His tongue felt awkward in his mouth, and he suddenly sat fully conscious of his own breathing.
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout fiercely at the oppressive atmosphere enforced by the crowd all his life. A small sliver of breezy light seemed to touch somewhere below his heart - a rising, inspirational emotion he hadn't felt in twelve years. It was that most dangerous of feelings, one which he'd seen get countless others killed… one which he'd used against others.
"No," he wrote back, shaking his head.
A terrible look of dismay fell across her features. "What?"
He looked away. "It'll get us killed. I have to expose this now, or we'll die."
For the first time in as long as he'd known her, her confident persona fell away. "But you can't - we can't live like this anymore!"
"My… friends… tried something like that today. They almost caused a riot. They would have definitely been killed."
"But that's the opportunity the revolutionaries hope to capitalize on," she wrote back. "People are doing something they haven't done since the genocides - they're talking. They're questioning. These are not the same people from twelve years ago. It's our generation now. This is a society under pressure, bursting at the seams, and we've only kept from exploding this long on the power of fear, silence, and mob rule."
He passed his turn, staring at her. "Where did you get all this? Is this your opinion, or theirs?"
"Both," she countered. "And I know it's yours, too. You won't have to put up with crap from people like blondie anymore."
"Elizabeth? She's fine."
"She's always insulting you. She's part of the problem."
"She's fine."
Passing her turn, she glared. "Why are you defending her? She's been horrible to you!"
"I'm not defending her. It's just…"
He couldn't put it into words. He kept replaying the near-riot in his mind, still unable to comprehend why she'd made those choices. How could anyone be so stupid, standing up to the crowd like that? But she was exceedingly intelligent, the smartest he'd ever met…
She wasn't stupid, not at all - which meant she instead had some unknown quality that allowed her to make those incredible decisions; some important factor that he, as a person, simply could not understand, or ever hope to match.
"Come on, Rolf," she pleaded. "What do you want?"
He stumbled on his own thoughts. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"Love, money, respect? Or even… kids?"
His jaw opened and shut twice reflexively, but he had nothing to type.
"We could have those things," she argued. "But not here, and not now. They hate us, Rolf, because we remind them of what they did. This place is a dead-end for us, and I know you feel the same way. We need this revolution to happen."
Her words meant something to him, but they were aimed at parts of him too heavily defended by high castle walls. All he could think about was Elizabeth protecting that child, a thief she had no connection to at all… it didn't make sense… it didn't make any damn sense…
"Shit."
Kitna narrowed her eyes. "What?"
Heart pounding, his every negative fiber screaming that he was making the wrong choice, he forced himself to write further. "I'll do it." He closed his eyes, fighting down his heart rate. "I'll keep the secret."
"Really?"
"Really."
She tentatively gripped his hand, and - for once - he did not brush her away. A moment later, she conceded the now-irrelevant ship battle. "Good game."
For a brief, terrifying moment, he waited, reviewing the public log. All the actions, ships, and numbers were there… he sighed in relief.
No text.
It had all failed to encode.
They'd communicated in private - and gotten away with it.
And he was making stupid decisions, protecting some secret revolution he knew nothing about, something that might get them both killed… but somehow, he only felt incredible, with lightness under his heart where usually there was only fear and void. He still sat alone in his deepest keep, but - at least for the moment - the dark specter that he kept imprisoned there now seemed absent.
"Good game," he said for once, and the onlookers that had bet on him jeered and sent congratulatory messages. None had any idea they'd just communicated privately. None had any idea the world was about to change… or that the change was building right under their noses.
"So, what'd you think of the game?" she asked, logging out.
"Looks fun," Dierk responded, standing. "I -"
An Orani teenager with spiked black hair bumped into him, knocking him down hard. Sneering, the kid made a disgusted noise.
"Hey!" Kitna shouted, leaping to her feet. The Orani and his two friends looked back at them with anger, but kept moving away. "Hey, asshole!"
Rolf stood hurriedly. "Stop! We don't want to start anything -"
She brushed off his hand. "No. Hey, putos! You come back here and apologize!"
The three punks suddenly turned and stalked back up to them.
"I'm sorry for my friend here," Rolf began, looking for some way to calm things down.
The Orani that had shoved Dierk stood tall, shoulders up, glaring at her. "What'd you call us?"
Kitna glared wildly right back at him. "Called you whores, kid. Now go don those certain colors and stand on the corner, right? Like your mother!"
"Oh, oh, my mother? You crossed a line, Subi."
Dierk finally regained his feet, blinking. "Is this a normal reaction?"
"No," Rolf muttered, trying not to shrink back as the Orani's cohorts stared the two of them down. "It's not normal at all. It's Kit."
Visibly excited, she raised her hands and made a wild face, continuing to mock the punk that had disrespected Dierk.
Forced to defend his honor in front of his two friends, he threw the first punch.
She laughed, clutching her stomach lightly. "That's it?"
Rolf glared death at her, but was not caught unaware by the punk opposite him. The teenager was two or three years younger, by his look, but much bigger. He launched a powerful right hook, narrowly missing his head.
"Goddamnit, Kit!"
Dierk took a hit to the face but just blinked in surprise. "Hey! That is not nice."
Trying to grip her opponent's head in a lock as they struggled, Kitna grinned up at him, her nose bloody. "It's a fight, dumbass!"
"Oh."
The six descended into a wrestling tangle, beating on each other and falling against the wall and stone repeatedly. Amused layabouts watched with interest.
It was hardly Rolf's first street brawl. Aiming mainly to exhaust his opponent, he kept the wrestling ineffective and his injuries minimal. None had many calories to spare, so it only took two or three minutes for the sweaty tangle to unwind into lolling, groaning bodies.
"Nice moves, kid," Kitna breathed, wiping her nose dry and smearing blood across her shirt sleeve, where it disappeared into virtual black.
The Orani teenager breathed heavily and favored his sore cheekbone. "You know, you three are alright. Who knew Subians were cool?"
Rolf stared in confusion as the three punks grinned and helped them up.
Kitna gripped forearms with each of them before the three departed. The punks laughed and looked back at their opponents as they moved off, but their laughter was satisfied, not mocking.
"The hell?" Rolf muttered, watching their supposed opponents depart. "How's that follow…?" But he already knew he'd never figure it out. Like Elizabeth, Kitna, too, had qualities he'd just never understood. She'd always kept him on his toes, always causing trouble, and yet… it had always turned out to be worth it somehow… when he might choose to run, she confronted, somehow winning her way into possibilities he'd never considered.
He'd always loved that about her, before. He wasn't sure that feeling had changed, even despite everything that had gone wrong between them.
Dierk smiled, a small bit of blood leak
ing from a scrape on his temple. "They were nice."
"You see that, Rolf? They're angry. We're angry. And it feels good to fight, even if it doesn't change anything. This is what it is to be alive, boys." She gripped each of them by a shoulder, breathing heavily, her chin dripping sweat. "Well that was fun. I think I gotta call it a day. We're burning sleep hours here." Her highly satisfied expression grew a little suggestive as she locked eyes with Rolf. "So…"
Despite himself, he laughed. "You're crazy."
Lying on her cot in darkness, watching Rolf and his game, Elizabeth's dismay and urge to apologize faded in favor of a slowly growing suspicion. Rolf's every reaction was muted to an incredible degree, invisible to anyone who did not know him so well - but she was certain he'd experienced a range of strange emotions during the game.
Going over the game's log, she saw no messages or anything else that might indicate what had managed to get to him.
She even watched the fight, as confused as Rolf by the result.
She listened as the three returned to the room, Rolf and Kitna taking Dierk's cot by the door.
"Hello," Dierk whispered. "We've switched if you don't mind."
She scooted over.
He curled up back to back with her. "Solve the efficiency barrier yet?"
She laughed softly. "No. How was the game?"
"It was fun to watch. I had fun. Kitna is scary and cool. She beat up a guy that pushed me."
"Yeah, I saw…" She looked at her visual map of the room, accessing the red dot next to Rolf's. She took a quick look at Kitna's recent history.
"Screw off," the Subian girl messaged in response to her access.
"Jeez, fine," she muttered, anticipating a satisfying moment a few hours hence when Rolf would wake up in a fit and