Plans, Fears, and Unknowns

VP and BP Standings
Sam - 105 VP - 2900 BP - 3 Achievs
Erin - 104 VP - 5100 BP - 2 Achievs
Claire - 97 VP - 7600 BP - 2 Achievs
Liesa - 96 VP - 2900 BP - 3 Achievs
Norah - 94 VP - 1550 BP - 3 Achievs
Chloe - 94 VP - 3650 BP - 2 Achievs
Emi - 93 VP - 5750 BP - 3 Achievs
Marissa - 91 VP - 4000 BP - 3 Achievs
Emily - 81 VP - 5600 BP - 3 Achievs (2 used)
Dawn - 75 VP - 5500 BP - 3 Achievs
Myra - 52 VP - 4000 BP - 2 Achievs
Riley - 42 VP - 6800 BP - 3 Achievs
Laura - 5950 BP - 1 Achiev

The Suite never really slept. The walls kept their own time, chasing away the sunrise with haze-glass windows, but there was always something—an echo, a mechanical sigh, the frictionless shuffle of memory against memory. Andy woke to the distant click of a coffee machine, the low buzz of a shower in the bath, the deep slow breathing of two Lauras with their limbs stacked around him like a protective tangle.

For a few delicious seconds he just lay there, refusing to move. The sheets were still warm, and he’d ended up on his back, one Laura curled tight to his left side and the other pressed against his chest, her thigh hooked over his hip in a way that suggested she wasn’t planning to let him out of bed any time soon. He let his eyes drift across the ceiling, picking out the tiny, spidery cracks he’d mapped on his first sleepless night here, and tried to guess how long it had been since midnight. Eight, maybe nine hours, but it felt like he’d lived two days’ worth of dreams.

Eventually, the right Laura stirred, mirrored by the left one, both blinking awake with a little hum of contentment. The left Laura rolled toward him, hair fanned out across the pillow, and said, “Is it morning?”

He smiled. “Not if we don’t want it to be.”

She laughed in stereo, then both of her sat up at once. He watched as she checked the clock in tandem, then shrugged, then flopped back down on either side of him, this time with one head on each of his shoulders.

For a while, no one moved. It was the best kind of inertia, a physical refusal to let the day start until it absolutely had to. The left Laura’s breathing went slow and deep, her head pillowed against Andy’s bicep, while the right Laura’s fingers traced idle designs across his chest, like she was sketching a secret map only she could read. The blue of her eyes caught the bedroom’s soft light, more alive than any time he had ever seen them since her return.

He reached an arm around each body, at once, gently drawing them closer, and felt the two Lauras press into him, each in their own way. The left one tucked her hand beneath his chin and closed her eyes. The right one stretched, hooked her leg over his hip, and just breathed, content to share the same square foot of space. Andy thought if he lay here long enough, he might be able to hear his own heartbeat synchronize to Laura’s.

Eventually, she broke the spell. In perfect harmony, both bodies rolled over so they were staring at him, two sets of sleepy blue eyes leveled at the same angle. "You’re staring," she said, voices layered but soft.

"You’re beautiful," Andy replied, because it was true, and also because it would always be the right answer.

Laura wrinkled her noses. "You’re sappy in the morning."

He shrugged. "You bring it out of me."

Laura smiled, but she didn’t look away. "You always wanted to be a morning person," she said. "But you never made it past the part where you roll over and wish you could hit snooze on the universe."

He laughed. "Why bother now? Time’s fake here anyway."

Laura grinned, then planted twin kisses on his cheeks, quick and warm. Then she lay back and, with a wordless mutual understanding, started to pin him between her bodies.

He pretended to fight it, but only a little. The world could wait.

If there was a way to improve on the luxury of laying in bed sandwiched between two Lauras, Andy hadn’t found it yet. The left Laura’s breath feathered his collarbone, her fingers curled around his ribcage; the right Laura’s foot rested on his shin, pinning him with the lazy weight of someone who’d never learned to share a blanket. There was a law of physics here, a gravity of touch, and he didn’t want to leave its orbit.

But eventually, biology overrode philosophy, and he felt himself hardening, first against Laura’s stomach and then, as she shifted, along her inner thigh. The right Laura’s eyes flicked open at once—half lidded, blue bright—and her mouth twisted in a sleepy, mischievous little smile. She reached down and ran a lazy finger along the length of him, not teasing but mapping. The left Laura giggled at the sensation, and pressed her hips back into him, so he was bracketed perfectly.

“You’re terrible,” he said, but his voice was hoarse with affection.

“I’m just efficient,” she replied, both bodies together. The right one leaned up, kissing his jaw, while the left angled her head so she could watch his reaction. “You always were slow to get out of bed.”

It was not the sort of thing one said to prod a person along. In fact, the way Laura said it, Andy thought she meant it as a compliment. He made a show of stretching, first one arm, then the other, letting both Lauras curl closer to him until they were a single heavy warmth at his chest. He liked this inertia, the secret permission to linger—maybe, he thought, he’d earned it.

The right Laura kissed his throat, just below the line of his jaw. She said, “You’re thinking,” both voices at once, even as the left Laura nuzzled in behind his ear.

Andy grinned. “I can’t help it.”

Laura considered. “What are you thinking about?” She asked.

He wanted to answer with a joke—“Breakfast,” or maybe “What happens if I try to kiss you both at once”—but the truth wanted out. “How lucky I am,” he said, voice raw.

The Lauras shifted against him. “Don’t be a sap,” they said, but there was no heat to it, only a kind of shy happiness that surprised him. He saw it in the way her eyes softened, the way she didn’t look away.

He kissed her, first the right and then the left, just to see if it would short-circuit the universe. It didn’t. If anything, the world seemed to stabilize, as if this was the more natural order of things. Both Lauras sighed at once. Andy felt their breaths sync with his.

He felt the left Laura’s hand on his hip, then on his bare thigh, her fingers tracing the line between sleep and morning. The right Laura pressed her chest to his, letting the slow, steady thrum of her heartbeat bleed into his own. He could feel the twin heat of them, and when she pressed her lips to his mouth, the left Laura’s hand slid between their bodies, her palm warm and certain.

She didn’t have to guide him. He’d have found her blind, if necessary. They kissed again, and then Andy rolled onto his side, bracketed by both bodies. The right Laura shifted on top of him, thighs warm on either side of his hips, while the left pressed in from behind, chest to his back—an arrangement that felt less like improvisation and more like something she'd worked out in her sleep. She was soft and firm in all the places he remembered, but there was a new strength in her—he could feel it, a coiled energy just beneath the surface. The Consort’s strength, he thought.

The right Laura rocked her hips into him, slow and deliberate, the friction perfect, the angle even better. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast, arching into his palm, and the left Laura matched the rhythm, rolling her own hips into the small of his back. Andy thought he might lose his mind.

He whispered, “You sure you want this?”

She laughed, both voices. “I’m pretty sure I showed you I can handle it.” The two bodies moved with the same intent, not quite separate minds so much as one decision expressed twice.

He thrust forward, just once, enough to slide himself inside her, and was rewarded with the most satisfying gasp, doubled and layered. Both Lauras shivered, and Andy held her—both of her—tight as he started to move.

It was not frantic, not ****. This was something else: a slow, unhurried negotiation, a rediscovery. Laura’s bodies worked in tandem, one bracing her arms against his shoulders, the other curling around his waist. He moved with her, letting her set the pace, letting her teach him what worked. When she wanted more, she took it; when she wanted less, she slowed, and he followed.

He lost track of time. He lost track of himself. There was only the pressure, the friction, the impossibility of her, and the knowledge that every sound, every movement, was reflected perfectly in both bodies. When he felt her start to tremble, he tightened his grip, and the left Laura dug her nails into his back while the right arched her head back and moaned, a sound so full and shattering that Andy almost came right then.

For a moment the synchronization slipped—not disagreement, just too much sensation to route perfectly—and both bodies clutched him harder, as if grabbing the same lifeline from two sides.

She came first. Both bodies at once, a single spasm that left her gasping, shaking, clutching at his body as if she might never let go. Andy couldn’t hold back any longer, and as he finished, Laura wrapped him in her arms, squeezing him until he was light-headed, until he forgot where his body ended and hers began.

They collapsed, tangled together. For a long time, nobody spoke. Andy listened to the slow return of his heartbeat, the mingled breathing, the soft, pleased hum that escaped Laura, both of her, whenever she was content.

He rolled onto his back, pulling both bodies with him, and she lay draped across his chest, one on either side. She seemed lighter now, the old tension burned off, replaced with a kind of bright, nervous hope.

They stayed like that for a while, until the scent of coffee finally **** Andy to disentangle himself and roll out of bed. He found boxers and a t-shirt, but Laura seemed content to stay naked, lounging in the sheets and watching him as he shuffled to the bathroom. Both of her tracked him automatically when he moved, like a pair of cameras locked to the same target.

When he emerged, the right Laura had put on one of his hoodies, the left had wrapped herself in the comforter, and both were grinning like she’d won something.

He almost said, “You did,” but the words felt too small. Instead, he just smiled, and she followed him down the hall, her bare feet soft on the tile.

The kitchen was not empty.

Sam was perched on a barstool, in gym shorts and a faded t-shirt that said DRINK COFFEE. DO GOOD. REPEAT. She looked up as Andy entered, raising her mug in greeting. “Morning, sunshine.”

Liesa was at the counter, peeling an orange with meticulous care, her hair up in a messy bun. She wore a slouchy sweater over a sports bra and leggings, and there was a lazy grace to the way she moved—always a little extra in the way she leaned, the way she extended a limb, the way she cocked her hip. The transformation was still working its magic on her, forcing every movement to be a little more sensual than she’d ever intend.

Laura padded in behind Andy, both bodies at once, and for a brief moment she hesitated in the doorway, caught between wanting to join the group and wanting to slip back into the safety of the bedroom.

Liesa looked up, her green eyes going wide as she realized one Laura was wearing only a comforter, wrapped around her body. She didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows shot up, and she offered the most genuine smile Andy had ever seen from her.

For a second, the kitchen went still. Then Sam reached behind the toaster and produced a mug, waving it at Andy in a silent demand for coffee. “You’re on eggs, right?” she said, already popping the fridge.

Andy nodded, a little groggy. “Always.”

Laura drifted to the island counter, one body sliding onto the stool next to Sam, the other standing barefoot by the window, watching the ocean beyond the glass. She pulled the comforter a little tighter but didn’t make any move to get dressed. The body that was sitting on the stool—still in Andy’s hoodie—leaned on her elbow and watched him crack the eggs. For a moment the two viewpoints seemed to tug at her attention, window and kitchen both, before her focus settled comfortably across both bodies.

Sam’s gaze flicked from Laura to Andy, then back, a small, private smile on her lips. There was a quiet satisfaction in it, the look of someone checking that something fragile had survived the last few hours. “So… how was your night?”

Andy made a show of thinking about it. “We slept like the dead.”

Sam laughed, the sound bright and genuine. “Try again.”

Liesa, meanwhile, was slicing bread and arranging the pieces on a pan carefully. She moved around the kitchen like she owned it, despite having set foot in the suite only a handful of times.

Laura’s body, sitting on the stool, found a knife and started buttering bread, careful and neat. The other one poured herself water from the fridge, then brought the glass over to Andy and set it beside the stove. “Hydrate,” she said, both voices.

He drank, mostly to make her happy. “You’re going to make me forget how to function,” he said.

“You already forgot,” she replied, but there was affection in her tone.

The breakfast preparation fell into place with the ease of an old habit. Sam manned the toaster, barking status updates like a drill sergeant: “Four minutes to carbs.” Liesa set the table, moving plates and utensils into a tight, geometric arrangement. Andy scrambled the eggs and, when they started to set, reached around Laura for the spatula, bumping into her on purpose. Both of Laura’s bodies rolled their eyes in perfect unison, a reflex she clearly hadn’t bothered trying to separate. She didn’t move away.

When the food was ready, the four of them sat at the island, plates steaming in the early light. Laura sat on Andy’s left and right, both bodies, bookending him in a way that made the world seem smaller and safer. Liesa and Sam took the other side, hands occasionally bumping as they reached for things.

For a moment, no one talked. They just ate, the quiet broken only by the scrape of forks and the clink of glasses.

It was Sam who broke the silence first. “You know, this is almost domestic,” she said, then looked at Liesa. “If you start asking me about my day, I’m leaving.”

Liesa smirked. “I would not dare. But you can tell me anyway, if you want.”

Sam made a face, but Andy caught the softening around her eyes. “You’re a menace,” she said, but her foot nudged Liesa’s under the table.

Andy looked at Laura, who was watching the exchange with open curiosity, as if she was still calibrating what it meant to be part of a group that didn’t need her to do anything but be present. The two bodies leaned forward slightly at the same moment, attention snapping together on the conversation like magnets finding alignment.

He cleared his throat, drawing attention. “We should talk about today,” he said, trying to sound casual.

Laura perked up. “I have an idea,” she said, both voices at once.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”

Laura put her fork down, wiped her mouth, and looked at each of them in turn. “We can break the game,” she said. “Not the rules, but the—” she searched for a word “—the math. The math checks out. Half of the others are less than ten points away from the 100 VP threshold, and the others, except Myra and Riley, could easily get there this coming round.” One Laura gestured with her fork while the other mirrored the motion a heartbeat later, the explanation clearly something she’d already been turning over in her head.

She looked at Andy slyly, and he caught the hint. “Myra and Riley are further behind, but with some work, and maybe Claire’s and Chloe’s advice, they could find a way to get there, too. And if everyone gets to 100 VP, the game ends, doesn’t it?”

Liesa’s eyes widened, then she nodded, instantly on board. “You want to crash the program.”

Laura smiled, pleased at the understanding. “I want to finish it. For real. If we get everyone on board, the show ends on our terms, and we get to go home.”

Sam considered, then nodded. “I like it. Burn the house down before they can move the goalposts, like Dani told me at the party.”

“Then we’ll bring this to the others,” he said. “But I want to make today about something else, too.” He glanced at the painting, which was still propped on the chair by the dining table, sunlight pooling across the canvas.

“Katherine,” he said. “As we discussed yesterday. She deserves to be part of the group. Not just an art installation.”

There was a beat of surprise—then Liesa, who had never needed a second invitation, said, “We can bring her to lunch.”

Sam grinned. “A coming out party for the painting girl. I’m in.”

Laura nodded, both bodies, but Andy saw the way her eyes flicked toward the painting, searching for a hint of response. Both gazes settled there together, curiosity and sympathy moving through her like a single current.

He stood, crossed to the frame, and lifted it gently off the chair. Katherine, inside, stood as always, but today her hair seemed brighter, her eyes more alive. She was blushing, though whether from shyness or from being talked about like an actual person, he couldn’t tell.

Andy set the painting on a chair at the table. “You okay with this?” he asked.

Katherine nodded, slowly. She mimed a tiny bow, then put her hand to her heart and gave Andy a look that was both grateful and slightly mortified.

Laura reached over, two left hands at once, and touched the edge of the frame. “You will be welcomed,” she said. “No pressure.”

Katherine smiled, the expression a little wobbly, and mimed a clumsy thumbs-up.

Liesa, watching, said, “She is very pretty.”

Sam, not to be outdone, said, “I bet she has good stories. Years of gossip.”

Katherine pantomimed zipping her lips, then wiggled her eyebrows. The group laughed, the tension breaking.

But Andy, watching her, saw a flash of something—doubt, maybe. He reached out and touched the canvas, as if to reassure her. “You’re one of us,” he said, softly.

Laura caught the moment and said, “You are, you know.”

Katherine’s eyes grew shiny, and she nodded.

They finished breakfast in a mood that was, if anything, better than the night before. For a while, the conversation drifted: Liesa and Sam told stories about college, about the time they’d tried to make pasta in a hot plate and nearly set off the fire alarms, or the time Liesa convinced Sam to sneak onto the roof of the library to watch a meteor shower. Laura listened, laughing at the right moments, sometimes adding a detail that made the story better.

Andy sat back and watched them. There was something surreal about it—these three women, who had defined the best years of his life, all together in the same room, sharing coffee and eggs and inside jokes. Even Katherine, in her silent way, seemed part of the group.

Sam broke the spell. “So what’s the plan? We start the points race, then introduce the painting, then see what happens?”

Andy nodded. “That’s the plan.” He paused. “Could you tell the others we’ll have lunch together, today? Don’t mention Katherine yet.” Andy squeezed one of Laura’s hands. “I need to look for Claire and get her out of the Archive. And today will be an eventful day.”

By the time the world outside the Suite had registered as real, Andy had already decided he’d have to talk to Claire first. It was a sensation, not a plan—a vague, accumulating worry that if he didn’t, she’d lose herself to the Archive and never come out, like a password-protected Rapunzel. The others, he could imagine waking up slowly, moving through their day at the same pace as the sun. Claire wasn’t like that. If left alone for even half an hour, she’d vanish into the stacks of her own design, only re-emerging at the exact time she’d calculated was least likely to involve human contact.

He took the spiral stair up to the Archive and made his way through its impossible geometry: aisles that should have intersected but didn’t, doors to dead ends that only became passable when you forgot what you were looking for. He found Claire there, as he had expected: when he stepped out onto the balcony, she was perched crouching on a glass catwalk three stories above, peering down at him through her round glasses with the expression of a librarian who has just discovered her patron is not only late returning a book, but had the audacity to borrow it at all.

She made her way down the ladder, feet silent. She wore a faded, oversized sweater over leggings, and her tail swished lazily as she descended. Her hair, always somewhere between ‘carefully mussed’ and ‘statistically unlikely,’ stuck out at optimistic angles. She didn’t speak, of course, but when she landed next to him, she gave him a brief, sideways glance, then a subtle wave, the gesture calculated to minimize eye contact while still acknowledging his presence. Her ears flicked once, forward then sideways, a tiny recalibration of attention.

Andy sat on a nearby bench and waited for her to do the same. She didn’t, at first. Instead she wandered over to one of the floating bookcases, pulled a volume, and flipped it open with a movement so quick it was nearly invisible. Only after reading a page—maybe two, though the speed suggested skimming rather than savoring—did she close it and finally sit.

They stared out through the glass walls at the rolling clouds and the faint line of horizon, letting the world fill with unspoken context.

He broke the silence first. “You’ve been up here a while.”

She reached for her notebook, slung over her shoulder with a wide leather belt, and scribbled something with a fountain pen. When she finished, she spun the notebook so he could read:

I like it here. Nobody expects anything.

Then, as if clarifying, she flipped to a second page and wrote:

Not that I don’t like the Suite. Or you. Or the others. But books are easier.

Andy smiled, trying not to overread the subtext. “I get that,” he said, and he did. There was a comfort in solitude, in not having to guess the emotional weather in every room. Especially for Claire. “But people do miss you.”

She looked up, surprised. Her cat ears twitched. She pointed to herself, befuddled, then shook her head, eyes squeezed shut for a split second.

He shrugged. “Yeah. You. When you’re not around, it’s like…” He tried to find a metaphor that didn’t sound ****. “Like a table missing a leg. Everyone leans a little harder just to keep upright.”

She pursed her lips, then uncapped her pen again and wrote:

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that being absent doesn’t mean zero effect. Just a negative one. The sentence was written slowly, as if she were checking each word for accuracy before committing to it.

Andy let that sit. Then, softer: “I just wanted you to know. I miss you too. I’m glad you’re here.”

She didn’t say anything, but the tip of her tail flicked, and that was as close as she got to gratitude.

He felt her watching him from the corner of her eye, so he let the silence expand, not pushing. She was the kind of person who only opened up when the pressure dropped to zero.

It worked. After a minute, she uncapped her pen again, wrote on the next page with careful, slightly shaky handwriting:

I used to think nobody cared, so it was easier to be alone than to risk wanting something and not getting it. I’m still getting used to family.

She looked at him, and for the first time since the conversation began, she met his eyes. The color of her irises was pale blue, the exact hue depending on the light and whether she’d cried in the last twenty-four hours.

He squeezed her hand, the gesture meant to be simple but feeling to him as if he was folding her entire, anxious presence into his palm. “You know we do care, right? All of us. Me especially,” he said, and the words were more than reassurance, they were a promissory note for every moment she’d spent doubting that she mattered.

Claire’s gaze snapped up, startled by the directness, but the effect lingered barely a heartbeat before her expression softened, unreadable but not cold. She drew in a breath, slow and deliberate. Then she leaned forward and kissed him—quick, urgent, as if tapping a glass to see if it would shatter. It was over before he could reciprocate, and she retreated an inch, cheeks flushed and eyes sheened with something halfway between tears and the brightness that came from laughing too hard.

He felt something raw and bright open up inside his chest, the way it always did with Claire: a species of vulnerability that was terrifying but clean, like standing on the edge of a diving board and knowing you had to jump. “I love you,” he said, voice catching at the end.

She nodded, sharp and certain. For a moment, she looked like she might try to say it aloud, but instead she tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, then snatched up her notebook and wrote, hand trembling only slightly:

I love you, too. Even if I’m still learning how to do it. She hesitated after the sentence, then underlined it once more, as if reinforcing the conclusion of an argument.

She flipped the notebook around so the message was unmistakable, the words underlined twice, once in blue and once in a hurried red. Andy felt the world slow and sharpen, the way it did in emergencies and first kisses, and—without thinking—he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She resisted for a microsecond, then let herself collapse against him, her body weight featherlight and unfamiliar.

They sat in silence, the kind of silence that was not awkward but viscous, charged. On the other side of the glass, the world blurred by, but neither of them cared. He felt the rise and fall of her breath beside his own, the way her pulse subtly accelerated when he moved his fingers along her upper arm. Her scent was cinnamon and library glue, and something faintly sharp he associated with toner.

After a few breaths, his hand found its way to her belly. For the first time since Arabella’s announcement, he let himself consider the fact in full, three-dimensional color: Claire was pregnant. He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel—joy, terror, pride, inadequacy, maybe all of it tangled together—but her presence in his arms was anchoring, and he decided to let the questions wait.

He kept his hand there, steady, and said softly, “How are you feeling?” He glanced down, and then, as if the answer might be plural, added: “How are both of you?”

Claire's ears flattened against her head, the way they always did when she was about to confess something she'd rather not. She uncapped her pen, hesitated, then wrote in her notebook: Scared. She paused, lips pressed together, then added in smaller print: What if I can't be what they need?

Andy read it, then looked at her, careful not to let any doubt show. "You're going to be an amazing mother," he said, but he could see her tail twitching in agitation, a metronome of doubt.

She shook her head vigorously, pen scratching across the page with such **** the paper dimpled beneath it: No. I won't. Her hand trembled as she continued: How can I when I can't even speak to them? When they cry and I can't sing? When they need comfort and all I have is this? She tapped the notebook violently with her pen. Then, in smaller letters: And what about the rest? My diagnosis. The way my brain works. What if they inherit that too? What if they're like me? Alone in their head? What if I can't fix it?

He could feel her shutting down, the way she sometimes did, so he took her hand and squeezed until she looked up. “Hey,” he said, and when she didn’t meet his eyes, he gently lifted her chin. “You're not broken. You communicate more clearly than most people I know who never shut up." He brushed a tear from her cheek. "And you won't be doing this alone. You’re not alone anymore. And they won’t be, either.” He said it quietly, not like a speech, but like a fact he expected the world to obey.

She blinked, eyes rimmed in pale blue. The words seemed to reach her, but she still wrote, almost angrily: My fertility cycle. The Feline Fertility transformation. Unless we're careful, there could be… She hesitated, then finally wrote: Many babies. Her pen trembled. Would you want that? With me?

Andy felt his heart do a funny, unhelpful thing, like he’d skipped a stair. He laughed, not to dismiss her but because the image was so perfectly, profoundly Claire: her first instinct wasn’t to be afraid for herself, but for the hypothetical group of babies she might bring into the world, afraid they’d inherit her isolation. He pressed his forehead to hers, let his lips brush the top of her hair. “If you want them, I’d want a whole library of little Claires. The world could use more people like you.” He meant it. “And we’ll make sure none of them are ever alone.”

Her ears twitched upward slightly at that, a small, involuntary sign the reassurance had landed. She let out a shaky exhale, then nodded once, decisively, as if that settled it. Then she wrote, in big, looping print:

I want to show you something.

He nodded, stepping back to give her room, and she slipped from his grasp as efficiently as a shadow. Without a word, she led him further into the Archive, navigating aisles that seemed to realign themselves as she walked.

She moved faster now, purpose replacing hesitation. Andy trailed behind, marveling as always at the way her feet glided over metal rungs, how she could swing between ladders or drop from a high shelf as if gravity was a polite suggestion. He let her set the pace, knowing that whatever she was about to reveal would be something she couldn’t say with words.

After a minute, she stopped at a low table covered in maps and spiral-bound notebooks, the kind with graph paper and color-coded tabs. She grabbed one of the notebooks—it looked almost identical to the one she carried everywhere, but had a yellow sticker on the cover—and set it in front of him. Next to it, she stacked a second and a third. She pointed to the first, then gestured at him to sit.

He did. She slid onto the bench next to him, her shoulder brushing his, and opened the notebook to a page, then rotated it so he could read easily. At the top of the page, underlined in blue, was a header:

First Dilmun Season: Anomalies, Candidates, and Transmission Vectors

The handwriting here was smaller and tighter than usual, the kind Claire used when she’d been thinking about something for a very long time.

This is what I’ve been working on, she said, using her pen to underline a point. It’s about Arabella, Anna, and Arabella’s first season on Earth. The show was called Harem Hotel: Dilmun back then, and how it’s all connected.

He picked up the first note, which read:

Arabella wasn’t Arabella once. She had other faces. Other personalities. Geshtinanna → Hecate → Seshat → ??? → Lady of the Lake? Avalon theme → ??? → Amaterasu → ??? → Arabella? Anna = Inanna.

The next note:

First Season: Anna, Alla, Abi-Eshu +8. Twins? Arabella/Geshtinanna = Host.

A third:

Alla = Ereş-kigal = Ereshkigal. Anna = Inanna. Abi-Eshu = Nergal?

He read on, following the thread through Sumerian mythology, through the collapse of Dilmun, through the transformation of Anna and Alla into goddesses by means unknown, through the centuries of aftermath, and all Claire had found about Arabella’s tenure as Host on Earth.

Claire didn’t editorialize. She let him read, let him assemble the connections in his own mind. Her tail curled around the leg of the bench, tight with concentration. At the bottom of one sheet, she’d written:

Alla was the winner of the contest. She got the wish. I don’t know what she wished for. But Abi-Eshu became the basis for Nergal, after ****. Enslaved to Ereshkigal. Master → ****. No record of ending after → is Abi-Eshu still Ereshkigal’s servant?

Then, in a different ink, a single line:

The Edict. The price. Ereshkigal always demands a price. Not cruel → cosmic law. The ink here was darker, pressed harder into the page.

She quickly wrote something on her notebook and showed it to him. I remember now. The night before the fourth challenge. Arabella came to me. She took me to a cave with Anna and Herman. Inanna and Hermes. They needed me to represent the Egyptian god Bast. They used pomegranate seeds, a feather, and the tablet we recovered. It was destroyed in water, used to water the blue rose that brought Laura back.

Next to it, a photocopy of the Sumerian clay tablet they’d recovered in the Third Challenge—the same one she was referring to, now. Andy remembered Arabella also mentioned that Ereshkigal’s Edict had been used to resurrect Laura. Under the photocopy, a post-it note had been added later, the ink slightly different:

All resurrection rituals involve exchange markers. Seeds = descent. Feather = judgment. Water = transition. Where is the designation of the substitute?

He read on, noting the increasing intensity of the handwriting as Claire got closer to her conclusion. The later pages were less tidy, arrows layered over arrows, circles around names as if she’d chased the same thought through multiple passes.

At the very end of the display, Claire had drawn a Venn diagram: in one circle, LAURA; in the other, INANNA. In the overlapping center, a question mark, surrounded by a ring: ANDY.

He looked up at her, then back at the board, then back again.

“What does it mean?” he asked, quietly.

She took the notebook, flipped to a fresh page, and wrote:

In the myth, Inanna went to the Underworld and returned. But only because Geshtinanna interceded and Inanna’s husband, Dumuzid, took her place.

She tapped the name LAURA. Then the ring: ANDY.

She looked up, expression painfully earnest. For once, she hesitated before writing the next line.

I think, she wrote, that’s how she came back. You’re the price.

He felt the world tilt, just a little, and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “So, what, I’m supposed to take her place? Be the next… what, dead soulmate?”

Claire shook her head, frustrated. No. I don’t know. But if the myth holds, returning from the dead requires someone to take your place. I don’t know if it’s Ereshkigal’s rule, or a cosmic rule she enforces.

Andy sat with that, the ache in his ribs familiar but sharper than ever. He took her hand. “You think I’m next?”

Claire bit her lip. Then she shook her head, fiercely, and wrote: Not if we break the story. The words were underlined once, hard enough the page tore slightly.

He laughed, and it was a brittle sound, but he squeezed her fingers. “We’re pretty good at that.”

She nodded, her eyes wet but determined. She brushed her thumb along his hand, then wrote: I don’t want to lose you.

He smiled, but it felt like a performance. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. Even as he said it, the myth sat in the back of his mind like a piece that almost fit.

She looked unconvinced, but accepted it, for now. They stood for a moment, looking out at the sky—Andy lost in the storm of myth and destiny, Claire bracing herself against his side, solid and necessary. After a long silence, she wrote: You still want me to come to the group thing, right?

He nodded. “I want you there.”

She nodded, tucking the pen behind her ear. Okay. I’ll be there.

They walked back through the Archive together, neither saying much, both pretending not to notice the weight in the air. Andy tried to memorize the way her hand fit in his, the tiny, decisive squeeze she gave every few steps. Claire’s grip tightened whenever they passed a threshold, as if confirming he was still there. He wanted to remember it for later, for the times when things didn’t make sense, which he suspected would be most of the immediate future.

He left the Archive with a feeling he couldn’t name—a mixture of dread, love, and a cold certainty that the pattern wasn’t done with them yet.

He didn’t get ten feet past the library doors before he was intercepted by Norah, who looked like she’d been pacing the Inner Gardens for hours, waiting to catch him in a net of her own impatience. She wore a sleeveless blouse and Capri pants over her perennial heels. He half-expected her to chide him for skipping a meeting, but the look in her eyes was colder, more urgent than that.

“Walk with me?” she said, voice brisk.

He didn’t argue. They moved along the flagstone path in silence, the sound of birds and distant surf making it easier to ignore the fact that Norah kept shooting him sidelong glances, as if measuring whether or not he was worth the investment. At last, she stopped in front of a room with locked display cabinets—a museum wing at the far end of the Gardens, a place Andy had never seen.

Norah didn’t slow as she led Andy down the corridor, heels ticking on stone, each step a rebuke for every second of his lateness. The so-called museum wing was a long, low-lit hall lined on both sides with glass cabinets—some with doors ajar, some locked with archaic keys, all filled with objects that looked like the detritus of someone else’s nostalgia.

The air smelled faintly of varnish and old paper, like a place that had been curated rather than lived in. Andy had the sudden, irrational thought that if he reached out and touched the wrong thing, he’d summon a ghost.

She stopped about halfway down the row and gestured at a waist-high case. “Look,” she said, her voice as clipped as the tap of her stiletto.

He bent over and squinted through the glass. The first thing that caught his eye was the collar: black leather, mother-of-pearl inlays, brass tag. It looked expensive, but in the way that high-end dog accessories were expensive—a statement piece, less for the dog and more for the owner. The tag read SANDRA, etched in deep, careful letters. Next to the collar was a grainy photo, probably printed on a hotel machine and faded by the years. In it, a woman knelt on all fours, naked except for the collar and a pair of dog ears, her hair wild and her smile tight and hollow. Next to her, on a tangle of blankets, was a baby reaching for the camera. The baby looked happy. Sandra didn’t.

Norah waited, arms folded, watching him process it. Her jaw was set at an angle that suggested she’d been holding it for hours.

“Read the plaque,” she said, pointing at the tiny bronze rectangle inside the case.

He squinted and read aloud: “Sandra Guerrero, Eliminated Contestant. Harem Hotel: The HH, Season 169. Master: Greg.” The name sat wrong in his mouth the moment he said it. He felt a prickle at the back of his neck, a memory stirring. Greg. The name had come up before.

“Keep going,” Norah said, and moved to the next display. It was another photo, this one of four women. The central figure was older, with exaggerated curves and a brittle smile, flanked by a younger woman—maybe a daughter—holding her hand. The third woman, in a cocktail dress and with long black nails, looked moments from tears. The fourth was mostly hidden, but her arm, wrapped around the older woman’s waist, and a cascade of black hair gave her away as someone at least as troubled as the rest of the group.

“Carol Wilson’s Elimination,” Andy read. “Same season. Same Master.” He glanced at Norah. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

She made a frustrated sound in her throat, then reached into her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “This,” she said, thrusting it at him, “is what you need to see.”

He unfolded it. The letterhead was old, the ink faint, but the handwriting was unmistakably feminine, with big, looping capitals and the kind of forceful slant that suggested the writer had Opinions. The paper crackled slightly as he opened it.

He read the letter, and when he reached the ending, he recognized the name, finally. “Sarah. Wait. I’ve seen a letter from this Sarah, before. Marissa, Dawn and Claire found a note from Sarah in the Library, during the first round. Warning future contestants about how the Master would get corrupted.”

He sat back on his heels. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Norah was the first to break. “I know it’s just a game, that we’re supposed to move on, but…” She shook her head. “What if she went back like that?” Her voice dropped, anger flattening the words. “What if Arabella sent her back as a—” She didn’t finish.

Andy’s throat felt raw. “Greg,” he said. “That was the Master.” He stopped. He remembered a conversation with Arabella, on one of the off nights, when he’d asked what happened to the eliminated. She’d grown uncharacteristically distant, even sad. “Most people,” she had said, “assume eliminated contestants always go home with their Masters, and live out their lives, as they are, in the Master’s care. Like a conjuring trick with pretty girls as the handkerchiefs. But that isn’t how it works, Andy. It never was.”

He remembered the Hollow Garden, and what he had seen there. Arabella had said, “Some are abandoned by their Masters, even before the game is over. Their stories end not with a bang, but with a long, cold nothing. Katherine, for example. Others, not always the luckier ones, make it out into the world—fragmented, altered, helpless, sometimes not even knowing who they are. A few I found and brought back here when their Masters died, or when their lives went… poorly. In one instance, I brought some back when their Master broke one of the tenets of The HH, even after the show was over. The Hollow Garden is for all of them.”

Norah was staring at the letter, jaw tight. “I know you can talk to Arabella. I know she listens to you. I want to know what happened to them. To all of them.” Each name came out sharper than the last. “To Sandra, to Sarah, to Carol, and the others whose name I don’t know. Did they go back? Did anyone care?”

He thought about Sandra, and the baby, and the look in the eyes of every woman in the display: terror, barely covered by a brave smile. He imagined a world where, after all of this, the ‘reward’ was to go back home, but as less than you started, and to have nobody even notice the difference.

He looked at Norah and saw something in her face—anger, yes, but also sorrow. The kind that came from discovering a system and realizing it had always been broken. He realized she wanted someone to tell her that it mattered. That the suffering in these rooms wasn’t just for show.

He nodded. “I’ll ask her,” he said. “I promise.”

Norah exhaled, long and shuddering. For a moment, she looked older, more tired than he’d ever seen her. Then she gave him a tight hug, kissed him, squared her shoulders. “Don’t let her gaslight you,” she said. “You’re the only one she ever tells the full truth.” It didn’t sound like praise. It sounded like responsibility.

He didn’t have an answer for that. But he nodded, once, then again, and Norah turned away, already planning her next **** on the records.

Andy lingered, staring at the collar in its case. He tried to imagine what it would have been like for Sandra, or Sarah, or any of the others who had come before—each convinced, maybe, that they were going to be the first to break the cycle, to be the exception. He thought of Claire, and the fragile hope in her notebook, and Laura, doubled and alive but with the past always lurking at the edge of the present.

He pressed a hand to the glass, then withdrew it, ashamed. The display case reflected his face back at him, faint and ghostlike. He was still holding the letter, fingers trembling. It felt heavier than before.

He left the Hall of Curiosities, walking fast, mind full of impossible math and the memory of Norah’s voice: Don’t let her gaslight you. He wasn’t sure he could promise that, but he could promise this: he’d remember Sandra, and Sarah, and all the women who came before. And he’d ask Arabella the questions that nobody else dared.

He reached the edge of the garden and, looking back, saw Norah through the window, staring at the same collar. She wasn’t crying, but her hand was pressed flat against the glass, as if she could reach through it and comfort the ghost inside. For once, Norah looked completely out of answers.

Andy turned and walked toward the Suite, the letter burning in his pocket, and wondered what it would feel like to finally know the truth.