And today? Today Amy was Admin, born and bred–it was Amy who’d had a good deal to do with cajoling Yanni–it was Amy who’d found justification in the figures she laid on Yanni’s desk. Maddy ran an exclusive dress shop, and you’d never think shewas worth anything in a construction project; but the dress shop was a front. Maddy collected gossip–she knewthe female elite of Reseune, knew their tastes, their habits, their liaisons, and their figure flaws; and besides that, Maddy had an eye for decor, and design–and understood the use of the gossip she collected: you wanted something out of someone, you wanted a favor, the name of a contact? Maddy had the key.
And Sam–well, Sam built things. Bigger and bigger things were in the future she planned.
So their juvenile fantasy wouldcome true. They’d be together again–here, in this wing, when this place they’d all planned was done. Not for the reason they’d all planned–never thinking it was for their safety, just one grand continuation of what they’d dreamed of building for the sheer beauty of it.
When they came in, they’d bring their liaisons, their families, their staffs, everything they needed…
And damn it, she’d keep them safe, forever safe, everyone she wanted to protect and nothave vulnerable to plots and gossip and schemes and outright sabotage once she took the reins. The Centrists and the Paxers and the Abolitionists wouldn’t get to the people she loved.
The first Ari–that Ari hadn’t had personal weak spots: she’d kept very much alone through her life: Ari Senior hadn’t trusted anyone but her Florian and her Catlin. But she’dlearned how to use allies the way her predecessor never had. She’d confounded Denys, frustrated Denys–finally gotten the better of Denys.
Now she had the better of Yanni and Hicks of ReseuneSec, who actually knew what this place really was…
Inside or outside this new wing, for Yanni?
That all depended. Maybe. Maybe not, depending on how Yanni took it. And how Hicks did. And what this team he was sending her turned out to be.
“Come see,” Sam’s message yesterday had said. “We’d love it if you could come.”
So here they were, driving along beside the white walls, and the whole project becoming more and more real the closer they got, right down to the feathery pour‑marks on the new walls, where they’d freed the finished wall from the molds.
All the conduits had gone into the forms before the pour, so she’d learned. The new place had a new sensor system, a new computer installation from the basic wiring up. It had new walls without ten thousand ghosty little lucifilaments running in places that were a real archaeological problem to trace…making a security headache for Wing One and most everywhere in Reseune. Systems as arcane as Base One–which had lurked within the lab computers until the day (event‑driven, calendar‑driven, it was never clear) it assembled itself and made contact–just could not surprise her in the new wing. Base One itself would get in, intact, through a prescribed gateway, and settle itself in, while other Bases would have to stop at that gateway and announce their presence to Base One before touching System inside. She trusted Base One absolutely. She was pretty sure it would do what she asked it to do. She no longer trusted, however, the systems where she lived–she hadn’t, from before Denys died. Florian and Catlin had long worried there might be a worm in the works, where Denys and his people had done all the arranging for years. Giraudmight certainly have done things within Reseune’s systems that could spring on them without warning. They’d gotten through the first months post‑Denys without disaster–but who knew what event might trigger something untoward? Giraud’s rebirth? Denys’s rebeginning?
Her own claim on power, when she did make it? She wanted to be in here when she made her move…safe, isolated, in control. Yanni ran Base Two at the moment: nobody but an Ari Emory and those she permitted had ever run Base One. But Base Two had been in Denys’s hands before that. And having some buried section of Base Two wake up and start actively spying–if Yanni didn’t already run those functions–that wouldn’t be good, no.
They would be in their new, secure apartment before summer ended: Sam promised it, and she had every confidence that would happen on schedule.
And the building had taken a big stride this morning: the gray, confusing forms that had stood at the end of the U had given way to a section of white angled planes rising stark and beautiful against the sheer natural rock of the cliffs. Florian turned the little car into the rutted and dusty area of what a sign proclaimed as Parking A, among the giant earthmovers, and Sam was waiting for them there, wearing a hard hat and orange overalls no different from any of the azi who worked with him. Sam’s square face split with a grin as they got out and walked onto the hard, rutted surface that was his particular domain.
“I hoped the pour would finally draw you out here,” Sam said, waving an expansive gesture at the walls. “There you are, people! Home sweet home!”
It was different than anything ever built at Reseune, an extravagant three‑story crown at the apex of the new‑born Alpha Wing. Her heart beat faster in excitement.
“We’ll be done ahead of schedule,” Sam said. “No bubbles in the pour. Went like a dream.”
That was good to hear. Bubbles in a foam wall were definitely a bad thing, and Sam meant they’d gotten all this foamwork set and hardened without sawing areas out, setting up forms again, and foaming in twice, and no problems with the design. Sam was decidedly happy with his job.
But she wanted to see. She wanted to walk inside, and make it real, not just a virtual image she could get on the computer.
“Can we get in there?” she asked.
“Right this way!” Sam led them all toward a gap in the pour, a broad area with rough notched edges. “This is just a workman’s door–you won’t be able to walk through this wall when you live here: we’ll foam it so it’s just wall, ever after.”
Reseune was like a fortress of sorts, against environmental hazards as much as for any other reason, the only lookout on this exterior side of the building once it was finished would be cameras, no doors or openings of any kind. Her apartment, at the top of the U, jutted out farthest toward the wild and the cliffs, and farthest upward, in its reinforced light‑channels. The rest of the U’s ground floor would be offices, a few shops, while the upstairs was all going to be very restricted residences: her apartment would have its main door on the third floor, the way things were in Wing One second floor. But, unlike Wing One’s, herapartment and only her apartment would have an upstairs section above the third floor–that was the height of the crown, up among the angles of the walls. That would be her room, her office, her personal safe place, with Florian and Catlin by her, and their rooms, and all the things they needed, up above the world, almost even with the cliffs.
Right now, the word given out among the CIT workers was that all this construction was new labs. By the time rumor got out that it was going to be a restricted residential area, and hers in particular, the security installations would all be in, and that time was getting very close. By the time Alpha Wing System went on line (and perished immediately as Base One moved in and took over) well, it wouldn’t matter any longer, at that point, what anyone knew. They’d be defended. Everyone she loved would be defended, once System came up and Base One ruled Alpha Wing.
Sam led the way inside, over dusty concrete floors littered with foam‑construction crumbles and plaster spatters. Sunlight fell in unlikely rectangles and bars from somewhere above–where not all the construction was finished, Ari supposed. Where they walked, first floor, was going to be offices and residences for wing security personnel other than her personal bodyguard, and they all would have immaculate security clearance.