Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nureyev wakes to a familiar, nostalgic sensation. 

He’s lying in a comfortable bed beneath warm covers, his head resting on a pillow. Even without opening his eyes, he knows that he’s not alone. He can feel the weight and warmth of another person beside him, the soft sigh of their breath as they sleep.

His mind plays its tricks, transporting him back to those rare months when he’d lived in a safehouse with the boy he loved, and a beautiful evening spent in a hotel in Hyperion before a certain lady had chosen the city over him—but then he performs his daily ritual of locking the long-gone memories away in their respective filing cabinets. He is not in bed with either of those past loves.

In fact… he shouldn’t be in bed with anyone.

That realization shatters its way through the brume of sleep and he opens his eyes, now completely and utterly awake. 

The figure dozing beside him is a stranger. A beautiful stranger, whose bare shoulders and mussed hair imply that they’re not wearing anything beneath the covers that shroud them, but a stranger nonetheless. It wouldn’t be the first time Nureyev has woken up next to someone he hardly knows—if a brief tryst might help him to obtain a worthwhile score (while also quieting the embarrassing creature inside his chest that sings a constant cry for closeness), then he’s happy to oblige. 

Still, he has certain parameters within which he acts, and this stranger is… not his cup of tea, to be frank. He’s had a rather abysmal year, but even so, he hasn’t the faintest idea how he’s ended up in bed with a woman.

More worrying is the fact that he doesn’t recognize the location where he has just awoken, and he is almost entirely certain that it isn’t where he fell asleep last night. Both very disquieting revelations. 

First rule of thieving: always be aware of your current location and any exit routes.

He scans the room, taking in as much information as quickly as possible. Apartment, not hotel—there are too many personal effects for this to be a temporary home. There’s a dress and undergarments lying on the floor that must belong to the woman beside him, confirming his theory about her state of undress. There’s a vanity littered with jewelry and makeup products, a messy dresser, a desk with a lamp. Two exits: one door and one window. It’s still dark outside, likely very early in the morning.

He needs to explore further to get a better handle on all of this. Is the door locked? Is the window? He moves to push the covers aside and sit up, and—

“Leaving in the middle of the night isn’t very ladylike.”

He starts, turns. The woman in the bed is awake now too, gazing at him with bleary but judgemental eyes. 

It takes him a moment to understand that she’s talking to him. Something clenches in his gut that he hasn’t felt since he was a child on Brahma, first realizing that when the shopkeepers screeched at the constables “that girl’s a nuisance”, it wasn’t the “nuisance” part that bothered him. He doesn’t know why this stranger has mistaken him for a lady, but the error fills him with a further sense of restive unease. He instinctively reaches under the pillow for the knife he always keeps there, and finds nothing—except even more unease.

First rule of thieving: never go anywhere without a weapon.

He wouldn’t have fallen asleep without a knife in arm’s reach. He knows better than that.

“Look, I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry you couldn’t… you know,” the woman says. “But it happens to a lot of people. I wouldn’t mind seeing you again sometime, when you’re… uh, feeling better.”

She reaches out to grasp his hand. He lets her do it; the action doesn’t seem aggressive, and she is currently his only source of information. But there’s one problem.

The hand she’s holding isn’t his.

Well—it is, in the sense that it is attached to him and he can feel her gripping it. But it does not resemble his own tan, bony, intentionally unblemished fingers. This hand and the arm attached to it are darker, sturdier, weathered with callouses and scars. They do not belong to Peter Nureyev.

He pulls wordlessly out of the woman’s grip and gets to his feet, letting the covers fall off of him. Everything about him feels… wrong. Unsteady, unbalanced. After decades of practice he’s learned perfect control over himself, how to move just right so as to make no noise and slip through crowds unnoticed, but his usual techniques are failing him. He doesn’t know how to carry himself; his footsteps are too heavy and his center of gravity is off. 

Nureyev is a man of many names, many outfits, and many adjectives—but “clumsy” has never been a word that he’s ever found applicable to himself, except for the occasions when he feigns gracelessness in order to get what he wants. Nonetheless, it is the only word that can properly describe the way he’s walking now as he lumbers across the room, nearly tripping over another bundled up pile of clothes on the floor.

Perhaps if he had, he would’ve recognized the old, ratty trench coat lying there, thus making his next discovery slightly less shocking. Or perhaps nothing could have prepared him for what he sees once he successfully makes his way to the vanity.

Peter Nureyev looks in the mirror, and Juno Steel looks back at him.

At first he recoils, his body tensing up at the sight of the lady that had walked out on him, convinced for a moment that he must have somehow appeared in the apartment—that the mirror is instead a window, and Juno is on the other side of it. But the man in the mirror recoils and tenses with him.

He looks down at his hands again, and he recognizes them. He runs a finger across a jagged scar on his arm and recalls doing the same six months ago, in that hotel room. His hands move to his head and instead of smooth, gel-damaged hair, he touches tightly coiled locks. Even his breathing, short and fast, doesn’t sound like his own.

“Uh, are you all right?” the woman asks.

This isn’t real. This is a dream—or worse, a hallucination crafted by the Executives. Except that the Executives already have everything they need from him, and as all-knowing as they may seem sometimes, they do not know Juno Steel well enough to be able to replicate every tiny detail of his face and body. They do not know what he looks like when he’s in the midst of total, overwhelming panic.

First rule of thieving: do not give in to distress. Stay calm, even in the most dire of situations—

Heart rate elevated. Consider taking a break for meditation.

Nureyev chokes out a gasp. The voice that had just spoken in his head wasn’t his own, wasn’t Juno’s, wasn’t even Mag’s. It was emotionless, cold, robotic. Unfamiliar. He looks around for an external source but finds none. The woman in the bed is looking at him with the same confused, pitying expression of a hyper-train passenger witnessing a public breakdown in the next car over. 

He hears a comms beep on the bedside table. The woman doesn’t reach for it, just looks at him expectantly, so it must not be hers. It certainly isn’t Nureyev’s; the brand is too antiquated and when he stumbles over to grab it, there’s no passcode to enter. A lapse in security he would never allow. But Juno Steel might.

He accepts the call with numb fingers, pleading with the universe for answers.

A gruff, older voice says, “Rise and shine, Juno. There’s work to be done.” 

Juno Steel knows there is something wrong the moment that he awakes. Namely: he can’t see anything.

He squints and rubs his eyes, but the haze doesn’t clear. Ramses had warned him there might be side effects as he gets used to the Theia Spectrum, but this is a little worse than a headache or a few quickly-fading spots in his vision. Everything is blurry, like he’s looking at it through a fogged shower door.

What the hell?

He pushes himself upright, and the momentum carries him further than he expects. With his shitty joints and sturdy build, it usually takes him more effort than that. Everything is… weird. The eerie phantom pain he’s grown accustomed to in his right eye socket, present even with the Spectrum installed, has completely vanished. His limbs feel lighter, not stiff from old wounds that had healed improperly. Even his breathing feels different.

It’s only when he looks around for his comms that he registers where he is, and that it isn’t anywhere he recognizes. Through the blur he determines that he’s in a barren, sterile-looking bedroom, almost as small and empty as the pod hotel rooms in Hyperion’s business district. 

Fuck. Just how drunk did he get last night?

He remembers going home with someone, a woman whose name he no longer recalls, but not much else. Is this her place? The comms he finds on the bedside table isn’t his, nor can he determine the passcode to unlock it. It must belong to her.

“Hey, uh, Theia. You’ve got that scanning feature, right? Can you tell me where I am?” he asks out loud. “Ground control to the cybernetic eyeball, you wanna help me out… here…”

He trails off, suddenly comes to terms with something that he has no way of explaining.

That wasn’t his voice.

“...Hello,” he tries. That word comes out wrong too, deeper and smoother than it’s supposed to. “Okay, what the hell is going on right now?”

Thirty-eight is too young to have a stroke, right? He really does not want to be having a stroke right now. Maybe this is just the worst hangover of his entire life. He fumbles for the comms again, and as he does, his hand knocks something else off the bedside table. When he reaches down to pick it up, he recognizes it as being a pair of glasses.

Without thinking, he slips them onto his face. As if a random pair of glasses, likely owned by a total stranger, might somehow fix his newly acquired vision problems.

Even more perplexingly, it does.

The room comes into focus, and with it Juno himself comes into focus too. He’d noticed something was off from the start, but chalked it up to a trick of the light or another spontaneous eye problem. Now, however, it’s undeniable. The hands he’s using are not his hands, the arms not his arms, and the slender, paler body he sees beneath him clothed only in a robe is not his body.

Someone must have slipped something into his drink last night. That’s the only explanation he can come up with right now, and it’s not a very good one, because this is way more real than any trip he’s ever been on. Even back in his twenties, on the good stuff only Cassandra knew how to get. 

There’s only one way to solve this. Juno might not be a particularly good private eye at the moment, but he’s still a private eye, and that means he’s good at gathering clues. First, the clues in his own mind—what does he remember from last night? He closes his eyes and tries to piece it together.

A night out at the seediest bar in downtown Hyperion, dancing and drinking until he forgot his own name.

A gorgeous woman named… Lana. No, Lyra. No, Lara. She’s grabbing his hand and asking if he’s looking for something more. 

She takes him back to her place. She knows all the right buttons to press and places to kiss, but all he can think about is the last person who’d touched him like this, and the way that man had spoken his name like a prayer to a holy goddess.

He falls asleep having satisfied neither of them, thinking about how if he had one more night with that man, he would tell him… tell him that…

Juno opens his eyes. Nope, not helpful.

If he’d taken or been given something, it would have kicked in earlier, and last night would be more of a void than it was. He remembers his shame and embarrassment all too well. So what’s the next theory?

He takes in the clues around him. This isn’t the apartment he fell asleep in; it’s somewhere else. There’s a bed, a bedside table—which now that he’s removed the glasses, sports only a comms unit he can’t access and an empty glass of water—a bathroom, a door, and a closet. No windows. The closet is the obvious next stop. If there’s anything else of note to be found in this room, it’ll have to be there.

He walks over to investigate it, and—

“Ow!”

He hisses out a string of expletives and rubs his forehead. When did they start making closet door frames so low?

No… when did he get so tall?

There are only a couple pairs of shoes and one full outfit hanging in the closet: a silk shirt in a size Juno could never fit into and a smart tweed suit. He runs a hand along the suit jacket, then slips his fingers into one of the front pockets. It’s deeper than he’d imagined, and far from empty.

He extracts the contents one by one, tossing them back onto the bed after inspecting each of them: a crumpled up condiment packet. A travel-sized bottle of pomade. A couple of individually wrapped mints. A hand mirror. A takeout menu with a comms number scrawled on it. A multi-tool. And then—an ID.

The name written on the ID is one that he doesn’t recognize. Jaymes Mansa, born on Saturn, 35 years old. The picture, on the other hand…

It’s impossible, obviously, but when he roots through the other pocket he only finds more proof: a cologne with a scent he’d know anywhere. A plasma knife. A set of lock-picking tools. And perhaps most damning of all: a crumpled up, very crude doodle of something that might be a cat or might be a lawn chair.

It’s him.

Everything here belongs to him.

Juno half collapses back onto the bed, surrounded by the accoutrements of a master thief with an eye for shiny things and a heart that had been too big for Juno to carry. Only when it jabs him in the shoulder blade does he remember the existence of the hand mirror, which he then pulls out from under him.

He opens it, and what he’d already deduced but had been unable to accept is finally confirmed. The face in the mirror is Peter Nureyev.

Juno reaches up and runs a finger along Nureyev’s sharp cheekbones, tracing the shape of his dark eyes and thin lips. His hands move downward, mapping a body that he has touched before but doesn’t belong to him. Smooth tan skin. Ribs just a little too prominent. Legs long and nimble and nothing like Juno’s.

Hell. Six months ago Juno had been able to read minds. Why wouldn’t this happen?

Why wouldn’t he wake up in the body of the man he’d betrayed?

He doesn’t know what could have possibly caused this, but regardless of what it was, he needs to figure out where the hell he is and how to get back to Mars. If this nightmare is tech related, Rita might be able to help him. If it’s something else… well, he’ll figure it out. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s solving a mystery.

The bathroom is totally bare except for some basic hair and skincare products, which means there aren’t any more answers in this room. He’ll just have to look outside of it, then. He slips on one of the pairs of shoes in the closet, some wedge heels that it takes him a few steps to remember how to walk in, and (doing a poor job of operating Nureyev’s gangly limbs) unsteadily makes his way to the door.

Right as he’s reaching for the handle, it slides open. He jumps back, only narrowly avoiding tripping over himself. 

Four identical men stand on the other side of the door. They’re all wearing plain black suits and—more alarmingly—all have virtually identical faces, as though someone has taken the idea of a mid-level executive at an office supply company and photocopied it into multiple different human beings.

“Good morning, associate. It is good to see you,” says the man who’d opened the door. His voice is smooth and lacking inflection, teetering on the edge of robotic but somehow too intentional to read as totally computer-generated.

“We have a task for you to complete,” says the man to his right in the same voice. “Your next job. Do you accept?”

“Associate? What is wrong?” the man to his left asks. 

As Juno struggles to find his voice, they keep talking in perfect tandem, one never speaking over another.

“Do you accept?”

“This job will be very lucrative. Should you succeed, it will cover the equivalent of three payment periods.”

“I recommend that you accept.”

“Do you accept, Mister Nureyev?”

Hearing that name sends a shock down Juno’s spine. 

No one is supposed to know it, right? For a second he considers that Nureyev might have lied about that, lied about everything, but no. Juno had seen into his mind. He knows exactly why Nureyev keeps his name hidden, and if this unsettling collection of clones is familiar with it, then… that can only spell trouble. As if everything else about this hasn’t already.

“Fuck,” Juno says.

The men tilt their heads in unison, staring at him quizzically. “Mister Nureyev?”

If he’s going to get through this and find a way back to his home and his body, he’s going to have to do a better job than that.

“Uh. I mean…” He swallows. “Oh, dear?”

Chapter Text

I meant every word I said, Juno. It will be quite an adventure. I’ll be waiting for you to join me. 

Signed, 

Your Better Half, Peter Nureyev 

Nureyev folds the note up and slips it back into the pocket of the trench coat.

Juno has kept it all this time. He doesn’t have the time to dwell on that, nor on the fact that Juno is apparently in a place in life where he has drunken one night stands with strangers. At least, he can assume the “drunken” part from the raging hangover that is currently making its home inside his skull.

A small, shameful part of him recalls what the woman had mentioned about Juno’s “performance” last night with perverse self-satisfaction; Juno had certainly had no trouble with that on the night they had spent together.

Not that it had mattered.

Outside the window of the luxury car, the city of Hyperion passes by in a blur. Nureyev has to do a double take every time he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the glass. Now that he’s overcome his initial shock at the current circumstance and knows to look for it, the Theia Spectrum sticks out like a sore thumb, much brighter than its organic counterpart.

Once upon a time, Nureyev had offered Juno Steel a cybernetic eye and a chance at adventure. When Juno had walked away from them—from him—Nureyev had hoped he’d miscalculated—that his assumptions were misplaced, and Juno simply had no interest in such things. But here he is with the most cutting-edge cybernetic that money can buy, courtesy of a mayoral candidate who’s hired him as a right hand man. He had wanted those things, just not from Nureyev, and not how Nureyev had offered them.

All of which feels secondary to the very perplexing, very worrying fact that Nureyev is now inside of Juno’s body. And not in the manner that he might have once preferred.

“You’re being uncharacteristically quiet, boy. I’ve never known Juno Steel to hold his tongue.”

Nureyev cringes at the voice coming through his comms. He hasn’t met O’Flaherty yet, but he’s spent most of this limousine ride doing as much research into him as he can. Scrolling through article after article, slipping into databases and city hall servers and census reports, past firewalls that his brief stint as a Dark Matters officer had given him the water to put out. He’s learned a decent amount of information in the past fifteen minutes:

Ramses O’Flaherty is a philanthropist.

Ramses O’Flaherty is an executive at a popular local entertainment conglomerate.

Ramses O’Flaherty has created dozens of soup kitchens and activist organizations in the greater Hyperion area.

Ramses O’Flaherty did not exist until thirty years ago.

More precisely—a different man existed thirty years ago, who then shed his skin and became Ramses instead. Nureyev knows that game well, has been a hundred different men in his own lifetime. So what lies underneath? If he pulls back the mask, what will he find? He isn’t one to judge another for hiding their past, but he also knows from experience that no one erases themselves that thoroughly without good reason.

Nureyev coughs into his hand. This is a performance like any other, and the role? A brooding, obstinate detective who can’t seem to accept a good thing when it’s laid out on a silver platter in front of him. 

“Are we going to arrive at the damn place soon, or what?” he says.

The stubborn-as-a-child-in-a-supermarket voice must do the trick, because O’Flaherty just chuckles and says, “Indeed. The Fortezza is just through this gate.”

Nureyev is familiar with the Fortezza; it would be remiss for a thief such as himself to be unaware of such a notable prison. It’s a well-trodden joke among the criminals of this sector of space that if you’re going to get thrown in lock-up, it might as well be in the Fortezza. The place is less of a prison and more of a retirement home for crooks and murderers that are too old or tired to keep up the cat-and-mouse game with the authorities any longer.

“Places like the Fortezza are first on my list when it comes time to do good in Hyperion City,” O’Flaherty tells him as the limousine pulls through the gate and Nureyev takes in the rather grisly and certainly ostentatious art display in the prison square. “So you can understand why someone who benefits from that corruption might not be my biggest fan.” 

Nureyev is familiar with the Proctor as well, though he’s not about to admit why. (The Arcturan Criminal Collectors’ Card Set had been a staple among the Pests. He remembers having to trade two Arcana Latelys and one Proctor for a Jet Siquliak, back in the day.) The fact that she’s fallen so far as to take up a cushy life in a place like this makes Nureyev’s nose wrinkle with disdain. Or—Juno’s nose, he supposes.

O’Flaherty greets him in the square, next to the defaced effigy that the Proctor has created of him. There’s something familiar about the old man. Nureyev has never met him before, but perhaps there’s an inherent kinship between those who hide their names. 

“Well, Juno,” O’Flaherty says. “My speech is in four hours time—which is exactly when the Proctor intends to shoot me. Which means you have four hours to figure out how she’s going to do it and stop her.”

He’s mobbed by reporters eventually, leaving Nureyev to explore the Proctor’s quarters alone. The guard at the front takes Juno’s blaster from him, but makes the mistake of not patting him down for any other weapons. The plasma knife stays hidden in the sleeve of the trenchcoat, where he’d been very pleased to discover it this morning. At least Juno still has some sense of self-preservation.

But Nureyev doesn’t have time for this. 

It’s of no interest to him whether a mayoral candidate for a city he’d never wanted to visit again lives or dies. The only reason he had heeded O’Flaherty’s call was to get a better picture of the situation he—and therefore Juno—is currently in. He doesn’t have time to linger any longer. He needs to get back to his own body, back to where he’s supposed to be, before he falls behind on payments and loses… loses what he’s spent all these years dragging himself through the stars for.

There is also one very, very important question that he needs answered: If I have awoken in Juno’s body, does that mean he has awoken in mine?

His hand curls into a fist around Juno’s comms. He could call his burner comms, hoping that he picks up on the other end.

“Quite a lot of noise out there today,” a voice croaks before he can ponder that idea any further. “Something very exciting must have happened.”

Nureyev tenses. The Proctor. He stays perfectly silent, waiting for her to speak again so he can pinpoint where her voice is coming from.

“Tell me about yourself,” she continues. To his right… the bed. She must be the human-shaped lump under the covers, but something about her voice sounds wrong. “I take a great interest in my guests. You have to, when you have... so few of them.”

Just another role, Nureyev reminds himself. “I am… Juno Steel. Private Eye.”

“I expected Ramses would send someone to pester me. I just thought it might be someone I’d actually heard of.”

“I’ve heard of you, ‘Proctor.’” Nureyev narrows his eyes. “How the mighty have fallen. From completing some of the most famed heists in Solar history to becoming a glorified stool pigeon.”

“The HCPD asks for my help. I do not say no. Why shouldn’t I comply with my local authorities?”

He’s already tired of the back and forth. He scans the room, filled with ornate decorations and paintings that must be worth thousands. There’s something disgusting about it—the way that so many on Nureyev’s home planet don’t even have consistent access to electricity, and all the while serial killers in Hyperion City are treated like kings so long as they play nice with the police. If he still had her trading card, he’d tear it in half.

There’s a confession sitting on a desk by the door. Perfect. He doesn’t want to put any more effort into this irritating task than necessary, but—despite the more bitter inclinations of his soul—it’s also not his intention to irreparably damage Juno’s reputation and career. The faster he can save the old man and get out of here, the better.

He slips it into his pocket beside the other note and makes for the exit.

“Goodbye, Detective,” the Proctor croaks. “See you again. Soon.”

He ignores that ominous final word, which he soon discovers is a terrible mistake—about the same time that he realizes that the guard who had taken his blaster has been replaced by a mannequin with "ART 101” drawn crudely over its visage. Typical.

He hurries towards the elevator, but he’s hardly run twenty steps before his lungs start burning, his breath coming out in too-short gasps. How could he forget? He’s currently piloting the body of Juno Steel: private eye, ex-police officer, and known asthmatic. Damn it all.

He reaches the elevator, slamming one hand on the button to call it and using the other to clutch his chest. It’s a terrifying feeling, like his throat has closed up to the size of a straw. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was dying or hyperventilating. But no, this is just what happens when Juno Steel runs.

(He wonders if Juno had lost his breath when he had run from Nureyev. He doesn’t let himself think about it long.)

He waits for a breathless thirty seconds, but the elevator doesn’t come. He’s trapped here, and “trapped” is the last thing that Nureyev ever wishes to be. He’d been so caught up in the Proctor’s game and pretending to be Juno that he hadn’t followed the first rule of thieving, hadn’t plotted his escape routes in advance. Careless.

“AaaaAAAAAAhhHHHH!”

Nureyev nearly jumps out of his skin as the wail erupts through the air, but only nearly—perhaps if he’d been a little more startled, his consciousness might have exited this respiratorially challenged body and found its way back to his own.

The scream gets louder and louder as heavy footsteps pound towards him. Nureyev goes for his knife, suddenly very grateful that he’d managed to avoid giving it up. He slips around the corner and presses his back against the wall, waiting for his mystery opponent to arrive.

Scanning heat signatures. At current rate, the target will be within reach in four seconds. 

Every time he manages to forget the cybernetic resting in his eye socket, it speaks and reminds him of its unpleasant existence. Unpleasant, yes, but useful in this case.

Three…

Two…

One…

Nureyev spins around the corner, a little less gracefully than he’d have liked now that he’s controlling a very different body, and goes right for the throat.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, please, I don’t wanna die, please don’t kill me—”

The man Nureyev is currently threatening doesn’t seem particularly… well, threatening. He’s wearing a guard uniform, but appears to have no weapons on his person and has thrown up his arms in immediate surrender, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Please! I’ve got a dad and three kids at home and they really need me—no, that was a lie, I’ve just got the dad but he’s gonna be real upset if I get murdered and—hey, wait a second.”

The man opens one eye, and then both of them, and suddenly a huge grin spreads over his face despite the fact that Nureyev hasn’t removed the knife from his neck.

“I know that annoyed sigh! Jayjay, good buddy, is that you?!” he exclaims. “I can’t believe it! Oh, with all that bangin’ around upstairs and the Proctor’s creepy laugh all laughin’ around, I thought I was deader than a doornail’s funeral!”

Back in his own body Nureyev and this man would have been similar heights, but right now he has to crane his neck to look him in the eye. And suddenly he recognizes this tall, gangly, goofy-looking man. 

Ramses isn’t the only person he’s researched extensively; he’d spent more than a few nights looking into Juno’s past after their run-in at the Kanagawa mansion. He’d seen yearbook photos of Juno arm in arm with this man, newspaper clippings of them getting arrested together. What was his name? Ah, yes—

“It’s good to see you again too… Bartholomew,” he tries.

The man stops short, blinking at him. “...Jay? You feeling all right?

“Of course,” Nureyev says, struggling to remember any useful information about Bartholomew Mercury. He knows that Juno had gone to school with him and that they’d both been friends with Agent Wire, but beyond that… the nature of their relationship is largely a mystery to him. Would Juno be surprised to see him here, or does he know that his old friend and classmate is a guard at the Fortezza?

“Bet you’re surprised to see me here, Jayjay!” Mercury says helpfully. “I told yah I’d get my act together eventually, didn’t I? Well, now you’re looking at the Fortezza’s newest private security guard: Officer Mick Mercury, King of Security!”

Mick Mercury. That’s what Nureyev has been missing, though he doesn’t have the foggiest idea where that nickname came from. It certainly doesn’t sound like it’s short for Bartholomew. “Congratulations, Mick.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Jay, how could a leech like me get a job like—Oh.” Mercury stops. “Thanks, buddy. Whoa, cool new eye!”

Nureyev brushes past Mercury, only half-listening to his inane ramblings about how he’d sought out this job as a way to return to the dangerous escapades of his youth. The elevator isn’t working and the guard is gone, and there can only be one person responsible. He strolls back to the Proctor’s room, fists clenched at his side. He doesn’t have time for this.

“Back again so soon?” the Proctor rasps.

Nureyev levels his best morally righteous scowl at her bed. “Let us out of here.”

“You have several exams to pass first.”

The Spectrum had alerted him of Mick’s approach, but it’s not indicating any heat signatures in this room. That, combined with the eerie stillness of the lump in the bed, makes a theory form in Nureyev’s mind. He extracts the plasma blade from the lining of the trenchcoat, takes aim, and tosses it directly at the Proctor-shaped lump.

“JayJay!” Mercury yelps. “I know she’s scary an’ evil an’ all, but you can’t just go around murdering folks without… huh.”

The knife has stuck into the bedsheets with a quiet thud, and without any of the screaming or bloody fanfare that would have accompanied it had there actually been a living person on the mattress. Nureyev stalks over and yanks off the sheets, revealing another mannequin. A shortwave comms is taped to its chest, the Proctor’s breathy cackle emanating from its speakers.

“Childish,” he hisses.

“Genius,” the Proctor corrects him.

A trap door creaks open above their heads and a rope ladder falls from it, dangling in front of Nureyev and Mercury.

“It’s about time you passed Intro to Theater. And to think, that’s just the beginning of tonight’s education! Aren’t you lucky? Now untape the comms from the mannequin and take it with you up the ladder. You’ll need me up there.”

Nureyev has no interest in doing anything this two-bit, has-been HCPD lap dog tells him to do. Unfortunately, he can also see no other way out. He climbs the ladder, which is much more difficult in Juno’s heavy boots and unwieldy coat than it would have been in his own sleek, breathable heist-wear. 

The trap door leads to a dark, dusty room that immediately makes him start coughing again. Mick climbs up next to him and casually thumps him on the back, so Nureyev assumes that Juno’s dreadful lungs are something he’s already intimately familiar with.

The Proctor’s voice crackles over the comms. “Alright, gentlemen, here’s your first test for the evening: a unit test for Applied Chemistry. Question one: during the War, Doctor Milla Veranov of the Outer Rim developed an incredibly deadly poison for interrogating enemy captives. What was it called?” 

Nureyev knows the answer. Veranov is from the same area of space as him, and he’s both used and been a victim of her creations multiple times over the past two decades. But would Juno know? Most likely; Juno Steel is many things, but Nureyev can’t accuse him of not being clever. “Hourglass venom,” he says.

“Very good. And how was it used for those interrogations?” 

“It is a slow-acting poison with a fast-acting antidote. Inject the poison, and the person you’re questioning watches themselves dying. The very moment they give up the intel, you can cure them.”

“Correct. And question three: where can hourglass venom be found right now?” 

Mercury raises his hand like a kid in class who’s excited that he finally recognizes a particular math equation. “Oh, I got this one! Outer Rim! You just said Outer Rim—”

There’s a popping sound, and Nureyev feels something jab into his neck. He hisses in pain and grabs it, wrenching the syringe out of his neck as quickly as he can, but he knows it’s already too late.

“Incorrect, I’m afraid. The correct answer was ‘in the syringes I’ve just shot into your necks.’”

“Forgive me, but I don’t know that I would call that an exam,” Nureyev says through gritted teeth.

“Argue the semantics all you like. I am your Proctor for the day, and you will take my exams, and you will succeed… if you want the hourglass antidote. Now, if you’ll allow me, we’ll be moving along to Contemporary Literature. Open your textbooks, please, to ‘The Ballad of Mick and Juno…’” 

“Hey, that’s us!” Mick exclaims. Nureyev resists the urge to roll his eyes, then drops the resistance and does it anyway, because eye rolling is a very Juno Steel thing to do.

They roll almost all the way back into his head as he listens to the Proctor’s “ballad”, as well. It’s a long-winded, poorly-written poem with no rhyme scheme or meter to be found, that amounts to a very simple statement: if one of them shoots the other, they’ll receive an antidote to the poison without having to pass whatever equally banal exams she still has in store for them.

“Shoot my best friend?! No way, no way. Never even think about it!”

Best friend. Ah. So that’s the nature of their relationship.

With a thump, another trap door opens in the ceiling and two pistols clatter to the ground at their feet. Nureyev isn’t an expert on guns, but he recognizes these two as being antiques—the kind of heavy, brutal weapons that were used before the invention of blasters. The kind that doesn’t have a stun setting.

“Sing, oh Muse, of these two seekers of knowledge! ” the Proctor wails. “Would they betray one another to save their own hides… or stand together to the death?” 

Nureyev picks one of the pistols up off the floor, weighing it in his hand. He hardly knows how to use the thing, but if push comes to shove… he can figure it out.

“I’ll never shoot you, Jay,” Mick informs him, wringing his hands. “And you’ll never shoot me. Right? Jayjay?”

Nureyev’s eyes leave the pistol to study Bartholomew “Mick” Mercury, instead. Over the past twenty minutes, he’s been able to create what he feels is a fairly accurate appraisal of the man in his mind. Mick Mercury is, in short, what would happen if you gave a Plutonian golden retriever the ability to walk upright and speak, and also forced it to wear a security guard uniform. He’s kind in the way that one can only be when they’re too ignorant to know better.

And yet he’s best friends with Juno Steel. How had that happened?

“Of course not,” Nureyev replies, tucking the pistol into Juno’s empty holster. He’ll determine later whether he’s telling the truth.

“Good,” Mick says nervously. “You know, how come it feels like every time I see you we get trapped in some lunatic’s crazy murder-game?”

“I… hmm.” Nureyev has always assumed that his and Juno’s run-in with the bloodthirsty Cecil Kanagawa had been a one-off bit of bad luck, but if Mick is to be believed, that’s just a regular Tuesday for Juno Steel.

Their first “real” exam comes in the form of some mannequins lined up against a wall, with papers taped to their chests that state their names and a button resting in front of each of them. As Juno and Mick walk into the room, the Proctor starts to ramble off some sort of puzzle they’re meant to solve in order to determine which button to press and advance to the next room.

“...Sage, Vladimir, Aisha, and Sponge walked down the road together side-by-side, holding hands. Two wore shirts of red, and two wore shirts of blue; but none would stand next to another wearing the same color shirt…”

The Proctor prattles on, but Nureyev has never been particularly interested in puzzles. The only puzzles he enjoys are the practical variety—like hotwiring a car or tricking a security camera or picking a lock. These sort of brain twisters are dull and infuriating.

Luckily, there’s always more than one way out of any room.

They can’t go down; that would be pointless. And there are no windows on this floor. The obvious conclusion is to look up —and sure enough there’s another trap door there, connected to the mannequins by a wire. The contraption holding the door closed looked complicated, but not outside of the realm of locks that Nureyev is familiar with. The only trouble is figuring out how to reach it.

“Mick, I need you to lean down.”

Mercury does so without question, and also doesn’t question when Nureyev clambers onto his shoulders. Nureyev has never had one before, but he wonders if this is what it means for someone to be your best friend—that they’re willing to hoist you onto their shoulders to help you pick a lock without question or hesitation.

That doesn’t mean Mick doesn’t eventually have complaints, however. “Y-you know Jayjay, we aren’t little kids anymore. You aren’t as small as you were when you were—”

“There. It’s done.”

The trap door in the ceiling swings open, another ladder spilling out of it. Nureyev tries to hop gracefully down from Mick’s shoulders, but he still hasn’t gotten used to the shape of this body, and instead finds himself slamming heavily into the ground. He lets out a hiss of pain through his teeth. Juno’s knees are atrocious. 

“You okay there, Jay?”

“Never better. Come along, Mick.”

Mick stares up at the newly opened trap door. “Whoa. Being a private eye really teaches you all kinds of skills! Hey, Jay, do you think I should become a private eye too?!”

“I don’t advise it.”

“‘I don’t advise it,’” Mick mimics him. “Why are you talking all fancy like that, Jayjay? It’s weird.”

Nureyev ignores him, climbing into the next room. It is, predictably, just as full of mannequins as the last one. He grimaces and clutches his head, which throbs at the same time as his stomach. Slow-acting poisons are always the worst ones. There’s no screaming pain, just a subtle, creeping dread, like your body has been turned into a ticking clock—each tick whispering at you that you’re going to die soon. 

Nureyev is intimately familiar with that feeling. He’s been battling against another body’s ticking clock for a long, long time.

Mick lets out an unpleasantly wet, wrenching cough. “Jeez, buddy, I really don’t feel so good.”

Nureyev is focused on the ceiling, already eyeing the next trap door. This one is a little higher, but if he can find something to climb, he should still be able to reach it.

“I educate you... I craft these tests for you with my own blood, sweat, and mannequins... and this is how you show your appreciation? You cheat?”

Nureyev has spent many years learning to anticipate the movements of other human beings. He can smell the sweat of an approaching guard, recognize the anticipatory breathing of an adversary that’s about to attack. Unfortunately, none of his tried-and-tested techniques apply to creatures that neither breathe nor sweat.

The mannequin’s arm is around his throat and choking him out before he can even register that it has come to life. He claws at its wooden limbs desperately, some feral urge unlocked in him to bite and scratch and tear like he had when captured by constables as a young Pest. But mannequins feel no pain, and even if they did, Juno’s teeth are blunt and not good for causing genuine harm. Nureyev spits out a splinter, struggling to breathe again, this time due to the deadly embrace.

“Let go of my best friend!”

With one very impressive heave, the mannequin is yanked off of him. Nureyev watches Mercury kick it into submission and rubs his bruised throat.

“Thank you, Mick,” he croaks, trying not to think about what a positively mortifying death that would have been. If he’s going to die at the hands of a criminal, he hopes it’s one that’s far more impressive than the Proctor.

Mick stops with his foot raised over the wooden doll, prepared to stomp it one last time, and stares at him. “What?”

“...I said, thank you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But then I thought, wow, Mercury, you really oughta get your hearing checked. Because if Jayjay just thanked you, that’ll make it only the second time in twenty years.” He grins dopily. “Two more times than I expected! You’re welcome, Jay!”

This man and his relationship to Juno are… fascinating to Nureyev. For all that he claims to be Juno’s best friend, he doesn’t seem to have been treated very well by him. In some ways, that’s a relief—Nureyev isn’t alone in having been burned by Juno Steel. Perhaps he treats everyone he knows just as poorly as he’d treated Nureyev, when he’d walked out on that night.

Stop thinking about that night.

He’s told himself that many times over the last six months, but it’s a considerably harder feat now. Still, there are more pressing concerns to focus on as they climb up into the next room and the Proctor’s games continue.

“The equation is simple, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you any hints on this one,” she says once they enter. She doesn’t seem as upset about them cheating anymore, which isn’t reassuring—because it probably means that it will be much more difficult to cheat at this particular task. “You will find it written over the doorway you must pass through… and you will find the answers you seek on its other side.” 

Nureyev sets his jaw. He has no interest in whether O’Flaherty lives or dies, but there are… other concerns. “What about the antidote? You claimed that we would receive it if we pass your ‘exams’.” 

“Oh, if you solve this test, Mr. Steel, you will certainly have found the antidote. Though I must say, that’s a big ‘if.’ Good luck.”

Above the door is a very simple diagram: a stick figure minus a skull and crossbones, equals a picture of an open door.

“Is that Algebra? I was never any good at Algebra…” Mick moans. 

The door will only open when they’re not poisoned anymore. The only way out of this is to find the antidote, and the Proctor has already made it abundantly clear how said antidote can be attained.

Nureyev pulls the pistol out of Juno’s holster and turns it over in his hands. He’s never been fond of guns; they’re terribly graceless, impersonal things. At least blasters have the benefit of being quiet and preventing a mess, but the old fashioned variety like this one will do no such thing.

First rule of thieving: study all available exits. Actually do it this time, you fool.

This room has no trapdoors, and when he attempts to pick the lock to the exit door, he’s met with a shock of electricity that is unpleasantly familiar. What he wouldn’t give to no longer be tortured via electric shock by old women who are far too passionate about their chosen fields. 

Mick gives the door a kick as well, which does nothing to improve the situation but does cause him to complain loudly about his stubbed toe.

“All that yelling about us cheating, and now she’s cheated us too! It isn’t fair!” the man groans loudly. “This isn’t an exam; it’s just a death trap!”

Nureyev can feel the poison seeping deeper and deeper, phlegm filling his lungs and threatening to drown him. No—not his lungs. Juno’s.

What happens if Juno’s body dies? Does Nureyev die with it, or does his consciousness return to where it’s meant to be? Either way, it will mean Juno Steel as Nureyev had known him will be gone forever. This body that he’d once held in his arms and cherished with his lips will fail and rot, all because he couldn’t solve some has-been’s riddle. Unless…

Nureyev undoes the safety on the gun. 

“Jay…? What are you doing? Don’t even think about it, Jayjay, your life is worth more than—Oh. Uh…”

Mick falls silent, frozen, as Nureyev points the gun at his head. He’d assumed that Nureyev was going to point it at himself, because that’s what Juno would have done. But he is not Juno Steel.

Mick shakes off his paralysis long enough to raise his hands in cautious surrender. “Jay… don’t do this.”

Nureyev is no stranger to murder, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it. Normally, he sees it as an unfortunate necessity in his line of work, something he neither seeks out nor tries particularly hard to avoid. But he likes to think that almost everyone he’s killed has been killed for a purpose—they were trigger-happy guards that he’d needed to protect himself from or pompous aristocrats who would have reported him to the authorities for stealing just a fraction of their unethically hoarded wealth.

Mick Mercury has done nothing wrong. For all that Nureyev knows, he is a purely innocent party. Not only that, but just a few precious minutes ago he might very well have saved Nureyev’s life. He shouldn’t have to die, and if he does… Juno will never be able to forgive Nureyev for that. This man is, supposedly, one of his oldest and closest friends. There’s no coming back from this. Nothing that Nureyev could say or do to make up for what he’s about to do.

But Juno doesn’t need to forgive him. He needs to survive.

That’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? Nureyev can pretend he’s doing it to protect himself, since he’s the one currently inhabiting Juno’s body, but that’s not his primary motivation. Even after all this time, he doesn’t want Juno Steel to die. How foolish.

First rule of thieving: no regret. No remorse. Do what you have to do.

He pulls the trigger.

“Jayjay, please, think of all that we’ve been through! Remember that time when we were fourteen and Mx. Grey asked me if I was the one who spray-painted his cat blue and it was actually you, but I—”

“Mercury.”

“Huh?” Mick opens his eyes and slowly lets his hands fall from where they’d been desperately shielding his face.

No bullet had come bursting from the pistol, and no blood and brains had splattered across the wall. Instead, a small, thin syringe has embedded itself in the palm of Mick’s hand.

Of course.

“The antidote was in the gun.” With one deft move, Nureyev pulls Mick’s pistol out of his shorts and points it at his own temple. He flinches as the needle pierces his skin, but as soon as it does, his head and lungs start to clear. He lets the gun drop to the floor, letting out a long-held breath. Why wouldn’t it have been in the gun? Even someone like the Proctor wouldn’t have created a test with no solution. Juno would have figured that out immediately.

“Did you know that, Mr. Steel?” the Proctor rasps. “Or did you really intend to murder your best friend?”

“Of course he knew!” Mick shouts at the speaker. “Jay would never shoot me on purpose! Right, Jay? You knew all along!”

Nureyev doesn’t answer. He’ll let Mercury make his own assumptions.

The door slides open automatically when they walk over to it, and the Proctor’s voice comes over the comms once more. “You’ve done well to make it this far, Mr. Steel, Mr. Mercury. Better than expected, I will admit... but this is the end of the line. Welcome to your Final Exam.” 

The last door opens to reveal a window with a clear view of the podium in the courtyard down below. O’Flaherty is standing there now in his well-pressed suit, preparing to address the crowd. This is the perfect location for the Proctor to shoot from, and yet she isn’t here. So where is she?

“Question one: where is the genius murderer? On the windowsill in front of you lies a long-range laser rifle. Enough to kill me, certainly… if you can find me.”

The rifle doesn’t have a stun setting either. He’ll have to aim carefully, or else risk Juno Steel being branded as a murderer of innocent civilians. He’s already come close enough to that today. 

There’s only one problem: Nureyev is a jack of many trades, but he is not a sharpshooter.

First rule of thieving: don’t get ahead of yourself. Focus on the next step. It doesn’t matter whether or not you can make a shot if you don’t even know where you’re shooting. 

Where would he hide if he were an aging, desperate, ex-murderer? Peter Nureyev would disappear amongst the crowd, slipping between bodies like a ghost. But the Proctor must have been down there since before the crowd formed, which means she’s hiding somewhere. Somewhere where she can be completely obscured from both the crowd and O’Flaherty’s view.

“The podium,” he hisses under his breath.

One shot to break the window, and then he aims the rifle directly at the stand where O’Flaherty is about to give his speech.

Target locked.

As much as he loathes to trust a cybernetic eye that he’d had no choice in obtaining, he knows it has a better chance of making the shot than he does. He breathes in, holds the gun as steady as he can, and shoots exactly where it tells him to.

“Augh!”

O’Flaherty’s security team surrounds the old man as he stoops over, clutching at his shoulder. The shot must have grazed him on its way to the Proctor (perhaps he ought to have told the man to duck, Nureyev muses belatedly), but… 

It had still hit its mark.

“Very well done, Mr. Steel. I underestimated you.” Even over the comms, Nureyev can hear the gurgle of blood in the Proctor’s throat. “I thought… I might finally meet my intellectual match today. But I was wrong. I underestimated… what a violent man you are.”

She’d made this test for Juno Steel. Juno would have solved the puzzles with ease, and without even considering shooting his best friend. He might have failed or he might have succeeded, but he wouldn’t have done what Nureyev did today.

Because he’s a good man, and Nureyev is… a thief. Nothing more.

The least Nureyev can do to make up for his utter failure to be Juno Steel, to be good , is to ask the questions he knows that Juno would have asked, ever-curious detective that he is. “Who hired you to do this?”

“You want to know who hired me to kill Ramses O’Flaherty? It was his worst enemy, of course.”

“That’s not an answer. You’re dying, Proctor. What do you have to lose?”

“Education is its own reward,” she wheezes. “Now here is your final riddle: In order to find Ramses’s enemy you must go home again… A frozen place, this home… a land of the past, of heroes, of justice... a place further than the inky blackness of space, yet as close as the heart of every child... Home, Mr. Steel. You’ll find Ramses’s enemy if you just go—”

Nureyev presses the power button on the comms, ending the call. If she’s not going to give him a straight answer, then he has no use for her dying words. 

He sees her writhe on the ground, hears her muffled shouts from down below. They’re too far away to be intelligible. She must have realized he’d turned off the comms and is trying to give her grand, final speech from afar.

Juno would have listened, but he isn’t Juno.

“You’re not Juno.”

Nureyev sets down the sniper rifle and turns to see Mercury watching him from a few yards away, his arms crossed defiantly over his chest.

Nureyev frowns. “What are you talking about, Mick?” How could you possibly have determined such a thing?

“You’re too nice, except when it counts. Which means you’re not my best friend,” Mercury says matter-of-factly. “The Jayjay I know is a real piece of work. He doesn’t know how to say thank you, or sorry, or ask for help. But when the chips are down, for better and for worse, he’d never choose himself over somebody else.”

“It was a matter of life and death.”

“Uh-huh. And the Juno Steel I know would never pass up a chance to go out in a blaze of glory trying to do the right thing. It’s the best and worst thing about you—about him.”

Nureyev remembers being on the wrong side of a door, pounding on it and begging Juno to stop throwing himself atop the grenade alone. Whether they truly are best friends or not, Mercury must know Juno well. 

“If I’m not Juno Steel, then who am I?” he asks.

Mercury seems to chew on this question for a moment, then points a determined, accusatory finger straight at Nureyev’s chest.

“You’re a pod person!”

Nureyev must admit, as much as he’d thought he’d gotten a hang of this man’s idiosyncrasies, he hadn’t been expecting that one. “A… pod person.”

“That’s right! You’re an alien that’s come down from the stars and stolen Jayjay’s skin! You better get out of him, you hear me? That’s my best friend whose body you’re riding around in! Go back to your own!”

Nureyev can’t hold back a soft, tired chuckle. “That’s the very thing I’m trying to do.”

“So you admit it!”

He puts up a hand, gently redirecting Mick’s finger away from his face. “It’s been a long day. You should go home.”

“Yeah, and you should go home, too! Back to whatever planet you came from!” Mick declares, but he doesn’t sound quite as enthusiastic anymore. He doesn’t stop Nureyev as Nureyev walks past him, but before he reaches the door, he says, “You… you weren’t actually gonna kill me, right? You knew about the antidote all along.”

Nureyev pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

“Yes, Mick,” he lies. “Of course I knew.”

Mercury is quiet as he slides the door open and walks out.

The scene of the near-crime is chaotic, so it’s easy enough to slip into the shadows behind the podium and watch from afar as the Proctor’s body is carried away and O’Flaherty continues his speech. Nureyev is only half listening; he has no stake in Martian politics and only a novice understanding of them, anyway.

Instead of paying attention, he opens up a browser on Juno’s comms and peruses until he finds what he’s looking for.

The Himavan Gala Stuns the Northern Rim For Fourth Year in a Row

Nureyev sighs as he reads the headline of the article in the Arcturus System Post. The rest of the article is merely a deluge of photos of beautiful gowns and quotes about how the gala had gone off without a hitch—which it shouldn’t have. He was meant to be there today, stealing the centerpiece of the event. Just one of many scores he’s going to lose, the longer he stays in this body. He was already behind on payments, and he’s going to have to make up for even more of them if he ever gets back to where—and who—he’s meant to be.

And that’s assuming that Juno isn’t currently destroying his career and everything he’s worked so hard for over the last twenty years.

He moves to swipe open the keypad and dial his own burner comms’ number. As much as he doesn’t want to speak to Juno right now, or ever, for that matter, he needs to find out whether the lady is currently piloting his body—and just how good or bad a job he’s doing of it.

Would you like to change your default language to [ BRAHMAN ] ?

Nureyev feels a chill run down his spine at the Spectrum’s sudden interjection. It takes him a second to realize why it’s asking: the article he’d just read was in Brahman. Is it connected to his comms?

Or can it simply see everything he sees?

Of course it can. It’s an eye, after all. But if it’s able to notice and change its setting based on what language he’s reading, what else can it do? If he types his own number into this comms, will it listen to the call? Will it hear Juno speak his real name? If Juno reveals anything about Nureyev’s body’s current location, will it know that too?

And who might it give that knowledge to?

His question is answered by the appearance of that strange, bright-eyed old man in front of him. Ramses O’Flaherty. As Juno’s employer and the one who’d paid for the Spectrum, any information it collects is surely able to be accessed by him. 

“That was a job well done, boy,” O’Flaherty says. “I owe you a word of thanks, though I suppose you also owe me a word of apology.”

Nureyev eyes him. His wound has been expertly patched up; with the kind of medicine he must have access to, it’ll likely be healed within the day. “I’m sorry. I could only see one angle at which to hit the Proctor.”

“Ah, well. You’re forgiven. It was a rather good shot, if you ignore the fact that I was in the way of it. You’re living up to your reputation as the best sharpshooter in Hyperion.”

What would Juno say? Not simply accept a compliment, surely. Nureyev taps his right temple. “This eye was responsible for most of it.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You must have solved plenty of the Proctor’s riddles in order to get to a position where you could take that shot.”

“I may not have played entirely by the rules.”

“Well, you know what they say. Rules are meant to be broken. Just don’t leak to the press that I said that.” O’Flaherty winks at him, eye twinkling.

Something about this man is making Nureyev’s skin crawl the longer he’s exposed to him. He’s so… personable. So determined to do good, no matter the cost. And what might that cost be? His own life? Juno’s?

The lives of an entire city, sent plummeting from the sky?

Nureyev shivers. Not everyone is as unlucky as you, he reminds himself. There’s no reason to believe that this man will harm Juno in the way… that man once harmed Nureyev.

“When I managed to listen despite the dreadful pain in my shoulder, I heard the Proctor mumbling something,” O’Flaherty muses. “She was speaking to you, wasn’t she?”

Nureyev nods. “Another riddle. She said that she was hired by your worst enemy, and that in order to get answers I would have to go… home. Or something to that effect.” 

O’Flaherty lets out a deep, belly laugh that hits Nureyev somewhere he doesn’t like. “An interesting place to strike… I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner.”

“You know the answer to the riddle.”

“I do, in fact.” 

The limousine that had brought Nureyev to the Fortezza touches down in the courtyard beside them, the wind from its thrusters making Juno’s trench coat rustle.

“My car will bring you where you need to go,” O’Flaherty says with a twinkle in his eye. “Go on, then.”

Nureyev glances at the door that the driver has opened for him, then back down at Juno’s comms. It’s still open to the keypad. Contacting his own burner or visiting his body’s last known location is too dangerous while the Spectrum is still in his head and O’Flaherty is breathing down his neck.

Even if it weren’t… he feels a bizarre, foolish need to see this through.

Whoever this man is and whatever his connection to Juno, Nureyev doesn’t trust him in the slightest. Perhaps that’s just what he wants to believe. He needs to believe that Juno isn’t leading a perfect, successful life without him. That there’s a worm in the apple, some poison in the well—or in the eye. 

You only care because you don’t want to lead that poison back to you, back to… him, he tells himself. That’s the only reason. It isn’t true, but it’s a nice thought—that he might no longer care about Juno Steel. Nureyev may be an expert in the skill of repression, but even he cannot pretend not to know his own fatal flaw. He’s always cared too much. There’s a reason he’s been in debt for all these years.

He tucks the comms back into his pocket and climbs into the limousine.

Chapter Text

Sometimes over the past six months, when Juno had been drunk on convenience store whiskey and feeling especially sorry for himself, he’d occupied himself by imagining what Peter Nureyev was up to.

There was always some glitz and glamor involved in the daydreams—a heart-pounding heist in a decadent mansion, a car chase in the clouds, a bank robbery involving several explosions. And, of course, a different flashy identity for each one. Some silly yet regal alias, like Alexander Kaiser, Tono Hyacinth, or… well, Juno was never very good at coming up with names. 

He’d tell himself that he was imagining these things as a source of comfort. He’s doing just fine without you, so you don’t have to worry that you hurt him. He never needed you anyway. You were just one stop on his grand adventure. But that hadn’t been the real reason. 

He’d just been wallowing in the idea of everything he’d walked away from, torturing himself with the knowledge that he’d be living a better, more beautiful life if only he’d managed to stay in that damn hotel room. The life of a master thief who answered to no one and whose name was Juno’s alone to keep.

“Answer me, Mister Nureyev. Do you have the money?”

The metal desk chair that Juno is seated in feels colder and harder by the moment. He’s doing his best to mimic Nureyev’s posture, sitting up straight with his legs crossed and his hands neatly folded, but he hates every second of it. The suited men stare at him from across the table with hard, empty eyes. One of them is tapping their shoe against the table leg, and the repetitive nature of the sound is starting to feel like water torture.

“I…” Juno swallows, running his tongue over Nureyev’s pointed canines. Does Nureyev have the money? How would he even know?

What he does know is that none of this is right. The Peter Nureyev that Juno had known wouldn’t have let some shadowy corporation push him around and demand all his funds. He was an adventurer, bouncing from star to star, never looking back.

But Juno hadn’t actually known him that well, had he? 

“He does not have the money,” the executive who was tapping his foot says finally. “He was not at the Himavan Gala last night, which means it is impossible for him to have accrued it.”

Last night. A missed job, one that Juno had probably slept through in his body. Dammit.

“Is this true, Mister Nureyev?”

Control your name and you control yourself. That was what Nureyev had told Juno not long after their first meeting, but apparently Juno had interpreted it incorrectly. He’d thought Nureyev was speaking as an example, living proof of the freedom that comes with controlling oneself entirely. But it hadn’t been a boast. 

It had been a warning.

“If it is,” Juno says carefully, “what happens then?”

The men look at each other with bemused expressions, like they hadn’t expected him to ask a question with what is—to them—such an obvious answer.

“Then you will have no choice but to heed our next request, else you will not make your payment in time,” the one on the right says. “And you must make your payment.”

Why had Juno never wondered why Nureyev was so desperate for money that he’d been willing to work for a genocidal anthropologist? Why had he never pondered how a man could be that skilled at thieving, but not live in the lap of luxury, drowning in stolen jewels and coins? Why had he never questioned it?

And why would a man as clever, skilled, and strong-willed as Peter Nureyev answer to people like this?

“Your payment is due at the end of the month, Mr. Nureyev. And you must pay it, one way or the other.” 

Something in the executive’s tone presses a button deep in the back of Juno’s mind, the same button that had been pressed by every shitty Oldtown High teacher or police captain or Kanagawa bodyguard that has stood in his way throughout his lifetime.

“Why?” he says.

Goddamn you, Juno Steel, and your inability to keep your big stupid mouth shut around authority figures.

The executive in the center cocks his head, staring at Juno with sunken, empty eyes. “I hope you haven’t forgotten what you are doing all this for,” he says.

“Do you need a reminder, Mister Nureyev?” says the man on the right.

“He is in the area for testing. Would you like to see him?”

“Yes, I think we ought to show Mister Nureyev to his room, my associates.”

“I agree, my associate.”

They stand up in unison, waiting patiently until Juno does the same, and then lead him back out into the hall.

Juno spends the ten minute walk speculating about what it is that might make a person like Peter Nureyev do all this. Despite his profession, Nureyev had never seemed particularly materialistic. Rich men seldom hoard condiment packets in their pockets or doodle on notebook paper for fun. The most expensive items that Juno had ever seen on Nureyev’s person were his clothes, and even they were just facsimiles—very good recreations of designer garments, never the real thing.

But they’d only spent a few weeks together, so who knows? Maybe he’s being led to a giant vault full of money or a vast collection of precious jewels.

“We have arrived,” an executive says, stopping at an unassuming gray door. He opens it for Juno and gestures for him to step inside. “We will leave you for a short period. When we return, we will tell you about your next job, and we expect that you will accept it.”

Juno walks through the door, hearing it slam shut behind him, and into a dimly-lit, white-walled room.

At the center of the room is a cluster of objects. One of them appears to be a bed, but it’s mostly obscured by a tangled mass of tubes, wires and machines. On one side a heart monitor thrums out a rhythm, and on another an aggregate of IV bags hang from a rack.

He’s only able to determine that there’s a person beneath all the clutter because the IV bags and heart monitor must be hooked up to something. It isn’t until he steps forward and leans down slightly, squinting through Nureyev’s thick glasses lenses, that he’s actually able to see them.

The figure in the bed looks about Juno and Nureyev’s age. His hair is a dull red, messy curls framing a gaunt, freckled face. His skin is a shade that probably used to be a warm brown when it still saw sunlight, but is now tinged by a grayer hue. He’s not visibly injured, but his limbs look skinny and atrophied, like it’s been a very, very long time since he last stood.

“Welcome back, Peter.”

Juno jumps upright, feeling like he’s been caught in the act of something indecent. A person in scrubs peeks their head around one of the machines and waves at him. Judging by their outfit and the ID card and stethoscope hanging around their neck, they’re a nurse.

“...Hello,” Juno says. Every time someone says Nureyev’s real name he feels more and more uneasy.

“I figured I’d see you soon.” The nurse’s face is wrinkled in sympathy. There’s recognition behind their eyes, and affection—and pity. Like they’ve seen the man whose body Juno is wearing visit this bedside many times. “No opportunity to pick up a fresh bouquet, then?”

Juno follows their eyes to a vase seated on the table next to the bed, filled with wilting white flowers. The art of floral identification has never been one of Juno’s strong suits, but he’s pretty sure they’re orchids. 

“How… uh, how is he?” Juno asks, which is a stupid question, but also the only one he can think to ask in this situation. It seems like it’s the one that the nurse is expecting, too, and they immediately jump into a detailed response.

“As of our last tests, we’ve seen a slight but noticeable increase in reaction to pain stimulus and more consistent pupillary response.” They flip a page on their clipboard. “Overall, his score on the Jovian coma scale has gone up. Only by a point, and it’s still low, but… it’s better than going down. I know we were hoping to see more improvements by now, especially in the category of verbal response, but we have to take our victories where we can.”

“...Thanks,” Juno says, trying to put on the expression of someone who totally understands what all of that means. All he can deduce is that it hadn’t seemed especially positive.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” the nurse says in a hushed tone, pulling a chair up beside the bed for him to sit in. “Be back in a few minutes to check vitals. You can turn him if you like, or I’ll do it during the check up.” 

They’re gone before Juno can respond. He hadn’t really wanted them to leave—being left alone here feels like being locked in a cemetery at night, kneeling at the grave of a stranger. But at least it means he doesn’t have to pretend to be Nureyev anymore.

He sits down in the chair and looks at the unconscious figure, watching the man’s chest rise slowly up and down. A scent tickles his nose as he does—one that is achingly familiar. It takes him back to his shitty apartment seven months ago, and a smell that had lingered on his couch and in his chest for far longer than it should have. More recently, he’d found the scent bottled in the pockets of the coat he’s now wearing.

He picks one of the blooms out of the bouquet and breathes in deeply. There it is; the scent of Nureyev’s cologne in its original form. Nureyev had taken the aroma of these orchids and carried it around with him, worn it on his body as… what? 

As a reminder?

Juno twiddles the orchid stem between his fingers. “Who are you?” he asks the sleeping man, as if he’s going to get an answer.

The patient doesn’t appear to be a blood relation, and Nureyev had never mentioned any family—but then again, Nureyev hadn’t mentioned a lot of things. He could be anyone. A brother, a friend, a lover. Either way, the depth of emotion that Nureyev feels for him is clear. In the bouquet of dying flowers that the nurse had expected him to replace, in the cologne he wears everyday, in the executives smug expressions as they’d led him to this door—as if they’d known that what was behind it was so precious that Nureyev would do anything for it.

This makes sense, now that Juno thinks about it. There’s only one thing in the galaxy he can imagine Peter Nureyev giving up his name for, and it’s love. 

After all, that’s why he gave it to Juno.

“Peter.”

He feels a hand on his arm, and looks up to find the nurse looking back down at him, their brow furrowed behind their glasses. He hadn’t even heard them re-enter.

“Don’t give up,” they say.

“I… uh…”

“I know Mister Jackson’s condition seems… unsalvageable. I know how many years it’s been and how hard you’ve worked for this, and I know it might seem like it’s for nothing, but… he could still be in there,” they continue. “If you’re able to find the right tech or give the bosses the right amount of money, it’s… They might bring him back.”

“I’m not giving up.” 

Juno doesn’t even know who the hell this guy is, but it’s obvious he means something to Nureyev. He wouldn’t have leased himself over to shady men in suits without reason. Juno’s already screwed him out of one job; he’s not going to mess up Nureyev’s life any further.

The nurse looks genuinely relieved. “Good. I just… I thought maybe…” They sigh. “You didn’t bring the flowers or greet him like you normally do. I wish I could promise you that he hears you when you talk and feels it when you kiss him, but I can’t. I just know he’s still alive in there, so please… don’t give up on—”

The door to the room slams open and the nurse immediately falls silent, retracting their hand. They step back beside the bed and bow their head slightly as the executives walk in.

“Mister Nureyev. I trust you’re ready to cooperate now?”

Juno swallows. “Uh, yeah. I guess so.”

Juno had left Nureyev to wake up alone in a hotel room after promising him that they were going to travel the stars together. He had undeniably betrayed him and forfeited any right to love or be loved by such a brilliant, enigmatic man. So he has absolutely no right to feel jealous of a coma patient for having been kissed by him.

He tries to convince himself of that as he follows the executives back to their office.

He only partially succeeds. 

“Your next job will be dangerous,” the suited man in the center says. “Arguably even more dangerous than your impersonation of a Dark Matters official, though we will provide you all of the permissions and fake IDs needed for the infiltration.”

Juno glares at his feet. “Tell me what it is and I’ll do it.”

The executives look pleased by his renewed vigor. “You will break into an institution housing the latest in cybernetic technology. They are pushing the boundaries when it comes to mechanical recreations of living creatures, and we require their tech in order to repair Mister Jackson’s body to a state in which it can be reawakened.”

Juno pins that information to his mental corkboard. So, all of this is about saving the man in the bed. “All right. Uh—very well. Give me a name and an address.”

The man on the right slides a folder across the table to him. “I doubt you’re familiar with the brand. They only arrived on the med-tech scene very recently, in the grand scheme of things. All the information you need is in that file.”

Juno flips it open to the first page. He doesn’t read more than a few words before he’s stopped in his tracks.

[ Interior Floor Plan of the Theia Research and Development Facility ]

“Small world,” he mutters once he’s able to choke down his surprise.

The executives tilt their heads in unison. “Hmm?”

“Nothing. Give me a second to collect my things and I’ll get the job done.”

Chapter Text

Nureyev has never been to an amusement park before.

To his knowledge, the only one on Brahma is located on the outer edges of New Kinshasa—because of course it is. It wasn’t only freedom and safety that the rich gatekept from them, but joy as well. He and the other Pests had fantasized about visiting it, inventing roller coasters and ferris wheels in their minds and pretending the stolen scraps they subsisted on were actually cotton candy.

Now that he’s here, the term “amusement park” seems less accurate. He’s feeling a lot of things, but amusement is not chief among them. A more accurate title might be “kitsch park” or “vaguely unsettling park”. Employees dressed in brightly colored costumes wave at them as they walk by, phony smiles plastered on their faces like clothes taped to paper dolls.

The one upside of all this is that there is not a chance in the galaxy that Juno Steel would enjoy a place like this either, so Nureyev has no need to wear a fake smile of his own.

Nureyev recalls the scribbled note that had been left with their day passes: Keep an eye out for Lorenzo Vega. As if he cares about doing Detective Steel’s dirty work.

But there’s something strange going on here, and against his better judgment, he wants to know what. He can’t go back to Amun or reach out to his own comms until he knows what the cybernetic infection in his eye is capable of and to whom its data is sent. To Juno’s employer, he’d concluded, but who is that old man?

Not Ramses O’Flaherty. That much is certain. He’d spent the entirety of the car ride on his comms, digging up even more information about the man—but it was the lack of available information that had been the most telling.

“I want to go on a ride! No, I want to have a hot dog! No, I want to go on two rides with two hot dogs just for ME!” 

Rita’s small, sweaty hand wraps around his, dragging him down the promenade. 

This woman is… interesting. He’s fond of her, in his own way. She’s clearly intelligent beyond her childish whims, unlike Mick Mercury. But like Mick Mercury, he can’t even begin to grasp how an irritable, brooding dame like Juno could have befriended her.

Rita stops short unexpectedly. “Andromeda and the Dragon’s Peak,” she whispers in awe, staring up at the display in front of them. “Mistah Steel, I’m gonna ride that ride six hundred times today.”

Before she can have her wish, the air is filled with the sound of screaming. That’s not atypical for an amusement park, of course, but Nureyev has heard his fair share of screams in his day, and he can tell the difference between a howl of glee and a howl of terror. These are the latter.

Nureyev hadn’t been particularly intrigued by the rides before, but now his interest is piqued.

It’s difficult to be sneaky when he’s dressed in heavy combat boots and has a very bright, very loud secretary following in his footsteps, but he still manages to slink past the wall of security that forms around the Dragon’s Peak unnoticed—until he feels a club jab into his stomach.

“Good morning. Who the hell are you and why aren’t you out of my park?”

The woman who’s just spoken has a strong jaw and, if her bulging biceps are anything to go by, even stronger arms. Her fake smile looks more practiced than the other employees’ expressions. She’s a natural at this; the only reason Nureyev even noticed that it was phony is because he’d practiced that very same smile in the mirror for days on end in his twenties. He’d never quite managed to get it to reach his eyes, and neither, it seems, has she.

Nureyev digs in his pocket, then holds up the piece of paper that O’Flaherty had given him. “Ramses sent me.”

She squints at the paper. “Of course he did. Fine, come on in.” She holds up the rope surrounding the ride to let them through. “My name’s Yasmin Swift. Chief of security.”

She leads him inside, and he glances back to see if Rita is following as well. She is, but there’s a strange, glassy look in her eyes, her cheeks are flushed, and she keeps letting out a strange noise that might be a giggle.

“...Rita?” 

“She’s so beauuuutiful,” Rita whispers. “I know you can see it, boss! You got two eyes again now, so use ‘ em!”

“Er… Yes, she’s very attractive.” Yasmin Swift is as much Nureyev’s cup of tea as the woman he’d woken up next to yesterday—which is to say, not at all—but he can acknowledge that she has a very… symmetrical face.

Rita sticks out her tongue. “Don’t act like you ain’t interested! I know she’s your type.”

Curiosity gets the better of Nureyev, and he says, “Is that right? What would you consider to be my type?”

“Tall, handsome, and strong enough to hurt you,” she replies matter-of-factly.

“Ah.” He scolds the part of him that’s pleased she didn’t list any attributes that he doesn’t share with Swift.

“But I know she ain’t gonna hurt a fly, because she’s way too preeetttyy for that—”

Then they turn a corner and a pungent smell fills Nureyev’s nostrils—a familiar smell. Without warning, he’s plunged into a memory that had been hidden so deep in the filing cabinet that it was all but lost to the sands of time and lockboxes of repression.

He peeks around the dumpster just in time to see the laser strike. It happens so quickly that he can barely comprehend it. One moment, Trig is standing in the street. The next, a flash of red fills Nureyev’s vision. Trig collapses to the ground, the half-eaten clementine she’d stolen falling from her limp hand and rolling across the cobblestones. It keeps rolling, rolling, rolling, until it stops right in front of him. A hideous odor envelops him, the smell of—

Burning flesh.

Someone, be they human or animal, is burning inside of that ride.

“If you’re at all squeamish, I’m gonna recommend you close your eyes now,” Yasmin grunts.

Nureyev isn’t squeamish, so he keeps his eyes open as the cart rolls out and the burnt flesh smell becomes near unbearable. The things left inside hardly look human anymore; they’re just black husks in the vague shape of people. Even Trig had left more of a corpse behind than that.

“This was bound to happen one day. I’ve been saying that to Vega for years,” Swift says darkly. “Should’ve shut this ride down ages ago.” 

“Over my soggy corpse, Yasmin,” a voice says.

Nureyev scolds himself for not registering the approaching footsteps, but when he looks towards the new arrival, he understands why—the man is walking on two metal legs. His steps are sharp and metallic, blending in with clashing and clanging of the broken ride. His name tag says “Dr. Lorenzo Vega, Head of Resmirks and Developgrins,” but his expression is far from jovial.

“I received a message earlier—direct orders that I’d receive a Private Investigator to do whatever I say for one full day. Ramses spoils me so. That’s you, isn’t it?” Vega says to Nureyev. “What’s your name?”

“Steel. Juno Steel.” He still hates saying that name out loud.

Vega tilts his head. “Steel… Why does that sound familiar?”

“It’s a very common metal.”

“I was thinking about that name just this morning… but why…?”

Nureyev doesn’t have an answer for his question, nor does he have any answers when Vega and Swift start arguing about the dangers or lack thereof involved with the Dragon’s Peak ride.

Why are you even here? You should’ve ripped out that eye the first chance you got and run straight back to Amun. 

Every second you’re here is a second you could have put towards Slip’s care.

But what can you do for him when you’re in this body? Juno Steel isn’t employed by Dokana.

Nureyev agrees to enter the ride and investigate the murders, if only because he can’t think of anything else to do at the moment. If he can get through this, he’ll win an audience with Ramses again. Perhaps he can even use his success here as a bargaining chip to have the Spectrum removed.

Rita giggles giddily all the way through the process as Yasmin straps them into the coaster. Nureyev attempts to channel the childhood version of himself that had always wanted to ride one of these rides, and not his adult self, whose first instinct when restrained is to break himself out.

A voiceover plays as they roll down the tracks, passing by holograms of characters that he can only assume feature in the Andromeda stream series. The trolley lingers next to an image of the leading lady herself, dressed in shining armor and wielding a whip at her side. 

She’s glaring out into the distance with an expression that can only be described as one of… well, moral outrage. But, given the body that he’s currently inhabiting, Nureyev can hardly be blamed for drawing nonexistent parallels.

They’ve just reached the “Dragon’s Peak” when Yasmin claims she sees someone in the distance and starts to run.

“You two, keep up with me! If someone really is sabotaging my park, I’m not gonna let them get away with it!”

Once again, Nureyev finds himself at odds with Juno’s body as he sprints after her. He’s so graceless in this form, his breathing harder and footsteps heavier than he’s accustomed to. Rita isn’t any faster, and they lose Yasmin to the darkness in a matter of minutes, coming face to face with a fire-breathing dragon instead. Not a real one, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

“Andromeda grabbed a sparkling crown as Draco unleashed its fiery breath!”

“We gotta run, Mistah Steel!”

They won’t be fast enough. Nureyev could have been, in his own body, but not this one. The dragon is moving closer and closer, burning heat gathering in its open mouth. 

He does the only thing he can think to do, and pulls out Juno’s blaster. The Spectrum doesn’t have time to help him aim, so he hones in on the dragon himself, and—

Misses both shots.

“Mistah Steel!”

The fire engulfs him, but it just feels… warm. Almost pleasant, even, like a summer breeze on some other planet. He closes his eyes and lets the hologram wash over him, then follows Rita to the ride’s control room, where they both collapse into chairs to catch their breath and tame their adrenaline. It takes longer for Nureyev to recover than he’s used to, his heart beating uncomfortably fast and his throat burning.

“What do we do now?!” Rita exclaims after a few minutes. “We gotta get outta here, but we aren’t any closer to figuring out whodunnit! Whoever tried to smash us with that cart must be the same person who sabotaged the ride and killed all those poor people!”

“I… ah…”

Truthfully, Nureyev had completely forgotten their original purpose for being here. He wasn’t in the business of solving mysteries; he was in the business of creating them. And whoever had caused this particular crime scene had made quite a mess of it.

“Wait! Didn’t Mistah Vega say the computer kept a log of who accessed it last?” Rita says. She jumps over to the keyboard and starts typing. “First I’ll deactivate the carts, then I’ll check the logs… It doesn’t say who used it, but it says it was in the next room. D’you think it’s whoever Yasmin saw?!”

“Er, I imagine it would be.”

“Oh, we can turn on the security footage for that room!” 

Nureyev is beginning to wonder whether Juno Steel is actually as impressive of a private eye as all the reports had claimed, or if he just had a very, very impressive secretary. A combination of the two, perhaps.

A few clicks and the footage appears on the screen, revealing—

“No... The one who activated the carts was Yasmin?!” Rita exclaims in dismay.

It’s such an obvious explanation that Nureyev is irritated with himself for not seeing it sooner. He may not be a detective, but he can recognize someone who’ll do anything for money when he sees them, and Yasmin had that bearing about her from the beginning.

“I can’t believe it, boss.” Rita looks so downtrodden that it instills Nureyev with a similar emotion to the one he feels when seeing a stray kitten shivering in a dark alleyway. Like he wants to protect her, or something similarly ridiculous. “She’s just so pretty, I didn’t think she could possibly be the bad guy!”

Ha. How many times has Nureyev used that inclination—the human tendency to falsely correlate beauty with goodness —to his own advantage? Perhaps he and Swift are even more alike than he’d realized. “Every rose has its thorns,” he says.  

“But…” Rita’s eyes widen as she stares at the screen. “No! It’s all deleting itself! Everything the camera’s recorded in the past twenty-four hours is going poof!” 

“So we have no proof. Wonderful.”

The door slides open and Yasmin walks through. “Oh. You’re alive,” she says, sounding surprised. “That’s good. Did you see anyone come through here? I was chasing after someone, but they slipped away… You two alright? You look a little pale.”

It’s easier to stab someone in the back than the front. If Swift doesn’t know she’s been had, then that’s all the better for them. There’s no point in confronting a murderer head-on if there’s a less dangerous option available.

Then again, Nureyev is getting extremely bored of this.

He un-holsters Juno’s blaster again and, in one fluid movement, points it between Yasmin’s eyes. He may not be a particularly good shot, but she doesn’t know that.

“We have the footage of you tampering with the ride, Swift,” he says. “Give it up.”

If there’s one thing that Peter Nureyev knows how to do, it’s lie through his pointed teeth. (Not so pointed now, he reminds himself—a shame. There’s power in being able to intimidate with little more than a flashed smile.)

“Goddammit,” Swift hisses. Her eyes dart around the room, clearly looking for an escape. 

He expects her to go for the door—his mistake. He doesn’t even process where she’s moving until she already has Rita in her arms, a plasma knife pressing into her neck.

There’s a reason that Nureyev normally works alone.

“Put the gun down or your very pretty secretary gets it!” Swift declares.

He narrows his eyes. He may not know Rita as well as Juno does, but harming her still feels like an unforgivable slight. “Drop the knife, Swift.”

“It doesn’t have to go this way. I don’t want to do this.” 

“Then I see a simple solution to your problem: don’t do it.”

“You’re not really in a position to be making demands,” Swift says, unfazed. “Now slide that gun over to me and then delete the footage like a good little lady.”

When Nureyev threatens someone, they take it seriously. Maybe it’s his stature, or his canines, or the clothes he picks out—or maybe it’s the dark haze behind his eyes that tells them this is a man who has caused death before and is unafraid to do it again. But he isn’t himself; he’s Juno Steel, and Swift has correctly assumed that Juno Steel wouldn’t harm her.

An understandable but fatal mistake.

He slides the gun her way and then moves back to the computer, booting it up as if to delete the security footage. One eye watches Swift through her reflection on the screen, waiting for her to let down her guard. 

Finally, it happens. Rita moans, “I know this ain’t you, Miss Yasmin! You wouldn’t hurt somebody as pretty and funny and nice as Rita!” and Swift hesitates for a second, like she’s trying to decide whether or not Rita is right.

Nureyev takes the opening. He whips his own plasma knife out of Juno’s sleeve, whirls around, and throws it in a perfect arch. It lodges in Swift’s hand and she howls in pain, relinquishing Rita—but to her credit, she doesn’t drop her blade. 

Out of weapons and out of time, Nureyev uses the only tool he has left: himself. He sprints towards Swift, planning to throw her off balance with a shoulder check and yank his knife out of her hand. He can tell by her stance and grip that she’s an amateur; this whole murder debacle must be new territory for her. It should be easy to gain the upper hand.

What he doesn’t account for is the several dozen pounds of muscle and fat that his current body has over his previous one.

“Augh!”

Swift isn’t just knocked off balance: she’s completely bowled over, sent sprawling backwards into the cart they’d ridden in on. As Nureyev attempts to regain his own composure, she presses a button, and the cart starts to move down the track. Away from him. 

Without thinking, he jumps in after her. He may not have a vested interest in O’Flaherty’s little scheme, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys failure.

“Goddamn you, Steel!” Swift growls. “Give it up already!”

She lashes out, but Nureyev sees the move coming from a mile away and dodges before the blade makes contact with his shoulder. He knocks it out of her grasp, then yanks his own knife free from her hand, feeling her blood splatter across his face. She shrieks in pain, kicking out at him, but he leverages Juno’s sturdy form a second time and pins her beneath him with his knee. It’d be so easy to reach down and slash her throat open, ending the fight when it’s hardly begun.

“Is this really what you want to die for? Some glorified carnival attraction?” he asks—and a part of him is genuinely curious to learn the answer. 

“You don’t know a goddamn thing. This all could’ve worked out, but you don’t know a god! Damn! Thing!” Swift shouts, her spit speckling his cheeks and mixing with the blood. “It’s about priorities! It’s about doing what you have to do, no matter how much you hate doing it! I’d do anything for her!”

There’s a wild desperation in her eyes and her voice that makes him believe her. Whoever this “her” is, she really believes she’s worth killing for. Worth dying for.

“I didn’t like killing them, either.” She swallows against the cold metal of the knife resting against her trachea. “And I really, really don’t like killing this park. It’s worth more than all of you put together. But I have to do this. A mother will do anything for her kid. You could never understand that.”

No, Nureyev can’t understand that particular frame of mind—he has never had a child of his own, or even a mother of his own.

But he does know what it’s like to kill in the name of someone you love.

“Without me, she’ll die.” There are tears running down Swift’s cheeks now, leaving clean lines through the dirt and soot. “She needs me.”

Nureyev presses the knife harder against her skin, leaving a line of blood across soft flesh. Would Juno Steel kill her? Would he let her live?

It doesn’t matter what Juno Steel would do, Nureyev decides.

Juno Steel isn’t here right now.

When Nureyev and Rita return to the entrance of the ride, Vega is waiting for them. He gives Rita a free pass for the park and she immediately wanders off to eat her weight in cotton candy, the trauma and turmoil of the evening forgotten. Nureyev watches her go with thinly veiled admiration.

“It’s a shame,” Vega says. “Yasmin Swift was irreplaceable.” 

“She murdered three people,” Nureyev points out, on the off-chance that he’d forgotten.

“As irreplaceable as Sarah Steel. That’s where I remember your name from, isn’t it? She was your mother.”

For one brief, stricken moment, Nureyev is only 90% certain that Juno’s mother is named Sarah—but yes, that was it. “What? You knew her?”

“Sarah Steel… It's been a long, long time, but yes, I did. I think I may even remember you, and that says something. I don’t bother to remember most people. She brought you into the office a few times, gave you your run of the Turbo merchandise. You and... what was his name? Benjamin?”

Nureyev tilts his head, summoning all the information he’d learned about Juno before being left in that hotel room and promptly locking it away. Some of it from Juno himself, and some of it from his own research.

“Benzaiten,” he corrects. Another goddess, though not of the same pantheon.

“Benzaiten, then. You were charming children. What happened?”

After their run-in at the Kanagawa mansion, Nureyev had read every police report and headline he could find about Juno Steel. He’d hacked into every database, searching for evidence that he hadn’t given up his greatest secret to the wrong person. It had been invasive, yes, but he hadn’t regretted it—he researched all of his marks, and he’d had no way of knowing just how special Juno would become.

Well, he’d regretted none of his finds… except one. An audio file, uploaded to the depths of a Martian shock website. It was one of many on a list entitled “Most Horrifying Emergency Calls in Hyperion City”. Nureyev had wished he’d never found that one as soon as he’d clicked play.

“We’re at Cypress Avenue in Oldtown. You have to come now. She shot him.”

“Paramedics are on their way. Stay on the line. Are you safe?”

“She’s still here. I… I don’t think she’s going to do anything. She’s crying.”

“You’re okay, kid. Who is she? Who did this?”

“S–Sarah Steel.”

“Sarah Steel. And that’s—”

“My mom. She’s our mom. She wanted to shoot me, but she shot him.”

“Stay calm. Is your brother awake? Can you tell if he’s breathing?”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of blood. He needs help. Please, there’s so much blood—”

Nureyev had let the emergency call run for longer than he should have, entranced by the horror of what he was hearing. He’d never heard a human being sound like Juno had sounded on that recording, his young voice filled with an agony so huge that it had turned to numbness. The wailing in the background of the call was almost worse: the wretched human grief of a mother who had lost her son and had only herself to blame for it. 

Not much can shake Peter Nureyev, but that audio file had done the job.

“You know what happened,” Nureyev says coolly. It’s easy enough to play the role of Juno Steel in this instance—he knows what Juno is like when Benzaiten is mentioned. Bitter, angry, and desperate to change the subject.

Vega doesn’t pick up on the hint. “Sarah seemed like life had given her challenges, too,” he says with a weary exhale. “I don’t think it was her fault, necessarily. Her being… I mean, Northstar letting her go like that. I was on the board that made the decision. And I don’t think we did anything wrong, I’ve never done anything I thought was wrong, but… we were just a little company back then. Everything we’d made was on the line. We only had the money to keep one of our two writers and then your mother, trying to steal someone else’s work…”

Nureyev’s mind is in overdrive as he tries to work through everything that Vega is saying without giving away the gaps in his knowledge. Juno’s mother had worked at Northstar until she was fired for plagiarism, and then…

“I just know things went poorly for her after that. Health-wise,” Vega carries on. “And I… expect that made things difficult for you. I’ve been thinking about that for thirty-four years now. She doesn’t leave your mind easily, a person like Sarah Steel. Unique. Singular. A shame. She made some great things.”

Nureyev lets out an involuntary scoff. He doesn’t know much about Sarah Steel beyond what little Juno and the news articles had revealed to him, but he imagines it takes more than poor health to inspire a mother to murder her own son. Still—Vega is implying that her termination was the catalyst. That’s interesting.

And what an odd coincidence that “Juno” was sent here. O’Flaherty had even prompted him to keep an eye on Vega specifically. Does he know about Juno’s personal connection to Northstar? Why call Vega out by name at all?

Vega clears his throat awkwardly. He looks like he’d been expecting something, and only now has given up on receiving it. “Hm. Anyway. About Yasmin Swift,” he says. “There’s a clause in our staff contracts that states we legally own any personal communications made within Polaris Park, so I made a copy of all messages and comms calls she’s made at work for the past five years.”

“Wonderful,” Nureyev says dryly. He wishes he were naive enough to be surprised by that, but any corporate surveillance state is child’s play when put toe-to-toe with the Guardian Angel System.

Vega hands over a transcript of a call that Swift had made to an unknown number last night. In it, her accomplice informs her that the first payment for her daughter’s procedure has been wired to Halo Medical, and tells her to look for a woman with one ear outside a certain museum. Valuable information, certainly—if Nureyev had given a peahen’s tailfeather about this case.

“Thank you for the lead,” he says, tucking the transcript into the pocket of Juno’s trenchcoat.

He turns to walk away, but before he can exit the office, Vega says, “Do you like it in Hyperion City, Juno?”

He liked this wretched city enough to choose it over me.

“What does it matter to you?” 

“Because…” Vega’s eyes linger on a collection of toys on his desk, all dressed in chainmail. “Do you know the premise to the Andromeda stories? Generally, I mean.”

Nureyev has had about enough as he can take of this children’s fairytale. “Something about a dragon, I imagine.”

“Andromeda is the protector of Polaris, a beautiful kingdom of crystal and ice, until the day the evil wizard Orion casts a curse on her. She’s cursed to wander the world forever, but no matter how she searches, she’ll never find her way home.”

“Lovely.”

“Andromeda makes the best of it.” Vega picks up one of the toys and moves its arm so Andromeda’s chain whip is raised high. “She tries. Every day she follows the North Star that lights the way to Polaris, and on her way she saves people and stops Orion from hurting others... but she never breaks the curse.”

Hm.

Nureyev has spent the last twenty years jumping from star to star, chasing an end to his debt and a cure for Slip, but there’s one place he’s never returned to in all that time. He doesn’t know whether he’s still in Brahma’s criminal database, but even if his name were somehow cleared, he can never go back.

He’s free to travel everywhere in the galaxy except the place he was born. If only he were as noble in his escapades as the fictional Andromeda.

“That’s rather depressing for a children’s program, don’t you think?” Nureyev muses.

“It’s ironic that the Andromeda pitch meeting is where your mother lost her… way,” Vega says, setting the toy back on the desk. “Because in retrospect, Andromeda reminds me of Sarah. Lost, searching, never finding home…”

Nureyev isn’t particularly interested in the case that O’Flaherty had given him, but this one—this one is interesting. “You sound as though you were fond of her.”

“You might hate me for saying this, but you remind me of her, Juno. Truly incredible ability, a truly singular talent… with something powerful storming within you. Be careful. I’ve seen how that goes before.”

Is Vega appraising Juno, or Nureyev? Where does one end and the other begin? Nureyev had vowed never to seek out Juno again after their night in the hotel, and now here he is, trapped in the lady’s very skin. In another context, it would be romantic.

He owes Juno Steel nothing. He doesn’t owe him success at his new career as a mayoral candidate’s lapdog, or maintenance of his reputation in the eyes of those who know him, or answers to the questions of his past trauma.

He isn’t obligated, but he’s so painfully curious.

“If you have recordings of all of Swift’s internal communications… then you have recordings of other employees, too.”

“Well, yes,” Vega says with a frown. “As I said, all employees—”

“Does that extend beyond Polaris? Did other parts of Northstar carry the same clause?”

“It was standard practice across all branches of the company.”

“Are historical records maintained for reference purposes?”

Vega’s frown deepens. “If you want to ask for something specific, then get on with it, Detective Steel.”

“Very well,” Nureyev says. “Do you have recordings of Sarah Steel’s communications?”

Silence fills the office. Somewhere in the park, a child is crying so loudly over their spilled ice cream that it can be heard through the memorabilia-plastered walls.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Vega says eventually. “But that’s hundreds of hours, Detective, and I’m not at liberty to give it up to anyone who comes asking. Besides…” He averts his eyes sheepishly.

“Hmm?” Nureyev urges him to get on with it.

“I don’t think it would be good for you to hear them. She wasn’t well, Detective. You know that. Do you really want to relive all of that?”

“That isn’t your decision to make for me.” It isn’t Nureyev’s decision to make for Juno, either—so it’s a good thing Juno won’t experience any of it.

Vega cringes. “Well, yes, but if you end up knee deep in a breakdown of your own, I don’t want to be responsible for another—for a—”

“You want me to forgive you, yes? You want me to grant you freedom from the shame of firing Sarah Steel and, by proxy, causing Benzaiten Steel’s death.” For the first time today, Nureyev has forgotten to act. He isn’t playing as Juno right now; every rage-filled word is his own. “If you truly want that amnesty, then you’ll send me those recordings. As soon as possible.”

What are you doing all of this for, Petya?

Surely not for the sake of a man who didn’t even have the decency to leave behind a note when he abandoned you to a cold, empty bed?

No, it’s not for him. It’s for the scared nineteen year old kid, stammering into his comms on a recording that Nureyev ought never to have listened to.

“Tell me what address you want them sent to,” Vega says, and suddenly the middle-aged middle manager sounds almost timid. “You’ll have them by tomorrow night.”

“Thank you,” Nureyev says, and walks out the door. There’s something satisfying about being able to slam it closed behind him. Unlike Nureyev, Juno’s emotions aren’t hidden. They’re loud and ugly and take up space in the world, and—it’s a little cathartic, really. Maybe he had the right idea about that.

Nureyev leans his back against the chain link fence surrounding the park, scrolling through the photo gallery on Juno’s comms. Devastatingly, there are no juicy secrets contained within, only a selection of selfies with Rita (clearly taken by Rita) and a selection of blurry images half-hidden by a thumb sticking out in front of the camera lens (clearly taken by Juno). A shame.

He hears the steps approach slowly and pause a few feet away.

“Why did you let me go? That’s not very heroic of you.”

Nureyev sighs and looks up. “I suppose not. But I never claimed to be a hero.”

Yasmin leans against the fence next to him, her arms crossed over her chest and a duffel bag draped over her shoulder. “You told Vega that I died.”

“I told him that you were tragically burned to a crisp, leaving not even a bone behind, to be more specific. You’d best make yourself scarce if you want to uphold that version of events. If you need help choosing an alias, I can make a few suggestions.”

Yasmin snorts. “I don’t understand you. What’s the point of being a detective if you let the criminals run free after catching them?”

Nureyev tucks the comms away. There’s a slight breeze in the air, picking up the Martian dust and transporting it directly into Juno’s awful lungs. He clears his throat and says, “Your daughter. What’s her name?”

“...Esta.”

“As long as you keep paying for her treatment, she’ll be fine, yes?”

Swift nods. “She’s been on dialysis for months, and this procedure is all she needs to finally get off it. We were on the transplant list for so long, and once they finally found her a match… then they told us the price tag.” She laughs bitterly. “It was triple the total amount of my life’s savings. Once she has that stupid kidney in her, she’ll be fine. I just need to pay for it.”

A guaranteed fix, if only she can lie and cheat and murder her way into enough creds. What Nureyev wouldn’t give for something like that. But there are no guarantees in the Slip Project, so he keeps lying and cheating and murdering his way through the decades without so much as a light at the end of the tunnel.

You’re lucky, he thinks, but knows better than to say out loud.

“Good,” he says instead.

Yasmin adjusts the strap of the duffle bag with a sigh. “You don’t act like a detective.”

Internally, Nureyev is a little offended. He’d thought he was playing the role of Juno Steel rather well. “What do I act like?”

She shrugs. “Something less infuriatingly righteous than that.”

Nureyev never has been good at the whole moral outrage thing. “Should I have killed you, then? Would that have been the ‘right’ thing to do?”

“Honestly? I’ve got no idea. But I’m glad you didn’t. Not because of me, but because of her. She deserves to live, even if I don’t.”

A taxi pulls up to the curb, the driver looking expectantly at Swift. Her dark eyes linger on Nureyev for a beat, then she opens the car door and tosses her bag inside.

“I hope we don’t meet again, Juno. But… thanks.”

He watches the cab drive away until it’s just a pinprick against the hazy Martian sky—thinking about someone else who deserves to live, even if Nureyev doesn’t.

“Mistah Steel, you don’t look too good.”

Rita is decked out in a Northstar™ brand cap, t-shirt, and sunglasses, both hands full of outrageously oversized sticks of cotton candy. Tucked under one of her arms is a plushie Drago, which seems a little flippant considering the extent to which that damn dragon had just terrorized them.

Nureyev breathes in, then out. He can’t allow so much as a tremor into his voice. “The heat must be getting to me. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause… you know you can fire me at any time, right?”

He’s so blind-sided by Rita’s words that he almost forgets to be miserable about the state of his own existence. Mick’s surprise at being treated kindly had been bad enough, but now Juno’s closest confidant is worried he’s going to fire her for no reason at all? Just how poorly does this man treat the people around him? Perhaps Nureyev had dodged a bullet, after all. “I’m not going to fire you, Rita. Without you, we never would’ve found our culprit today.”

“Well… yeah.” Rita pushes her brilliantly pink sunglasses up on her head, nearly jabbing herself in the eye with cotton candy in the process. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“There’s just one thing, though. Somethin’ that’s been bugging me all day, ever since Mistah O’Flaherty sent the car to take us to Polaris.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m okay. But who are you?”

Well. 

Nureyev’s faith in his own acting ability is waning by the minute.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says through gritted teeth. Perhaps Rita would be a useful ally in his current predicament, but he’d rather not be accused of being a pod person for a second time.

“I don’t think you’re a pod person,” Rita says, and Nureyev spends the next three seconds spiraling at the idea that she—like Juno, like the damn cybernetic eye—might be inside his head. But then she says, “Mistah Mercury called to warn me about that before we left, but I didn’t believe him, ‘cause it didn’t seem like you were trying to suck out my brains or gather information to bring back to your people or any of the other things aliens do in the streams. You just seemed like, you know. Mistah Steel.”

“So?” Nureyev raises an eyebrow. “What changed?”

“Well, first of all, you were usin’ your comms like a normal person. Then you didn’t throw up or nothin’ at the sight of all those people burnt to a crisp, even though I know Mistah Steel hates blood and gore ‘cause of that one time when—well, that ain’t important. You didn’t seem like you were into Yasmin even though she’s totally Mistah Steel’s type, and you missed two blaster shots at point blank range, and you didn’t fire me, and you’re sad but you ain’t sad in the same way Mistah Steel is, his sad’s all grumpy and angry and hurt and yours is… It’s quiet.” She pauses to breathe, then carries on. “But you don’t seem like you’re up to nothin’. You’re not bein’ nefarious. I mean… you let Yasmin go. That isn’t something that an evil clone or a robot or a pod person would do. My guess is, you woke up the other morning and you were in Mistah Steel’s body, and now you ain’t got a clue what you’re doing and you’re just goin’ through the motions until you can figure it out. And you must know Mistah Steel, ‘cause you do a decent job acting like him, but not super well or else you woulda known about the comms thing and the gore thing and the hot lady thing. So I think I figured it out.”

Nureyev listens to the rant, dumbfounded by the accuracy of Rita’s assessment of the situation. “Yes, that’s… very….”

“You’re Mimi Parker!”

He blinks. “Who?”

“Mistah Steel’s old fling from when he first started working as a PI!” she says proudly, then deflates when she sees his expression. “Oh. Then are you that weird Glass guy he disappeared with six months ago? ‘Cause that was my second guess.”

“Rita…”

“Uh-huh?”

“You’re a marvel.” Nureyev grabs her by the shoulders, letting all the desperation he’s been holding back seep into his voice. “Now please, help me get out of here.”