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my mouth.
    "That is the real question isn't it? Why do they need you alive?"
    I took the bite, started to chew, then gagged and tried to spit it out. The texture was tough, somehow stringy and grainy at the same time. Horrible.
    "What the hell are you doing?" She shouted at me for the first time and pushed the stuff back in my mouth with her fingers.
    "What did you give me? It's disgusting," I said. My voice had taken on a whining note that I had never heard before. It almost struck me as funny.
    "It's meat! I spent most of my creds on this! You need the protein."
    Her anger conveyed the importance of this meat so much more than her words. I still didn't understand most of what she said. But I deliberately and forcefully chewed the fleshy grains and swallowed with the aid of another sip of water.
    After a few bites, as a reward for my hard work, she helped me up to a sitting position, balanced against the wall.
    "If you knew they would kill people for my trackers, why put them on the lifts? Why not just destroy all of them?"
    "If I'd done that they would've known right away what happened, that they'd been removed. That's why I had to cut them out of you so they would still be alive. Putting a few out into the world easily bought us a day or two here," and she motioned around the room, "In our palatial abode. I knew you would need time to recover."
    "You could have told me what you were doing. Instead of just assaulting me." I allowed an inflection of accusation to seep through.
    "There wasn't time. And besides, if you had known, they would have killed you." She tossed the tray and the spoon on to the concrete floor. "I'd been tracking you just like they were. When you're in the pockets, the lauds –"
    I raised my eyebrow at her in question.
    "The nanosymbiotes. They can't transmit while you're in the pockets. You were out of range for so long I thought you might be dead." She stopped and looked hard at me. "You really can jump, can't you?"
    I nodded. I could tell she was impressed. Perhaps that made me valuable to the Mandate, and perhaps Cutter wanted me for the same reason.
    She continued, "As soon as you flashed back on the map I knew I had to act quickly or risk having them decide to stop you. There wasn't time to explain all of this." She motioned around the room and then pulled out a small portable tracking unit from one of the satchels and handed it to me.
    I thought I knew where it had come from, but I still had to ask. "Who gave this to you?"
    Contempt weighted her voice. "He did."
    I looked up at her, my eyes wide, hoping to see the truth amongst the gray and dankness around me. "The Bishop?"
    She slapped me across the face so hard that I dropped the tracking unit and collapsed onto the bag that supported me. Tears stung at my eyes, but I would not give them to her. I wouldn't show her my weakness.
    "Never say his name," she said quietly.
    Anger welled inside me, which only amplified my physical pain.
    "Why are you doing… this? You didn't need to put those things on a lift with so many people. You didn't need to get them killed. What's wrong with you that you would do all of this? This isn't a war!"
    I let the pain wash through me in hot ripples with each raging word. I welcomed the next slap, the next assault from this cruel girl who was both my salvation and my torment. This Wraith who was my savior.
    She stood slowly, towered over me for a moment, picked up the remains of my meal, putting the spoon on the tray, walked over to the reclamation bin and dropped them in. The clank of metal falling into metal pierced the room and I winced as if she struck me again. Then she walked back to me, her left hand curled over the bandage on her left wrist. I could see a faint bloom of blood under the gauze. I dropped my eyes to the floor and waited for the blow.
    She stopped directly in front of me, legs apart, hands fisted on her hips, and I looked up at her. She was magnificent, a black and silver goddess, terrible and