Mirem lies awake at night, Lanis snoring softly beside her. She stares at the darkened ceiling, and thinks back to school.

  Like most high-achievers, her tertiary education was undertaken within a corporate entity. She’ll never really know if she would have been accepted into the Kaisho-Renalis training program through her own merit… but, if she’s being honest with herself, probably not. Her presence was more likely due to the recommendation of her uncle, Peter Seto, who had already advanced quickly up the KR hierarchy by the time she was seventeen. After all, KR was, and still is, the largest corporation on the planet, which makes it inherently among the most prestigious.

  Once accepted, she worked blindingly hard. She had to. Uncle Seto still wasn’t high up enough to keep her afloat through sheer nepotism; and even if he had been, KR could only tolerate a certain degree of nepotistic bloat.

  She wasn’t in the engineering or finance divisions, where first year interns regularly suffered nervous breakdowns, but the competition in talent resource allocation was still ruthless, the hours long, the nights late. People simply didn’t have a life for the first few years; their life was the corp, and the job. She thought she had seen dedication when a KR intern was found dead in a bathroom stall after snorting off-brand stims for a third night straight, all in an effort to impress their manager with the sheer output of their KR-branded incontinence pad marketing mockups.

  Compared to Lanis, that was nothing.

  Mirem has never seen someone work as hard as Lanis in the past three weeks. Even the Kaisho-Renalis finance interns had certain mandatory break periods. Lanis though… she's a machine. Mirem knew that Lanis could get by on next to no sleep by the casual way she spoke about her weeks of drug-fueled gallivanting, but it’s different seeing it in person. The woman beside her has barely been sleeping a couple hours a night, and that’s after a non-stop day of pilot training. Then she’s up again, doing God knows what in the gym at 3 AM, then meditation, and then off again to the Versk hangar, where she now has a tech whose morning shift revolves around Lanis’ own pre-dawn schedule.

  Mirem thinks back to those first few nights when Lanis stayed with her, when she was sleeping for fourteen hours straight. Just how long had she been up? What was her body recovering from?

  She turns to her side, gazing at the analog alarm at the bedside, its analog radium dial slowly spinning past the hour mark of one.

  There’s not much space for anything else between them now besides the odd touch or smile. Not that there isn’t tenderness, but it’s like her mind is constantly somewhere else. Mirem wonders what Lanis’ Fleet psychologist would say; Lanis has told her about Tran, and the weekly checkups. She almost smiles as she thinks of how she might get in touch with him, and what she would say.

  At least Lanis was upfront about being broken; but now Mirem wonders how much of her current behavior can be attributed to the ‘incident,’ rather than the obsessions that were honed during Fleet training. A thousand Lanises, all with their heads bent down, the best minds of the planet all trying to outdo one another in a cauldron of competition for the greater good of humanity’s galactic survival. Not exactly the sort of ethic that can be switched off at will.

  It’s not like Mirem resents her or anything—well, perhaps she is slightly hurt—but another part of her is simply fascinated to bear witness to what is unfolding.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  She closes her eyes. Sander says that the first pair of Suits will be competition-ready in less than a month. Fornis and Vallicent, the other Suit pilots that Versk has contracted with, are still better than Lanis when non-integrated, but that doesn’t really matter anymore, and even there the gap is rapidly closing.

  It had seemed unfathomable that Lanis could be their best pilot in such a short amount of time. And yet, here they are.

  Dreams have a way of manifesting, and it’s almost without surprise that Mirem receives a ping from her uncle the next day.

  It’s eleven at night, and Lanis is indifferently slurping down a Murkata-Heisen protein packet while scanning some of the more archaic Suit loadouts when Mirem suddenly jolts upright on the couch.

  “Shit, it’s my uncle,” Mirem says, an edge to her voice. Lanis glances up, watching as Mirem walks to the skyline windows, mumbling a greeting to her uncle via implant feed. Lanis can’t help but overhear Mirem’s side of the conversation.

  “Now?” Mirem says, glancing at Lanis. “It’s late, isn’t it? And I’m a little busy right now. Oh really? Right. Of course. Ten minutes, then.” Mirem disconnects the call, and stares blankly out the window for a moment, into the black and glittering expanse of the city.

  “Your uncle?” Lanis asks, standing up and stretching, arms unfolding overhead.

  Mirem takes a deep breath, exhaling noisily before turning to Lanis.

  “Yeah. My uncle Peter. I may have mentioned him before, but he’s a Kaisho-Renalis executive. He’s pretty much the reason I worked there, and also the reason I was let go without too much of a fuss. Anyway… he’s coming over for a drink.”

  Lanis thinks back to her inquiry with Lieutenant Tran before she decided to stay at Mirem’s place. Peter Seto, Vice President of Kaisho-Renalis Corporate Security. She remembers a picture that she looked up later: A severe but attractive looking man, vaguely Asiatic features, greying at the temples, with the hint of a smile, as if the taker of his KR portrait and he were sharing in a secret joke.

  “He’s about as subtle as a KR fusion rifle,” Mirem says, nervously wiping down the already spotless kitchen counter. “Of course, I’m not the one he wants to talk to. I told him not to keep tabs on me, but I know he can’t help himself. Professional duty, he’d say.”

  Lanis follows Mirem around the counter, her arms crossed. “What do you mean? That he knows my background? And that he knows about me working with Versk?”

  Mirem scowls. “That’s what I’d guess. I imagine he’s just curious, but the visit is also a statement. Clearly word’s gotten out that Versk is training someone ex-Fleet. I knew it was bound to happen eventually, but I don’t think even Kaisho would bother surveilling Versk’s Suit complex… Maybe Trenalis, or HanSpec…” Mirem says, thoughts drifting inward. She shakes her head. “Whatever. I’ll have a talk with Renfol, but the how or why of it doesn’t really matter right now.”

  Mirem continues, leaning against the counter, her hand on her chin, considering the situation. “Anyway, you don’t represent a clear competitive advantage, at least not yet, and Kaisho wouldn’t want to do anything disruptive. Maybe they would have thought about it a year ago, but now Murkata-Heisen is involved, as a major shareholder of Versk. They don’t take kindly to poaching, even if you’re still just a contractor.” Mirem’s smile tightens. “Also, Peter is my uncle. Family does count for something.”

  Mirem straightens up, her eyes suddenly appraising Lanis. Her hair is matted, still unwashed from the day, and she’s dressed in Mirem’s sweatpants and a stained, overlarge Kaisho-Renalis branded shirt from Mirem’s past. Mirem checks the clock.

  “I’ll buy us a little extra time, but you have maybe eight minutes to take a shower and change into something else,” Mirem says, snatching the forgotten Murkata gel pack from Lanis’ limp hand as she speaks. She squeezes the rest of the gel into her own mouth, tasting an orange-flavored rush of protein and sugar.

  “Get ready to meet the family.”