If they’d assigned a Scarlet team to the capital, she might have been in it—if not for recent events, of course. The most celebrated pr?torian posts were in places with active fighting, like the provinces and borderlands. Those were around-the-clock missions and also the ones pr?torians died in. Pr?torians were also rotated through the capital, however, to guard senators and important national monuments and buildings. It was relatively sedate work for soldiers like them, but there was power in it. The pr?torians were a symbol of the RUNA’s strength and perfection. Putting pr?torians on display in Vancouver reassured citizens of their country’s superiority, even if it also sometimes frightened them. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, though. Capital duty had shifts like ordinary jobs, meaning pr?torians received a lot of time off. Having a significant amount of one’s cohort on hand was an unusual perk since they were normally split and scattered around the world.
Val and Dag were fully aware that they’d landed a very sweet assignment, but Dag diplomatically tried to make Mae feel better. “I’m sure you’ll see cool stuff with a servitor. Maybe you’ll get to take down some crazy cult. I saw this one on the news that was sacrificing animals and having naked moonlight dances.” He turned wistful. “I wouldn’t mind a little of that. The naked part, that is. Not the animal part. I heard they tried to stone the servitor.”
Mae gave him a smile for his effort. “Cults usually get taken down with paperwork instead of brute force. They only show the sensational ones on TV.”
“Well, just remember, it could’ve been a lot worse for you.” Val’s voice was light, but there was a warning note in it. Nobody was mentioning the funeral, but they were all thinking about it. “And hey, how crazy is it that you’ll be with a mysterious exile and a provincial girl? That’s drama right there. You can’t make that stuff up.”
“No,” agreed Mae, thinking back on what she’d seen. “You really can’t.”
“Is he cute?” asked Val, with a look Mae knew all too well.
“Don’t get any ideas.” Mae wasn’t going to breathe a word about what had happened with Justin. There’d be no living with Val or Dag then. “I don’t need you showing up at his door.”
Val’s eyes lit up. “Ah, he is cute.”
Dag shook his head. “Ignore her. She hasn’t been laid in, like, a week. It’s a wonder she’s still alive.”
He was joking, although pr?torians did tend to have particularly active sex lives. It was another side effect of the natural physical responses that the implant kicked into overdrive. Justin had been Mae’s first sex in almost six months, an astonishingly long span for pr?torians, but after Porfirio, she hadn’t really felt up to it right away.
Val elbowed Dag for the joke, but at least Mae had the answer to a question she’d wondered about. Val and Dag were constantly on-and-off-again, making it hard to keep track of their current status. Apparently they were off right now. That always made Mae a little sad, but at least the two stayed friendly.
She glanced at the time and finished her drink. As much as she loved her friends, she suddenly longed for some downtime. “I’ve got to go, guys. I’ll give you a drama report the next time I see you—unless you see us on TV first.”
“Where’re you off to?” asked Val. “Hot date? Wouldn’t hurt you to get laid either, you know.” If only Val knew the truth. “You’re cycling back to that castal stiffness of yours.”
“That never goes away,” Dag said. “But you do need to relax, Finn.”
Dag had started calling her that back when they’d first been assigned to their cohort and begun pr?torian training. He’d never been able to remember her last name, but he could remember that she was Nordic, hence the nickname he and eventually Val had both started using. Everyone could tell she was castal, which had made for some rough adjustments in the military. Val and Dag had bonded with her immediately and unquestioningly, maybe because they needed her as the straight man for all their jokes.
“I can’t relax,” said Mae, standing up and swiping her ego to pay for the drink. “I’m not the one on vacation. I mean, monument duty.”
“Ha ha,” said Val. She rolled her eyes but was obviously relieved at the turn of events, and Mae felt a small pang of guilt for not getting in touch with them sooner. They’d had no idea what had happened to her after the funeral and had probably assumed the worst. They were closer to her than her biological family.
“Hey…” Mae hesitated and rested her hands on the back of her chair. “Do you guys know how Kavi’s doing?”
“Still hospitalized,” said Dag, sobering. “Well, that’s what the rumors say. The Indigos aren’t really talking to us.”
That queasy feeling Mae got whenever she thought about Kavi returned. “I guess that’s normal. It hasn’t been that long.”
Pr?torians were hard to hurt, but for most injuries, they healed like ordinary people. There were always whispers of stem cell treatments or other biological breakthroughs to facilitate pr?torian recovery, but the RUNA’s policies against biological and genetic manipulation were still too harsh, even for its prize soldiers. Medical research was one thing, but no one wanted to risk abuse that could lead to another virus-caused Decline.
Val stood up and hugged her. “It’s not your fault.”
“I broke her leg,” Mae pointed out. “If it’s not my fault, whose is it?”
“She was asking for it,” said Dag loyally. He rose too and gave Mae a crushing hug of his own.
“She was just upset about Porfirio.” Saying his name brought about that familiar pain in Mae’s chest. “We all were.”