Any nerve she’d worked up deflated like a bad soufflé. Luciana was right. She had no idea what she was doing and no real allies with any power or knowledge of the system who might back her up.

“Well, this sure is stressful,” said Luciana, standing to leave. “How much longer are they going to keep you here?”

“I don’t know. I imagine they’ll tell me I have to meet with the general in an hour, then all go home and forget to tell me, and I’ll clock out around midnight.”

Luciana forced a wan smile. “Well, want to come over and play video games tomorrow?”

Cora brightened, at first relieved at the prospect of socialization, at the gesture toward a return to normalcy. Shouldn’t this whole mess have brought them closer together, instead of the opposite? After all, there had been this massive part of Luciana’s life that had up until recently remained hidden, and now it could be something they shared, if they could get past the betrayal that had precipitated that part of Luciana’s life coming to light in the first place.

A betrayal that Luciana still hadn’t admitted to.

“I can’t,” said Cora. “I think they want me in here tomorrow to give me the talking-to they didn’t give me today.”

“Oh, okay,” said Luciana. “Well, change your mind, let me know?”

“Sure,” said Cora, mechanically turning back to CNN, which had cut to a commercial break. What she needed was a person to confide in, and paradoxically Luciana was the last person on Earth she could do that with.

* * *

Cora didn’t hear from Ampersand at all that day, or the next day, and she was starting to feel very, very worried. The only thing that was keeping her from flying into a panic was the fact that their empathic bond was still functional, and while she couldn’t sense much, at least she wasn’t sensing wild despair or terror. If anything, it felt like single-focused determination, too preoccupied to be upset.

One person she did hear from was a producer named Laurel Sullivan for The Hot Seat with Satomi Mack on MSNBC, apparently a result of her position at ROSA being leaked to the press. Not knowing what else to do, she told Sullivan she couldn’t talk to the press at this time.

More worrisome, however, was that she didn’t hear from Kaveh, either. She tried calling his burner several times, under strict instruction that this was the only way she would get in contact with him. Finally, on Sunday night, she got one single text from him:

stage one Operation: Probably a Huge

Mistake but Fuck It success! I did not

die and the floor is mostly clean E.

much more coherent, returning in the

morning, hear from &?

She responded: No :-(

Ten minutes later, she got a response: Imk if you do!!!