At the end of her work day, Guernica remained mostly untouched on the Octopus. A few sections of facial tissue had been slowly, painstakingly peeled away so she could see the state of the paint underneath, and now that she had…there was no simple way to put into words what it did to her heart. There was some ethereal idea in her head about what all the damage looked like, especially after the light scans, but nothing had prepared her for the extent of it all. She had picked a corner of the tissue area that was close to one of the dendritic veins of adhesive that had been under the UV, and when she had revealed it, just for a moment, she thought it wasn’t so bad. The paint seemed so perfectly flat she almost let go of the ball of anxiety within her chest and in that moment, she moved just slightly to the side, allowing the light to bounce off it at a different angle.

Then she saw them. The lines under the paint, clear as day. They were thinner at the edge of the revealed area, but as they moved towards one of the larger adhesive tributaries, they got wider. And wider. And much wider, pushing the paint off the original canvas material itself.

Alexa reached out and adjusted the lamp on the work table, moving its light to project from a different angle across the canvas. The distortions seemed to mellow out, an optical illusion forced onto her perspective. She swore under her breath and moved the light back, seeing the ridges and troughs that faded in and out of existence like some kind of magic trick. There were hundreds here in between the fine, thin rivers. The potential of thousands more under the tissue-applied area, where the bulk of the adhesive’s reactions had been, made a pit deep in her abdomen.

“Oh, Carlotta…” Dr. Mendoza had been right. She’d been right the moment Alexa turned on the IR and the UV, but it hadn’t felt real at the moment. Now, she was trying to imagine how it had all gone down. Had someone opened a door and cast a new ray of light onto Guernica? Had they discovered the first ridges as they moved it for the first time in five years?

Alexa shut her eyes for a few seconds, and then looked at the painting. She felt the distinct possibility that perhaps Carlotta had spent hours and hours with the piece, staring at it, seeing all of its previous intricacies…that she simply was the first to notice. Likely when the process had just started. When there was still, perhaps, some hope that it could be stopped. She wondered, then, how long she watched. How long that hope had lasted as it slowly ebbed away, bit by bit.

When was it that she gave up? Was it when she understood that nothing could be done without destroying the painting along with it? Was it when everything they had tried failed? Was it when the board agreed to trade it for an unnatural fake, and condemned the real Guernica to a private collection, never again to see the light of day?

She commanded the Octopus to pull the painting away, where it hurt her sensibilities less. It floated there, back out of reach, almost taunting her. A part of her wanted to call Mendoza again, but given the time difference…

Oh. She still had the files. When she had first browsed them after lunch, one in particular had caught her eye. She had been in the middle of preparing to remove some of the tissue, and shelved it in the back of her brain, but now, as Carlotta’s lingering despair dimmed the lights in her head, the volume stuck out. Alexa brought it up on the computer.

The title was: “Advisory Regarding the Continued Use of NAN-47 Consolidation Gel”.

She sighed. The name of the culprit adhesive was one of the first things she’d looked up that day. On Frindalis, there was only one company that still stocked it, and it was for hot air balloons at that. A quick tab to her inbox revealed no replies as of yet, but perhaps the morning would bring more for-

“You’re still in here?”

She almost jumped out of her skin as the door swung open and Jerod leaned in to ask the question. “Oh! Hi!”

“I wasn’t aware that Dr. Klein has allotted you overtime.”

“Right.” She actuated the Octopus and the painting back into reach. “I might need your help putting this in the vault.”

He furrowed his brow. “Given how you reacted to this thing I thought you’d be chomping at the bit.” He revealed a metal flask that he was holding. “I even brewed you some tea. Camomile. Helps with sleep.”

“I highly doubt a painting is gonna keep me-”

He stared at her, his lips bordering on a frown.

Alexa bit her lip. “I just didn’t look at the time, that’s all. You can make my clock-out twenty minutes ago. I just…I need to think about this.”

Both their eyes fell on the painting once more. There was a long moment of silence before Jerod asked: “Is it bad?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. And there’s a lot of material Steven’s friend sent me, so I need time to go through it before I can even start doing anything. You know they tried this like sixty years ago, and they couldn’t do it.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” He put the thermos on the desk and picked up her empty coffee cup that he had delivered to her right before lunch break, fully diluted by the melted ice. “And try not to leave things in the storage room next time.”

“Yeah!. Yeah.” She started moving the mechanical arm again, but Jerod was beside her chair, a hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll handle the cleanup and storage. Go home, Alexa.”

She swallowed, before quickly gathering up all her things plus the tea thermos into her shoulder bag and rushing out of the studio. This time she went further back up the hall almost to Jerod’s maintenance closet and took the smaller lift back up to the ground floor, and exited via the staff door out into the side of an exhibition hall. At four in the afternoon, it was a bit more lively now, including an entire parade of little schoolchildren and their leading teacher going through the displays. Alexa smiled to herself and made her way back to the rotunda, where the guard at the front desk had changed, now a bored-looking pale woman who immediately spotted her, indicating her to come over.

“Busy day today, Maud?” she asked as she approached the desk.

“I just got here.” The guard yawned. “Anything interesting happening downstairs? A new dinosaur maybe?”

“We got a new piece, still needs a lot of work. Did you sleep late or what?”

“More like I couldn't sleep. Bloody construction all morning.” Maud wiped her eyes. “Oh yeah, there was this…” She spun around in her chair, and tapped at her own computer terminal. “Ah. There. Apparently someone was looking for you today. A woman…and he didn’t get her name. Typical day shift.”

Alexa frowned. “Wait, what?”

“Apparently Jerod said you wouldn’t like being disturbed today.”

“...he’s not wrong. Did they leave contact details or anything?”

Maud shook her head. “Nooope. She was told to try another day.”

“I’m not in tomorrow.”

“Yeah, figured. I’ll tell the day shift to keep an eye out.”

“Thanks. You know, you should try camomile tea. I heard it helps with sleep.” Before Maud could answer, she was already making her way out of the rotunda, chuckling to herself.

While the parking lot was still mostly empty, the heat had died down in the shadow of the growing clouds, preparing to unleash another downpour upon the city. In speeding up her steps with the hope of beating the rain on the way home, she almost missed the man in the crisp white suit at the main gate, watching her from under the brim of a matching white fedora.

“Miss Romilly!”

She stopped, and threw her gaze over the hoods of two or three other cars towards him, squinting.

He stood up from where he was leaning against the hood of his own car, a jet-black vintage model that Alexa could guess was worth more than what she made in a year. His hands were in his pockets as they met in front of an empty parking space. A whole head taller, and a smirk to match his demeanor.

“Who’s asking?” She clutched her shoulder bag, trying to pry anything at all on him that didn’t just scream “nepotism”.

He held out a hand, with a simple silver signet ring on the pinkie. “Kurt Armitage.”

She shook. His palm was dry and coarse, almost like sandpaper. "As in the Whitlock-Armitage foundation?” she ventured.

“Eh. Hmm.” He tilted his head in a playful measuring gesture. “I’m not really involved in the day-to-day operations, that’s more my sister. She loves her galas for her donors. Have you been?”

“I don’t think I’m that much of a philanthropist,” she joked dryly. “I wasn’t aware the foundation had an interest in historical conservation.”

“It doesn’t. Thalia prefers medical research, as boring as that sounds. I’m here in my own personal interest. Have you heard about the excavation?”

“Can’t say I have.” In truth, she vaguely recalled snippets of it from a news report, but that had been at least a week ago.

“I have a team up in the northern Vestin digging up something. I’d love for you to be part of the whole process.”

She blinked. “Hold on, me? I don’t even know anything about this.”

“We’ll bring you up to speed in no time. There’ll be full pay, and I can take flexible hours so you don’t need to resign from your post or anything. And uh, I pay well. Really well. All I ask is for your expertise, you can leave the manual handling to my guys.”

“I-” The image of Guernica came to mind. “I can’t,” she said. “There’s a lot going on right now.”

“You could at least hear me out about what we have first. They think it’s a whole spaceship down there.”

“There’s other experts for that. I could maybe recommend someone if I ask around-”

“Material from the pit carbon dated to over three thousand years ago. This planet wasn’t even terraformed.”

Alexa started looking around her, trying to spot a camera or something. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Kurt stared her dead in the eyes. “I’m not kidding.”

“But that means…it’s from one of the gods. Like, the ones that escaped. Nothing else is that old and that advanced.”

“Most likely. There’s bound to be artifacts inside, I could use your help figuring out which one.”

“You’re playing with fire. Aren’t…” She lowered her voice. “Aren’t they watching? The last time someone messed with an actual god…”

“You know what they are, don’t you?”

She pursed her lips. “I’ve heard theories. Applied theology isn’t my field.”

“Then you know they’re not real gods, just parasites. Help me figure this one out so I can make it safe, before…” It was Kurt’s turn to look around. “...before the wrong people get a worse idea of what to do with it.”

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m not messing with any of that.”

As she tried to move past him, he held out a business card between two fingers, in her way. She snatched it and kept moving.

“If you change your mind, don’t hesitate!” he called after her.

Alexa slipped it into her bag and shook the dread off herself. She had better things to do then piss off the highest authority in the land. Anyone with half a brain would-

She sucked in a breath. No use thinking about it. Her life, her job, Guernica were more important than the ambition of some rich schmuck with more money than he knew what to do with.

The first drop of the lightest rain hit her on the cheek. She started to run.

“That doesn’t look like it went well,” Hanlon said.

Kurt shut the door. “It’s about what I expected from it.”

“Do we need her?”

“It’ll go faster with her.” He watched Alexa leave through the side gate in the parking lot. “I have a backup plan.”

“I wish you would start making those for my mother’s events.” A judgemental stare met him in the rearview mirror. “You know she tears her hair out arranging those.”

“Can’t help it, can I? I’ve got important work to do.” He hit up a contact on his phone and held it to his ear.

A woman picked up. “Yeah?”

Kurt smiled to himself. “Your turn.”

Alexa had almost reached the bus stop near her house when the downpour started behind her. With a glance, she identified the wall of the rain rushing towards her and dug into her bag, grabbing the collapsible umbrella and bringing it to bear. It popped open as if parrying the onslaught, deflecting the water around her like a warrior’s shield, sparing her from the initial torrent but soaking her legs in the process. She made haste through the fence, feeling the water beginning to soak into her socks. She was so focused on that exact unpleasant feeling and keeping the umbrella shielding her hair that when she finally got on the porch, she figured she was alone.

But she wasn’t.

“Hey, Lexi.”

Ice shot through her veins, and it wasn’t from the cold of the rain. She slowly turned to the bench on the porch. The young woman sitting there was her exact age - not that she could forget that - and her raven hair was longer now, tied into a neat and rather cute ponytail that Alexa hadn’t seen since the last summer before their finals. She wore a baggy, frilled white blouse, and one of the hundreds of pairs of jeans she owned. Gotta have one for every occasion. The words replayed in her mind.

“H-Hey…” That was all Alexa could manage.

“You look good.”

“How did you get here?”

“I took a starship, then a landing craft, then a taxi from the spaceport?”

Alexa’s expression hardened. “You know that’s not what I mean.” The shouting. The crying. It all came crawling back from the deepest part of her memory.

She looked her dead in the eye. “I missed you.”

“Aerin.”

“Love it when you say my name.” She smiled softly, the faint pink lipstick reflecting in the distant lightning. Those pillowly, soft lips that were seared permanently into Alexa’s brain.

“Why?”

“I just said I missed you, dummy. Look, we both said a lot of stuff, but…I don’t know. I didn’t fly here for you, more like a work thing, but I thought maybe I could see you again. Is that so wrong?”

Alexa said nothing. Her own breathing was ragged, from her run through the park.

“I’m not here for a fight. I just want to see my friend,” she reiterated.

Alexa simply turned, put her keys in the lock, and opened the door. “Come on,” she said. “Before you get a cold out there.”

“Hah, you’re the one who’s gonna get a cold.”

They stood in the living room hallway as the door swung closed, banishing the noise of the storm to the outside. In the dark, they stared at each other, with their breathing saturating the silence between them.

“I’m sorry,” Alexa said first.

“I’m sorry too.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“Yeah?”

Alexa nodded. “Do you still wanna stay over until it stops raining?” she asked, knowing full well the forecast had predicted it late into the night.

“Sure.”

They stared at each other some more, until Aerin took a step forward. Alexa responded in kind, their faces almost brushing against the o-

Aerin caught her by the wrist. “Let me see the paintings I’ve missed.”

Alexa exhaled slowly, so close to her. And yet just out of reach. In that moment, there was not a god, an authority in the universe that could have made her say no.