Through the Limbs

Part 1

"The Qloud tastes like suicide," Raisha said to the auditor and waited for the other woman to process it.

She was as pale as anyone Raisha had ever seen. The only spot of color on her were her eyelashes, which had been twisted and painted bright blue like coral polyps at the ends of her eyelids. Even her irises were colorless.

The auditor noted Raisha's response and tapped out a sequence on the green square of glass at the ends of her fingertips, but she didn't challenge the answer.

"You're tense," the woman said.

"I'm never not tense," came the answer. Raisha was still anxious from having to shake the woman's hand. She'd extended it when Raisha first came into the room and waited.

Just renting out space in your head. Raisha had told herself. Just do it and move on.

The woman's hand had felt bloodless, like it had been draped over the edge of a bathtub with red waters.

"Is that because you've been stealing from RedHouse?" the auditor said, not looking up.

"No."

Cameras and sniffers crawled over every detail. Even Isolates couldn't fool them: emotional discharges from deceit and surprise showing as nimbuses of pink and orange. The auditor's screen stayed a cool emerald beneath the white fingers. It was a routine question that always got the same reply.

"It's because of the handshake," Raisha said without attachment. "And the fact that I'm not due for an audit for another three sorties."

"The audit every five sorties guideline gets reset when you've been in Research long enough. RedHouse needs to make sure that you can still tap a blue line without crumbling."

"Must be bad if you're recruiting miners from Research. I already did my time on a ship."

The auditor made a sour face and her perfect complexion just made it worse. "I'm sorry." The woman pushed the screen across the desktop, satisfied with what she'd seen. "I'm not used to dealing with Isolates as damaged as you."

"We're all damaged about the same, just in different ways. But none of us likes to be touched."

At least she didn't call me a Q-tip.

"Haphephobia is common, but not exclusive to Isolates. And we need to measure your personal responses."

It sounded like half-a-phobia, but it was enough to wreck my whole life.

"To see if I'll break the next time I touch the Qloud. I get it. I still haven't been told why I'm being sent out on a ship after three years in Research."

It had felt longer than that to her, time moving geologically inside climate-controlled archives and laboratories, data so critical that it couldn't be digitized for fear that someone else like WareCo would be able to tease it out. Knowledge that had been stolen from the Hesette and off-the-books studies in Aetheric wave manipulation, Solomonic circle configurations in nanoscale gold. Plus the other that Raisha couldn't even think about while the sniffers were active.

The auditor's lips went pinkish and tightened, insult in a silent gesture. "It's because of your value to RedHouse that we take these steps. This is only an investigation, anyways."

Raisha reached out through the back of her mind, trying to read the woman while projecting what the sniffers were supposed to be looking for: hate, self-loathing, thoughts of suicide, signs of Qloud contamination.

They would also be seeking out treachery. But they wouldn't find any.

"I owe RedHouse everything," Raisha said. "Without them, I'd still be an untrained Isolate in a Q-ward or wandering Patapsco until I starved to death. I only want to pay back what I owe them."