Chapter 10
?rim
Cassie. Something about Cassie stuck in his mind beyond just fascination with her voicelock.
He didn’t recognize the feeling, but it was new and uncomfortable.
It would be better to focus his energy on trying to solve the puzzle in front of him.
Whatever strangeness he was dealing with wasn’t going to help him get reinstated on Teos.
?rim knew he was being obsessive, but he couldn’t help but check to see if Raptor had responded to his last message on the board.
There it was. A new message from Raptor.
He took a moment to read. If he was understanding the subtext correctly, Raptor was implying the desire for a less coded conversation.
He wanted more details about Cassie’s voicelock and ?rim’s level of access to her.
Something about it rubbed him the wrong way, but it would also be remiss to pass up on an opportunity for more information if it could help unravel the mystery of disabling Cassie’s voicelock.
He thought for a moment before typing a response, taking a calculated risk at revealing additional information regarding his interest in removing or disabling the voicelock.
Whatever he said would have to be a lie anyway.
He technically wasn’t affiliated with any institution, not since leaving Teos.
My research operates through academic consortium rather than single institutional framework—collaborative theoretical analysis across multiple jurisdictions.
The subject access remains variable based on scheduling constraints and facility availability. Remote monitoring limitations you mentioned are precisely why I'm seeking alternative diagnostic approaches.
Based on Raptor’s message, it sounded like he was going to have to get access to Cassie’s hardware eventually.
There was no way around it. He definitely didn’t want to ask Raptor about the best way to do it because it would be an enormous reveal about his proximity to the device.
It would likely also put Cassie in danger, which defeated the purpose of what he was trying to do.
He didn’t know much of anything about her backstory, but he would be an idiot to believe she ended up with a voicelock under positive circumstances.
No one ended up with a voicelock unless they were in a really sokt situation.
He’d done a cursory search on humans with voicelocks to determine if it was common practice on any of their colonies, but all he turned up was an IA brief.
Fifty captives released from an unnamed facility.
Fifteen males. Thirty-five females. Twenty minors and thirty adults.
All of the postpubescent captives were voicelocked.
The full brief was obviously encoded, and he wasn’t an idiot to go poking around in classified IA documents.
Even though they would be easy enough to hack, he wasn’t in a position to get himself into trouble with the IA.
For now, Cassie’s origins were mostly a mystery, but as soon as he could get the voicelock disabled, she would be able to tell him whatever she wanted. Or nothing. He shouldn’t expect anything from her. She was already giving him more than necessary by letting him access her tech.
?rim considered what he should do for the rest of the day.
His lessons were already planned. The IA academic curriculum was simple enough, even an uneducated dullard could teach it, and he suspected he wouldn’t hear back from his mysterious darkwave contact for quite some time.
He pulled out a nutritional supplement and added it to his soaking pool.
His crystalline structure required weekly replenishment, but he didn’t eat like a biological organism.
This was fine. He did his job and kept to himself.
The need for relationships and communication was a strictly biological impulse.
Teosians had long conquered their base instincts.
Seedlings were raised in pods by nurturers after their genetic contributors brought them to life.
Romantic relationships were a waste of time.
There was no purpose. On Teos, the highest calling was to dedicate your life to serving the glory of the Empire.
?rim had tried to do just that as a rising star bioengineer.
And now his lab was gone, his collaborators were gone, and he could only perform minor, meaningless experiments with his limited resources.
No doubt his former colleagues were laughing at him or using him as a cautionary tale. They’d regret it after he returned, but for now, he would bide his time and do what he did best. He was going to solve the puzzle of Cassie’s voicelock, and once he did, they would beg him to return.
?rim tried to return to his usual daydream of striding back into the research institute with his head held high to the hushed whispers of his colleagues, but it lacked its usual bright flavor.
He couldn’t think about it without thinking about Cassie, and a human female was not something that had ever factored into his calculations before.
The brighter of the suns had gone down. He supposed he could leave the house. He needed to pick up the restock of his reseeding solution he’d ordered in from Brasnia Prime anyway.
?rim got on his levibike and rode into the center of town, parking beside the other bikes.
He wasn’t looking forward to the awkward socialization that would undoubtedly come from being in town when all the adults were finished with their workdays, but collecting the reseeding solution was a necessary evil of living on a planet like Cassiaq-IV.
There were no natural mineral pools with frequent energy charge from lightning storms like on Teos, so he’d have to accept the artificial substitute.
He adjusted his eyestones against the dust as he made his way over to the general store. The giradey proprietor trilled at him in greeting as he entered. “I have your package in stock.”
“Oh, thank you.” ?rim went up to the counter and waited as the proprietor rifled through a box of packages before finding the one addressed to ?rim.
“Do you need anything else?” The giradey asked.
“No, this is sufficient. Let me pay the delivery fees.” ?rim extended his wrist to transfer credits into the interface.
“Well, you have a good evening then.” The giradey turned his attention to another customer, and ?rim was grateful to grab his package and leave.
If he only had one social interaction to navigate, he would consider it a successful visit to town.
He was halfway to the levibike charging ports when he noticed a group of younglings clustered around someone, writing something in the dirt with a broken off antenna from some device.
“This is my name,” one of the urtazi younglings scrawled out ‘Grumm’ in the dirt and then handed the antenna to Cassie, who he could finally see was in the middle of the huddle.
“She can’t say it, you left hopper. Eggmother Kravv says her voice is broken.”
?rim stared transfixed as Cassie smiled softly. “I am so sorry! Let me try again.” She reached for the antenna and sketched a lopsided little urtazi face next to Grumm’s name.
“Ooh! Me next. Draw me next!” The youngest kyrot female peeped up from the crowd.
“She does well with younglings, but I don’t know if she enjoys it.”
?rim nearly dropped his package as S’samph came up beside him. “I should be on my way. I was just surprised to see my students together after school hours."
"Why are you surprised to see the younglings together? Unless you mean you are surprised to see Cassie among them.” The latil’e asked with such precise bluntness it caught ?rim off guard.
“She is very patient with them.”
“She is. Eleri says I should keep secrets about Cassie, but I see no reason to hide her past. Cassie was responsible for a group of younglings at the Aviary. She has much experience in this area.”
“Cassie has offspring?” ?rim asked as he watched Cassie trace the outline of a kyrot as one of the other younglings clung to her back.
“No. Cassie was responsible for helping train younglings to care for iridescence addicts.” S’samph spat the last phrase. “I see no purpose in protecting secrets like this.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.” ?rim had not seen. He had not known. He should have guessed it was something horrible, but he’d been so focused on examining her voicelock that he hadn’t fully considered the implications beyond a passing thought.
“But you did not hear this from me. I just think it’s important for you to know if you’re tampering with her voice device. She is fragile.”
“I am careful with all of my research endeavors. Cassie will be no different. I’m knowledgeable of the intricacies surrounding such a delicate biological framework.”
Finally, Cassie glanced up from the gaggle of younglings around her and caught them staring.
Although ?rim couldn’t process the exact color, her face darkened several shades like it had the first day in his classroom.
She said something to the younglings, extracted herself, and rushed past everyone, hurtling toward the clinic.
“Be very careful with this research endeavor. And remember. Cassie is a person. She is not an experiment.” S’samph’s frill lifted in warning before he stalked off in the same direction Cassie had fled.
?rim stood in the center of town as the younglings dispersed.
He suspected he’d made a social error. S’samph’s revelation about Cassie’s circumstances didn’t change his plans, only modified the parameters.
A traumatized research subject would need to be handled with more care.
?rim rubbed his wrist nodes. Perhaps it would be prudent to learn more about the Aviary.
Surely there was information on the darkwaves.
If he better understood the nature of her trauma, he could be more precise in his approach to examining her device.