“Did you get everything you needed?”

  “Yes. What happened?” hissed Mi, as they quick-walked away from the building.

  Roxa grimaced. “There was another b assistant there, but off-duty. The one you dosed must have asked him to cover the desk. You were already inside so, I improvised.”

  “Shit. That was close. So you bribed him? I mean, thank you Roxa, but how much did you spend?”

  “Enough to convince. If you give them too little, the threat won’t keep them in line.”

  “You bribed and threatened him?”

  “Don’t worry, he liked it.”

  “Oh?” Mi raised her eyebrows.

  “Such a little slut.” Roxa smirked and shook her head. “I could tell. Not sure he was actually a boy, though.”

  “Wait,” Mi said slowly, “had you ever seen this person before, Roxa?”

  Roxa looked uncomfortable. “Well, as a matter of fact, yes. You and them, uh, kind of...had a moment. Right before Penelope, ah…”

  “...Oh. Yes.” There was an awkward silence, which Mi gritted her teeth and bulled through. “Roxa, listen, I would have been sharkbait back there without you.”

  Roxa grinned weakly at her. “Not on my watch.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” Mi sighed, stopping to face her. Roxa stopped too. “You’ve been helping me so much. And I haven’t been telling you everything.”

  They were crossing a small, empty courtyard between buildings. The sun had just risen, and the clear, damp air was full of twittering birdsong.

  Roxa gave her a lopsided smile. “Nope. But you’re my friend. And I’m not fool enough to fall into the trap of thinking that trusting someone means telling them everything. Sometimes keeping secrets is the best way to protect them…or protect someone else. And, you’re way more vulnerable than me, no matter what you say, and no matter how far I stick my neck out. So no more false equivalencies from you, young miss. Oof!”

  Mi was squeezing her, hard.

  Roxa tentatively stroked her head. “Friend,” she murmured into Mi’s fragrant, dark hair.

  ~ ~ ~

  The tumult of exams was soon upon them, and Mi knew there might be no better cover for her project. The bs grew more packed than ever, as students frantically jostled for space to complete their assignments or get one more set of results. Mi buckled down and synthesized batch after batch, hidden from notice in the beehive storm of activity.

  Mi had spent her life in Opali, embedded in a rich tapestry of dialogue and discussion with other tea girls and herbalists. She’d spent countless hours comparing notes, specuting, drawing from and adding to a deep collective knowledge of bodily shapeshifting. She had heard a dazzling diversity of goals and helped compile anecdotal evidence from hundreds of different accounts.

  As a result, she had factored over a dozen workable schemas. She decided, in the end, to only synthesize batches based on a few of those, based on her assessment of their elegance, her limited time and materials, and her preferences and goals for her own body—since she had no one to test them on but herself.

  Her aim was to produce a several week supply based on each of her chosen schemas. This would st a while, as well as give her a rich run of data on which to base updates and tweaks before she committed to a second synthesis push.

  Spending so much time in the bs, she had ample opportunity to surreptitiously study Petrel. Mi kept finding excuses to look back up and peruse her one more time, as the cute b assistant ran distractedly around, delivering precursors and reagents, stocking supplies, washing and cleaning surfaces, and otherwise running around during her shifts, studiously avoiding Mi.

  Yes, Petrel’s cheeks were plumper. Her face as a whole seemed lighter, more open. The rest of her was hard to get a read on under her baggy clothes, but Mi was increasingly sure that the shape of her body was changing too. Mi kept affirming her own observations, but when those observations were taken all together, the conclusion that popped out still astonished her. And the fact that she’d had that same, matching gut reaction upon first seeing Petrel all those weeks ago?

  It just seemed, well…unlikely.

  Perhaps Mi was projecting; seeing what she wanted to see. And yet, Roxa had said something about it too?

  But even if Mi was right, what then? If Mi had indeed clocked Petrel outside the dining hall, well, Petrel didn’t seem eager to acknowledge it. Mi could hardly bme her.

  The fear that if they were seen together, they would each be rendered more clockable, lived coiled tightly around her own lungs, ready to constrict. There were hawks circling above them both, after all.

  The most Opali part of her wanted to string a bridge to the other girl, and level with her openly.

  The part of her that had been living stealth in the Imperiat for months, the part that had walked out of Cordivar’s office with gritted teeth, the part that she feared more than anything else was her true self—that part knew the price of openness could become unbearably steep.

  Even if Mi was right about Petrel, did she really want to pce her own life and safety in the hands of someone she didn’t know at all? No, the fact that they shared one particur axis of vulnerability was not a substitute for real trust, not by a long shot.

  If Mi were to extend a bridge, she would need to do it in such a way as to not expose her own hand. The situation called for careful pnning. And unfortunately there were more immediate, pressing concerns before her. The primary one being that she needed to get through exams in one piece.

  She ended up crushing Apomasaics, which made sense, given that she’d poured all her spare focus and energy that term into reverse-engineering it. Her other two exams she scraped by in, which made her thank all the tiny spirits of the night that she’d taken on a lighter course load this term.

  Roxa was busy and often away from her side, which meant that she had to pour a greater part of her energy into vigince. She successfully dodged Penelope’s goons, lying in wait for her, three times that she could count. And of course, she began her dose regimen, and fastidiously recorded the most minute changes and side-effects.

  Almost immediately, with a triumphant grin, she noticed her breasts growing. Her nipples ached constantly. Despite having gone through girl puberty years ago, she noticed signs of it coming on again, with certain...differences. Her smell changed. Her skin felt different—even softer than before, and far more sensitive. Her clit had always been small, but now it was shifting, rooting into her, and it seemed more connected to the rest of her body? Something as small as the brush of Roxa's fingers on the nape of her neck—or just the thought of more than that—sent wild, vivid bolts of lightning rolling and flowing through her, and pulsing between her legs. And she was, increasingly, desirous of...well, sex.

  Living in Opali, Mi had never deprived herself of sex. Quite the opposite, actually. She’d slept with many of her friends, often all at once. But in undertaking the enormous risk of living and studying in the very heart of the Empire’s bastion of technocratic knowledge production, she had rgely capped the wellspring of her libido. The constant fear and loneliness had helped with that. For the st year, she had resigned herself to occasional sessions with her hand in the shower.

  Her shower sessions had increased markedly in the st few months. That made sense, though. She had been feeling markedly safer with Roxa, after all, and much less lonely. And it didn’t hurt that her roommate featured heavily in those fantasies. It was Roxa’s lips she imagined breathing hotly in her ear, nibbling, whispering all sorts of...things.

  As the new term began, however, she seemed to be rushing to the washroom every night before bed. It was actually pushing the limits of credulity, how many long, hot showers she’d been taking tely. Slowly, a realization was dawning in Mi that the orgasms that her hand and her imagination could give her just weren’t cutting it any more.

  And she didn’t know what to do.

  Her prior reasons for not bedding Roxa seemed to dwindle every time she thought about them. On the one hand, she knew her desire could cloud her judgment, obscure her thinking. And yet, on the other, a slow realization was happening like a sunrise in Mi’s heart.

  Without willing it, without trying, without any conscious choice in the matter, she had already surrendered to the lull of intimacy with her roommate. When they were alone together, she was no longer the least bit braced or defended. All her cautionary armor had melted into a puddle at her feet.

  After a year of pressure and isotion, the relief of being able to lean on the company of a trustworthy friend was indescribably good. Mi reveled in it, like a delicious stretch after long stasis. It didn’t hurt at all that her tall, beautiful roommate liked to touch her, either.

  Mi had just survived a year-long drought of touch, and her condition could fairly be described as starved. She couldn’t resist leaning into Roxa’s caresses like an eager cat. And tely, as she did, there was the added variable of heat pulsing between her legs, and this, of course, made her cheeks redden. It was all such a shifting muddle of mingled attraction.

  Roxa, for her part, kept their cuddling carefully within the bounds of friendship. Mi had been ridiculously grateful for this for so long that it took her completely by surprise when it ceased to relieve her and started to drive her crazy.