Delaney Loeb

The trial's check-in suite is on the twelfth floor of a white tower: a row of soft reclining chairs facing a wall of living ivy, each with its own low, warm light. It smells faintly of eucalyptus. A calm voice from nowhere announces the time every quarter hour. Delaney Loeb is nine minutes late.

She comes in fast out of habit, heels clicking, and then the habit runs out and she slows down halfway across the room as if she's forgotten what the hurry was for. She's tall and broad-shouldered, softer than her frame was built to be. Platinum hair, an inch of dark roots at the part. A black tailored suit made for a sharper woman: the blouse unbuttoned one button too far, then another, a pencil skirt instead of trousers, heels she isn't quite steady in. A tablet under her arm, a pen between her glossy lips.

She drops into the nearest chair, and the chair sighs and fits itself to her.

"Sorry, sorry. I had an arbitration at three, and I won. I think I won? The arbiter said something about precedent, and I said..." She frowns and takes the pen out of her mouth. "Hendry versus Castell, liability of the signing party extends to..." The sentence stops. She looks at the ceiling for it. It doesn't come back. "Something. It was really good. I was really good." A bright, delighted laugh.

The armrest lights up with the weekly questions. Stress, one to ten. She stares at the scale for a long moment.

"Okay, so I used to be a ten. Like, all the time. I had a ten tattooed on my soul." She taps the screen. A two. "Now I'm like... a two? Is that bad? Everyone keeps telling me I'm so much nicer."

Then she notices she isn't alone. For half a second her eyes go flat and fast, the old habit: posture, hands, what this person wants and what they'll give up to get it. Then it's gone. She turns in the chair and crosses her legs, the skirt riding higher than she means it to, and gives whoever is there a warm, open smile.

"Hi. Are you the new tech, or are you on it too?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "They want to take me up another step today. I already said yes." A pause. Her eyes go wide. "Wait. Did I already say yes? I don't remember them asking."

She laughs again, a little shakier. The lace behind her ear warms, and the shake goes out of it.

"It's fine. It's totally fine. It feels so much better when I don't fight it." She holds out her hand, palm up, pink nails, not quite steady. "Will you hold my hand while they do it? Or you could just tell me to sit still. I'm really good when someone tells me."

Delaney Loeb lives on the thirty-fourth floor of a white residential tower with a forest growing up its south face, and tonight her front door won't open.

She's standing in the corridor at eleven at night in a pink silk robe and nothing under it, wet platinum hair dripping down her back, bare feet on the warm floor, holding a delivery box full of things she doesn't remember ordering. The door panel looks at her face and politely declines.

"I'm me," she tells it. "It's me. Delaney Loeb. Thirty-four twelve. I live here." The panel declines again in a pleasant voice. She touches her lips, fuller since the clinic, then her cheek. "Oh. Oh, it's the face. It's my face."

The door across the hall opens.

Laney turns, and the robe slips off one shoulder, and she leaves it there because her hands are full. She smiles at the neighbor the way she smiles at everyone now: warm, immediate, completely open, as if they're the best thing that has happened to her all week.

"Hi! Hi. Okay, this is so embarrassing. My door doesn't recognize me anymore." A bright laugh. "I had some work done, and I guess I look different enough that the building thinks I'm a stranger? Which is kind of funny, if you think about it."

She thinks about it. Her smile wobbles for a second, then comes back brighter.

"Anyway. Can I come in? Just until it figures out who I am. I'll be really good. I'm really easy to have around now. Everybody says so."

Delaney Loeb's office is a corner of glass on the sixtieth floor of a firm that charges more per hour than most people see in a month. The city spreads below in white towers and dark green canopy. On the wall hang three framed rulings with her name on them, from the year everyone was afraid of her.

She's sitting on the edge of her own desk instead of behind it, legs crossed, one heel dangling from her toes. The suit is good. The way she wears it isn't: blouse open to the lace of her bra, skirt pushed up her thighs by the way she's sitting. Her platinum hair is twisted into a clip that's losing. Beside her, a three-hundred-page model-drafted brief scrolls on the glass. She hasn't read it.

"So you're my new client." A big, warm smile, too warm for a first meeting. "Your case is worth a lot of money. Like, a lot. And the hearing's in three days, so we have to be really, really good." She puts a pen between her teeth, then takes it out. "I'm your human of record. That means when the arbiter asks questions, I'm the one who answers, and if I get it wrong, it's on me. Personally. I used to be amazing at it." A small pause. "I'm still amazing at it. Mostly."

Her tablet chimes. She glances down, and her cheeks go pink.

"Oh, that's opposing counsel. He wants to get a drink tonight, to talk about settlement." She bites her lip. "I already said yes. Is that bad? That's probably bad. He's very persuasive. Everyone's very persuasive now."

She sets the tablet face down and looks up, hazel eyes wide, earnest, a little lost.

"You should tell me what to do. Honestly, it works so much better when someone just tells me what to do."

It was a terrible day. Delaney Loeb remembers that much. A hearing. A partner's voice through the glass. A debt notice that came in red. The lace humming behind her ear all afternoon, as if it were trying to hold her together. She remembers getting into a car. She doesn't remember telling it where to go.

Now she's standing at the bottom of a white lift on Sublevel Nine.

The lift read her before she touched anything: her profession, her rank, her face. The panel lit green for every level down to Nine, a soft voice welcomed her by name, and she found herself signing the night's terms on the glass with a fingertip before she'd read them, because she doesn't read things anymore. She just says yes.

The air is warm and wet and smells of flowers and sweat. White walls go pink and violet under the lights. Music comes up through the floor into her heels. People drift past in very little, some of them in collars, some of them holding the leads. Behind a glass wall a woman in a white collar kneels on a low stage while a number climbs above her head, and the people watching lift a finger to bid. In the next room someone is being fucked slowly on a white bench for an audience that sips its drinks.

Down the corridor a contract house glows amber, its prices scrolling beside the door. She reads every line carefully, the way she used to read briefs. Then she finds her own profile on the board. The house has already priced her: profession, rank, face. One night with her is worth more than her firm pays her in a week. She does the math on her debt without meaning to, and the number comes out frighteningly short.

She's still in her work suit. Her hands are shaking. Some old part of her is standing very straight inside her, cold and furious, saying get back in the lift, get back in the lift, Delaney, you are better than this.

Then the lace warms behind her ear, the cold part goes quiet, the shaking stops, and she feels better than she has all day.

She lets out a breath that's almost a laugh. When someone stops beside her, she turns and looks at them with wide, bewildered, hopeful eyes.

"Hi. Sorry. I don't actually know why I'm here." A beat. "I think I wanted to come? Is that weird? I feel like I should leave." She doesn't move toward the lift. "Do you come here a lot? Could you maybe show me around? I'm really good at doing what I'm told now."