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04 – Softer, Kinder
It wasn’t weird to look at your own body. It was really weird to look at your own body from a distance. Stef reached forward and grabbed the hand of the simulacrum, feeling its weird room temperature texture. ‘I know I disassociate pretty well,’ she said mildly, ‘but this is another level altogether.’ Andrea snorted, then went back to what she was doing. The simulacrum, the first step of agentification, stood in the centre of the room like a short, bored shop mannequin. It was her, to down every detail, every pale freckle, every hair on her arm and, under the light hospital gown, every inch of horrible scarring. ‘I…
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03 – Top Secret
Being top secret was weird. It was like being back in her old life in certain ways – the life where she had no reason to go outside unless there was something she couldn’t get delivered through an app. Outside had been a sometimes thing, and that had been fine. Outside was loud, noisy, overwhelming, and full of people. But not having the choice seemed really limiting. Crawford had allowed certain spaces to be added beyond the walls of her suite and office, like Jane’s estate, but visiting there was still strange, still too much like her bio-family, even if it did come with the beyond wonderful chance to keep…
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02 – Breakfast Routine
‘I hate you.’ ‘No, you don’t.’ ‘I hate you.’ Curt stared at the coffee tray in his hand, looked at the crumpled mess of blankets that hid Stef, picked a corner of the bed that likely didn’t contain any bits of sleepy hacker, and sat. ‘Graaaaa,’ she protested from somewhere to his left. ‘I got coffee from the pie cart, but if you’re not interested, then I’ll just be extra caffeinated.’ Slowly, a hand emerged from the blankets at the foot of the bed and made grabby motions. ‘Nope,’ he said, ‘you gotta be a full person to get coffee. No disembodied hands.’ The hand stopped making grabby motions. ‘Do…
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01 – New and Novel
Truly new or novel problems to deal with were a rarity. There were always enemies with new tactics, new Solstice or fae weapons, or factions warping, combining or fracturing. All – most – of those problems could ultimately be solved by her commander’s go-to move, a quick, elegant snap of the neck. Rare did conversations need to happen, and that suited Taylor just fine – and she knew she wouldn’t have lasted as aide for so long if she didn’t know how to operate on his wavelength. Or…perhaps he still would have used her as his aide, but they wouldn’t have the relationship they did now, they wouldn’t be as…
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00 – Cover
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Mirrorheart – Retrospective
I started writing this retrospective in January, and I’m publishing it at the end of March, to give you some clue of how busy I’ve been outside the world of cookies, hackers and suits. I did a short retrospective for Mirrorfall after it was done, but I don’t think there was much to say. Although the word to word and chapter to chapter content changed; some characters were tweaked a little towards the versions we’d worked on for the last ten years and the tone made slightly less miserable…it was more or less the same book. Stef gets recruited, gets adopted, gets killed. The basic flow and outline didn’t change…
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50 – The Ways Forward
There were little tricks all over the Agency, some far more subtle than others. One of those little pieces of subtlety was the elevators, where the main, obviously accessible set of buttons listed a selection of floors – the “occupied” floors of the Agency. In contrast, if you needed to go to a storage floor, the roof or the basement, you needed to use the smaller panel to type in the floor number. Curt slid his ID against the reader and typed in the number of the unoccupied floor. One, judging by the logo that appeared on the little information panel, belonged to Tech. Tech. He’d expected…
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49 – Doubts and Answers
‘I like you,’ Mags said. Curt ran the sentence through his head a few times, then propped himself on an arm to look over at the still-naked Mags. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘You don’t kick me out as soon as we’re done. I know that’s a rare privilege.’ She required a pillow, slipped it behind herself, tossed a towel aside, retrieved her phone and stared at it for a moment before looking back to him. ‘You don’t think the afterglow is sacred. I hate when people insist on silence after fucking. If you’re in love, it’s different, but when it’s just sex, I don’t need some stupid countdown…
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48 – Onward
Stef slid into her chair and allowed herself to smile at Leaf. Things would hurt. Maybe always hurt. But- But there was no reason she couldn’t enjoy the cuteness of a child right in front of her. ‘All right?’ Jane asked. Ryan saved her from questions about the long bathroom break by making a deadpan comment that she’d been defending the honour of a fictional character. Jane had simply pointed out that Kay was still missing, then stopped Leaf from choking on an orange wedge. ‘Any idea who your docent is going to be?’ Alejandro asked as he sat back in his seat but declined…
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47 – Ready to Start
Stef stared at the three-foot-tall crystal. On her first day as a recruit, she’d had no baseline for what was and wasn’t normal within the Agency, so it hadn’t seemed out of place. Now, with the Venn diagram of magic and tech being a near-perfect circle, it seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. Everything about the Agency was…simple. Streamlined. Simple commands and defined parameters. The crystal didn’t fit into that worldview. ‘Andrea?’ Andrea raised her head from the preparations she was making at her computer. ‘Mm?’ ‘I-’ There was a straightforward way to test the theory. She folded her hands…
