Ad Noctum: The Faith (Part 15)

 “Tapes Guy is fighting the last war,” Telford snarled.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Violence. Injuries. Torture. Abduction. Anxiety. Panic. Purposefully insensitive discussion of mental health issues. Loss of agency. Thought control. Boundary problems. Manipulation. Gaslighting. References to suicide. Drug use. Death wishes. Indirect references to sexual assault. Blood. Grief. Self harm.

Text iteration: Early.

Additional notes: None.

The Faith (Part 15)

“Dale.” Varro’s face shimmered in the small communications sphere. “Good of you to check in. I was beginning to wonder when I’d hear from you.”

“It’s a small ship.” Volker shimmied a little deeper into the crevice between two stacked crates. “Hard to get time alone.”

“You have something to report?” Varro said.

“Couple things.” Volker swallowed. “Our drive is dead.”

Varro’s expression didn’t change. “We know. What happened to it?”

“Telford,” Volker glossed a hint of skepticism over the other man’s name, “says there’s something wrong with the naquadah.” The communications sphere was damp in his palm. A trickle of sweat ran between his shoulder blades.

“Telford says,” Varro repeated.

Volker had the terrible suspicion that Kiva was in the room and watching their little exchange. He couldn’t see Varro’s surroundings; he was backed by a shroud of silvery gold.

“Yeah,” Volker replied. “Not sure I believe it.”

“Why’s that?” Varro asked.

“Because Rush did something to the drive. Hooked it into his cypher work. Drained it, maybe.”

Varro looked off camera. Whatever his attention was on, it stuck there for a few seconds. He nodded.

Kiva, it had to be Kiva. Volker’s heart pounded like it wanted to escape his ribcage and sprint for the nearest airlock.

“Have you looked at the drive?” Varro asked. “Can you confirm it’s non-operational?”

“Yes,” Volker said. “The hyperspace window won’t open, and all the indicator lights are red. I’m not—” he caught himself before he said “a mechanic.” He paused, reorganizing his sentence. “Rush connected extra crystals to the drive. I’ve never seen that before.”

Again, Varro looked offscreen for direction. When he looked back, he said, “Has Rush solved more cyphers?”

“He got another one.” The words were coming too fast. Volker slowed himself down. “He has six.”

Again, Varro looked off-screen.

“He’s working on cypher seven,” Volker offered.

The screen rippled and shifted.

Volker’s heart tried to crawl up into his throat.

She materialized out of a silvery veil. Dark hair. Darker eyes. Full lips. Even on a hand-held terminal her gaze pinned him like an insect to a corkboard. Volker tensed his arms, bracing himself against the solidity of the crates on either side of his concealed nook.

“Cousin Dale,” she said. “We’re so glad you decided to report in. We were beginning to wonder about your loyalties.”

Volker knew he should say something. Couldn’t. He nodded mutely.

“I’m pleased,” Kiva said, crisp and lethal. “Time is short. We have reason to believe that either Colonel Telford or Dr. Rush have passed solved cyphers to the Tau’ri.”

Even as Volker’s heart sank, a tiny corner of his mind filled with a glimmer of hope. Could it be true? Was Telford loyal after all?

“Military activity at Theseus Base has increased,” Kiva continued. “A Daedalus-class starship is in orbit; another is on the way with personnel and supplies. Geothermal instability on the planet is increasing, consistent with multiple failed attempts to dial the nine-chevron address.”

Volker swallowed. “Oh.”

“We can’t retrieve you now,” Kiva said. “Our fleet is committed to the attack at Theseus. Once we have control of the base, we will dispatch someone to repair your drive. You and your crew will then join us there.”

“Got it,” Volker said.

“Within the hour,” Kiva continued, “Colonel Telford will receive a message ordering him to turn over command of the tel’tak to you. If he fails to notify you of the change in command structure, you are to report back to us.”

Kiva was putting him in charge? Panic rose like mental static. “I—understand.”

Kiva seemed to lean closer to the camera, even though her face stayed the same size. “Find out which of them passed information to the Tau’ri. Any intelligence you glean about the true status of Dr. Rush’s work on the cypher set will lead to command opportunities in the Sixth House. If your information about a sixth solved cypher is and his use of drive elements in solving of it is true, ownership of the tel’tak you now serve on will pass to you. I’m prepared to grant much more than this. You need only assist me faithfully.”

“Yes,” Volker said. “I will. I—I am.”

Kiva smiled, and the welcome in it softened her eyes, relaxed her jaw. “The galaxy is changing, cousin. In the coming era, we have more to gain than to fear.”

Volker was so astonished at her change in demeanor that no words came. Fortunately, it seemed plausible that Cousin Dale would react exactly the same way. He bobbed his head in a stiff nod.

“We will stay in touch.” Kiva ended the connection.

As soon as her image faded to dull silver, Volker shoved the sphere back in his sock like it might grow teeth and gnaw off his hand. He scrambled to his feet, rounded the bin, and looked down at Telford, sitting cross-legged on the other side, elbows braced on knees, his face in his hands. 

“What are we going to do?” Volker asked.

Telford scratched at the line of neat stitches below his eye, then stopped himself.

“Was it you?” Volker asked. “Did you pass Rush’s solved cyphers to the Air Force?”

Telford searched Volker’s face, like he’d caught the hope in Volker’s tone and was tracing it, like a red thread, back to its source. “No,” he said.

His throat tight, his thoughts narrowing, he said, “You have to say no, though. Right? You’ll get us out of this. You have to. You’ll call the Air Force. Get them to extract us. If they come now, we can warn them about the LA attack on Theseus. We can—”

“This is a deep cover mission,” Telford began.

“Maybe it was.” Volker spoke over him. “But it’s over, man. Admit it. They tried to extract you!”

“They didn’t. One man, acting alone—”

“That’s crap,” Volker said. “It’s garbage. What’s your real plan? You have to tell me.”

“There is a war,” Telford said quietly, “between dimensions. A higher plane is conquering a lower one. Ours. We don’t have a chance of holding ground in a battle like that without advantages.” Telford’s voice rose. “Advantages that Rush, and I, and you are in a position to secure.”

Volker shook his head.

Telford pressed his case.

“You think the Air Force knows what they’re doing?” Telford asked. “They don’t. They blunder from one disaster to the next. Opening doors, interfering in cultures, dismantling governments they don’t like, building nothing in their place. Offering humanitarian aid when it suits them. When they remember.” Telford leaned in. “The Alliance are no better. They understand risk, weakness, image, propaganda applied to leverage points, and not much else. They’re doomed. Earth and the LA. They’re leveraging institutions against a war they can only half perceive. And institutions don’t solve problems like this. They can’t.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Volker lobbed a hot ball of sarcasm back at Telford. “I’d say NASA’s done pretty well.”

Telford’s smile was thin and wolfish. “Back when they were a handful of extraordinary people? Sure. But what about lately? Where’s our damn space shuttle, Dale? Where’s our base on the moon? How are we doing on terraforming Mars? NASA wouldn’t know where to buy a clue even if they got congressional approval to do so. Not five years ago a Goa’uld chucked an asteroid down Earth’s gravity well and nearly ended all life on the planet. You know who stopped it? Not NASA. Not the USAF. Four people. In a stolen tel’tak just like this one.” Telford pressed his fingertips to the deck of the cargo bay.

“Tapes Guy,” Volker whispered.

Telford rolled his eyes. “No. It was Colonel Samantha Carter who saved you, your cat, and every blade of grass on Caltech’s campus. My point is: people solve these problems, Dale. People. Not grants, not funding allocated by committee, not panopticon institutions that say what is and is not okay. You’re a rule follower. I get that. I respect it, even. But you need to leave that behind. Because no one is granting permission slips here. It’s just you and me and what we think is right.”

The cargo bay smelled like Volker’s high school gym. Like anxiety. Like falling short. Like letting teams down. Like being picked last. Like not being picked at all.

“There’s a transdimensional line to be mapped and held.” Telford’s Team Captain gaze didn’t waver. “The Ori are coming for everything in this galaxy. For the scattered remains of the Goa’uld. For freelance con artists. For the Jaffa Nation. For the Lucian Alliance, and always and especially for Earth. Everything you know. Everything you love. They’re already halfway across the Milky Way.”

His hands on his hips, Volker stared at the floor. He didn’t speak.

“Daniel Jackson, the man you look up to so much,” Telford said, the words curdling with bitterness, “is trying to convince people, settlement by settlement, world by world, that ‘even though the Ori possess godlike powers, they aren’t gods.’ Meanwhile, priors of the Ori kill and heal. Burn and unburn. Level cities and raise them again. Provide example after example of validated omnipotence. All they ask in return is hours of prostration and ritual prayer designed to harness the energy of collective cognition. That energy is used to power a war machine that devours the galaxy at the rate of twenty worlds a day.”

Volker’s eyes pricked with tears.

“Tapes Guy. Cannot win. Tapes Guy is fighting the last war,” Telford snarled. 

Volker shook his head. “No.”

“Yes, Dale. I’m sorry. I don’t understand why Rush roped you into this, but I’m glad he did. You’re smart as hell. You’re getting stronger. You can hold the line in a tight spot. You’ve got Jackson’s heart, but none of his hubris. You’re better. You’re who we need.”

Volker stood, not sure what to do with his hands, his body, his life. He tried to get tears of disappointment and homesickness and fear to reabsorb into his eyes.

The Ori were coming. They were the whip behind Kiva, the spur in Telford’s side, the edge in Tapes Guy’s voice as he tried to speak reassuringly into a camera.

A tear left a hot trail down his cheek.

“You see it,” Telford whispered.

His old life was truly gone. David Telford would never rescue him, no matter how many pushups he did or planets he found. Volker was picking his way, half-blind, through the flaming wreckage left by a bizarre comet that landed like divine whim: terrible and out of nowhere. He saw no path back to Pasadena, California and his radiometric data, to his violin and his comfortable couch and the idea that maybe one day he’d go to a faculty mixer or join a chamber group and meet someone special. Someone pretty and kind, who liked drinking beer and watching musical theater and old science fiction shows.

“I do,” Volker rasped. “I see it.”

Telford was on his feet like a shot, both hands clamped on Volker’s shoulders. “Dale, listen to me. I can get us through this. Once Rush finishes the cypher set, we’ll lead the Lucian Alliance through the gate. You and I. Kiva thinks she’s one of yours. It couldn’t be more perfect. The rest of them will fall in line.”

“What about Rush?” Volker asked. And my cat, he didn’t add.

“He’ll get the Faith. We can’t stop it.” Telford’s lips quirked with a hint of a smile. “But I don’t think it’ll work on him.”

Volker scrubbed at a wet cheek. “Why do you say that?”

“Look at what he can do,” Telford said, like he was sliding an ace out of his sleeve. “He can manipulate EM fields. Stand up to a zat blast, supposedly. Knock over liquid naquadah into plutonium and whatever the hell else is poisoning our hyperspace window.”

Volker took a steadying breath. “If he knew how the Faith worked, if he knew exactly, then maybe, but—”

“Rush is a fighter,” Telford said. “An absolute champion of humanity. Even if the worst case scenario does occur and the Faith takes hold, I’m guessing that, where we’re going, we’ll get an opportunity to fix the damage.”

“If you think that,” Volker said, “you must have some idea what’s beyond the nine-chevron address.”

“It’s a launching pad for ascension,” Telford said. “That’s well documented. The LA know it. The Tau’ri know it. Maybe it’s a lab. Maybe it’s a city. Maybe an outpost. Whatever it is—it’ll be a threshold to another dimension. It will give us a way to see the battlefield as it is. To influence the outcome.”

The deck of the cargo bay felt hard and solid under his stolen boots.

Ascension?

No. Come on.

Dale Volker was never gonna ascend. There were a million problems with the idea. He didn’t bother to list a single one. Because his mind was full of Mendelssohn’s cute little meows and his biscuit making and his expressive face and his straight-up-in-the-air happy tail when it was time for dinner.

No way.

For all the intensity of Telford’s devouring gaze, the man couldn’t read thoughts. Hands clamped on Volker’s biceps, he waited for an answer.

Volker took a breath. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. I’m with you.”

Telford’s gaze burned with pride, with resolve, with the kind of fever that had sent mountaineers and explorers and astronauts alike to their deaths. He let Volker’s arms go, and clapped him on the shoulder a symbiote had chewed into, only a few weeks back. “Good man.”

As afternoon transitioned into evening, Volker grabbed two packets of vy’ta, and paid a visit to the engine room. He found the mathematician sitting on the floor beside the drive, hunched over his open physiology textbook. The page was open to an erythropoiesis diagram that had the wrinkled look of paper that had been cried on.

“So.” Volker settled himself on the floor, not so close as to crowd Rush, but near enough to be companionable. “Telford’s crazy.”

“Y’need a new word.” Rush threaded his fingers under the frames of his designer glasses like he was pressing away fatigue. “Y’use that one too much.”

“Telford’s a zealot.” Volker slid a packet of vy’ta over the floor. It bumped the edge of the textbook and came to a stop. “Is that better?”

“Not thrilled that you’re just realizing this today,” Rush muttered, doing a pretty dang good impersonation of a guy who wasn’t crying.

“In my defense,” Volker said, “he hides it well.”

“He fuckin’ doesn’t.” Rush’s voice was breathy, and there was no strength in it.

“You okay, man?” Volker asked, all his kindness in his voice.

“I burned your fuckin’ house down.” Rush sniffed, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and mustered up a watery glare. “And your lab.”

“I remember,” Volker replied. “Can I give you an update before you kick me out?”

Rush gave him a get-on-with-it wave of the hand.

“Telford had me report to Varro and Kiva. Turns out the Lucian Alliance has plans to attack Theseus Base.”

Rush sighed, shuddery and fragile.

“Telford wants to let the attack run its course,” Volker said. “His idea is: the LA takes the base, they fix our drive, you finish the cypher set, and we lead a bunch of LA goons through to some kind of cosmic transdimensional door.”

Listlessly, Rush prodded the vy’ta. “Before or after I get the fuckin’ Faith?”

“Oh.” Volker pumped some sarcastic brightness into his tone. “Not to worry, actually. Telford thinks the Faith won’t affect you, because of all that Arthur C. Clarke-branded magic you’re constantly pulling out of your trick sleeves.”

Rush’s scoff and eye roll were almost enough to distract from the tear that ran down his cheek.

Volker bit into his own dinner, tasting dust and the ghost of meat. He chewed. Swallowed.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m a sucker for a great story. I ever tell you that?”

“I don’t find it surprising,” Rush rasped.

Volker smiled. “Good. So, before we get curtain called—I gotta know. Did that flash drive you handed Everett have your five solved chevrons on it?”

The question put a definite lift in the mood of the room. The walls glowed a shade brighter. Rush uncurled a little, and there was a hint of amusement in the angle of his head. The arch of his brow.

“Y’sure you want to know?” Rush picked up the vy’ta, and its silver packaging reflected the rainbow of the walls. “It’ll only be another secret to keep.”

“I do,” Volker said.

“That drive,” Rush said, “contained nine solved chevrons.”

Volker felt a pang in his heart. The kind that came with wonderful moments, executed beautifully. Cio-Cio San’s imagining a trim white vessel entering the Port of Nagasaki. Don Alfonso and the Ferrarese sisters blessing a departing boat with sincerity and irony. Tiamat’s plea for her doomed sea. 

“Quite a gift,” Volker said softly.

Rush stared at the tops of his laced-up boots. In the soft light of glowing crystal, Volker saw time-worn patterns in the leather—the whorls and ripples of faded shells, as though, long ago and far away, the leather had been stamped, had seen a harlequin goddess through decades, and had been passed along. Resoled. Time-tested. Full of history. Given with love.

“You’re watching for him,” Volker guessed. “For Everett’s dial?”

Rush shook his hair back and reseated his glasses. And there was no doubt about it. The mathematician’s mood was turning.

Volker bit into his vy’ta. “That’s cute,” he said, mouth full. “Cute as heck, man.”

Rush glowered at him in full Department Chair form.

Volker grinned a little wider. “If your cosmic soulmate’s got nine cyphers and a planet, what’s taking him so long?”

“There’ll be a tenth, I think,” Rush peeled back the wrapper on his vy’ta. “Emergent from the interaction of the nine. Impossible to recover from a gate without a naquadriah-powered dial.”

Volker nodded. “Think he’s up to it? Cracking an emergent tenth on the fly?”

Rush smirked. “No.”

Volker snorted a laugh. “What’s the plan, then?”

Rush gestured at the walls. “I’m monitoring the entire gate network in real time. I may be able to supply remote technical support.” He took a bite of vy’ta and made a face.

“You are such a rockstar,” Volker breathed. “You sure you don’t want to restart the drive? We could make a run for it. Warn Theseus Base? I bet that would score you points in Everett’s book. Big time.”

“Even if I could,” Rush said, “this ship and our literal bodies have Lucian Alliance tracking technology built in. We’ll not make it anywhere undetected, and we’re likely to bring the Sixth House Fleet on our heels and compromise Stargate Command’s dial.”

Volker nodded. “So either the LA wins the battle and Kiva orders us to Theseus, where you unlock the nine-chevron address and we lead the LA through, or the Air Force holds the planet and dials the address while Kiva takes heavy losses, gets really angry, and we get called to account. Maybe tortured.”

“There are uncountable variations of those two alternatives,” Rush said, “but yes, I’d say you’ve captured the dominant possibilities.”

“Scenario one is best for us,” Volker said.

“And yet—” Rush opened a hand.

“Yeah,” Volker agreed.

In the last days before the battle for Theseus Base, Telford changed their workouts. The strength training and cardio turned lighter, less likely to leave Volker an aching mass of sore muscle. The sparring sessions turned more technical. More emphasis on speed. On mentality. Volker won more matches than he lost, and though Telford never said it aloud, Volker understood it was because Telford was trying to build his confidence. 

Two very different lives branched with the outcome of the coming battle.

He and Telford talked together. Ate together. Telford abstracted points from officer training. Discussed USAF rules of engagement versus the swarm-based structure of Lucian Alliance attacks that had been honed over centuries of battle with the Goa’uld. Each night, they stayed up late in the workroom. Telford diagrammed three-dimensional battlefields on the window next to Rush’s math with a marker that was running dry. He detailed gravity-well biases that Volker might have only days to shed.

Meanwhile, Rush sat alone and in the dark, watching low-resolution quantum echoes paint the crystal-covered walls.

The battle for Theseus came in the evening. Volker and Telford sat together on the bridge, comms open tuned to the LA chatter being broadcast to Cousin Dale through subspace in real time.

Mindful of the listening device on the bridge, they didn’t speak.

Telford sat in the pilot’s seat, holding a pen and a legal pad. He drew the planet. The likely positions of the fleets. As information updated, he flipped pages. He adjusted the positions of the capital ships. The short-range fighters. Again and again he outlined the planet and the clashing fleets with a competence that felt unhurried, even as he sketched a new configuration every forty-five seconds.

Crisp and clear and cutting through the radio chatter came a woman’s voice. Volker recognized her—the girl he’d met on Kiva’s flagship. Red hair. Serious eyes. Careful questions about the Tau’ri.

Ginn. That had been her name.

“We’re receiving intelligence that the stargate is active,” Ginn said. “I repeat, the Theseus gate is active.”

Telford’s pen paused. He met Volker’s gaze.

The Air Force was dialing out. The question was—where?

On the legal pad, Telford wrote “EARTH?” in block caps.

Volker compressed his lips and offered Telford a grim if-we’re-lucky shrug.

Telford turned a page. Redrew the planet. Redrew the fleet.

“Geothermal instability in the planetary core is increasing,” Ginn said.

Volker smiled faintly. He’d pegged her as a scientist when they’d met on Kiva’s flagship. Or, if not a scientist, the closest thing the LA had. Go on, he silently encouraged her. You know what that instability means. Go ahead and say it.

Telford flipped a page and sketched, again, the battle.

Ginn spoke, her voice full of fear. “Geothermal instability is consistent with successful dial of the nine-chevron address.”

Telford stopped drawing. Shut his eyes. Closed his pen in a fist.

And there it was.

Everett had given the Air Force a flash drive of solved cyphers, and they’d opened the door.

Telford hunched in his chair, like he’d taken an invisible hit.

Volker imagined Rush, sitting on his stack of books in the engine room, watching something spectacular, something sacred, something old, swirl across the crystal-draped walls. Something that suggested the sea or the stars or the split-light joy of a lonely machine. He nudged his leather jacket aside, and looked down at his A-corder. It shone with an image he didn’t recognize, three-dimensional catenaries of iridescent points colliding and passing through one another, slow and strange and full of longing.

//Congratulations, buddy,// he told the A-corder. //I’m happy for you.//

The radio exploded into chatter. Volker heard “ground forces,” heard “Tau’ri air support is retreating.” 

He caught Telford’s eye and put his confusion into his expression. Retreating? Why?

Telford held up a grim fist, then spread his fingers wide, miming an explosion.

Of course. The planet itself was unstable, and a massive amount of power was being drawn from its core. Getting bombarded by the Sixth House fleet wouldn’t help.

Volker picked out Ginn’s voice. “The planet’s core is unstable.”

Come on. Mentally, Volker cheered her on. Try again. A little stronger.

Telford stared into nothingness. Waiting.

“Recommend withdrawal of all Ha’tak vessels,” Ginn said. “Immediate withdrawal.”

The general chatter was picking up on the danger the planet posed. Vessels were altering course. Reversing attack burns. Other voices echoed Ginn’s warning. A man shouted, “The Tau’ri have jumped. They’ve gone—”

And all of it cut to static. To the communications whiteout that followed a massive blast. 

Volker caught Telford’s eye. Gestured at the legal pad.

Telford shook his head, flipped a page, and sketched a shattered planet. A stylized explosion. Ships caught in the blast radius. Ships that made it free. He bracketed each set. Then annotated them with question marks.

They waited.

The blown-out hiss of static faded.

Kiva’s voice filled the bridge.

“Cousin Dale. You’ll be pleased to learn my flagship is only in need of minor repairs, which are already underway. Once those are completed, we’ll head to your location. Estimated time of arrival is ten hours. Please confirm.”

Telford compressed his lips, stood, and waved Volker into the pilot’s seat.

They switched places.

Volker pressed the button Telford indicated, and said, “This is Dale. I read you, Kiva. We look forward to your arrival.”

They waited, but nothing more came.

“Permission to get some sleep?” Telford asked dully.

“Yeah,” Volker said, playing the part of captain. “Go ahead.”

Volker tried, but sleep wouldn’t come. The threat of discovery, of torture, of brainwashing, drew his thoughts like a lodestone. Might Kiva already know everything about him? Rush had burned his lab. Burned his home. The pocket rocket fuel dropped like a calling card, or compulsion. Maybe it was both. Maybe burning his life and personal effects to the ground made him harder for the LA to track. Or easier. What had the news reported? A serial arsonist in Pasadena? Or had the popular press connected his disappearance with the vanishing of another California academic, months back?

What did the Air Force know? Maybe not much.

Everett had known his name. And Rush’s. But Everett had been tipped by Vala.

Cycles and epicycles of who knew what, when they’d learned it, and how spun through his thoughts as he studied the underside of Telford’s bunk.

In the small hours of the morning, he gave up, left the sleeping quarters, and wedged himself into Mendelssohn’s shielded wall cavity.

“It’s okay,” he reassured his sleeping cat. “If anyone asks, I’ll say I stole you from Rush. You’re a Sixth House cat, buddy. A kitty-cat Pirate Prince. I’m gonna own this tel’tak soon. We’ll get you a scratching post. The choicest Lucian Alliance kibble. A personal chef, even. You’ll see.” Volker swallowed in a tight throat.

Forget what happened to him; if he could only guarantee Mendelssohn would make it safely through the danger of the coming days, he’d feel better.

If Volker got the Faith, he’d still care about his cat just as much, right?

That wouldn’t change, would it?

He stroked a finger over the line where orange hair transitioned to black, just above Mendelssohn’s shoulder.

The cat flicked an ear and shifted.

“Sorry,” Volker whispered. “Just a few hours in the bulkhead, and then I’ll be back. I’ll leave you my A-corder. I bet it’ll entertain you with mice to bat, if you meow nicely.”

Volker unclipped his A-corder, hoping he might get it to display a little moving creature, but as soon as he pulled it from his belt, it showed him Rush’s biometric signature shifting from lavender to amber to russet. The color of dying leaves and wilting autumn flowers.

Volker sighed at the slow-doom rainbow cycling in his hand. The walls of the ship ghosted into place, transforming the display into a map. His own maritime signature rippled to life. “All right.” He clambered to his feet. “I get it.”

Rush was in the bathroom.

Not a great start.

Volker rapped on the door with two fingers. “Rush?”

“Fuck off,” Rush suggested in a polite sing-song.

“Love to,” Volker replied, “but my A-corder is worried.”

“It’s a jumped-up brick pried from the ruins of a dead civilization,” Rush said.

Volker patted the A-corder in sympathetic solidarity. “You decent? I hope so.” Volker keyed eight digits of phi into the door’s control pad. “Because I’m coming in.”

Condensation beaded on the metal walls and ran down the tarnished gold in slender streams. The shower sprayed a fine, warm mist. The steam-white base of the shower’s glass partition was spattered with blood. It looked wrong. Fake. Desaturated. 

“Oh god,” Volker breathed, a little lightheaded and a lot sick.

Rush sat in the broad bowl of the sink, knees drawn up to his chest, Drow corset buckled over a sleeveless threadbare T-shirt. Above him, a bag of the LA’s synthetic blood substitute hung from the top of the shower. Pale lavender liquid ran through the clear plastic tube that connected the bag to a vein in Rush’s arm. A second tube trailed into the shower, spilling watery pale-pink fluid.

“What.” Rush leaned back against the mirror, now nothing but a wall-mounted plate of fog.

Volker bent over, hands braced on knees, eyes on the floor just inside the door. Rush’s coat was there, the copper thread in its repaired sleeve shimmering with a gloss of moisture.

“Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m in the middle of a serial dilution here, so—” Rush trailed off, leaving the get-the-fuck-out tastefully implied.

“I noticed.” Volker drove the uncanny hue of Rush’s blood from his thoughts by summoning stats on red cell life spans, what they’d learned of the Faith over the past weeks, the very real utility Rush might gain from swinging for the self-experimentation fences. “Are we sure a volume swap is, uh, survivable?”

“Evidence points to yes,” Rush said. “I’ve been diluting for days. Doubt the final round will kill me.”

Volker waved his A-corder at the other man without looking up. “Make sure.”

With a brush of cool fingers, Rush drew the little device from his hand. It rainbowed in delight.

Volker shut his eyes and focused on the solidity of his own body, which was, happily, full of normal blood, all on the inside, where it was supposed to be. His palms pressed into the leather of his thighs. His legs, newly strong, held steady. His breathing fell into the new pattern Telford had taught him for quick recovery, for siphoning adrenaline when what you needed was thought instead.

“Toss us a bag while you’re here, eh?” Rush asked.

Volker looked up at him.

Rush’s skin was waxen. The dark ash of his hair fanned against the misted-over mirror. The A-corder, wedged between Rush’s hip and the lip of the sink, shimmered through a desaturated palette, circling through the slate blue of clouded sea, the smoky green of Caledonian pines, the purple of windblown heather, the amber of whisky and winter light.

“Sure, man.” Volker’s sarcasm was no more than a wisp-thin shield. “In for a penny, in for a blood bank. Where—” he trailed off noncommittally.

Rush tapped the lip of the sink, then pointed below it, to a pile of unused synthetic blood substitute.

Volker picked up a bag, slid it into the sink, then straightened up.

“Telford says Kiva’s promoted you to captain,” said the flexible little former Death God casually swapping out his blood for chemicals. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Volker replied.

“I told him I’d allow it for now.” Rush kinked shut the line draining pale pink liquid into the drain. “Though, eventually, I will expect you t’cede the title. To me.”

“Can’t say I want to be captain of anything—” Volker began.

Rush put the kinked tubing in his mouth, holding it delicately between his teeth, then went to work on swapping the empty bag for the new one.

“—but at the same time, I don’t think I want a captain who’s running solo shower blood-swap sessions in the middle of the night,” Volker said. “I think I’m a better captain than that guy.”

“Mmm,” Rush said, the tubing still in his mouth. He muttered something unintelligible.

“What was that?”

Rush spit the tubing out. “I said, ‘would it’ve made a difference if I’d invited you’?”

“To the blood swap?” Volker put his hands on his hips and surveyed the small mountain of empty bags so he didn’t have to look at the color of Rush’s mostly replaced blood. “No, man. Wouldn’t’ve made a lick of difference.”

Rush collapsed back against the misted mirror. “That tracks.” He shot a significant look over the tops of his glasses at the empty air beside Volker’s shoulder, then pushed the frames up his face. “I’ve got a lot to do, if y’don’t mind.”

“Turns out I do mind,” Volker said. “I’m assuming your crystal cave told you that the Tau’ri dialed the nine-chevron address?”

“Yes yes,” he said. “I’m fuckin’ elated for them. Got an earful about it from Telford.”

“Oh yeah? How’d that go? Anyone lose an eye?”

“Not today,” Rush said sweetly. “He failed to mention your planet. I take it you’ve not told him about it?”

“No,” Volker confirmed.

“Good,” Rush said.

They studied one another in a room that smelled of steam and blood.

“Do you have a plan?” Volker asked.

Rush looked at him through half-lidded eyes and didn’t answer.

Volker was sure the mathematician had a plan. He was sure that it was complicated as heck, relied on indescribable EM manipulation, quantum entanglement, the death-mask of confused memory Anubis had left in his head, and more exotic things. And worse.

“Maybe you do,” Volker said. “Or maybe your plans ended with getting your cosmic boyfriend across the nine-chevron threshold. But that’s okay. That’s no problem.”

Rush angled his head, furrowed his brow, and gave Volker the specter of a smile, packed with polite incredulity and enervated charm. 

“Because I’ve got a plan,” Volker finished.

“Oh yes?” Rush’s smile sharpened with academic devilry. “Marvelous.”