Chapter 7

In the end, getting Cris to be comfortable with her was much easier than she'd feared it would be. Silicia gave herself two weeks to linger in places around the facility where she would occasionally be able to observe the children, studying how they talked to each other. They noticed her a few times, Rin smiling at her in passing and Alec throwing her calculating looks every time that he caught sight of her outside her office. It was sort of endearing, because it made her think of how it was seemingly unfathomable to elementary school students that their teachers might have lives outside the classroom.

All it really took was subtly mirroring the kid - cutting down on the mannerisms she'd developed to make herself seem approachable to children, shutting down a line of questioning when he started to express disinterest in it and instead circling back around to it until she'd gotten her form filled in. She couldn't quite disabuse him of his superiority complex, but she knew she'd have years with him, so she wasn't overly concerned.

---

At the beginning of the next month, Mira would be gone for three days while the company flew her out to New York for an interview with a fancy newspaper. It put an odd sinking feeling in Silicia's stomach, but she smiled through it so as not to dim the brilliant smile on her girlfriend's face when she told her. She was proud of Mira, so much that she was kind of out of breath. So much that she was feeling left behind.
Then again, Silicia was beginning to have trouble telling new anxieties from the constant air of disquiet that hung around her shoulders like a heavy blanket already - a form of emotional unrest she hadn't struggled with since her teenage years.

She worried about what it was about Mira's increasing fame that upset her, and so she simply chose to think on it as little as possible.

Instead, Silicia hunkered down and focussed on building relationships with her charges that would make Mira proud. She dreaded ever having them all in one room, because the way she talked to each of them became more disparate as the days went on.

Talking to Tump, Rin and Erik came fairly naturally to her; they were trusting and happy to have open conversations even about emotions. Cris, Lia and Alec on the other hand sometimes looked like they might reach across the table and hit her if she got too sappy on them. With them, Silicia had to stick to neutral statements, offering kindness in the form of silences the kids were welcome to fill. She enjoyed getting to really use all she knew about how people's brains worked - figuring them all out one by one was almost like a game.

---

"Towels?"

"Hotel; won't need any," Mira called from the hall where she was rifling through the coat rack. Silicia struck out 'towels' on the packing list and looked up. She was leaning against the back of the sofa while Mira was throwing things into a big pile next to her open suitcase. Tomorrow morning, early as sin, she'd be leaving for the rest of the week.

"Okay uh, sun screen?"

Mira stuck her head in through the door, looking thoughtful.

"I'm not sure if I'll be spending all that much time outside. But I guess I'll take it just in case; one tube won't be that much additional weight."

Silicia fished a half empty tube of sunscreen out of a box already sitting on the table and tossed it on the pile.

"Doing okay?", Mira asked suddenly, and she realized her hand had gone up to her neck again, laying over the bandaged skin like had happened in her dream.

"Yeah, just... itchy."

"Worry not dear; I suppose if you just can't handle my genius in your bloodstream, as a very last resort we can always take it out rather than letting you die," Mira said, voice comically arrogant, and disappeared back into the entry way.

Silicia stared at the spot where she'd been, her lowering hand halted in mid air.

"You can remove them?"

"Who do you take me for, of course I can, Si," Mira answered, her voice muffled but clearly a tad annoyed by the question.

Silicia sagged against the back of the couch, crinkling the pack list in her hands as they twitched.

"You don't brew a poison without its antidote, silly," Mira elaborated more humorously.

Silicia didn't feel like joking at all.

---

Tump leant his face on his elbow and made a 'thinking hard' expression. Silicia's mood soured.

"Hmm, no, I really couldn't say."

She knew he knew, but just like the others, he wouldn't spill. Maybe pack-bonding them had worked a little too well. Alec had stared at her until she'd changed the subject, the fresh bruise on his left cheek only adding to the glare. Cris had laughed at her and then started babbling about having been worried about the math class he'd had earlier in the day. Rin had mutely shook her head and mimed zipping her lips. Lia had closed her eyes and solemnly said "It's none of your business."
Erik, finally, had admitted outright that they'd agreed not to tell. Now Tump was pretending to not even know what she was talking about, like she hadn't witnessed him bodily pull a flailing Alec off of Cris.

She ripped out the page of her note book, a bit too much anger apparent in the movement.
The fight had broken out in the hallway just a few meters down from her office, and she'd run out when she heard yelling only to find Cris and Alec on each other on the floor. Tump and Rin had been hastily trying to grab a hold of the boys to separate them as Lia stood by with wide eyes. Silicia hadn't even seen Erik at first, because he'd stood silent and still against a wall, watching and biting his lip bloody.

Tump's eyes followed her hands, before they flicked up to meet Silicia's. She wouldn't be getting anything out of him if he had his way. It was kind of above her paygrade to disentangle the petty squabbles of teenagers, but she was beginning to find this personally frustrating.

On top of the obvious, she was struggling to reconcile the rambunctious prankster Rin was fast growing into with the quiet girl who gently held Cris' hand and asked him if he could flex his bruised fingers for her while they waited for their teacher in Silicia's office.

"How about we devote a few sessions to conflict resolution," she said as calmly as she could make herself sound. She would wheedle it out of him, even if it took her weeks.

---

The elevator door slid open and her gaze was drawn immediately to Fred, sitting with a coffee in the 8th floor lobby. The moment he spotted her he started enthusiastically waving to her with the magazine in his hand, one finger stuck between the pages to mark his spot.

Resignedly, she trotted over to him and took the other seat. The magazine was shoved in front of her face with no preamble. The front page bore Mira's photo, accompanied by the headline 'rising stars: Mira Weaver on building the future'. She was sitting on a black leather couch, back straight and a dazzlingly polite smile on her lips. In her blazer jacket and classy dress, she was playing her character perfectly.

"Have you read it yet?", Fred asked cheerfully, taking the magazine back and flipping to the article he'd been looking at when she arrived.

Silicia had read it, in fact she'd been up early waiting for opening time outside their local shop this morning. She didn't think very highly of the interviewer, but had to admit the contrast of their intelligences only made Mira seem all the more brilliant.

"'Course. I thought she handled it well. I didn't know she could do things like that, to be honest."

Fred looked up in surprise.

"Didn't they coach her for this or anything?"

"If they did, she hasn't told me about it. So I don't think so, no," she said, squirming in her seat a bit. She needed a coffee and a pain killer. Fred hummed in acknowledgement and started idly flicking through the pages.

"So, a mother program huh?"

"Yeah, 'huh'," Silicia repeated.

At the end of the interview Mira had been asked what kinds of news one could expect out of Frinet in the next few years, and of course she'd given him the usual platitudes, but she'd also hinted at something tangible: an autonomous system that could remotely manage a whole database's worth of cybernetic implants.

"Maybe being her girlfriend will grant you a command position in her upcoming robot army," Fred suggested with a quirked eyebrow when she didn't elaborate any further.

"Don't even joke about that."

"Aw come on. We both know realistically they'll use that kind of technology to serve more accurate ads and lock people into using only Frinet tech with limited compatibility. Allow yourself to dream a little!"

"You'll have to pardon me for choosing the predictable evil over the exciting one, here," Silicia said, trying for a lopsided grin, and Fred laughed and stood.

"Alright. Off to work then, boss. They won't beam ads into our brains while it might distract us from doing their bidding, ey?"

She sighed and turned her attention to the coffee machine. He was right of course, although the whole thing did make her wonder why almost none of Mira's technology was actually commercially available yet. What was the big idea there?

---

Silicia was beginning to catch herself playing favourites - not that she was supposed to develop personal bonds in the first place, but inconveniently she wasn't the kind of person who could avoid it alltogether at will.

Erik had wriggled his way into her heart - without even knowing it, if she was doing her job well enough. Out of all of them, he seemed to be the only one who actually wanted to take advantage of her psych degree, and he was a pleasure to work with. Increasingly she was taken in by the lively way he told stories, his shy honesty, his genuine enthusiasm for learning.
He had been hurt before but was deeply trusting by nature, which had made him adapt to life in the facility with admirable ease. Erik seemed to have deemed her a trustworthy adult, and damn her, she would do her best to live up to his expectations.

Unlike the others, who were all either aloof, themselves detatched from their emotions, or entirely focussed in on themselves, he could often just tell her how he felt about things and talk it out without making her force it out of him with continued interrogation over multiple appointments. It was a breath of fresh air.

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