âThe drive to cease existing, to die, it is said, is part of human nature.â
When Ilyana entered the office that morning, it was to find Dietrich already present and hard at work. This itself was not unusual, and so she wasnât at all surprised by it. The operation on Crux had been completed some months ago, but aside from the time he spent with that, he seemed to have developed a new fascination with the world outside the domes.
For several days following the incident, the publicâs reaction had been rather explosive, but then that was hardly shocking, considering what they had been shown. Somehow, though, Helena had managed to calm most of it, and the average citizen was now thoroughly convinced that the government was working very hard on a massive engine to purify the air and water supplies outside the domes, and that the garden in Central was in fact a prototype for exactly that project. The lie fit together so smoothly that it was much more easy to swallow than the truth, and so even the most skeptical of people generally chose to believe it.
Of course, the government was doing no such thing, and she knew this quite well, given that it was exactly the sort of project she and Dietrich were perfect for. But they had been given no directive to work on it, and so sheâd occupied herself with overseeing the latter stages of the biomechanical police force that had begun with Crux. Currently, he was the only one, but development was reaching a point where it was probably not going to be the case for very much longer. Dietrich had performed the actual implantations and adjustments that allowed the man to hook up to the network, and sheâd assisted with the rebuilding of his organic parts, but the truth was theyâd both felt Solomonâs lack very clearly in those moments. No doubt they were the best living people at what they did, but⊠she wondered, sometimes, what Solomon would have done in their place. It was a worry that she did not choose to share with her friend.
All of a sudden, Dietrichâs deskbound HUD lit up, projecting around the now standing figure of the scientist what appeared to be an array of⊠cards? Ilyana set her jacket down over the back of her chair and approached them where they revolved around his still figure. Upon closer examination, they proved to be tarot cards of all things.
âThis reminds me of summers with my grandmother,â she said quietly. Summers with her brother, too. Her grandmother had been rather old-fashioned, a big believer in fate and destiny and chance, and had shown both Ilyana and Mikhail how to read the tarot, which was supposed to be some primitive method of divination. As with everything of the sort, she hardly believed a word of it now, but if Dietrich was appropriating them for some reason, she could be confident that it had nothing to do with trying to predict the future.
âYou can read them?â he asked, a faint note of surprise underlying his tone, and she nodded. Tilting his head slightly to the side, Dietrich reached out and touched one of them as it went by, flicking his fingers outward to enlarge it. She was able to see that the face of the card was something more intricate than it first appeared. It would seem that code was written into them. Well, that made a little more sense. Solomon and Dietrich had used to play games with one another like thisâthey would put encrypted information with a specific meaning into a seemingly-mundane image. It wasnât only computer processing power that was needed to decipher something like thatâit was creativity and unconventional thinking as well. Usually the image itself was a clue.
The card he had enlarged held a skull on it, and she knew immediately which one it was, though it was quite likely that almost nobody else in the Domes wouldâsuch oddities had disappeared into history long ago. If Ilyanaâs grandmother hadnât been so strange, she would have had no idea what she was looking at. âDeath,â she said, and it was his turn to nod, encouraging her to go on. âWell, it doesnât usually mean âdeathâ in the common sense. The card is supposed to represent the ending of somethingâloss, conclusion, sadness. It can also stand for some kind of transition, moving from one state to another.â
âVery good. How about this one?â Dietrich moved Death to the side and drew forth another. This one depicted lightning crashing into a building.
âThe Tower,â Ilyana replied. âA sudden realization of something catastrophic. The destruction of old illusions in favor of new, harsh truth. Crisis of identity. Itâs reversed, though, so thereâs the suggestion that it might just end for the better. Dietrich⊠these represent people, donât they?â
He turned to look at her, and the light in his eyes was one he almost hadnât had since they were children. She knew she was rightâthat light was the one he had when he felt he was in the middle of some grand puzzle, and he was enraptured in the solving of it. âThat is my hypothesis as well. These were delivered to me this morning, from an unknown location, entirely off the Network. Some of them contain data of mine, that I have been keeping away from anyone else, which means that the party responsible has effectively hacked my encryptions.â While it was true that a mind or computer of sufficient computational ability, like Sollaâs, could access the files Dietrich kept on the network, they were encrypted so as to be impossible for someone so literally-minded to understand. Even Ilyana, who knew him so well, couldnât always make sense of his encryptions, which meant that whomever had sent him this data was a genius on par with Dietrich himself.
It didnât take long for Ilyana to abandon all thought of further progress today as well, and she stepped into the circle of cards with him. âWell⊠what have you figured out so far?â
Dietrich waved a hand, and the cards shifted positions, grouping themselves. âThey were sent to me first in groups, and then a full reading was given. These were the groups.â She could see that Death was associated with the Devil, and then there was a trioâThe Emperor floated slightly above the Empress and the Hierophant. The Chariot and Strength were apart from them, but close by. Justice and The Hermit were paired, but the Tower seemed to oscillate between that location and where Death was. Apart from the rest, but still in the picture, were the Magician and the Star.
âI believe The Star was the most obvious clue, because it links linguistically. If we assume that it represents Stella Iaret, then it follows fairly directly that the Magician is Uno Summus. That gives us a clear enough idea of what the reading is supposed to be about. The others are a bit harder, but I think I know what most of them are. The biggest clue for them was the associated meanings of the cards, and the data I found in Death.â
âWhat data was that?â she asked, fixing her eyes on the card in question.
âCruxâs real memories.â
Darcia stood on the roof of one of the tallest buildings in Specter. It had been about two weeks since the incident, and she could tell immediately that short of someone destroying her memory entirely, she was never going to be able to forget what had happened there. She didnât even know what the results were. Medically, it should have been the case that her partner survived, but there could always be complications, human error, things of that nature. The thought that he could be dead was a constant ache, making it feel as though something in her chest was hollowed-out and empty. She didnât understand it, and she wondered if she even wanted it. Things would be so much better if she had no emotionsâshe would simply have followed the Supreme General back to Central and been decommissioned without complaint.
But now⊠she could not decide if that was what she wanted. Part of her, strangely, did want that. She wanted the pain, the hurt in her heart, to go away. She wanted all of the things that she could not comprehend to leave her alone. She wanted all of the memories to begone, or at least, to be the kind of thing that would feel nothing at all upon recollecting them.
Even thought this was definitely true of part of her⊠the other part was different. She had fought and subdued every government agent sent to retrieve her, though she had killed none of them. She didnât want to do that either, and the idea of taking a life now was repugnant to her. Because every time she could, every time her logic informed her that it was the most expedient option⊠she just saw him again, and she couldnât do it.
âHe promised,â she said softly, and only to herself, for there was nobody else up here. He had promised her he would continue to live. And she believed in him, so the thought that he was dead never lasted long in her. But the thought that she should be was more persistent. None of those agents that had come after her had been able to do anything. Not even when they used the highest-level override she knew the government had. There was nothingâno response in her systems at all. It was as though that inch, that fraction she had made herself move even when overwritten, had somehow broken the hold of her obedience protocols entirely.
She didnât know what she was anymore. Or if she was anything at all. She didnât even know if the fall she planned to take when she jumped from this roof would kill her or not. But stillâŠ
âHey.â Her foot was an inch from the ledge when a voice stopped her. She turned slightly, already recognizing it as belonging to perhaps the only person alive who might just know more about her than she did.
âBefore you decide to do that, thereâs someone you should see.â
Stella had been only barely cognizant for most of the trip back to the safehouse, and while she was aware that she was being treated, it was proving to be a bit too much effort to speak at this juncture. Still, her healing factor was doing its work, and in the end, by the time Uno was done tending to his own wounds, her vision had cleared enough to see him slump down against the sofa she was laying on.
In a better frame of mind, she would have told him to go actually find himself a bed and sleep in it, because he wasnât likely going to heal all that well in such a position, but at just the moment, she couldnât find the words. His won surprised her a little, but as all the events of the last few hours finally caught up with her and she really had the chance to think about what sheâd seen, it was clear enough what he meant and why heâd think so.
âAt least youâre not the only one,â she murmured softly, one of her hands reaching downward and grasping his sleeve. Her fingers curled in the fabric, and she yawned, exhausted. âGuess we can be monsters together then.â If he was what she wasâand he did seem to beâthen in the end, what had been her was now a they. They were the Flowers. They were the monsters. And, to her at least, there was something a little bit reassuring about that.
Stellaâs eyes slid closed, and she too dropped off into sleep.
Almost four months from the incident, and they hadnât exactly been taking it easy. It was true that most people had been pretty content to buy the Governmentâs lie about creating some kind of engine for eventual use on the outside, but not all of them were like that, not by a long shot. There was also the matter of the GHOSTs. These days, it seemed like the entire agency was after them, but fortunately, none of those people were nearly as good as the android girl or that guy who always seemed to succeed in putting bullets in them.
Those two hadnât appeared since the incident, though, and while she never admitted it, that troubled her a little. You didnât just take your best people off something important for no reason, and it bugged her that she didnât know what the reason was. Apparently Prometheus did, but he wasnât always forthcoming with what he knew, and so she had no idea, personally.
The hacker still occasionally spoke to them through monitor screens, usually to notify them if something important or dangerous was happening, and more than once, heâd saved their lives by doing it, so she wasnât exactly in a position to be mad at him for not telling them everything he knew, though admittedly, sometimes she was anyway. Cass was a regular go-between, and nowadays, he trained both of them. Apparently, Unoâs power had once belonged to one of his fellow Seeds, and their eyes were the same color, so it was a very good bet that was his father or something. But apparently Theo, as Cass called him, had been dead for a long time, even longer than her own parents, and so it was impossible to confirm anything without a laboratory, which they didnât have. Personally, she didn't think it mattered much, but if Uno ever decided he wanted to know, sheâd certainly be willing to help him find out.
Sheâd definitely taken the opportunity to make the joke that sheâd been all too correct in calling him Violet from the get-go, a little twist of irony that seemed almost too at home in her life now. But whatever the case had been before, she was embracing this now, as much as she possibly could. The thing was, between Violet and Cass and even Prometheus, things were starting to feel a little like home again. It was a dangerous thought, to be sure, but one she was willing to allow herself, because it kept her going between all the confrontations with GHOST agents and the constant moving around to keep themselves off the radar.
This particular morning, Violet was out, doing she wasnât exactly sure what, but she was expecting him back pretty soon at least. Cass was much more irregular, but heâd called her a few minutes ago and told her heâd be stopping by. So she wasnât surprised when she heard the knock he used to indicate that it was definitely him, but she was surprised at the low murmur of his voice, as though he were talking to someone else. Maybe Uno was back already?
He came into the living room where she was sitting, currently taking the tiny piece of free time to actually read something, and she glanced up with a small smile. âHey.â
He returned it and nodded as well. âMorninâ kiddo. Is Uno around?â
The question immediately puzzled her given what sheâd heard, but she shook her head. âHeâs outâhe should be back soon. Why, is there a problem?â She wasnât sure when it had become her first instinct to think that, but it was at least useful. Stella was always on her guard, now.
Cass grimaced. âNot exactly. It just means Iâm going to have to explain twice. All right. Look. Iâm about to show you something that will probably freak you out a little, but you gotta trust me here, okay?â Stellaâs brows drew together, but she nodded slowly, marking her place in the book and setting it aside.
âAll right. You can come in now.â He stepped slightly to the side of the doorway, and what appeared to be a young woman stepped through. OnlyâŠ
âCass? What is Project Zero doing in our safehouse?â
For several days following the incident, the publicâs reaction had been rather explosive, but then that was hardly shocking, considering what they had been shown. Somehow, though, Helena had managed to calm most of it, and the average citizen was now thoroughly convinced that the government was working very hard on a massive engine to purify the air and water supplies outside the domes, and that the garden in Central was in fact a prototype for exactly that project. The lie fit together so smoothly that it was much more easy to swallow than the truth, and so even the most skeptical of people generally chose to believe it.
Of course, the government was doing no such thing, and she knew this quite well, given that it was exactly the sort of project she and Dietrich were perfect for. But they had been given no directive to work on it, and so sheâd occupied herself with overseeing the latter stages of the biomechanical police force that had begun with Crux. Currently, he was the only one, but development was reaching a point where it was probably not going to be the case for very much longer. Dietrich had performed the actual implantations and adjustments that allowed the man to hook up to the network, and sheâd assisted with the rebuilding of his organic parts, but the truth was theyâd both felt Solomonâs lack very clearly in those moments. No doubt they were the best living people at what they did, but⊠she wondered, sometimes, what Solomon would have done in their place. It was a worry that she did not choose to share with her friend.
All of a sudden, Dietrichâs deskbound HUD lit up, projecting around the now standing figure of the scientist what appeared to be an array of⊠cards? Ilyana set her jacket down over the back of her chair and approached them where they revolved around his still figure. Upon closer examination, they proved to be tarot cards of all things.
âThis reminds me of summers with my grandmother,â she said quietly. Summers with her brother, too. Her grandmother had been rather old-fashioned, a big believer in fate and destiny and chance, and had shown both Ilyana and Mikhail how to read the tarot, which was supposed to be some primitive method of divination. As with everything of the sort, she hardly believed a word of it now, but if Dietrich was appropriating them for some reason, she could be confident that it had nothing to do with trying to predict the future.
âYou can read them?â he asked, a faint note of surprise underlying his tone, and she nodded. Tilting his head slightly to the side, Dietrich reached out and touched one of them as it went by, flicking his fingers outward to enlarge it. She was able to see that the face of the card was something more intricate than it first appeared. It would seem that code was written into them. Well, that made a little more sense. Solomon and Dietrich had used to play games with one another like thisâthey would put encrypted information with a specific meaning into a seemingly-mundane image. It wasnât only computer processing power that was needed to decipher something like thatâit was creativity and unconventional thinking as well. Usually the image itself was a clue.
The card he had enlarged held a skull on it, and she knew immediately which one it was, though it was quite likely that almost nobody else in the Domes wouldâsuch oddities had disappeared into history long ago. If Ilyanaâs grandmother hadnât been so strange, she would have had no idea what she was looking at. âDeath,â she said, and it was his turn to nod, encouraging her to go on. âWell, it doesnât usually mean âdeathâ in the common sense. The card is supposed to represent the ending of somethingâloss, conclusion, sadness. It can also stand for some kind of transition, moving from one state to another.â
âVery good. How about this one?â Dietrich moved Death to the side and drew forth another. This one depicted lightning crashing into a building.
âThe Tower,â Ilyana replied. âA sudden realization of something catastrophic. The destruction of old illusions in favor of new, harsh truth. Crisis of identity. Itâs reversed, though, so thereâs the suggestion that it might just end for the better. Dietrich⊠these represent people, donât they?â
He turned to look at her, and the light in his eyes was one he almost hadnât had since they were children. She knew she was rightâthat light was the one he had when he felt he was in the middle of some grand puzzle, and he was enraptured in the solving of it. âThat is my hypothesis as well. These were delivered to me this morning, from an unknown location, entirely off the Network. Some of them contain data of mine, that I have been keeping away from anyone else, which means that the party responsible has effectively hacked my encryptions.â While it was true that a mind or computer of sufficient computational ability, like Sollaâs, could access the files Dietrich kept on the network, they were encrypted so as to be impossible for someone so literally-minded to understand. Even Ilyana, who knew him so well, couldnât always make sense of his encryptions, which meant that whomever had sent him this data was a genius on par with Dietrich himself.
It didnât take long for Ilyana to abandon all thought of further progress today as well, and she stepped into the circle of cards with him. âWell⊠what have you figured out so far?â
Dietrich waved a hand, and the cards shifted positions, grouping themselves. âThey were sent to me first in groups, and then a full reading was given. These were the groups.â She could see that Death was associated with the Devil, and then there was a trioâThe Emperor floated slightly above the Empress and the Hierophant. The Chariot and Strength were apart from them, but close by. Justice and The Hermit were paired, but the Tower seemed to oscillate between that location and where Death was. Apart from the rest, but still in the picture, were the Magician and the Star.
âI believe The Star was the most obvious clue, because it links linguistically. If we assume that it represents Stella Iaret, then it follows fairly directly that the Magician is Uno Summus. That gives us a clear enough idea of what the reading is supposed to be about. The others are a bit harder, but I think I know what most of them are. The biggest clue for them was the associated meanings of the cards, and the data I found in Death.â
âWhat data was that?â she asked, fixing her eyes on the card in question.
âCruxâs real memories.â
âBut not everything that wants to cease is human.â
Three months earlierâŠ
Darcia stood on the roof of one of the tallest buildings in Specter. It had been about two weeks since the incident, and she could tell immediately that short of someone destroying her memory entirely, she was never going to be able to forget what had happened there. She didnât even know what the results were. Medically, it should have been the case that her partner survived, but there could always be complications, human error, things of that nature. The thought that he could be dead was a constant ache, making it feel as though something in her chest was hollowed-out and empty. She didnât understand it, and she wondered if she even wanted it. Things would be so much better if she had no emotionsâshe would simply have followed the Supreme General back to Central and been decommissioned without complaint.
But now⊠she could not decide if that was what she wanted. Part of her, strangely, did want that. She wanted the pain, the hurt in her heart, to go away. She wanted all of the things that she could not comprehend to leave her alone. She wanted all of the memories to begone, or at least, to be the kind of thing that would feel nothing at all upon recollecting them.
Even thought this was definitely true of part of her⊠the other part was different. She had fought and subdued every government agent sent to retrieve her, though she had killed none of them. She didnât want to do that either, and the idea of taking a life now was repugnant to her. Because every time she could, every time her logic informed her that it was the most expedient option⊠she just saw him again, and she couldnât do it.
âHe promised,â she said softly, and only to herself, for there was nobody else up here. He had promised her he would continue to live. And she believed in him, so the thought that he was dead never lasted long in her. But the thought that she should be was more persistent. None of those agents that had come after her had been able to do anything. Not even when they used the highest-level override she knew the government had. There was nothingâno response in her systems at all. It was as though that inch, that fraction she had made herself move even when overwritten, had somehow broken the hold of her obedience protocols entirely.
She didnât know what she was anymore. Or if she was anything at all. She didnât even know if the fall she planned to take when she jumped from this roof would kill her or not. But stillâŠ
âHey.â Her foot was an inch from the ledge when a voice stopped her. She turned slightly, already recognizing it as belonging to perhaps the only person alive who might just know more about her than she did.
âBefore you decide to do that, thereâs someone you should see.â
âAnd not every human is ready to die.â
Stella had been only barely cognizant for most of the trip back to the safehouse, and while she was aware that she was being treated, it was proving to be a bit too much effort to speak at this juncture. Still, her healing factor was doing its work, and in the end, by the time Uno was done tending to his own wounds, her vision had cleared enough to see him slump down against the sofa she was laying on.
In a better frame of mind, she would have told him to go actually find himself a bed and sleep in it, because he wasnât likely going to heal all that well in such a position, but at just the moment, she couldnât find the words. His won surprised her a little, but as all the events of the last few hours finally caught up with her and she really had the chance to think about what sheâd seen, it was clear enough what he meant and why heâd think so.
âAt least youâre not the only one,â she murmured softly, one of her hands reaching downward and grasping his sleeve. Her fingers curled in the fabric, and she yawned, exhausted. âGuess we can be monsters together then.â If he was what she wasâand he did seem to beâthen in the end, what had been her was now a they. They were the Flowers. They were the monsters. And, to her at least, there was something a little bit reassuring about that.
Stellaâs eyes slid closed, and she too dropped off into sleep.
Almost four months from the incident, and they hadnât exactly been taking it easy. It was true that most people had been pretty content to buy the Governmentâs lie about creating some kind of engine for eventual use on the outside, but not all of them were like that, not by a long shot. There was also the matter of the GHOSTs. These days, it seemed like the entire agency was after them, but fortunately, none of those people were nearly as good as the android girl or that guy who always seemed to succeed in putting bullets in them.
Those two hadnât appeared since the incident, though, and while she never admitted it, that troubled her a little. You didnât just take your best people off something important for no reason, and it bugged her that she didnât know what the reason was. Apparently Prometheus did, but he wasnât always forthcoming with what he knew, and so she had no idea, personally.
The hacker still occasionally spoke to them through monitor screens, usually to notify them if something important or dangerous was happening, and more than once, heâd saved their lives by doing it, so she wasnât exactly in a position to be mad at him for not telling them everything he knew, though admittedly, sometimes she was anyway. Cass was a regular go-between, and nowadays, he trained both of them. Apparently, Unoâs power had once belonged to one of his fellow Seeds, and their eyes were the same color, so it was a very good bet that was his father or something. But apparently Theo, as Cass called him, had been dead for a long time, even longer than her own parents, and so it was impossible to confirm anything without a laboratory, which they didnât have. Personally, she didn't think it mattered much, but if Uno ever decided he wanted to know, sheâd certainly be willing to help him find out.
Sheâd definitely taken the opportunity to make the joke that sheâd been all too correct in calling him Violet from the get-go, a little twist of irony that seemed almost too at home in her life now. But whatever the case had been before, she was embracing this now, as much as she possibly could. The thing was, between Violet and Cass and even Prometheus, things were starting to feel a little like home again. It was a dangerous thought, to be sure, but one she was willing to allow herself, because it kept her going between all the confrontations with GHOST agents and the constant moving around to keep themselves off the radar.
This particular morning, Violet was out, doing she wasnât exactly sure what, but she was expecting him back pretty soon at least. Cass was much more irregular, but heâd called her a few minutes ago and told her heâd be stopping by. So she wasnât surprised when she heard the knock he used to indicate that it was definitely him, but she was surprised at the low murmur of his voice, as though he were talking to someone else. Maybe Uno was back already?
He came into the living room where she was sitting, currently taking the tiny piece of free time to actually read something, and she glanced up with a small smile. âHey.â
He returned it and nodded as well. âMorninâ kiddo. Is Uno around?â
The question immediately puzzled her given what sheâd heard, but she shook her head. âHeâs outâhe should be back soon. Why, is there a problem?â She wasnât sure when it had become her first instinct to think that, but it was at least useful. Stella was always on her guard, now.
Cass grimaced. âNot exactly. It just means Iâm going to have to explain twice. All right. Look. Iâm about to show you something that will probably freak you out a little, but you gotta trust me here, okay?â Stellaâs brows drew together, but she nodded slowly, marking her place in the book and setting it aside.
âAll right. You can come in now.â He stepped slightly to the side of the doorway, and what appeared to be a young woman stepped through. OnlyâŠ
âCass? What is Project Zero doing in our safehouse?â