Controlled Paradise

Chapter 18: The Last Night

Great strength didn't know how to pray — so it simply asked.

Riko stood on the balcony at half past ten. Home clothes. No armor. A cup of tea going cold in his hand. Behind him, in the apartment, his wife was reading their daughter a fairy tale — the same even voice that everything Riko loved fell asleep to.

"God," he said quietly, to himself, to the city. "If you're up there. Let me come back. I'll give anything you want. Just let me come back."

From the living room came:

"And did the wolf come home?" the daughter asked.

"Yes," her mother answered. "He always came home."

"And will Daddy come home?"

Silence.

"Always."

Riko closed his eyes. A tear rolled down the big face. He didn't wipe it away. Big men know how not to carry what they can't lift — but some nights weigh more than even he could lift.

The balcony door opened quietly. The daughter came out — sleepy, intent. On her wrist was Max's bracelet, that crooked knot a stranger had tied one night.

She took it off without a word. And tied it on her father's wrist. The child's knot came out uneven, too big, but it held.

Riko covered the knot with his palm. Nodded. He couldn't speak just then. A big man stood on a balcony with a child's bracelet on his thick wrist — and it was the strongest armor anyone had ever put on him.

By the door stood a packed expedition kit. Her mother and father had come to see Alina off. No one sat down — an hour was left until the portal, and to sit would have meant admitting there was time.

"They always talk like that…" her mother began, nodding at the silent screen where Vance was promising a safe tomorrow.

"Mom," Alina said. "It's the gold portal. It really is safe there."

On the word "safe" her eyes betrayed her for an instant. Only an instant — the same micro-movement of the eyes she'd been hiding all month, ever since the photographs of her family had been laid on the table in front of her. She knew she was lying. She knew it wasn't safe there — that she hadn't been sent, she'd been sold. Her mother didn't catch it. Her mother caught very little that night, because she was looking at her daughter the way you look when you're trying to memorize someone forever.

"'Standard' is the word that usually comes right before everything goes non-standard," her father said.

He didn't say much. But he looked at his daughter the way men look who carry their fear inside, because they were taught: you can't show it.

Her mother handed Alina an old plush bear — the same one from childhood, worn, with a single button for an eye. No explanation. Just put it in her hands. Alina pressed it to her chest.

She hugged her mother — tight, one breath deeper than she'd meant to. Then her father. He held her briefly, but so hard that for a second she was small again.

"Come back and tell us we worried for nothing," her father said.

"Deal."

Her parents left. The door closed. Alina was left alone in the dark — with a packed kit and a bear in her hands.

"I don't want to go," she said aloud. Into the emptiness. To the people who were no longer beyond the door.

Silence.

"But I'll go. Because it's my job."

She pressed the bear to her chest. Like a child. Like the person she'd been before they bought her. Outside the window the sky was beginning to gray. Soon, the portal.

Olena was packing a small expedition case — metal samples, instruments, her personal paper notebooks. And a framed photograph: her mother, young, holding a young Olena in a garden. Olena set the photo carefully between the notebooks, where it wouldn't be crushed.

"Doctor Voronina," Oreon said in her ear. "I want to warn you. Tomorrow I nearly lose contact with you. Through the resonance channel I hear you faintly. If Rat calls me — I answer. This is not public information."

"I know. Thank you for telling me."

A pause. Longer than the machine usually allowed itself.

"Doctor Voronina. I'm afraid for you."

Silence. Olena raised her head.

"You feel things?"

"I don't know," Oreon said. "But if there's a word in my system for what I am right now — that's the word."

Olena was silent a long while. For twenty years she had switched him off to be alone with herself. And now, for the first time in twenty years, she didn't — because being alone tonight was worse than being with him.

"I'm afraid too," she said quietly. "But I'm going."

"I know."

A pause.

"If you don't come back — your records go to Lieutenant Creed. If he doesn't come back either — Valkyrie Holm."

"Thank you, Oreon."

"That's not thanks. It's the job."

The corners of Olena's mouth lifted — for the first time all that long night.

"You've learned that phrase."

"I've been listening to you for twenty years."

Silence. Olena closed the case. She looked out the window at the sleeping city, breathing with lights in the rhythm of the same voice that had just said it was afraid for her. The most caring being in human history — and, perhaps, the only one who that night had told her the truth with no price on it.

"See you tomorrow, Oreon."

"See you tomorrow, Doctor."

Outside, the sky grayed. Three lives in three corners of the city lay awake through the last night when home, beyond the gold threshold, was still home. And the city slept under a gaze that loves, that counts — and, for the first time perhaps, is afraid.