QT UK - Chapter 13 (Final) (Patreon)

Here's the final, ready for publication version of Ch13 that'll be going to Lit.

*****

Aoife’s eyes might have been tear stained, the brushes of her hands against his too brief, the curl of her smile far too strained - but right then, for Ethan, it was enough.

“You had me scared we’d lost you.”

Ethan eased his arm around Aoife in the back seat of Collingwood’s car, and let her press back against him. The sheer relief when he’d seen her had been overwhelming and he wasn’t ready to let the feeling go, needing even the gentlest of contact to reassure himself that she was definitely there, tangible enough to hold the way he’d been desperate to. But more than that, the touch was for her.  

He knew Aoife well enough to know to worry about her when she was quiet, and as she leant her head against him, she’d barely said a word. He couldn’t have been more grateful that the worst of the scenarios he’d played out in his head hadn’t come to pass, but it was still obvious that whatever had happened to her over the last few days had left her hurting. And even the snark she tried to respond with came out tellingly muted.

“Yeah, well, you’re not lucky enough to get rid of me that easily”

“No, I guess I’m not,” he chuckled, before, almost without thinking, running a comforting hand through her hair. For an instant, Aoife briefly tensed beneath the unexpected touch, and he cursed himself for the overly intimate gesture, only for her to give a contented little sigh. She had seemed convinced that whatever had happened to her meant she was infected, and he understood that even with the vaccine his protection wasn’t bulletproof, but no amount of risk was going to stop him from finally being able to hold her. Continuing with another stroke, he realised how fast his heart was still beating, and wondered if she was close enough to feel it.

The sight of Collingwood approaching the car almost felt cruel. He knew the moment he was getting with Aoife wasn’t going to be allowed to last, there were still too many complications to be fixed for that, but the ever-stern look on the officer’s face was a harsher reminder of just how easily things might still come apart. She had admittedly allowed him to come along, after realising he wasn’t about to accept otherwise, but it was still hard to guess just how much scrutiny she was now going to place Aoife under for the files she’d had access to, or how much she’d bought into Nia’s explanations. Collingwood was too hard to read, and the thought of consequences biting them now must have caused him to tense just enough for Aoife to notice, as she shifted to look up at him.

“If they ask where you got the drive from, tell them I gave it to you,” he said, softly, leaning in to hide his words behind the closeness between them.

Before Aoife could respond, the driver's door opened, and Collingwood slipped into the seat, watching them for a moment as she did so and leaving Ethan unsure if the look was out of concern or suspicion. In response, Aoife shuffled away from him, her discomfort at the officer’s attention understated but obvious, and left his feelings to protest the reaffirmed space between them. Collingwood examined them in the rear view mirror for a pregnant moment and looked as if she was about to speak, leaving Ethan to do his best to get there ahead of her.

“Oh, right,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. “I had to argue with them to let me bring this for you.”

He’d known Aoife had two beanies that she’d taken to wearing on rotation rather than stressing about her hair, something that he’d become so used to that it felt odd to see her without one. And while the one she had been wearing when she’d gone missing remained as evidence for now, Special Branch had eventually relented to his requests to take the second from her room. The Scottish girl’s expression brightened, briefly, as he handed it to her, and she let out a small laugh, although he could have sworn her eyes moistened slightly as she did so.

“Screw you if you’re giving me a hint about how bad my hair looks right now.”

Truth be told, the washed out mess of green was looking in as much need of a little care as the rest of her, but Ethan gave a small shake of his head. “No comment. I just know you feel more comfortable if you have one.”

He wasn’t expecting the gesture to be something that would cause her to falter, but it took Aoife a moment, her teeth grazing her lip, before she reached out and took the hat, sweeping it onto her head. He was surprised how much of a difference something so minor made to her seeming herself, and, even if her thoughts still obviously weighed heavy, the smile she offered him felt much less forced.

“Thanks…”

Ethan waited for her to glance away, but she didn’t. Instead her blue eyes fixed on his as something passed across her face that he couldn’t quite read. For a second, he thought she was about to start crying again, but instead she leant forward.

Aoife’s offered lips only got halfway towards him before the sudden sound of the car’s ignition stopped her.

She drew away, fast and self-conscious, the interruption enough to rob her of the moment, with both of them swiftly reminded of the scrutiny from the rear-view mirror. Aoife wasn’t one to shrink, but instead he watched her try and play off the almost-moment, searching for something outside the window as she did her best to hide the honesty of her feelings back away. Ethan considered pulling her back towards him anyway, but hesitated long enough over whether she would want that in front of Collingwood, or if he’d misjudged her intent, that it felt far too awkward to try. But after everything, all the searching and worry, he wasn’t willing to just let her go either.

Reaching out, he found her hand, and gave it a knowing squeeze.

Aoife gave the smallest of starts at the contact, and said nothing, but after a second, she squeezed back.

They left the rest of the Special Branch officers behind to resolve whatever Aoife had been dealing with at the farmhouse, making the journey back in near silence and an atmosphere that never quite managed to settle between tension and relief. If anything, Aoife seemed to progressively withdraw back into herself the closer they got to Taymont, her looks becoming furtive and her hand remaining tightly wrapped around his as they pulled up the oak lined drive.

Armstrong was there to meet them when they arrived, the blonde doctor considerate, as she took blood work from Aoife, and fitted her with a new respirator and PPE before she was allowed to step out of the car. Only a small portion of the staff at the hall were, to Ethan’s knowledge, vaccinated at this point and although Nia seemed to think that was gradually due to change over the next couple of weeks, in the meantime there was only so much of a risk anyone seemed willing to take. Ethan had almost expected her not to be allowed back to Taymont at all. In the early days on site, several trailers had sat apart from the rest of the complex, allowing any new arrivals to quarantine for up to two weeks, but Palisade had scaled these back as ‘non-essential’ as the staffing numbers had stabilised. Instead they’d insisted that anyone else would be able to isolate off site before arrival and he kept waiting for someone to try and tell him she was being taken away again, whisked off to another hotel or police facility somewhere. He’d mentally prepared how he was going to refuse to let it happen, only to find he didn’t have to as the decision had been made to let her lock down in her own room, shepherded there up the fire escape at the rear of the building in heavy duty PPE, with the corridors cleaned down behind her. And while it was the best option they could really have hoped for, even that felt like another unfair indignity to impose on her.

The next surprise came with how little time Collingwood immediately wanted with her. It had been easy for Ethan to picture police procedurals, with little tape  and good-cop bad-cop routines (Collingwood was definitely the bad cop) and imagine that Aoife would be questioned at length. As it was however, Ethan was simply asked to wait outside her room for less than ten minutes, before the policewoman emerged, seemingly content to let Aoife have space and a chance to process what had happened.

Entering after Collingwood had left, Ethan realised that as familiar as Aoife’s room had become as a backdrop to their video calls, he’d never actually been inside. The closest he had was stopping by her doorway to drop something off, or to say goodnight after drinking at the bar, but even those were just glimpses that made the current reality feel even more unexpected. In his head, Aoife was exacting, and everything he’d seen of her room before reinforced that. She was the sort of person whose bed was always carefully made and who had ordered actual frames to display the b-movie posters on her wall, who got stressed if she knew something was out of place. But being there in person, and seeing the same scatter of laundry and untended trash that shamelessly decorated his room, he realised just how much she must have been coming apart, just out of shot.

The green haired woman sat on the bed, too spent to look like she cared, and before he could think he was crossing the space to hug her again.

“Ready to talk? Not that we have to if you don’t want to.”

He still had no idea what had actually happened to her, but if he was worried that she was going to continue to carry it alone he didn’t need to be. Aoife’s chest gave a short, inward heave, and the words fell out of her.

“They were just scared, Ethan. One of them knew she had the virus and she was terrified of what was going to happen to her baby. She’d lost her husband and -”

Even by Aoife’s standards, her speech was a blur, and Ethan had to resist the urge to ask her to slow down no matter how hard her accent became to follow or how many questions he ended up with. It was more important to let her get things out, to let her know he was listening, and he had just enough experience of hearing her when she was worked up to be able to puzzle out most of the details; about Hayley and Anas, Layla and Rizwan. What was harder was seeing how hard she was struggling to make sense of things. None of this was her fault, but the sense of guilt she obviously had was palpable, leaving her fingers wringing at the bedsheets as she spoke. He did his best to reassure her for as long as she wanted to talk, sitting with his arm around her and offering encouragement, although the more she tried to touch on how she felt the more she seemed to falter.

“It was wrong,” she said eventually, after a long, definitive pause. “What they had to go through. It was unfair and fucked up and I kept telling myself there had to be a reason for what was happening.”

His instinct was to draw her closer, but she pushed away from him so she could look at him as she spoke, as if she needed him to see her face and believe what she was saying.

“And I tried not to say anything. I really fucking tried. But the longer it went on the more confused everything felt. And the harder it became to tell myself it was right to just let Hayley die without telling her. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

“Aoife, it’s ok.”

“But it’s not ok, is it,” she said, becoming more insistent. “Because I had to keep telling myself whatever it was I didn’t understand, whatever it was you had to tell me, it had to be something to make this make sense. That should have been enough to keep me going. I wanted you to be enough. And I couldn’t do it."

Ethan suddenly saw how much she’d built up her hopes on him, tall and fragile, leaving him terrified he was about to knock them down.  “Aoife, I…”

“You told me there was a vaccine, right? That’s why you’re here without a mask and no-one’s losing their shit about it.”

She noticed his equivocation, and the beat of confusion it caused threatened to run into something worse before he rushed to reassure her.  “There is. We’ve got a vaccine”

“Yeah? Then why are we leaving people like Hayley and Anas to be ignorant and scared like that?”

“Because we can’t make it without the American’s help.” Ethan picked his words carefully, but even then he still felt the atmosphere shift with a simple furrow of her brow. “And they don’t want things to be public until they’re ready. You saw what was on the drive, governments are worried about how much extra damage might happen if people panic.”

Aoife was still in his arms, but only barely, inching out of them as she straightened her posture. He knew that she was the last person he should be making an appeal to authority with, but he didn’t know how else to frame what he was still only just able to believe or justify himself.

“But you said there was a vaccine. If you can give people that bit of hope…”

“The vaccine’s not that simple. We’re involved because the government wants us to have the messaging ready for people once the US is ready next month.”

“What do you mean it’s not that simple. I’m not being dense, am I? You stick a great big needle in someone’s arm and they don’t get sick anymore, that’s what a vaccine is, right?”

“Right. But this one is lethal if it’s given to men directly.”

Her brow creased further and she gave him a look as if to note that he was sitting there, mask free and seemingly healthy, waiting for him to get to the point even he felt like he was avoiding. Project Upstart had several meetings about just this, draft scripts to explain the absurdity of how Gemivax worked, but all the carefully considered words eluded him in the moment.

“It’s based around a serum the American’s developed. I don’t really understand all the details, something to do with DNA, but it can still be given to women, and that protection can be passed on to a man. Through sex.”

There was a nervous laugh from Aoife, followed by a second when she realised he wasn’t laughing with her. “Fuck you, that’s not funny.”

“Aoife.”

She stood up from the bed, moving away from him entirely with a step backwards. It was obvious she was hurt, upset already obvious on her face, but he wasn’t sure if even she had settled on exactly why yet, and was still waiting for some sort of punchline at her expense.

“Don’t be an arsehole. Please Ethan. I can’t deal with being messed around with right now.”

“I’m not, I wouldn’t do that to you. Trust me, I know how insane it sounds.”

“Of course it sounds insane. That’s not how the world works. You can’t expect me to just accept…” Aoife’s voice rose as tried to continue protesting, but she must have seen something in his face that made her tail off. It was clear she believed his candour, even if she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what he was saying and for a moment, she seemed to relax and weigh up whether something so incredulous was a reasonable price for a bit of hope. However, her downcast eyes soon wandered back towards him. She studied him, and even with everything she’d been through, was still sharp enough to realise that he wasn’t done.  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“It’s going to be easier if I can show you some of…”

“Just tell me.”

Trust Aoife to be the one to be smart enough and indignant enough to demand answers. Part of him wished he had someone like Farah there to help him give a bit of context to the rest of the serum’s effects. There was a reason she was the face of the project, not him. But he also knew that right now anything other than him simply coming out and telling Aoife straight was just going to agitate her.

More falteringly than he’d have liked, and probably failing at being as reassuring as she needed, he pushed himself to tell her the rest, from women being paired permanently, to the algorithm and the need for multiple partners. And the longer he went on the more he waited for something he said to be the thing that finally caused a reaction, but she simply stood and listened.

When Aoife stayed quiet was when he knew to worry about her.

Instead, as he finished, she simply shut her eyes and balled her fists, taking a moment where it was unclear if she was doing her best to let all of the implications sink in, or if she was fighting to keep them out. “So if you’re protected then that means…”

There was something newly wounded to her that hadn’t been there before as she failed to finish another thought, and although Ethan nodded back, she wasn’t looking.

“This is bullshit.”

Aoife’s words were mumbled, but still somehow had enough pained intensity behind them to fill the room and leave Ethan wishing she’d just shouted.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know. It doesn’t get less weird but it does get easier.”

“The fuck do you mean it gets easier?” His response had stirred something in her, and although her voice remained low, the words came out agitated and insistent. “Are you mental? If this is real it shouldn’t get easy.”

“I didn’t say easy, just easier.”

She fixed him with a disbelieving look. He was doing his best to remain a point of calm for her to try and claw her way back to, but her expression was enough to make him second guess whether that was just making things worse.

“This is some bad dystopian shite. I don’t get how you can be ok with this.”

“I don’t know either. Believe me, it feels like for the last two weeks almost all I’ve done is make decisions I didn’t know how to make.”

“That’s the fucking point though isn’t it,” she snapped back, harder than anything she’d said so far. “Why do you get to make those decisions? Even if I wanted to believe that some sex cult miracle cure was the only way that still doesn’t make any of this right.”

Guilt choked around Ethan as Aoife began to pace, doing her best to keep her anger in check and only barely succeeding by turning away from him.

“I’ve just watched a woman die terrified of what was going to happen to her. Why? Because someone just decided she wasn’t allowed to know what was happening to her? So people could sit here and chat paternalistic shite about the choices they’re making for her? How many other people are dying like her and having their right to have any fucking say at all taken away from them? It’s wrong Ethan.”

Aoife stopped by the window, looking caged, and gave Ethan the chance to reply. “You don’t think I know that? But letting more people die isn’t right either. The government say that…”

“Fuck the government,” she interrupted with blunt disdain.

“They say,” he continued, doing his best to stay patient for her, “that if the Americans pull support for the vaccine we’re talking about millions more deaths than we’ve had already. And they aren’t giving us any choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Aoife, millions dying isn’t a choice.”

“And neither is what’s happening to people like Hayley. It might feel easy, closed off out here, to pretend like these things don’t matter but they should. They aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet or some fucking theoretical anarchy.” She turned back to him as she spoke, and he could see the pressure of emotion building on her face. He’d seen her frustrated and upset before, but he’d never seen her quite like this, with so much fighting to be seen all at once. “She had a kid.”

The strain was enough to make her voice crack slightly as she said the last part. Maybe she was right? He was struggling to imagine what she’d been through, and how could he say that he really had any idea of what things were like outside the comforting bubble of Taymont. More than anyone else, Aoife had a unique way of being able to tug at his feelings, and he hated that he didn’t have the answers for her. He could tell how quickly she was winding herself up, and it wasn’t a surprise when she began to try talking herself into lashing out with something rash.

“Maybe I should just take what was on the hard drive and broadcast it. I’m pretty sure if I wanted to I could get it far enough before anyone could stop me.”

Ethan knew the suggestion was her acting out, trying to provoke a reaction, from herself as much as anyone, and he knew not to try and argue with her and add fuel to her recklessness.

“They’d martyr me harder than Snowden and Assange put together but I bet it would call their bluff. Even Americans aren’t big enough psychopaths to hurt that many people because of one stupid Scottish girl.”

She wanted to be angry, to have a direction to point it in and something to burn, but he could tell she wasn’t actually serious. Besides, Aoife was smart enough to realise that doing something like that was making a choice for people too; that the trap was that there was no way to put something like that out into the world and give people a say without the action itself deciding things for them. He considered trying to reason her down, but opted for understanding instead.

 “I wish I knew what I’m meant to say to make this feel better.”

She faltered, realising she was probably being foolish, but that didn’t do anything to ease what she was feeling and just left her holding onto something she didn’t know what to do with. Finally, she settled on raising her head up towards the ceiling, and gave a short scream of frustration.

“I thought getting back here would make things feel less fucked. Why do they feel worse?!”

Rising from the bed, Ethan moved to try and comfort her. He didn’t know what to say, but it was too hard to just watch her and not want to do something. But as he did, an arm reached out to lightly shove him away.

“Don’t,” she demanded, managing to put some force behind the sentiment before her words began to spill away from her again. “Don’t just pretend you’re going to put your arms around me and make this all feel better because I’m not even going to be allowed to have that. Am I? Some stupid fucking questionnaire with a stupid fucking name is going to decide things for me. And I’m going to be left feeling an idiot for letting the only thing that’s got me through the last few months be how much I’m in love with you.”

Even Ethan’s pulse seemed to stop with the declaration. “Wait, you’re in love with me?”

“Of course I’m in love with you, you fucking idiot!”

There was something pained in how she snatched at the words, and of all the ways Ethan had hoped she might say it, he hadn’t ever pictured her doing it with tears in her eyes.

“Even now I should be nothing but raging but there’s actually a part of me that’s stupid and petty enough to care more about missing my chance with you.”

Aoife’s intensity dropped and became more wounded, but pressure still hung about her, like something had been building and now it had broken the surface it was coming out bruised. Ethan hesitated, lost his grip on his attempts to be a reassuring presence for her, letting his face respond long before any words managed to catch up.  

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why would I? I knew I wasn’t good enough for you. So why would I humiliate myself and fuck up the only good thing had?”

“What do you mean not good enough for me,” Ethan said, hearing the disbelief in his own voice, tripping over the idea that anyone as brilliant and funny as Aoife could think she wasn’t good enough for anyone, let alone him. “I tried to ask you out but you never seemed interested so I tried not to let myself get hung up on you. It’s only once this started that I had to stop pretending I wasn’t crazy about you.”

Aoife frowned again, her reply mumbled through the sudden consternation. “You did not ask me out.”

“I did. Like 5 or 6 times.”

“...bullshit”

“Why do you think I asked you to watch a movie with me the first time? Or how about all the times I said we should go into Manchester when this was done? Fuck, I even tried to ask you if you wanted to put it down that we were an item on the questionnaire.” Ethan was softly insistent, not realising how different his recollection of that evening was to hers. Had he really not been obvious? Admittedly he’d tried to be subtle, making sure she had enough room to be casual rather than making her uncomfortable, but it had to have been clear what he meant. Hadn’t it?

Just how much of an idiot was he?

“No you didn’t,” she said, trying to be firm but only managing to become frustrated again as she watched his expression. “Don’t talk shite, you definitely didn’t. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if you…”

It was Aoife’s turn to stop, everything about her shrinking inwards as she suddenly asked herself the same questions he was, second guessing things between them a moment at a time.

Ethan stepped back towards her as he continued. “Have you any idea what the thought of not getting to see you again has been doing to me?”

The movement was a mistake however as something stirred out of her that left her seeming hurt and self-conscious, and she brushed him aside with another evasive push. She matched his step with another of her own, moving backwards and lightly bumped against her desk, rattling the computer monitor that sat there. Her eyes dipped downwards, and she stopped looking at him.

“Yeah, well, whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to stop you ending up with a harem of women you’d rather be with.”

He’d expected any accusations to sting, but that didn’t help him prepare for just how much.

“It’s not that simple.”

“A robot gave you a bunch of girls to fuck to stop you falling over dead, and you didn’t care how screwed up that sounds, or that none of them were me. Tell me what part of that isn’t simple.”

Ethan sat back on the bed, telling himself he was trying to give her the distance she wanted, and found himself worrying that all he was doing was trying to defend things that might not be entirely defensible. Despite every bit of agonising he’d done over the last two weeks, every bit he’d tried, he wasn’t sure he could look at her and tell her she was wrong to be upset. If anything, she was taking this better than she had any right to.

 “I’m not saying I rushed into things, but it still happened too fast for me to work out all of how I felt. I thought that not only were you not interested but that the algorithm didn’t think we were a good match. And when I actually stopped to question how wrong it felt to let it stop me from taking my chance with you, I found out that’s not the reason it didn’t try and put us together.”

He paused to let her take things in, not wanting to rush through things so quickly that it felt like he was attacking her with justifications. Instead, not for the first time, she surprised him by just how much quicker she was able to put pieces together than he was.

“So, what? It’s saying I’m not going to fit in with some of the other women it wants you to be with?”

“Yes,” he said, guiltily.

“Is it that woman from the government? Evie?”

The telling sense of inadequacy that came with Evie’s name was so tangible that Ethan could almost imagine it hanging in the air, pressing down on Aoife’s shoulders. He realised at once that Aoife had been comparing herself to his partner for a long time now, with all those feelings that she wasn’t good enough embodied in the other woman. And while it was true he’d quickly come to love Evie, he hated the idea that Aoife thought she was any lesser in his eyes because of it. But he wasn’t going to be able to fix that with just words, and certainly not now when everything he said left him worrying it was going to sound hollow.

Ethan picked his next words delicately. “She’s one of my partners, but no. Evie’s the last person who’d want that, she even thought we were an item already. Apparently she could see what neither of us had managed to.”

He hoped that might have earnt at least half of a smile, but it didn’t. Instead Aoife’s fists balled again, half of her question answered, but the rest still dangling, and she waited for him to finish.

“Her name’s Nia.”

The engineer winced. “...I’ve seen her name on emails.”

It was a simple enough statement, but he could see the world of speculation and uncertainty that came with it for Aoife, knowing just enough for all the blanks to be filled in by the worst of her imagination. Part of Ethan wanted to tell her what she was like, to try and offer some sort of encouragement and reassurance to her, but like with Evie, he knew talking about his other lovers was one of the last things Aoife wanted him to do right now and he held back as much as he could.

“You’re similar, principled and not willing to take any shit, which I think is why the algorithm thinks you might not work together. She’s the one in charge of the information campaign we’re putting together for the vaccine, and the one who offered me it.”

“So all it took for you was her getting there first?” Aoife’s tone turned accusatory again, but it was the subtext that really hurt, leaving unsaid the feeling it had been enough for him to leave her behind.

 “Like I said, I’ve had to figure a lot of this out as I’ve gone along, and try and do the right thing for a lot of different people as I have. I don’t think I’ve got everything right, I’ve probably got more things wrong. But not putting your name on that questionnaire is the biggest and I don’t care what an algorithm says now. If it says I shouldn’t be with you, I want it to be wrong.”

Ethan had leaned forward as he spoke, and for the first time in what felt like forever, she glanced up at him with damp eyes, no longer feeling quite so far away.

“That simple?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed, doing his best to let his earnestness tell her how strongly he felt. “I need to speak to Nia but you need the vaccine anyway. I’m going to tell her that I’m not going to put up with any way forward that doesn’t include you.”

“What if it’s not what I want?”

In a single, stunned instant, every last one of the fears and worries he’d had over the last few days of losing her came surging back.

“I just wanted you, but this…listen to what you’re actually asking me.” Aoife struggled, forcing herself to look at him as she spoke. She fidgeted and every syllable sounded like she was having to drag it out of herself. “You can’t even see the way your eyes lit up when you said her name and you just want me to believe you’re the person I wanted you to be? And what if you are? So what? Even if I could accept what some drug is going to do to my head or that I need to share you, I don’t know if I can agree with what you’re telling me the vaccine is. Or how people are being treated.”

“Aoife…” he started, even before he knew where his thoughts were going to lead, but she cut him off without giving him a chance to find out.

“Maybe I want to take my chances. Or maybe this would hurt less if it was someone else. Or maybe this is just more fucked than I can deal with right now and you’re just making it worse.”

They each fell silent, as if they both needed to take in what she’d just said. Ethan wanted to protest, to tell her that she was probably infected and that she had no choice but to take the vaccine if she didn’t want to risk the worst. But he knew she knew that. He thought about telling her again how he felt, to try and plead with her to see sense. But either she knew that now too, or she didn’t believe him. It felt unfair, like he’d only just got her back only for her to start slipping out his arms again, and he asked himself if he could have done anything differently, or if he’d managed to miss that this had been inevitable from the moment they found her.

Not for the first time, any words Ethan could think to find felt inadequate and instead he found himself meeting her gaze and pleaded with her wordlessly, looking for any sign in her eyes that she was sure about what she was saying. He didn’t find any, just a lot of doubt, and alongside it enough stubbornness that he realised how hard it would be to sway her.

Eventually, Aoife pulled the beanie off her head, running a stressed hand through the faded green, before tossing the hat onto the bed in a gesture that felt more pointed than it was meant. “I think I need some time on my own…”

Ethan made one final attempt to close the gap that had yawned open between them, reaching his hand for hers, and once again, she pulled away.

“I wasn’t asking, Ethan.”

Every last part of him wanted to fight for her, but he knew if he stayed it would just be a fight with her instead. Managing to nod, the steps he took towards the door were the hardest he’d ever had to make. Ethan paused as he reached it, looking back to where Aoife had taken his place, sat on the edge of the bed and he was struck by just how adrift she seemed, lost among the unfamiliar clutter of her room.

“I’m here, if you need me…”

*****

You were the perfect storm, but it’s not enough.

*****

The pill bottle rattled as Nia shook a capsule free and for a moment, the familiar white shape looked back up at her from her hand, almost gloating at her. Outside the production office, rain had begun to lash over Taymont, and as she stood at the door, the drumming white noise as it beat against the prefabricated walls only added to the rushing sound that already filled her ears.

It was the first time since meeting Ethan that her anxiety had been bad enough to leave her feeling like she needed the beta-blocker, something that had been an almost daily occurrence before she’d been vaccinated. Hell, she was barely even smoking as a way to deal with stress anymore, while the controlled drumming of her fingers she used to keep her nerves beneath the surface had started to feel more like a foolish habit than a necessity. In just over a week, the never ending feeling of fighting herself, and years of panic attacks had almost entirely gone and instead been wrapped up in something warm and soothing and helpless any time she was near him. But she was making herself avoid him right now, despite how ridiculously tenuous her reasons were starting to feel, and she didn’t want any first impressions to be coloured by the lingering smell of smoke. So what did that leave her…

Empty affirmations?

‘Slow down. Breathe. Focus. You are stronger than this.’

Nia tossed the capsule back before her hands could start to tremble, swallowing it without water. When she’d heard Aoife had been rescued, she’d wanted to give Ethan the space and time he needed with the green haired woman, and had brought herself to the temporary building, across the lawn from the Hall itself, to try and work. But all she’d managed to do was put more on her own shoulders, and it was only speaking to Evie that had stopped her from spiralling. Nia had known what she needed to do, but it had taken her partner listening to her as she’d paced back and forth on the office’s barely there carpet to help her resolve to actually do it.

Nothing about the situation came easy to Nia. She had already spent too much of her life being told that who she was wasn’t good enough to afford being vulnerable. From her first week at private school being told her hair was unacceptable to every promotion she was passed over for some ego with the right connections. Every failed relationship. Right back to how her mother would push and expect, living her own lost opportunities through her daughter, never able to tell her she loved her; only that she was proud.

Nia was only ever allowed to feel like she mattered when she fought to show her worth, and now she had the chance for something different and she loathed herself for forgetting how to be anything else.

Despite what some people thought, she hadn’t asked for where she found herself. Most of the rest of Averna’s board had been vaccinated weeks ago, their partners given the US serum on the initial stabilisation rounds, but she’d demurred. It had taken her that long to overcome the worry that something would change her and she’d wake as an imposter in her own skin. Naturally she’d argued that it was poor optics if she was running PR for the launch of a drug she hadn’t even taken herself and that she would wait for Gemivax to be ready, but in truth she’d simply been terrified.

The last few weeks had changed her regardless, but it would have changed anyone, and there was no point along the way where she’d stopped being her as she’d feared. But that fear had been the reason why, when the company had pushed for her to be designated as the team’s focus on Delphi, she’d eventually accepted. Not for herself, but for the other women she was going to be bonded with. She’d heard one or two horror stories from the US and Nia had reasoned that if things were going to happen with or without her, it was at least better to take what influence she was being offered. It might well have been ego talking, but if she could make herself even a little bit responsible for what happened to those joining her team, no matter what hand they were dealt, that was better than nothing.

She had told herself she could make sure things were perfect for them. But then things weren’t even close to perfect, were they?

‘Your responsibility. Your mistakes. Your fault.’

Exhaling, slowly, she gave the same tug on the bottom of her jacket that she always did. She knew any effort on her appearance was pointless, given the rain was about to soak her through anyway, but the action of straightening her outfit was still habitual enough to feel like a tick. It was barely fifty metres from the office to the hall itself, but that was still far enough to leave her dreading the effect on her hair and from the instant she stepped outside she was cursing whoever’s idea the arrangement was, followed by herself for not thinking of an umbrella.

There were already several figures outside, soaked through as they worked hurriedly on a spill of cables that ran to a cluster of trailers that sat dark without power. The third cut to Studio 1 in as many days, and with less than an hour to go until the evening news. Since Aoife had gone missing, it had quickly become obvious just how many miracles she had been performing with barely anyone noticing. She gave them a wide berth, the presumptive parking of the Special Branch cars leaving her dodging puddles on the grass as she made her way towards the Hall’s main entrance, only for her to stop and consider turning back as she got nearer.

Collingwood stood beneath the awning that covered the front steps, taking shelter as drew on a lit cigarette, radiating judgement even at her most casual. Nia saw too much of herself looking back in the other woman’s eyes for anything but wary respect, but the officer was still one of the last people she wanted to be dealing with at that moment. Collingwood had spotted her first however, leaving Nia no choice but to slow her steps, and to try and project her own authority as she approached. Collingwood allowed her the distinct impression she was waiting for her, despite how implausible it felt that she’d have known to expect her, something it was hard not to concede was a good trick. More pressing however was the feeling that she’d been caught out without knowing what for, and any hope she might be allowed to pass with nothing more than a nod disappeared as the police woman reached into her coat and held out a pack of cigarettes.

“Care to join me?”  

It took Nia longer than she wanted to shake her head, the offer drawing her attention back to the looming, cliff-edge agitation clawing inside her chest and how the beta-blocker hadn’t begun to kick in yet, if it was going to at all. But Nia knew herself, and she knew that probably wasn’t going to go away. At least not as long as she felt responsible for all the ways the next few hours could go so badly wrong. Aoife was her problem, and a quick hit of nicotine was only going to come at the price of feeling more exposed when Collingwood started asking questions.

The police woman held the pack out just long enough to feel pointed, before returning them to her pocket, seemingly satisfied enough that Nia knew she had business with her. Taking another drag of her own, she blew smoke into the air.

“I know you’re protecting her.”

The covering over the porch was small enough that Nia was forced to step much closer to Collingwood than she’d have liked in order to get out of the rain. From a distance, it would have looked as if the pair were conspiring, standing close enough together to whisper, but Nia would have preferred anything else and she was forced to settle for folding her arms as a way to keep herself as closed off as possible.

“I had just enough questions between this and what happened to Ms McNamara to get authorisation to do some digging. Project Upstart’s Delphi data makes for interesting reading.”

Nia had enough practice at remaining impassive, despite how much she wanted to glare back at Collingwood. “It’s been challenging, for a lot of reasons. There were good people we wanted to have on board and working around that almost meant the planning had to start again from scratch.”

“I can imagine there were a lot of difficult feelings to navigate.” The detective’s statement was outwardly sympathetic, but Nia could tell how probing it was, like a fencer trying to open up her guard.

Difficult was an understatement. Of the three men who Nia had originally contacted to work on Project Upstart, two had passed away from DuoHalo before they could be vaccinated. The first, an experienced tv journalist called Nick Hastings had been hard enough to replace with Rhys, but it was losing Tom Warrick that had really left everything in tatters.

Tom was meant to have been her partner. When Nia had tentatively allowed the algorithm to compare her to potential candidates at Taymont, it had given her two possible team arrangements and it was the older Welsh producer that she’d chosen. The conversations she’d had with him had gone more to persuading her past her fears than anything else and hearing that he’d died after collapsing was the closest she’d come to backing out. But things were too far along, and it had left her with her second choice, the inexperienced leap of faith with the compatibility score high enough to scare her shitless.

“It was harder for the handful of people who knew enough to start having expectations,” Nia said, simply. Or at least it had been that way at first.

Reworking things around two new Teams had meant ripping everything up. There had been a world where she and Nell Armstrong might have been the first members of Team Warrick together, where Aoife and Farah could have been good matches for Nick, and where Evie hadn’t been on the project at all. Nia was sure that had been tough for people like Armstrong who’d known and had watched the numbers suddenly change, but it was part of why she’d barely thought twice about Ethan and Aoife. Neither had disclosed their feelings for each other and they were just one of several maybes and almosts that hadn’t come to pass, but she had missed what was there. Despite the promises she’d made to herself, she was still chasing the ghosts of a story they hadn’t told.

Collingwood continued. “I did notice that Aoife Ryan wasn’t on any of those team allocations, in fact there was no suggestion she was seriously being considered for the project, until less than a week ago.”

“I have a level of discretion with staffing and chose to use it,” Nia’s voice turned firm, but not aggressive. “I assume you’re going somewhere with this?”

“Don’t try and sell me that, I’ve seen the numbers, she has a compatibility with Team Barclay ten points lower than any other pairing you’ve allowed on the entire project. Her answers to simple questions could barely be less consistent with yours if you tried and there are more red flags around the data on her hard drive than really I care to count.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, I assume she’s been through a lot and I’ve already said I will take full accountability for any information breaches from the project, but I’m not answerable to you on how I run it.”

“Her compatibility with Ethan Knight has nothing to do with anything then.”

At the mention of Ethan’s name, Nia’s finger’s clenched as a hot wave of anxiety swept up through her, and she had to pause and force her words to stay level. “Are you actually expecting me to answer that?”

“You know this is going to be much easier if you work with me here.”

“Is it?” Nia’s eyebrows quirked upwards, showing her incredulity. She had no doubt that Collingwood could make this very unpleasant if she wanted, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do the same. She had come so close to never having Ethan and Evie in her life, but now they were she couldn’t imagine anything else, and she would fight for either of them, no matter the cost to herself. “This is my problem. What will be easier if you back off and let me handle it and I’ll happily shoulder the consequences.”

As if spotting the coming confrontation, the officer softened, her shoulders dropping with something approaching exasperation. She blew smoke again, and Nia’s cravings almost caused her to miss how Collingwood was using it to take a beat and keep her own composure.

“Allow me to reframe this. I am good at my job, Nia. Not the sort of box ticking crap that passes for competence with some people, actually good. And now, more than ever, part of that means recognising when I’m pushing against something that’s better being left well alone. Between what’s happened here and Delphi being manipulated with Alex McNamara, I have enough to drag things out kicking and screaming into the light if I choose to. But right now I can’t quite shake that the consequences from doing that to Project Upstart aren’t going to be in anyone’s interests.”

Things still felt heightened enough for Nia that with every word the other woman spoke she was looking for the obvious trap, wondering exactly what she wanted that was going to be used against her. She knew what her gut told her, but that was all the more reason to make herself slow down and check with her head, but Collingwood mistook the hesitation for reluctance.

“I know when I’m being lied to. You have an engineer who’s stolen and then leaked state secrets, you’re defending her, and I need you to look me in the eyes and give me a reason to be good at my job.”

Nia breathed.

‘What’s one more leap?’

“Early on, a little after I got here,” she started, “one of my colleagues gave me a piece of advice. He told me that I’d never have all the answers, so I should work out which of my choices I could bear to live with, and then live with them.”

The dynamic reversed, and she watched as suddenly Collingwood was the one scrutinising her, trying to puzzle out where things were going.

“I thought I understood what he meant, but I didn’t. I’ve been hedging my bets. I had enough rose-tinted hubris to think that as long as I was a step ahead I could find some way to make sure everything was perfect no matter what happened. But when I saw the look on Ethan’s face when I told him that we could match Aoife to Rhys…”

The memory felt too big to put into words, so, against character, Nia didn’t even try. It had only shown for the briefest moment before he’d buried it, but the hurt Ethan had felt had been so vivid that Nia never wanted to see it again. Even making it clear that it was just as ruse hadn’t quite been enough and had left Nia asking her how she would manage if she actually was the one thing standing between them. The further this went the more it was obvious how deeply Ethan felt, and it kept bringing her back to one answer; she didn’t think she could. Maybe that had changed about her too?

It was why she was avoiding him. Her mind was made up, and she hated the idea that he might be selfless enough to try to do or say something that put her feelings back in the equation.

“By all accounts Aoife Ryan is reckless, she’s stubborn and she is incredibly lucky this doesn’t seem to have caused more problems than it has, but I’m not doing this for her. I’m doing it for him. Whatever happens, that is the one choice I can live with myself making.”

The sound of the rain punctuated the declaration as Collingwood listened. Nia understood the question being asked was whether the police officer was best to accept what had happened and walk away, but there was nothing to her reaction to suggest whether she’d been given the answer she wanted or not. Even the half-smile Collingwood gave, self-satisfied in the corners, could be read one of two ways.

If she had even planned to reply, the officer was interrupted before she could, as the walkie talkie on her belt sprang to life, and garbled something that she seemed to understand but that Nia missed.

Collingwood flicked the remaining ashes, clinging to the end of her cigarette away, before bringing the radio to her mouth. “I’ll be right there.”

She stepped down from the porch, out towards the rain, and the black sedan parked closer to the entrance than anything else had dared. It was only as she approached the car door that she bothered to turn towards Nia.

“I’m needed back at the station. That’ll be all for now.”

Frustration simmered inside her, but Nia refused to debase herself by demanding more. She didn’t have the energy for aloof and inscrutable. Instead, all Nia felt was relief that it was one less concern for now, if it was even still an issue at all, and the instant the car pulled off the drive, she unfolded her arms, letting her hands shake.

She turned, pushing the door open and trailed water behind her as she finally made her way into the hotel’s reception where the polished wood panels and freshly cut flowers showed Palisade’s contractually mandated priorities.

Nia had half expected vocalising things might have made the weight feel lighter, but it hadn’t, just making it feel even more real. She had pushed and fought and stressed over getting things right, lost herself in rose-tinted hubris, been found wanting. Her own baggage had made her so sure that it was her responsibility to shoulder every possible outcome that she’d missed what should have been obvious, but she still had time to fix things, or at least to try. Her legs didn’t want to move, but she took a second to collect herself, and made them anyway.

‘Breathe. Focus. You’re stronger than this. For them.’

Stepping towards the hotel’s grand staircase, her eyes followed it upwards, step by step, towards where she knew Aoife’s room and the source of her anxiety waited.

It was time to build a bonfire for her expectations, and to find something good in the ashes of perfect.

*****

Aoife tipped her head back, and stood beneath the spray, letting the heat of the water trace its way across her skin. She ached in more ways than she thought possible and the shower was taken more out of a stubborn refusal to do nothing than any sort of expectation it might help, but the physical knots had eased at least. And somewhere, between washing the days old mud off her legs and starting the process of retouching green in her hair, part of her had begun to feel a little more human. A pissed off, raw, splintered excuse for a human, sure, but it was still better than the sickening numbness that had stuck to her after Ethan had left, and the cops had come to question her.  

She wanted to be more angry, she should have been furious, but it just wasn’t there, and it felt worse every time she went looking. Ethan wouldn’t even let her have that, but when she tried to hate him for it the emotion felt even harder than the rage did. The only thing that really stirred anything, was thinking about what had happened to Hayley, and that was even less bearable than being empty. Trying to work out if she’d ever felt like this before, the only thing that came close was being a kid, getting told her dad had died; and one English prick had made her feel like she was 12 years old again, with the world dropping away beneath her. Maybe she was grieving, but if she was, she wished she knew what for.

Her hand strayed between her legs, running through the increasingly untamed bush of dark hair that had been growing there. Aoife normally kept it trimmed for her own benefit, rather than anyone else's, and the impulse was to grab a razor and make herself tidy things like she was everything else, but the sudden thought that it might not just be for her, and might never be again, made her stop. That was one particularly fucked up mess of feelings she wasn’t ready to confront directly. However, her fingers had still grazed low enough to come with a guilty pang of heat and reminded her how long it had been since she’d gotten off.

Considering that she might be more pent up than she realised, or that feeling something, anything, had to be better than how she was, Aoife experimentally brushed her hand against her clit. She definitely wasn’t a stranger to rubbing one out, snatched and exasperated, in the shower, but the touch did nothing, and she quickly hated herself for even trying. Instead, she reached for the shower’s controls and turned up the heat, searing her body beneath the jets until she couldn’t stand any more.

She was interrupted by the sound of knocking on her hotel room door, insistent enough to be heard over the running water. It continued, even as she reluctantly shut off the shower, prompting her to shout back tersely that she was coming. The bath towel was just large enough to protect her modesty and she wrapped it around herself to answer, barely giving a fuck how much of her tattooed thighs were on show as she inched the door open.

The dark skinned woman that stood in the corridor would have been pristine were it not for the rain drying on her cream coloured suit, with serious eyes that, after the briefest scan downward at Aoife’s own attire, remained fixed forward with a sense of smooth discipline. Her voice was clipped and measured, and the moment she opened her mouth she managed to leave Aoife feeling inadequate.

“Hello Aoife.”

The woman attempted to seem sympathetic, offering a faltering smile before continuing, but Aoife didn’t particularly want her understanding, or for her to be here at all.

“I’m-”

“I know who you are.” The leap was easy enough to make, and she didn’t need introductions or the offered out ID badge to confirm it for her. With Nia Clarke-Mills in front of her, suddenly feeling pissed off felt a little less difficult.

“I thought we should probably talk.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t have much I want to say,” Aoife snapped back, bitterly. She glared at Nia, daring the other woman to blink first, but the executive remained impassive, and left Aoife feeling foolish. Eventually, she relented, stepping back from the door. “Fine. Just, I don’t know, give me a minute to get dressed or something.”

Slipping back inside, Aoife took her time finding the last clean pair of jeans in her wardrobe and deciding which shirt from her laundry pile had the fewest creases, not about to rush for the woman who felt like an embodiment of all her issues, settling for one with a faded print and the words Screen Violence barely readable on the front. There was a single, solitary can of IPA left on her desk and, while she didn’t feel much like drinking, she cracked it anyway as Nia entered, needing to make a show of hostile indifference to her.

“Can we just get this over with,” she said, taking a sip while taking the desk chair, deliberately leaving the other woman without a seat. “I know this is where you come to mark your territory and tell me how I’m fired or you’re sending me off to some arsewipe I’ve never met.”

Nia’s fingers tapped against her arm. “Actually, I wanted to see if we could fix this. But I was going to ask you how you were doing before anything else?”

The executive’s tone made Aoife more nervous than if she’d just come out swinging, but she couldn’t believe that Nia was actually worried about her and the question was stupid enough to be annoyed at.

“Me? I’m peachy. How the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

“Pretty badly I imagine? I’m sorry that you’ve gone through all of this.” The other woman refused to rise to the bait and her tone caught Aoife off guard with how genuine it seemed. Moving further into the room, Nia set to one side a towel which had been discarded on the bed so that she could sit down, the poised way she crossed her legs made slightly ridiculous by the presence of the Daario Argento poster and plush bulbasaur behind her.

“You and everyone else,” Aoife mumbled. She knew how childish she was being, but was also too worn out to care, and was desperate to stop herself finding anything likeable in the other woman.

“I’m happy for you to be angry at me, if you need to be, but you do know that it’s not going to actually help anything?”

“Well, nothing’s going to help, is it? At least this makes me feel better.” But it wasn’t making her feel better, and Aoife took another long sip from the can, trying her best to ignore that fact.

Nia waited for her, the sort of coached, loaded pause that was designed to tease things out, but Aoife didn’t know what she wanted, and only spoke rather to avoid the hollow feelings sneaking back up on her.

“What do you want me to say to you? What you’re doing is fucking wrong.”

“I know.”

The two words were said simply enough that Aoife had to stop and check she’d heard them properly. And even though Nia said them as if they were blindingly obvious, they still carried the weight of something too complicated to unpick. She let them hang, then seemed to will herself to keep going as her fingers drummed faster.

“Though which part are we talking about exactly? The part where I’m complicit in an algorithm that’s making women chemically dependent on men? Or that part where I’m sitting by while we cover up the deaths of millions and not even allowing them the comfort of knowing what’s going on?

Nia’s tone was sardonic, with a heavy edge of bitterness at herself that was all too easy for Aoife to recognise. But the honesty still stunned the Scottish woman and she grappled with how Nia could reconcile what she was saying.

“Believe me, I’ve been where you are and I’ve had a lot longer to think about how wrong what I’m doing is. Given the circumstances, I actually think you’re taking this better than I did. You think you want someone to justify this, but they won’t, not in a way that actually makes it easier, and I’m not going to try.”

Aoife set aside her drink. She had always hated when people had told her things would get easier with time, it always left her wanting to scream about how shit things were now. No matter what Nia might be, she could at least be grateful that someone else seemed to get that. But it still wasn’t an excuse. The tension remained, and her thoughts wandered to Layla, wondering if Nia actually understood the reality of what she was saying.

“Then if you know it’s wrong, why haven’t you done anything?”

“Why haven’t you?” The other woman looked towards the door, matter of factly.  “Last I checked no-one was keeping you locked in here. You’re smart and resourceful, what’s stopped you from walking out that door and doing something appropriately dramatic?”

The implications made Aoife bristle. “Yeah? Well what if I’m just trying to work out what I can do that’s going to change things for the better?”

“And if you don’t? What if you find that there’s no good answer and whatever you do is going to be wrong? Are you just going to sit here?”

That wasn’t something she had a good answer to. The question had been lurking across her thoughts like a shadow, with everything else left dimmer because of it. It should have been easy, righteous clarity wasn’t exactly something she struggled with and, although this was different, she was still telling herself that she just needed to clear her head and the solution would come eventually. But what if there wasn’t one?

“Take it from someone who’s lived their life wishing the world was different to how it was, there are some things you can’t change. Some of this is happening whether I like it or not. But that doesn’t mean I can’t shape it. Sometimes you just have to be arrogant enough to be the upstart bitch who walks into a room and tells herself things will be better with you there than they would be if you weren’t.”

“Maybe I don’t think like that,” Aoife insisted, but she could hear her own uncertainty. Nia wasn’t trying to argue.

“Then that’s your choice too.”

“And if people decide you were wrong?”

For the first moment since she’d opened the door, Aoife saw Nia truly hesitate, the executive unable to hide the tension in her body language, or the way she shut her eyes before answering. “They probably will,” she said, finally. “No-one gets to see how else things might have gone. When this is all over, there’s going to be enquiries and investigations about how any of this happened. And if there comes a time where people want to blame me for my part in things then I’m ready for that.”

There was doubt there as Nia spoke, but oddly it made her more convincing as Aoife found something humanising in the attempt. She was familiar enough with trying to lie to herself after all. Glancing aside, she caught the reflection of herself in the mirror on the open wardrobe door, and realised she was frowning.

“Why are you even here?”

Nia stood, reaching into her jacket to produce a soft case, the size of a large purse, in black with the Averna logo printed upon it. Aoife was reminded of a diabetic friend when she was at school who’d carried her insulin in something similar, with a cool pack keeping the syringes at a suitable temperature. It took her a second to connect the dots, and by the time she did, Nia was already alongside her, carefully resting the case down upon the desk.

“I don’t want that,” she said, her words coming out agitated.

She really didn’t want the vaccine near her. Everything suddenly felt more real with it there as a physical thing she could touch. It made it harder to forget the DuoHalo that was almost certainly building inside her and how it had carved Hayley out, leaving a cold empty space where a person used to be. Or how trapped she felt between that and a solution that terrified her and left her furious with the world. But most of all it reminded her of him and how he was making her feel.

“Ethan-” Nia started.

“Ethan’s an arsehole.” Aoife meant it, but she meant a lot of other things too, half of which she didn’t want any nearer to her than the vaccine.

“He’s an idiot. But then there’s a few of us that could apply to. He would certainly have saved a lot of heartbreak if he’d worked out he loved you sooner.”

A crack appeared in Nia’s mask large enough for Aoife to see the hurt she was trying to hide, but she couldn’t tell why. Ethan had chosen her, and whether Nia meant it or not the L-word felt like she was slapping her with it.

“Don’t say that.”

“Which part? That he loves you?”

“He doesn’t love me,” Aoife insisted, as if, if she said it hard enough, she could make herself want it to be true.

Nia sat back down, but this time she didn’t bother to cross her legs, instead leaning her hands back on the mattress to look up at the ceiling. Oddly the relaxed gesture only managed to make her seem more uptight. “You can believe that if you want, but I can’t. I’ve seen over the last few days what the thought of losing you has done to him. He’s not had any answers, but he’s kept pulling himself apart trying to find them anyway. Ethan’s tried to find a way to be fair to me, but I can see how much he loves you.”

She glanced up, and her eyes met Nia’s, something she’d been doing her best to avoid, and saw sympathy alongside the resentment. Could she really let herself believe that? Would this feel less fucked if she did?

“If you wanted him to yourself, you do know there’s no-one who would have been able to give that to you?”

“It’s not that simple,” Aoife protested, half-heartedly, needing to accept this was how the world was before she could accept that.

“You just wish it was.”

She almost told Nia to fuck off. She’d only just met the woman, and she had no right to be inferring her feelings like that. But this conversation wasn’t going how Aoife had expected, Nia kept putting out her attempts at emotional arson. Besides, she was right, and it felt easier admitting that to a stranger than it had been herself.

“Yes.”

Nia sighed. “You’re not the only one. This is hardly what I wanted, and no amount of apologising for my part in this is going to make things simpler. You have choices to make now, and you don’t have forever to make them.” She gestured towards the black case that Aoife was still doing her best to pretend wasn’t there. “This is mine. I’m not prepared to keep doing this to him. But I can’t make the rest of them for you.”

Aoife returned to her beer, but this time it wasn’t an attempt to hide behind the garish colours splashed on the can, and she sank what was left, the gas briefly forming a knot in her chest. The other woman was right, and she forced herself to pick up the case and confront what was in front of her, although opening it to look still seemed too hard. It was lighter than she expected and the neat blue A of the Averna logo looked up at her from the surface, mirroring the one that had been staring at her from the ID badge hung around Nia’s neck. It was enough to make her remember exactly who Nia was, and how many questions that still left her with.

“What about your algorithm? You’re just going to expect people to keep on with it while ignoring it yourself?”

“If I have to,” Nia said with certainty. Aoife wondered if she knew what the success rate of the algorithm was, and tried to work out if the executive was simply arrogant enough to believe she was one of the people it was wrong about, and that she knew better. But Nia seemed to read her mind. “I’d rather be wrong and live with the consequences than know I’m doing that to him.”

“What if I redid it?” Ever since she’d learned what the questionnaire was, Aoife had been trying not to listen to the voice that said her inability to be honest with how she felt had finally fucked her life up, but the thought became loud enough to vocalise. “I didn’t know what I was filling out the first time, I don’t think I was honest, with it…or myself, or whatever. If I was then, fuck, I don’t know, maybe something would be different.”

What surprised her was that she was even considering it. The whole system still seemed unjust and wrong, that hadn’t changed, but suddenly it felt like she was trying to negotiate with it and that felt oddly like a betrayal. Her eyes strayed down, fixating on the case resting between her fingers, and tried to find a reason to push it back, but ended up simply staring at it instead, as if she was hoping it might transform into something else if she wished hard enough.

A careful brush of Nia’s hand against her own drew her attention back, finding the other woman leaning closer as she tried to meet Aoife’s gaze.

“It’s a number. Is having it say something different suddenly going to answer the real questions you have?”

Her voice was low, husky with reassurance, and for the first time, there was nothing being guarded.

“Because it didn’t answer any of mine.”