Powell held up both his hands. “Miss Peterson, that’s not me. I’m here to–”
“You’re here to spy,” Amy said. “You’re here to–” She blinked. “Are you… Is that…” She stared at Powell’s groin. For the first time, Javier noticed that Powell was at half-mast.
“It’s not what you think,” Javier said.
“That was quick,” Amy said. “First you do the one thing I’ve explicitly outlawed on this island, ignore the one request I made, and then you start…” Her lip trembled. “Did he failsafe you?” she asked. “Is that why you did it?”
“We didn’t do anything!”
“We didn’t,” Powell said.
But tears were rising in Amy’s eyes. “Why is your shirt all wrong?” She pointed. “Why are your knees all dirty?”
He tried to take her by the shoulders. She batted his arms away. “Is this because I didn’t say yes?”
Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus. He was so far beyond fucked.
“Amy, querida–”
“Miss Peterson–”
“Shut up!”
Amy pointed, and the earth beneath Powell’s feet opened. He stumbled and it closed, burying him up to his thighs. He couldn’t stand but he couldn’t kneel, either, so he was reduced to scrabbling for balance in the dirt, quite literally bowing and scraping. Javier’s vision started to change; the edges of everything sharpened. It was happening again.
“S-stop,” he said. “Stop this. R-right now.”
“Did he failsafe you?” Amy was staring straight at Powell. Her fingers pinched closed around her thumb. Her gaze traveled to Javier. She spoke in a whisper. “Did he rape you?”
Javier’s mouth opened. Nothing came. He tried again. “W-what?”
“Did he rape you?”
“I didn’t!” Powell was sweating. His eyes roved wildly in his skull. Javier thought of the puppet on the beach. “I swear to God–”
“Fuck your god,” Amy said, and buried him deeper.
Javier looked between them. His vision was a series of lines, now, like CRT, pulsing white hot where it lit on Amy, her palms open to widen the void. He charged. He grabbed her around the waist and jumped. They sailed eight feet in the air, into another tree. It wasn’t far from here to his own garden. He crossed the distance in two more jumps with her wriggling around in his arms.
“I told you to let me go!”
“You were gonna kill him!”
“He deserved it!”
Now he did let her go. She stumbled back a bit, onto the nearest bough. “Don’t say that,” he said.
“He deserved it. He failsafed you. He raped you.”
Javier was about to tell her that no, Powell hadn’t raped him, that it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that easy, but that thought branched his focus elsewhere and he said: “If you’re so concerned about that, why won’t you hack me?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re worried about me, you think I’m so vulnerable, but you’re the one who’s keeping me vulnerable.” He swallowed. “If you’re really so concerned about it, you should make me stronger. Make me able to refuse.”
She gripped the limbs of the tree with white knuckles. “You’re saying this is my fault?”
“I’m saying you’re a hypocrite!”
The wind picked up around them. Hearing it rushing through the leaves – the real leaves – was different from hearing its progress through the solar and carbon ones. It sounded better, softer, more alive. Something deep in his clade’s original programming preferred it. He was suddenly grateful to be in this space, and knew why he had chosen it for this conversation.
“I’m going to spend the rest of the night with Xavier and the boys,” he said. “I think it’s better if I just take some time away from home right now.”
Amy remained frozen. She obviously had no idea what to say. It was one of the few advantages he had over her – he had experience with this kind of thing, and she didn’t. He let himself fall out of the tree, and started walking.
“Well, that didn’t take very long at all,” Ignacio said, when Javier arrived.
Unbeknownst to Javier, it wasn’t just his youngest who chose to spend the night with Matteo and Ricci and their oldest. The others had all joined in, too. They were crammed into the second tier of a stack of old containers. Unlike the others, it was insulated, and well lit. It was meant for guests. They were listening to some terrifically antique Eliades Ochoa recordings on a thing called a “turntable” that a really rabid fangirl had sent them from Boston. Ricci was serving a bunch of vN rice rolls, which looked exactly like the organic version, except the fibrous meat inside was really asbestos. A box of them had come in on the boat. Apparently he had to stream a review of them, later.
“So is this it, or what?” Ignacio asked, in Spanish.
“I don’t know,” Javier answered.
“Is the missionary OK?” Ricci asked.
“I jumped over there, but he’d dug himself out already.”
The boys nodded as one. “You’re better off,” Ignacio said.