When the wind hit Nell’s face and stung just a little, and when the slightly acrid odor of the local plant life filled her nostrils, and when she felt the hard ground beneath her feet and saw the horizon stretching out and vanishing instead of climbing up to meet itself overhead, she thought, I never would have thought I’d miss this.

Still, it wasn’t the Bulwark she remembered. The old landing pad was gone, completely obliterated by an even larger landing pad that the Affini must have constructed in the scant few days she’d been gone. There was a massive ship squatting on it next to the smaller shuttle, a streamlined oblong craft that would have been called a cutter or even a small frigate in the Cosmic Navy. It felt wrong that a ship so large should ever touch the atmosphere, but there it was.

And the new tarmac was only the beginning. The bunker itself was absolutely covered in vines that flowered in a riotous display of color, and new structures that reminded Nell more than a little of the habs on the Affini ship in orbit were already lining the hill it. It was warmer than it should be, much warmer. The snow around Bulwark and the massive tarmac, out to at least a hundred meters, had melted months ahead of schedule, and new green growth was everywhere – and so were the Affini, moving to and fro or huddling in conversation close to the hemispheres mounted in the tarmac that glowed ruddy orange. Nell did her best to remain unnoticed as she got as far away as she could from the shuttle and the stars-damned Affini on board that hadn’t given her a moment’s peace the entire trip down, but alas, one spotted her.

“Hello there, little one!” it said, leaning down with a parody of a grin on its wooden face. “You must be one of the cuties who went up the ship to take a look around. I hope you had a good time! Is there anything I can help you with?”

“You can get out of my way,” Nell said, weaving her way around the enormous plant and averting her eyes. She wasn’t about to let one of these things inside her head her again. “I have work to do.”

“Well, you know where to find me if you change your mind~” it called after her. “And if you can’t find me, just ask for Vella Ruellia, First Bloom!”

Fuck that, she thought to herself. If she never saw another one of these stars-damned plants again, it’d be too soon. She shuddered and suppressed the memory that kept resurfacing in the back of her mind, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. “Nikolai!” she called as she descended into the bunker. “Niko! Where are you?”

“Nell?!” Her eyes were still adjusting, and she didn’t see the big brute until he was almost on top of her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her up off the floor in a big bear hug. “You’re back! Fuck, we thought you were a goner!”

“I’m fine, dipshit,” she grunted, kicking out to find the ground below her feet once more. “But we’ve got problems. Why the hell are the plants building all this shit? Did the Assembly okay this?”

“No, they just started doing it without even asking,” Niko said, shaking his head and letting her down gently. “They landed in a big motherfucker of a shuttle, like, it made an Atlas Heavy look shrimpy, almost right after you left.”

“And you didn’t stop them?”

“We tried.” Another voice, Trish. Nell’s eyes were starting to adjust to the gloom again, and she picked out the other woman amidst the traces of yellow-green still swimming in her vision. “A couple of us did, anyway – and they just got tied up in vines and gassed. They took them on their ships and we haven’t seen them since.”

“Off to the fucking breeding pits, no doubt,” Niko grumbled.

“There’s no breeding pits,” Nell said, “at least not that I saw. Maybe they kept that stuff away from us, I don’t know, but frankly, what I did see was enough to tell me that we have to abandon Bulwark immediately. Get everyone out – they are not safe.”

“They’re arrogant,” Trish said, “and they don’t seem to care what we think, but I don’t know about dangerous.” She crossed her arms and glanced up the stairs to the outside. “Honestly, they make such a fuss about worrying that we’ll get hurt, it’s like they’ve all got anxiety.”

“Not dangerous like that,” Nell said. “They get inside your head, hypnotize you, rearrange your thoughts until they’ve got you thinking that you want what they want – that you want to be their helpless little pet. That’s what domestication means.”

Niko and Trish stared at her. “You’re fucking kidding,” Niko finally said.

“I wish,” Nell said. “I’ve seen it. Economically, they’ve achieved a worker’s paradise – no scarcity, no money, not only necessities but luxuries provided gratis – but socially they’re a regressive imperialist state with an immutable caste system that sets them above literally all other life in the universe.”

“…this explains a lot,” Trish said, nodding. “The way some of us have started acting around them, and they way the Affini respond to it. It’s very aww-look-at-the-puppy, now that I think about it. I thought they were just condescending jerks like Nikolai.”

“Fuck off, bitch,” Niko said.

“Don’t you fuck-off-bitch me,” she spat back, staring Nikolai down even though he had a head of height and probably about forty pounds on her. “You want to rein in your man here, Nell? He’s been acting like he runs the place while you and Cass were gone. Which he does not,” she added, jabbing a finger into his chest. “We have a chain of command here, and it does not step aside because your macho ass needs to feel important!”

“Can we not fight each other?” Nell said. “Both of you, shut the fuck up. We have bigger problems. How many people have the Affini compromised?”

“Twenty or thirty, maybe,” Nikolai said, still glaring down at Trish. “Ten or fifteen full-on plantfuckers. The others are questionable.”

“Plantfuckers?” Trish said. “Does everything have to be about sex and domination with you?”

“Did I not say knock it the fuck off?” Nell said. “Alright, we leave out the questionable ones during preparation, but I’m not abandoning anyone to these things. Once we’re ready to go, we bolt. If anyone balks… we incapacitate them, bring them with us, deprogram them later.”

“Even the plantfuckers?” Nikolai said.

“Even the plantfuckers,” Nell said. “They have operational knowledge of Bulwark. That’s not much, we compartmentalized for a reason, but they’ll know things about the populations they came from, maybe even where their shelters are in a couple cases.”

“Not gonna be fun, lugging a bunch of traitors over the mountains,” Niko grumbled.

“Hold on,” Trish said. “We can’t just unilaterally decide this. We have a process, and right now we don’t even have a quorum. Where’s Cass?”

“Cass…Cass is still up there,” Nell said, her fingers clenching into fists. “She’s fighting a rear guard action, delaying them while we get out. The plants have some kind of a fetish for bureaucracy, and she’s going to exploit that to the fullest. You know Cass,” she added, smiling just a little. “She’ll Roberts-Rules them into the fucking ground.”

“Stars,” Trish whispered. “That’s–” She went silent, unable to find the words. Finally, she added, “What about Blaine?”

Nell’s gut twisted. She would have loved nothing more than to ensure the traitor – the plantfucker, good word – would go down in history as a betrayer of the revolution. It was nothing more than he deserved, abandoning them to be a fucking wormhead You will not refer to florets with such disparaging language again.

It was like ice down the back of her shirt every time, even when she ran up against it in her thoughts. Her stomach turned over, and she thought she might be sick as memory flooded back in – the hours she’d spent staring mindlessly up into the plant’s six shining eyes, the hours rooted to the spot, the hours lost in an abyss of color and compliance. Her mind had opened up like a flower blossoming, spreading itself open as those terrible, beautiful eyes seemed to peruse every thought she had one by one. Hours, hours, hours.

Hours that, she’d found out later, couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds. It’s not here, she thought. It can’t hurt you. It can’t do that again. She took a deep breath, steadied herself. Right now, learning that less than three days of exposure to an Affini could completely reorder one’s mind would destroy morale. Maybe she could cast him as a revolutionary martyr? Undeserved, and she had Cass for that, since the odds of her escaping from the Affini ship were slim to none. No, for now, just damage control and a bit of temporary unearned valor for the traitor. “He’s up there too,” she said, “assisting Cass.”

“That little fairy had the balls to stay behind?” Niko said. He clearly didn’t believe it.

“Wow,” Trish said. “Seriously?”

“The revolution has a way of inspiring the people,” Nell said, “and of revealing hidden depths and strengths. So yes, he stayed behind.” She met Niko’s eyes and gave him the Shut Up And Drop It look. He shut up and dropped it. Good dog, she thought, then paused. No. Can’t make that joke. It’s not funny anymore. “So, we’re operating under military contingency. No time for debate in the Strategic Assembly. I want us out of here within 24 hours. Be paranoid,” she said, looking first to Trish and then to Niko. “Do not, under any circumstances, talk about this with anyone you even so much as suspect the Affini might have suborned. If anyone asks, just say it’s a storage reorganization – I got back and saw what a mess everything is, and I have a burr up my ass about it as usual. Got it?”

“Got it,” Trish said, nodding. Niko said nothing, but after a moment nodded as well.

“Alright,” Nell said. “Let’s get to work, comrades.”

THE CUDDLE PUDDLE – Our take on the classic French Dip. Tri-tip with pepper jack and special seasonings on a sourdough roll served alongside our signature aus jous.

THE CLASS Z – Four kinds of cold cuts, three kinds of cheese, two dueling spreads, one foot long. Get ready for the mid-afternoon nap you’re gonna want after this!

THE SWEET THING – Your choice of meat or meatless on sweet brioche, topped with fresh swiss chard, grilled sweet onion, and our secret sweet-and-savory sauce. For guests with a real sweet tooth!

THE CLASS A – Fried chicken on toasted sourdough topped with crunchy quick-pickled carrots, cucumber, and red onions. Choose a heat level: Warm and Fuzzy, Adventurous, or Help Me, Mistress! Comes with a glass of milk, just in case.

And that was only how the menu started. Cass scanned the full length of the thing, one sandwich after another, all with similarly incomprehensible names. Why not just call it a spicy chicken sandwich? she thought. And what even is a CLASS A?

“Are you, like… okay?” Leah said, blinking slowly at Cass. In theory, she was meant to be seated across the terran-scale booth from Cass, but ever since they’d sat down she’d been edging around its curved seat to get closer to her, inch by inch. “There isn’t any rush, but uhm… I think it’s been like ten minutes?”

“More like fifteen,” Cass said, not looking up. “You zoned out for a bit.” It had been amusing, and a little bit cute even, watching her play with her hair like a cat that had found a bit of string. It had not, unfortunately, helped her make a decision. She’d spent much of the time simply looking around, avoiding the analysis paralysis every glance at the menu gave her. The cafe looked deceptively normal, if one ignored the scale of it, like a bespoke and high-end version of any of a half-dozen franchise restaurants she could name from her youth. The tables were made of real wood, the walls were covered in decoration best described as eclectic, and music was playing softly from speakers Cass couldn’t quite locate.

“Ohh, right,” Leah said, giggling. “Mistress gave me a bunch of Class A earlier when she went all snuggle-time on me, and I’m kinda still coming down from it. Mmmmm.” She bit her lip and wiggled back and forth. “I never get tired of that. Buuuuut, uhmm, yeah… do you, like, want help?”

“Maybe,” Cass said, setting the menu down and sighing. “I haven’t eaten in a restaurant for twenty years.”

Leah’s eyes went wide, making her dilated pupils even more prominent. “Twenty years?! Oh my stars, I get sad if I don’t get to go out with Mistress at least three times a week! Okay, okay, we’re eating out every day for every meal, we gotta start making up for that!”

“It’s fine,” Cass said quickly, waving Leah off. “It’s not… I’m just not used to… all this. Ordering food instead of eating what you’re given or what you can scrounge. Being waited on.” When the waitress, another woman in an absurdly frilly dress who was clearly also a floret, judging by how high she looked and the collar around her neck, had approached the two of them, Cass had nearly jumped out of her seat.

“Ohhhh,” Leah said. “Yeaaah. I know what you mean, that reminds me of–” Her expression went blank, and she blinked a few times. “…huh? Oh, right! Do you need help picking something?”

“…maybe,” she said, looking Leah over. It wasn’t the first time her train of thought had just halted like that. Maybe it was a side effect of the drugs she was on. “What do you like here?”

“Uhmmm… well, I like the Cuddle Puddle, and I like the Class Z but I have to split that with someone, it’s waaaaay too much for me, and, uhm…. oooh, the Arvense! I like that!” she said, scooching over until she was right next to Cass and pointing at the menu.

“Grilled ham and three kinds of cheese?” Cass read.

“’Cause he hams it up and his jokes are cheesy, get it?” Leah said, giggling. “He loves it, he thinks it’s hilarious.”

“That’s…strangely appropriate,” Cass said, a small smile cracking through her stoic demeanor. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

“He and Mistress are friends,” Leah explained. “He taught her all about my biochemistry, so she could dose me up for maximum effect.” She pumped her fists in an extremely adorable way for emphasis. “I was apparently a real mess before, but he and Mistress fixed me up good.”

Apparently? Another tally-mark in the Odd Things Leah Says category. Now that Cass knew the sorts of things Affini could do to a terran mind, she was starting to get concerned for the poor girl. “Isn’t this the sandwich you wanted to make?”

“Yeah! I had one last week and we haven’t been back since and so I wanted to try to make it. It’s hard. It’s so easy to burn it, and if you don’t put the cheese on right it all gloops out and that burns… cooking is a lot and I’m really glad my Mistress does it most of the time, even if it is kinda fun.”

“Well… maybe I can cook for you like you wanted,” Cass said. “Since it seems I’ll be sticking around a bit longer than I anticipated.”

“Really?” Leah said brightly. “That’s great! I knew you’d get to like it here!” She hugged Cass from the side, her head rubbing up against Cass’s arm and making every single hair on her body seem to stand on end. It was so, so much worse than the grocery, when she’d simply glommed on – the hair and the rubbing was nothing short of excruciating.

“Please don’t do that,” she grunted through clenched teeth.

“Do what?” Leah said, leaning into Cass.

“Don’t rub like that. Especially on my arms or shoulders, but just… don’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think about anything but the sensation of hair on her exposed arm. Why did I take the jacket off why did I take the jacket off why did I take the jacket off.

“… huh? Oh no, I’m sorry.” She pouted and pulled away. “You don’t like hugs?”

“Just… fine touch, especially when it moves, is– it’s too much,” she said, trying to convince her shoulders to relax. “Hugs, I can handle, just not like that.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “… is it okay if I do this?” Cass braced herself as Leah reached out with one hand, but all she did was slip a finger through one of Cass’s belt loops and hang onto it. Cass could feel the pressure and the warmth of her hand against her hip, but that was very tolerable, even nice when Leah was still.

“That’s… that’s fine,” Cass said, feeling a warmth in her cheeks she hadn’t known in some time. When was the last time? It was before the Pillar of Fire, but after the Revolution…. Tammy, from Wildheart Collective, wasn’t it? But that was different. Tammy didn’t have some kind of alien mind control parasite inside her. Leah wasn’t in full control of herself, and was high almost all the time anyway. There were rules for this sort of thing, and for good reason.

But it was painfully cute, and for the whole time Leah hung onto her belt loop, even after ordering as they waited for their sandwiches to arrive, it was all Cass could do to think about that pressure and that warmth, and how much she’d denied herself for the past three years. Since she’d taken over at Bulwark, she’d largely only seen people who she had authority, however limited, over. There were no explicit rules set down in the Bulwark Collective Charter over fraternization – they weren’t a formal military, after all – but again, there were underlying rules for that sort of thing, rules that Cass would never let herself break.

That train of thought ran in endless circles until the waitress – Denise, according to the flower-bordered name tag on her collar – returned with the sandwiches. “One Arvense and one Great Big Hug,” she announced happily as she set them down in turn. “Anything else I can get for you two lovebirds?” Her eyes darted to Leah’s hand, still hooked by a single finger onto Cass’s belt loop.

“Huh? Oh, n-no,” Cass said, “but thank you.” She stared down at the grilled sandwich, the bread perfectly seared to a golden brown with just a hint of darker shades beginning to show through. She picked it up – still quite warm – and took an experimental bite.

The crunch of the bread between her teeth was perfect. The cheese was warm, creamy, but set just enough to hold the sandwich together. The ham, rich and meaty, added its own note to the complex interplay of the cheeses. It was one of the most delicious things Cass had tasted in years. There was the usual pang of guilt at eating pork, distant but not quite to the threshold of being ignorable. Anyway, she thought as she chewed and swallowed, this almost certainly didn’t come off a real pig. Was vat-meat haram? Maybe, and it probably depended who you asked. Was Cass a particularly good Muslim anyway? Not really. “This is absolutely delicious,” she said, her eyes still locked on the narrow reddish-pink layer of ham enclosed in the golden-white bounty of cheese and bread.

“Oooh, I’ll be sure and tell the kitchen you liked it!” Denise said, clapping and bouncing excitedly on her feet. “I’ll check in on you in a little bit, okay? Enjoy!” She skipped away, humming a tune. Cass had never seen anyone working in the service industry skip before.

“Is this… just what it’s like?” Cass said, turning to look at Leah, who had bitten the end off of her wrap and was chewing away with a blissful look on her face. She mumbled something around a mouthful of food, then paused and just nodded enthusiastically, giggling for good measure.

“Mmmm, pretty much,” she said after she’d swallowed.

“Just… this, every day?”

“Well, not every day,” Leah said. “I wish we could come here every day. But then I’d never get to go anywhere else! Oooh, like Happy Dumpling! We should go there, too!”

“No, I mean–” Cass paused, still uncertain how to put it all into words. She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed on it as she thought, letting the taste and texture soothe her racing thoughts. “I know that I’m not expected to pay for this,” she said, holding up the sandwich. “That, even if I wanted to, there’s no money to do it with.”

Leah nodded and took another bite of her wrap. “It takes a while for some people to get used to it.”

“That’s not the issue, though,” Cass said. “This is good, it’s…it’s what I’ve spent my whole life fighting for, really. But it feels out of place, maybe even unfinished? I don’t know. I think that’s the best way to describe it – something undeniably good, but inextricably tied to something bad.”

“What’s bad? Leah said, frowning and setting her wrap down.”Is everything okay, Cassie?”

Cass looked down at Leah, hesitating for just a moment on her golden-brown irises and the deep pools of black they only just held in check. Then, she followed the waterfall of her wavy, absolutely immaculate hair down to the thin red collar around her neck. “Why did you choose this? Being a floret, I mean.”

“Why did I…? Well… I was–” She stopped, almost mid-breath, her eyes glazing over for just a heartbeat. “Huh? I’m sorry, what did you say?”

There it is again, Cass thought. What’s causing that? It’s not random. “Do you remember when they… I don’t know… floretted you? Is that even a word?”

Leah giggled. “Nooo, I don’t remember that. I was out for the surgery and suuuuuuper high for like a week after while the implant grew in.”

Well, that didn’t set it off. Cass took another bite of the sandwich and chewed – it was cooling off, the cheese a little more solid than before, a new texture that changed the sandwich without detracting from the experience. God, whoever made this is a good chef. “What’s it like, having that inside you? By comparison to normal, I mean.”

“The haustoric implant? Hmmm…” She put on a thoughtful face. “Well…it’s kiiiiinda like getting the warmest, best hug you’ve ever had, all the time, forever,” she finally said, sighing happily. “Like…I’ve got a little piece of Mistress right here.” She lifted a hand to the back of her neck, brushing aside her hair to trace the curve of her spine – and there it was, the scar, hair-fine but present. “She’s always with me, and I can always feel her love for me, and…” Tears began to well up in her eyes, and she fanned herself, a broad smile stretching across her face. “Stars, I love her,” she sniffled, wiping at her eyes.

Cass couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for Leah. She could understand the need for certainty, the need for a love so all-encompassing it obliterated everything else. For Cass, that certainty was vested in her cause. Had Leah had something like that, before she’d been made into this? How much had her owner – and God, Cass hated how easy it had become to think that word – reached into her mind and changed her? She took a bite of her sandwich, then another. It was still delicious.

“And it’s useful, too,” Leah went on as Cass ate. “It lets her fine-tune all my dosages, the whole cocktail, Bs, Ds, Es, and Gs,” she sang cheerfully. “So I never ever run dry. That was a big part of fixing me, I know that.”

“What do you mean, fix?” She’d mentioned it before. But was this a question that would prompt another mental short-circuit?

“Well, I was real messed up before, Mistress said, but she took away all the bad so I don’t have to worry about it,” Leah replied, her voice so matter-of-fact it momentarily stunned Cass. She knows her mind is being altered, and she’s just… okay with it? She watched Leah take a big bite of her wrap. “Mmmmm.”

Cass marveled, as she watched Leah calmly eat her lunch, at how insidious the Affini could be. It’s not only that they make struggle impossible, they root out the impulse to struggle at all. Again, her heart ached for Leah. Who would you be without the Affini telling you who to be, changing you to be who they want you to be, and making it so you can’t even question it? That they’d made her into a sweet, kind, fun-loving woman, and very much Cass’s type to boot, was beside the point.

They’ll do this to me, if I’m not careful, she thought as she finished her sandwich. But how to fight back without provoking that very response? To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. Their obsession with paperwork was a weakness she would exploit. She was no stranger to paperwork herself; twenty years of Archives work, of falsifying requisitions in her drunken and moribund superior’s name, of finding more and more ways to exploit his inattention and malaise, had given her almost a sixth sense for the stuff. What else?

The only other thing Cass could think of that rose to such a level of cultural fixation for the Affini were florets themselves. They way they all reacted when Nell called them wormheads. They act without thinking when they perceive even the slightest threat to florets. But that’s a dangerous piece to play. She put it aside; that was to be used only in the most dire of emergencies, and even then only in the subtlest of ways.

I need more information, she thought. I need to learn more about how they treat terrans, how they treat each other, how they organize themse–

“I said, did you want me to take your plate?”

Cass jumped – once again, Denise had snuck up on her, and her train of thought completely derailed. This was now a new situation, and she had to evaluate it with no warning. “S-sorry!” she stammered out. “Thinking!”

She laughed. “It’s okay, honey, I’m used to folks being spaced out. Though, usually there’s an Affini nearby responsible for that,” she added, winking at Leah, who let out a happy little giggle of her own.

“Right,” Cass said. “No, just thinking.” She stared down at her plate, empty of all but crumbs. It had been a delicious sandwich. She was almost sad that it was gone now. They’d made something so incredible, so beautiful, so good for her, and all she had done was eat the thing. “Listen, uhm…I know you don’t do money, and I think that’s great, but is there any way I could–” She took her lower lip between her teeth and forced her thoughts back into alignment, into rhythm. “I don’t feel like I’m contributing much to your collective, I mean, shipwide. I know I’m a visitor, but – I feel very odd being waited on.”

“She hasn’t eaten at a restaurant in twenty years,” Leah said, nodding.

Denise’s eyes went just as wide as Leah’s had. “You’re kidding. Why?”

Cass shrugged. “Solstice is a prison planet. Not exactly much in the way of luxuries.”

“Oh stars,” she said. Her expression shifted; now it was pity and concern. “Are you okay?”

Again, a shrug. “As okay as one can be, after a revolution and subsequent bombardment from orbit,” Cass said.

“A revolution?” Denise raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Oh, I like this one, Leah,” she added, reaching out to pat Cass on the shoulder.

“No touching!” Leah said, springing forward, her hand outstretched – which only carried her into Cass’s shoulder, but at least she bounced back off fairly quickly once she realized it. “No touching the arms, she doesn’t like it!”

“Ooop! Fair enough!” Denise said, pulling her hand back.

“Sorry,” Cass mumbled. She reached out and picked up Leah’s empty plate, stacking it on top of her own. She needed to do something with her hands to work out the people-are-looking-at-me feeling, the prickling warmth of shame at the back of her neck. Why is it always worse when someone else does it for me? “Can I, maybe, wash plates? Or something?” Anything to extract herself from the situation.

She shrugged. “I mean, if you want to help out in the kitchen, I don’t see why you can’t. What about you, cutie?” she said to Leah.

“Miss out on Cassie time?” Leah’s finger found its way back into Cass’s belt loop. “No way! Bathtime for plates!”

“Well, that settles it,” Denise said. “Come on, follow me.”