{"id":474,"date":"2024-06-22T06:37:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T10:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/?p=474"},"modified":"2025-01-28T23:44:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T04:44:29","slug":"identity-theft-chapter-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/identity-theft-chapter-40\/","title":{"rendered":"The Changeling Game, Chapter 40"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\ntt {\nfont: .857em menlo, monaco, consolas, monospace;\nmargin: auto;\n}\nh2 {\ntext-align: center;\n}\nh2.chapterhead {\nmargin-bottom: 2em;\ntext-align: center;\n}\n  .nowrap {\n    text-indent: 0;\n    display: inline-block;\n}\n<\/style>\n<p><b>Title:<\/b> The Changeling Game <small>(Formerly <i>Identity Theft<\/i>)<\/small><br \/>\n<b>Author:<\/b> Ardath Rekha<br \/>\n<b>Chapter:<\/b> 40\/?<br \/>\n<b>Fandom:<\/b> TCOR AU<br \/>\n<b>Rating:<\/b> M<br \/>\n<b>Warnings:<\/b> Adult themes, controversial subject matter, harsh language, violence<br \/>\n<b>Category:<\/b> Gen<br \/>\n<b>Pairing:<\/b> None<br \/>\n<b>Summary:<\/b> Jack\u2019s plans for her future had already crashed and burned; now Kyra\u2019s have, too. They must now make a difficult choice and begin plotting a new way forward, when an unusual and dangerous opportunity appears\u2026 for one of them.<br \/>\n<b>Disclaimer:<\/b> The characters and events of <i>Pitch Black,<\/i> <i>The Chronicles of Riddick,<\/i> and <i>The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury<\/i> are not mine, but belong to Universal Studios.  I just <i>wish<\/i> I were in charge of their fates.  No money is being made off of this.  I\u2019m writing strictly for love of the story.<br \/>\n<b>Feedback:<\/b> Absolutely, the more the better!  Shred me, whip me, beat me, make me feel grammatical! I post \u201crough,\u201d so I can always use the help. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<input type='hidden' bg_collapse_expand='6aac1529215ab4019431435' value='6aac1529215ab4019431435'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-more-text-6aac1529215ab4019431435' value='Long post is long. Click to read the story.'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-less-text-6aac1529215ab4019431435' value='Hide the story again.'><button id='bg-showmore-action-6aac1529215ab4019431435' class='bg-showmore-plg-button bg-green-button  '   style=\" color:#D9ECFB;\">Long post is long. Click to read the story.<\/button><div id='bg-showmore-hidden-6aac1529215ab4019431435' ><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"chapterhead\"> 40.<br \/>\n<u>Out of the Field of Fire<\/u><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cSo what now?\u201d Jack asked Kyra as they returned to their room and two unappetizing trays of food. Sebby had already helped himself to bits of their meals from both trays, including all the olives, and was grooming his carapace on Jack\u2019s pillow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Kyra swallowed, looking around the room with hurt, wistful longing. \u201cNow\u2026 we get ready to leave in a few more days.\u201d Her voice cracked on the word <i>leave<\/i>. Jack moved to hug her, but she held up a hand. \u201cI can\u2019t right now, I need to\u2026 <i>fuck<\/i>, if that Toombs bastard were in range, I\u2019d\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYeah. Me too.\u201d Jack sighed and sat down, picking up her tablet to start a search. \u201cSo where do we go next?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWe\u2026\u201d Kyra sighed. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Jack. I really am. I don\u2019t want to run out on you, but\u2026 it can\u2019t be <i>we<\/i> anymore. You heard that Toal guy. Toombs is looking for <i>two<\/i> girls, partners in whatever crimes he\u2019s made up\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She sat down on the foot of their bed and sighed, surreptitiously wiping at the corner of her eye.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cHe\u2019ll catch us if we stay together,\u201d Kyra finally said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cNot if I lay a false trail,\u201d Jack protested. \u201cI was thinking maybe some doctored photos of us, with Riddick, could show up on the merc network\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201c<i>You<\/i> have a <i>life<\/i> to get back to,\u201d Kyra told her. \u201cYou really think that\u2019s gonna work if you show up back at your mom\u2019s house with the Black Fox of Canaan Mountain in tow? \u2018She followed me home, mom, can I keep her?\u2019\u201d The bark of humorless laughter that escaped Kyra was painful.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Of course Kyra knew where she was going, Jack realized. She\u2019d felt, in the last few weeks, like they were sometimes hearing each other\u2019s thoughts, seeing into the insides of each other\u2019s heads\u2026 and based on the latest revelations, she hadn\u2019t been wrong.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It had started in the hospital, at least between the two of them. Looking back, she thought she could see so many clues\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI\u2019m a known quantity,\u201d Kyra said, flopping back on the bed and then wincing with pain. \u201cFucking stitches\u2026 my prints are on record. Finger and retina. All kinds of data. You were able to clear yours out, I know that, but mine are in too many systems for you to get to them, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAmnesty Interplanetary\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cIt doesn\u2019t <i>matter<\/i>, Jack. They could get me exonerated or pardoned or <i>whatever<\/i> and it wouldn\u2019t matter. If I\u2019m with you, I\u2019ll lead Toombs <i>right to you.<\/i> He doesn\u2019t give a fuck about me. He just wants to use me to get to you, and you to get to Riddick.\u201d Kyra sighed and closed her eyes. \u201cEven if the bounty on me ceases to exist <i>tomorrow<\/i>, I still won\u2019t be safe for <i>you<\/i> to be around. You can\u2019t ever stop being Jack B. Badd if I\u2019m along for the ride. And we both know you\u2019re sick of being her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack found herself desperately wishing that Kyra was wrong, but knowing that she wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAnd,\u201d Kyra sighed, \u201cif anybody outside of this family and that Toal guy ever puts our trail together, enough to prove to the envoy that we <i>were<\/i> on board the <i>Scarlet Matador<\/i>\u2026 there\u2019s no place in the Federacy that\u2019ll be safe for us or <i>anybody<\/i> we care about. So yeah, get those fake images out there. Make \u2019em think we <i>did<\/i> run off to the Bayou Nebula or something. Make \u2019em think we\u2019re living lives of crime as Riddick\u2019s <i>hench-bitches<\/i> a hundred light years away from here. We need all the camouflage we can get. But it doesn\u2019t change what has to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack swallowed, nodding. She could do that. She could lay down a convincing false trail, for all of their sakes. But\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWill you be okay?\u201d Kyra asked, snatching up the words that she\u2019d been about to say. \u201cI mean, you weren\u2019t being abused by your mom or her boyfriend, were you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cNo,\u201d Jack told her, sighing. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t anything like that. It\u2019s just\u2026 I don\u2019t think Alvin and I <i>ever<\/i> liked each other. He was dating my mom, but\u2026 the fact that she had a kid from a previous marriage was a big turn-off for him. I think it made things a little too real. I tried to just\u2026 make myself scarce when he was over. I figured they wouldn\u2019t be together long anyway, and when they started fighting all the time, I figured I was right. They even broke up for about a week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWhat were they fighting about?\u201d Kyra asked, looking interested. It struck Jack again how incredibly different their childhood homes had to have been. If Kyra\u2019s mother had been on board for the whole New Christy colony project, she\u2019d probably been domestic and pious, not a high-powered corporate lawyer who, in the year before Jack took off, often hadn\u2019t gotten back from dates until early Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cEverything. Nothing. The dumbest things were suddenly setting them off at each other. I was relieved when it ended, especially because, for a few days, I thought maybe my dad had a chance to come home\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">And then everything had crashed and burned.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI still don\u2019t know what happened, but suddenly my father was just\u2026 really quiet, and then he told me he\u2019d rejoined the Corps of Engineers and was leaving for Furya. I wanted to go, too, but he said there weren\u2019t any schools there that\u2019d be challenging enough for me, and I should stay with my mom, and I\u2019d understand why soon\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAnd did you?\u201d Kyra\u2019s voice was soft, almost hesitant.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cTwo days after he left, I came home from school and Alvin was back. Sitting in the living room, holding my mom\u2019s hand\u2026 and they told me they were getting married in three weeks.\u201d The pain of that moment was still sharp and fresh. She pressed her fist against her heart, trying to tamp it down.\u00a0 \u201cThey fucking waited until it was too late for me to go with him\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWhy the hell did she take Alvin back?\u201d Kyra sounded every bit as confused as Jack felt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI don\u2019t\u2026 know. I didn\u2019t really care. I just felt\u2014\u201d <i>\u2026feel\u2026<\/i> \u201c\u2014so fucking betrayed\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cHow long after that did you run?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cA week before the wedding,\u201d Jack sighed. \u201cHe was already throwing his weight around, wanting to be a father figure, wanting to be the fucking <i>man of the house,<\/i> like we needed one of <i>those\u2026<\/i> He even said \u2018my house, my rules\u2019 to me one time, that fucker\u2026 So I figured out a route to Furya, forged my mom\u2019s signature on some forms that\u2019d let me pull the money I\u2019d been saving up for summer camp out of the bank, and got the fuck outta there while they were having their bachelor parties and some twit from up the street was too busy making out with her boyfriend to <i>babysit<\/i> me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAnd you\u2019re just gonna go back to that?\u201d Kyra looked dubious.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack shrugged. \u201cMaybe. Probably. I can\u2019t get to Furya, and I don\u2019t <i>want<\/i> my parents to think I just died somewhere\u2026 but if he\u2019s still a shit I\u2019ll just\u2026 I dunno, threaten to disappear again if they don\u2019t let me go live with my grandparents or one of my aunts and uncles, or something. I can\u2019t let them think I just died, though. I didn\u2019t\u2026 I didn\u2019t do any of this to <i>hurt<\/i> them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I never wanted to hurt anybody\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It made her ill to think of what she\u2019d put her mother, and also her father, her cousins, her grandparents, <i>everybody<\/i> through for more than a year now. It was especially hard to think of how her cats must have looked for her, called for her, those first few nights\u2026 and <i>they<\/i> would still have been bereft even if she\u2019d made it to Furya on schedule.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Ewan\u2019s wrong\u2026 I don\u2019t think enough about how my actions affect others\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cNo, Jack, Ewan\u2019s <i>right<\/i> about you,\u201d Kyra said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She glanced over, surprised. Kyra smirked and tapped her temple. There was, she realized, no point in either one of them hiding or denying anymore that they were in each other\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYou don\u2019t try to hurt anybody. You just tried to get to your dad fast before anyone could stop you,\u201d Kyra continued. \u201cNot your fault there was an unexpected detour into a shitstorm. Life\u2019s just a series of detours, anyway, right? Most of what we plan out never really happens the way we expect it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYeah. Probably\u2026\u201d No <i>probably<\/i> about it, Jack admitted to herself. \u201cYeah. And <i>that\u2019s<\/i> why I\u2019m gonna give you a shit-ton of resources to take with you if we\u2019re splitting up. Gonna teach you how to ghost around in case you ever need to replace Kali Montgomery with another alias.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">For the next hour, they made plans. They wouldn\u2019t leave <i>right<\/i> away, but they would have to go soon, before someone got it into their head to restrict their movements \u201cfor their own good.\u201d The conversation came to an abrupt halt when they heard voices in the courtyard.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cFuck,\u201d Kyra said, rising up and grabbing their plates and carrying them into the bathroom. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to put my IV back in. Take Sebby and jump in the shower, okay? I\u2019m going to tell them I needed to take a shit and you couldn\u2019t help me get up to do it because you were already showering. C\u2019mon, <i>go.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">While Jack climbed into the shower with an excited crustacean, Kyra scraped their cold, uneaten food into the toilet and flushed it down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack waited a few minutes, giving Sebby time to do his little water dance at her feet, before she emerged from the shower and slipped into the robe that Kyra had left for her. In the bedroom, Ewan was reconnecting her sister\u2019s IV drip with an air that was simultaneously amused and martyred. He avoided looking at Jack much once he realized she was only wearing a bathrobe.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cIn the morning, we\u2019ll begin your physical therapy,\u201d he was telling Kyra. \u201cYour stitches look really good, though. In another few weeks, if you want, Takama can take you to a clinic to have the scar removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cScars are trophies,\u201d Kyra said. \u201cI want to keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Tafrara entered the room with a box\u2026 a <i>singing<\/i> box. Sebby, on Jack\u2019s shoulder, began to make a high-pitched <i>reeeeee<\/i> of excitement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYes, little one, this is your dinner,\u201d she said, pouring the box\u2019s contents into Sebby\u2019s tub. \u201c<i>Yezan!<\/i> Get off of me, you little\u2026\u201d She brushed off several crickets that had jumped onto her arms instead of into the tub.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">With a delighted shriek, Sebby leapt off Jack\u2019s shoulder, bouncing across the bed and then sailing through the air, straight into the tubful of crickets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cThis is why Izil put the box into the tub, flipped open the lid, and jumped back,\u201d Ewan observed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAnd he still had three crickets jump on him,\u201d Tafrara retorted, smirking. \u201cWe\u2019ll see how well <i>you<\/i> manage next feeding. You can show us how it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Throughout their good-natured ribbing, Jack noticed, they never once mentioned their visitor, or the conversation in the dining room. She wondered if it would ever come up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Some of it\u2019ll have to,<\/i> she thought sadly. <i>They\u2019re gonna have to tell Kyra that her participation in the reception tomorrow evening is off.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Several times, before Ewan and Tafrara said good night and left the room, she thought Ewan was going to say something to her, but he always stopped himself. Things still weren\u2019t normal between them. They\u2019d almost gotten there, until everything changed again while she and Kyra were supposedly having dinner in their room.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Maybe we\u2019ll find a way back to normal,<\/i> she thought, picking up her tablet and carrying it over to the bed as the door closed. <i>We still have three more Tangiers days\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">And then he would be gone. And, soon after, so would she.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Kyra fell asleep almost immediately, but Jack couldn\u2019t manage to. Maybe it was because she\u2019d taken an unscheduled nap during the middle of the day, but her mind was too active. She spent another hour writing up instructions for how to access the hidden menus on different security platforms before Kyra began to whimper in her sleep.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cNo\u2026 leave me alone\u2026 don\u2019t wanna look\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cKyra?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cJust\u2026 fucking\u2026 stop already\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack closed her eyes, focusing on the starlit place that the <i>Apeiros<\/i> inhabited. \u201cAre you talking to the other larva?\u201d she demanded.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Yes.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cStop. Leave her alone. You\u2019re hurting her,\u201d Jack told them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">For a moment, there was silence. Then\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>We did not know.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Back on the bed, Jack could feel Kyra relaxing beside her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cShe\u2019s still not healed. Talk to me. Just me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>You are also injured,<\/i> they pointed out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cMaybe, but you don\u2019t hurt me by talking to me. It hurts her when you do. So I need you to leave her alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Nothing should have to be alone,<\/i> one of them whispered.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cOkay. Fine. But you wait until <i>she<\/i> talks to <i>you.<\/i> If she calls to you, you can answer. But otherwise, let her be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">There was a long pause. She had the sense that the ether they inhabited was full of communication, just none of it directed at her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>This is acceptable,<\/i> they finally said. <i>You and the smallest ones are enough.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That was a little creepy, she thought, and decided not to ask \u201cenough for what?\u201d Not yet. She wasn\u2019t sure she was ready to know.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">They didn\u2019t seem to mean either her or Kyra harm, she reflected. They had been afraid, when she\u2019d been struggling with the cube from the <i>Scarlet Matador<\/i>, that she would hurt or even kill herself, and had tried to stop her. For the moment, their motives seemed kind. But, and it would be especially true once she left Tangiers Prime and parted ways with Kyra, soon there would be no one she could discuss them with if she developed doubts about that. She would sound completely psychotic\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014<i>like an escapee from a mental hospital, even<\/i>\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014if she told anyone she was communicating telepathically with a strange alien race, unless she submitted herself to Quantification and the risks Takama believed came with that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">If she ever came to think they posed a threat, though, she might <i>have<\/i> to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Unless it\u2019s just a threat to me\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">And\u2026 <i>there<\/i> it was.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She spent another half hour, still not even a little sleepy, researching \u201csuicide by proxy\u201d on the tablet. The historical material was disturbing; the law enforcement literature was a little horrifying. She skimmed over case studies of people whose guilt had overwhelmed them but who were repressed from making active suicide attempts, and who began to do more and more dangerous things, most of them in some way connected to the guilt they felt or a moment that they\u2019d survived but felt they hadn\u2019t deserved to. \u201cSuicide by Cop,\u201d she learned, was one of the most common forms, as people punished themselves and ended their lives by creating threatening-seeming situations in which police believed they had no alternative but to shoot to kill.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But it didn\u2019t seem to cover what she was doing. Or what she had done.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">In the al-Walid house, she reflected, she had felt completely alone and cut off from the world. She barely spoke Arabic for the first several weeks, none of the people she encountered there knew or were willing to speak English to her even though she <i>knew<\/i> that Abu, Lajjun, and even little Ziza were all bilingual\u2014they were, they had told her, immersing her in \u201cher\u201d new language \u201cfor her own good\u201d \u2014and she wasn\u2019t even allowed to control how she presented herself to the world. Skirts, dresses, and hair coverings, not as disguises but as her new normal, had been shoved upon her. They only grudgingly continued to call her \u201cJack\u201d because she had refused to give them, or answer to, any other name; they used it as little as possible, too, often referring to her as <i>\u201cher\u201d<\/i> when she was standing right there.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Why, she wondered, was it so much easier to let people call her Tislilel\u2014which, when she\u2019d looked it up, she\u2019d found literally meant \u201cbride of the sea\u201d\u2014and to wear jalabiyas and other traditional North African attire, here in New Marrakesh than it had been there?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Because the Tomlin-Meziane family loves me, loves us\u2026<\/i> And because the name had been a gift from a man she had fallen in love with and was in mourning for.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She\u2019d tried so hard to believe in the love that \u201cUncle Abu\u201d and \u201cAunt Lajjun\u201d had claimed to feel for her, tried so hard to reciprocate it\u2026 but in comparison to what she\u2019d experienced in New Marrakesh, she could see just how empty and controlling it had all really been. The al-Walids had used \u201clove\u201d as a bludgeon, and had very nearly broken her with it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">In <i>their<\/i> house, she hadn\u2019t had access to any resources she could use to run away again, and they had never given her an opportunity to find any. Anything she questioned or protested was grounds for a lecture about everything they were sacrificing for her sake, and how hurtful her ingratitude was to them. Through it all, she\u2019d felt \u201cUncle Abu\u2019s\u201d judgmental censure over her hooligan ways, hidden beneath a wrapping of well-intended avuncular guidance, even as she\u2019d been made to feel guilty over her instinctive, bone-deep rejection of all that prescriptive \u201cnurturing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Death, she thought, had been the only way she\u2019d seen out of the terrible, inescapable prison that had been assembled around her. Somehow, she\u2019d even come to believe she <i>deserved<\/i> it all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Those musings seemed to resonate with something. She tried to follow the thought, but it vanished as she tried to chase it down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But the only remaining part of the despair she\u2019d suffered in the al-Walid household was the sense that she had failed others when they\u2019d needed her most, hadn\u2019t done enough to help or protect them\u2026 and an absolute terror of finding herself as the sole survivor of yet another disaster.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">There was, she noted ruefully, an abundance of links to the subject of \u201csurvivor\u2019s guilt\u201d on the tablet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">If she really was an esper, the way everybody suddenly seemed to think, was her persistent survival in part because she\u2019d unconsciously foreseen, and been able to side-step, disasters as they came at her?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>\u201cFirst you\u2019re a boy, then you\u2019re a girl, and now you\u2019re a psychic. Careful what you wish for, Jack\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Of all the people she\u2019d met on the first leg of her run, only three had survived meeting her, and only one of the people she\u2019d loved had. She realized that she couldn\u2019t stop dreading the possibility that history would repeat itself <i>here.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She didn\u2019t want to <i>die<\/i>, but she didn\u2019t want to be the only one left standing if death came for the people she loved again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">On Deckard\u2019s World, movies from twentieth century America were enormously popular, and she had watched hundreds of them with her cousins. There had been one where a man\u2014a <i>Scotsman<\/i>, much like Cedric\u2014had discovered that he was immortal and outlived everybody who mattered to him over and over, losing all the people he loved to war and time, slowly growing more aloof and disconnected from humanity. The film had made it seem so romantic and dashing, but a line from one of the songs that had played in it had indelibly embedded itself in her head: <i>Who wants to live forever when love must die?<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The conviction that the Tomlin-Meziane family, and the <i>ait Meziane<\/i> tribe as a whole, would be far safer with her and Kyra gone was still strong. And Kyra would probably be a lot safer, too, no longer traveling with the walking bullseye that was Jack B. Badd. Every bullet she\u2019d dodged, and there had been so many now, seemed to have struck someone else as a result.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She didn\u2019t want to step into a bullet\u2019s path, though. She wanted out of the field of fire.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cDeckard\u2019s World it is,\u201d she sighed, and burrowed her way into the shipping schedules for that region of space.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Most of the shipping turned out to be indirect. Her planet, which had seemed so huge and consequential when she\u2019d lived on it, was considered something of a remote backwater by the rest of the Federacy. There was regular, direct passenger traffic between there and New Queensland, and most of the freight that reached her home world was offloaded on Vasenji Station before making the final leg of its journey on smaller vessels. She would probably have to pass through one of those two locations on her way back.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She narrowed her search, setting a maximum time frame: she wanted to return to Deckard\u2019s World within two years of the date of her disappearance. When she added Tangiers Prime as a starting location, only fourteen scheduled flights were left with openings in either their passenger or crew manifests. With a feeling of resignation, she added an exclusion for cryo-sleep, expecting all of them to disappear from the list.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">One did not.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The <i>Nephrite Undine<\/i> was a new freighter, which was only just coming out of Sirius Shipping\u2019s orbital shipyard at their headquarters above Tangiers Six. The company was preparing for its run-in flight using a new set of Star Jumps that would allow for direct traffic between the Tangiers system and Deckard\u2019s World\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Could anything be more perfect? It seemed too good to be true.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The ship had never Star Jumped before. Maiden voyages, she soon discovered, had 90.3% success rates. They generally carried inexpensive and easily replaced cargo and were staffed by tiny skeleton crews that not only had to agree to the risk of a journey they might never return from, but also had to be willing to stay out of cryo and be \u201con call\u201d every second of the journey in case something went wrong. High risk, high maintenance\u2026 hardly anybody wanted that. Those positions paid handsomely but were difficult to fill, especially if, as in this case, it was a months-long solo flight.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">And, Jack saw, the job listing for the <i>Nephrite Undine<\/i> was still up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Sirius Shipping had been sweetening the pot every way they could think of, she read, in an attempt to get even <i>one<\/i> qualified person to apply. It would be a five-month journey with twenty-five Jumps, none of them more than two days long and the rest of the time spent traversing normal space. The crew quarters were advertised as lush, with a recreational facility and data center that was described as \u201con par with any luxury system available to the public.\u201d The maintenance schedule, they insisted, would only take up a few hours of each day, and the emergency procedures had been streamlined but shouldn\u2019t be necessary. The human crew member would have AI support and would only be responsible for situations that non-humans had no legal authority to handle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">And yet the position was unfilled.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She dug deeper, slipping behind Sirius Shipping\u2019s firewalls\u2014she gravitated to their ships and ads, she thought, because she knew that they used her father\u2019s security systems everywhere\u2014and digging into their Human Resources department\u2019s confidential files.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The job <i>had<\/i> been filled, briefly, a month ago, but had been relisted less than a week earlier\u2026 following the discovery of an obituary for the man they had hired and who had died in the spaceport explosion. The one backup candidate they\u2019d had on file was no longer available. With the inaugural flight just eleven Standard days away, the company was becoming desperate and had, just hours earlier, increased the benefits they were offering.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Still, the almost one in ten chance that the ship would fail to reach its destination seemed to have deterred everyone\u2026 especially with the lucrative alternatives that had opened up in New Casablanca and New Fes as both cities\u2019 spaceports expanded their staffs to accommodate traffic that would normally have gone through New Marrakesh. The few queries the listing had received in the last eight Standard days were from people seeking even <i>more<\/i> benefits and securities.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cMarianne Tepper,\u201d she noted as she looked over the listing again, was fully qualified for the position. And under the circumstances, she didn\u2019t really care how much she\u2019d be paid.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Ewan was leaving in three Tangiers Prime days, slightly less than six Standard days. To reach the Tangiers Six orbital shipyards in time, she would need to leave New Marrakesh two morning-days after, travel to New Casablanca, and take a midnight launch from there. She would arrive at the Sirius Shipping HQ a little under one Standard day before the <i>Nephrite Undine<\/i> was scheduled to leave.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But there was almost a one in ten chance that, if she boarded that ship, she\u2019d vanish forever and never make it home at all\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Would this be this some addlepated suicide attempt on her part? Boarding a ship that might never be seen again?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>The <\/i>Hunter-Gratzner<i> was never seen again,<\/i> she thought, <i>and everybody thought it\u2019d be safe.<\/i> She had already survived one Level Five Incident. She could survive another, if it came to that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She\u2019d be home in less than six months if it worked, well before what everybody would think was her fifteenth birthday. If she could play a good enough hand, maybe she could even make people believe she\u2019d been somewhere on Deckard\u2019s World the whole time\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">No matter what happened, the <i>Nephrite Undine<\/i> could break her trail.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack opened the message that she had received from Sirius Shipping that morning-day. They were still waiting to hear whether she wanted an interview for the <i>Major Barbara<\/i> position, something that was probably a simple formality. They might even skip an interview altogether when she made her counter-offer. She began to compose a reply.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><tt>Dear Ms. Nguyen,<\/tt> she wrote, addressing it to the executive who had signed the interview offer. A year before she\u2019d taken off, her mother had shown her a stack of letters that had come from candidates she was considering for her law firm. Jack tried to phrase things the way her mother\u2019s favorite choices had in their letters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em\"><tt>Thank you for your kind offer of a potential position on the <i>Major Barbara.<\/i> I regret that, due to some logistical and scheduling issues traveling to the Catalan System would create, I must decline the offer at this time. However, I am aware that you have another opening that doesn\u2019t pose any such conflicts on your new vessel, the <i>Nephrite Undine<\/i>\u2026<\/tt><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Either way, she told herself as Kyra slept on beside her, Jack B. Badd could finally disappear forever.<\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: The Changeling Game (Formerly Identity Theft) Author: Ardath Rekha Chapter: 40\/? Fandom: TCOR AU Rating: M Warnings: Adult themes, controversial subject matter, harsh language, violence Cate","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"\u201cThe Changeling Game\u201d 40: \u201cOut of the Field of Fire\u201d","bgseo_description":"Jack\u2019s plans for her future had already crashed and burned; now Kyra\u2019s have, too. They must now make a difficult choice and begin plotting a new way forward, when an unusual and dangerous opportunity appears\u2026 for one of them.","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fan-fiction","category-the-changeling-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1184,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/1184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}