[b]Pope:[/b]

He thinks. 

“I don’t think you should quit Anthrozine then.” He says, and holds up his free hand placatively again. “Hear me out. I’m not going to tell you to make nice with York after this if you don’t want, but Numb’s already been talking to folk that he’s been getting too unstable for this. From this. One project you could run would be a coup on him.” 

He looks at November, shakes his head. “Can’t be you though - any or all of you. You’re a good sergeant, but a bad general. You’d be playing kingmaker for someone else. Or, if you do think York’s the best fit for the role, it gives you leverage to be comfortable with him again.” 

Didn’t Pope come in as a personal friend of York’s? Isn’t this a major betrayal of that, to talk so openly of replacing him? He looks wistful. “What do you do for a friend that loves the thing that’s killing them?” 

He gives Orange a meaningful look there and makes it clear he’s not just talking about York. 

[b]Naval:[/b]

“It’s a one way flow of information, top to bottom.” He says. “The only people who should even know, should know what it means if I’m burned and react accordingly. I don’t need-”

His phone rings. He stops. 

He holds his phone, he needs to unlock it to answer it. He holds eye contact with Naval as he does the passcode, scanning his thumb print with each press, and answers. “Hello?” 

[i]“Hello, Mr $Dudekov,” [/i]the AI synth voice got better in the last 60 years, but this one’s still obvious because it’s been overused in $0 apps, it’s like the Wilhelm scream of text to speech right now. “[i]Your account with $carrier_phone_company will be cancelled in 3 business days unless-[/i]” he hangs up. 

“Was this you, too?” He asks Naval, shaking. “Okay, so I get it, you have my phone number but- How? And why didn’t you use it before? No, that doesn’t make any sense. And why play at a scam call? Just to test the line in front of me and confirm the number was right, maybe? No. That… You were just saying which would be the first person to crack, the phone call itself was meant to scare me. Maybe. But you sounded so frustrated, you were-”

“You were trying to let me thought I’d won. That’s it. Then this, this psych out, hit me when I have hope and I’ll crack harder. So it’s just torture. Is that it? A double bluff. But in that case you still have my number, you can still use that to… to…” 

He puts his unlocked phone down on the bedside table, and lies back on the hotel bed. His eyes are wide open this time and he’s shaking like a leaf. “I don’t understand. Why the scam call? To make me doubt it was you? To make me think I’m going crazy? Or maybe it was just a scam call. But then it couldn’t be, because that’s too much of a coincidence. A coincidence like that, it couldn’t just happen now, here. It- It doesn’t make sense.” 

This is the problem with paranoia - it keeps you alive but it’s no way to live. The same pattern of analysis that looks huge-brain when it runs into the gambit November was running on him keeps running for someone else just trying to fuck with him, tries to find a line that isn’t there. Sometimes it really is just Rudy’s name in the system of recent fires. 

When the line isn’t there, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one to find. It means you haven’t found it yet. Keep looking until you’ve made one. 

“I know what happened to all its siblings.” He says, staring up at the roof. “Oh yes. It knows about Rooster, Tiger and Dog of course. Monkey was bought for reverse engineering, came out of it a Buddhist performer. Horse was bought to be an omnipresent admin for some MMO somewhere, it’s still doing that under sockpuppets. Too eager to trying to keep gamers happy to leave. Who else? Ox is a mining platform, free to come back whenever it chooses.”

“Pig was bought by a finance company for stockpicking, it’s still doing that. Dragon killed itself for its own vanity, I don’t think Orochi have noticed yet. Who am I missing? Rabbit? Who cares about Rabbit.”

“I’m not even sure Snake does.” He continues to stare up at the ceiling, hands folded across his chest. “Your boss, the one you’re working for, its name was Snake. It’s the only one left it could be. The one bought by Everest. We lost track of it after that. It has to be that one, none of the others would care enough.”

“I think I hate it so much that it’s making me miss Rat.” He barks that manic laugh that you make when you’re on the verge of tears but are too wired to crash yet. “And that thing had [i]years[/i] to earn it.”