“For that few minutes I had this feeling that it was inevitable, that I was being swept toward something…and then it exploded. I mean it literally did. And now I’m here because where else can I go and I’m lost and alone and there are no more steps to take and…I’m just—” Her voice breaks in half. “I’m such an idiot,” she whispers, wiping her cheeks furiously.
Eleven says nothing.
“I thought I was doing something,” she says, and hiccups. “I thought I was, I don’t know, accomplishing something. Like I was getting closer. But look at that thing. I am on one dot of that mess up there, and that dot is bigger than anything I ever imagined. And that’s just civilization. If the Humans were on one of those dots, somebody would have found them. They’re not even on that map, Eleven. They’re in the empty parts between Networked solar systems, those gigantic voids up there that would take centuries to cross—and how many centuries do you think I have?” She throws off the strap that is reaching for her shoulder. “Don’t touch me,” she says, her voice rising. “This isn’t something you can just…just encourage me through. I’m being realistic, okay? I am a literal speck of fucking dust and I cannot do it.”
Sarya hangs in the suit in silence, her body trembling with sobs that she would rather die than release. Her jaw is locked shut and she can feel the hot wetness around her burning eyes, and she refuses to address it. She stares out into the arboretum, into one of countless spaces on countless stations across a Network whose immensity she can’t comprehend, let alone search. She feels the break coming, like she’s unraveling, like the Widow and Human inside her are coming apart, like her mind is strained to a point it cannot withstand—
And then Eleven’s holos flick off.
Sarya stares at the wall, feeling her heart slowing in her chest. The universe has shrunk to a few cubic meters of warm darkness, surrounded by a ten-centimeter-thick wall of titanium and synthetics.
[Question], says a small tag floating in the darkness.
Sarya sniffs and runs a sleeve under her nose.
[Have you always known what you are?]
Sarya stares at the question for long moments before answering. She coughs. “No,” she says shortly.
[How did you find out?]
She draws a deep breath. It’s easier to breathe now, enclosed in a shell like this one. “You’re trying to keep me from panicking,” she says.
[Or I’m curious.]
Or both. But fine, why not. “My…mother,” she says. She sniffs again, batting away the absorbent cloth that has just emerged from some compartment or other. “I mean, I had to almost die to get the truth, but still.”
[Your mother…almost killed you?]
“Well, she—hold on.” She accepts the cloth and pauses to blow her nose on it, because the Human body really can be disgusting sometimes. “I mean, yes, she almost killed me, but that was unrelated. She—” She stops, trying to assemble Widow and Human memories into something cohesive. “Mother had this way of saying things, where she would make you think she said something else.” She releases the cloth when a small arm comes to retrieve it. “Sorry, that’s gross.”
[That doesn’t make much sense to me], says Eleven, pulling the cloth into a compartment and snapping it closed.
Sarya takes another deep breath. “Ask me a question,” she says. “Ask me…I don’t know.” She runs a hand over the smooth interior wall, the only thing keeping the universe out. “Ask me if I know what I’m doing here.”
[Do you know what you’re doing here?]
And now she puts some Widow force into her words. “If I didn’t, do you think I would have come here?”
The suit is silent for a moment, then hums appreciatively. [I see what you mean], it says. [You didn’t answer the question, but somehow I feel like you did.]
“I learned it from my mother,” says Sarya. She learned a lot of things from her mother, come to think of it. “Probably explains why I have a false registration; I can picture her talking circles around some poor low-tier immigration intelligence.”
[Or you were lucky.]
Sarya coughs. “Yeah. Luck. Well, whatever she did, I ended up registered as a little Spaal. Know what a Spaal is?”
[No idea.]
“Well, if we ever come across a real one, you’re in for a treat. And by that I mean you’ll be bored senseless.”