“Very well,” he nods. “Internal comms-uplink syncing now. Your father has sent over the details. Full script side-load to your internals complete. We have aligned all networks and stream-feed platforms. The holo-camera crew is on standby, and the selected press conference attendees are ready. Please make your way through to the studio.”

I nod as Gerald’s head disappears behind the door and pat myself down in my sharp suit. Platinum silver with a pink pinstripe. All business for this day. I knew what was to come as the fallout from the situation at the Hub blazed through the networks. When the Daily Echo ran the story, the stream-feeds exploded with rumour and the streets set alight with gossip and threats of violence. Ready to riot now, as my father says. Ready to step up and fight against all our false promises. All the endless lies I’ve peddled.

But this is my time. This is the moment they bred me for. This is the culmination of all my education, all my training, all the lessons with the finest media experts money can buy. I am the head of Arkwright Industries Public Relations, and I must perform my duty to the company, to my family.

Another quiver runs through me before I turn and ready myself for the action required.

Quick steps and I’m out of my office and moving along the corridors of the floor, seething with movement and people. The buzz is frenetic. Hundreds of media managers, executives and officers move in and out of the floor-to-ceiling nanoglass offices. Wired in, talking via their AR comms-visors, carrying stacks of print newspapers. Tablets in hand, transmitting and receiving the latest updates from the stream-feeds, broadcast networks, tabloid chatter. Sending and receiving information. Putting out fires as they stoke others.

Some take a moment to nod with a small smile. Most are too busy working their magic against the tsunami of speculation, rumour and negative press that is hitting the family now. A complete media blitz, now enacted, as ordered by my father. Lord Richard Arkwright, the head of our family.

I come to a door at the end of the corridor. I know what is behind it. Gerald will be there, tablet in hand, comms-visor wrapped around his eyes. The horde of press on one side of the room, carefully selected to ensure they ask only the right questions. My podium with the family motto written atop our crest at the front. The lights. The hustle of people. The intense heat of it all. My theatre. What they made me for. What they shaped me to do.

“Selene,” my father’s face appears on my internal peripheral vision uplink display. No comms-visor for me, only the best for his daughter. “Take a breath. Make the family proud. Make me proud. I know you will, my precious girl.”

He disappears.

My hands are slick with sweat.

I breathe and bury the tremble down.

The door slides across, and Gerald rushes over to me. “Lady Selene, please, we need to get the conference and broadcast underway. All networks and stream-feeds are on standby. The press is ready.”

“Yes, of course,” I follow him into the studio, the frenetic energy of the offices left behind as the door slides across. Now, a few select camera operators, makeup specialists and team advisors as I cross the polished floor, and there in front of me, two dozen of Horizon City’s finest journalists sit and wait.

A makeup artist rushes over to me, glides a puffer across my face as the spotlights above shine down with their pure white light. “Perfect,” she says with a bright smile. “You’re always perfect, Lady Selene.”

She rushes away, and Gerald leads me to the podium before he turns, nods, steps back behind the cameras and rows of press sitting patiently in front of me.

“And we are live, in three,” he points three fingers at me, and I breathe. “In two. And one.”

“The fine people of Horizon City,” I say, placing my hands down on the podium’s sides, looking straight into the cameras and at the press with my finest face of capitulation. “As many of you are now aware, the Daily Echo ran a libellous news article about our family and the Arkwright Industries company only 24 hours ago. I am here to address this issue directly and to assure you, the good citizens and our fine press, that Arkwright Industries is, as ever, a friend of yours and a friend of this great city.”

I pause, take a deep breath, the lines of speech running down in my peripheral, prepared by my father and his lead executive teams. The words coming in, the lies, I know they are lies. And for the first time in my long history of performing this task, I choke.

“Lady Selene,” I hear Gerald’s voice in my ear. “We are live.”

The press look up from their tablets. Some stir in their seats. Uneasy. I see sweat on their brows and uneasy smiles on their faces.

I hold it back. Compose myself. Look directly at them and continue as the stream of pre-written lines runs down my peripheral vision.

“People of Horizon City. I am here to reassure you that any reports regarding the weaponisation of the Seep phenomenon are utterly untrue. We built the Hub with the dual purpose of security and discovery. Of safety and study. Arkwright Industries created the containment field rings around the failed Chrono-Wave reactor to understand the temporal phenomenon it formed. To ensure that any Echo relics that appear in our timeline are collected, categorised and presented for investigation. To safeguard any temporally displaced people and to guarantee their citizenship within the Horizon City limits as brokered with the national government. We have acted on these promises since the temporal phenomenon broke out and we initially contained the Seep. Nothing has changed. We are here for you. We are here for your safety. We are here for the city, and for all people, in the continuation of safety and study of this phenomenon for the benefit of all people everywhere. We categorically deny any involvement with the weaponisation of the Seep or any related technologies. We are, I would like to reiterate, here for the science, and for the benefit of all people everywhere. Thank you. Now, I will take a few questions.”

The bank of press explodes, voices fire at me, shouting and jostling as they stand and shove each other.

“Please,” I say. “Please, yes, you,” I point at a chiselled man with a comms-visor across his eyes.

“Thank you, Lady Selene. John Hammersmith, the Horizon City Times. If Arkwright Industries is denying any involvement with the weaponisation of the Seep, can you please help explain the independently verified reports of explosions that took place underneath the Hub shortly before the Daily Echo report came out?”

The jostling stops. The room goes quiet. All eyes are on me. I hold on to the podium to quell the shakes. The pre-written answer streams down my peripheral vision. The preordained lies created by my father.

“Of course, of course. John, the energy required to contain the Seep is colossal. This is no secret. One thing that few factor into this is the amount of cooling that is required to keep the Hub’s computational power running, as well as the containment rings around the Seep functioning. Occasionally, these coolant systems require systems maintenance. During one of the routine procedures to ensure we keep these coolant tunnels functional, a repairs team experienced a situation whereby part of the tunnel collapsed. This is nothing to worry about, I assure you. It is an unfortunate side effect of the coolant liquid that is used, and the general wear it creates on these tunnels. The tunnel experienced a structural difficulty, injuring no one on the repair team, and they resolved it immediately. You see, it’s just a case of bad timing. Such a structural situation in one of these coolant tunnels, from the outside, could be misconstrued as some sort of explosion. Nothing of the sort ever took place.”

“Thank you, Lady Selene,” John says as he sits and the rest of the press explode back up.

They fire questions at me.

The lines of response feed their way to me.

My voice speaks these words.

But they are not my own.

The lies stream out of my mouth.

One after another.

I stand and perform my duty to the Arkwright dynasty, to my family, to my father. To the company. I pant for breath and grip the podium. More questions come. More lies are told. I shake and sweat, but I push on until they ask the final question, the last of the lies feed out of my vision, and my mouth closes.

“Thank you,” Gerald says, coming over to the podium. “That concludes today’s conference.”

I take a step back from the platform. The lights on the front of the cameras blink from green to red. The lights go down. The press stand and make their way to the exit.

“There will be another conference in three days,” Gerald says, ushering the journalists out. “Please have your editors coordinate with our PR teams to ensure we have vetted your questions and granted your participation.”

“I—” I take another step back. My legs are weak. My hands shake.

“Lady Selene?” he turns to me.

“I have to go. Gerald, no interruptions for at least thirty minutes.”

“Yes, ma’am. Your father—”

I turn and pace out of the room. Back through the corridors, through the hive of people all spilling their lies to the world. I move across the floor and between them as they stop to clap at my illustrious performance peddling deception and falsehoods to the people of Horizon City.

I enter my office and collapse into my chair. The night has set over the city, and it casts its neon hues through the vast bank of windows. The city looks calm, but the shake in my hands is still there.

“You did well, my precious girl,” my father’s voice comes through the comms-link. His direct line circumventing my call restriction software. “You have done your duty. You have saved the family. The stock has stabilised. Initial polls show a turn in sentiment. This has quelled the potential riots for the moment. I have many matters to attend to now, but I will see you soon.”

“Father?” I breathe.

“Yes, my dear.”

“Will you continue to work with the government? The military? Project Rubicon…”

“My dear, this is for my side of the business. You deal with the public, and I will ensure I take care of all the other concerns, the same as I always have. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good girl, Ordo Per Innovationem,” he blips out.

My head goes quiet. A rare moment of peace. I look down at my hands, ringed with golden Echo relics. I know what I have done. But now, through all this, it has finally become clear. What I must do. Now I truly understand.

I call up my holodex in my peripheral vision, the name there, pulsing in green, ready for the call I know I must now make.

Milo Garnett.

The one who did what he did to my cousin, the awful Lady Lyn.

I nod, and the connection indicator blinks low amber as I wait for his answer.

Where Milo Garnett told me to meet. A quiet spot for locals, a place where if I showed up, he said we could talk.

Come alone, he said.

I came alone.

Be there at two, he told me.

I arrived at one.

I sit and watch, wrapped in my heavy cloak, the big hood pulled up and hanging over my forehead. Hair tied back. Holo-decals across my face. Echo relic rings gone. All signs of who I am, where I come from and the family I belong to removed.

I listen to them talk. Spy them drinking their warm beer and oily shots and smoking their cheap tobacco. But I do not judge. I might not belong to these people. I might not know them as well as I wish I did. But I understand them. Now more than ever. Fighting to survive. They battle with the world, with this city, the one my ancestors built, my father helped create, the one I have had my hand in maintaining. No more.

“Amber?” I hear the name I told him to call me as I turn my head and see the young man standing at the side of the cubicle.

“Yes,” I say, a modulator shifting the pattern of my all too well-known voice.

“How do I know it’s really you?” he says, taking off his weathered top hat and placing it under his right arm, the hand of which is holding an equally weathered cane.

“You don’t,” I slide a holo-chip across the table. “But this should reassure you enough.”

He places the head of his cane down on it. The sync takes a fraction of a second. The details of Hub security protocols, Project Rubicon data and sub-routines only someone with my level of clearance could have access to.

His eyes go wide. The holo-chip fizzes, crackles, and disappears in a minute blue flame, the synced data eroding away from his internal systems with it.

“A taste,” I say.

“Indeed,” he nods. “May I?”

“Please do.”

He sits, shifting over to my side as he places his top hat on the table and rests his cane beside him on the worn leather seat.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?” he says, facing forward.

“Yes, well, the chip should have settled that. I am here because I need your help.”

“We’ll get to that,” he nods at the young girl with the shaved head over at the bar.

She nods back, hammers down the shot she was nursing, stands and walks over.

“Keira,” Milo says as she reaches the table. “This is our friend, Amber.”

“Friend?” she says, a hard smirk written across her young face.

I clear my throat. “Please, Keira, sit. I will explain everything.”

“Call me Kestrel.”

I nod, bringing my hands up onto the table. The shake from the press conference is gone. There are no nerves here. No tension. No palpable fear or anxiety. Now my direction is clear, I am calm, the calmest I’ve been in a long time.

“Well?” Kestrel furrows her brow.

“Well, you have heard the story from the Daily Echo. The media frenzy that has ensued. We’ve all been watching the protests, the riots breaking out again. Heard the rumours the team at Arkwright PR have been fixing—”

“The ones YOU have been fixing,” Kestrel leans across the table, setting her stare into my eyes. “I saw that press conference. Watched you peddle the lies. Oh, and I know they’re lies.” She shakes her head. “You are part of the machine. You fucking created it. Remember that.”

“My family and the world have reminded me of that every day for my entire adult life, and before that, as a child in the schools of the Spire Quarter. I understand who I am, and where I come from, and this is why I know it is time for change.”

“Change…” Kestrel sits back into the worn leather seat.

“Change,” I say.

“What do you have for us?” Milo turns his head to me in the dim light. He is handsome. Forthright. Holds his own level of authority. I can see why he went so far in the Old Silk Exchange until he did what he did to my cousin. But sitting here with him, I can see why he did that too. That action, now, I also understand.

“You’re right. The broadcast—it was all lies,” I say, looking at them both. “All of it. The weaponisation of the Seep is real. Arkwright Industries colluded with the military to develop temporal weapons by harnessing the power of a secondary reactor.”

“Jesus,” Milo whispers.

Kestrel sits still, her eyes fixed on me. “I fucking knew it.”

I breathe. “This is why I am here. I cannot sit idly by. I cannot continue to peddle my father’s lies. I cannot do this anymore. I never—”

“You never meant for it to be like this? You never realised what your family was doing? You never what?! You never realised?!” Kestrel’s voice rises above the background chatter of the room as heads turn to us, suspicious eyes in the dim light.

“Calm,” Milo says to Kestrel, putting his hand on her shoulder as she sits back down. “We need to listen to her. Whatever this is, whatever has changed her mind, she’s here now. Kestrel, please.”

She nods, clenches her jaw. “Okay…okay, tell us what you’ve got.”

“My father, he has gone too far. I know this. We have a history. They have taught it to me all my life, forced me to accept it, to swallow it down as the rise of a great family, of a great company and in a way, as our right. It has blinded me for so long. And now I’ve—”

“Now you’ve had a change of heart?” Kestrel seethes. “Oh, poor little rich girl. Listen, I’ve had to fucking fight for my sister to have the medication she needs to stay alive. I’ve had to become a criminal to save her life and mine. I’ve had to do so many things while you and your kind sat in the ivory towers of the Spire Quarter for all these years. While you reaped the benefits of the Echo relics and trod on the temporally displaced people, and now, now it’s gone too far? It went too far a long time ago, Amber, and it’s all your doing.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Sorry isn’t good enough.”

“This is why I’m here.”

“I believe her,” Milo says.

“You would.”

“Please,” I say, looking back up at them both. “I can’t take back everything my family has done. But I am here to do something about it now. I am here to help change it.”

“I believe you.” Milo reaches across the table and takes my hands in his. “You’re here. With us. This is where we make the change. What do you have planned? How can we do it? How do we stand up to your family?”

“Right,” Kestrel sits up, still not sure of me, but now I can see I’ve got her attention. “I take it you have access to the sort of security intel we’ll need to have?”

“I can get it,” I say, letting go of Milo’s hands and sitting back.

“I’ve seen it,” he says. “Protocols, sub-routines, she gave me a flavour.”

“I have a plan,” I look at them both. “We’ll need a team. Strong people. Experienced.”

“I know a guy,” says Kestrel.

“I’m sure you do,” I say, turning to Milo. “We’ll need broadcast capabilities as well, for what I have planned.”

“I can arrange that,” he says. “When do we move?”

“Now,” I say.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kestrel leans forward.

“What is it?”

“First, shots.” She raises that big smirk again and fires a wink at me. “On you, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Good,” she nods, signalling three fingers to the bar. “We’ll get you loosened up a bit. Your full story. And then, and only then, we’ll make our way to Vargo.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you need,” I say, and I know I’ve found my people.