Thresholder

“The werewolves are dead,” said Flora as she came into the apartment.

“Dead?” asked Perry.

“That old man whose tooth you swallowed, I went to go see him,” said Flora. “I was in uniform, and arrived there to see other police. Him and his entire family had been killed with undisguised violence and without any apparent motivation. They were werewolves, even with the moon not out they should have been able to fight back. It’s not clear to me who did it, but I think that the purge might be starting already.”

“There were children in that family,” said Perry. He grit his teeth. “Goddamn it.”

“I don’t know which faction is responsible,” said Flora. “We barely even know what the factions are. But someone decided that the werewolves were either a threat or a liability, and acted accordingly and without the expected discretion.”

“The expected discretion?” asked Perry.

“Something quiet, silent, disposing of the bodies,” said Flora. “Poison would do, in a pinch.”

“You’re talking about poisoning a child?” asked Perry. “That’s something the Council would do?”

“No,” said Flora. “Or … not in normal circumstances. If the Custom was threatened, if there wasn’t a way around it, then yes.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Perry.

“What?” asked Flora.

“It’s — nothing, you don’t know him,” said Perry. “What do we do then?”

“Nothing,” said Flora. “There’s nothing to do. I’m just letting you know, because it’s a sign of the times one way or another.”

“A threat?” asked Perry.

“In what sense?” asked Flora.

“It’s a public execution,” said Perry. “Anyone who sees it, anyone who knows, or anyone who hears about it, is going to get some kind of message from it. A warning to keep your head down, to not stick out, maybe.”

“Maybe,” said Flora slowly. “It’s not how the Jade Council normally operates. Their messages are more blunt.”

“More blunt than a slaughtered family?” asked Perry.

“They announce their intent,” said Flora. “And they hold trials, hearings, as they did with you. But the Jade Council isn’t what it’s been.” She looked off in the distance. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“I’m putting the first pieces of the glamour in place tonight,” said Perry. “You have a lead on other allies? The strix, the terrine?”

“The terrine, yes,” said Flora. “An old friend. She’s undercover at the moment, and will meet us at a tea house, in a private room. That’s later tonight.”

“What does she know about me?” asked Perry.

“She thinks that you’re more dangerous than you are,” said Flora. “I let her believe that.”

It was the first time the subject had been broached between the two of them. Thresholders were creatures of myth in Teaguewater, feared for their power, and while he could kill their people much more easily than they could kill him, he was still frighteningly vulnerable, especially without the suit. They had been treating him like he might be capable of one-man genocide, though that was far enough in the past that there was still some creeping doubt. It had been his main takeaway from speaking with Mellon.

“You don’t believe it anymore,” said Perry.

“I think you and Cosme are both dangerous in a different way,” said Flora. “Dangerous because of your thoughts, because you’re outsiders, because you have information that might be deadly to the Custom, or to life itself. I was speaking to Marchand last night while you slept. Some of the things he knew of … even if he wouldn’t have been able to replicate any of it, it’s extremely worrying.”

“Nuclear weapons?” asked Perry.

“What are those?” asked Flora.

“Nevermind,” said Perry. “Ask March about it later, I guess, and I can take you through everything that’s not a history lesson. Though March knows a different history than I do, so … it’s not really important. And I think you’re right, I’m not personally dangerous.”

“You are,” said Flora. “Inside the suit, I could never hope to beat you in a remotely fair fight, and probably not even if I got the drop on you, which I would never be able to do.”

“You’ve thought about killing me,” said Perry.

“You’ve thought about killing me,” said Flora. She folded her arms across her chest. “It’s only natural. But no, we’re allies, thinking about it is just an exercise in caution.”

“Caution,” Perry repeated. He thought she was substantially correct, but there was something about it that didn’t sit right with him. He was glad they could have the conversation, glad that they were allies … but there was an undercurrent to it, a worry that if they suddenly weren’t allies, if their interests somehow became unaligned, she might strike out at him.

“We have some time,” said Flora. Either she wasn’t registering his unease, or she was choosing to ignore it. “I need to eat dinner.”

Perry had almost gotten used to seeing Flora eating her pickled body parts, though he wished she wouldthat she put some kind of effort into plating it up. For all her flawless skin and prim appearance, Flora had no compunctions about reaching into a jar and fishing out a kidney to plop into her mouth. She often did this over the sink while hunched over so she’d get no drops of brine or meat juice on her clothes, and it was the most singularly unattractive thing that Perry had ever witnessed a pretty woman do.

His own meal was beef, only barely cooked, with a baked potato. He was getting enough meat to satisfy those cravings, but still had to deal with a lack of vegetables. Teaguewater seemed to run on grains, and finding bread was always easy, but a nice plate of roasted vegetables was a rarity, and nothing had the freshness that Perry was used to. Without much refrigeration, everything was a bit wilted.

When they were finished, they made their way across the city. Flora was in her uniform, which she seemed to wear like a shield. It bought them access and freedom, especially from the other gendarme, who were still stalking the city looking for anything out of sorts. Officially speaking, there was no news about Cormorant Wesley, but there was movement at his factories and workshops, which were getting their instructions from somewhere. It was entirely possible that was just the crown taking control and saving face, but Flora didn’t have as much information as she would have liked.

Perry was getting used to the city of Teaguewater, its sounds and smells, the way that cobblestones felt beneath his feet. He had also gotten used to the looks he got for being so tall, though the glamour helped with that, making him stick out less than he probably would. He had his sword in hand, wrapped up, though he hadn’t been keeping up his training as much as he would have liked, especially without anyone he could spar with. Teaguewater was familiar in the way that a vacation could become familiar after the first week, when nothing was as fresh and new.

The tea room was a busy place, even at night, and Perry had no idea what these people were going to do with the caffeine that was hitting their system after dark.

They went up to the arranged room and slipped in while trying not to look like they were slipping in, then sat there together and waited.

“This place is safe?” asked Perry.

“She chose it, so I presume it’s safe,” said Flora. “We all engage in a little bit of deception and spycraft, just to get by under the Custom, but it’s different for the terrine, wearing the bodies of other people.”

“Mmm,” said Perry. He didn’t particularly like the concept. It seemed more invasive than any of the others, personal in a way that even the cerebol were not. “We have a little time?”

“We have the room until the tea house closes,” said Flora.

“I mean before she gets here,” said Perry.

“That, I don’t know,” said Flora.

“I’m not sure where your compulsion to help me came from,” said Perry. It was something he’d been wanting to say for a while, a topic he hadn’t known how to broach.

“Compulsion?” asked Flora.

“Instead of killing me,” said Perry. “Which seems like it would be the other reasonable option. It’s pretty clear to me now that there wasn’t a mandate to bring me in, just a briefing you got from Mellon at some point, and … I don’t know. Thank you, I guess, but I don’t understand it.”

“If you were told that someone might come from another world with immense power, that they might be capable of single-handedly wiping out a whole genus of our kind, what would you do?” asked Flora.

“Tread cautiously,” said Perry. “But they came to kill me, and you saw that it wasn’t a slam dunk,” he caught himself, realizing that the expression wouldn’t translate, “that maybe a handful of vampires couldn’t handle it, but that timed right, with a dozen trained and armed men, when I was out of the suit … probably could have? You must have known.”

Flora pursed her lips. “How many people do you think I’ve killed?” she asked.

“Um,” said Perry. “Directly, or indirectly?”

Flora winced. “Aside from the contents of my chiller.” They were both still pretending that those were ethically sourced. Flora wasn’t personally stealing kidneys either way, but where they were coming from … stolen by the Council’s people in the morgue was the best case scenario.

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “You’re a cop. And enforcer. You’re young, but grew up in a civilization where people grow up young, where they’re forced to. And you’re part of a grand conspiracy to hide away. A double cop. So … fifteen kills.” A normal cop, one from Earth, might go their entire career without ever firing their weapon in the line of duty. The average number of people killed by the average cop in America was closer to zero than one. Perry had put in some research time during long debates with people who were Wrong on the Internet.

“Three,” said Flora. She said it with some weight, like it was a heavy number.

“Ah,” said Perry.

“I don’t relish death like you do,” said Flora.

Perry let that pass. She had the wrong idea about him, and there didn’t seem to be anything that would change her mind.

“Those early days, I made excuses for you, and for myself,” said Flora. “I would say to myself that perhaps there were things you weren’t telling me, powers that you had kept hidden, that your suit would spring to life and kill me, that you would rise from the bed with lightning in your eyes and grip me by the throat if I tried to lay a hand on you. Or I would say to myself that you deserved your life, that we needed to follow the rule of law, that clemency and respect were the order of the day.” She sighed. “Fear, doubt, hope, in that order.”

The door to their room opened up quietly and without fanfare, whisper-quiet, and a slender girl slipped in. It was hard to place her age, but Perry thought she was closer to being a teenager than a young adult. She moved through the room like water, her long blue dress flowing after her, and she took her seat across from them. The room was small, and she was close. She had on makeup and a heavy perfume that swept in after her, making her seem overly artificial to Perry, but that might have been the biases he’d come into this meeting with.

“This is him?” she asked, looking Perry up and down.

“This is,” said Flora. “Temmie, this is Peregrin, Perry, this is Temmulen.”

“Which do you prefer?” asked Temmie.

“Perry,” said Perry. “And you?”

“I prefer not to be referred to by name,” she replied. “If you were ever to see me on the street and desperately needed to talk to me, it should be ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’. But it would be best for us to pass each other by.”

“You wouldn’t always be wearing this face,” said Perry.

“Tea service will be in shortly,” said Temmie. “We can save sensitive topics until after it’s arrived.”

“What are we talking about until then?” asked Perry.

“I thought we would catch up,” said Temmie. She turned to Flora. “You’re in your uniform, things are still going well with your posting?”

“As well as can be, given circumstances,” said Flora. If this was really an old friend, there was no softness in Flora’s face. Maybe that was just Flora’s default way of carrying herself. “Double shifts have stopped, and I’m not sorry for that, but someone’s kicked the hornet’s nest, and it’s not quieting down. There are more police on the streets, more of the regular military called in for reinforcement or brought in from the countryside, and there are all sorts of people being pulled off the streets for rather innocuous reasons.”

“The dissidents and enemies of the crown might be hiding among us,” said Temmie with a nod. “And who knows who or what might be caught in a large net?”

“It’s a worry,” nodded Flora. “It’s a good time to lay low.”

There came a brief knock on the door, and Temmie got up from her place on the couch to allow a waitress in a drab uniform in. She had a tray with a pot of tea, three cups, and a few finger sandwiches, though none of it looked particularly appetizing to Perry. Once she’d left, Temmie locked the door with a solid thunk of sliding metal and returned to her seat. Perry poured himself a cup of tea.

“We’re safe?” asked Flora.

“As can be,” said Temmie. “Or rather, we’re balancing different forms of safety against each other. This place is watched, but not closely, not even in these times. It will be assumed that we have a private room for other purposes, if we’re noticed at all.”

“That might damage my reputation,” said Flora with a frown.

“It won’t come back on you,” said Temmie with a wave of her hand. “I know the owner, and I know the gentleman who reports to the king. He has some loyalty to me.”

It took until then for the penny to drop. The ‘tea house’ was open late for a reason, the private rooms you could rent for an hour with mixed company had an obvious-in-retrospect purpose, the underwhelming food and oversteeped tea … Of course, in this particular time and place you couldn’t call it a love hotel, you couldn’t make it obvious, but Perry was going to try to keep from touching the couch.

“And you,” said Temmie, turning to Perry. “You’re everything they’ve claimed you to be?”

“More or less,” said Perry.

“The Custom is at stake,” said Temmie. “Your counterpart, Cosme Walsh, has the ear of the king and at least some knowledge of the inner workings of the Custom. A fraction of both the varcoli and osten elements are working with the king and have helped him to create his own small army of vampiric soldiers who are working in secret. The varcoli feed off the prisoners at Bishop’s Gate, while the osten are fed from bones pulled from pauper’s graves. Given the rapid expansion, it’s not clear that this is entirely sustainable. Certainly the king’s secret — which is also our secret — cannot be kept forever, not if handled as the king is handling it. Those soldiers don’t come from nowhere, they have families, even if they’re housed in barracks, men without wives or children.”

“He’s building an army to take us down,” said Flora. She had a very deep frown on her face. It was a lot to take in at once, confirmation of some things they’d guessed and a bit that was new.

“That’s part of the goal,” said Temmie, nodding. “But there’s something else.” She crossed her legs and smoothed her dress. “We believe he’s setting his sights on Reclamation.”

Flora swore. There was obvious anger on her face. “He wants to fight a second Reclamation War? That moron.”

“He has a weapon that his prospective enemy knows nothing about,” said Temmie. “We’re a new enemy, one that’s been living under his nose, but the homeland beckons, and a surprise attack with platoons of varcoli and osten might have a good chance of succeeding. It seems that before he went missing, Cormorant Wesley created an invention of untold possibility using a new material that only our nation possesses, at least for now.”

“The second Reclamation War is imminent,” said Flora. Her nostrils were flared. “Idiot.”

“He might win this time, doing what his father did not,” said Temmie. “Maresland would be an occupying force, but it would need less support than any previous occupying force in the history of the world, its soldiers feeding off the blood of the people. The deaths that would come from such an invasion would be enough to keep the osten fed for years.”

“You’re not sharing this with the Council,” said Flora. “If you had been, I would know about it.”

“The Council is leaking like a sieve,” said Temmie. “As it does. If I had told the Council what I knew, then everyone would know what I know.”

“War though,” said Flora. “War using what is ours. It wouldn’t just be the breakdown of the Custom, it would be —”

“Yes,” said Temmie. “It would be something else, worse than we’d ever feared.”

“You’re on our side then,” said Flora.

“Your side?” asked Temmie. She leaned forward. “Do you know what happens to an espionage system when it gets taken over by a foreign power?”

“Guillotines,” said Perry.

“What?” asked Temmie, losing her intensity for a moment, confused.

“Oh,” said Perry. “It’s … a device for chopping off heads. A frame set up to hold the neck in place with a blade that gets dropped from a high height.” He pantomimed that.

“Ah,” said Temmie. “Yes, that, more or less.”

“So you’re looking out for your own skin,” said Flora.

“I am,” said Temmie. “I tell you this as a sign of honesty and trust between us, but I am absolutely looking out for my own skin. For me, it’s between attempting to salvage something here and making a new life somewhere else. There’s bountiful land out west, an expanding rail network, and I’ve got both the skills and talents to make a new life, washing my hands of Teaguewater. But I don’t imagine that the death of the Custom will make things easy for me, and if people know about the terrine, they know what to look for. Much of our power comes from the Custom. I’d like to preserve it if I can, especially since I plan on living a few more centuries.”

Perry held his tongue, but he doubted that the terrine would be afforded that kind of leniency, even if they could somehow prevent the masquerade from being broken. Technology was advancing, probably for the same reason that it had advanced on Earth, and Perry doubted that the forward motion could be arrested. In another hundred years, there would be photographs and video, infrared cameras, disposable testing kits, mandatory drug testing, and all kinds of things that would be likely to trip up the terrine. Perry didn’t have a way of identifying them yet, but it was only a matter of time. If he got one in his sights while in the suit, it seemed likely that March would be able to say something like ‘she’s running a fever’ or ‘she’s got two heartbeats’ or ‘her skin reflects too much light’ or something.

“You have your people,” said Flora. “They have information on the king and his plans, on Cosme, Wesley, all the primary players. They have ways to strike.”

“We’re slow to act, as an institution,” said Temmie. “We watch our backs, we deliberate, we have meetings of our own about what’s appropriate to do.” She turned to Perry. “A built body doesn’t last forever. They decay over time, and must be shored up with flesh, and it’s difficult to keep the shape right, so that you’re recognizably the same person. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say some variation on ‘oh, but don’t you remember me?’ to cover up for cumulative errors that even the glamour can’t hide. Going in among the unawakened, it’s a risk.”

“Is assassination off the table?” asked Perry.

“It depends on who we’d be killing,” said Temmie. “In my experience, assassination is best when done by an outsider, someone who can slip away into the night and never be seen nor heard from again. Someone close to the king, if that’s who you’d like to kill, isn’t the ideal. Suspicion casts a wide net, you see, it gets people poking around, and that’s dangerous for the terrine, especially if we’ve replaced someone. It’s not a good use of the terrine.”

“One of the strix would be better-suited to it, if we could slip into the castle,” said Flora. “I could land on the rooftop, slip inside, and be out, into the air, before the alarm was raised.”

“Are we really talking about killing the king?” asked Temmie. She glanced at Flora.

“I was thinking about killing Cosme, actually,” said Perry. “Though he’ll be sleeping with one eye open.”

“Mmm,” said Temmie. “Killing the other thresholder would have much less of an impact than killing the king. It would make fewer waves.” She seemed relieved by that. “I don’t know where he’s holed up though, and I’ve never seen his face.”

“Here,” said Perry. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. He wasn’t the best at drawing, and the power armor didn’t have a printer attached to it, but he’d done the next best thing, which was to draw while wearing the helmet with a filtered image of Cosme overlaid, ensuring that the proportions were exact. It was tracing, more or less.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” said Temmie. “And I’ll show it to some other people.” She folded the paper up and slipped it into her dress. “This is helpful.”

“I’m not sure that killing Cosme helps anything,” said Flora. She took a sip of her tea and grimaced at the taste. “Most of the damage he’s done has been in the form of knowledge, and removing that knowledge is impossible.”

“Not strictly impossible,” said Perry. He looked at Flora; he wasn't sure whether that was meant to be a segue into sharing knowledge about the tower plan.

“You’re talking about killing all the people who know?” asked Temmie, oblivious to the attempt at signaling. “Then burning all the books and their copies?”

“How difficult would that be?” asked Flora.

“You’d need to bomb the king’s castle,” said Temmie. She said this casually. “Otherwise, you’d need to know who all the targets were and pick them off one-by-one, except that wouldn’t work, because they’d know what was happening, so it would take a coordinated strike, so … this all would have worked a lot better if we’d been able to stop it before it started.”

“I need to tell you about what we’re doing with the cerebol,” said Flora.

This took some time. Perry had little to add, so he watched Temmie’s face. She had a happiness to her that seemed like it had to be an act, but it was an act that she never let up on. Her makeup was pretty much perfect, and he wondered whether this was a part of her power, if she could just make her lips red and put on blush by changing the skin itself.

“I know Mellon, though not personally,” said Temmie. “There are points of cooperation between the cerebol and terrine. Do you think that he can do it? That it will work?”

“We’re hoping,” said Perry. He was on the fence about it, lacking any expertise, but it was a first-of-its-kind creation, and historically those had failures and setbacks before they actually worked.

“It would be the time to strike,” said Flora. “A moment when they forget about our existence entirely, when we have the advantage of a surprise attack against someone who forgets that there was even a battle? It’s not something that comes around often.”

“And replacing the king,” said Perry. “Is that outside your capabilities, or off the table?”

Temmie looked at Flora. “He doesn’t mess around, does he?”

“He does not,” said Flora. Her face was set.

“We could kill and eat the king, yes,” said Temmie. “And we could then assume his visage, at least for a time, and possibly with the right resources, keep it close enough that it would fool his family and friends, especially if aided by heavy glamour. But the king is routinely seen by hundreds of people, including all his staff, and we wouldn’t know where the cracks were until it was too late.”

“Power insulates a king,” said Perry. He folded his arms.

“Power binds a king,” said Temmie.

“Oh come on,” said Perry. “Are we going to argue that a king has no real power, that he’s equal parts slave and master?”

“I suppose that would be a step too far,” said Temmie. She seemed agreeable by default, which was throwing Perry off. “But the king is by no means a tyrant. He has the support of those whose support he needs, and he quells opposition through means other than just guns and swords.” She sighed. “At any rate, wholesale replacement of the king — and presumably the upper ranks of royal leadership — would be an undertaking that would be years in the making. We would need our own people around him, so a lone person wasn’t responsible for keeping the deception up, sticking their neck out. It’s not something that we’re going to do.”

“It’s not something that we were going to do before the king knew about the terrine,” said Flora. “Now, it would be suicide. If the king has any brains at all, he’ll have put in defenses in place, code words, verification, things that would get even a skilled, well-prepared terrine killed.”

“Does he have brains?” asked Perry. “She said that he was planning on waging war against a country across the ocean using an army of newly minted vampires that would feed on the occupied nations. How is that a smart plan?”

“Don’t confuse ambition and generational wounds for stupidity,” said Temmie. “Though I admit that they’re hard to distinguish, in this case. Regardless, the king is untouchable, at least to someone like me. To kill him would make the current state of danger look like a calm breeze.” She smoothed out her dress. “I’ll resume my intelligence gathering, and I’ll speak with my people. We know that there needs to be some sort of bulwark in place, and if we can keep the Custom, all the better. I assume your plans for the city-wide glamour are secret for the moment?”

“For as long as they can be,” said Flora.

“Excellent,” said Temmie. “You know I can keep a secret.” She stood up and went to the door. She had barely touched her tea. “Peregrin, it was a pleasure to meet you, but I won’t shed a tear when you leave this city, and I can only hope that I’m still alive to see it.”

“Take care,” said Perry. “And thank you.”

They were left alone in the tea room, and Flora paused for a moment before getting up to lock the door.

“Do we trust her?” asked Flora.

“I don’t, but I don’t know her,” said Perry. “I can’t imagine that the king would keep her on, but I guess I don’t know the king either. Seems like if he was cleaning up, the very first thing he’d do is take care of the terrine and the second thing he’d do is take care of the cerebol, but maybe I’m just trying to game out how I would do it.”

“She might sell us out, if she could, but I don’t think she has any illusions that it's possible,” said Flora. She bit her lip. “You shouldn’t speak so freely about killing the king.”

“Why?” asked Perry. “He’s a threat to your people. Besides, I'm not a fan of monarchy.”

“It could get you executed if the wrong person hears,” said Flora. “And I have some loyalty to the crown. I am a gendarme, not just someone playing as one. If the crown can be saved, then I have a duty to save it. I know you don’t come from here, that your land has no kings —”

“No, we did,” said Perry. “Who did you think the guillotines were for?”

Flora glared at him. “And what did you replace them with? Something like the Council?”

“Democracy,” said Perry. “It’s not clear to me how the Council is chosen, but I wouldn’t guess that democracy played too large a part in it.”

“You worked for a king,” said Flora. “You were a knight.”

“Yeah, and I never had any illusions that he was all that special,” said Perry. “He was set against an invading horde though. And if I could have, yeah, I would have switched their government over to something a little more sane than a king and his cronies, as much as I thought they were decent enough people.”

Flora tapped her foot, then stood up. “I think this is what I had understood the least about thresholders.” She looked at him. “Come, we should go.”

“Sorry if I’ve upset you,” said Perry. “But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that the monarchy needs defending, certainly not by the likes of us. The previous king sent your father to war, right? Where he died.”

“He died honorably,” said Flora. Her lips were a thin line.

“I didn’t mean to imply that he didn’t, but he was put in a position to go to war by a king who wanted — what, land? A place that hadn’t been a proper home for a generation by that point? And you said that the current king is an idiot, a moron, for trying to fight that war again with better weapons.” Perry took a breath. “Look, we’ll chalk it up to differences, and maybe some ignorance on my part of not just the history but the sociology or the cultural stuff. I had these sorts of problems in the last world, it comes with the territory, let’s just … get on with it.”

Flora took her oaths as a gendarme seriously, and it did seem as though she was willing to break them, but it was clear now that it was a subject that needed to be approached cautiously. She was going to try to preserve the monarchy, if possible, and if it wasn’t possible, then that was something serious and dire. Perry didn’t get it, really didn’t get it, and he understood that well enough that he thought he could avoid the subject. Decapitating the monarchy, literally or otherwise, felt like it would throw the quest to destroy the Custom into disarray, at least, though Perry knew enough about revolutions to think that whatever replaced the monarchy might also go on its own fanatical quest to put down any opposition. That would be doubly true if it was the Council that replaced the Custom.

Still, it was good that they had a woman like Temmie nominally on their side, someone who could engage in her own form of surveillance. That felt like progress, at least, toward a solution.

They walked back through the city together, silent. Perry could hear better, after having been turned into a werewolf, and he was alert for an ambush, but nothing came.

There were questions that he wanted to ask Flora, but he didn’t want to step in it again. If they had been in a love motel or something like it, a pay-by-the-hour place for consenting adults to have a good time, it raised some questions about the sexual mores of the city, and that raised some questions about Flora herself. He didn’t know how she saw the world, not really, but she didn’t seem interested in the kinds of long, drawn-out discussions of personal philosophy that he’d had in college or during those interminable fights with internet people. Flora was traditional and conservative, except in those places where she wasn’t, though Perry didn’t have all that much experience with even Earth conservatism, let alone this strange time and place. He kept silent, mulling it over.

Late at night, once the nightlife had begun to die down, Perry slipped back into his power armor then took to the skies holding a plate of metal. It was suitably dark and foggy, with the HUD supplementing the cameras through sonic sensors, infrared, and just March’s best guesses about where things were. The plate needed to be installed at a specific point on the tower, one that was far enough away from the central staircase and elevators that no one would be able to see it, and where it also wouldn’t be able to be seen from the outside. The angle was important, the placement was important, and Perry didn’t really have a clue what he was doing.

He was in the middle of holding the plate still, letting the bonding material set, when Cosme’s response finally came in.