The Vital Abyss

It was midmorning, as we reckoned such things in the room, and Brown, his precious hand terminal clutched to his breast, had been taken away by the guards again. Alberto and I walked, making a slow circuit of the room for the simple pleasure of feeling my body in motion. I had just reached the corner farthest from the hotel when Quintana walked up to us. The benignity of his expression surprised me at first. I expected rage or sorrow or confusion. Alberto recognized something threatening in Quintana’s demeanor before I did. He shouted and tried to push me out of the way, but Quintana stepped in close, twisting his body from the waist. His elbow hit the bridge of my nose with a sound like a wine glass being stepped on: sharp and deep at the same time.

I rolled to my side, uncertain how I’d fallen down. My hands guarded my abused face but didn’t touch it. Contact made the pain worse. Blood ran down my cheeks and dampened the collar of my jumpsuit. Shouting voices came at me from a great distance that turned out to be about four meters. Alberto and two of Fong’s men wrestled Quintana, pushing him back and away from me. Half a dozen other prisoners ran toward us, to help keep the peace or to watch it being broken. Quintana’s voice buzzed with rage so badly I couldn’t understand what he was calling me or threatening me with. I rose to my knees and looked up. The Belter guards leaning on the windows above us seemed slightly less bored than usual. One, a woman with short red hair and a tattoo across her chin, smiled at me sympathetically and shrugged. I stood, but the throbbing pain brought me to my knees again.

Quintana turned away, followed by Fong herself to make certain he wouldn’t circle back. The others watched them go, then Alberto came to my side.

“I told you war would come out of it.”

“You’re so very smart,” I said, the sound of my voice like something from a child’s cartoon.

He took my guarding hands and gently guided them away. “Let’s survey the damage,” he said. And then, “Oh, darling. You poor thing.”

They stuffed my nose with two tampons donated by women in security before we reset it. Our Belter guards never made an appearance. The politics of the enormous room were our own to work through, and the Belters took no side. Still, when Brown and his escort did come, no one in the room talked about anything but the violence he’d missed.

The guards didn’t allow us mirrors. The expressions of the others gave me the nearest thing to a reflection, and from that I assumed I looked pretty rough. Albert ripped the sleeve from his jumpsuit and dampened it at the showers. My drying blood grew sticky, adhering my suit and beard to my skin and tugging at me when I moved. I sat with my back to the wall, accepting Alberto’s ministrations with as much grace as I could muster. I saw Brown approach Fong, watched them speak. Brown kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other and glancing behind him, as if expecting to be Quintana’s next target. I waited, still and patient, afraid that any movement on my part would scare him off. Quintana paced at the far end of the room, muttering to himself with several of Fong’s security people and Mellin from imaging. Around me, the narrative of the room changed. With Quintana as the villain, I shifted to being the victim. And as the victim, approachable.

“Fong told me what happened. You look like shit,” Brown said, establishing dominance before he had to admit weakness.

“I blame myself,” I replied, then paused, making it a joke. “No, actually, I blame Quintana.”

Alberto, approaching with a freshly dampened rag, caught sight of us, paused, and angled off to sit by himself. Brown lowered himself to sit beside me. “He’s always been an asshole.”

I grunted my agreement and waited. Brown shifted, fidgeted. A tightness filled my gut, and the certainty that he would offer me his sympathy and walk away filled my throat. I took hold of his arm as if I could keep him there by force, but spoke calmly. “He’s been talking to you a lot?”

“They have,” he said. “The Martian officer hasn’t been there. It’s just the Belter guards.”

“What do they say?”

“They ask me what it is.”

“And what do you tell them?” I asked. When he didn’t respond, I tried again. “What is it?”

“It’s an elaboration of the original protomolecule sample. You saw that much, didn’t you? Before you gave back the terminal?”

“I did,” I said. Candor about that cost me nothing.

“The thing is, they know. I’m sure of it. This isn’t a problem they need to solve. It’s a test. They want to see if we can solve a puzzle they’ve already cracked. They don’t say it, but I can hear them laughing at me.”

That piqued me, but this wasn’t the moment to sit with it. Brown’s open shell gave me my opportunity, and I drove my knife in to keep him from closing again. “Tell them they need two. Tell them to take both of us, and I’ll help.”