Author: Lurina

188: Death Masquerade (𒐅) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Empyrean Bastion, Aetherbridge Services | 3:21 PM | First Day

It took less than a minute to navigate the passage and find the doorway to the women's lavatory. Are you going to make me describe a public bathroom? Very well; it was, as might be expected for a travel hub at a prestigious location, suitably large and ornate yet vaguely disgusting all the same. A large, segmented sink with tall mirrors was flanked by tall cubicles numbering a dozen on the left, while artificial sunlight of some nature poured in from the right. The air smelled of thick perfumes that failed to conceal the more subtle odors of ammonia and defecate. Though there was no queue, it was rather busy - half occupied upon our arrival, I'd wager.

I headed towards one of the stalls, but looked over my shoulder with puzzlement as both Su and Ophelia came to a stop at the sink. "What, you two didn't just come for the ambience, did you?"

"I can't use public lavatories," Su spoke in a lowered voice, fishing around in her bag in front of one of the mirrors. "I just wanted to redo my concealer. Smudged my face against some asshole's back on the way out of the bridge."

I scoffed incredulously at the former statement, both at the absurdity and its lack of necessity. "What do you mean, you can't use them?"

"It's too gross," she elaborated. "I don't like touching places where-- Look, I just don't like it."

I was unable to resist laughing. "For goodness' sake, Su, you're not a bloody child. Just squat like everyone--"

"That's not the issue," she cut me off, face blooming with embarrassment. "It's not a question of what I want to do. My body just won't."

Every day was a new surprise with her. "How do you function? What do you do when you need to travel?"

But she lost patience for my inquiry, staring ahead with a frown as she began working on her makeup.

Ophelia, meanwhile, was looking around with concern. "I was, ah, hoping they'd have some single-use rooms..."

I frowned, scanning our surroundings again. Indeed, though there was a changing area for infants, there were no private spaces to speak of. "You might use the disabled section," I suggested. "It's not a busy hour, so I doubt you'd get in any trouble."

"It looked as though it was closed on the way in," Su commented. "They'd taken the sign off."

My brow dropped all the further as I nodded. As medicine had advanced - especially over the past twenty years - disabled facilities had been slowly going the way of the dinosaur. Now that more significant changes to the anima script were legal alongside comprehensive organ synthesis and replacement, there were very few incurable physical afflictions left. All that remained were a handful of particularly complex nervous and developmental disorders; Labos Syndrome, FND, and of course dementia, though that was its own beast.

Societies must shift with demand or else be consigned to inefficiency, and thus national governments had increasingly moved to remove requirements for accommodation previously imposed on guilds and public institutions outside of select exceptions, like retirement communities and dense urban centers. Of course there were people who willfully abstained from treatment for personal ideological reasons - like Theo's father, apparently - but the world could not be expected to turn on the whims of a vanishingly small minority.

...is what I would normally say. Though, in this case, I did have some personal reservations.

"Well, isn't that just a bucket of rocks," I said, looking to Ophelia. "I suppose we could go looking for one when I'm done. This can't be the only public lavatory on this side of the bastion."

She appeared somewhat mollified, and nodded meekly.

And so, after I relieved myself, we parted ways with Utsushikome temporarily and set about traipsing around the area for a business with suitable facilities. The smarter move would perhaps have been to simply return to Ran and inquire after further direction, but in truth this turn of events served my purposes. I'd wanted another word with her in private before we arrived at the sanctuary.

We searched for about five minutes, ultimately managing to find one in a small gift shop tucked away behind the larger storefronts, though we practically had to crawl to get there - the smaller streets and alleys in the Bastion were so slim it was as though the entire city had been built at scale for children, like some obscenely overfunded theme park.

I waited outside the establishment, against a tall wall that likely segregated the still-rather-narrow front grounds from what I was forced to presume was someone's private property, judging by the overhanging foliage and the sound of children playing rather loudly. Ophelia was not ultimately gone very long at all, emerging before I'd even had the chance to settle in and pull out a book; her expression upon emerging conveyed a mix of relief and preoccupied ennui.

"I-I'm sorry about that," she spoke softly. "I didn't mean to make such a fuss."

"Quite alright," I said, rising to my feet. "You needn't justify yourself."

"My implants they, well..." She held a gloved hand gently to the side of her cheek, looking away. "They're acting a little up today."

I raised an eyebrow. "Our trip up the Aetherbridge, perhaps?" My tone had a hint of coyness, but it was mostly for myself, without an intent to be audible. "I imagine an agent to regulate a foreign set of physics may be prone to disagreeing with bending physics over one's knee."

"P-Perhaps it's that," she whispered self-consciously. "Or simply poor luck."

"I do worry about how often you seem a little under the weather, or even miss class," I commented. "I assume the Mimikos ill agrees with you at the best of times."

"It's, ah... well, even in the homeland, our people are prone to suffering from weaker constitutions," she spoke somewhat warily. "Our bodies were dependent on the Wyrm since the settlement, after all. The substitutions we rely on now are... imperfect."

I hesitated a moment. The conversation seemed to be taking a turn for the political, and I wondered if perhaps I'd leapt to questionable conclusions regarding the situation. While I wasn't normally the type to recoil at getting my boots muddy in controversial debate, I found myself avoiding such things with Ophelia more than with anyone else, at least when it came to the issue of her heritage. It was, after all, an extremely ugly spot of history.

Being from Rhunbard, it was difficult to avoid certain predispositions regarding said ugly spots, if not in one direction than the other. What my gut was telling me to say was that no one was forcing whatever community she belonged to to remain in the Diakos, and that even at this late stage, they could still get properly biologically reconfigured and immigrate to the Settler's Coast in the Mimikos. That whatever the circumstances, it was folly to cling to the past at one's own expense, most of all when it involved living in an alien hellscape fundamentally unsuitable for human life. One which people were only made desperate to inhabit at all because of a fuckup that had now been resolved for almost a millennium.

But perspective came from growing up in a society of revanchist idiots. The scions of a genocidal empire convinced they had been wronged by losing to saner societies. While Ophelia's people - the Xetaeiwyr in their tongue, the Diakosi, Wyrmkin, Hosts or whatever other pejorative in ours - had a much better claim at having been objectively wronged. Even I, who considered the political union born in its aftermath a blessing that few of my peers did, had to concede what had happened was extreme.

...but in geopolitics, sometimes the extreme was necessary. Humanity could not abide a species that combined our intellect with its own, creating a gestalt that was stronger than the sum of its parts, and that more importantly was not dependent on iron. That would reproduce faster, expand faster, that in just a few generations since contact effectively exceeded our technology outside of the arcane. Had the war not happened, how long would have been before our roles reversed? Before our very lives became subject to the cold intellect of alien beings?

It was not a pretty thing, but from a Machiavellian perspective... I would be lying to say I couldn't see the rationality.

Still, that wasn't a position I was as keen to advocate as most of my beliefs.

Ophelia seemed to notice the awkward silence, putting on a smile and digressing. "Shall we head back to the others, then...? Lili and her mother are probably back by now, so we're likely keeping everyone waiting..."

"We can in a moment," I said. "But I wanted to update you on something first." I turned towards my luggage - yes, it followed me into the toilet and then to here, I hardly see how that's relevant - and retrieved the replacement box I'd hastily acquired in lieu of the one I'd been forced to damage earlier. "So, I failed to mention this during our little chat on the tram, but I received a bit of a courier assignment from the headmaster this morning, around the time I overheard that conversation."

"A courier assignment...?"

"A request to play delivery girl for an alleged gift for the Order on behalf of the academy," I explained, turning back around, chest in hand. "A 'small collection of first edition books', I believe he said."

"Oh." She considered. "...well, that's not so strange, is it? I know they've been acting as though they might be involved in something with the Order, but..."

"It wouldn't be strange were they telling the truth," I spoke with a smirk. "But I had, shall we say, an inkling that something more might be going on. So I took it upon myself to investigate the gift box."

She looked alarmed. "You broke it open?"

I flipped my hand dismissively. "Don't look so concerned. It wasn't enchanted in any serious way - I replicated most of the ward myself, even. And I sincerely doubt the Order is going to anticipate precisely what manner of container it ought to be arriving in. This one is pretty close to the original, anyway." Or at least I should hope so; I didn't spend eight luxury debt on it for nothing. "No, the important thing is what's inside."

I popped it open, revealing the key like device. Ophelia frowned slowly.

"What... is that?" She tilted her head. "It looks like the pictures of antenna from before the collapse..."

"I'm not entirely certain." I lifted it out, giving her a closer look. "It's obviously only a component of a much larger device, but based on what I could tell from a cursory examination, it's some manner of trans-dimensional interface intended to be operated directly by a human." I pointed at the metal rod at the center of the thing. "Look closely; there are strips of false iron, and the polymer lattice that you normally see used for quantum tunnel sensors. Obviously I haven't taken it apart, but based on the design I'd bet these wings at the head contain anchoring particles, as well."

She looked uneasy, peering at the thing closely.

"And that's not all I noticed," I continued, and this time pointed towards the bottom of the device, where a set of recesses in the metal were accompanied by hook-like connectors, themselves containing tiny, carefully-dug and insulated tubes. "I've seen this design for the plug here before. What we're looking at now has no arcane components, but it's clearly designed to accommodate the flow of raw eris. That is to say, as a dock for modules that do. In fact, one discipline used this exact design in its early days because it was phased out in lieu of the industry standard. Can you guess what it was?"

"I-I really couldn't."

"Neuromancy," I told her. "In fact, the craftsmanship of this entire thing - top to bottom - is highly reminiscent of Zeno of Apocyrion's personal work."

Ophelia hesitated. "You're saying... this was made by the Order." I could behold the pieces falling into place behind her eyes. "You think this is something to do with what we're looking into? That it's..."

"Precisely," I said, before she could name the discipline. (And honestly, it should really be obvious at this point, if you've been paying attention.) "I think this is a major lead regarding what they truly have planned this weekend, and what, precisely, this incredible innovation they've attained is."

"But... why would the academy have it, if that's the case? And-- Moreover, ah, would they be returning it like this?"

"Now those," I said, pointing to her, "are the real questions, aren't they?" I smiled conspiratorially.

This rhetorical question prompted an unintentional reprieve in the dialogue. There was the sound of a ball hitting the adjacent wall, and several children cheering.

"...um, yes." Ophelia said. "Those do seem like the real questions."

"Well-- What I mean is that the very act of trying to answer them is illuminating," I elaborated. "You have to consider these things in reverse, Ophelia-- It's elementary. Say that you're one of the leaders of the Order. What reason would you have for giving the academy such a valuable piece of technology? Considering what we already know."

She considered. "Are they, ah. On the list?"

My eyebrow twitched. Fuck, I cursed to myself. I really ought to have checked that.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Quickly, make a vague statement so you don't appear incompetent. "One would presume so, no?" I spoke suggestively, peering up at her with a raised eyebrow. Good. Yes. Nailed it.

"Then... I suppose they were likely one of the people to whom the invention was distributed." She frowned. "But then, that wouldn't answer the second part... nor why they would have it prematurely, since it was supposed to happen this weekend."

"Well, turn it back around the other way," I instructed, making a rotating motion with my fingertip. "Say, inversely, you're Headmaster Ishkibal. You have a piece of the technology. Why would you give it back? And why, especially as a gift delivered by one of us? Surely there would be a better and more secure way to do it, no? The very idea is almost absurdly irrational if you take the situation at face value-- Ergo, there must be another layer to it."

Ophelia, in a rare moment for her, appeared to pout slightly, pursing her lips. "I really don't like these sort of hypothetical games, Kamrusepa... and the others are probably waiting for us."

I closed my eyes for a moment, releasing a small sigh. It wasn't that Ophelia was dumb - perish the thought - but I did feel that our ways of thinking were in some ways incompatible. Both in her schoolwork and otherwise, she was always the sort of person to take the most straightforward and honest approach to resolving an issue. The type of person who, if you mixed two jigsaw puzzles together in the same box, would keep giving her best effort to assemble them into a coherent image for hours after an ordinary person would dismiss the exercise.

It wasn't even a matter of 'catching on'. She wasn't incapable of sensing skullduggery. No-- It was more like she made a conscious effort to approach all things in good faith, even when it was obviously going nowhere.

Maybe this was just what sincerely religious people were like. I wouldn't know; everyone in my hometown seemed to use it as an excuse to hate foreigners and homosexuals.

"Tsk, fine." I looked up at her seriously. "Let me put it like this: As established, we can reasonably assume that this item is somehow part of the Order's technological breakthrough. But we know that the date said technological breakthrough was to be distributed has not yet arrived."

"Well, yes... we just went over that."

"That leaves us with two possibilities," I continued, leveling my gaze. "Either the academy had it early by the Order's design... or they didn't."

She looked puzzled. "How would they have got a hold of it early, without them?"

"I don't know. Maybe someone else in all this smuggled it to them for some reason-- We still have little grasp of the motives of any party in this situation, but we do know several members of our class are intimately connected to the Order. It could be Su, Theo. Even Lilith." Or even you.

Ophelia shifted uneasily. "Lili's just a little girl."

"She's at least twelve. That's old enough to be a tool in adult games." I put the item back inside the box, strapping it back amongst my luggage. "In any case, the other possibility may well be more likely. Perhaps they needed to have it early, for some reason pertaining to our class and the conclave." I narrowed my eyes. "But in either case, I can think of only one explanation for sending it back specifically with us like this."

"What would that be?"

"A threat," I answered bluntly.

"I... I don't understand."

"Consider," I said. "We don't know the Order's ultimate objective, but we do know that the one thing they don't want is for this discovery to get out to the general public. Ipso facto, the best way to strangle their balls--" Ophelia immediately blushed when I said 'balls', because of course she did - "is to show one's willingness to do just that. And what better way to remind them of this power you hold over them than to flaunt all caution? To have us lug it through one of the most heavily surveilled routes in the Grand Alliance, then present it to them on a platter? It's practically the scholarly equivalent of sending someone a photograph of their child at school."

Ophelia stared at me with a wary look. It was impossible to discern whether she understood, yet alone believed, anything I had just said.

Never mind. It doesn't matter. "Look, the point is that we can use this to our advantage," I explained. "I'm going to 'forget' to give this gift to the Order today and see if I can't reason out a little more of its function this evening, then try to think of a good context in which to present it where we might be able to put them on the spot. Ideally a single council member, one that appears the least in accord with the others." I folded my arms. "In the meanwhile, I think we should both keep our eyes open for anything else that seems like it might be related to the same technology. Anything with extra-dimensional interfacing, anything using a very large amount of the Power..."

"...anything that... resembles an Induction Bed...?"

I was silent, but looked at her grimly.

"Kamrusepa," she spoke cautiously. "Do you have any... theories? On what this technology really is?" She looked away. "The more we learn about this, the less it sounds like anything to do with life extension..."

"I think it would be imprudent to jump to any conclusions yet," I stated. "We've only seen a small segment of the broader picture. It's easy to let our minds fill in gaps, but there could be an entire component we're not aware of."

Ophelia nodded, but appeared reticent, falling silent for a moment.

"...Ophelia," I continued. "I don't wish to be condescending, but if anything about this is making you uneasy, you do still have the option of following that note's advice." I softened my tone a note. "Fang is already absent, and you are ill, if only somewhat. I'm certain it would upset the headmaster, but you do have the option of walking away from all this if you suspect anything insidious. I'd be willing to make excuses on your behalf, even."

She stiffened, and her expression grew firm. "No. It's important that I go."

"I told you before. There are... questions I need answered," she said, looking at me directly. "About why Master Wayal stayed in the homeland so long to mentor me that year. Why he went so far to see that I was selected for this class, if he really was responsible. About why I... ah..." She trailed off, a visage of anxious uncertainty appearing on her face.

"There are other ways you could find answers, I'm sure," I told her. "I doubt we'll be in any danger, but the fact remains. One shouldn't stick one's hand in a hornet's nest unless one is prepared to be stung."

But she didn't respond further, appearing to become lost in thought.

Despite having spent more time with her recently, I still did not feel I truly knew Ophelia. Obviously there were things about her situation she was not telling me - just as there were things I wasn't telling her. Maybe there was a deeper reason she felt she had no choice but to attend, despite having none of my historic enthusiasm for the Order, or even outright antipathy for their goals.

Or maybe all of this was an act.

I'd just have to play it by ear.

"...let's get back to the others," I eventually said. "And make sure to keep an eye on all of them, too. If one of them is wrapped up in all this, it could be the smallest detail that gives them away."

When we arrived back at the arrival square, Mehit and Lilith had turned up - apparently having been delayed by Lilith almost losing some of her luggage and throwing a tantrum - and Ptolema was threatening to make an attempt at vaulting the fountain, with Ran and Su fighting a clearly losing battle in attempting to talk her out of it. We received a light passive-aggressive remark from Mehit about putting us behind schedule, then quickly set off to meet the valet the Order had sent for us.

Navigating the Empyrean Bastion continued to be a rather frustrating process. At first, I tried to hold the group to strictly following the directions we had been given, but alas, my foray with Ophelia had created an imperative to rush that in turn fostered a mood of desperate populist rebellion, and ultimately Su successfully advocated that we defer to Ran's more sophisticated understanding of the terrain. I will concede this turned out to be the right decision, as she knew some rather good - if insane - shortcuts, although most involved possible trespassing and in at least one instance involved traveling through what I was pretty sure was a former sewer.

In the end, we arrived at a covered carriage with just a little time to spare, where the Order's man - clad in a strange mask - greeted us and took our bags. And then we were off to who-knows-where.

Frankly, as much as I was wont to enjoy a bit of mystique-building theatricality, the whole idea seemed a tad bit absurd to me. The Empyrean Bastion wasn't even all that big - there were only a few roads wide enough to even accommodate a carriage. There was no route you could take that was circuitous enough to fully disguise your destination. If one wanted to do that, it would have been better to blindfold us for the on-foot segment afterwards.

What, exactly, were they hoping to accomplish?

On the way, I'd opted to raise a conversation about the projects the others planned to bring before the Order, partly out of sincere curiosity and partly in the interests of fishing for suspicious behavior. After all, it was a possibility - if perhaps a remote one - that, considering it had some other, hidden purpose, that the main event of the conclave would never actually end up taking place. Were that so, I reasoned that anyone who had an especially shallow premise for a presentation was worth a higher degree of scrutiny.

Unfortunately, this plan failed because almost everyone appeared to be, to various degrees, phoning it in. Utsushikome, Ran and Ptolema were all just reusing work they'd already shown at prior events with a few minor tweaks! With Su it was of course the bloody pigeon zombie technique again, while Ran had this diagnosis incantation she'd been fussing over all year that she barely even seemed to want to talk about.

And Ptolema-- She was the worst of the three of them! After I spent a good few minutes pushing her, she finally confessed the truth, albeit with some considerable reluctance, that she'd just been planning to demonstrate the same bone marrow implant installation technique she'd shown at the conference at Qatt earlier in the year. Not even an improved one! The same exact thing!

Honestly, now I was almost hoping it didn't happen. This was the most prestigious event our class had ever attended, and this was the level of effort that was being put in? A shadow of what most of them managed for seasonal coursework? It was like they didn't even care about their careers.

Ophelia, of course, was hesitant to discuss her own at all, calling it embarrassing. I'd expected a similar response from Lilith, but something must have put her in an excitable mood, because instead of rebuffing me, she began an exhaustive explanation that continued even as we all disembarked the carriage.

You know me-- I'm an enthusiast for technology. I'm hardly averse to getting in the weeds in terms of arcane errata. But Lilith was closer to a logic scripter than an arcanist, a subject I knew little about, and I had to confess - especially with her stilted, monotone manner of speech - it made the explanation all but incomprehensible, testing even my patience.

"...which will monitor the peptide count in the skin barrier. This will of course. Feed back into the central algorithm, creating a projection of the expected histamine count. The elastin and collagen density, as well, will be estimated by a secondary process, though stability in the middle layer is. Broadly outside of the scope of the script, as the relationship to the immune system is less direct. A third sensor willalsoneedtobeplacedon-- In the gut, to be. Inserted via enema. Since it will be. difficult to get a volunteer for that part, I'll... I'll use some data I took from a patient in the academy as a stand in. If they don't understand that, they'll just-- Just have to volunteer." She breathed in sharply, as if something in her imagination had offended her. "Of course, the inflammation of the gut... will need to be contrasted with VCO2 levels, which will. Together with the previous figures, generate the dynamic NSAID recommendation. Though it might make the equation appear to have less fidelity, since the gut is the canary in the coal mine. The gut is always the canary in the coal mine, when it comes to autoimmune disorder. I hatethosesortof-- Of cute little-- Cute little-- Little phrases, but it's true. Do NOT touch that."

She slapped Ptolema's hand as she attempted to help haul her luggage out of the carriage, which had ended up being placed rather deep in the storage compartment. "Ow!" She rubbed her hand. "I was just gonna set it on the ground!"

"You will break my things if you touch them with your neanderthal hands, skull-cavity," she stated imperiously. "Do not touch them with your neanderthal hands."

"I'm a surgeon!" Ptolema exclaimed defensively. "I ain't got neanderthal hands!"

"Shall I assist with your bag, young miss?" The Order's escort inquired.

"No," she insisted. "I'll get it."

"Lili," Mehit said firmly. "You're being silly. Please, let someone help..."

But Lilith was already practically crawling into the thing, determined to be self-sufficient one way or the other.

Mehit sighed, addressing both Ptolema and the man. "I'm sorry about this. She must still be worked up about what happened back at the Aetherbridge."

"It's okay," Ptolema replied, giving her a cheery smile. "When I was a kid, I was always hung up on people messin' with my stuff, too."

I had gathered my belongings already, so I headed away from the carriage to join Su and Ran, who were gathered around a piece of rather tasteless political graffiti. It read, in large red pr

Alright, we're good to go.

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

I looked up from the journal sharply at the words. Nora had returned from the bench where she'd left me for the past few minutes, now wearing a large and sort of peculiar azure badge depicting what looked like a stage mask. She was holding a second one out for me to take.

"We need to wear these to go inside?" I asked curiously.

"Yep, that's right." She gestured towards my chest. "Just put it somewhere where it's easy to see. You probably won't get in trouble either way, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

"What are they for?" I asked, doing as instructed.

"It'll make sense once we get there," she said, brushing off the question. "C'mon. You'll see."

I closed Kamrusepa's account for the time being and rose to my feet apprehensively, quirking my brow. I followed after her.

I had to admit, I'd been feeling good about the idea at first, but having to sit and wait for a few minutes to even get permission to go into this place was starting to build my anticipation into a muted dread, even if I had no idea whether whatever I was about to see was something that even warranted being dreaded. The massive copper door that ultimately segregated the inner and outer parts of the City - and I do mean massive, here, we're talking somewhere in the range of 30 feet tall - admittedly did not help. It felt like I was entering a hidden fortress in a fantasy drama.

...well, I guess that was actually pretty close to what was happening...

In any case, there didn't appear to be any guards or staff on this side of the door, so I wasn't even sure where Nora had got the badges-- Somewhere inside, presumably. And she was obviously in a hurry, so there was nothing to do but pass directly through a smaller, separately-operable entrance within the larger doorway.

We approached, past another small group of people leaving - not looking out of the ordinary - and then I saw it.

Within the tower, cascading both above and below in a similar fashion, was an entirely second city to the one we'd just been in. It was shrouded in what I presumed to be an eternal evening to contrast its sibling's eternal noon, the only light source other than street lamps a dim glow from the apex. The general vibe of the place was different, with rounder and smoother architecture - modernist, almost - with much more vivid color schemes and a lot more use of wood. From what I could tell, it seemed only a little less busy than the outer City, the streets quite crowded.

The revelation that this place apparently had a whole second half and a much larger population than I'd originally thought was of course a little surprising, but at this point - with everything I'd already seen - didn't inspire much of a reaction in me beyond 'oh, that's nice'. I struggled to perceive whatever revelation Nora had been treating as implicit. I looked to her, hoping for clarification...

...and then I saw it.

It dominated the entire area to the left of the entrance, and I could only describe it as a massive curtain, or perhaps a series of many interconnected curtains, all descending from fairly far overhead. It was built at a sort of vertical fork in the road, where beneath the curtain the road had to split both upwards and downwards, as well as continuing on normally both along the interior wall and towards the door from which we'd just emerged. There was some kind of-- I don't know exactly how to describe it, and whether it was engineered with the Power or simply some manner of sophisticated optical trick, but it was difficult to ascertain its dimensions and precisely how it moved, much less the movements of the people within it, despite it being partially transparent.

The curtain covered what seemed to be the main road of this place, so a lot of traffic passed through it. People entered the curtain. Some people disappeared out of sight, to above or below. Others, though, seemed to vanish outright, while others appeared from thin air. And because of the way it was built - because of the ways the floors overlapped - it looked like there was no spot you could stand, or even float, where you'd be able to see every entrance and exit at once.

It took me a few moments to understand that what I was looking at was, well, essentially a fixture that deliberately anonymized the movements of whoever passed through.

From there, it was only a very short leap, considering the context, to understand that no one was actually disappearing or appearing at all.

Yet I still didn't understand. I pulled my eyes away, finishing my turn towards Nora. "Why?"

Nora, in this moment, was already reaching into her pocket. She pulled out what looked like a home-made cigarette, which lit itself as she placed it in her mouth.

"Su," she said, taking a drag. She glanced to me. "Is it okay if I call you Su?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "Sure."

"Su, let me tell you something about immortality," she began.