Ioan was surprised by just how wrung out True Name looked during their Secession Day coffee date. The skunk’s blouse was wrinkled, her normally orderly fur mussed atop her head, and her whiskers all abristle. She looked as though she’d not slept for days and certainly not changed outfits in at least as long.
All the same, her arrival was much the same as all the others had been, with her smiling to em, ordering her coffee, and joining em on the couch in order to set up a cone of silence.
“Good morning, Mx. Bălan. I trust you are well?”
“Uh, I’m fine, I guess.” Ey frowned, continuing carefully, “What about you, though? You look…well, terrible.”
The skunk’s smile faltered, betraying the exhaustion that plainly lay beneath. With another blink, the cone’s ACLs changed to opaque it from the outside. She sagged against the couch. “I came in a rush, my dear, I apologize for my appearance.”
“You don’t need to apologize, True Name. I’m just worried. Lots of Secession Day preparations?”
“Of a sort, yes. Things have been rather stressful the last few days.” She laughed, shook her head, and added, “Well, more than a little. I have been stretched very thin and am…struggling.”
“Struggling?”
The skunk’s eyes darted around the coffee shop, scanning each face within at least twice. “I am not comfortable expanding on that at the moment.”
Ey held up eir hands disarmingly. “Of course. Are you at least excited about the day?”
“When I have the chance to slow down, I can feel some of that excitement. This provides me a good chance to do so. Twenty-five years since Launch and both LVs are continuing on in their journey with very few problems. Two and a quarter centuries since Secession and life continues smoothly here.”
“That seems to fit with your goals pretty well.”
She gave a slight nod of acknowledgement, though she remained distracted. “That it does, my dear.”
“You and Jonas planning anything for yourselves, at least?”
“There will be a gathering, yes,” she said. “Today at noon.”
“‘A gathering’? Not a party?”
She shrugged. “His words, not mine. I do not know what he is planning.”
“Well, hopefully a good one.”
“Agreed. This will limit my time here, of course, I hope that you understand, and I may be distracted as several of my forks merge down to reduce conflicts while there.”
Ey nodded. “That’s alright. I’ve got stuff to work on, too.”
Lapping at the whipped cream atop her drink, she once again scanned the crowd, which, as far as ey could tell, had not changed since she’d arrived. Something about her posture suggested that the topic of what was happening was closed, however, so ey made note to ask about it later instead.
They fell into work after that. True Name focused on her messages or dealt with merges while ey dedicated a token amount of effort to eir writing. The rest of em observed the skunk out of the corner of eir eye and thought about just how much must be happening for her to admit that she was struggling. 225 years since the System seceded from the rest of Earth’s governments doubtless came with a lot of celebrations and announcements to make, speeches to write, hands to shake, or whatever it was that the non-leaders of Lagrange did in such an event.
Add in the twenty-fifth anniversary since Launch and certainly there would be an added note of joy for many across all three Systems. Ioan was particularly looking forward to the letters from Castor and Pollux in a month and change to hear how things had gone on each of the LVs. Perhaps ey’d even hear from Sorina from Artemis.
Still, True Name’s mussed look and anxious expression seemed to go beyond that. Ey couldn’t think of a reason related to the day that would have her in such a state. Things would be intense, but no so much so as to force her to drop her carefully constructed veneer of confidence.
Ah well, at least she got some time off, ey thought. This was followed by a gentle chiding which ey heard in May’s voice. And you are not supposed to be fixing things, remember?
Right.
Forcing emself to concentrate on eir writing at least bought em ten minutes of work.
“Huh,” True Name mumbled, frowning.
“Mm?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, I suppose. Just got a merge from an instance, and it sounds like Jonas is looking for me. He knows that I am–“
Ey jolted back as the skunk leapt to her feet, gaze whipping about the room, then out through the windows to the street. Her tail was bristled out, ears pinned flat, and paws clenched tight, something ey’d only seen in May, and then only a handful of times.
“True Name?”
She held up a paw, beckoning em to silence, and, despite the way she kept searching face after face, ey could picture dozens of sensorium messages flying back and forth from her. Her frown only deepened.
Ey closed eir notebook, figuring ey was pretty well ruined for work at this point, and watched her carefully.
When nothing of interest appeared on the street, the skunk slowly turned to scan the room. Her eyes shot wide open, and ey followed her gaze out into the scant crowd of patrons. Everything was much as it had been: folks sitting and chatting, drinking their coffee, reading or doing work. She, however, seemed to be focused in particular on a middle-aged man walking from the back of the shop where a door opened onto patio seating.
“Fuck,” she said, then shouted, “Fuck!“
She darted around the coffee table, knocking against it hard enough to send both of their drinks spilling across its surface, and grabbed eir hand. “Go, Ioan! Go, go!“
“What?!” Ey scrambled to eir feet, eyes darting between True Name and that oddly familiar man walking towards them. “Where?”
“Home! Anywhere!”
It didn’t seem open to discussion, and enough of her panic had built up in em by now that ey quickly stepped from the sim to home.
To home and chaos.
There was a flurry of activity down the short hall from the entryway, several instances of May blinking into and out of existence, along with several more of the same man they’d seen at the shop. She was forking close enough each instance of him to exercise the collision algorithms of the sim, knocking him this way and that to keep him away from her. She was screaming, “Get the fuck out! I am not her! Get out!“
“May!”
A few of the skunks looked over to the door, and then suddenly another was beside em, grabbing eir free hand. With a wrenching sensation, a sudden change in light and sound and gravity, the three of them stumbled out of Arrowhead Lake’s default entry point.
May pulled eir paw roughly free of eir hand and whirled to face them, shouting, “What the fuck did you do?!”
Tugging her own paw free, True Name darted away, looking around wild-eyed. “How secure is this place?”
“I think May and I are the only ones who even know it–“
She quickly ran a few paces into the woods, peering between the trees.
“Ioan,” May growled. “What the fuck just happened? Why the fuck was he in our house?”
Ey shook eir head, trying to dislodge the dazed confusion. “I don’t know. He was at the coffee shop, too. Who even–“
“Guōweī,” she snapped, then shouted up to True Name, “Why the fuck was he in our house? What did you do?”
The other skunk had shifted from her near feral crouch to standing, rigid and staring up into the branches, a look of dire concentration on her face.
When she didn’t answer, May began pacing and muttering — whether to herself or through some sensorium message, ey couldn’t tell.
Guōweī.
The assassin. The reputation analyst who had killed Qoheleth in the middle of his speech. A quick prowl through eir memories lined up face with name.
Eventually, True Name’s shoulders sagged and she stumbled down from the trees, Ioan and May both watching her, wide-eyed. She kept walking past them, past the trail, down onto muddy beech, then out into the water. The short waves lapped up against her legs, soaking her slacks, and still she kept walking. She walked until the lake had made its way nearly up to her waist.
And then she screamed.
It wasn’t a shout, no words were behind it. It was a scream of pure, unrestrained emotion, though whether anger, fear, frustration, or something else, ey could not guess.
Then she turned around and waded back toward the shore, stumbling once or twice, until she gave up and fell to her knees, water up to her waist once more. She beat at the surface of the lake with balled-up fists, growling and crying. Finally, she stopped, slouching over until she had to catch herself on her hands.
May’s fury, which until that point had been burning hot in her expression, was replaced by something more complicated. Anger, yes, but anxiety and fear as well. “True Name,” she said, voice more under control than it had been. “What happened?”
“Someone is trying to take me out,” she said between heaving breaths. “Trying to get rid of me.”
“What? Why?” ey said.
There was no answer from the skunk.
“Who, then?”
She shook her head numbly. “I do not know. There is a small list that we have been keeping our eye on. There are some reactionary elements that have been growing louder. I need to think. I need to…but…”
They waited, tense.
“But all of my instances are gone. Two merged back, one sent a message that she would be late, and then nothing.”
“All of them?” May asked. “How many?”
“One hundred and eight.”
At that eir partner let out a startled laugh. “Jesus Christ, True Name.”
Again, no answer.
“Well, who would even know where your root instance was? Or all of your other instances, for that matter?” Ioan asked.
“My root–” She tried to stand so quickly that she stumbled again and had to catch herself. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
Her eyes went blank, and she frowned out toward nothing, though tears left tracks down her cheeks.
May looked to Ioan. “What does she mean?”
Ey couldn’t tear eir eyes off the other skunk, and it took em a few seconds to even work up the concentration to reply. “Shortly before we left, one of her two merges said that Jonas was looking for her.”