"All right, Christ, I'm coming!" Athena begrudgingly got out of bed, though she took the topmost blanket with her, wrapping it around her shoulders like a cape. Whoever was at the door would just have to deal with seeing her in her pajamas; after about 22:00, she got dressed for nobody and nothing. The apocalypse could happen and she'd show up wearing a onesie; she simply couldn't be bothered.
She padded over to the door blearily, rubbing at sleep-clouded eyes. It was probably a package she'd ordered when she was drunk and decided to go on an online shopping spree. Those were always exciting, though they threatened to get her evicted for not paying rent when she spent her entire paycheck on whatever she thought looked good at 4 AM when she was wasted.
To her surprise, there was no package or envelope waiting for her. Another loud, frantic knock sounded, followed by a panicked voice. "Athena? Athena, let me in!"
"Carina?" Athena opened the door, blinking. "What the hell?"
She looked like someone had decided to practice painting using her face as a canvas. Makeup swatches in very pale shades dotted her neck, and she wore foundation that was much too light to match her skin with fluorescent red lipstick that belonged on an underground meretrix more than it belonged on a Scientia. Somebody had tried to braid her hair, but her severe, shoulder-length haircut was too short for it to work, so the half-braided tendrils fell limply next to her ears. Her entire body, from head to toe, was covered in glitter.
Athena blinked. "You look like an eight year old's arts-and-craft project gone wrong."
"Yeah, I know. I know. I—" She cut herself off. "You know what? That doesn't matter. I have to talk to you. Right now."
Athena sucked in some air. "Are you in trouble? Wait, am I in trouble?"
"Maybe."
"Shit. If they ask who I am, you don't know me!" Athena didn't think they'd actually go after her for her comments, but that was foolish in retrospect—they could go after her for whatever they wanted. The Magistratum could be chasing her for any number of reasons, actually, ranging from underage drinking to movie pirating to saying things she wasn't supposed to about Alestra and her family.
"No, the police aren't after you or me or anyone, yet," Carina said, reading Athena's mind. She took a deep breath to calm herself and sat down at the edge of the messy, unmade bed, wearing an anxious expression.
"Okay." Athena felt a surge of relief, though her heart still pounded in her chest. If the police weren't involved, she was fine… probably.
Now that she thought about it, Carina had a tendency to get like this. She'd done something similar last year when they took their calculus final; she came to Athena's room, panicking, at about two AM, stressing about how she'd fail and crash and burn. She took the test the next day and passed with a 98, while Athena, who hadn't even bothered to study, slid by with a 66 and a lot of notes written stealthily on her hand. Knowing Carina, this anxiety was probably because of something equally as dumb.
But she'd also just spoken with royalty earlier that day, so it was also not out of the question that she'd received bad news.
"What did Cipher want?" Athena asked, preparing herself for the worst, but expecting something mind-numbingly dull.
Carina bit her lip. "Not here. There could be bugs."
"Bugs? Who would bug a Scientia's quarters?" Athena scoffed. "I'm definitely not that important."
"We might be more important than you think we are."
Athena narrowed her eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just… don't trust this place. Don't trust any place where someone could possibly hide something."
"Okay, well, if there are cameras here, you're acting super shady and that's bound to raise some red flags," Athena said. "But if it'll make you feel better to go someplace else…" She was half-hoping that Carina would feel guilty about dragging her out of bed and rescind her plead to leave the apartment, but there was no such luck.
"Yes. Yes, it would." Beads of sweat rose around Carina's hairline.
Athena was surprised at that. Ordinarily, Carina was polite almost to a fault; if she was making someone get up in the middle of the night to go galavanting around all Eleutheria, there had to be a damn good reason for it. And if that reason involved the royal family—which it probably did, seeing as Carina spent all day at their oversized mansion—Athena didn't want to miss it.
"Hold on," she said, kicking off her slippers to put on more sensible sneakers. She could only find one sock, so she disregarded the thought of wearing them and figured that she'd just deal with the blisters later. "I know where we can go."
"Do you, uh, want to change first?" Carina asked, eyeing Athena's stained pajamas. They were covered in the visages of the titular characters from Freep and Wuggle, a children's show featuring adorable talking aliens who taught young Scientias about the wonders and horrors of science. Athena had started watching it again semi-ironically, but she'd quickly found herself unable to stop quoting Freep's soliloquies about the nature of entropy, and her enjoyment of the show had gone from ironic to dead serious.
"You're the one who looks like a little kid who had way too much fun playing in Mommy's makeup bag, and you're asking me to change?" she asked, partially because Carina really did look that stupid, and partially she could pry Freep and Wuggle from Athena's cold, dead hands.
"Fair enough." Carina sighed. "Then let's go, quickly. It's important."
***
It was late enough that the lobby was almost deserted, save for occasional smatterings of nightshift workers and busied staff. A few young girls who'd clearly snuck out of the educational facility on level 361 stood in the corner, giggling and whispering; they scrambled off when Athena and Carina passed. Athena smiled at them, remembering how it felt to sneak away when she was that young—exciting, adventurous, bold. Now it was just routine.
"Okay," she said, "first, we gotta get to that creepy abandoned biologics lab a little ways down from the blood pharm on level 228 of the Trinity lab building. It's pretty dangerous there, so we're gonna have to go fast."
Carina's eyes widened. "Dangerous?"
"Yeah, there are all sorts of horrible diseases there that nobody ever thought to clean up. Don't worry too much about it, though—I've been there a bunch of times, and I only got anthrax twice."
"Anthrax?!"
"It's treatable with phage therapy, whatever that is," Athena shrugged. "Anyway, the cameras there don't work too great, since everyone's been too scared to go in and replace them since the Ebola breached containment. But I don't really want to stick around there, because bleeding out of my face holes doesn't sound fun."
"I… I don't even want to know," Carina said, shaking her head.
"Then we have to take a different elevator all the way down to level…" She counted quickly on her fingers. "31, 30, 29, 28… 21. We have to go down to level 21. You'll see."
"That's really dangerous," Carina said shakily.
"We'll be fine. Kalyn showed me the way around."
"Okay, but do you trust Kalyn?"
"Listen, do you want to get someplace without cameras or not?" Athena asked. "Because you sure as hell won't find anywhere that's totally safe up here. Sure, the lower levels are risky, but isn't it riskier if we just stay up here and just hope and pray that nobody's watching?"
"Fine," Carina conceded. "Can't we at least wear, I don't know, masks or something? This seems—"
"Come on." Athena grabbed her arm and practically dragged her into the elevator. She stopped protesting momentarily, her features turning from irritated to worried again. Athena's heart skipped a beat. She knew she shouldn't be taking advantage of her friend's stress, but at the same time, the anticipation was impossible to ignore. If this turned out to be big, this could be her golden ticket into power and importance.
She barely breathed as she ran through the abandoned lab, primarily because she didn't want to catch super-anthrax, but also because she wanted to hear what Carina had to say so badly she found it difficult to focus on anything else. Seconds dragged on like minutes; running at top speed wasn't fast enough. By the time they piled into the dingy old elevator on the lowermost floor of the ancient complex and began plummeting down to the surface of the Earth, Athena felt like she'd burst at the seams from the stress of waiting. It took all her strength to put a finger to her lips and say "no, not yet!" when Carina opened her glittery, lip-glossy mouth.
The whole carriage shook as they sank towards the Underground, sending a rush of adrenaline through Athena's entire body and turning Carina's face a sickly green. They landed at an awkward angle in between two floors, exactly where Athena had expected. She kicked the door open—she wasn't very strong, but it was extremely corroded—and jumped out, a fall of about five feet. Carina followed hesitantly.
"This way." Athena pointed to a doorway half-covered by boxes and bright yellow tape. An illegible sign written in ancient English hung on the doorway, held to the wood with faded silvery-gray adhesive strips.
The interior of the building was a maze. It had been a functioning office once, then a historical display, then the decrepit mess it was now, a ruin smattered with crumbled walls and gaping holes where bombs had hit. It was a relic of a war that had happened a long time ago, something about the country of Arcadia; Athena hadn't paid enough attention in history class to remember the specifics. It was hallowed and hollow, burned down and burnt out, and that was all that mattered.
Through a passageway half-blocked by shards of broken glass and crushed metal pipes was the target. It was a tight squeeze, though both Scientias were short. Carina breathed sharp, claustrophobic breaths as she dodged sharp pieces of shrapnel that nobody had ever bothered to clear away after the facility was shut down. Athena remained steadfast, eyes on the reward of finally getting Carina to spill the beans.
"All right," she said, emerging from the capillary-sized passage into a larger, hollowed out space. "We're here."
"Where's here?" Carina demanded, looking afraid. She stared at the sparkling lights that surrounded them—they were cocooned in a swathe of blinking electrodes and exposed electronics, most of which were entirely nonfunctional.
"Kalyn and I found it one day when we were exploring," Athena explained. "These are the bombed-out remains of a supercomputer from like an eon ago. It was called Timotheus."
"The Timothy Davis supercomputer?" Carina asked, eyes wide. Of course she knows what that is, Athena thought. Nerd.
"Yeah, whatever you want to call it," Athena shrugged. "Anyway, Kalyn swears to me that it's totally safe in here. I don't think the government even knows this place still exists. They'd have torn it down years ago if they knew. So…."
Carina opened her mouth and shut it again.
"Come on," Athena whined. "I'm dying!"
"Okay," she said, "but you have to swear not to tell anyone. It doesn't matter if what I tell you is right or not, it could get us both killed if someone found out that I knew and I told you."
"Damn, this must be pretty important." Athena tried to sound chill, but inside she was quivering.
"So all that elaborate stuff was just, well, Aleskynn being Aleskynn," Carina began. "You know how she is—well, you've never met her, but she acts exactly like how you'd expect a princess with all the money in the world and absolutely no responsibilities to act. Like–"
"Like a spoiled brat."
"Yeah. I mean, she has some redeeming qualities, but—okay, wait, I'm gonna ramble again." Carina took another steadying breath. "So, we were talking, and she kind of offhandedly mentioned that everyone in the royal court hates Acidalia. And apparently she's not exaggerating; they really, really, really dislike her, to the point where most if not all of them want her dead."
Athena was, admittedly, slightly surprised by that. "Really? Most people I know don't hate her, even if they don't love her, either. She's better than her mother, supposedly."
"Well, according to Aleskynn, they absolutely detest her. I don't know if you knew this, but she's not legitimate—at least not in the purest sense of the word. She has a claim to the throne under the Code, but it breaks tradition, and they do not like that. And she's also half-Martian."
"I did know that." Athena thought back to a few months ago when someone had called her a tinfoil hatter because she'd made a comment about it. Screw you, Maevyx from Biologics, she thought. I'll show you.
"But that's not all of it," Carina continued. "Aleskynn also said that nearly every noble house is planning to kill her at some point—"
"Aren't they always threatening to kill each other?"
"Yes, but this is different. Since when has Generalis gotten along with Vulgaris and Communia? Agrestis hates every other noble house in the court, yet somehow they're in agreement with everyone else about hating a Cipher, but just this one specific Cipher. That sounds weird, doesn't it?"
Athena nodded, feeling gears turn in her head. Truth be told, she didn't know half as much about the intricacies of the court as Carina did; she always envisioned herself among the nouveau-riche rather than with the stuffy old-money aristocrats someday. But if any of the (admittedly terrible) fantasy films she'd seen were right, it was rare for every noble house to suddenly agree with each other. That just didn't happen when people were constantly grappling for power.
"That's very weird," Athena said. "And suspicious."
"So I sort of, kind of mentioned that to Aleskynn—how strange it is, I mean. And she all but admitted that nearly everyone with the court is working with the Novagenetica."
"What." Athena said it flatly, like it wasn't a question.
"And they're going to assassinate Acidalia sometime this week," Carina added, her voice dropping to a whisper. "House Generalis—the same house that pulled a gun on her at the coronation—says she'll be dead in two days."
"Wait, you mean there's an actual plot to assassinate her right now?" Athena asked, eyes wide. "And Aleskynn told you about this, like it was nothing?!"
"Not just a plot to kill her, a plot to do it and pin it on someone else, just like they did with that soldier boy. And I was very much not supposed to tell you about anything. I'm still questioning whether telling you was even a good idea, but I figured you're the only person I know who has some ability to help me."
"That's fair. For all my shortcomings, I am pretty well-connected." Athena smirked. She felt like a side character in a cyberpunk movie, like a badass hacker the protagonist would just happen to come across after receiving a tip from a shady guy in a bar. She knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about hacking—she could barely make her laptop run a simple word processor—but it was still a nice feeling, so she relished it as much as possible. "Did she tell you anything else?"
Carina shook her head. "I don't think she honestly knew much else. I mean, she's Aleskynn Cipher, she's not well-known for being perceptive and shady."
"Ain't that the truth." Athena recalled an interview of Aleskynn that she'd read in a gossip magazine once. They kept asking her about political issues and her sister's ascent to the throne, and she'd responded with nonsense every time. It was like when Athena was a little kid and she answered every science question with some bullshit about photosynthesis—she had no idea what it meant, but it sounded like sufficiently big word. The whole interview was like that, but Aleskynn used words like "antidisestablishmentarialism" instead.
"She did, however, tell me that she'd make me a royal advisor if—when—she took the throne, though," Carina added. "I'm not sure if she'd ever actually do that, or if her mother would let her."
"A bunch of Nova maniacs letting a Scientia into a position of power?" Athena asked, suspicious. "Something tells me that wouldn't happen."
"Something tells me you're right," Carina agreed. "I don't think she really realizes the consequences of what they're planning on doing. Talking to her is like talking to someone who's lived in a bubble their whole life. She was going on and on about how great it would be when she became the Imperatrix, but had no idea what she'd actually do once the crown was hers. She literally told me 'well, that's what advisors are for, isn't it?' As far as assassinating her older sister... she acts like it's totally normal and consequence-free."
"Wow, either she's a total sociopath or they had a really shitty relationship." Athena said.
"I think it's the second one... well, I don't know if I'd define it as shitty. More like nonexistent. Aleskynn thinks Acidalia is a 'Martian whore,' and I don't know what Acidalia thinks of her because I've never seen them interact with each other."
"Well, if someone called me a Martian whore, I probably wouldn't want to talk to her, either." Athena suddenly felt bad for the Imperatrix—both because seemingly everyone wanted her dead, and because growing up with someone as annoying as Aleskynn Cipher sounded horrific.
Carina sighed. "I suppose that's besides the point now, though. All I know is that they're going to kill Acidalia, and they're going to do it soon. And that means seven more years of Alestra—"
"Yikes."
"And then Aleskynn will be on the throne with her for God knows how long," Carina finished. "And even though I don't hate Aleskynn, she would be an awful empress."
"Agreed." Athena didn't know Acidalia whatsoever, but she had to be better than her mother or her sister—not that the bar was set very high. Still, having a semi-competent Imperatrix was far better than having a bunch of Nova fascists and one stupid tween at the helm of the solar system's biggest empire. There had to be some way to stop her from dying.
Athena racked her brain for a solution. It was as simple as letting Acidalia know somehow what her family was planning—if she knew the lengths they were willing to go to get her out of the line of succession, she might be able to get the hell out of there before someone put a bullet through her brain. But how on Terra could they just talk to the Imperatrix Ceasarina of Eleutheria like that? Athena didn't really know how royalty really worked, but she was pretty sure Acidalia-Planitia Cipher didn't just have a phone number or email address to send a warning to.
She thought briefly of direct messaging her on social media, then immediately dismissed that as a stupid idea. Acidalia probably got trillions of messages a day—she would never notice anything Athena sent. Besides, she probably didn't even manage her own accounts.
No, it would have to be someone close to her—someone who could walk up to her and be listened to. A noblewoman, probably, or some insanely high-ranking soldier or police chief. Even then, they'd have to be friendly with her. Otherwise she'd be wary of listening to them—if so many people truly wanted her dead, she wouldn't be willing to take what a stranger told her at face value. (That is, if she had an IQ higher than 4, which Athena somewhat doubted, seeing as she was related to Aleskynn.)
But who was high-ranking, had direct access to the palace, and had a friendly relationship with Acidalia Cipher? Athena couldn't think of anyone, especially not anyone she knew.
"I don't know what we're supposed to do," Carina confessed, looking lost. "I don't even know why I told you. It's not like we can change anything."
"No, I'll come up with something." Athena suddenly remembered a concept she'd learned in a communications class they'd made her take in eighth year. She'd thought it was so stupid at the time—why would an Astrophysica need a communications class? But they had told her one useful thing—the theory of six degrees of separation. No one person was really separated from another; the world was a network. If person A was trying to reach person B, there was a virtually guaranteed chance that A knew someone who knew someone who knew someone and so on, all the way until someone knew someone who knew person B. If you knew the right people, you could reach anyone in a relatively small amount of steps.
But who were the right people?
Athena thought of the most important people she knew. Most of them were work bosses, people who only slightly higher ranking than she was. She knew Carina, who knew Aleskynn, who knew Acidalia, but there was no way she could go that route when Aleskynn was actively trying to kill her own sister.
But, outside of the normal chain of command, there were other ways to gain power. They were less legitimate, less common, and less legal, but those pathways still existed. And Athena knew Kalyn, whose mother was supposedly a leader in some criminal enterprise. If she truly was as powerful as Kalyn made her sound, she'd probably made bribes with some wealthy Magistratum, who probably knew politicians, who knew more politicians... and the chain continued, all the way until someone knew the highest-ranking politician ever.
"Okay," Athena said. "This is a long shot, but I have a plan."