“Raised up,” Natalie said. “Is that related to social class?”

The boy’s eyes went wide, as he took a second or two to try to wrap his head around the words.

“I’ll rephrase. Is it about power, family status, rank?”

“Rank. My family… no wealth. No rank. Never fortune. My patron… fortune. Is taken-right of those above to rise-up those below.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Responsibility, I think,” Kamil volunteered.

The boy nodded. He stole looks at Kamil, eyes traveling up and down arms and across Kamil’s face until he realized the person he was looking at was looking back. “I have father, mother, urm, father I carry pen for.”

“How did they pick you?” she asked, leaning forward.

“Urm… random? Is luck. I have chance and cannot waste. Heavy… to carry?”

“It’s a burden.”

“Yes.”

“Expectations. From your parents and family?”

“Yes.”

“I know what that’s like,” she said. “I’m grown up, I earn good money, I studied hard and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Now I help write laws. But my parents? Not happy yet. I’ve carried that burden for a long time. I might always.”

“That’s their failure, not yours,” the boy said, with all of the innocence and brazenness of youth. It seemed to shock Ms. Matteson into a rare smile. “Oh. I should go. Should I give word you have need—for anything?”

He’d stumbled through that last sentence.

“No need, we’re well taken care of,” Kamil told the boy.

He watched the boy duck and jog off. That there was a gap in the torrent of attention might have been a failure in the team that was managing them. He could imagine another room or a hallway where distractions, people with food, and young people with questions were all ready for someone to send through to them, to distract and keep them from wondering where Breakthrough was.

He checked his watch, heavy on his wrist, and estimated it had been about an hour and a half that they’d been here, waiting for their escort to the prison.

It had started with the inital foray, talking to diplomats, meeting Luis and Yosef, and promising exchanges of ideas. Parahuman knowledge for parahuman knowledge. He was an advisor to the police and an ex-PRT Director, so he knew enough that he could make offers.

From there, the more political maneuvering. Not his specialty. Jeanne Wynn had armed him with a few things. There was talk of opening trade, something about a ‘textile pathway’, and from the time those specific words had left his mouth, a lot of unfriendly people had started acting more friendly.

Yosef hadn’t been among them.