Chapter Text
Tarquin spends the day of his father and sister's funeral haunted by the memory of them screaming.
He remembers thinking, at his mother's funeral, how tidily sanitized the whole affair was, like it was happening on the other side of a curtain. On one side, a parade of MERIT's highest-ranking members, whispering to each other as if afraid of waking the lifeless print in the casket. On the other side, his mother twitching on a surgical table, screaming, his father falling to his knees, Leka grabbing Tarquin and pulling him out of the room. He's been looking over his shoulder all day like he's waiting for his sister to come get him, like she's going to usher him outside and fix everything.
If the video from the conservators is to be believed, the video that Security Chief Hector Alvero had summoned him, red-eyed and stricken, to watch after Acaelus and Leka's signals had gone cold over Sixth Cradle, she cracked first. There's a moment in the video where she breaks into a scream, then Acaelus's eyes widen, then his whole body seizes, and within four seconds, the last of Tarquin's family is gone forever. He thinks his father might have held out a little longer if Leka had sounded less like Canden when she cracked. He thinks the conservators might have known that as well.
Now, he sits in the front row of a sickeningly clean room, next to Emali Rochard, who has not spoken to him in the last week, and shakes hands with well-meaning people who do not know what his father's blood looks like, who haven't heard his sister's bones snapping in half. He gave a eulogy, earlier, that someone else wrote. He remembers none of it. At some point, the people behind him stand up and someone ushers him to stand at the front of the room, where he is then treated to the unique misery of shaking hands with dozens of people whose entire families are not dead.
He reverts back to years of media training, and he smiles woodenly, and says things he's sure are polite and polished and would've been included in a pre-approved statement, and he doesn't tell Thieut Rochard that the last time he saw his father, they argued like he was a teenager again, and he's never going to be able to apologize. Emali leaves with her, and he isn't sure if it's better or worse that he has to face all of the funeral guests by himself.
Chiyo has deliberately ensured she's the last in line. When she reaches him, she says nothing, only grips his shoulder and nods at both of their exemplars to give them space. The room begins to empty behind them. His family is gone, and the only person left to comfort him is Chiyo Fucking Ichikawa, and he thinks he might laugh if he wasn't on the verge of crying.
"I don't know what to do." His throat feels raw. "Everyone keeps looking to me for answers for everything, they keep looking at me like I'll know what to do and I… I never wanted any of this."
Her grip on his shoulder tightens. She looks up at Caldweller, her mouth settling into a thin line. "If you'll wait outside, E-X?"
Caldweller waits for Chiyo's exemplar to leave the room before following her out. Tarquin swears that his expression grows wary for a moment as he looks at the two of them together, but it's gone as quickly as it came. As soon as the door closes, Chiyo turns to him with flint in her eyes.
"You need to pull yourself together."
Tarquin flinches. "What?"
"Something horrific has happened to you. It never should have happened. You have my genuine sympathy for that." Her voice is steely, pitched low, even though it's only the two of them in the room. "And at this moment, none of that matters, because every person on this station is going to be watching how you handle this. Every other MERIT family is looking to see how Acaelus's cub responds to this attack. These people are frightened. Two of their own were cut down like dogs in the street, and they're out for blood. If you're not very careful, if they decide that you're incapable of steering the ship here, it's going to be yours."
His chest feels very tight. He fights the urge to guide both him and Chiyo towards the chairs, remembering his father guiding him out of the room at his mother's funeral, quietly reminding him that none of the people in that room had earned his public grief. The memory is almost enough to bring him to his knees.
"It shouldn't be me," he manages to rasp. "I'm barely fit to steer Mercator off a cliff, let alone into the middle of a war. If the MERIT council wants someone else, I won't stand in their way. I'm happy to abdicate."
Chiyo's hand tightens until it becomes painful, her nails sharp. "Like hell you will."
In spite of himself, Tarquin raises an eyebrow. "You and I both know that you've had designs on my family's empire for years. I would think a succession crisis would be a rich opportunity for you."
"You're correct. But a succession crisis is the least of our worries right now." She waves her hand at him, like he's brought up something as trivial as the temperature in the room."If it comes down to a choice between you, and all of your little underling cousins wasting resources killing each other for the next year, I know who I'll take.
Chiyo flashes all of her teeth at him, and for a moment, something like the warmth of pride spreads through his chest. His father has been dead for less than seventy-two hours, and he's already looking to fill the vacuum of parental approval. The worst part is that he thinks Acaelus might have laughed.
"Most of the other MERIT heads feel the same, even if they won't admit it to you. Civil war is messy and expensive." Chiyo withdraws her hand at last, stretches her arms behind her back and cracks her shoulders. "You'll need to retaliate, though, and soon. Jonsun Hesson's actions cannot go unanswered."
Tarquin scoffs. "Obviously not. I authorized Merc-Sec forces to go after the conservators the night of— the night we received the video."
In reality, Captain Aniyah Ward had been the one to make the suggestion, while he had stared at the wall in the Mercator security council office, trying to convince himself that what he'd just witnessed was a terrible dream.
Chiyo smiles serenely. "That was an excellent first step, Liege."
Her voice drips with condescension, and he's not so stricken with grief that he can't respond to that. "Did you have another suggestion for me?"
"Merc-Sec and the HCA are excellent tools when given a task that requires brute force strength. A worker dispute to settle on a mining station, for example. A shroud outbreak like what happened on the previous cradles. Tracking down an organization as elusive as the Conservators, and especially someone as slippery as Jonsun Hesson? It's a bit like trying to catch fish by punching them."
He'd suspected as much, especially as the days have gone by with no update, but he has no idea what else to do. It's not as though he can pack off into a ship and hunt them down himself. "What would you propose, then?"
She inclines her head. "Your father praised the work of several of Mercator's specialists over the years. Careful, precise extraction like this is their purview."
Tarquin blinks. "I. I beg your pardon?"
He's familiar with the word, obviously, heard plenty of jokes about the practice when he was at JovU, surrounded by MERIT children who wanted to appear higher up in the line of succession than they were. He can easily imagine Chiyo authorizing the cracking of one of her prisoners, can imagine Estevez sending a finalizer after someone who compromised their business interests. Mercator, though?
He's taken too long to respond. Chiyo's mouth falls open the slightest amount, her expression sliding into a kind of soft pity that makes Tarquin want to strike her.
"Your father always did want to spare you the more unpleasant details."
Tarquin forces his jaw to steady. "Certain… services are required. They have their uses."
It's the justification that he's sure every other head of MERIT has given over the centuries, the justification that, he's realizing, his father has, as well. Leka was always destined to be head of Mercator, but he'd hoped, as they both grew older, as Acaelus grew to trust him more, that he might be able to exercise some sway in his family, soften his father. It had been the crux of that last awful argument he'd had with Acaelus, the night before he'd left to intercept the Conservators' ship bound for Sixth Cradle. Tarquin had insisted that he be allowed to come along and lead a scientific survey of the planet, actually get to the root of what had caused the explosion of shroud, give the Conservators an answer to their questions instead of just returning their fire.
"I don't want to live in a world where we punish people for trying to survive. I don't want to live in a world where we murder people when they dare to ask us what's killing them. Surely, there has to be a better world than that."
His father had looked at him with exasperated fondness, like he was looking at a particularly charming puppy. Acaelus had clapped him on the shoulder, and told him that he admired the optimism of his worldview, and that they'd discuss the matter of a geological survey when he returned.
And then he had left, and the next time Tarquin had seen him, he was tied to a metal chair, covered in blood and screaming for Leka.
There may be a better world than this one, one where he doesn't have to resort to the same tactics that landed him here in the first place.
He doesn't think that world exists anymore, though. Maybe it never did.
Chiyo takes another step towards him. "I can have Yuna ask around. She's very discreet."
She softens her voice, makes it soothing, a kind of easiness that Tarquin wants to sink into, the easy embrace of letting other people make difficult decisions for him. Chiyo's wife will hand pick the Mercator employees who will hunt down his father's killers, who will butcher them like animals, and he'll be able to pretend that he misunderstood what she meant.
He shakes his head. "No need. I'll inquire with my security council. Your assistance is appreciated, though."
Chiyo nods. "Understood."
She pauses at the door after they make their polite goodbyes, her gaze drifting over him appraisingly. "We're all hoping for your success, liege. A united MERIT makes all of us stronger."
Her comment is made worse, somehow, by the fact that Tarquin believes her. When she walks out of the room, he sinks into one of the chairs in the front of the room, his head in his hands, and sobs until his throat is raw. The thought strikes him, as he lifts his head and sees Acaelus and Leka's caskets in front of him, that this is the last time the three of them will be in the same room again, forever. The only thing that prevents him from vomiting at this realization is the knowledge that if he does, he's going to have to call for someone to clean it up himself, because no one is coming to check on him, not now, not ever again.
He means to ask Captain Ward for a list of Mercator finalizers in person, but the only thing he can manage to do after the funeral is return to his rooms and crawl into bed, still in his deeply uncomfortable suit. When he wakes hours later, soaked through with sweat and thirstier than he's ever been, the thought of going to another meeting feels as appealing as eating glass. He sends a message to her HUD instead, forces himself to shower, then change into clean pajamas while he awaits her response. When it comes, the list is longer than he'd expected, which brings its own kind of discomfort, the idea that not only does Mercator employ these people, they employ them in droves. Tarquin assumes that each of them has their own specialties, unique services they provide. His stomach churns at the thought of reading through their files. He opens the first name on the list -- Specialist Etna Renauld -- and is so overwhelmed by the quantity of information that he moves to his office, where Caldweller stands watch by the door. Halfway through the first page of Renauld's information, his head is swimming, and he has to give his eyes a break.
"Caldweller, I was wondering if I could ask your advice on something."
Caldweller's posture goes, somehow, even straighter. "I'm not sure how helpful my advice would be, liege, but I'm happy to hear whatever questions you might have."
Tarquin runs his hands through his hair. He isn't sure how to verbalize this, not really — he's never needed to hire an assassin before, has never needed to evaluate their qualifications. "You've been with Mercator for nearly twenty years, correct?"
He nods. "Nineteen, liege."
"How much work have you done with specialists in that time?"
Caldweller stiffens. "Sir?"
"I intend to send one after Mr. Hesson. Perhaps two, if the circumstances call for it." He summons authority into his voice, the kind of command that his father seemed to be able to conjure on the spot, and hopes that he doesn't sound like a child playing pretend at the grown ups' table. "I was wondering if you had any unique insights about what makes one qualified for a particular job. All of them seem to have impressive resumes, but I'll admit that some of it is outside my scope."
Nothing about Caldweller's stoic expression changes, but Tarquin swears something shifts imperceptibly in his eyes. "Liege, are you... how committed are you to this decision?"
He sounds so cautious, so careful. It feels like Chiyo all over again, all easy smiles and false encouragement, like no one will tell him what they actually mean. Tarquin hates it. "If you have a problem with my decision, E-X, I'd thank you to come right out and tell me."
Caldweller's jaw stiffens. "My apologies, liege. I-- I'll admit I have very little personal experience with specialists. Exemplars are more likely to work with Merc-Sec, if we work with anyone outside of our immediate circle."
He seems to sense Tarquin's mounting frustration, because he presses on quickly. "All of us work within station security. All of us are very familiar of the kind of sacrifices that have to be made in the name of safety. But if you ask me, or any other exemplar or Merc-Sec, for that matter, they'll tell you that there's a pretty big difference between shooting someone in the head and stabbing them in the back. An even bigger difference between killing someone quickly and taking your time with it."
The visual is enough to amplify the queasiness that's sat in Tarquin's stomach all day, that rears its head every time he reads another word on these files. It curdles into anger at the way Caldweller speaks softly, hesitantly, his eyes never leaving Tarquin's.
"I wasn't aware I had asked for a moral judgment on the specialist profession, E-X."
"Begging pardon, liege." Caldweller pauses for a moment, a muscle twitching the smallest amount in his jaw. "If you're choosing one to work with, then the same metrics you would use for one of us, I suppose. The strength of their data, their prior recommendations."
His voice is still professional, but there's a stiffness that wasn't there before. Tarquin gives a clipped nod.
He imports the list of names into a spreadsheet, sorts them by their case completion rates, their approval ratings. There are two names that immediately leap to the top of the list, their scores within mere decimal points of each other, dozens of points above everyone else.
Tarquin opens a holocall to Captain Ward, who answers on the first ring. "Yes, liege?"
"Captain, when you have a moment, could you could send Specialist Fletcher Demarco and Specialist Naira Sharp to my rooms?"
Naira is already having a shit day before Liege Tarquin summons her and Fletcher.
They were on a deployment when Acaelus and Leka were captured. Their connection was shaky the entire time they were away — they'd been on a remote Rochard station, tracking down a Mercator defector who'd eloped with information about the shroud — and they returned to a funeral, a regime change, and greater unrest than Naira's seen in the thirteen years she's lived on this station.
It's not like she's mourning the great loss of Acaelus Mercator, but she is mourning the stability of waking up every morning and not anticipating an inter-MERIT war. She can't escape the gossip in the caf, the gym, the hallways, people huddled together and whispering frantically about which family is most likely to strike first. They have an overeducated princeling sitting as the head of Mercator, and he's deployed fucking Merc-Sec, of all things, to hunt down a terrorist who's evaded capture for years. It feels like the setup to a really terrible joke. If she was Ichikawa, she'd strike them down herself and remove the liability.
And if all of that hadn't been enough, Fletcher had leaned over to her in their tiny shared apartment this morning, his voice pitched so low that she'd had to strain to hear him over the shower running, and whispered "we never should've come back at the end of that mission."
She'd been so furious with him that she'd stormed out of the apartment, her hair still wet, breakfast untouched.
It's not like she's never thought about leaving. In those first few months after cuffing for Mercator, after Fletcher wore her down and convinced her to switch tracks, it was the only thing that kept her sane. She would come home every night, innocent people's blood drying under her fingernails, and recite the name of every station she ever visited while in the HCA, everywhere she could escape to.
And then she would lie in bed next to Fletcher, knowing in frightening detail, by now, exactly what his hands were capable of doing, and wonder what they would feel like holding a knife to her throat. It's what kept her from running every time: the knowledge that Fletcher would always be able to find her, and, as much as it sickened her, the fear of what her absence would do to him, the way it might curdle everything in him that hasn't been corrupted by this place.
He doesn't get to talk to her about leaving. Neither of them are ever going to leave. It's what makes them so well suited for each other.
When the summons comes, Naira's in the gym, hiding from her anger at Fletcher. She lets out a surprised laugh when it flashes across her HUD. Someone's finally advised the liege to call in the actual experts, it seems, but she'd still put money on him chickening out before actually requesting their services. The man's spent the last fifteen years surrounded by academics and scientists. He'd sooner vent into open space without a suit than order someone cracked.
She's nowhere close to presentable, dressed in exercise clothes and her hair plastered to her neck with sweat, but keeping the new liege waiting feels more dangerous than showing up red-faced and smelly. She pings Fletch's HUD, checking if he's received a similar summons, but he's been marked as offline all morning. Naira rolls her eyes. He's probably hiding in one of the sec labs, running tests on their last mark's map, in spite of the fact that the woman had dropped into the endless scream within fifteen minutes. Fletcher's always been thorough, in all things.
The hallway that houses the family suites hasn't changed since Acaelus cracked. It's stupid to think that it would, but it feels wrong, somehow, that this wing of the station is the same when everything else has changed. Liege Tarquin hasn't moved into the head of family apartments yet. It has to be a security nightmare; the other suites aren't nearly as heavily armored as Acaelus's old rooms. His exemplars must be crawling the walls.
Ex. Caldweller greets her outside the door with a stiff nod. He's been polite enough with Naira in the limited interactions they've had over the years; plenty of Merc-Sec and E-X's openly show their distaste for the finalizers, as if what they do is any less messy. Now that his charge is head of family, Caldweller is going to kill just as many people as her and Fletcher do. The only difference is that he'll do so by throwing his own print into the line of fire and people will call it heroism and bravery.
"Guess the new liege knows we're a package deal."
Naira fights a warring mix of emotions at the sound of Fletcher's voice. Every time she walks into a debrief with him, she feels like she has a loose cannon at her back. There's something comforting about that, though, the idea that Fletcher will blow everything up for her, even if it means they both die in the process.
"He knew you'd be useless without me." She waits for him to make his way down the hallway, adjusting the cuffs of his uniform. One of his buttons is a little askew. She doesn't tell him.
"Forgive me for not congratulating you on the promotion, E-X; I'm sure we both wish it was under better circumstances." Fletcher cracks a grin at Caldweller, whose stoic expression doesn't change. Fletcher rolls his eyes.
"He's ready for both of you," Caldweller says, his voice a low rumble.
There's a version of Naira that stands at this doorway in his place. It's a version that either stood up to Fletcher or let herself be swayed by Acaelus's vision, whichever shade of the truth she happens to believe on any particular day. She's never sure whether she regrets the loss of that opportunity.
Before the shroud infestation on Sixth Cradle was made public, Liege Tarquin had spent most of his adult life hidden away at graduate school, acquiring several degrees in, to the best of Naira's understanding, rocks. She's seen photos of him on the news, footage of him speaking at one of his many graduations, a polished little Mercator princeling with Acaelus's nose and suits that cost more than Naira's yearly salary.
The man sitting in front of her now looks absolutely fucking terrible.
He's wearing one of those expensive suits, but the jacket is discarded somewhere, and several buttons of his shirt are undone, his sleeves rolled up around his elbows. His hair hangs lank around his chin, looking like it's been several days since he last washed it, and his neck and jaw are both dotted with stubble. It's his eyes that really make Naira pause, though: they're bloodshot, and purple, bruiselike circles stand out starkly underneath them, making him look like he's been punched in the face.
She inclines her head before she can say something asinine about him needing a nap. "Morning, liege. Sharp and Demarco at your service."
Fletcher stands to her left, arms clasped behind his back, a mirror image of her own stance. They've gotten good at this over the years; standing like a set of twin weapons, always more effective together than when separated. Liege Tarquin blinks at them. He looks a little dazed, like he hasn't fully realized the extent of what he can summon at a moment's notice. "Pleasure to meet both of you. Thank you for arriving so quickly."
Neither of them had a choice in the matter, but they do the liege the service of not mentioning that.
"I'll admit I'm a bit inexperienced in these matters," Liege Tarquin says, leaning back in his chairs. "I'm aware of the type of work you two do, obviously, but the specifics aren't my area of specialty. If I suggest something that's unreasonable, or ineffective, I'd greatly appreciate you telling me. You're the professionals here."
If Naira had told Acaelus that a deployment was unreasonable, he would've made Fletcher rip out her agility pathways and then run her through hours of brutal drills. She stifles a laugh. "Understood, my liege."
"I'm in need of someone to track down Mr. Jonsun Hesson." The liege steeples his hands and rests his chin on his fingertips, appraising both of them. "Merc-Sec has been unsuccessful so far. It seemed prudent to call in additional forces."
Merc-Sec has been unsuccessful because he's sent a pack of wild dogs to hunt down a rat. Naira nods.
"Would you like us to crack him upon apprehension, liege, or should we bring him back here?"
Something ripples across the liege's face before he schools his expression into a stoic mask again. Hearing it said out loud, what she and Fletcher have been called in to do, has likely rattled him, this pampered boy who's been kept away from the dirty parts of his family's business.
"I. Bring him back here, please. I'd like to interrogate him, before..." he shifts uncomfortably in his chair, swallows. "He's caused unfathomable harm to my family and the whole of humanity. He'll need to stand trial for his crimes."
Holding a man like Jonsun prisoner long enough to stand trial feels like offering him a hundred opportunities to escape, but Naira keeps her lips resolutely sealed. She inclines her head. "Understood, my liege. I take it that you intend to send both of us to retrieve him, considering that you called for both of us?"
Liege Tarquin doesn't say anything at that, just looks between the two of them, an expression of growing bemusement spreading across his face. Something flips over in Naira's stomach. Bemusement on the face of a Mercator is rarely a good thing.
"That depends. Does Demarco speak, or does he need you to talk for him?"
Naira opens her mouth to respond, but she's cut off by Fletcher letting out a short laugh. "We discovered a long time ago that it's better for everyone if Sharp does the talking for me, liege. I'm far less likely to say stupid things that way."
Every cell in Naira's body fights the urge to turn to him incredulously, to smack him upside the head, to hiss at him to shut up, you fucking idiot. Liege Tarquin's bemused expression only grows.
"Is that so? If that's the case, I suppose you'd recommend I send both of you."
"Sharp and I are better as a pair. The entire sec department knows it. Respectfully, liege, your father knew it, too."
She's going to strangle him, slowly, if they're lucky enough that Liege Tarquin lets them walk out of here.
Something crosses the liege's face, but it's gone in an instant, shuttered beneath the Mercator mask that always used to make her skin crawl around Acaelus. It seems even more unsettling on this man, somehow.
Fletcher squares his shoulders. "If it's not too much, liege, could I offer you some advice?"
Liege Tarquin raises an eyebrow. "I hadn't realized your resume included experience running a family mining enterprise, Demarco. My father really found a gem with you."
Naira has to cut in at that. "Apologies, liege, he seems to have forgotten his common sense. You're clearly far more qualified in matters of your family than either of us are."
She shoots Fletcher a sidelong glance, but he's resolutely ignoring her. Fine. If he mouths off at the new liege less than twenty-four hours after Acaelus's funeral, gets himself demoted or iced or cracked, it's his own damn fault. It'll make her life easier.
The liege raises a hand dismissively. "No need for apologies, Sharp. I'll admit I'm curious what he has to suggest."
"I'm honored by your consideration, liege." Fletcher's voice drips honey, his demeanor easy, relaxed. "Jonsun Hesson is a slimy little rat of a man, begging your pardon. There's a reason he's evaded capture from every head of MERIT for nearly a decade. I'm always down for a challenge, but this one is a hurdle even by my standards."
"I'm well aware of the challenges here. That's why I called for the two of you." The liege leans forward in his chair. "My understanding is that you're the very best of my fath— of my family's finalizers. If you're not up for the task, I can inquire elsewhere; I've had some promising offers from Ichikawa."
A muscle twitches in Fletcher's jaw and Nai suppresses a smirk. They both hate Yuna Ichikawa with the might of a thousand stars, but Fletcher's animosity towards her runs deeper.
"Didn't mean to imply that Sharp and I aren't capable of it, liege. Neither of us has ever backed down from a challenge. I only had an alternative route towards getting there."
Fletcher waits for Liege Tarquin's nod before he continues. "You might have better results by sending us into the lower levels of the Conservators first. Infiltrate their ranks, interrogate a few lower operatives. The path to Jonsun might open for us a whole lot easier if he thinks we're coming in as friends."
"Both of us have undercover experience," Naira says in spite of herself, because it's not a bad idea. It's a unique skill of Fletcher's, to propose genuinely smart ideas while being insufferable. "All finalizers do, but Demarco and I carried out plenty of undercover work for your father. You can read up on it in our respective files, if you'd like to evaluate it yourself. Captain Ward is fairly knowledgeable about most of our missions as well."
Liege Tarquin blinks at them. He looks, for a moment, incredibly young, and Naira realizes with a sickening sense of pity that they're probably the first people to explain this to him, espionage and statecraft and the fact that firing directly into the heart of the Conservators might be impossible even for the might of Mercator. She can't comprehend it, the idea of being so close to such deafening power and having no idea what to do with it.
He's going to get all of them killed, probably. She had no love lost for Acaelus or Leka, but at least they'd been able to fathom the ramifications of their own power.
"That sounds… very reasonable. Thank you, both of you." The liege looks between the two of them, his expression unreadable. "I'll require some time to dig through our files; identify potential targets."
"I can think of a few off the top of my head." Naira pulls up a holo from her wrist, scrolls through a list of names the entire finalizer team have been monitoring. "Stephen Vattero comes to mind first. He works closely with the Conservators' tech crew; been instrumental in gaining the cyberattacks for every recent large attack, definitely has the ear of Jonsun's inner circle, if not him directly."
"His partner defected from Tran; he's probably got a soft spot for people who look like they're running. Wouldn't be too hard to get him to talk to us." Fletcher's pulled up his own holo, settled into the easy rhythm of sorting through data with her. "Thoughts, liege?"
The liege is staring at the face on Naira's holo with wide eyes. It has to be different than thinking about Jonsun, a cartoonishly evil figure looming above all of them with tangible evidence of his crime. This man, with a perfectly normal-looking face and a partner and no visible blood on his hands, must be much harder to see as a monster.
Fletcher softens his voice. "He would've been instrumental in the attack on your family's ship, liege. The software that took out their comms looks like his work."
Liege Tarquin's jaw clenches so tightly Naira imagines she can hear bone creaking. His squeezes his hands together, knuckles going white.
"All right, then." He looks between the two of them. There's a flintiness in his voice that's new; it makes the resemblance between him and Acaelus even more striking. "You'll ship out tomorrow to extract him."
Tarquin spends a week agonizing over his first MERIT council meeting, which ends up being a fruitless endeavor, because it's even more of a disaster than his panic-addled brain could've imagined.
It's not precisely that navigating people is difficult for Tarquin. He's perfectly comfortable defending a thesis, verbally dissecting a classmate's opposing theory. He's given undergrad lectures for classes of well over a hundred students, most of whom found him a capable teacher. He's very good with people in situations that feel comfortable and predictable, where the ground under him feels steady: geology, research, classroom discussions. When interactions breach those boundaries, though, he's left floundering. It explains why he's been so spectacularly unlucky in romantic relationships. It explains, as well, why his only real friend through his JU days is Emali, because their relationship was built on the shared awkwardness of navigating university with exemplars in tow.
That, and their shared loss, now, but he doesn't see that bringing them any closer together. She still hasn't reached out to him, and he can't bring himself to contact her. He's so deep in the well of his own grief that the idea of talking about it feels like drowning.
The MERIT council meeting is by far the most unfamiliar territory he's ever been on. As he settles into a chair between Chiyo and Thieut, he finds himself kicking his past self for refusing his father's offers to teach him the family business, countless invitations to sit in on meetings just like this. He probably would've spent the entire meeting daydreaming about mineral samples, but at least he would've retained something.
Chiyo shoots him what's probably supposed to be an encouraging smile, and he fights the urge to be sick.
Estevez begins the meeting with a lengthy expense report review that Tarquin retains absolutely none of. He's aware, from a few conversations with Mercator's accountants, of the strain the Conservators' attack placed on their holdings, the cost of purchasing more ships and reprinting essential personnel, as well as the disastrous situation with the relk on Sixth Cradle, but he can't bring himself to care. It feels pointless to talk about balancing numbers when the man who cracked his father and sister is still out there, when Sharp and Demarco haven't given him a report in two days.
When the conversation turns to relkatite stores, every head turns towards him. Tarquin clears his throat and pulls up a holo from his wrist, deferring to the prepared statement he'd written the night before.
"While the collapse on Sixth is obviously a tragedy, our mining teams have assured us that the situation is manageable. There will be a suspension on voluntary reprinting, as has always been the case in times of shortage. We will prioritize mining of the asteroid belt while we refine our plans for an expedition to Seventh Cradle, but in the meantime, Mercator's relkatite stores are stable enough to ensure life goes on as normal."
He feels like a puppet performing for a captive audience. Across the table, Thieut snorts. The sound feels like nails digging into his chest.
"Something the matter?"
She leans back in her chair, scowling. "Forgive me, Tarquin, but I'm far less concerned about your family's mining operations than I am about your manhunt that appears to have gone nowhere."
Tarquin resists the urge to flinch. "I beg your pardon?"
"We're all thinking it." Thieut gestures around the table. "You've been the face of the hunt for Jonsun Hesson for nearly two weeks. The hunt for a man who, may I remind you, kidnapped an acting head of MERIT and his heir and filmed their brutal cracking. And as far as I can tell, none of your people have made any progress on finding him. You're either woefully incompetent, or you're afraid of getting your hands dirty in a way your father never would've been."
He can feel all of their gazes on him: the other three heads of MERIT, the exemplars standing in the corners of the room, even if they pretend not to be paying attention. Tarquin swallows.
"Two weeks is hardly enough time to make such a definitive call as that. There's a reason the Conservators have evaded capture for so many years. I can assure you I have Mercator's best people working tirelessly to—"
"Not tirelessly enough." Thieut brings a hand down on the table, hard enough that Estevez jumps a little in their chair. "What will it take? Another one of us captured? A live-streamed cracking, perhaps? With you at the helm, that seems inevitable, doesn't it?"
The weight of her glare feels inescapable, like a wet blanket being pressed over his mouth and nose. Tarquin suppresses a wave of nausea. All of them are looking at him, and he has no idea what to do, never did, was never supposed to need any of the answers that are evading him now. Across the table, Chiyo stares at him, unflinching, and it makes him feel like his skin is crawling with ants.
"Who else would you place at the helm, then, Liege Thieut?" He feels a bit like a child playing dress-up, forcing his father's bravado into his voice. "Are you suggesting that the search would fair better in Rochard's hands? That's a bit surprising to me, considering the… unfortunate business with Prosperous station. You've got quite the shroud problem going on, haven't you? I wouldn't have expected you could spare the resources for a manhunt."
Thieut's mask slips for a moment. It's subtle: the slightest widening of her eyes, the most minute clench of her jaw. It sends satisfaction through Tarquin's chest all the same.
"As you said, what happened on Prosperous station was unfortunate, but I can assure you crop production remains steady."
"Excellent." Tarquin leans back in his chair, adopts the careful ease that he used to watch on Acaelus. "I'm sure it's reassuring for all of us to hear that, especially in these uncertain times. And if production becomes less steady, or if you require the construction of new farming stations to make up the loss…"
He lets his voice trail off, locking eyes with Thieut. The threat hangs in the air. If Rochard wants the relk to ensure that they can keep feeding their own people, Thieut can back off.
"Then Rochard knows who we can depend upon." She smiles placidly at Tarquin. "Mercator's generosity knows no bounds."
He waits for someone else to raise a concern, for Estevez to bring up the financial implications of the Conservators' continued reign of terror, for Chiyo to make some quip. None of them do.
He'd used to think his father was exaggerating, when he would talk about Mercator's prowess to him and Leka, waxing poetic about relkatite's place in the universe. The other four families are plenty wealthy in their own right. Now, though?
Rochard's farming stations, Ichikawa's map experimentation, none of it means anything in the absence of relk. Tarquin could probably spend the next council meeting polishing his rock collection and all of them would politely compliment his samples, so long as he's the one holding the purse strings. He pretends that that doesn't make something twist in his belly, this feeling of being needed, relied upon, nondisposable.
He lets himself lose focus in the meeting, lets the sound of Estevez's voice soothe him into nothingness. He'll have access to the notes later for anything important. For now, he squeezes his hands together and thinks about his father, of how today is the closest he's ever been to doing something that Acaelus would have been proud of, and it only happened because he's gone forever.
Sharp's message comes late that night, well after he should've gone to bed. He's poring over notes for the mining expedition to Seventh Cradle, half ready to pull his hair out — everyone involved in the plans is an idiot who can't read or count and has never been sentient before — when his HUD pings. The notification nearly sends him falling out of his chair.
N. Sharp: Target extracted, my liege.
Tarquin responds before he can think twice about it.
T. Mercator: That was fast.
Immediately, he wants to bury his head in his hands and scream. It's an asinine response. He's a head of family, who sent his two best specialists to complete a high-priority task. Of course they should move quickly. It would have been much more notable if they didn't.
N. Sharp: He was far more trusting than we initially anticipated, my liege.
F. Demarco: casting back tonight. we'll put him in a holding cell; he's already been prepped for questioning.
Tarquin frowns.
T. Mercator: Prepped?
F. Demarco: HUD pathways removed, anything that might be a problem for us later on.
Tarquin traces one finger along the illegal strength pathway that stretches down his leg. He imagines it wriggling under his skin, embedded into muscle and blood vessels. He can't fathom how much it must hurt to have one ripped out.
T. Mercator: Understood. Thank you for the update.
Naira always sleeps badly the night after an extraction.
She's gotten better at it over the years, more out of necessity than anything else. She can't show up to an interrogation yawning and unfocused. The first six months of working for Mercator, though?
The extractions themselves were never the problem. Naira was a soldier for years. Hunting down an enemy combatant, disarming them and taking them prisoner, were all familiar enough territory for her. She'd taken plenty of people prisoner who knew they were going to their deaths: war was messy, and prints were valuable, and the losing side always knew they were going to be melted down for parts. People fighting her, begging for their lives, hurling insults, none of that fazes her, hasn't in a long time.
Metal for metal executions were always quick, though. It was a point of pride in her squad, that they would make it easy, wouldn't shake anyone's PTC too much.
She doesn't puke after cracking jobs anymore, doesn't retreat into the hidden space inside of her where even Fletcher can't reach her. She doesn't think she'll ever sleep peacefully the night before torturing someone to death, though, doesn't think she ever wants to.
She's alert enough when they go to meet Stephen Vattero in the interrogation room. Fletcher had slept the entire night, oblivious to her tossing and turning. Naira can't decide if that makes her queasy or not, if it would be worse for them to lie awake together in the dark. He shoots her a sidelong glance as she swipes her command keys.
"You good?"
She squares her shoulders. "I'm fine. Should be a pretty easy one; he was scared shitless last night."
Vattero seems just as terrified when they enter the interrogation room. His head is bandaged sloppily where his HUD pathways were ripped out, and he rubs at the wound like a nervous tic, fresh blood blooming under his fingers. Fletcher clicks his tongue.
"Sharp did such a sloppy job with that, didn't she?"
He softens his voice as he comes to stand next to Vattero. He's slipped into that smooth, commiserating tone he has when talking to marks, where he sounds like a caring service employee. Vattero is strapped to a gurney in the middle of the room, his hands and feet bound to the metal rungs, and Fletcher drops onto the stool next to him, absently patting his knee like an old friend. He eyes his HUD like he's examining an old-world watch.
"I didn't think we'd beat the liege here, Sharp." He lowers his voice, leaning in almost conspiratorially. "She's a stickler for punctuality, always has been. I could've had a second coffee if she wasn't rushing me out the door."
The first time Naira had seen Fletcher like this, cozying up to a mark minutes before brutalizing them into the endless scream, she'd nearly been sick all over her brand new uniform. She remembers very little from that day. She had blocked out everything besides the feeling of blood under her nails, because at least that was less horrifying than whatever the man next to her had shifted into, whatever had apparently been in there the whole time. They had come home to their shared apartment and she'd locked herself in the bathroom, water beating down on her as she sat in the shower fully clothed, until she was shaking so hard her bones ached.
She'd almost called Kav that night, eaten crow and told him that he'd been right, that she'd made a mistake. It would've meant telling him what she'd done, though; that she'd followed the order, that she'd even been good at it, that a familiar flame of satisfaction had burned in her chest when she'd done something right.
The only other person who understands that now is Fletcher, and so, here they are.
It's gotten less unsettling over the years, watching him shift like this. What used to distress her most was seeing the softness she knew from the Marconette ducts and the HCA sparring gym and their bed here.
She and Fletcher are very rarely soft with each other, these days. She doesn't remember the last time she saw him act like this around her, besides on a job. It's less upsetting to be reminded of something she might never see again.
Vattero swallows hard, the muscles in his neck working as his gaze dart between the two of them. It settles on Naira, his eyes pleading even as his mouth curls in contempt.
"Gonna turn on your own people, is that it? All it took was those pretty cuffs, and now you're willing to rip us all into pieces? Half the Conservators are ex-HCA, you fucking bitch-"
Naira smirks at him, leans back against the wall. "From where I'm standing, looks like I made the right call, didn't I?"
His response is cut off by the door opening. Liege Tarquin trails into the interrogation room, Ex. Caldweller close on his heels. The liege looks momentarily startled to find all of them assembled already, before he schools his face back into that impassible mask.
"I hadn't realized I was behind schedule."
"Not at all, my liege." Naira peels herself off the wall and straightens. "Demarco and I just wanted to get an early start. Merc-Sec's been here already; took care of all his pathways. We're ready whenever you are."
She didn't think they would get even this far. It's one thing for Liege Tarquin to authorize the extraction of a man he's never met before, to have his nonessential pathways stripped when he doesn't have to hear him screaming, but here? Seeing him tied up, interrogating him while he cries and pukes and begs for mercy? Naira gives him five minutes before he sends her and Fletcher the questions he wants asked and sprints from the room.
The liege appraises Vattero from his perch by the door. He looks remarkably like his father when he's standing like this, posture ramrod straight, leering down his hooked nose like a hovering bird of prey. "Mr. Vattero, do you understand why I've ordered you brought here?"
Vattero's eyes have gone very wide. Still, he bites his lip, forces his voice not to shake. "Fuck you."
"Right. That's what I suspected you might say." Liege Tarquin seems to draw himself to an even higher height, which Naira had really thought was impossible. "You've been arrested under suspicion of collaboration with Jonsun Hesson, a wanted terrorist, who is also the man responsible for the brutal murder of my father and sister. I have reason to believe that you provided him with a great deal of tech for that mission — the virus that took their comms offline, the software that killed their engine. You wouldn't happen to mind clearing that up for me, would you?"
Vattero's mouth narrows into a thin line. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I was afraid you'd say that." The liege pauses for a moment, as though he's weighing options in front of him. "Mr. Demarco, if you may."
Fletcher approaches jobs with an intimacy that Naira's always found a bit distasteful. He runs two fingers gently over the side of Vattero's face as he opens his instrument case with his free hand, seemingly ignorant of the way that Vattero flinches. He prods at a strength pathway running along Vattero's thigh with a bemused expression.
"Interesting modification choice, Vattero, considering your line of work. I wouldn't have thought a comms specialist needed to be particularly strong."
He makes a small incision along the length of the pathway, first on one side, then the other. Vattero squirms. Fletcher lifts his gaze to hers, nods.
Naira leans forward so she's staring directly into Vattero's eyes, making sure she's the only thing in his line of vision. She's upside down, looming, in a way that she knows is disorienting, especially under the blinding fluorescent light.
"What tech resources do you provide to the Conservators?"
"None."
Vattero attempts to bite down his scream when Fletcher rips his pathway out. It's an unsuccessful attempt, though, the sound filling the interrogation room as he twitches. Naira shakes her head.
"This could've been so easy, Mr. Vattero. Demarco and I aren't difficult people to work with."
She trails her fingers over his forehead. The bandage covering his HUD exit wound is soaked with blood now, and she rests her thumb on top of it. "Were you the one who designed the comms-disabling virus, or was that one of your colleagues?"
Vattero clenches his teeth. "I don't know what you're talking about."
He's prepared for her to dig her thumb into his injury, but he's not prepared for Fletcher to begin slicing into his other strength pathway. When Fletcher rips it free, Naira brings her right fist down, hard, directly on top of his bandage, and Vattero shrieks so loudly she feels it in her bones. He chokes out the name of a fellow engineer between sobs, and she rubs her thumbs over his temples, almost soothingly.
"Thank you, Mr. Vattero; that's very helpful."
She and Fletcher have a familiar rhythm after so many years working together. They settle into it easily, Fletcher's instruments and her hands working in tandem to drain confession after confession, name after name from Vattero's trembling lips. When he finally chokes out the name of a station he recently visited to meet with Jonsun, both of them lift their hands reflexively, turning to Liege Tarquin for further orders.
The liege wears his usual Mercator mask, stoic and unshakable, but his jaw twitches the smallest amount. "Yes?"
Fletcher lifts one hand to wipe sweat from his brow. Some of Vattero's blood streaks across his forehead. "Are there any final questions you'd like us to ask him, liege?"
It takes the liege a moment to process what Fletcher's just asked him. He continues staring, a little blankly, at the two of them, and Naira barely swallows the urge to shout at him. "Liege, your primary purpose was to find out about his connection to Jonsun. We've just learned that. Demarco and I can keep questioning him, but he's nearly gone. We would need to move very quickly."
The liege opens his mouth for a moment, but nothing comes out. Naira could throttle him. He has an opportunity sitting in his lap, one that she and Fletcher risked their lives for, put blood on their hands for, and he doesn't even know how to handle it—
"Liege." Fletcher's voice is so soft that it makes Naira freeze. "He's gone no matter what you do. It's just a matter of how long it takes."
Liege Tarquin takes in a shaky breath. "Right. That… that will be all."
Naira lets her hands run down the sides of Vattero's face, over his jaw, to rest around his neck. It hadn't taken much poking around in his file to find this particular phobia: a near-death experience as a child in Gardet, a bed sheet tangled around his throat during a laundry shift, an aversion to tight-collared shirts. The second her hands wrap around him, his eyes snap open, frantic.
"I. I know more, I can tell you more, please, please, I know everything, I'm in their walls, in their comms, I—"
Naira shakes her head, lets her hands tighten minutely. "You've been so helpful, Mr. Vattero. It's all right. Thank you."
He twitches feebly under her as she squeezes harder. His eyes are still open, darting back and forth like he's seeing every moment of his life, the ghost of every nightmare. He melts like butter under her hands. She lets herself slip into it, the easy rhythm of a familiar task, a job to do. The comfort of being good at something, even if it's something like this.
She presses her thumb into the hollow of his throat, just a touch of extra pressure, but she senses the moment when his map shatters. His body tenses before he breaks into a scream. Naira pretends the sound doesn't bother her anymore — it shouldn't, not after this many years, not after this many people. It's unsettling, though, feels like a thousand butter knives slipping under her skin.
It almost feels like bringing comfort, when it's the end like this. She snaps Vattero's neck easily. The screaming stops, his chest stills.
On paper, the two of them are similar: orphanage upbringing, a stint in the HCA, aspirations of cuffing for MERIT someday. Naira often wonders what would've happened if she'd followed in his footsteps when Kav called her five years ago, if she'd cut and run and decided that all of this was too much. Blood on her hands, but not like this. Her and Fletcher, on this table instead.
She leans back in her chair and rests her hands on her thighs. There's no point in going down that path. She rolls her shoulders back, lifting her gaze to Liege Tarquin.
"Merc-Sec can take care of things from here, liege. Demarco and I will send over a report of everything he said; should be done by the end of the day."
The liege is staring at them like a wounded animal. The Mercator mask has fractured, his eyes wide, his face pale. His jaw is clenched so tightly that Naira can almost hear his teeth grinding together.
"This was pretty successful, liege. He gave it up much earlier than they normally do."
Liege Tarquin makes a faint wheezing noise. He peels himself off of the wall, drawing himself up to his full height, and appraises the two of them.
"Make sure this gets cleaned up."
He doesn't look backwards before sweeping out of the room, Caldweller trailing after him. Naira feels her blood pressure rising with every second that goes by after the door closes. She clutches the table in front of her, forces herself not to further abuse Vattero's lifeless print, and seethes.
The two of them put their lives on the line, delivered the liege their mark ahead of schedule, wrung vital information from him in an impressively short time span, and he's looking at them as though they've done him a great personal injustice by following his own orders.
"The fucking audacity." Naira pitches her voice low enough to avoid the room's security system, even though she knows it's a lost cause. "Didn't even—"
"Nai." Fletcher's voice is laced with warning. He reaches a hand out to her, but she shakes him off.
"At least Acaelus-"
"Nai." He grabs her wrist anyway, squeezes it like a vice. "Let's just go. Merc-Sec's got the cleanup handled. We have a report to write. You'll feel better after you shower, yeah?"
The night that Naira amended her paperwork for Mercator, checked the "specialist" box instead of "exemplar," she'd felt the weight of a thousand rocks weighing heavy in her belly. Fletcher's words rang in her memory over and over again, screaming at her in a sparring gym that he wasn't going to let her throw her life away for some misguided sense of honor.
There is no such thing as benevolent service towards MERIT. Any illusion of honor is a way of softening a death sentence, a way to comfort her neural map into believing her future deaths would mean something. She's a tool, just like Fletcher is a tool, just like Stephen Vattero was a tool, in the end. She knew it then, knows it now, is reminded of it every day, in Fletcher's voice, in the tightness of his hand on her wrist, firm in a way that's both a promise and a threat. All of them are playing a game. She'd just been stupid enough to think that all of them understood its stakes.
At least Acaelus had the decency to know what he was asking for. Liege Tarquin Mercator stands with unfathomable power at his feet, and he can't even look it in the eye.
"Fine," she says, lifting her head to meet Fletcher's gaze. She thinks she might hate him, a little, for his easy ability to keep rolling along like nothing bad has ever happened to him. "Get me out of here."