The air smelled like smoke – not smoke from the campfire, but from the rapidly spreading wildfires to the south. It was drifting high in the air and staining what little sunset was visible strange colors. The two dead men had taken her mask, such as it was, but the particulates in the air were the least of her concerns with her hands bound behind her back with a ziptie.

“I still say we shoot her,” one of the dead men – the one holding the gauss pistol – said. It was an RM-6E; an old but still serviceable model, but made bulbous and ugly by the extraneous “tactical” additions, like the overcharged capacitor bank and the slide-rail. “She’s the fuckin’ queen commie! This shit’s all her fault!”

“Dumbass, they’re gonna be out for blood after that,” the second dead man said, nodding south towards the reddish glare that used to be Landfall. His arms were crossed over his chest, hiding the entry wounds bleeding black down his khaki guard uniform. Was he a work-release case, or one of the ones who fled to the hills and never surrendered? “You think a bunch of communists who just got nuked are just gonna invite the ‘counterrevolutionary element’ back to their drum circle? They’re gonna need scapegoats. She’s our ticket out of a firing squad.”

It hadn’t been a nuclear weapon, fission or otherwise, Cass thought. It didn’t behave like one. Now, while the dead men argued, she could finally give herself space to think about it. It hadn’t been a funny flicker on the horizon that grew in brilliance that welled up into the sky – the light had come from on high, the sky already blinding before the pillar truly even formed. Why drop a nuclear device from orbit, after all, when you could simply sling an asteroid at anything you didn’t like with a few kilometers per second of delta-v? Rocks were quite a bit cheaper than bombs, even very fast rocks.

But it wasn’t an asteroid that had hit Landfall. Even on a near vertical trajectory, there’d have been a fireball, an agonizing moment before the blast where the city’s fate could be clearly apprehended. Whatever made the Pillar of Fire had been moving so blindingly fast that it had simply carved a channel through the atmosphere from vacuum to ground, a channel that then detonated outwards. Who needs a nuclear bomb when you can have a nuclear pillar for the price of a much, much faster rock – say, one moving close to the speed of light?

How had they done it? It was, even at humanity’s level of technological development, not a trivial task to make even a very small something go that fast. You’d need a linear cannon a mile long at least, wouldn’t you? The numbers eluded her. She would have to look this up when she got the chance – if she got the chance.

But Osbourne-Clark’s zipties were as cheap as everything else they bought, and the rock she’d palmed had just enough of an edge to wear at it. The ties were biting her wrists raw, but she was nearly through by the time Gauss Pistol swore at Entry Wounds and stalked back over to her. “Get up! Get up, you fuck!” he added, kicking her when she didn’t immediately get to her feet.

“Oh, what a piece of work is man,” she muttered. “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.” She felt a heavy blow on her left cheek – she staggered, but remained standing. The dead man did not know how to pistol-whip someone effectively, and it had been a glancing blow. Stupid. Risked damaging his weapon.

“Don’t need any Marxist shit from you,” he growled.

“That was Shakespeare,” Cass said, running her tongue around her teeth. She tasted blood, but nothing had come loose.

“I don’t care which fucking commie it was,” Gauss Pistol retorted, pressing the muzzle up against her forehead. Stupid. Risked getting the electronics dirty from splashback when he fired. The man did not know guns. “It all ends up in the same place: the decent, hardworking man completely fucked. Well, guess who gets to fuck back now?”

“So your plan is to shoot me, then…what?” She raised an eyebrow and forced herself to meet his face. “Be in charge of the shitstorm that’s going to come next? Do you know anything about survival? About logistics? About organizing a unified collective response to diaster?” She was staring at the hole in his head as she said her lines, the light of the campfire slowly fading and the darkness inside it seeming to swallow the world around her. I have to pay attention, she thought as the dream slipped away like dust sifting through fingers. The most important part was coming, and to live through the next five minutes, she needed to be ready. Next, Gauss Pistol do his third stupid thing, and then Cass would kill him.

But no. The dream faded, and the thick darkness of a fireglow night became the darkness of shut eyes and a pillow pressing against her face. She woke in the broad, impossibly comfortable bed that Tsuga had procured for her without her even asking – a bed that was blessedly normal-looking, on top of it. She stretched out and grabbed her tablet, waking it up to order a fresh outfit from the compiler. How quickly we get used to luxuries, she thought, sighing. Single-use clothing?

It did, at least, cut down on clutter. The room was empty of all the boxes now, and the hammock was gone. The bed took center stage, and Tsuga promised there’d be a desk and a proper wardrobe coming soon. Were they being handmade, like the bed?

She wished, not for the first time nor for the last, that the Affini Compact wasn’t a massive imperialism-fueled excuse to take people as pets. She wished she could just take joy in good things being available, and in so many bad things being banished, without having to worry about ulterior motives or underlying truths. And even if some florets, maybe even the majority if her experience so far proved accurate, were still capable of functioning independently, claiming that decision on their behalf just didn’t wash.

I just have to hope that the plan works, she thought as she dragged herself out of bed. That we can make the prospect of hunting us all down individually unsustainable for them. After all, there were other sophonts in need, other sophonts that actually needed Affini help, and every moment wasted searching for sophonts that didn’t want to be found was a moment that could have gone towards helping those other, less fortunate sophonts, right? That are fairly straightforward logic, and even if the Affini were weird, it seemed sound from their perspective. If fighting was out, and negotiating was out, this was their last, best hope.

And if that failed? Well, Cass told herself, if it does, we’re fucked. So we’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t fail.

Breakfast was warmed-over fesenjoon from the night before – Cass had showed Tsuga how to make it, dredging it up from deep scent-memories from her childhood of cooking with her father – but warmed over wasn’t the word, because when Tsuga handed her the bowl it was as warm and fresh as it had been when the pot had gone in the refrigerator. “How in the world– no, don’t tell me,” she added as Tsuga began to answer. “Let me preserve at least one mystery here.”

“It’s not that mysterious,” Tsuga said, making a passably good shrug and squatting down next to Cass’s table. “But alright.”

Cass only smiled in return, taking another spoonful of the thick stew. The pomegranate flavor was still sweet and sharp amid the savory essence of walnut – she’d made the sauce from scratch, scoring and cracking the compiled pomegranate and squeezing the juices out of the liberated arils inside. It had been over two decades since she’d had pomegranate, and it had brought her close to tears when she’d tasted it. “So, what are you doing today?”

“I have a meeting with the ecological engineering team in a little while,” Tsuga said. “I’m going to present my findings and we’re going to start planning large-scale remediation.”

“Mmmm.” Cass nodded while she worked on the fesenjoon. “Will Pisca be there too?”

“She may,” Tsuga said, “but I doubt it. She hasn’t been very active in the overnet discussion thus far. I think she might a bit distracted. It’s alright, though,” she added. “This is mostly high-level planning, and she’s at least a century away from being in a position where she might contribute to that. It’d be useful experience, of course, but it’s best to learn by doing for a while first before one starts playing around with theory and design.”

“Well, you’re the expert,” Cass said noncommittally, thinking it over. Distracted is one way to put it, she thought. “You’re feeling alright, though? Yesterday was…rough.”

“…it was,” she agreed, her bark shifting a little. “But I’m glad we had that conversation. If nothing else, it’s the only time someone has listened to be talk about it without immediately suggesting that getting a floret would cheer me up.”

Cass snorted, shaking her head. “I think you can rely on me to be fairly consistent about that.” She took another few spoonfuls, and Tsuga sat in silence as she did so. “…actually,” Cass added, “if you’re okay with it, I did have another question. Just a general one, not really specific to what we talked about.”

“Of course,” Tsuga said. “I very much hope I can help you understand the Compact and feel more comfortable here.”

“Leaving that aside – how do you decide? I mean you as in the Affini. How do you decide whether a floret gets to stay functional or stays toasted 24 hours a day?” She left of the and why do you think you deserve to make that decision. Baby steps.

“That’s entirely up to the Affini and the floret in question,” Tsuga said, her tone as casual as if she were discussing the weather. “Whatever is best for the floret. For some, that means heavy doses of xenodrugs.”

“Right, but how do you decide? What are the criteria involved?” Tsuga affected a sigh. Knowing that she didn’t need to breathe, it felt a little odd, but it was where a terran would sigh if they wanted to express a bit of frustration. Oh, wait, she’s frustrated with me?

“Again, it’s just– it’s what’s best for the floret. That’s always what motivates an Affini, Cass. Given what you’ve experienced, and your own beliefs, if what little I’ve read of Mr. Bakunin is anything to go by, I understand that you likely don’t believe that, but it’s very, very true.”

“I can believe that you’re incredibly defensive of them,” Cass said. “I was there. I saw what the Captain did to Nell.” Hell, she’d felt it, the barest fringes of it, and it had felt like she was being stalked by some kind of horrible extinct apex predator. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been like for Nell.

“That was… a very understandable reaction on eir part, honestly,” Tsuga said. “After all, if she’s willing to say things like that to us, who knows what she’s saying to others when we aren’t present, and what they might hear, and what they might repeat in the hearing of others, especially florets.”

“Okay,” Cass said, holding up a hand. “Let me put it this way. One of the florets I met yesterday told me that his– ugh, his owner, when he was captured, he tried to charge him with a grenade, and the Affini took it from him and basically fell on it. He fell on a grenade to protect this random guy who was trying to kill him.”

Tsuga smiled. “I think I remember hearing about that. Before my time here, though. It’s a very sweet story. And what a brave little sophont, though I do feel sorry he felt he had to do something like that.”

“My point is, I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around that, let alone doing what the Captain did to Nell over saying something mean.”

“Affini will do anything for florets, Cass,” Tsuga said. “Anything, to ensure that they are loved, well cared for, and happy. It’s as intrinsic to us as respiration is to you.”

“So…” Her mind turned the situation over. She hadn’t learned much, but she’d confirmed her suspicions at least. A quote bubbled up: “Being myself no stranger to suffering, I have learned to relieve the sufferings of others.” Oh, Virgil, she thought, you had no idea.

Tsuga leaned in a little closer, still smiling. Her new face really did make it look better – either that, or she was getting more practiced at it in general. “I am always struck,” she said, “how you always seem to have something interesting to say.”

“I mean…I spent 20 years obsessively reading books when I wasn’t obsessively planning for a revolution,” Cass said, scratching the back of her neck nervously. “Some of it stayed up there, I guess.”

“I could sit here and listen to you talk all day,” Tsuga said. What was that warmth in her voice? Cass couldn’t quite place it, and by the time she was starting to process it, Tsuga was already straightening up. “Unfortunately, I do have to get to that meeting. I’m very sorry. Perhaps we can continue the discussion later?”

“Sure,” Cass said, craning her neck to look up at Tsuga. “I’ll figure dinner out and get what I need.”

“I look forward to our next mutual culinary adventure,” Tsuga said. “Until then.”

Cass watched her go, and sat in silence as she finished her fesenjoon. Thought filled the vacuum. Anything for florets, she thought, except let them make decisions for themselves. There was something she was missing, something she hadn’t quite wrapped her head around – she could feel the silhouette of the idea in her mind, but grasping it was like trying to grab her own shadow. If I can just figure out what this is, maybe everything will click into place. Maybe that’ll give me what I need to stop this all from happening.

But she wouldn’t figure it out just by sitting here and smacking her head against the problem. When she encountered a problem like this, it was often better to think laterally – do something unrelated, and let the problem percolate in the background until a solution presented itself. Otherwise, she’d get nothing done all day, and there was one thing she needed to do, someone she needed to talk to who, in all likelihood, would shed some light on her main problem.

She decompiled the empty bowl, took a quick shower – hot water pouring on her like a waterfall was still a novelty after three years of washcloth baths – and dressed in her fresh clothes. A tank top much like the last joined a pair of trousers with a much more agreeable texture, and the jacket as ever completed the ensemble. She walked out the door like there was nothing unusual about stepping into a cylindrical habitat kilometers across.

The communal hab that Cass had never so much as spent a single night in was empty – not only empty but absolutely cleaned out. There was only one other place she could think to look, and thankfully, a quick search on her tablet gave her a map to her destination. The door it led to was not the first door Cass had seen aboard the Tillandsia that remained closed as she approached. It was, however, the first that spoke to her.

“Just a sec, cutie!” it said in a cheerful, androgynous voice. “I’ll let everyone know you’re here!”

“O...kay,” Cass said. Weird doorbell. A moment later, the door slid aside, and Cass had to crane her neck upward.

“Cass!” Pisca said, her voice bright. “What a lovely surprise! Come in, come in!” There was a hand at her back and a gentle pressure that brooked no disagreement. Pisca’s hab was like a less intense version of Tsuga’s – it had a lot of the same aesthetics, and Cass had to wonder if that was Tsuga’s influence or if Affini homes were just like this. She had a soft-looking couch, and on it she saw the person she’d come for – sprawled out, clearly high, and wearing a long, flowing dress that stopped somewhere just below the knee.

Wait, what?

“Hey, wake up, sleepylegs,” Pisca said, leaning over the couch and poking them gently. “I didn’t give you that much. Besides, look, Cass is here!” That got their attention – they bolted upright, only overbalancing a little, and stared down at Cass.

“Wh-what?! I– oh no, oh no, uh…”

“Here, let me help you down,” Pisca said, picking them up and setting them down in front of Cass. They wobbled, unsteady at first, until they got their balance, then hugged themselves and looked up at Cass past a curtain of wavy red hair that just reached their chin.

Cass stood there for a second as her mind turned the situation over. This wasn’t nearly so much a conundrum as her other, bigger problems, though – the solution arrived quickly. Oh. Everything fit. It was obvious, and she was annoyed with herself that she hadn’t noticed it before. “Come here,” she said, wrapping her arms around the girl and squeezing her gently. This was definitely a hugging sort of situation. There would probably be tears and– yep, right on schedule, the redhead began to cry, burying her face into Cass’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered, stroking her hair. “You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” she wailed through her tears.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Cass replied. “Honestly, everything makes a lot more sense now.”

“But…you’re mad ’cause I wanna stay with Pisca,” she whimpered.

“I was worried you were making a big decision without thinking it through,” Cass said, “but like I said, it makes more sense now. If they’d shown up before I’d transitioned, I’d probably have done the same thing.” She still thought that staying up here – staying with Pisca – was a terrible idea, but she at least understood why she wanted that now. “How long have you known?”

She sniffled. “I dunno. I think maybe when I met you.” Oh, no. Cass felt those words right in her heart. “You’re really not mad?”

“No. Not about you wanting to stay, and especially not about this.” She thought back to her own tearful confession to her father, when she’d been even younger than– Ah. Right. “Have you picked out a name?” she asked gently.

She nodded, face still buried in Cass’s shoulder. “Aletheia.”

“Aletheia?” Cass smiled. The spirit of truth? Went right for the old standbys, I see.

“Allie for short,” she mumbled.

“Well, Allie, let me tell you what my father told me when I came out to him,” Cass said. “Look at me, okay?” She gently lifted Allie’s chin, and steeled herself to look into those deep, blown-out green eyes. “Only you and the Infinite can know the shape of your soul, so don’t let anyone else tell you who or what you have to be. Okay?” He’d said it in Farsi, but that was close enough.

“Okay,” she breathed. Tearstains still carved wet runnels down her cheeks as she looked up at Cass. Her stare was painfully intense, but Cass knew better than to look away in a moment like this. If there was one thing she could still do for Aletheia, she could give her surety that she was accepted as she was.

And then, without any warning, without any sign that it was about to happen, Aletheia stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against Cass’s. Her arms snaked around Cass’s neck and she hung there, her eyes slipping shut as she kissed Cass, soft noises trickling up from her throat almost overwhelmed by the delighted sound that Pisca made, by the loud wooden clack of her hands as she clapped excitedly.

Wait, what?

The kiss went on. It was actually happening, not some weird figment of Cass’s imagination. She stood there, puzzled, being kissed, for a long moment before she finally sorted out her thoughts and gently, gently, pushed Aletheia back. “What?”

“Oh stars that felt nice,” she mumbled. “Mmmm, I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” she added, leaning back in and resting her head on Cass’s shoulder.

“Hold on–”

“How adorable!” Pisca said, laughing and all but bouncing in place, her vines twisting and shivering. “Oh, this definitely calls for a celebration!”

“Why did you–” She stopped short of saying it. Saying it would make it real. More real, somehow, than it already was.

“Because you’re amazing and cool and really nice and did I mention really, really hot?” Aletheia said, giggling in a very familiar way.

“Aletheia, I’m old enough to be your mother,” Cass said gently.

“I don’t care,” she replied.

“Well, I do,” Cass said. “You and I are in such different places in our life, and–” She paused as a vine drifted close to her, tipped with a bright orange flower with something shining at its heart. “What’s that?”

“Just a little playtime juice,” Pisca said, leaning down and putting a hand on Cass’s shoulders. “A little Class-A to make you feel nice and good.”

“It’s really good,” Aletheia said, giggling again. Now that the stress was gone, she was sinking back into the high.

“I don’t really do intoxicants,” Cass said. Wasn’t supposed to, either, but then, she was not particularly observant about other strictures – the only reason she’d never indulged was because she’d never seen the point.

“This isn’t like those nasty terran intoxicants,” Pisca said. “It’s clean, healthy, and safe. You remember Arvense? I asked him, and he said this particular xenodrug is perfectly safe for all baseline terrans. Aletheia’s having a great time with it, aren’t you petal?” She reached down and stroked Allie’s head, and she let out a happy whimper.

“It just makes everything feel nice,” Allie murmured. “And a little floaty, but just a little.”

Cass was silent for a moment. She had no idea how to extricate herself from this situations she’d gotten herself into with Aletheia, and that was bad enough, but adding in being high on top of it did not sound like it would help. On the other hand – maybe this was the breakthrough she needed. Maybe getting a little blasted, having a taste of what Leah and now apparently Allie were going through, was the lateral jaunt that would clue her in to what she was missing about the Affini.

“A small dose. A very small dose,” she added. “I don’t want to get completely obliterated on this stuff.”

“Alright, flower,” Pisca said, her vine darting in and delivering a quick pinprick to her collarbone. “Oooh, I can’t wait!”

“Just don’t expect me to–” She paused as she felt the warm sensation spreading through her arm, across the skin, into the rest of her body. “To–” She swallowed, and felt every muscle convulsing in turn, all the way down her esophagus. “This– this is–” She took a breath, felt her lungs expanding. “I– I can’t–”

“Here, let’s get you two up on the sofa again,” Pisca said. Her vines coiled around Cass and Aletheia, squeezing them together, and every inch of the vines felt like a line of tingling electric current. The fabric of Aletheia's dress was like sandpaper, and the sofa if anything, worse worse, gritty and scraping.

“Too much,” she grunted, struggling out of Allie’s arms and leaving the confused girl blinking as she tore off her jacket, her tank top, her trousers. “Get it off, get it off, get it off!” Everything was fire, lightning, rasping and cutting and scoring her skin. The inside of her body wasn’t any better – with every movement, she could feel muscle on muscle on bone, her skin sliding and bulging as insides moved around. She could feel her entire digestive system convulsing, feel the blood rushing in her arteries. Her heart thundered in her chest, in her ears, the sound like a staccato waterfall threatening to burst her from the inside out. I’m dying, she thought as she curled over, trying to keep as much of her skin off of the sofa’s awful, scratching surface as she could. It’s poison, and my heart’s going to explode.

“Cass, what’s wrong?” Allie’s hand came down on Cass’s back, a crackling thunderblow that elicited a primal scream from somewhere inside her, ripping its way through her trachea and setting up intolerable resonances in her larynx. “Pisca, help her!”

“I don’t understand, Arvense said it was safe!” Pisca cried. “We’re going over there right now. Cass, I’m sorry, but I have to pick you up.” Vines again, burning, stinging, drilling, carving into her skin as she screamed and screamed and screamed. Pisca said something, but language was a dead thing to Cass now – dead in her throat, in her ears, and in her mind. There were no words for what she was feeling as the wind skated across her skin, as the light dug into her eyes, as sounds drove themselves like bullets into her ears. There was no separation between the screaming and the things that made her scream. She wasn’t even certain if she was still screaming, or if the blackness clawing at the edges of her vision meant she’d screamed herself hypoxic and was on the verge of blessed unconsciousness.

The nightmare thought of what if this follows me down there surfaced, for only the briefest of moments, above the choppy, whitecap surface of the ocean that was her panic. Then, it too slipped into the deep.