Nights and Days in Hive Acropolis Ch. 10

"Thank you, Brega," she says. "Thank you for--"

Brega cuts her off. "Don't waste your honeyed words on me, slut."

That word, that Rebeck threw around so much in fun, strikes Vaia very differently when Brega says it. No ally here then, she thinks.

Vaia leans back in the comfortable chair, drinks her tea, and resigns herself to listening to one of Brega's rants.

"I know very well, what you've been up to, young lady. Those men -- Manfred especially! -- they'll come up with all kinds of excuses for you. But I know. I could always see it in you. Your age group has no idea how fortunate you are, and you've always been the worst of the lot. When did you last do a lick of work? Just studying at your own pace, isn't it? When you're not drugged up, or drowning your mind in filth with that daemonic head-set!"

It's nothing Vaia hasn't heard before. It's just that this time Brega's acting extra-righteous about it. She lets it wash over her.

"And now you go out and find some women --" There's a lot of extra emphasis put on that word. "-- who've struck it rich, who do Emperor-knows-what to you. I hardly like to imagine whether you enjoy it, or just put up with it because they seem to have money. Either way, it comes as no surprise to me. You'd rather choose to be a whore than be a hard worker, wouldn't you?"

Brega's flow stops. It seems like she actually wants a response now.

"What do I even have to be working at?" asks Vaia. "I get told to keep studying, but I have no idea what job they have planned for me at the end of it. Honestly, I'd love some hard work, rather than being left in limbo like this."

"Don't try to change the subject on me, young lady!" Brega resumes. "But it just goes to prove what I always say. Girls from your age group have no appreciation of the kind of opportunities they are getting. If you were patient and agreeable, like my age group always were, you would have no problems whatsoever. But you're spoilt, it's as simple as that. No, not just spoilt. You know what the older women would have said about you when I was young? That you were ruined now."

Brega smiles at her cruelly, as if she's sure she's really sunk the knife in with that.

But the word doesn't mean anything at all to Vaia.

"Thanks for the tea," she tells Brega softly. "Since I've been a bad girl, are you going to tell me my new ground rules?"

"Always the smart mouth. Very well. You are not to leave the compound without permission. You are not to leave clan territory at all. You will do all your chores without error. You will remain quietly in your room at night. You will show humility and respect for your elders. Do I need to go on?"

"No, I suppose not." Vaia gives a shrug. "You do appreciate that I'm not a child, don't you? No one has the authority to punish me like this. I am a House share-holder in my own right. And this is the Republic now. I'm a citizen too."

"So what? You'll appeal to the Governor, will you?"

"Perhaps I will. Perhaps I'll appeal to my Representative. You do realise who my new friends work for, don't you?"

Brega wavers for a moment. She doesn't know, Vaia discerns. "Now you're verging on disloyalty to your House. In any case, you will find that your communication privileges have been revoked."

Vaia thinks that she'd like to see them try that! But she's careful not to let any confidence show through. Stay quiet. Let her think she's won.

Brega nods firmly. "You have a last chance to be a proper, dutiful, hard-working Van Saar woman. To be one of the luckiest people in the hive, I might add. I suggest you take it. Go to your room and spend some time in appropriate contemplation. I'd suggest prayer if I didn't know it would be a waste on my part. And take that disgusting thing off while you're at it."

It's not clear where Brega's finger's pointing, but Vaia knows. Her collar. No, that's something she's not going to do.

Vaia is content enough to be dismissed though. She finishes her tea -- whatever her faults, Brega cannot help but make damn fine algal tea -- and leaves.

On her way back to her room, unescorted, she does her best to hold her head high before the curious looks of the people she passes. And yet, it's making Vaia crazy. She's always done her best to avoid notice. She has no idea how to fight gossip. How to put her own side of the story out there. Besides, she thinks, the truth of what happened was pretty wild. How many people could accept that that's who she is?

***

Her room's been raided.

The head-set's gone. She checks for her obscura stash, but that's been found and removed. Nothing else seems to be missing, but she can tell that they've gone through all her drawers. All her stuff.

She checks her terminal. When she logs in with her ID, there's a notification that she's limited to the internal network only.

She'll deal with that in a minute. Right now she needs to clear her head and think.

Vaia shuts the door, and locks it. At least she's still allowed a lock. She lies down on her bed.

She's lost track of her suit, she realises. She's still wearing the medical gown. That's so weird. A Van Saar's suit is like a second skin to them. She shuts her eyes. She doesn't need head-sets, or drugs. Not any longer. She thinks of her mistress, and the images, the sensations that the thought of Rebeck conjures could not be more vivid.

She starts to get herself off while she thinks about Rebeck's body.

If she can just get out of this situation, she thinks. If she can just be with her mistress once more. With Rebeck. With Sash. Her troubles will melt away. She can put all this behind her.

It's not long before she comes, hard.

Just being able to control her own body in that way makes her feel so much better.

Within the small cubicle that is her room, there is a little washbasin. Vaia strips off the gown, runs the tap and rubs herself down. She checks that her spare suit is in its spot in her cupboard.

Then, naked, she climbs back into bed, and begins to try to focus.

Her first thought is, again, of her mistress. She wishes so much that Rebeck were here to tell her what to do. Her presence makes everything so much simpler. So much clearer. But she's not here. Vaia has to figure this out for herself.

She can do this, she tells herself. She tries to keep it simple. She mustn't get paralysed by overanalysis.

What are her priorities?

The biggest risk she can think of is ending up in the hands of Frank. The rest of the clan... maybe they won't understand. Who knows what gossip has them believing by now? But they're still her family. They don't want to hurt her. Even Manfred was quite insistent that he didn't want to hurt her. And she believed him.

But he's still a fucking traitor, she thinks.

Frank, on the other hand. She doesn't know what he would do to her if he got the chance. He's so peculiar that he's hard to read. But she's sure she doesn't want to find out.

To stay clear of Frank, she thinks, she needs to be well-behaved enough that no one sees fit to send her back to his clinic. When she gets the chance, she'll tell the people she thinks are most likely to be well-disposed towards her that she really, really doesn't want to be alone with Frank.

Brega couldn't stand Frank, she recalls. Better the devil you know, right? She could suck up to Brega a bit. She'd much rather quietly absorb some more rants and drink a lot more algal tea than find herself back in the clinic, being subjected to some process that Frank convinces Manfred will 'cure' her.

With difficulty, she stops herself from speculating about what Frank might come up with. Her inventive mind is too capable of terrifying herself if she does that. It doesn't matter. She's going to stay clear of him anyway. Next item.

Her favoured goal is obvious. She wants to get back to Sash and Rebeck.

Again, her mind races. Can they help her? Will they help her? Would they let her stay with them? Would the Representative permit that?

Painstakingly, she shuts down all those lines of thought. If it turns out that she can't reach her preferred goal, she'll find another to settle for. For now, she knows her objective.

She isn't sure that this can be her home any longer. The time she spent with Sash and Rebeck... That was already going to make life back here feel so dreary in comparison. Maybe she could have managed it, found a balance, if she got to go and see them regularly enough. But now that's not going to be permitted. With what's happened, she finds it hard to imagine being comfortable living here again.

That thought is a bit of a shock. To say the least. This has been her home all her life. But the time spent with Sash and Rebeck is still fresh in her mind. There's a whole new life waiting for her. A better one. She believes it.

And... That's enough planning for now. For all that she's in turmoil, she can boil it down, and it's simple enough. She wants to avoid the person she's most afraid of, and get back to the people she trusts the most. The ones who threw her off a Spire... Vaia smiles.

It's time for action.

She gets up, puts on her spare suit, and accesses her terminal.

Vaia has known this system all her life. She programmed some of it. She's not so easy to lock out.

She knows she should probably keep her head down. Be a good girl. Wait for the heat to die down and the restrictions on her to lift. Then, she could make a break for it. But she knows what she'd prefer. She wants to be rescued...

While she finds the system's backdoors, she begins composing the message in her head.

'Hi Rebeck. Hi Sash. I hate to do this to you, but I'm in trouble...'