With Tovadin gone Nuori was left to deal with the mild wrath of Spark.

“You can’t actually be considering taking his offer. It won't end well.” He sternly lectured her.

She rolled her eyes. “Already a political prodigy at the age of sixteen are we? I think it’s better I get my hands dirty than you.”

Besides Tovadin was right, Steve would get bored of his language lessons at some point. Most of the things he suggested were in line with what activities she’d come up with normally so it’s not like anyone would know the difference.

“It’d be better if neither of us get our hands ‘dirty’.” Spark responded scathingly. “The work I’d be doing for Dyrian wouldn’t be bad.”

“How do you know that Spark?” Nuori asked tiredly.

“He only wants information.” Spark pointed out.

“Information can be one of the most dangerous things on the station, we don’t know how he’ll use it to manipulate things.”

“Ah, Tovadin’s way must be so much better since we do know exactly how he’s manipulating you.” Spark sarcastically retorted.

Damn. Why did she teach him how to argue?

“Point.” She conceded. “I just don’t like the route Dyrian’s trying to push the Empire in. I don’t want you to help him then be stuck with the consequences.”

“Do I have a choice?” Spark eyed her and grabbed her hand. “I don’t want you to die because you got caught in their games.”

Some moisture made its way to her eyes. “I don’t want you to die because the wrong person won their games.”

He did his best to hug her, her situation making it an extreme failure. She didn’t mind.

Spark let her go and sat back down.

“What now?” He asked.

Only one thing they could do. “I guess we wait for the ‘monster’ to get here.” Nuori answered.

A small light laugh resounded through the room

“Monster.” A soft voice remarked from the side of the room speaking in an amused tone. It terrified Nuori.

“Dyrian does like his dramatics.” The voice continued. “I’d describe myself more as a poor soul tasked with keeping idiots from getting people killed. Dyrian’s usually one of those fools though so I can understand why he’s more inclined to his interpretation.”

To Nuori’s right Alliandra suddenly became visible. She was leaning against the wall, eyes analyzing the faces of Spark and Nuori. She seemed somewhat pleased with the look of abject horror.

“Don’t worry too much.” She pushed off against the wall and moved to the oft used chair. “I’m just here for a chat like the rest of them, I just like to arrive early.”

Spark who had been opening and closing his mouth in shock finally found words. “How! When did you get in here?”

“I slipped in at some point, of course.” She smirked at him. “I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess when.” he just glared at her. “You know it’s rude to stare, right?”

“You know it’s rude to spy?” Spark answered back angrily much to Nuori’s horror.

That’s no way to speak to the most powerful person in the Empire.

Alliandra just laughed though. “You’re one to talk kid, or do you have some alternate interpretation of what Dyrian is going to have you do?”

Spark had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Don’t worry, I’m not judging. Proper skulduggery is a perfectly honourable occupation.” She gave him a toothy grin. “I’m much better at it though, especially since I have one of these.” She pulled out a small metal ball.

“That’s what made you invisible.” Spark looked all too interested in Nuori’s opinion.

“Invisible!” Alliandra responded with glee. “The things you youngins come up with. Invisibility is possibly possible but not something I’d want to trifle with.”

“But we couldn’t see you.” He pointed out to her.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I was invisible, it could just be that you’re both extremely unobservant.” She looked at both of them expectantly then sat back disappointed when they didn’t seem to believe her. “Not buying it?” She narrowed in her look at Spark again. “What do you think invisibility is?”

Spark must be having flashbacks to every lecture I ever gave him.

“Uhm” He started eloquently. “It’s not being able to be seen?” Alliandra looked at him in disappointment. “Well, that’s technically the definition!” Spark valiantly defended himself.

Alliandra stuck her tongue out at him, showing the maturity expected in one who had been alive seventy-five thousand years. “Well then, technically I think you’re an idiot. Doesn’t make it true now, does it?”

“I mean…” Spark faltered for a second then rallied “it’s certainly true that you think I’m an idiot! So technically you just proved my point.” He crossed his arms and sat back. Smug.

Alliandra turned to Nuori. “Why did you teach him to be so much of a little shit?”

Nuori looked into the distance. “I ask myself that question every day.”

Spark clapped his hands and cheered. “I claim victory through existential crisis!”

“Victory?” Alliandra looked at him skeptically. “You didn’t even learn why you were wrong.”

“Ignorance would be a small price to pay for this mild sense of accomplishment!” He then smiled knowingly at her. “I don’t think I’ll have to pay it though, you’re itching to tell me anyway.”

She winced slightly. “Yep, can’t let your rampant ignorance go unchecked.” She winked at Nuori. “It’s a terrible weakness I know.”

I honestly never would have expected her to be like this.

As Alliandra launched into a lecture about the different types of visibility, Nuori found herself amused by the situation. Alliandra had almost instantly slipped into Nuori’s mentor role for Spark. It was fun to see someone else teach the kid something.

“When I think invisibility I think transparency, like air. It’s there of course but we cannot see it with the naked eye, hence it is ‘invisible’. Now it is quite visible with certain instruments but we are not talking about that right now.”

“Now, is it possible for me to go invisible, transparent?” Alliandra wiggled her hand a bit. “Eh, maybe, but it’d involve changing the properties of the materials that make up a person. Very... ‘problematic’.” Her look indicating that was a massive understatement. “We don’t know if a person can survive a change like that, let alone come back. Our experimentation showed that we can make people disappear... but finding them after is beyond our capabilities.”

That last part threw Spark a little bit. “Umm, does that mean there are actually invisible people just hanging around?”

Alliandra laughed and shook her head. “Maybe? We stopped looking into it.”

“Why? Seems like it was an interesting field of study.”

“Too interesting. The research team decided they wanted to try and turn their station invisible so they could figure out how it works on the other end.”

“What happened to them?”

“I don’t know! Haven’t seen them since!” She gleefully told Spark.

“So.” Nuori tried to get her back on track. “If you weren’t invisible why couldn’t we see you.”

“It’s incredibly simple actually, this device I have.” Alliandra held up the ball. “Can erect an outer layer specifically tuned to stop light waves.” She searched for an analogy. “Think of it as a forceshield for light. It then admits the light it absorbs on the other side of my body, and that side does the same. It just works out where the waves are ‘supposed’ to go and emits them as if I wasn’t here.” She turned it on and five seconds later she appeared behind Spark. “Simple, right?”

Not even a shimmer.

Nuori had to ask. “How many calculations does that even require…”

Alliandra smiled and sat back down. “Ehh… a moderately exorbitant amount, it was really annoying to make, also boring. But simple enough.” She grimaced from the memories of tedium then suddenly brightened. “No one died though! You’d be surprised how much of a rarity that is with some of these projects.”

“You’re really filling me with confidence in our science programs.” Nuori deadpanned.

Alliandra shrugged. “Meh, people like trying new things.” She pulled out her cloaking device and lobbed it at Spark. “For any non consensual listening you may have to do.” She winked at him.

Spark grinned in excitement “Thank you!”

That probably won’t be good.

“You’re quite welcome.” She grinned back, then her face turned serious and she leaned forward “Now can you do me a favour.” Spark looked at her intently then nodded.

“Fuck off.”

“What?” He asked, disbelieving what he had heard.

“I need to talk to your mother.” Alliandra clarified. “Go outside and make sure no one comes in. This conversation won’t be for prying ears.”

Spark looked at Nuori, reluctant to leave.

“Go ahead Spark, I’ll be fine.” She assured him.

Alliandra led Spark to the door and then whispered something in his ear, they both burst out laughing. Then she shoved him out and closed the door.

Alliandra pulled out a small metallic disc which she placed on the door. She then slowly turned towards Nuori, still smiling, a bit too wide.

“Are you sure?” She asked.

“Sure of what?”

The smile slid off of Alliandra’s face and she spoke quietly, almost mournfully. “That you’ll be fine.”

Nuori eyes widened, seeing the look on Alliandra’s face she gave the only honest answer she could. “No.” She shook her head. “I’m not.”

Alliandra nodded sadly, she was fidgeting with a different flat metal object in her right hand. “I can give you fifty-fifty odds. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do.”

Nuori shifted slightly in fear and confusion. “Odds? What odds?”

Alliandra didn’t answer, she just stared down at the metal object in her hand.

Nuori’s terror grew within the silence, her heartbeat measuring the passing moments, eventually she couldn’t handle the pressure.

“What is that… ‘thing’ in your hand.”

“Nothing important.” Alliandra sighed and put the object away. “It just reminds me of a story.”

Nuori tried to smile. She failed. “Dyrian did say you’d tell me one.”

“Such a gossip, shameful habit, really.” Alliandra shook her head.

Really, she says gossip is a shameful habit.

“I can think of worse things.” Nuori remarked pointedly.

“I’m sure you can.” The older woman laughed then gave her a small smile. “Relax, I just like to mess with you young folks. Your imaginations can come to the wildest conclusions.”

Relax…

Nuori’s fear turned to anger.

“You knew what you were fucking doing, you shouldn’t play with people like that!”

Alliandra looked tired. “You can learn a bit about someone from how they react to terror.” She stared into Nuori’s eyes. “You thought I would kill you.”

All Nuori could do was nod.

“That’s fair.” Alliandra continued. “I would've come to the same conclusion in your position.” Her voice grew stern, almost angry. “The problem I have is that you accepted it. I think part of you wanted it. Why do you think that you deserve to die?

“I don’t…” She started to lie but shook her head. “I’ve made bad mistakes in the past and they hurt the people around me. I don’t want to do something that gets Spark killed.”

“Mistakes.” Aliandra frowned. “You were promised a story, I suppose. Would you like me to tell you one?”

“I just want you to leave, but you’ll just tell me anyway.” Nuori had been on the opposite end of the lecture enough times to know how this ended.

The old woman put up her hands. “You got me! The story starts a long time ago, when I was fairly young.

“Shit, must be a long time then.” Nuori sardonically remarked.

Alliandra gave her a look. “It’s about the fall.”

Shit.

“Our ‘colony’ was just a small technocracy, based out of an asteroid space station quite a bit smaller than this one. The founders left the core worlds because they felt innovation was stifled by red tape, similar to the soul cult you were telling Spark about.”

She had been listening to that?

Alliandra smiled and shrugged when she saw Nuori’s bafflement. “We all have our vices.” She continued on. “There were traders back then that kept us somewhat in touch with the rest of humanity, we generally had interesting technology so we were visited often enough. One day a trader came by talking about multiple colonies in the outer reaches that had gone dark. Mildly concerning but it didn’t really affect us.

“It took a core world falling for us to care. Harival. A call went out to the far colonies, and the core worlds actually stopped squabbling. The idea was to make a truly united Empire of humanity to hold the tide of the enemy.

“Do we have any idea what they were now?” Nuori asked.

Alliandra just shook her head then continued.

“We had two clear choices, join this new fledgling Empire and strike out against the unknown or do our best to hide. We debated the issue but we were all highly opinionated people. Frankly we made terrible scientists, most of us believed we couldn’t be wrong.” She rolled her eyes.

“We had incomplete information though, so how could we make a decision? In the view of some extremely enlightened people,” She pointed to herself mockingly. “We couldn’t. At least not a good one. So the physicists got together and came up with a plan.”

Nuori knew the story, but it was interesting to hear it from one who was there.

“It was centered around multiverse theory, the idea that if you say… flip a coin there is a universe in which it is heads and one that it is tails. We knew that alternate dimensions existed, although we couldn’t reach them, so it was our idea to use this fact to make sure we succeeded at least once.”

She spread her arms out. “Genius right? Let every single person make their own plan and randomly select the winner. Someone has to be right. The draw was held and we abandoned the rest of humanity. We're not dead, so it must've worked, right?”

A dark look came to Alliandra’s face. “Which is more than we can say for the rest of humanity.”

“Why are you telling me this? I mean it’s interesting but I know this history.” Nuori told her.

Alliandra looked at her sadly again and pulled out the metal thing again, a coin. “Fifty-fifty Nuori. Call it.”

“No… you said…”

“I said your mind jumped to wild conclusions, I never said they were wrong. Call it” The old woman said more sternly.

“This isn’t right! Why do this?” Nuori asked incredulously

“I don’t know if I can trust you to just do your job. Someone else can learn the language in time, we may not be able to undo any damage you cause to the plan. If this was a good enough solution for the fate of our people it’s good enough for you. Call it.” She stared at Nuori with intensity.

Nuori finally saw the monster Dyrian talked about.

She closed her eyes then spoke “Heads.”

The sound of the toss, then a silence that stretched on. Nuori opened her eyes when nothing came and saw the monster looking at her with pity.

Alliandra stood out of her chair and pulled out a knife. “Don’t worry girl.” She patted Nuori on the cheek then brought the knife to her neck. “Anything I should tell the kid?”

Tears had already formed her eyes but at that she finally let out a soft sob.

Spark...

“Tell him I’m sorry. He deserved better.”

Alliandra glared at her. “What an asinine thing to say, that kid loves you. How dare you tell him he deserved better when his mother’s throat is slit open in the room behind him.”

“I’ve made so many mistakes.”

“Mistakes!” The monster made a sound derision. “I’ve done worse.”

Nuori looked at the arm holding the knife. “I know. doesn’t make it better.”

“You don’t know.” Alliandra pulled away the knife. “I was wrong. There was no split in the path. Chance? It doesn’t exist, not in the way we thought it did.

“I staked the future of humanity on what was essentially a complicated coin toss.” She said the words, filled with self loathing. “Luck is the only reason we survived, it’s a fucking joke.”

“Then why? Why the coin? Why do any of this to me?” Nuori questioned the tired old woman.

The monster answered.

“To show you why I’ll never leave anything to chance again.”

Possibly.

But she wasn’t sure. As the monster left Nuori couldn’t help but wonder if the coin landed on heads.

---------

After Nuori’s beatdown in the arena Steve found himself in an interesting situation.

By interesting he meant confusing and frustrating.

With apparently the only person who spoke his language unconscious he had been left in the wind, so to speak. He had been given food and a bed, but was primarily left to his own devices. Every ‘conversation’ he just said “Nuori” over and over again to try and indicate that he needed to speak to her. It might have worked?

His guide brought him through the plaza, (where he confiscated a bribe for the good of the Empire) then down a series of confusing paths. This further reaffirmed his idea that the architect of this place was in need of a firing squad.

At the end though, Steve and his guide came across the greatest obstacle of their journey. A young, green eyed man with black hair stood in front of a door. He gave Steve a death glare.

Steve tried his new technique to get through to the door behind him.

“Nuori” he pointed at the door behind the young man.

The man just shook his head.

Steve’s guide then gave a valiant effort. He walked up to the green eyed man, pointed at Steve and then demanded something. Assumedly that Steve should be let in.

The green eyed man retorted with a few words and Steve’s guide promptly gave Steve a wave then decided to hurriedly vacate the premises.

“Huh.” Steve shrugged then eyed the young man at the door. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me in?”

Steve just got a stare in return.

He tried to move past the man to the door but was stopped by a hand. Fairly expected.

Steve decided to try an age old trick.

“Do you know who I am?” He made his voice sound indignant.

It obviously didn’t work, especially because the man didn’t speak his language, but his customer service side loved using the line on someone else for a change.

Steve and the young man just kinda awkwardly stood there until the door opened. When it did, it revealed one of the few people he’d seen that actually looked somewhat aged.

Her face didn’t look ‘old’ but she had a few wrinkles and a grey streak going down her hair. She said a few words to the young man and he laughed a tiny bit, he then indicated Steve. She said a few words then motioned for Steve to come in. The green eyed man moved to follow but the older lady grabbed his arm stopping him.

Point one to Steve. He grinned.

In the room was a fairly beat up Nuori. Steve would have thought they’d have better medical procedures in the future but he supposed they were too busy beating each other up with sticks.

These people’s priorities were so out of order.

Still, the fights had been incredibly entertaining, so he had to give them that.

Steve looked at Nuoris face, she had tears in her eyes. Her injuries must be quite painful.

Hopefully my gift will cheer her up.

“I brought a gift for you.” He tried to sound cheerful and lobbed the bundle of thick rope towards her.

She didn’t move to catch it and it landed on her stomach with a thud.

Ah, I didn’t think that through. Her arms are probably busted from that fight. She glared at him before catching herself. She looked down at the rope then did something Steve didn’t expect.

She started laughing.

It was a horrible, despairing, desperate, laugh, that was completely devoid of hope.

But hey, Steve thought. At least it’s a laugh.

But when it started sounding more like uncontrollable sobs he decided to intervene. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He went up to her concerned.

“I can’t believe she got you to give me a rope.” Nuori stated in disbelief “The metaphors a little on the nose…”

“Are you… alright?” He asked, knowing that she was anything but.

She looked at him, eyes filled with tears and despair. She tried her best to smile.

“Of course. let’s get to work.”