#her foundational belief being that sufficient discipline will keep the boundaries of self and safety intact

[apparitionism]

Run 7b

Newsflash (not really): I underestimated the “few more passes” this second half of part 7 needed. However, in what I hope is better news, here’s a continuation of this story about deceit and Deceits. The situation as it stands: Myka is in possession of information conveyed to her by Giselle—information that Myka doesn’t know came from Helena. Myka now has to figure out the utility of that information. In essence, she has to solve a puzzle. But can she also save the day? Can she save everyone’s day at once, given the variety of interests in play? It’s a sticky situation, as described in part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7a.

P.S. To the anon who asked if I’m on AO3: yes. I’m apparitionism there, too. My process, incidentally, is to post works in progress here, then move completed pieces to AO3 as I work through editing them into a “final” form I can live with.

Run 7b

Ingenumedix, Myka typed into the search box. She was at her tiny desk in her tiny home office—sized, she realized now, appropriately like her internship closet—working on her personal laptop. A similarly tiny desk lamp provided a puddle of light, just enough to illuminate the pad of paper next to the keyboard.

She’d refrained from diving into this research at work, after lunch. Given that Giselle hadn’t been willing to say exactly where she got the information, it was most likely sensitive somehow, and given that Giselle was trusting Myka, Myka should try to keep that trust. So: nothing traceable through work, take notes on paper, clear everything she could when she was through.

Playing at being some kind of corporate spy, probably incompetently... but she had to acknowledge that having something to focus on at last, to take steps toward, was liberating. She didn’t have to think about Helena—or rather, she had to think about Helena only as an adversary in the present, not as the betrayer of the past. Do your job, she told herself. Best this enemy.

She worked well into the night, searching and running down information about Ingenumedix’s founding and funding, its research and its promise. Most of it was frustratingly vague; her notes featured more question marks than verified facts. Some articles cited experts, tech and otherwise—even, once, a Zelus official. Myka seized on that as her deniability: “I was looking for anything I could find about Zelus,” she could say, “and I ran across this, which made me wonder.” She wouldn’t need to bring Giselle into it at all.

The quoted sources offered cautious praise for the company’s potential for nebulous “innovation,” yet the majority spoke additionally in caveatese of how early it was in the start-up’s life cycle, how predicting the future was a fool’s game, how hopes might not be realized. Playing down the company’s prospects, no doubt hoping to lower expectations and pounce on a devalued deal.

The next morning at work, Myka took to the telephone; if she really was swimming in sensitive information, an email trail was inadvisable. She headed into a conference room, saying “Can’t talk,” to Pete as she rushed by. He would pout about her not choosing to start the day by drinking her coffee at him while he ate his second breakfast of the morning, but that was apparently the price she would have to pay for engaging in industrial espionage.

She closed the door and started making calls. She used her personal cell phone. She soon realized, however, that if she wanted to get any real information from anyone—Ingenumedix employees or otherwise—she was going to have to either lie about who she was or use who she was. And since she had no time to come up with a convincing lie... and since she had never been able to lie convincingly anyway...

Evidently, the real price she would have to pay for engaging in industrial espionage was having to face the fact that she was in no way cut out for industrial espionage. Another potential price would be having to take the fall for any negative consequences. “She went rogue,” she could hear Pete—or even, horrifyingly, Dan Badger—saying. And “yes I did,” she would have to agree, even if she couldn’t say out loud “because I wanted to best Helena Wells. To win.”

So in the interest of winning, she began using her AAI position and title; further, she began dropping athletes’ names and using their positions and titles; and eventually, after several conversations, up up up several chains, she reached Ingenumedix’s CEO: one Joshua Donovan, who, she knew from her previous night’s work, did the public talking on behalf of the company. The extremely limited public talking.

He sounded harried, hounded. “You’re from a government organization? Is this something about regulation? I thought we didn’t have to worry about any of that yet, not for the serious devices. They’re nowhere near market.”

The serious devices? Myka set that aside for the moment. “Not government. Governing. Over athletic competition. If you’re planning to improve athletes’ performance—make them run faster, jump higher—then we’d regulate it. Well. Try to.” She couldn’t hold back a self-conscious chuckle. Maybe it would disarm him?

“Would information do that? From their bodies via their clothes, and then on from there? If so, then yeah. But I’m thinking no. So why do you care?” His implied Why are you bothering me indicated that he was not at all disarmed.

Myka said, truthfully, “I’ve been reading a lot about your funding—that initial round, the second round, the push now for results—but not a lot of detail about what you’re actually doing. I know you work on that via-their-clothes tech, but I think I need to know more.”

She heard him inhale, expected him to speak, but the pause lengthened. Continued to lengthen. Then he said, “That didn’t tell me why. Are you going to be some source for a story?”

Definitely not disarmed. Myka answered with a firm, honest, “No.”

“Some spy for somebody who wants to buy us?”

“No,” she said again. “But I do want to know why Zelus is so interested in buying you. And why they haven’t been able to yet,” she added, because that was the real mystery. What Zelus wanted, Zelus got, yet nothing in her research explained why they hadn’t got Ingenumedix.

“Oh.” A differently long pause ensued, and Myka waited through it... was she finally going to get an answer? “You want to talk to my sister, Claudia.”

Not exactly what she’d hoped for. “I do?”

“She’s the brains,” he said. “Also the attitude. I’ll transfer you.”

Myka began, “But I—” Too late. She looked down at her notes in consternation. Her research hadn’t touched his sister; now she was at sea.

At sea, as the conversation began, with someone who was just as suspicious of Myka’s motives as her brother—and he had not been kidding about the attitude. At Myka’s first mention of Zelus, Claudia Donovan expressed... irritation. That was the polite word. Myka allowed as how Zelus was making her own job more difficult, and at that, Claudia’s irritation morphed into angry enthusiasm. “So you hate them,” she said, as if there could be no other position. “Awesome. Me too. Thinking they can land on us with all the money in the world like we’re some conveniently located helipad and shut down what I’m trying to make here.”

“But I thought they wanted what you’re trying to make.”

“Only if you can put it in a T-shirt or a pair of socks and sell it. But the wearable tech is just a subset of the bigger idea: portable tech. Do you know that? I hope somebody knows that, and maybe even cares, because the Zelus blob sure doesn’t.”

Myka let herself enjoy “Zelus blob,” even as she understood now why Claudia’s older brother—well, older-sounding brother—did all the talking. “Why not just start another company to make whatever Zelus doesn’t want?” she asked.

“Are you dim?” Claudia demanded. Myka was inclined to confirm that yes, yes she was dim, but fortunately Claudia went on, “Because they won’t quit till they buy the rights to everything. They think I’m as low as they are, that I’ll try to shimmy some big-deal patent past them. So they buy it all, then shut down whatever they don’t see some billion-dollar sports use for.”

“Can you make that a condition of the deal? That they not shut anything down?”

“Sure. And then they’ll go ahead and do it anyway, because who’s gonna stop them? Me? How much lawyer-money do you think I have?”

“A lot, if you let them buy you,” Myka pointed out.

“Not enough. Are you sure we’re talking about the same Zelus?”

“Or,” Myka barreled on, trying to probe for where there might be strength Claudia hadn’t considered, “maybe you could go public with what you want? Put pressure on them that way?”

“Same answer. I can shout pretty loud for my size, but when it comes to media blanketing, who wins? Little shouty or big-money mountain?”

“What’s most important to you here?” Myka asked.

“All of it!” The aggrieved exclamation suggested that Myka was once again being dim. “Why would I be bothering otherwise? I want to make important stuff!”

“Okay,” Myka said, as a placeholder, thinking on irritation and ambition, utility, deals. She needed something to work with. Maybe she could identify another buyer for Ingenumedix, if she knew enough about what Claudia wanted to do? She had no expertise in any of this, but... winning. Winning might just mean showing Zelus—showing Helena—that everything wasn’t theirs for the taking. “Tell me about as much of the important stuff as you can.”

“How much time have you got?”

“As much as it takes.”

Claudia Donovan started talking. She said many, many things that Myka wrote down to look up later, but when she said “MRI,” Myka’s scalp prickled. The serious devices, Joshua had said. Actual medical devices were indeed serious, and indeed subject to regulation. Claudia then modified “MRI” with the word “portable,” and Myka realized the prickle had been a hope that Claudia would in fact apply that magic word. Now the hope-frisson resolved into scissors that cut a precise solution-shape from the information.

“I might have an idea,” Myka said, though “might” was a hedge against what she was sure was an idea.

“Ideas are fantastic,” Claudia said. “Particularly if they help us fend off those Zelus vultures. We’re not dead yet. And by ‘dead,’ I mean ‘desperate enough to take their money.’ Joshua keeps saying we won’t have to, but he’s trying to keep me calm. This R&D is beyond pricey, and money’s not easy, so we could get there. I hate it, but we could get there. Don’t tell.”

Those Zelus vultures.

“I have no interest in giving Zelus any information,” Myka said. “My organization is as much at their mercy as yours is.”

“Not like it’d be a surprise if they got to you. Or anybody. Or everybody. Buying their way out of everything. Cheat now, pay later,” Claudia said, bleak, in contrast to Myka’s new pulse of possibility.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to mitigate against. It might not work.” She hesitated over what to say next, reluctant to give Claudia false hope. Then again the hope might be real... “What would you say about a deal that not only let you keep the medical-device research, but accelerated it? With Zelus money?”

Claudia snorted in clear disbelief. “I’d say it was a miracle.”

“I’ll be honest: I’m not saying I’m sure I can talk anybody into making it happen.”

“Not sure about your miracle? Less than godlike; kind of a letdown. So what are you saying?”

Myka found herself now wanting not only to win, but also to avoid letting Claudia Donovan down. Wanting to take on the Zelus blob—and, yes, Helena as its representative—and work that miracle. “Hold on. Just a little while longer. That’s what I’m saying.”

She’d watched Helena stride through the elevator lobby that very morning. Hold on, she’d told herself. Just a little while longer. All the levels of this problem were the same.

After her conversation with Claudia, Myka exited the conference room. She went to her desk, sat down. Wished she could breathe a minute, but of course Pete wasn’t about to let that happen. “What’s up?” he asked. “You look all weird. Like you might throw up.”

He wasn’t wrong. Hope was nauseating. “I have this idea,” she ventured, because she would have to start figuring out how to say it. “About the shoes,” she tiptoed, “or, I mean, what to do about them. I don’t want to tell you too much about it, because it might not work, and also because of why I got on the track that led to the idea, because I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.” Even that was too much to have said to him, most likely.

“That’s a lot,” he said, like he’d heard her thought and knew she was right. “Is it a good idea?”

“I think so. Hope so? Honestly, I don’t know.”

He shrugged and said, “Take it to Badge.”

Was it that simple?

It might be, if it was enough leverage, but what if Giselle’s tipster was wrong, despite all Myka had heard from Claudia Donovan? What if she was spinning wisps of cotton candy from nothing at all?

An additional complicating factor: taking it to Dan Badger meant actually talking to him, one-on-one. The problem with that was that Myka had never had a meeting with Badger that wasn’t problematic, primarily because Myka wasn’t one of his pet athletes, but also because every time she looked at him, she saw what she wasn’t—or rather, what she imagined, in some ideal world that was not this one, she would like to become.

“You’re the kind of person who’s always early and makes everyone else feel late,” a law school acquaintance had once told Myka. She’d taken it at the time as a poorly aimed insult, having more to do with one-upmanship than precision and truth. But seeing Dan Badger, experiencing him as a presence, made her rethink, for in him she saw a subtle yet sharp difference: he was the kind of person who was always early and made everyone else wish they’d been early too. Myka felt that difference. She wanted to learn how to be Badger in that difference, but she had despaired of ever making such a leaderly leap.

Badger had done it, she had always assumed, by winning those medals; she would obviously never have the opportunity to accomplish something so definitive—so definitively elevating. But now... maybe making a real contribution to winning out over Zelus would serve her in some minimally similar way.

Badger’s assistant put her on his schedule the minute she said “possible solution” and followed that with “for Deceits.”

The lion’s office was every bit as elegant as he himself was. The gold medals occupied a side table, as if they were a natural feature of the landscape, and Myka would not have been surprised to see the bones of his enemies arranged with the same casual lack of contrivance, as objects toward which he might similarly gesture, an “oh, those” flick of dismissal underlain with threat.

“Myka,” he said in smooth greeting. “So lovely to see you.”

How did he invest conventional words with such professional purpose?

“You have an idea for me?” he asked. Calm. Not eager. He didn’t invite her to sit down, so she tried to stand secure and solid. The concentration that required was immense.

“I...” she started, then coughed, thinking on the bones of his enemies; she lost her focus, fidgeted from foot to foot. “Yes,” she said. “An idea.” She looked down at her hands, wishing she’d brought her notes, then realizing they would have been one more thing she would have had to think about holding, literally holding, still. “Zelus. Is.” She cleared her throat. “Zelus is trying to buy a tech start-up in order to get control of the wearable technology it’s developing.” Deep breath. “But the start-up doesn’t want to be bought.”

She plunged into explaining Ingenumedix, its work, and Claudia Donovan’s fears of that work being shut down. Narrating Claudia’s worries distracted her from her own, calming her; she felt her fluency increasing. Then she said, “The part that matters to us—or should matter to us—is that one of her projects is to make medical scanning devices far more portable, and far more affordable, than the current state of the art.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following,” Badger said, conveying I’m afraid I also fail to see why you are taking up my time.

“We want to ban Deceits. But we don’t know how enforce a ban.” He nodded, as if she were a child reciting the alphabet. “Claudia Donovan wants to make portable MRIs,” Myka then said.

Badger’s brows lowered, and he squinted, nearly imperceptibly, as if he’d caught sight of prey at a great distance. Myka recognized his expression, for she’d spent a great deal of time watching footage of Badger in competition: that was how he looked before races he won—races he seemingly knew he would win. “I see,” he said.

Myka now was the one to nod. “We can measure sole height and they’ll pass every test, and carbon plates won’t show on X-ray. So what are we left with? Cutting the soles open? No athlete wants to let us do that, plus it’s prohibitively time-consuming. So here’s my solution: we say Zelus is banned—completely banned—until portable MRI technology can be provided to examine their shoes at a reasonable cost just prior to competition, on-site.”

“And what is your basis for believing Zelus will accept such a deal?”

“They get the wearables they want, and we would ensure they get them at a discount. They’ve made huge offers that Claudia and her brother have so far resisted. The price drops dramatically if Zelus commits to funding the other work.”

He didn’t visibly react, not even a movement of his face. Myka wanted to mimic him, but instead she shifted, shifted, left foot, right foot, left, right. At last, he said, “This is... creative. I see two gaps, however. I hope you’ll be able to fill them.”

What hadn’t she considered? She tried not to let show how she instantly began scrambling back through everything, but she felt herself blinking fast, too fast; thinking hard; thinking so hard yet finding nothing.

Badger took pity on her. “Gap the first: how can this organization afford to threaten Zelus with an overall ban?”

Myka deflated. “Bluff?” she offered weakly.

“I’ll need something more compelling than that.”

“Bluff,” Myka said, as compellingly as she could.

He sighed. “I suppose I might be able to manufacture a billionaire or two who would be willing to fund meets, at least in the short term, if Zelus refuses to agree to some version of this deal. And of course it might be suggested that other athletic-wear companies would welcome the new opportunities that a Zelus absence might yield... however, that leaves us confronting the second gap.”

Myka’s swings between high and low were recreating, dramatically, the nausea Pete had read on her face. “Second gap,” she echoed.

“Yes. Zelus wants Deceits in competition. They don’t want us to keep them out. And you know as well as I that what Zelus wants, Zelus gets—this promising technology company notwithstanding. The status quo serves them well. Records fall; they reap the benefits.”

What was lower than low? Myka was plumbing the depths: the idea wouldn’t work, because of course Zelus wanted Deceits in competition. They wanted them in competition, and... wait. Helena had said something in the elevator yesterday, something that spoke to this: Competition is one small corner of a very large field. The company wants Deceits everywhere. Was that useful? “I think I know something else,” she said. “I think Zelus cares less about Deceits breaking records than about selling Deceits to the public.”

Badger sat back in his chair, just as predatory in repose. “And that latter becomes at least a bit more difficult if Zelus shoes are disallowed entirely from competition.”

“I think,” Myka said, trying to do the thinking right, “this is where the bluff really matters. Or at least, our being willing to bluff.”

At that, Badger smiled. It wasn’t a comfort. “You mean my being willing to bluff. Unless you’re intending to conduct the negotiations yourself.”

Myka’s stomach fell again, but she spoke honestly. “You don’t want me to do that. I’d try to negotiate no Deceits anywhere ever.”

“I would prefer a more realistic position, yes,” Badger said, still smiling, but now a bit indulgently, and Myka thought, perhaps imagined, definitely hoped, that she heard behind this utterance a backbeat of sympathy for her unrealistic position. Then he said, “This information rings rather true to me. How did you come to pursue it?”

Myka thought she was ready. “I was looking for anything I could find about Zelus,” she said, as she’d planned. “And I ran across Ingenumedix.”

He raised an elegant finger to his lips and tapped gently. “I suspect that is not the story in full.” After saying that—after being right about that, which suggested Myka had in fact not been at all ready (she had never been able to lie convincingly anyway)—he made her wait again. Eventually, he said, “All right. Then perhaps you and I never had this conversation. Stay steady. We’ll see what’s next.”

That rang of an ending; Myka said a quiet “thank you.” She backed away, turned around, tried to leave, but something about the door, the threshold, the relief of escape, all of it made her fumble, her hand slipping, failing to find purchase on the doorknob so she could make her exit.

From behind her, Badger said, “Ah, Myka...?” Had he seen her blundering? Was he about to instruct her in doorknob operations?

She faced him again, resigned.

When he spoke, his voice was soft, his tone casual. “What do you think of Helena Wells? You’ve met her, correct?”

A hot bullet ripped through her, an internal scream rending her viscera, inchoate at first, resolving fast into He knows! Oh god he knows! What do I do now? What do I do? Scrabbling to tamp down the immediate shearing panic, trying to buy time, she repeated the last word he’d said, praying it was a right and useful one: “Correct.”

“Your thoughts?” he asked, still seemingly offhand.

How could he know? Someone had to have told him. Pete? “Hey, Badge, guess who Myka’s ex-girlfriend is!” Worse, Giselle? “You know Helena Wells and I have a history? Well, so do she... and...” dragging, wait-for-it suggestive... “Myka.” Or, by far the worst: Helena herself? “By the way, I once coerced Myka Bering into helping me undermine her then-employer. I’m sure you can imagine how.” With the clear implication being, “Perhaps I’m doing it again.”

“Thoughts,” Badger prompted, but Myka had wasted too much time racing through hypotheticals to formulate a decent answer.

“I...” she began, trying now to buy some of that wasted time back—as if time were the only thing preventing her from knowing what to say. All she could come up with was a weak, “I think she’s probably good at what she does. Or she wouldn’t be here.”

Badger tapped his lips again. “And yet given these things you’ve told me today, perhaps not quite good enough.”

That allowed her space to take a breath, for it suggested he didn’t know... surely, if he did, he would have gone in for some sort of kill, exploiting her helplessness. “It’s not for me to say,” she replied, not certain enough to feel any real relief.

“Rather for you to prove. Stay steady,” he said again, which suggested he thought Myka might otherwise be inclined to... topple? She might be. She had no idea, now, whether he knew.

“Yes,” she said, and “I will,” and yet another “thank you.” She confronted the door again, at last wrestling it open. She looked down to navigate the sill, then looked up to see...

Of course.

Beside the desk of Badger’s assistant stood Helena, her brow marred by a filament-furrow of... some sort of concern. Her eyes widened just a bit when she saw Myka, and Myka jumped to a wonder: had Badger somehow set them up to come face to face like this? For a report on how they interacted? Well, Myka would show him—would show him and Helena both—by providing evidence of absolutely nothing.

She tried now to channel him: to narrow her eyes, to voice an adversary’s name as he would, as if victory would be inevitable, as if whited bones would be the eventual evidence. “Helena,” she said.

Pathetic try. All she’d really done was lower her voice, and all that could do was speak of the past.

“Myka,” Helena responded. The vertical furrow was gone, replaced by delicate horizontal lines: she’d widened her eyes still more, and Myka wished she had some way to signal Don’t react to me.

She did the only thing she could: she turned her head, breaking their gaze, then walked past Helena. She hoped Helena had turned away too.

And yet she felt Helena had not turned away; she felt those dark, acute eyes focused upon her back.

Helena had looked at her back before, looked and looked and looked. “This arch,” Myka remembered her saying, her voice gliding into Myka’s ears from behind, saying it and saying it again: “This arch.”

This arch isn’t yours, not to speak about or in any other way. As she continued out, Myka thrust her shoulder blades up and out, splaying them wide as if they were wings, now hoping that Helena, should she still be looking, would wish such an arch were still hers. If Myka could deprive Helena of at least this one thing she wanted—if she did still want it—then Myka would win. Regardless of the shoes. Wouldn’t she?

Strangely enough, that was Pete’s question to her, later: “So did you win?”

“I have no clue,” she told him, with an internal Well, that certainly covers everything. “Anyway I’m not supposed to talk about it... I feel like a spy, out in the cold. ‘If you get caught, we never heard of you.’”

“I heard of you,” he said.

“I appreciate it. I really do, but it probably won’t help.”

“Hey, you had an idea. Nobody else has.”

“That probably won’t help either,” Myka said, knowing she would continue to fret over what Dan Badger did or didn’t know, over how her hope had turned sour and gap-laden, over how she would most likely in the end be unable to avoid letting everyone down.

****

The next morning, Myka’s run was a study in discomfort, with each foot-strike against the pavement jarring fully through her body, as if she were running in Deceits’ polar opposites: shoes designed for heaviness, limitation, instability. It seemed an omen of how little good the day would bring.

At work, when Pete rolled in, he greeted her with, “Wow, you really did it.”

And here all of it would come, as the hopeless run had foretold: the consequences. Myka braced herself. “What did I do?”

“The deal.” He shook his head at her incomprehension. “You need to get on social media. Badge had some supersecret call with the Zelus CEO late last night, about what I gotta think was your idea. And we got what we wanted.”

How could that be true? “We did? No Deceits?”

“Well... sorta. Not in competition, that’s what we got. And there’s something about new tech we’ll use to verify compliance? But we won’t void the records they already set: that’s what they got. Plus regular people can have ’em, because who cares.”

“I wanted. It’s awful. They’re deceitful.” Because that was the problem. The whole stupid, never-ending problem of what was and wasn’t real.

He flung his neck around, the more dramatic version of an eyeroll, as he said, “Duh. It’s their name.”

“Zelus doesn’t mean it like I do.”

Now Pete pushed his hands toward her, a little patting, calming gesture. “Zelus doesn’t care how anybody means anything as long as the shoes sell. They’d call ’em ham sandwiches.”

“That isn’t trying to trick you twice.”

“Maybe it is though,” he said. “I don’t know what ham really is.”

“What? Ham is... ham. Which is pig.”

“See? We just call stuff things.”

That stopped her. “I think that’s the most profound thing you’ve ever said,” she told him.

“Thanks. I guess. Can you tell me how to say it in Spanish?”

Myka was absurdly grateful for this standardly silly turn in the conversation. “Just learn Spanish.”

“I’m trying. But for real, I suck at it almost as much as I sucked at hurdles.”

Hurdles. No more silliness; she fell hard against the word, against the sudden inexorable concatenation of thoughts, and those thoughts brought her down, one lurching step at a time, destroying her thought-balance, sending her mind sprawling: Hurdles. Helena’s father. Helena. Helena, Helena, Helena. Like rough pavement scraping: Helena, Helena, Helena.

Silence arced between them. For a long while, nothing but that.

As if from a great distance away, Pete said a surprisingly soft, “At least it’s over.”

Myka nodded.

“And that’s what you wanted.” Still from that gentle distance.

“That’s what I wanted,” Myka agreed, but she did so against a destabilizing background rumble of “no no no no no”... and she felt herself again in that night elevator, alone. This is what I’m supposed to want.

Now that it was over, though, she let herself know, for a moment she was not certain she could withstand, that her want was what it had always been: at first to be the focus of Helena’s attention, but then so much more than that. She wanted to exert the power she had had before, to thus claim the privilege of clawing at Helena’s clothes, the prize of pushing and sweating against in her in the night, the peace of speaking soft with her in the quiet not-quite-morning of that night.

Her disastrous run, she understood now, had been figuring for her the drudge of exertion it would take to make herself unknow that prodigious want. She’d done it before, yes, but to have to do it again would be such a greater tilt and push uphill. But she would do it. She would do it.

At least it’s over.

TBC