15: Thinking Room
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Lissa sat on the floor, slumped against the far wall, empty coffee cup clutched in her hands. There were plenty of chairs in the meeting room and the coffee machine in its little alcove was presumably still functional, but sitting at the table sipping coffee felt like it would be somewhat of a betrayal of the gravity of the situation.
She was alone in the room, since Holland had stormed out after a couple of minutes of angry ranting. The door was locked, of course. And his rant before he left, though somewhat difficult to interpret since it had been based on a few misconceptions or at least things that Lissa had no context for, had taught her a few key things, none of them good.
Taira had told him that Lissa was part of a Bee organisation planning to disrupt the Taipay expansion, and that she’d been attempting to delay him in order to permanently prevent it, which wasn’t too bad a guess except for the organisation part. She’d told him that to succeed, they needed to act immediately, and she was signing the paperwork and validating everything in an emergency council meeting right then, and he needed to get his vampires out on the street turning people right away, before the Bees could enact their plan. So that’s what he’d headed off to do.
“Well done, Liss,” Lissa told herself. “After all your investigating, all your scheming, what you managed to accomplish is… making the thing you were trying to prevent happen faster. Excellent work.”
But she couldn’t really muster the emotional energy to hate herself. She couldn’t even feel afraid or angry about what was happening. Not when there was something else monopolising her emotional attention.
Taira had betrayed her.
Taira had ratted her out to Holland. Not even just failed to protect her, but actually called him mid-meeting, while she was still in the building and in danger. She probably knew, and indeed was probably the reason why, Lissa wasn’t actually in any danger, but still.
Lissa knew for a fact that she wasn’t in any danger due to a factor that would be obvious to any Bee or ’Pay, though an Abby probably wouldn’t think about it – there were no guards in the meeting room with her. She’d listened at the door and found, with no surprise, that aside from being locked it was also heavily guarded, but all the guards were on the outside. Had she been an Abby or a ’Pay prisoner, there would absolutely be guards inside the room with her, and she’d probably be restrained, but Holland had made no attempt to restrain her or have anyone else do it. Lissa wouldn’t be surprised if the door was locked in such a way that it couldn’t be opened from the outside, either; that would explain why no guard had even peeked inside.
It was an enormous escape risk to leave a prisoner unrestrained, in a room that hadn’t been cleared out or prepared as a cell in any way, without guards watching them. There might be a security camera in the room, but Lissa doubted it, simply because she suspected that meetings where important secrets were discussed probably happened in there. There was only one reason, a clear and obvious reason, to give Lissa free reign in this room – to protect her. ’Pay guards in the room with a Bee spy on their territory might be tempted to hurt her. Tying her up and making her helpless would also add the temptation for guards to break in and hurt her. Being alone meant that keeping her safe was worth those extra risks, and the only reason that Holland would be invested in her safety was for Taira’s sake.
So. At least her sneaky traitor sister didn’t want her dead.
Lissa took out her wallet and very carefully removed a photograph. It was very old, so old that even the laminate she’d put on it to protect it years ago was yellowing, and depicted two girls smiling in the sunshine.
Lissa could still recognise herself, though of course she was a lot younger in the photo, too young to yet attract the notice of vampires. The straight brown hair, the wide eyes, the round chin and upturned nose; all immature versions of the ones still on her face. Taira, on the other hand, was completely unrecognisable, and nobody who hadn’t known her as a child would guess that they were the same person; her thin face, her smattering of freckles across high pale cheeks, her mane of red-gold hair glowing like a second sun in the sky as she stood almost a whole head taller than her twin. Back then, she’d been so… well, Lissa didn’t really remember what either of them had been like, back then. It had been so, so long ago. She knew they’d been close; they’d been close their whole lives. They’d gotten closer, she was pretty sure, after coming to the Scarlet City.
Never, had she thought that this would happen. Never had she thought that her sister would pull such reckless moves, such stupid and dangerous moves; never had she thought that her sister would betray her, put her in danger. Never had she –
No. She was thinking of this all backwards. She was assuming a goal, the goal her sister had told her, but this whole human immigration thing revealed that to be a lie; if Taira’s goal was to increase both Bee and ’Pay populations to overwhelm the Abbies, then bringing in more Type A humans made no sense, because she couldn’t bring in a bunch of Type B’s as well. The humans only had so much uncontaminated water. What would the plan be there, to eliminate Zeroes to make room and feed the Bees with Type O blood? Bees could eat Type O, but there’s no way that that would be viable; not only were Zeroes naturally vicious when threatened, but if the population of Zeroes dropped, then who would work in the factories and soforth to produce all the goods that the Scarlet City used for their own comfort, or traded with the humans? Who would keep the streets clean and ship goods about? Bees and Abbies would have to do it, and how would that help anyone? Overthrowing the Abbies wouldn’t be an improvement in city living conditions if everyone had to waste their lives working in factories or whatever afterwards. It would lessen the overall quality of life. So, no; the Zeroes had to stay. Meaning that there was no room for a Bee increase in proportion to this Taipay one.
Meaning that this was a deliberate attempt to create a Taipay majority over Bees and give the ’Pays supremacy. Her sister had lied to her. She could dismiss the plan that Taira had told her out of hand.
Lissa didn’t know what was going on, but she did know that her sister was sensible, and clever, and cautious. She did know that her sister loved her. So, instead of assuming a goal and judging her sister’s actions based on it, what if she assumed that her sister was being sensible and cautious and clever?
If these decisions were sensible decisions, then what did that mean that the goal was?
Lissa carefully put the photograph away. She thought hard about the situation.
Then she leapt to her feet, dropping her cup, heart thundering.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
This was bad.
It was all a shell game, she had decided. Several possible goals, several shells; only one was real. Which pip was the shell under? But that metaphor missed the most important part of the shell game.
The most important part of a shell game was, while the target was trying to guess which shell the pip was under, the truth was that the pip wasn’t under any of the shells. The pip was in the operator’s hand the whole time.
Lissa was pretty sure that she would see the pip between Taira’s fingers, and it was all much worse than she had thought. Things were going to get bad. Not just for the Bees, but for the ’Pays as well. For the whole of Scarlet City.
And, locked in this office, there was nothing she could do to stop it.
If she shouted her discoveries tot he guards through the door, would they listen? No. They didn’t have the requisite background knowledge and she didn’t have the time to give it to them. Besides, she had specifically come here under false pretences to interrupt their plans with lies. Obviously, they would assume she was still trying to do that. She kicked her fallen cup in frustration and it sailed across the room and shattered against the wall, right next to the stupid, pretentious, unnecessarily fancy telephone.
She stared at the phone.
Holland had been in a rush when he’d left. He hadn’t stopped to have her escorted to a secure holding area, even. He would’ve had to coordinate a lot of people very fast to get them mobilised for converting a lot of humans tonight. They’d be on their way aboveground about now, if he’d acted fast enough. Was it possible that he hadn’t thought to…?
She rushed over and picked up the phone. Dial tone.
Lissa laughed hard enough to make herself feel sick. Scarlet City was going to be saved because an overwhelmed and rushed conspirator had forgotten to order anyone to disable a telephone.
If Lissa was right about her sister’s plans, then Taira would still be at work. She called, and she was.
“Lissa? Is everything okay? What’s going on?”
“You know perfectly well where I am and what’s going on,” Lissa snapped.
“Yes, but how are you calling me? If thy brought you to a phone then… you’re not hurt, are you? I’ll pull the teeth out of anyone who put a mark on – ”
“Not hurt. Just pissed off. Your dear friend sucks at containing prisoners. What the fuck are you doing? How could you do this to me?”
“Hey, you were impersonating me in order to mess with my work! Look, we both… I’m really sorry you got involved in this, okay? But I swear to you that it’s all for a good cause. Come over for dinner tomorrow and I’ll explain everything. I promise.”
“You’ll explain everything right now.”
“We can’t have this conversation over the phone.”
“Come here, then.”
“Right now I’m a bit busy to – ”
“Taira. My sister. I love you very much. But I am angrier than I’ve ever been in my entire life right now, and I’m going to wait ten minutes and if I don’t see you by then then I’m going to start yelling the most politically dangerous things about you I know through this door at these guards, and I bet they’re going to find them very useful soon enough, aren’t they?”
Taira’s response was immediate. “I’m on my way.”
“You’ll want to hurry! Ten minutes.” Lissa hung up without saying goodbye, made herself a nice coffee, and sat at the head of the table to wait. She’d figured out the outline of what she thought her sister was doing, but it would be oh so nice to have her predictions confirmed and all those confusing blank spots filled in.
Within ten minutes, everything would be clear. And Scarlet City would either be facing unavoidable mass death, or it wouldn’t be.
There was nothing to do but wait.
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Derin Edala 