For the first time since I arrived at the Citadel, I watch the sun rise over Akademos.
At night, you can see Prime, the capital-world of the entire Imperium, clearly in the sky. It was chosen not for any strategic or even symbolic significance, but simply because it was the most beautiful planet in the entirety of Imperium space. That much is visible even here, from the surface of its second moon. Massive mountain ranges of pure jade, lapis, and sunstone. Sprawling forests of prism-trees, with leaves that change color based on the angle the light hits them at. And of course, there’s the palace itself, a massive city-sized complex that serves as both the Emperor’s home, and the seat of government for the Imperium.
The palace is the only permanent settlement on the entire planet, as the first Emperor forbade by decree anyone to build anything on Prime’s surface that wasn’t at least twice as beautiful as whatever was paved over to construct it.
When the sun is up, Prime can’t be seen- it sinks below the opposite horizon, now only visible to anyone who might be looking up at the sky from the other side of the moon. Of course, you can only see the palace at all during a specific period of the year, since Akademos both rotates and orbits around Prime faster than the capital-world itself rotates.
As the first rays of sunlight strike the translucent violet leaves of the trees in the Grove, just outside the Citadel, I take a ragged breath, heart thumping violently. My cuts and bruises from yesterday aren’t halfway healed, and this morning’s training hasn’t helped. If I wasn’t already regretting asking Sander to train me up for the Combat 101 midterm, I certainly am now, and not least because he insisted we start before dawn.
The view, I have to admit, is pretty spectacular. Glittering purple leaves hang off of gnarled, crooked branches, dappling the soft, dew-slick grass. But having just run several miles through that forest in the dark, while being hunted with a crossbow, makes it difficult to appreciate.
“Iiiiizaaaaa,” Niko croons cruelly, his voice carrying across the distance clearly on an otherwise silent morning. “You can’t hide forever, honey!”
It worries me a little how much he’s gotten into this. Turns me on just a little bit too, but I’m not gonna admit that with Sander in earshot. My personal trainer slash tormentor decided to enlist him for today’s exercise, with the aim of improving my stamina while also giving me some experience in what it’ll be like to be hunted by assassin''s through the jungles of Akademos- except without any of the guns I’ll hopefully have managed to get my hands on by then. Because assuming I’ll have made it to one of the weapons caches by then is optimistic, and not training for the eventuality that I get ambushed before then would be foolish.
The logic is sound, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
According to my internal clock, we started a little over an hour ago. It feels like longer. At least half of that time has just been me running, with Niko hot on my heels. A couple minutes ago, I was able to give him the slip, and after putting some distance between us, I stopped here, behind a large tree at the bank of the river that winds its way through the Grove. The sound of the river should, in theory, mask my presence somewhat, although it also makes it harder for me to hear my pursuer coming. But really, what I needed was a moment to catch my breath.
Now it’s my turn to do some hunting.
With a grunt of effort, I grab ahold of the sturdiest branch of the bitterbark tree, and hoist myself up onto its trunk. The way it’s bent over like a hunchback works to my advantage here, allowing me to hide amongst the foliage more easily. It’s hardly perfect cover, with the way these trees are all low to the ground, branches frail and crooked, but the real advantage being up here gives me is height.
Keeping myself pressed close to the tree trunk I can, so as little of me as possible is visible, I take a breath and wait for my pursuer to arrive. There’s little doubt in my mind that he’ll come- Niko is a better tracker than me, that’s a fact. Finding people who didn’t want to be found was one of the many ‘odd jobs’ he did for the trip back in Limbo City, and those people had far more options for covering their tracks than I do right now.
While I wait, the Grove’s more permanent inhabitants begin to make themselves know, calling out with high-pitched chirps across the expanse of bitterbark trees where they make their nests. It’s a good thing there isn’t one in the tree where I’m waiting to make my ambush, else I’d probably be fending off a flock of agitated shriekbeaks right now.
The birds that live in the Grove aren’t as aggressive or vicious as their cousins that dwell elsewhere on the moon, but they’re loud and irritable, hence the name. Their shrill squawks further mask any sound I might be making that would give me away to Niko, but I’m not sure that’s worth putting up with how annoying they are. Not to mention, any sudden movements on my part might spook them, and give my position away, which feels like it might become a problem if Niko doesn’t show soon.
After a minute or two, I start to worry that I actually did lose him, which would be unfortunate. I can’t really get down from here now without sending the shriekbeaks in the trees around me scattering, which will draw Niko right to me. And that’s what I want, in theory, except that it’ll only happen after I’m already out of the tree, and back at a total disadvantage against his crossbow again.
I’ve had enough of running. Literally and otherwise. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna blindly charge forward and confront an opponent who, in this exercise, I’m supposed to be treating like he can permanently kill me. No, if I’m gonna do this, I have to be smart about it.
Gripping the bark tight, I tilt myself very slightly to the left, trying to move without and of the birds noticing. All I need to do is get a tiny bit closer to the river, so I can stretch my tail out and dip it into the water. Shivering slightly as my extra appendage touches the icy stream, I open the pincer-like tip of its barb and grasp a small rock from the riverbed.
Pulling my tail back, I slowly scan the area around me, choosing my target carefully. Then, after my eyes land on a tree maybe twenty yards away, with half a dozen birds happily hoping around amongst its branches, chirping back and fort, I draw my tail back and whip the rock at it.
The stone strikes the bitterbark tree dead-on, startling the birds, who take flight immediately, their frightful cries sending every other bird around into a panic. Crucially, though, the tree I hit was just far enough away from where I’m hiding that the ones nearest to me remain where they are. When Niko comes to investigate the disturbance, he’ll look where the stone struck, not where it came from.
As expected, the hunter arrives not much later, crossbow held at the ready. We’re not using an antiquated weapon for my benefit, of course. The assassins dispatched to truekill me almost certainly will be using something like what Niko is carrying. Arrows and darts are the only effective long-range options for dosing someone with Mindkiller. You just can’t fit a lethal dose into a bullet. And that fact is probably one of the only reasons I stand a chance of surviving on my own against the assassin''s we’re assuming will be coming after me. Avoiding one arrow at a time is a lot easier than several hundred rounds per second.
Niko’s already wary when he steps into my line of sight. He’s clever enough to know that I wouldn’t have given away my position like that unintentionally, and therefore knows this is some kind of trap. what I’m banking on is being able to spring it on him anyway. And he probably knows I’m thinking that, too- but it won’t do him any good.
Still trying not to spook the remaining birds, so as to maintain the element of surprise for as long as possible, I shift my stance until I’m poised upon the tree trunk like a cat preparing to pounce on its prey.
Still suspicious, Niko is looking around the area, crossbow raised and ready to fire the moment he sees a flash of motion. I’m still far enough away, and hidden behind foliage, so he doesn’t notice me yet. He will, eventually, but I’m not gonna wait long enough for that to happen.
All I have to do is wait until his back is turned, then I leap off of the tree trunk, every ounce of tension built up in my body releasing explosively. I’m not hoping to tackle him from this distance, that’s not in the cards. What I can do is use my tail to swing off of a sturdy tree branch, flinging myself a few feet further towards him.
At the apex of the swing, the branch snaps, proving itself less sturdy than I’d previously thought, and alerting Niko to my presence a few seconds sooner than I’d planned. This isn’t the kind of scheme that hinges on something so trivial, though. In the time it takes for him to register the sound and start to turn in my direction, I’m already on him.
Tackling Niko to the ground is nothing new, but usually I’m grabbing him in very different places. This time, I prioritize his arms, using my own to pin them in place and make sure he can’t find a way to point that crossbow at me. The arrows are blunted, but getting hit by one still means I lose the game. Meanwhile, the weight of my body- including at least a few extra pounds of muscle I’ve put on since I started training with Sander -holds him in place. And, most crucially, the tip of my tail slithers up to press against his neck, less than an inch away from opening his carotid artery.
In other words, I’ve got Niko exactly where I like him: completely at my mercy.
“My my,” I whisper, doing my best to sound sultry despite how exhausted I am. “I wasn’t expecting my assassin to be so handsome.”
Niko chuckles, and makes a token effort to struggle against me.
“And I wasn’t expecting my target to be so- unf -cute.”
“Cute?” I ask, tracing my tail across the length of his neck. “I think you meant devastatingly gorgeous, pretty boy.”
Before our banter, if you could call it that, can continue, I hear a faint sound behind me, and then a louder one. Footsteps, and a crossbow being nocked.
“You didn’t think they’d just send one man, did you?” Niko gloats.
In response, I hook my ankles beneath his, and roll over, putting him on top just in time for Sander’s arrow to strike him in the back. Niko flinches, because even a blunt arrow is bound to hurt, and I use his momentary lapse in concentration to wrest the crossbow from his hand and, still using his body as cover, shoot back in my second assailant’s direction.
There’s no time to waste now- if I missed, Sander will be reloading right now, giving me a very short window to attack him before he can fire again. I kick Niko off of me, struggling slightly now that he’s gone limp, playacting like he really was just truekilled, and kip up to my feet, ready to fight.
Only then do I realize that I didn’t miss at all. Firing blind, using a two-handed weapon with one hand, and I still managed to hit Sander right in the chest. Got to admit, that one feels good. He’s holding the arrow in his hand, looking faintly pleased, the second crossbow at his side.
“No,” I reply to Niko belatedly, unable to keep some smugness out of my voice. “I figured there’d be at least two.”
“The second crossbow might have been a bit of a giveaway,” he admits, rolling onto his back with a groan. “Told you she wouldn’t believe it was a spare, man.”
Sander chuckles, which is a surprise in itself.
“Perhaps. But the presence of reinforcements can be expected regardless. This was intended to gauge your response when your own ambush turned out to be part of the enemy’s plan.”
“And I kicked ass,” I brag, fully aware that it was a close call.
“Mm,” Sander replies, unimpressed by my reaction, but clearly aware I wasn’t entirely serious. “You should endeavor to avoid being put in such a situation again.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I reassure him with an eye roll. “You know, I wouldn’t have had to be so reckless if you’d just let me have a gun…”
“In that case, why don’t we go again?” he suggests, without a hint of irony. “I hid caches around this area before you arrived. Their transponders are now active, so all you need to do is dig them up.”
Blinking twice, I check to see if what he’s saying is true, and find to my surprise that it is. Three transponders ping back at me from all around the Grove, including one not too far from here.
Part of me wants to refuse. I’m still exhausted, and I want to bask in my hard-fought victory a little longer. But on the other hand, it seems unlikely that my secret anti-admirer would only send two assassin''s, and they definitely wouldn’t give me any time to rest or relax before continuing the hunt.
“Alright, fine. When do you wanna start?”
“I was thinking… thirty seconds ago,'''' a voice from behind me says. Without needing to look, I can tell that Niko’s picked the crossbow up and now has it pointed straight at me.
Still looking at Sander, I grin, and flick my tail up to sever the crossbow’s string. That’ll buy me a few seconds, at least. Then I start running.
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Our second round of kinetic hide and seek goes by much faster than the first. That’s not much of a surprise. Once you enter modern ballistic weaponry into the equation, things are much simpler. Still, there is one close call before I manage to get my hands on a gun, but after that, the tide turns decisively in my favor. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
None of this makes me feel that much more confident about being hunted by actual assassins, though. They’re almost certainly going to be highly trained professionals, a cut above even Sander and Niko, who for all their training, skill, and inherited ability, simply don’t have the decades of experience necessary to be truly called a master at any craft. Neither do I, of course, which is precisely why I’m worried.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible we’re freaking out over nothing. Just because this Combat 101 midterm is a golden opportunity for whoever wants me dead to get their wish, doesn’t mean they’re actually going to take it. All the better for them to lull us into a false sense of security and strike when we’re least expecting it. But practically speaking, it’s hard to see how they’ll pull that off, when opportunities to strike at me within the Citadel are rare. The whole reason this is such a rare opportunity, is because they know for certain that I’ll be away from the protection the Citadel provides.
And even if no attack comes, there’s little harm in having put in a lot of extra time training. It’ll just ensure that I score very highly on the midterm itself.
“So, remind me again why we haven’t taken this to the administration?” Sofie asks idly. “I mean, it’s been pretty well established that they don’t care that much about keeping you alive, but aren’t they obliged to put up at least a token effort?
“Same reason we never told anybody about the dart trap in my room on our first day. We dunno who here is compromised, and alerting them to our plans only puts us at a disadvantage.”
There’s a brief silence as we both acknowledge that there’s one person who we probably could trust- Niko’s favorite teacher, Professor Kore, who’s already keeping one serious secret for us. But given how badly my last encounter with her went, Sofie is wise not to mention her name aloud.
“Right. Whatever happened with that, but the way? Sandman never found who put that thing there?”
I shake my head.
“Whoever did it covered their tracks well. Nobody could give us a name for who delivered it to my room, and the shipping manifests were either never recorded properly, or got tampered with somehow.”
“Which suggests insider access, hence why you’re convinced it’s the Emperor himself.”
“Well, not personally. But you’ve got to admit he’s probably at the top of the list of people who have a reason to want you dead.”
“Followed by everyone who’s ever met you?”
“Yeah, exactly. Except for the ones who immediately fell in love with me, ‘course.”
Sofie rolls her eyes fondly and smacks my arm.
“Anyway, the real answer is probably that whoever delivered it wasn’t in on the plan, they just thought it was part of your luggage or whatever. And all the other people you interviewed didn’t want to give up a name because they figured you were trying to get somebody fired for some petty Noble shit.”
“Well, you wield Occam’s razor quite deftly, but it’s beside the point either way. I dunno why we’re even talking about this, we should be focusing on the Championship.”
“Fair point,” Sofie replies with a shrug. “Back to the topic at hand. Your plan worked- we’ve got a pretty solid idea of how they’re gonna try to rig your game.”
My ‘plan’ in this case was pretty simple- I made sure to be seen heading to the shooting range yesterday, so that the other units would know I’m planning on competing in the sharpshooting event during the Championship.
“Which ‘they’ are we talking about, exactly?”
“Komodos,” she clarifies, before taking a sip from her smoothie. The two of us are in my apartment, where I’m doing my best to move as little as possible, slowly recuperating from this morning’s excitement.
“Huh. Did we get new bugs in their dorm while I was gone or something?”
“A couple, but that’s actually not how we got this intel. They seem to exclusively be discussing sensitive stuff on the ‘band now. Which is probably something we should start doing, to be honest.”
I make a face, unconvinced. In-person brainband conversations tend to be kind of uncomfortable, at least in my experience. Maybe a full-dive conference like what we did to prep for the heist would work better.
“How’d you find out, then?”
“Put a tap on their equipment requisition order registry. They’ll probably notice it eventually, but for the time being, we can see everything they’re buying in advance. Including a portable grav-field generator.”
Furrowing my eyebrows, I turn that over in my head for a few moments. gravity field generators are mostly used on spacecraft, and in settlements on planets with problematically low natural gravity. The exact science behind it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me- I’m pretty sure it involves a tiny, stable singularity that generates gravity equivalent to a massive planet without actually needing to be particularly large. How that could help the Komodos rig a sharpshooting competition in their favor, or against me, isn’t immediately obvious. But after a second, it clicks.
“Ah, you think they’re gonna use it to screw up my aim. That makes sense. They’ve probably got whoever is competing for them practicing right now with the generator active, so they’ll be able to account for it and I won’t.”
“Exactly. And even if we got a generator of our own, it wouldn’t do us any good, because we don’t know what setting theirs is gonna be on.”
“Presumably nothing so extreme that it’s visible to the judges, but even so, there’s a lot of potential variance,” I muse, now turning my attention towards dealing with this problem. “Do we know who’s gonna be shooting for them?”
“Scáthach, I’m pretty sure.”
That sounds about right to me. She’s not a designated sniper the same way I am, but she’s probably got the best aim out of anyone in the Komodo Unit’s combat group. Better with a revolver than a rifle, I’d wager, but many of the same principles apply no matter what weapon you’re using.
“And the others?”
“Peregrines don’t seem to be putting anyone up, or if they are, we haven’t seen ‘em at the range. Oxen seem to be going with Stojanov.”
I raise an eyebrow at the unfamiliar name. Whoever that is, he never really came up while we were doing our threat assessment of the Oxen prior to the War Games.
In response to my indication of confusion, Sofie blinks twice at me, transmitting her dossier on the Ox Unit warrior. Apparently Mikhail Stojanov is a fairly rare case of a Noble who doesn’t ‘sync’ well with his Founder’s cognitive pattern. His Founder, Ambrose, was a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ type, adhering to strict formal rules of etiquette at all times, on the battlefield and off. Stojanov, by all accounts, has no interest in following in his Founder’s footsteps, and resents the fact that other people expect him to do so.
“So, no serious threats,” Sofie concludes. I’m not so sure- apparently Ambrose’s Regalia weapon was a lever-action rifle, which does imply a certain amount of skill at sharpshooting. But then again, if Stojanov rejects his Founder that thoroughly, maybe he hasn’t practiced with those skills as much as I have.
“Hence why they’re trying to screw me over, rather than make things easier for themselves. Even if I end up winning, a closer margin of victory is good for them.”
“Quite so,” Sofie says, affecting a more formal way of speaking, which makes me chuckle. I tilt my head in her direction, from where I’ve been lying on my back on the couch. Noticing that I’m looking her way, she waggles her tongue at me suggestively.
Rolling my eyes, I raise a finger and beckon her closer. Obliging me, she gets up out of her chair and crosses the short distance between us, before gesturing for me to scoot over on the couch. With an exaggerated groan, I do as I’m told, giving her some space to sit down, so I can lift my head up and place it on her lap.
“Good girl,” she whispers softly, and though I know she’s only half-serious, I have to suppress a full-body shiver. “You’ve been working hard, I know, but you can’t stop yet. The Komodos are trying to put all of that hard work to waste, and you’re not gonna let ‘em get away with it, are you?”
If anybody else was trying to motivate me like this, I’d probably tell them to fuck off. With Sofie, it’s different, because I know the cloying, almost condescending nature of her words is a deliberate performance for my benefit, rather than a genuine attempt to motivate me. Precisely what practical difference that makes is difficult to articulate, but it’s different for me, and that’s what matters. So instead of replying, I close my eyes, and think.
The metaphorical ‘null hypothesis’ here is to simply do nothing, and hope I’ll be able to adapt on the fly. I’ll take one shot as normal, probably miss because of the gravity-field, and use that to recalculate all my successive shots, hoping I’m able to figure out exactly what adjustments I need to make fast enough that it doesn’t hurt my score too badly. But missing even one shot is essentially an unforced error here. Or, well, not an unforced error per se, but knowing they’re trying to force one and letting it happen is basically the same thing.
So, assuming we’re not gonna do that, what are my options? Not many, as best I can tell. Disabling the generator outright would be ideal, but presumably the Komodos aren’t just going to leave it out in the open, so that would be gambling that my people can find it in time, either before the event starts, or before it impacts my score too badly. I’m no stranger to taking risks, but certainty is always preferable when you can get it.
Plus, my ego is kind of on the line here too. I’d prefer not to embarrass myself in front of the entire Citadel just because whoever we send to shut the generator down can’t find the off switch in time. Knowing my luck, Bret would somehow end up the only person available for the job that day.
Just because disabling the generator isn’t a safe bet, doesn’t mean there aren’t other things we could do with it, though.
“Okay, here’s an idea. Give Ada a call, ask her if it’s possible to remotely hijack a portable grav-field generator. If she tries to blow you off because of Project Barbicane, tell her this came straight from me, and it’ll only take her like, ten minutes to figure out anyway.”
“You wanna disable it remotely?” Sofie asks, her tone switching smoothly back to business, even though she’s still running a hand through my hair.
“Nah, no way it’s got a remote kill-switch, that’s way too dangerous. If you could turn off the generator for a whole city, you’d destroy a ton of infrastructure in an instant. But I bet you can modify the output just fine.”
It takes a moment before Sofie realizes what I’m suggesting. Then her face lights up.
“Oh, that’s clever. You wanna make it impossible for the refs to ignore. Turn the generator way up, or way down, or back and forth, so it’s obvious there’s some interference. Safer than snitching, because this way we don’t have to explain how we know, they’ll just assume the generator glitched out on its own.”
Besides basic notions of honor and propriety, there’s one big reason we can’t just report the presence of the generator directly to the Championship officials- doing so would expose the fact that we tapped the Komodos’ requisition registry, which is just as flagrant a violation of Citadel rules. That kind of rule-breaking is common, even expected, in competition between the units, but you’re supposed to at least make a token effort to cover it up. This way, we can expose the Komodos for cheating without exposing ourselves in the process.
“Bingo. Then the whole event gets put on hold until the generator is disabled. If it gets linked to Hark’s people, they get disqualified outright- and if not, we’ll just have a fair game, which means I’ll win.”
I’m not actually quite as sure of that as I sound, but this is no time to be second guessing my own abilities. Even if my tactical and physical acumen both feel as though they need some improvement, I’m trying to stay confident in my facility with firearms. And getting that perfect score at the range yesterday didn’t hurt, although obviously it was under a lot less pressure than the Championship event will be.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sofie says with a smirk. I’m really quite fortunate to have met someone who enjoys my scheming as much as she does.
“Oh, that reminds me. My copyclan seems to have figured out when the best time to pull off Grant’s little ice-skate heist will be. I’ll have one of ‘em shoot you the details later, you can figure out who’s best-suited to make the swap.”
Probably Valent, if we’re being realistic. But it’s Sofie’s job to make those decisions, and it’s possible the Conjuror will be otherwise occupied. I’m sure whoever she picks will be fully capable of getting the job done.
“Hopefully it goes better than your last heist,” she replies, chuckling. I raise my tail to give her a limp smack on the back of the head, which just makes her laugh harder.
“Hey, that reminds me,” Sofie continues, when she’s done mocking me. “I had something else I wanted to ask you about. Dunno if you heard, but apparently the Queen’s coming here in a couple months.”
Now that’s a title that bodes ill if ever I’ve heard one. The Queen is, as the name suggests, a Noble, one of the Three Crowns, a ‘supergroup’ not unlike the Nine Titans, but encompassing the ruling elite of the Imperium, rather than its greatest military minds. Besides her, it includes the Emperor himself, and the Prince. Each dangerous in their own right, but if I had to pick one I least wanted to run afoul of, it would be the Queen, by a mile.
Her story- the story of her Founder, that is to say -is a fascinating one. Not least because it’s a small miracle anybody even knows about it. After all, the first Queen of the Imperium was also one of the only people ever to get one over on the First Emperor. She was his greatest love, yes, and achieved Founder status at least in part on that basis, although of course her own brilliance had much to do with it as well. But once her place as a Founder was secure, she made clear to the entire Imperium that her relationship with the Emperor had, unbeknownst to him, been a fraud. She’d manipulated him, wrapped him around her little finger, in order to make herself functionally immortal through an eternal lineage of Nobles, using the most powerful man alive as a mere puppet to achieve that goal. And since the process to make someone a Founder is irreversible, there was nothing he could do about it.
He could have had her permanently retired, of course- even laid down an edict demanding that every successive Noble of her line suffer the same fate. But instead of espousing her for publicly humiliating the Emperor, the public adored her for it. She became an icon, virtually untouchable thanks to her popularity. All of it rested on a carefully cultivated image, of course- but most people understood that, and liked her more because of it.
After severing ties with the Emperor, she threw herself into politics, and earned a second title of Queen, not merely as the Emperor’s lover, but as the uncontested ruler of the Great Game, the quiet political power struggle between Nobles of her ilk and Sofie’s, the type that prefer to do battle with words, poisons, and knives in the dark, rather than armies and battleships.
Much of that status was won by default- few dared to challenge the woman who’d beaten the Emperor at his own game. But those few who tried were crushed mercilessly, as an example to all the rest. Now, Nobles of her line retain that status, acting as political kingmakers, dictating through influence who rises and falls within the Great Game. Occasionally, some fool tries to take a shot at whoever urgently holds the title, and inevitably fails.
Officially, the Queen’s position in the Imperial bureaucracy is as the regional governor for the Core Worlds, which include Prime and all other planets in its system, as well as the moons of Tacitus, Akademos, and Carceri. In practice, that power is rarely exercised, because doing so would bring her closer to the Emperor, and the animus between them has remained throughout many successive generations of Nobles.
“Here?” I ask redundantly, to express my surprise. “You got any idea why?”
“Officially, a routine inspection. Making sure everything is up to code. Probably gonna stick around long enough to observe the second round of War Games too. Unofficially? No clue. But I wanna impress her.”
Curious, I raise an eyebrow.
“Impress how? Are you gonna do a tap-dance routine?”
“Not sure yet. That’s why I’m asking you for help, Izzy. Are you down, or not?”
“For you? Always.”