Another blaring beep and the treadmill speeds up again. Sweat pours down her back in sheets. She hasn’t been getting sleep. She’s been too busy with Grantyde. She can’t keep running. She can’t.

Her legs buckle. She slams face-first onto the treadmill and skids off it into a crumpled heap on the concrete floor. The electrodes and the breathing hose they’ve stuck to her wilt like snipped stems. Her heart hammers in her ears. A burning in her throat. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. You’ll go to sleep hungry if you’re sick. Don’t—

The big Maekyonite they call Draik shoves the shock prod against her, and she’s sick.

“Gawdammid, Draik.” Heavy footsteps in her ears as she lies in burning agony on the floor. “Chahavtaduthatfur?”

“Awperant kindishning. Nodmai aidia. Blaimthi aighedz.” The toe of Drake’s book nudges her. “Giddup, Beethirdywon.”

Her legs wobble, but she’s too exhausted to do anything but bend her knees. They won’t support her weight.

“Awrite.” Draik smacks his lips. “Hidderwitha hoaz.”

Sykora hates the goddamn hoaz so goddamn much that for a moment before she comes to her senses she’s about to flash them and say no hoaz. But she shuts up, and the icy blast of water comes for her. She screams as its force rolls her onto her back.

They wash the sweat and the sick off her and strap her onto the hard plastic gurney. She struggles to stay conscious as the harsh pale lights pass her by.

Back to her horrible cell. Shivering and deprived. She lies on the bars and feels the first of the hunger pangs hit. The punishment for her earlier weakness. It always keeps her up, the hunger. She does her best to ignore it. She thinks about the Pike, and her cabin and the smooth song of the sweep. She thinks about her friends. But a lance of sorrow accompanies their faces now, sharper every time. The enormity of her loss salts the wound they used to soothe.

She thinks about Grantyde instead. The sooner she sleeps, the sooner she’ll see him.

And the acid tragedy subsides, and she sleeps.

Her Maekyonite has brought something with him tonight. It looks like a Strala, but with a whole avenue of strings and a wider, deeper body. “Thizziza geedar.” He taps his big, thick knuckle against it and brings out an acoustic woody sound. “Un instroomand.”

“Gee-dar,” she says. “Instroomand.” It makes him smile when she repeats him, which shows his dimples, which makes her smile.

“Yezmam.” He flips something out of his wrist. A little plastic chip. He brings it down across the strings, summoning a gorgeous silvery chord. “Meusik. Yinno meusik?”

Her ears fan out; her stomach does a backflip. That planchette he’s using. It’s the perfect size for the vent screws.

“Geedar,” she murmurs. “Meusik.”

“Uh huh. Yuhwanna hira song?”

She nods. The excitement at her new objective mingles with the excitement she can’t ignore at the idea of this big hunky behemoth playing her some of that music that she’s only ever heard muffled.

He strums the little piece of salvation against his instroomand and sings.

The music is like a physical pull, tugging her closer to him. His voice is so beautiful. A wounded, faded thing, a physicalization of all the hurt and all the gentleness at the same time.

When he’s finished, she whoops and cheers and applauds, and the look on his face, of surprised happiness, just about rips her heart out and engraves itself on the surface.

She has to keep him. This complicates an already-complicated escape so brutally, but she needs this beautiful alien and his music in her life. She can’t leave him behind or let him die.

She wonders how he’ll look in a Black Pike uniform. She wonders if he’ll like stekkai. She wonders how he’ll handle zero gravity without a tail. She wonders what he tastes like. 

She can’t have these thoughts about her jailer. She’s forgetting why he’s here, the life he’s keeping her from. He is being kind, and she’s latching onto that kindness. That’s not attraction or love; that’s weakness.

He’s yours. Look at it like that. He’s your prize for escaping. The tables will turn, and the jailer will be the prisoner. Let that be fuel for you. Be vicious. Be the Princess you were trained to be.

She taps the glass. “Grantyde hand?”

“Whaddyu mean?”

“Grantyde hand. Uh.” This language is so clumsy on her tongue, like she’s spitting out gravel. “Meusik instroomand.”

“Oh.” He holds the planchette up. “Thazza pik.”

“Pik.” Silly little name for a crucial little thing. She finds the sample drawer. They put little things through this; hand-puzzles and hard candy incentives. She pushes the handle out to put the chute on his side. “Pik.”

Wariness on his face. He mumbles something. Not so fast, Maekyonite. Your mind isn’t your own any longer.

Will he panic at this? Will he understand what’s happening?

“Grantyde,” she says. Flash. “Hand Batty pik.”

The dark hair along his neck moves with his nervous swallow. He looks at the pik in his hand. Sykora’s heart gallops as he places it in the drawer. With a clack, it’s hers.

A moment of quiet panic as she looks into his eyes. Is there an understanding there of what just happened to him? Will she need to intervene? She can compel him to stop. She knows the word. Then she can unscrew the vent while he’s frozen and make her way out there and—

And what? Kill him? Rip out Grantyde’s golden throat? Can she bring herself to do that?

He scratches his neck. “Thairyago,” he says, and there’s a lightness there, a calm she doesn’t think he’s good enough to fake. “Cand exackly fit the geedar, but…”

“Pik.” She climbs the scaffold, holding it up to the light, giddy with her prize and with the revelation that she can spare him, that he must not understand what the compulsion has done. Perhaps his sweet, simple alien mind thinks it was his idea. “Pik pik pik. Oh, it’s fucking perfect.”

“Yu hyde that thing, rite? Maybiuh… behind that, maybi.”

Hyde. That’s his name. It’s also a word? She follows his finger to the poster. Hyde. Hide?

“Hyde,” she says, and flashes him. Maybe he’ll understand this. “Hyde pik. Hyde, Grantyde. Don’t fucking tell anyone about this. You understand?”

“Uh. Ryde. Izzackly.” Her Maekyonite stands and sticks the geedar under his arm. “Okay, Batty. Aigodda go now.” He points at the door. “Godda go hoam soon.”

“Go hoam soon.” She forces her racing mind to understand. “Hoam.”

He chatters happily in reply. She crawls off the scaffold and approaches, and his words trail off as she rubs up against the barricade.

“Grantyde,” she whispers. “Hoam. That’s home, isn’t it, Grantyde? You still think this is your home.”

The way he looks at her closes a sweet, tight fist in her stomach. He doesn’t just want her. He’s desperate for her.

“I’ll give you a better one,” she says. “A proper home. You and that music of yours don’t belong on this rock. I have so much to show you. And I think you’ll hate me for it for a while. But for all I take, I’ll give you so much. My company. My mercy.” His eyes are following the swaying of her hips. And despite the naked deprivation and the hunger and the cold, it pulls a smile across her face, that attention. “My maidenhood.”

He smiles uncomprehendingly.

“Do you want to take my virginity, Grantyde?” She presses against the glass. “I think you do. I think I’ll give it to you.”

She points at him. The twinging flicker of compulsion lights up behind her eyes. “Grantyde. Batty. Hoam.”

His jaw flexes. His brow furrows. She holds her breath. Did it work?

He turns his geedar over and roots around in its sound hole. She sees the thing he pulls out, and her breath catches and holds.

A computer. He smuggled a computer in. And he’s showing it to her. Is the compulsion working? Is he going to give it to her?

“Kinyew, uh. Aneedataik a pickshur ofya. Pickshur.” He makes a funny clicking noise with his tongue. “Umtryna bia wisslebloar hir, nod stardupin aylian onliphanz. Innifyir standnlyke that, itz, uh…”

She imitates his clicking noise. He shakes his head and makes a shooing motion at her. She takes a step back. He raises the computer.

A camera. He’s taking pictures of her. Maybe he’s trying to take them somewhere, to send them to someone. To get her out? Maybe he understands enough of her words that the compulsion is working.

He babbles companionably as he fiddles with his tablet. It’s communicator-sized in his hand. All the icons on its touch screen. It looks quite multipurpose. Surely it has some kind of connectivity. Some sort of communication. Or if not, she can use it as a harness into their systems, as soon as she gets into his security room.

The half-formed shards he’s been slipping her are gradually finding form.

“Okay. No idia whogetz theaz or how aye proov thairnot feik.” Grantyde crouches down and fixes her with a look of such care that threatens to pull a tear from her eye. “But issa start.”

“Issa start,” she repeats, and thinks of escape, and her life with him as her prized possession, and being able to hear that beautiful voice any time she likes. “Hoam.”

He nods and stands. And then he’s gone.

She returns to her hard metal bed. She hums his song to herself.

“Ind azai wunder wairyuare,” she whispers, in his nonsense syllables. “Aymso loansum ai cud crai.”

***

Sykora giggles at Grantyde’s gobsmacked expression as he looks up at the galleon’s rigging. Framed and flapping sails surround them.

Stretching across the horizon is a line of similar ships, chopping up and down with the simulated waves. Across an expanse of water, a rival fleet exchanges thunderous cannon fire. The crackle of flames, the roar of the waves, the pre-recorded cries of the crew. It’s quite evocative if you don’t look too hard at the low-resolution horizon.

Director Wex—

[Threat level: Unknown, presume low.]

[Control Vector: Clearly sheltered and unaccustomed to dealing with royalty. If you can coax her into overconfidence, she might commit a useful faux pas that will terrify Reka into obedient recompense.]

[Contingency: Amadari females’ crests are sensitive. Apply sharp pressure to discompose, then disable or destroy via strangulation.]

—unsaddles the wand microphone from the side of the daemon housing and speaks into it.

“Are you here, Captain?”

A Taiikari woman in heavy leathers stomps onto the deck, her face sooty. A tricorne, the distant ancestor of Sykora’s, rests under her arm.

“Right here, God,” she says. Sykora squints at her, and scoffs in recognition. That’s Rovakt of Kyre, one of the greatest Gravitas players of the last generation. Vora’s shown Sykora reels of some of Rovakt’s games, whispering about the woman’s genius over her shoulder. In the footage she’s in a comfortable jumper, nursing an herbal tea, and certainly not wearing a brace of Pre-Vindication pistols.

“Show me the game state, if you would,” says Wex.

A nearby deck splinters under the whistling impact of a cannonball. “Kind of in the middle of something, God.”

Wex titters. “The hazards of dilated time. A coincidence that we were here during its quest runtime. Let’s just…”

She lifts the daemon off the plinth. The scene vanishes back to a plain paperwhite wall. “And now we’re letting it run at full speed for a moment, aaaand…” She places it back down.

They’re back on the same deck, blood and bodies now scattered across it, lined up in rows and under heavy canvas sheets. A crew of indistinct mannequin shapes clamber across the vessel, patching holes.

“The crew is new,” Wex says. “We used to just have phantom runtimes. Much better for verisimilitude, wouldn’t you say.” She pulls the microphone out again. “Captain Rovakt. Gamestate.”

Rovakt’s daemon emerges from quarters with a hexagonal Gravitas board, which she places on the deck. The pieces on it stay stuck fast as she places it onto the blood-slick and groaning deck. “There,” she says. “Burgundy to move.”

Wex sinks to a knee, eye-level with the board. “Whoever used this demo unit last was hopeless. Yes, they were.” She looks up with a wry smile. “Madame Vorakaia, your face just lit up.” She holds the microphone out. “Would you care to make the next move?”

“Oh, I—pardon me. I’m fine.” Vora takes a step away. “I just enjoy Gravitas very much.”

Sykora hides a grin behind her hand. Vora normally has an excellent poker face, to use the term she learned from the Maekyonite Amarillo Slim. But the majordomo can’t disguise how star-struck she is to be facing Rovakt’s digital ghost. Sykora nudges her. “Go on, Vora.”

“Uhhh.” Vora accepts the microphone. “Carrier onto J6.”

The piece slots itself across the board and settles. The woman drags a barrel of gunpowder over and perches on it, her eyes flitting across the table with uncanny speed. “Give me an outrunner,” she says. “Something fast. A cutter. And I’ll answer this little game.”

Wex pops the statue off the plinth and hands it to Sakko. “As you can see, noble shareholders, this generation of NVI intelligence can optimize its own rewards. No simulation state calculations required.” She’s so smug that Sykora sees the twitch of her preening instinct kick in and suppress. “Rovakt will automatically conceive of a proper reward that balances simulation state integrity with appropriate stimulus. We’re quite distant from the era of discretely calculating how many cannons to give her along with our move input.”

“This is all very interesting,” says Grantyde, with hard-won patience in his voice.

“Very interesting.” Vora’s eyes are lit up.

“But we need the K line specifically,” he continues. “I understand if K-77 is a rarity. Can you show us a K-86?”

“Majesty.” Wex clicks her beak. “I seem to have been unclear. This is a K-86. You just saw it. The 77 is a more rudimentary version of Captain Rovakt and her fleet.”

“Ks are Gravitas players?” Sykora’s tail wraps around to her front, ready for chewing. “We were sent all this way for a Gravitas program?” Grantyde gently tucks her tail back where it was. She gratefully bumps him with her hip.

“It is a highly regarded Gravitas program.” That’s their ridiculous Marquess hostess, piping in.

[Threat level: Low]

[Control Vector: Desperate to please.]

[Contingency: Reka is a fifth-ring spear-fighter with a passing knowledge of Taiikarizia’i. She will be easily dispatched.]

“We set the standard in the firmament, I assure you.”

Sykora and her husband share a look. She finds a shine of wary suspicion in his dark eyes and gives it a subtle, agreeing nod.

“The serial number,” she says. “Is there truly no way of tracking it?”

Wex glances past the group. Sykora makes no sign she’s watching, but she knows her assistant is back there. The Amadari refocuses on Sykora. “There might be. I’ll go to the archives myself and review the files. If there’s something to be found, I’m sure it’ll be there for the finding. Sakko can continue the tour for you.”

Sykora murmurs in English. “Trickery, husband.”

He nods. “Verily.”

“No.” Sykora returns to Taiikari. “Pardon me, Director, but no. I’ll be accompanying you to your office and going over this file with you.”

“Really, Majesty.” Wex’s responding titter is laced with nerve. “It’s going to be a dull affair. Why don’t you remain with your retinue and take in the facility?”

“Director.” Sykora applies her least safe smile. “We have not known one another very long, and I can tell you are more used to the world of industry than that of nobility. So I will treat this as an educational moment.”

She folds her hands behind her back and draws herself up to her full height.

“If a Void Princess is made to insist,” she says, “someone has made a grave mistake.”