It is a rat’s nest. It is a hive. This underground collection of chambers and tunnels carries the redolence of strange industry; there are metallic smells in the air, and the scent of ozone, intermingled with the stink of morphogen and other gene-tweak compounds. Whole reams of graffiti have exploded across the stonework of tunnel walls. In reading the political slogans, love-prattle, and bizarre existential interrogations, Ilya comes to the gut-deep recognition that this is a pirate’s warren: home to those who hack the streets and carve a collective living in the strangest of twilight worlds. Music bleeds from one of the workrooms--the harsh signature of industrial slar: all bowed guitars and aggressive, multilayered drumbeats woven through the sustained drone of male-voice vocals that speak of tainted affections. Breakfast is a range of breads and sausages (likely procured from street-level kiosks) and a brew of cholinergic compounds that leave the exuberance of oranges on the tongue when swallowed. Ilya drinks the citrus-tinged cholinergics, while Aleo and Dorianna nip at mugs of steaming tea. He can smell hif infused into Aleo’s brew. “You have interesting friends,” Dorianna says, cradling her mug of tea in both hands. “A bit paranoid, but seeing where we are, I suppose that’s normal.” “It is,” Aleo says. Ilya hasn’t seen them all, but he’s met Aleo’s contact--a dark-eyed scruff named Arkady. He smells like a street doctor, but talks like a code wrangler. He’s probably a little of both--a danger if you cross him, but exactly the kind of friend Aleo would pull out of some murky stretch of his past. Dorianna looks around, as if gauging the qualities of the room. It is a small chamber, lit with bioluminescent globes suspended from the ceiling. It is the common space between her room and the room that Ilya shares with Aleo. “How long are we gonna be here?” she asks. Aleo shrugs. “Two more nights, maybe three…we’re safe here, so we should take advantage of that.” Dorianna levels a gaze at him. “And you have some clue as to how we’re gonna do that?” Ilya sits forward. The world has stopped spinning and garish false-light no longer rages in his peripheral vision. He is conscious of every move, however: of the faint, persistent itch of wound-seal smeared across the left border of his brow. “We’ve got resources at our disposal…a superior tactical position.” He considers his drink, all that he’s consumed. It is a mad, witch’s brew of cholinergic compounds and nootropics: proof that he’s sustained a bit more than a concussion, that there is damage to his ‘ware. Nothing too serious, he judges, but damage nonetheless. It’ll repair itself. But it needs time. His brain needs a crutch, and through Aleo’s quiet pharmacological ministrations, he drinks it. Dorianna cocks one eyebrow. “Our superior tactical position?” “We’re in a street-hacker’s warren--which means that we don’t exist. We can swim in the datasea, but we don’t have direct cerebral access to it. This means that we can’t be tracked, nobody can hack into the sea itself and find the ID tags our ‘ware constantly sings out.” He tosses back a swallow of his drink. He has no appetite for the breads and meats arrayed on the platter before him. “It sounds like you have a plan.” “I do,” Ilya says, quietly. He glances at Aleo. “I’ll need to speak to Arkady.” “Sure.” “You have a history with him?” “Yes. I learned the undercities because of him.” “He trusts you?” “Enough to let two obvious initiates of the Cloister, and one post-Centralist offworlder stay here, but beyond that…I don’t know.” Ilya nods. He finishes off his citrus brew and grimaces at the exuberance of artificial orange that doesn’t quite cover the hollow taste of brain-boost chemicals. “We need horses.” Aleo catches the allusion and lets his eyes widen in surprised approval. It is the expression he wears when he is faced with something gleefully devious. “Horses,” he says, a grin in his words. “At least two,” Ilya says. “Three,” Dorianna amends. “Whatever it is you’re planning, count me in. I may not be a Brother, or even Nemaean, but I feel like I got you into this, so I want to be a part of whatever the hell it is that gets you out.” “You didn’t get us into anything,” Aleo says. She shakes her head. “We got a bomb lobbed at us, because I was desperate to touch a pilot”-- --“No,” Ilya says. “We got a bomb lobbed at us because someone’s aiming for you, and any one linked with you. He would have tried that or another tactic no matter what.” He reaches forward and takes Dorianna’s hands in his own, reading the flash of guilt in the depths of her gaze. She blames herself for all of this, he thinks, she’s torturing herself. “I’m proposing something dangerous, Dashenka, and I refuse to ask you to endanger yourself.” Her fingers tighten around his. “And I refuse to sit here like some damsel in distress while my two…handsome heroes put their asses on the line. If there’s something I can do to help, I’m gonna do it, Ilychka. Don’t try to stop me.” **** “I don’t know,” Arkady says, an hour later. “I can’t speak for anyone but myself.” He is tall. His hair is dark, wavy mop, pulled back into a ponytail. His eyes are brown. “I can promise you a single horse. I need time to talk to the others.” He speaks comfortably to Aleo, but his gaze sparks with shy unrest when Ilya catches his attention. “Take whatever time you need,” Ilya says, as gently as he can. “And ask for whatever payment you feel is right for the situation.” Arkady grins, but the expression, as Ilya judges it, is meant for Aleo. “Don’t break our bank,” Aleo says, quietly. Arkady nods. And again, the gesture is aimed solely at Aleo. “We’ll talk,” he says. He steps to his feet. “Give me about one bell…maybe two.” Aleo nods. “We’ll be here.” A look of contemplation veils Arkady’s face as he nods. He glances at Ilya, and contemplation becomes stark appraisal. A skein of judgments, Ilya sees, unravels in that gaze, settling into an odd constellation of trusts and mistrusts. “Everyone knows you’re here,” he says at last. “And you have free run of the nest. You can leave your quarters if you want. There’s always someone in Commons…people to talk to. There’s food. You’re welcome to it.” It is Aleo who answers. “Thank you,” he says, and then smiles. “It’ll never be said that Arkady-Borisoich is an unkind host.” Ilya hears a singular note chiding humor in the comment, proof of an extensive shared biography. With a pang of jealousy, he realizes that Aleo is in conversation with a lover from his past. The pattern is there, in the way that Arkady looks at Aleo, as if he’s the only one of importance in the room. Warmth flashes across his cheeks and over the crests of his ears. A tickle of hair at the nape of his neck annoys him, suddenly, and he rakes at it with outstretched fingers, all while choking silently and trying, desperately, to contain his puerile burst of childish envy. Arkady smiles faintly, nods departing courtesies, and steps out of the room. “He’s cute,” Dorianna pronounces. “In a scruffy way.” “Arkady?” From Aleo. “Yeah.” “In a sense, he’s your type.” “And what type is that?” Dorianna challenges. “Unavailable,” Aleo says. “Thanks,” Dorianna says. “You know just how to lift a girl‘s spirits.” And Ilya, still hot with a blush, rises from the table. Whether it’s there or not, he senses wounding treachery in Aleo’s knowledge of Arkady. He says nothing, as he takes one step and then two…two steps and more into the room he shares with Aleo. Images of Aleo flash through the switchback convolutions of his suddenly-muddled thoughts: images of Aleo--younger, in the most intense of amatory embraces with Arkady, the pink spark of a kiss between them. He can hear the vanished laughter of their long-ago bed play. He flinches at the sudden pressure of hands on his shoulders. “Ilychka…?” Aleo’s voice. It is soft, so soft! “I’m okay,” he says. “No. You’re not.” Aleo hugs him from behind, his hands working their way under Ilya’s shirt. There is warmth in the way his fingers spread over Ilya’s flesh, palms surfing the contours of his stomach, sternum and chest. Aleo rests his chin in the cupping hollow of Ilya’s shoulder, lips finding the flank of his neck with the pressing brush of a soft, soft kiss. “I can guess at what you’re thinking about, and I can tell you that I’m flattered.” “Flattered?” “My past was never a closed book to you…it’ll never be. Arcady’s a part of that past, and that’s all he’ll ever be.” Silence, for a moment, and then, from Ilya: “I’m sorry.” “Why?” “For making you say this…for…being stupid and showing you something on my face that should never have been there.” Aleo laughs. “I like it. It‘s cute.” “What?” “You were jealous. That flatters my ego. It tells me that the guy I’m in love with is unwilling to ever share me with anyone else…with anything else…including the past.” Another kiss to the neck. “But the past is immutable and irrelevant, Ilya-Viktorovich…but once we’re out of this and back in safety at Cloister-house, we’re going to take each other in whatever ways the fire in our blood tells us.” Another kiss, longer this time… …And it is enough of a spark to drive sudden, bestial demands through Ilya’s blood now. Tingling pressure spreads through his gut, and Aleo--pressed behind him--senses it. His flesh responds in its own way, and for a prolonged moment, it is all Ilya can think about. The moment ends, however. There are demands greater than those of the flesh--demands that have come with the punctuation of fire and screams. Ilya shivers, suddenly. And in less than an hour, Arkady returns. He calls Aleo, Ilya, and Dorianna into a meeting in the Commons. They follow him through the dim, vaulted corridor, lit with vertical strips of bioluminous algae in gel suspension. There is a soft, animal comfort in the way that Aleo brushes the outside cusp of Ilya’s hand, as they walk, then clasps his pinky in a light, twining clench with his own pinky finger. There is a kiss in the gesture, in the way that it lingers for a few steps before Aleo withdraws contact and slips and impassive mask over his face as the corridor opens into the commons. Food smells waft through the air: a faint mélange of dough and something pickled, something spicy. Commons is a large area, a sea dotted with island tables. Card players occupy one, a bored trio of guys who look like tech-types occupying themselves while they wait for something. Arkady leads them to a far table. A young guy sits there. A girl sits beside him. They’re twenty at the oldest, Ilya judges, and the guy could be the pilot, Téomir’s doppelganger, for the keen set of his broad features and blond, ropy dreads. The girl wears dark hair in a short, spiky cut…the sort favored among station riggers. Bad news in a fight, Ilya thinks, as his gaze slides along her hard, muscular contours. Arkady makes introductions, as Ilya, Aleo, and Dorianna take seats around the table. “So,” the young woman says. Her name, is Ivanna. “These are the riders?” Arkady nods. “Skilled?” Ilya leans forward, nodding. “Yes.” “What do you need horses for?” “We need to find someone.” The guy leans forward, dreads held back from his face by a black headband. His name, by way of Arkady’s introduction, is Mihail. “This someone…would he happen to like blowing up cars on crowded streets?” Ilya nods. “You know how you’ll find him?” “Yes. But we‘ll need a day or two for that.” “And you will need us immediately after.” Mihail speaks as if weighing potentials. “Yes.” It is all Ilya says. Mihail sits back, folds his arms over his chest and nods. “I’m in,” he says. Ivanna nods, though the expression on her face is one of deep reservation. She eyes Dorianna with open suspicion, and Dorianna--for anything she may see--simply sits back and meets Ivanna’s open skepticism with a wry, mocking half-smile. “I’m in, too,” she says, cocking one eyebrow as if in answer to a challenge levied in Dorianna’s expression. **** ...and still, more to come...