I wanted to have an answer, because I suspected Vista was being genuine. She had that stripe of heroism in her that I really respected. There were people who needed to be dragged into goodness, who were good except for, or who were good because. And that except for could be a vice or a bad thing they’d once done. The because could be a justification, a motivation. People who were heroes except they’d killed a person, who were heroes except for the fact they did drugs. Who were heroes because it was the fastest, safest way to make money. Many risked falling from the path, getting dragged down, or finding themselves in water so muddy that ‘heroism’ wasn’t much more than a label. And then there were the genuine heroes, who could go through hell, be given any temptation, and they would always gravitate toward a baseline of doing what was lawful, right, and moral.

I wasn’t about to lay claim to being genuine, but I was pretty sure Vista could. And part and parcel of that was that if I asked her for something as a friend and colleague, then she would go out of her way to do it. Even while hurt and mending.

As Vista broke the hug, I turned my back to the conference room, leaning against a table piled with rolled up concept sketches. The nice thing about these offworld installations was that they often had an amazing view. This place, as gray as it was, was up there. What had come up here as a rough equivalent to tall grass had matted, grown in dense, and curled into itself until it looked like lichen. The snowfall hadn’t really done anything to wipe it out or flatten, it, only gave it a look like it had been doused in powdered sugar.

“Any biokinetics or bio tinkers in the prison right now?” I asked.

Vista turned my way. I could see her eyes and eyebrows vaguely through the textured glass of her visor. Eyebrows up, the eye closest to me wide.

“No,” she said. “Why?”

I shook my head.

“Doesn’t seem like something you’d ask.”

This wasn’t easy.

“For Sveta. Just… considering options.”

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s…”

“Not an easy thing to bring up,” I said.

“Yeah, that.”

“I want a good outcome for her.”

“Even though she’s kind of playing a role in cutting you out, right now? Not to poke at the wound, but…”

You really suck at changing topics and distracting, I thought. But I’d raised the line of conversation and of course she’d have questions.

“If she came out of that conference room, and they said they wanted me off the team, and that she was a major voice arguing for it, I’d still want good things for her.”

“They’re not going to do that, Vicky.”

“I’m just saying, worst-case scenario—”