I often wonder about the impact a small group of very irritated people can have on the course of events.

- Tasjadre Ra Novo, Jesa Sagoja: Zhetam Asade

Pain.

It was white-hot, searing, an amorphous mass of pure agony. There was no beginning or end to it. It simply was, and it was everything.

Well, not quite everything. There was an awareness of the pain, so surely the awareness was separate? Distinct? The awareness tried being something apart from the pain for a little while, testing out the experience. It hurt, but there was more here than just the agony after all - oh, yes, much more. Being its own entity felt familiar, somehow, and gave it pause. There was experience, memory, an idea of time that distinguished the past from the present.

She was a being - and she was a She, as it happens. The mass of memory was overwhelming, enthralling, and the pain was beginning to seem less all-encompassing than it had at first. What else lay buried in there? She prodded tentatively at it once more, examining snippets of it.

She was Jackie. Jacquelyn Hicks. Doctor Jacquelyn Hicks, Ph.D. - thank you very much. She had a few names, a couple of titles, and, curiously, a sense of indignation about their use. She had preferences, feelings - emotions.

The intensity was uncomfortable, and she tried to pull back. Every memory she recalled seemed to drag two more with it, and the rush of expanded awareness was beginning to escape her control. She couldn’t stop being more. There was no way to get her arms around - oh, and now it seemed that she had a body.

The unyielding reality of physical existence slammed into her, mercilessly solid and kinetic. The pain she thought she knew, that pure flickering candle, was drowned out in the maelstrom of sensation.

She remembered everything at once, a lifetime flooding back into her in the space of a heartbeat. Dazed, reeling, she felt it all unspool back into her until she was left with only one memory at the forefront.

The final memory, the one that undid the rest.

Floating in the dark, formless, the void raking into her with endless questions and stretching the fabric of her being until it tore. Slow, agonizing, even as she told it what it wanted to know. When the questions were answered to its satisfaction, however, the nightmare did not end. It had a purpose in mind for her as well. There was no bargaining with it; the void took her voice away when it had no further use for it.

Pain, and she could not scream. Fire and ice scraping against her bones, and she could not scream. A rough invasion of every inch of what she had called her self, profane and uncaring, and she could not scream.

Her eyes snapped open, and the blinding, stabbing pain of the light was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, sharp-edged and wholly opposite to the void. She was herself again, corporeal and whole. Finally, she could scream.

“Any change?” Jesse asked, sitting up straight. He had managed to catch a fitful quarter-hour of sleep against one of the control room’s support pillars, sidelined by his inability to safely draw close to Jackie or the tablet - although nobody was getting close to the tablet, preferring to give the potentially dangerous device a wide berth until they knew more.

Mark gave him a noncommittal shrug and sat beside him. “She’s asleep,” he said. “Gusje is with her. She didn’t say anything, just sort of stared at the wall while we splinted up her arm. I’m worried she might have nerve damage or something from the break, she barely reacted when we set the bone.”

“Maybe,” Jesse said. “However she’s hurt, we’ll have to hope the asolan is enough.”

“You don’t sound confident,” Mark said. “You think it won’t be?”

Jesse shook his head, leaning back against the pillar. “I think it’ll probably do fine with the injuries to her arm,” he said. “I worry about the rest, though. Adjusting to Jes was difficult, and she was trying to make it easier on me. From what Gusje said it doesn’t sound like Tija cared if she hurt them.” He gave Mark a level look, grim-faced. “The asolan can only do so much, especially if she’s still got active script in her.”

“You don’t think Jackie’s still got a stowaway, do you?” Mark asked. “I thought that was the whole point of breaking her arm.”

A squad of halberdiers marched past on their way up the elevator, dipping their pikes in acknowledgement as they passed by the two seated men. Jesse raised a hand in return, frowning, then let it drop down against his knee.

“It’s hard to say,” he replied. “Tija proves that breaking a script doesn’t necessarily kill it. There could be remnants left over, with unpredictable effects.”

“Shit,” Mark observed. “I guess we’ll have to wait until she wakes up again to know. Worst case scenario, we could always see if weakening the scripts affecting her is enough to let Maja fix the rest.” Jesse looked away, and Mark peered at him. “You don’t like that idea,” he said.

“I think we should hold off until we know more,” Jesse said. “Maja might have other priorities where Tija is concerned.”

Mark gave him a wondering look. “Wow,” he remarked. “I just realized that you might trust her even less than I do.”

“Maja isn’t trustworthy,” Jesse said firmly. “She might be predictable, in some circumstances, but not trustworthy. That’s a human trait, and we shouldn’t think of her like that. I wouldn’t bet on her having any sort of morality that we’d recognize at all, aside from her hardcoded directive to help Gusje.”

“That’s pretty harsh,” Mark observed. “Not that I especially disagree, I had just sort of thought I was the odd man out where she was concerned.”

Jesse shrugged. “We need her,” he said. “And she needs us, for the moment. I don’t think we have to worry about her until that changes.”

“And when it does?” Mark asked.

Jesse gave him a humorless smile. “We should probably have some contingencies,” he said. “Although I’m not really sure what those would look like.”

“I’m sure we’ll think-” Mark began, breaking off when he saw Arjun walking toward them. He gave Jesse a nudge, and both men rose to their feet.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked.

“She’s awake again,” Arjun said, looking weary. “And she seems to have settled down somewhat. I thought you two would want to know.”

Mark clapped Arjun on the shoulder and smiled. “Thanks for letting us know, doc,” he said. “How is she?”

Arjun grimaced and waggled his hand. “Like I said, she’s settled down a bit. I haven’t seen any indication that she’s suffering from lingering script effects either. Still, she’s…” He trailed off, shrugging. “You should just come and talk to her.”

They walked over to the windows, where some sheets of cloth had been raised to screen an area from view. Jackie was sitting up, talking with Gusje in low tones as they approached. She gave them a wan smile.

“Hey, guys,” she said. “What’s up?”

Mark lowered himself to sit beside her. “You tell us,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugged, the motion hampered by the makeshift sling holding her arm. “Eh, can’t complain,” she said, the ghost of a smile flitting over her lips. “Kind of a rough morning.”

“How’s the arm?” Jesse asked.

She wiggled her fingertips experimentally, wincing. “I mean, it’s broken,” she said. “But it seems like it’s set and Arjun found me some pain meds. I think the asolan might be doing something in that respect too, it’s hard to say.”

Jesse sat on the floor beside her. “And the rest?” he asked softly.

Her smile didn’t fade, but there was a momentary hitch in her movements. “I’m fine,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of it. What I do remember wasn’t - um. I’m not going to sugar it up, it was fucking horrible.” She shook her head. “Tija is totally unhinged. How much did Gusje tell you?”

“We got the general idea,” Jesse said. “Angry, grieving.”

“That’s a mild way of saying it. She was hell-bent on revenge against her sister for the attack,” Jackie said. “Like a particularly goal-oriented hurricane. She wasn’t very coherent, and she didn’t like it when I asked questions. She just wanted to know about the tablet, how it stored data, how the processor worked.” She reached down and took a drink from a cup of water resting on the floor beside her. Jesse noticed a tremor in her hand; she sipped and quickly set the cup down before folding her hands in her lap.

“She learned what she needed to know, at least enough of it, but she didn’t let me go. She was really losing it by that point. I wasn’t doing great either, so it’s kind of muddled. I think she still needed me to make it work, somehow the tablet by itself wasn’t enough.”

“Do you know what she was trying to do?” Jesse asked.

Jackie shook her head. “Not really, one of the first things she did sort of, um. Scattered me.” She bit her lip and looked out the window. “I’m not really sure how to say it. I wasn’t me, I wasn’t anything. It was like the world’s worst fucking trip. Even after you broke the script I was pretty messed up, it took a while to sort myself out.”

“It sounds like she wanted to shove you out of the way,” Jesse muttered. “Jes was set up to work with me, but I don’t think Tija wanted to share space.”

“I believe it,” Jackie shuddered. “She was single-minded, obsessed.”

“And you haven’t felt any lingering effects?” Jesse asked.

Jackie’s eyes snapped to him. “Do you know something?” she asked. Her voice was insistent, raspy. “I haven’t felt anything, but…”

He shook his head. “I was just asking,” he reassured her. “As far as I know the script is totally inert - you know what, hold on.” He reached for his sword and laid it across his lap. “I want you to touch my hand.” He hesitated. “Actually, this might not be safe.”

Jackie gave him a flat look. “I want to know,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

Jesse nodded and held out his hand towards her. Gingerly, she reached out with her uninjured arm and tapped a finger against his outstretched palm. Nothing happened. She rested her hand lightly against his, palm-to-palm. He could feel the slight tremor in her fingers.

“All right,” Jesse said. “I’m going to touch my sword. If there’s anything of Tija’s left, it should react to me once I’ve tapped into the sword’s amplifying effect.” He let his hand hover over the grip, then brought them in contact with the leather.

Nothing happened.

Jackie laughed, giving his hand a squeeze. “Oh, thank fuck,” she breathed. “When you said I might still have…” She trailed off, releasing her grip and looking away. Her breathing was uneven for several seconds, and when she looked back up at them her eyes were reddened.

“Thanks,” she said quietly. “All of you.”

“You going to be okay?” Mark asked. “It sounds like it was a rough time.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Jackie said, shaking her head emphatically. “I’ll be good as new when my arm is healed up.” She eyed the bandaged arm suspiciously. “You don’t think there’s any chance of the script reactivating when it heals, do you?”

“There should be some scarring and minor misalignment on the bones even when they’re fully healed,” Arjun said. “The impression I got from Tesu is that script is not very tolerant of breaks in its inscription medium.”

“Well, I’m certainly broken,” Jackie said, shrugging her arm in its sling. “I’ll let you know if I start feeling the urge to hurl lightning from my fingertips, though.” She grinned. “Kind of unfair that I didn’t get superpowers.”

Jesse gave her a strained smile. “Probably for the best,” he said.

“Yeah,” she grumbled, leaning back on the makeshift bed. “Would have been nice to find a silver lining, though. Tija really screwed us over by bricking the tablet. We had a good chunk of the primary floor recorded, odds are we had the-”

She broke off, staring ahead blankly. “Paper,” she said, holding out her free hand. “I need paper, something to write with.”

“You okay?” Jesse asked, frowning.

Jackie squeezed her eyes shut, her face contorting. “Just get me the paper, please,” she grated.

Mark stepped away and came back with Jackie’s journal, which he placed in her outstretched hand. She took a pen and began tracing a figure on its surface, drawing the distinctive loops and whorls of Tam Sao script. The others watched silently as she completed her quick sketch, then looked down at it with obvious confusion.

“Jack?” Mark asked. “What is that?”

“I have no fucking idea,” she said, sounding shaken. “It just popped into my head, it must be left over from…” She grimaced and balled her hand into a fist, slamming it into her leg. Gusje grabbed her hand, but Jackie shifted away from her and laid back on the bed, her face tight and pale.

Gusje motioned silently for the others to step away. They moved to the other side of the curtain barrier and walked a short distance while Arjun studied Jackie’s drawing intently.

“It’s legible,” he said. “Numerals and text. I’ll have to look at it with Tesu, but I think she may have just given us the piece of script we were searching for in Mosatel.”

Mark took the drawing from Arjun and rotated it, frowning. “Well, that has some implications we should probably talk about,” he said. “As far as I’m aware, Jackie never learned to write Tam Sao.”

“She hasn’t,” Arjun said, taking the drawing back. “Judging by her reaction, I’m sure she’s come to the same conclusion I have.”

“Tija’s still got some hooks in her,” Mark muttered.

The three men shared a glance, then Jesse shook his head. “We knew this could happen,” he said. “Let’s focus on the script she gave us. We should run it by Tesu, maybe even Maja if we can find a way to get her input on it. I don’t want to trust something that Tija gave us blindly.”

“You think Jackie’s passing us bad info?” Mark asked.

Jesse shrugged. “I believe exactly what she said - that it popped into her head and she doesn’t know anything else about it.” He looked back towards the curtains, then shook his head. “I say we leave her alone and run this as far as we can without bugging her. She should have some time to rest.”

Mark scowled. “I don’t want to just leave her alone,” he grumbled. “It feels like we should be doing something.”

Jesse grabbed his shoulder and steered him away from Jackie’s bed. “Trust me on this,” he said. “Just give her some time to herself. If she wants our help on anything, she’ll ask.”

Gusje laid back on the mat beside Jackie, feeling the soft shuddering of the other woman’s breathing. At some point she drifted into an uneasy sleep, waking only when she felt Jackie shift to sit up and look out the window. She turned her head to look at the reddening sky outside, the last grasp of daylight slipping away from between the clouds.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

Jackie shrugged, not turning her head away from the windows. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m awake.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Gusje pointed out.

Jackie shot her an annoyed look. “I don’t know,” she grumbled. “How am I supposed to feel? Someone tried to kick me out and move in, and they left all their shit everywhere.” She paused, her face going slack. “There’s more than just that thing I drew, I can tell. Little snippets of things, like a song where you can’t quite remember the melody.”

Gusje felt a sick heat in her chest. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I should never have told Tija about the tablet. I never should have rushed into the room.”

“What?” Jackie said sharply, turning to face her. “Cut that out.”

Gusje blinked at the sudden shift in Jackie’s tone. She opened her mouth to reply but was cut off as Jackie continued speaking.

“Tija attacked both of us,” Jackie said. “Don’t go finding ways to justify what she did, she’s a crazy pile of broken rocks. Having the guards there wouldn’t have helped much, and from what you said she was going to straight-up kill you before you told her about the tablet.” She shifted her injured arm and grimaced. “This sucks, but it’s better than you getting killed.”

“You’re not mad?” Gusje asked.

Jackie snorted. “Oh, I’m fucking furious,” she said, looking back out the window. “At Tija, at Eryha, at all the smug idiots who thought it’d be a great idea to create a bunch of psychotic weather goddesses with abandonment issues lying all over the place. The dumbasses who pretty much ended their civilization, and the Sjocelym who apparently picked up the stupid torch where they left off.” She gave Gusje a tight smile. “Hell, you’re one of the few people that missed making the list.”

Gusje was surprised to feel a little stung by Jackie’s venting. “You hate it here that much?” she asked.

“I don’t really hate it,” she muttered. “It’s just that you all have magic. You can pull water from the air, make the crops grow so everyone is fed, cure disease and injury, extend lifespans - and some people said ‘nah, you know what’ and blew it all up. This place should be paradise. Instead your ancestors handed you an apocalypse.”

She shook her head. “I’m probably being harsh, it’s not like we’re doing much better back home,” she sighed. “It’s just that I see the solutions to a lot of our problems here, and instead of solving them and being happy they went and got some more, better problems.”

Gusje mustered a wry smile. “I don’t think settling down and being happy sounds very realistic,” she said. “There’s always someone who wants a little more.”

“True,” Jackie admitted, chuckling a little as she leaned back down on the bed. “Ow. In my language one of the words for a perfect place without any problems has the literal meaning of ‘a place that doesn’t exist.’ I guess we’re pretty cynical about the whole thing.”

“I like that,” Gusje said, stretching out beside her. “No place that exists should be too perfect, or there’d be no point in being anywhere else. You’d always be looking back, never out.” She sighed. “Ademen Tacen had things it was missing, even if I didn’t see them at the time. Mountains, forests. The ocean. The things I saw that made me forget how much I missed home, just a little bit.”

“I didn’t really notice, but at some point I think I gave up on seeing Ademen Tacen again. And even though I grieve for it, I know I could be happy in another place - as long as I had my family back.” Gusje shifted closer to Jackie. “All of them.”

“Aww, you’re such a sweet old lady,” Jackie cooed, tousling Gusje’s hair even as she scowled and twisted away. “Who knows, we might be able to use the gateways to get near Sjan Saal and find your family without having to deal with the wall. Maybe Maja knows an address.” She blinked. “Maybe I know an address.”

Gusje laughed as Jackie screwed up her face in mock concentration. “There’s no hurry,” she said. “I think it will be a little while before we leave the Sanctum again. If the figure you draw actually works, we won’t have to worry about the Sjocelym in the short term.”

Jackie nodded. “I can think of worse ways to spend a few days. Compared to most of the spots we’ve found ourselves in-” She paused at some motion from behind the curtain, looking up curiously as an approaching figured caused the drapes to sway.

Tasja poked his head around the corner, looking exuberant. “Tesu says it looks good!” he said, practically skipping in his excitement. “Jyte went down to the valley a little while ago to have the Aesvain formally choose their leader. All we need to do is get Maja to tell us where to carve the inscription.”

Jackie and Gusje exchanged a glance. “Huh,” Jackie said. “Sounds like we should go have a chat with our glowy host. Well, I guess she’ll only be talking to you.”

“Are you sure you want to come?” Gusje said. “You can rest, I’ll take care of it.”

“Nah,” Jackie said, awkwardly rising to her feet. “Doing something would probably be good, and I think this will be interesting to watch.” She stretched and rubbed at the small of her back. “Besides, this is the one good thing that will have come out of our trip there. I’d be an idiot to miss it.”

Gusje nodded and walked out of the curtained-off area, following Tasja as he half-ran back to the dais. Jesse shot a questioning look towards Jackie as they approached, at which she smiled and shrugged with her unencumbered shoulder. Tesu, Mark, Arjun and a scattering of Aesvain were clustered around the far side of the dais. Maja stood above them, staring outside with her customary stillness. Only when Gusje drew quite close to the platform did she turn to mark her approach.

“Hello, Maja,” she said, threading her hand into Jackie’s. “We’ve found the inscription that we believe will link you to Tinem Aesvai. Can you tell us where to place it?”

“Yes, Caretaker,” Maja replied. She felt a sick pang of involuntary panic at the sound of that voice once more, swiftly pushed aside by the pain of Jackie’s hand tightening on her own. Gusje looked up to see that Jackie had paled noticeably, her posture rigid. She gave her hand a gentle squeeze and felt the vise-grip loosen in response, although Jackie did not relax in the slightest.

“An appropriate site can be selected if a diagram is available,” Maja said, extending her hand.

Gusje took the page from Tasja and showed it to Maja, who studied it for only a moment before straightening up with an unreadable expression.

“There is a nearby site that could accept the inscription,” she said, blurring over to appear next to a stretch of wall on the far side of the chamber. The group made their way over as she waited serenely by the wall, and as Gusje approached she could see an unadorned tile amid the subtly raised decorations.

“Here,” Maja said, pointing to the blank spot. “This is a standard integration point, with the incorporation line at top and emanation at bottom. Are all of the necessary tools present, Caretaker?”

“Ah,” Gusje said, feeling lost. “I’m actually not going to be inscribing it, Tesu is more experienced.” She turned to the scriptsmith, who was staring dazedly at Maja in his usual manner. “Do you need anything?”

“I h-have some crude tools,” he stammered, fumbling at a waist pouch and coming up with a fine chisel and hammer. “Not worthy to touch the walls of the Sanctum.” He held them up and lowered his head as Maja approached, looking unimpressed as she inspected the chisel.

She picked both implements out of his hands and crushed the hammer in one fist. A stream of powdered metal from its head trickled over the chisel blade, collecting in thin lines of sparkling grit along the worn surface before briefly flashing orange-hot. She placed the diagram and the chisel into Tesu’s shaking hands - Gusje was worried the man might faint, but he merely swayed with an expression of utter rapture on his face before walking over to the wall.

His face grew serious as he pressed the chisel to the wall, moving with surprising delicacy for a man who had been on the verge of collapse mere seconds before. The lack of a hammer did not impede him in the slightest - where he traced the chisel’s blade along the wall a thin ridge of stone extruded outward like putty sticking to the blade, forming the design Jackie had traced earlier. His motions betrayed practice with similar tools in the past, even if he wasn’t important enough to carry one of his own. It did not take long for him to finish. Upon making the final stroke of the design, he traced two quick strokes up and down to connect it to the points that Maja had indicated.

There was a shiver of something intangible in the air. Jackie sneezed violently, and Jesse rubbed at his temples. Maja looked at Gusje with an inscrutable expression, inclining her head.

“The incorporation is successful, Caretaker,” she said. “The new regional affiliation is active.”

“Great,” Mark said, clapping his hands. “Now what?”

“Now we need Jyte to come back,” Arjun said. “If they’ve done the election properly she’ll recognize his authority and he can release some of her restrictions.” He looked around, serious-faced despite the note of excitement that quickened his words. “I think we’re all in agreement that the first thing we’ve got to do is ask some questions?”

“Definitely,” Jackie said, her voice tight but measured.

“I’ve been here,” Jyte said, stepping forward. “Walked up while the scriptsmith was doing his work.”

“Great,” Mark said. “Go ahead and ask Maja to recognize you as an officer of the government.”

Jyte gave him a quizzical look, then laughed. “Me?” he guffawed. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it? No, gold-cloaks stand apart from the ruler. Aside from that, the folk in the valley’d made their choice a while before this.” He turned to look at Jesse, who stared back with a slow look of horror dawning on his face. “Nearly everyone was in agreement. If we’re to have a leader, Zhecima is it.”

“You can’t,” Jesse sputtered. “I’m not - I’m not Aesvain! I shouldn’t be eligible!”

Jyte frowned. “Was that a rule?” he asked.

Jesse blinked, then shook his head morosely. “No,” he said. “No, I suppose it wasn’t.”

Mark walked over and clapped him on the shoulder, mostly succeeding in restraining his laughter. “Cheer up, Fearless Leader,” he said. “Let’s get you sworn in.”

Jesse turned to look at Maja and found her staring directly back, her eyes flaring bright as they met his own.

“Maja,” he said, feeling a wild acceleration of his heartbeat. There was a hush. Everyone around him seemed to be staring in his direction. His finger slipped almost unbidden to the hilt of his sword. There was a moment of electric contact, and he felt the cool tracery of fingertips on his arm, a brush of lips against the back of his neck. His heart slowed, and he drew a steady breath.

He straightened up, squaring his shoulders. “I have been elected as an officer of the Aesvain government,” he said. “I am formally requesting that you grant me access, as no members of the Ministry are available.”

Maja closed her eyes and smiled, seeming to shiver from head to toe as an ineffable tension left her posture. When she opened her eyes again they were languid, calm. A smile plucked at her lips, and she walked forward to stand just in front of Jesse.

“Access has been granted,” she said quietly, seeming to savor every word. “Now, Jesse Gibson - let’s talk about what you and I can do for each other.”