With a drink of water and a dash of time, the caffeine crash passed. Ruvle didn’t track how long exactly. She had the strength to sit up, and Chain had the patience not to rush that.

  “I don’t think I can fight him,” Ruvle said, her voice high-pitched.

  “That’s not my plan, either,” Chain answered, over his shoulder. “All I gotta do is get the glint off him. We’ve been dancing with death since we got in here; I don’t wanna lose the next coin flip, you know?”

  She rubbed her face and stood again. Acid burn holes speckled her bodysuit...she had some sewing to do at home. “Then I won’t fight him. I’ll…” What were her options, anyway? “...figure something out.”

  “Aces. Let’s get in there.”

  Chain pushed open the door—it parted in the middle with an elegant glide, opening into a place that pissed Ruvle off. An oval ceiling with a big stupid chandelier of beryllium and emeralds, casting filtered green spotlights through the gems that illuminated the place. Precious metals lined the walls, reflecting each other as a maze of mirrors that strained Ruvle’s perception. Some mirror panels were engraved into a black-and-white depiction of Othek, posed as a giant and rejuvenated with youth, standing atop all of Crater Basin with Mount Radius no taller than his feet. Too many lines of sight in the mirrors ended at his visage, a blessed few terminating on the chandelier. Before a central screen on the far wall, flanked by symmetric engravings, was the man in the flesh—his hands clasped behind himself, facing away from the two and towards the screen, in the formal robes Ruvle remembered, his top hat replaced in greater ostentation—bearing not a yellow band of Dye, but a coating for every stitch of its fabric. He had a thing in his hands. A something. Black. Purple. Ruvle made herself stop looking at it directly, the glint, the bundle of gas distorting light away and pulling the floorboards of cognition out from her thoughts.

  “—and recall, you agreed to trace their mail,” Othek spoke to the screen.

  “Yes, no need to belabor it,” answered the voice on the screen, a close-up of the face of a woman in a swivel recliner with a backdrop of several oval, squarish windows that Ruvle didn’t recognize. She had a remarkably pointed chin and a nose so understated that it was barely there, eyes narrow-set and striking hair: black with patches that faded inward to blonde, white, and translucent, as if her body selectively declined pigmentation only where most beautifully framing. “The postal service sees reason now that I’ve replaced enough people; they will tell me soon. I’ll request that favor from you when I need it.”

  Chain crouched and pointed to the glint; Ruvle put a hand against his chest, holding him back from doing something not very thoughtful right now.

  “Ah, isn’t it so much easier to have professional relationships with your equals?” he said, his smug-but-pleasing smile visible in his many reflections.

  The woman only politely chuckled in return.

  “If you’ll excuse me a moment,” Othek said, tucking the glint into his robes and exchanging it for a small square of metal in his palm.

  “I see them too,” the woman answered.

  He pressed the button on the square, the light of the screen compressing to a dot and turning the screen black, its electronic hum fading. Othek turned in place, in no rush, looking upon Ruvle and Chain like a food stain on a least-favorite child’s shirt. “The very moment I stop waiting and do something else with my valuable time, you choose to come in.” He closed his eyes and faux-clapped, too gently for any noise, walking towards the two at an elderly pace. “Well done, well done.”

  The voice of who he’d spoken to was familiar, but Ruvle couldn’t place where, and...she’d had such a long day that she declined to think about who that mail investigation might be about. Chain strode on in, his scarf and his light-up sneakers immediately rotating the dominant hue of the mirrors from emerald green to pale blue. “Hey! So this is normally where we fight and take your stuff, right?”

  “I suppose if you want to die on purpose,” he answered, without opening his eyes.

  “See, that’s what I’m getting at,” Chain continued. “Don’t really want to. I was hoping we could make this easier on all of us.”

  “No, I think I’d rather put your bodies in the disposal pool and be done with it,” he said. Wind started to whirl in the room behind them.

  “Wait,” Ruvle said, leaning in and waving both hands, “If you did that, it would be a long and annoying fight, it would take so much time! I’m slippery and I can climb!” she blurted. “We can negotiate raid spoils instead!”

  He quirked an eyebrow.

  “I can notarize it on the spot, right here, we walk out the door and you can get back to what you were doing immediately, no loose ends to occupy your thoughts,” she said, with a tug on her collar and a removal of her pen.

  He peered at her with narrowed eyes.“You’re the hoodlum.”

  “The one,” she answered with an apologetic smile. Her voice gave it away.

  “You took my hat.”

  “And you wear the new one so much better,” she said. It was obnoxious and gaudy.

  “Tell me who you are. Name, former names, addresses.”

  She couldn’t get out of that. “Ruvle, formerly Mielo before I became a notary, The Checkered Office in Stepwise south.”

  He harrumphed. “That’s enough. State what you want, hoodlum. I believe it was alcohol, pills, fine...men, I suppose.”

  She twirled her pen; Chain gave her a reassuring shoulder pat. “We need an Inheritance Dispute Resolution form and some blank pages.”

  “Get one,” he answered.

  The henchman in the room, whom Ruvle hadn’t noticed until now (making him very competent at his job), departed through a mirror that turned out to be a side door. She made a mental note of it. He came back shortly with several of his fellows, opening a folding table and carrying sturdy wooden chairs with flared, polished feet—purpleheart lumber with plush red cushioning, durable and exquisite, more expensive than anything Ruvle could have considered for furniture. The henchmen slid them behind Ruvle and Chain so casually, with much more care in the process for their patron, who then rested his hands on the arms engraved to look like computer chips. She maintained her smile. People from all walks of life needed documents notarized. Atop the table between them, the wood laminated with an image of ocean waves, was the form.

  “I’m interested in personal power,” Ruvle began, sweeping the form flat and bringing her pen near its surface. “I will take a direct bribe of wealth, but I’ll be out of your business much faster if you can grant me my interest.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “You’ll be content with however many bars of beryllium I deem appropriate.”

  “And I’ll be overjoyed with them,” she said, “but there’s a more direct conversion between value and making me go away.” Beryllium had long been the king of precious metals in the crater—light, shiny, stiff and insidiously toxic, it was the shadow of Dye, doing nothing for those that held it but be proof that they could endure its presence.

  “That was not a request,” he said, frowning, putting both hands on the table—grasping the glint. “State a number for how many. Don’t disappoint me with a poor guess.”

  Ruvle looked over to Chain, who shrugged, clearly trying not to look directly at his anti-prize. She shouldn’t either, to remain coherent. “Are there tools and equipment you’ve outgrown, perhaps?” Ruvle suggested. “Things that you’re too powerful to make use of now, but which would benefit your lessers.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “That isn’t a number.”

  “...three thousand,” Ruvle picked, at semi-random, angling for something too outrageously high for him to agree to.

  “You cannot remove that from my treasury,” he scoffed.

  Ruvle nodded. “Yes, a person like you has their wealth in investments and symbols, not laying in a vault where it can’t benefit you. And that’s why I’m saying—”

  “I spoke literally. You couldn’t carry that many. My men use heavy machinery to organize my wealth.”

  She could not, in fact, carry three thousand ingots. Ruvle pressed her lips together. “I would also accept Dye, if—”

  He held up one hand, palm forward. She followed the wordless order to stop talking.

  “I have a different offer.” Othek glanced at one of the henchmen. “Bring the gift from Nerso.”

  He hurried away, and Ruvle steadied herself. The same Nerso responsible for her eye. Betraying her anger would give Othek leverage. She thought instead about how she was missing her fez and formal suit; doing notary work felt strange in her bodysuit. While they waited, Othek rested his hand back on the table, but not on the glint, still clutched firmly in his other.

  Chain coughed from the residual acid fumes. Othek glared the silence back into him.

  The henchman returned and placed a steel briefcase on the table with two round electrodes at the top around the handle. He opened a latch to unfold it into a computer console—a mechanical keyboard, a small black screen in a corner, and a series of vials and tubes packed in an orderly fashion in every spare space—their contents primarily pink, grainy mixtures, the gaps between them being filled by incrementally smaller tubes and vessels, a labyrinth of both sizes and directions. A flick of a power switch displayed a green rotating double helix on the screen. The henchman stepped away.

  “Nerso refers to this as an Adult Genetics Self-Determination Kit,” Othek spoke. “Any idiot with a petri dish can grow a creature from a new gene line, but this can change the genes of something that already exists.”

  “...I thought these were science fiction…” Ruvle said, leaning in, reaching out with one hand.

  “Nerso seems to...disagree,” he answered. “You don’t understand what can be created from wealth exceeding entire industries, hoodlum. It has enough supply left for one major enhancement, plus perhaps simple cosmetics.” The largest tube, the one whose girth relegated the screen to the corner, was nearly empty. “A passive-aggressive gift from him that Fygra has been clamoring to take from me.”

  Ruvle blinked. “I don’t see why it’s passive aggressive. It’s such a wonderful boon.” Swarms of ideas about what she could do with this buzzed in her mind. “You haven’t used this on yourself?”

  “And that, hoodlum, is the snub,” he said, his upper lip curling. “To insinuate that I am not already perfect. What do I need with genes for strength, if I have all of them? What do I need with genes for immunity, if I can never be sick? I could institch myself with the speed of a hummingbird—only to be slower than when I started?”

  Ruvle searched for words. None of his behavior indicated speed, only ego. Nerso was a bastard who needed to die slowly and painfully for what he did (don’t ruminate on that, don’t ruminate), but his vileness was more direct than giving bad gifts.

  “None of my troubles are my own. It is from not being taken seriously by the older true citizens,” he said, his hand clenching and unclenching around the glint, its gas slithering around his fingers like centipedes. “Fygra sees everything I have as unearned. I cannot even use this as a bargaining chip for respect—she desires it, but greater so is her disdain that I have it at all. Anything in myself left that I lack, I can get through Consolidation.” Ruvle winced. “I have made my position as true citizen very clear, for years, and somehow my newness leaves them all so shy of me. I can crush buildings with a flick of a hand. I can purchase anything, at any time, on whim. I can transit the globe with none of your restrictions. The world bows to me. And yet it is not enough for them. That is the only thing I lack, hoodlum—for my peers to see that there is nothing I lack, that I am one of them.”

  Ruvle blinked.

  “The more I discuss this, the more set I am in it.” He pushed the kit towards her. “You’ll dispose of this reason that Fygra disdains me, leave, and never bother me again.”

  She wrote quickly on the inheritance form. Since this was a negotiation instead of just grabbing items and running, she denoted Othek as the bequeather. One Adult Genetics Self-Determination Kit in as-is condition, herself as the sole receiver and signator. The Dye-infused ink and her notarization sealed the document as official. “I’ll make a record for you to show to Nerso and Fygra,” she added, “Proof that you no longer own it. Sign here.”

  “You don’t give orders and I don’t take them.”

  “Signing here would be the Thoughtful course of action,” she corrected herself, offering her pen.

  He signed. It was a singular O and a dot.

  Ruvle jotted down a record of a lost asset on one of the blank pages, with notarization. She started on a duplicate, only for Othek to wave his other hand dismissively, freeing both from the glint. “My patience is worn,” he said. “Leave.”

  “I will.” She passed over the record to him and folded up the inheritance form, to go into her collar with her pen.

  Othek looked towards Chain. “You. You didn’t sign the form. I won’t broker a separate deal.”

  Chain grinned, shrugging his shoulders and crossing one ankle over the other as he stood up straight. “Yeah. See, it’s actually fine that I didn’t get to sign, right?”

  Ruvle tucked the genetics kit under one arm and leaned forward, as if to get up off her chair, but stopped because she could hear the mischief in his tone of voice.

  “See, me and her made a deal beforehand; I don’t get any of the loot…”

  Othek’s hands weren’t pressing down on the other side of the table right now. She...she had the genetics kit and the form that said she should have it. This was a chance. Betraying as little motion above chest-level as she could, Ruvle slipped a foot around one leg of the folding table and put her free hand on its underside.

  “Then explain why you bothered,” Othek said, with a frown.

  “I just wanted to do this.”

  In an adrenaline jolt, the next half-second happened in slow motion—Chain ducked and grabbed for the glint like a scorpion latching onto its prey, a distance too far to be faster than a man on-alert—Othek’s hands swooped down to hold onto it, but he was not Exact. His reflexes had not been honed by months and months of refinement at the monastery with students of a path beyond gymnastics, and he lacked that level of embodiment in the physical self that exceeded human birthright. Ruvle reacted first. All she needed was a nudge of the back of one leg of the table and a knock of the underside, trivial tasks, to bump the glint forward—into Chain’s hands, not Othek’s.

  And the rest was a blur of a cackling friend running, back the way they came, Othek shouting and flinging aside the table like it weighed less than the blank pages, of Ruvle landing on her feet from a toppled chair. Othek reached but an arm’s length behind Chain by the time it was too late—he was on his scarf to float across again and slam-dunked the glint of nothing, into the pool of final acid, alighting the entire pit into a sizzling, foaming mass, emergent bubble currents writhing at random until that which determined them a thousand layers of inference deep was annihilated—

  Ruvle flung open the side door and bolted through, to his living space, to her hopes for the exit. Where exactly, she didn’t care: anywhere but the spire.