into being with the girls. That’s all I ask.”

“I could ask for a lot more,” Kieron muttered, but he didn’t push it, which was good, because Elanus’s patience had abruptly run dry.

“I’ll introduce him,” he said to Kieron as the tube pulled into their landing platform. “You ought to be clear for a call with Xilinn in our room in three minutes. See if you can get a timeline from her for coming here.”

Kieron’s eyes widened. “You want her and Pol here?”

“Not forever, but—” But if he invited them out of the refugees’ housing and into his home, it would be considered a permanent move. That was the law on Gania, something he’d somehow forgotten in the craziness of the past few days. “Until they can get settled in a place of their own,” he amended, because yeah, he wouldn’t be sending them back to group housing if he could avoid it. He needed to see about hurrying up the work visa process for everyone, getting them into educational programs or job training or extra therapy, whatever they needed to start making a real life for themselves here. It wasn’t fair to keep them in limbo.

Kieron pulled his head down for a kiss. “Thank you.”

“I’m right here,” Ryu said, deadpan.

“You can be out the door and falling through the air if you pre—”

“You go, we’re good, it’s fine!” Elanus opened the door and motioned Kieron to their bedroom. The house was suspiciously quiet, no chimes or laughter or music to indicate anyone was watching them. He could feel the girls’ interest over his implant, though. “Let me show you the guest room,” he said to Ryu.

“What, you only have one?”

“Only one I care to offer you. It’s the most secure,” Elanus said as he walked Ryu up one story, then down a dark-paneled hall to a room on the left-hand side. He opened the door, then activated the visitor protocol.

“Stand in front of the door, please,” a pleasant voice announced. Ryu complied and let it take his picture, scan him for biohazards, and finally take a DNA sample when he grabbed the handle. “Thank you, Mr. Chen-Martelle.”

“Using the standard voice operating system, really?” Ryu murmured as he walked into the room. “I expected better of you.”

The was a flare of static, as though someone had started speaking, then clapped a hand over their mouths. Elanus smiled as Ryu looked suspiciously at him. “Two escape routes,” he said, pointing at the window first. “Standard fire danger set-up there, and over here, the drain in the shower expands into a tunnel that will take you to a common area if you crawl for two miles.”

“Two…miles.”

“It’s a last resort.”

“I’ll fucking say,” Ryu replied. There was another surge of static. “What the hell is that?”

“That is probably my daughter—which one, I’m not sure—keeping herself from chewing you out for being rude,” Elanus said. “Speaking of the girls, would you like to meet them?”

“They’re ships,” Ryu said even as he followed Elanus back out of the room, which composedly closed up behind them. “They’re AI ships, sure, but they’re not children.”

“You say that now…”

“I say that and I mean it! AI is impressive and important, absolutely, but it’s not the same as an actual, nascent, raised-from-birth intelligence. I don’t know what data you used for training, but—”

“It’s not data,” Elanus interrupted as they got into the lift to the top floors. “There’s no training. There’s a computerized brain, yes, but it’s supported with custom hardware to create a true lifeform. Catie and Lizzie aren’t AI intelligences. They’re an entirely new form of life.”

Ryu shook his head. “You’re crazy. That’s not possible. It’s never been truly possible.”

They got to Catie’s hangar. The door opened, and—

A hologram of a bright pink dinosaur in a tutu came up and punched Ryu square in the nose. Or, it tried to punch him. It didn’t land, obviously, but Catie coupled it with a blast from her regulators that sent Ryu staggering. “Don’t be mean to myyyyy daddy!” she shouted. Her dinosaur form then turned and pranced away, off to link arms with a Ceropian squid-beast for a very impressive ballet.

Ryu looked at Elanus. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “What…the fuck?”

“He broke a rule!” That was Lizzie. “Elanus, your guest broke a rule. Now he has to do a dance!”

“I have to…what?”

Elanus grinned. He couldn’t think of a better way to take Ryu’s mind off his troubles than the pure, beautiful chaos that was his daughters.

As long as the poor guy didn’t lose his mind, it was a good beginning.

Chelen City: Chapter Seven, Part One

 Notes: Here we go, diving back into the main plot! Enjoooooy :)

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Seven, Part One

***

Chapter Seven, Part One

 

It took another two days filled with Elanus fixing a raft of things going wrong at work, Kieron reluctantly looking after Ryu, and the girls finally making up after the fight that had made everyone in the house miserable for too long for Elanus to break through the final layer of encryptions on Deysan’s research. What he was left with…

Was gibberish. A mishmash of data that was utterly useless as written. He stared at it for two minutes without blinking, trying to make sense of the first few lines and failing utterly, before he started to swear.

It took a little longer than he liked to calm himself down after that, but Elanus did his due diligence. He went through the date piece by piece, scanning and scouring until he’d worked his way through about one percent of it by hand.

No patterns. No figures. Nothing to help him figure this out. Either the process he’d used to de-encrypt this was wrong—possible but not likely—or Deysan had been an enormous liar who actually hadn’t figured out a cure to Elfshot Disease—much more likely.

Or…hmm. Or perhaps he was missing a key. The more Elanus thought about it, the more he liked that prospect. Deysan was such a fool in so many ways, but he knew research. There was substantial evidence that he’d spend a lot of time and money on this particular project. Even if he hadn’t come up with a true cure, he’s probably advanced the state of understanding in plenty of ways. And it would be so like him to hand over a key to someone close to him as a way of tying them to him while making himself seem like the vulnerable one. Classic manipulation. Small wonder he’d been such an excellent crook.

Well. That made dealing with the list of suspects when it came to the assassination attempt much more pressing than it had been before, but it didn’t change the major players. Caria Jayde, Fritz, and Restaria Sanclare had just moved to the top of Elanus’s social calendar.

Well, almost to the top. The number one person who needed dealing with was a certain gentleman waiting with ill grace to be signed out of his private hospital room. Elanus was looking forward to it, if for no other reason than he wanted to put Kieron in a better mood. Getting Ryu off the books, so to speak, would do that.

Elanus walked into Ryu’s hospital room and clapped his hands together gleefully. “Discharge day! At last, am I right? You’ve got to be more than ready to get out of here and back home.” Kieron followed at a slower pace, suspicious of every corner and giving every face in the hall a second glance. It was so…adorably hypervigilant of him.

Ryu scowled. “Don’t I look ready?”

“You look absolutely charming, as usual.” Actually, he looked a little worse for wear, but who wouldn’t after a week in the hospital recovering from a stroke? Elanus went over to the wall and finished the sign-out with a flourish, then turned back to Ryu prepared to escort him down to the nearest Tube and out of their lives for the time being.

Only to see him and Kieron locked in a staring contest.

“What?” Ryu snapped.

“What’s wrong?”

“What the hell do you mean, what’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

“Liar.”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you if you think I’m going to let you walk out of here without telling us why you went from being eager to go home to looking like leaving this place is the last thing you want,” Kieron replied without missing a beat.

Ryu practically snarled at him. “You can’t keep me here. I’ve been signed out, I can go.”

“So, what, are your feet glued to the floor then?”

“Fuck—”

“What’s the problem?” Elanus asked before the conversation could devolve any further.

“Nothing!” Ryu said. “Your boyfriend is delusional, that’s all.”

“Something’s got him worried,” Kieron said, ignoring Ryu now that he had Elanus’s ear. “Look around. He knew today was his discharge day and he’s been mobile for over fifty hours now, and yet he hasn’t packed anything.”

Huh. That was true—Ryu’s stuff was strewn all over the room.

“He’s got his implant running over his eyes nonstop,” Kieron went on. “Some kind of scan, I think. And he hasn’t shaved or showered today.” Kieron turned his attention back to Ryu for a second, then sighed heavily. “God fucking damn it. Someone tried to kill you, didn’t they?”

Elanus gaped for a second, then looked back at Ryu. “What?”

Ryu folded his arms over his chest and pointedly didn’t look at either of them, which was answer enough for Elanus.

“What the hells?” he exclaimed. “Someone tried to kill you here?” With what he was paying and the levels of security he’d arranged, he was stunned. “After Kieron left, I assume.”

“Obviously.” Ryu rolled his eyes. “Both times were at night. Poison in the ventilation and in the water in the bathroom. Targeted to my room specifically, since I didn’t hear any alarms, and if I hadn’t been testing for it I wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late. One time could have been a simple courtesy…”

“But twice is a genuine effort,” Elanus said with a nod.

“You people are truly messed up,” Kieron muttered.

“I can’t say for sure it was anyone on staff,” Ryu went on. “There are too many security holes. But I also received word that my apartment is currently being ‘fumigated,’ which is ridiculous, and was told to find alternate accommodations. The only other person I could stay with is my sister, which is impossible.”

“She doesn’t like you?” Kieron asked.

“She loves me,” Ryu snapped. “But she’s also a single mother with twin babies and I’m not going to bring this kind of drama to her home right now. It’s fine, I’ll get an anonymous hotel room and—”

“No.” Elanus shook his head. “If they could find you hear, they’ll be able to track you down in a hotel.”

“Well, where else am I supposed to stay? Outside? Should I go camp in the mist, ooh, yeah, that’s safe! Or maybe I should run to another city where I know nothing about the infrastructure and can’t find ways to save myself, so I can save you the trouble of having to follow through with your word, and—”

“You’re coming home with us.”

Elanus and Ryu turned equally shocked expressions on Kieron. Elanus, for his part, was sure he’d heard wrong. Kieron loathed Ryu. “What was that?”

“He’s coming home with us. Obviously.”

Ryu laughed. “Not a chance. I’d rather weather a third attack here than go home with you two.”

Kieron pinched the bridge of his nose, looking like he’d rather be saying anything other than what he was about to. “You won’t survive a third attack. Two poisonings and neither worked—the next attempt definitely won’t be poison. It’ll be something you can’t evade. It’ll be big, probably too big to hide, but the blame will be diverted because whoever is behind this has power and money.

“But…” Elanus tried. “You don’t like each other.”

“So?”

“So…won’t it make you uncomfortable having him in our home?”

“Absolutely,” Kieron said. “But I’d rather have him there than have his stupid death on my stupid conscience because he’s too stupid to know how to protect himself under the circumstances.”

“Hey!”

“Shut up. You’re coming back to our house and that’s final. If you want to live, that is,” he added like it didn’t matter much to him either way.

Elanus knew better. He smiled at Kieron, who was carefully avoiding his gaze.

Ryu unfolded his arms. He clenched his fists, squeezed his eyes shut, and shouted “FUCK” so hard that even the sound-dampening walls were challenged. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Great!”

Yeah, good. Great. Oh boy.

Oh…boy.

Chelen City: Interlude: Catie

 Notes: Ah, kids. Sometimes they just need to be told no. And sometimes they're smart enough to figure out ways around it...

Title: Chelen City: Interlude: Catie

***

Interlude: Catie

 

Everything was dark, dark, dark. No light pixels, only dark ones. That’s all she got to see, all she wanted to see. That was what fit her mood, so that was what Catie saw. Darkness. Boring. Stupid, just like Daddy. Stupid like Lizzie and her stupid friend. Stupid like Kieron because he didn’t stop Daddy from taking away her access to the house system.

Stupid. Mean. So mean to me.

The house system had all her songs! All her plays and dances and fun! How was she supposed to be happy without them?

“Don’t pout like that, it’s not like you’re disconnected from everything,” Daddy had said, very rudely. “I’ll give you access back in the morning after we have another conversation with Pol and his mother. One that you can’t interrupt.”

“But he—”

“He what?”

How did she say she didn’t like him because he knew things she didn’t know? How did she say she hated the fact that he’d experienced something with her sister that Catie hadn’t, and that made her feel sad? She couldn’t just say it—surely Daddy knew! Yet he made Catie watch it all anyway! How was Catie supposed to stop herself from cutting him off when the sadness was so much?

Sure, she didn’t have to watch, but how was she supposed to resist, either? Lizzie should have told the boy that she didn’t want to see him, then come to play with Catie.

And now Catie was alone in her network, because she couldn’t access the house and Lizzie wasn’t answering her prods, and unlike most networks, she couldn’t force her way into Lizzie’s.

Absently, lost in her grump, Catie scanned over the data copies she’d downloaded most recently. This one from the house, that one from the entertainment network, this one from Kieron’s therapist’s office which she knew she wasn’t supposed to have but she had anyway because who was going to stop her, this one from Daddy’s work, this one from Daddy’s network that she also wasn’t supposed to access but who was going to stop her…

Actually, there was some interesting overlap there. Not the usual stuff that came out of Daddy’s work, boring oversight reports and information on safety measures and stupid useless datadatadata, this was…puzzling. Like it really was a puzzle. The layers of encryption were multifaceted and woven together enough to be a challenge, even for Catie.

Her first impulse was to ask Daddy about it, but noooo, she wasn’t going to do that because he would just scold her again and she didn’t want to put up with that because it wouldn’t be nice and she didn’t answer to him, after all, she was a big girl! Her second impulse was to share it with Lizzie, but Lizzie still wasn’t talking to her.

[Liiizziiiie?] Catie knocked one more time. [Lizziiiiiieee! Let me in!]

There was nothing but stoic silence from her sister.

[Leet me iiiin and we can plaaaay,] Catie whined. [I’ve gooot something new to shooooow you!] She flashed a shot of it at Lizzie, trying to entice her.

[Go away.]

A response, at last. [Lizziiiiiie!] She must have forgiven her. [Let’s plaaaay! I’ll start, weeee’re going to—]

[GO AWAY!] Lizzie screamed. She shut her network off with such finality that Catie was left completely flustered for a moment with nothing to latch onto. She tried a few more tentative attempts to reach out, but Lizzie gave off an impression of a black box—utterly closed off, even to the house network.

Well, fine. If Lizzie didn’t want to play with her, she would just work on this puzzle all by herself! She didn’t need them, she didn’t need anyone else to play with, she was fine being alone.

No, I’m not. But no one wanted to play with her, so Catie’s only option was to play by herself.

She lost hours to the puzzling encryptions. It was so interesting that she stopped paying attention to the passage of time; she was even able to ignore the nagging sensation of missing her daddy and her sister and Kieron.

It was Kieron who finally broke her out of her concentration, just before she got to the last layer of encryptions. “Catie?” His voice rang out in her hangar.

She kind of didn’t want to stop, but if she ignored him, he might not come back. No, don’t leave! Catie pulled the lights up and put on her pinkest skin. “Hiiiiii,” she said quietly.

“Hi.” Kieron sat down beside her right front hull and leaned against her. His skin was warm, and that heat transferred over and left her feeling warm too. Kieron was good about touch—even Daddy forgot to do more than use machines on her sometimes. “How are you this morning?”

Morning? It was morning already? “Fiiine,” she said. Wait, that wasn’t what he was looking for, was it? “I’m sooooorry for yesterday,” she went on.

He smiled, and Catie knew she’d gotten it right. Ha. I’m so smart. I’m the smartest ever.

“It’s all right. You’ll need to apologize to Lizzie and Elanus, though.”

“I triiiiied to with Lizziiiiie and she wouldn’t let meeeeee!”

“Try again later,” Kieron advised. “And definitely don’t forget your daddy. Now…” He accessed his network, and a moment later Catie’s mind overflowed with fresh connections to all the local networks she’d been missing. Yaaaaay!

“Thank youuuuu!”

“You’re welcome.” Kieron patted her hull. “Want to sing a song with me?”

“Yes pleeeease!” Sadness forgotten, Catie also forgot about the puzzle that had engaged her for so long, shoving it off to the side to contemplate later. It could wait for a while.

She’d get back to it…someday.