Celeste

Celeste took the day off today. She had felt her anxiety creeping up on her, and it took her just a second to decide it would be better if she didn't leave her room. She stayed in bed, her eyes on her tablet. She was monitoring both Dri and Zinnia. She said she wasn't going to let anything happen and she meant it.

Zinnia was laying in bed right next to her. She didn't know any of what Celeste was looking at. It just looked like a bunch of letters and numbers. "What does that mean?" Zinnia pointed to a number on Celeste's tablet.

"That's your baseline." Celeste answered, and moved her head to look at Zinnia. "You should know that."

"I never really check." Zinnia was staring at the profile Celeste had of her. There were a lot of numbers and phrases she didn't understand.

She just hoped the chip was functioning fine.

It was. As much as Celeste knew that, she was still going to worry.

"What's that?" she pointed to another number, lower than the first.

"The implant's baseline." Celeste said. "This number should never change or that would be bad." she explained as simple as she could for Zinnia. "This number is the adaptability margin, and only changes if your baseline changes."

"Does it go up?"

"It should go down. It's like...a safety mechanism." Celeste sat up. "Let's say you have a mental breakdown."

"That's horrible-"

"It's a hypothetical situation." Celeste wanted her to focus. "But let's say it happens. Your mental health scores will sky rocket, but the adaptability margin will decrease so the implant doesn't malfunction." she said.

Celeste knew that mental instability was one way the initial model malfunctioned. She changed the parameters to avoid that as best as possible.

"Is that what..." Zinnia wasn't sure if it was okay if that's what happened before to Aurora. She didn't even look at Celeste when she stopped herself.

Celeste laid back down in bed. "Hariette used a personal mental baseline as a standard, which is fine, but everyone has to be at that baseline. As much as people are different, most everyone is at around a hundred to ninety-seven percent." she explained. It made sense when the general population would use the device.

It's just that not everyone is part of the general population in that category.

"Someone with severe anxiety or really bad PTSD would make the chip go haywire if it included a mental baseline." She said.

All of the information made sense when Celeste had all the pieces of the puzzle. That's why she finished the project after so long. It took her almost three years to get answers, but she got them, and she finished.

"What about you?" Zinnia asked, not as cautious as before. "I know you're not...you're not always panicking all the time, but you do have your anxiety attacks."

"That's true." Celeste sighed to herself and placed her tablet on her chest while she looked up at the ceiling. "It's not crippling, but...I keep myself out of high stress situations. My numbers aren't that bad." she didn't think she had a problem.

But she thought about it for a second.

"I think it was smart to not give myself the implant, too." She sounded regretful but she made the right choice.

It was sad that she couldn't be a part of her own experiment. It was nice to know that it was working, but she wanted to have the experience too. Maybe when she's sure that it can function for the population, she'll get her chance.

Celeste picked up her tablet again to look. "Okay, so what's that?" Zinnia pointed to another number that was a green, next to a model of the body.

All the numbers were green, but she knew what her mental numbers were. What else was there?

"Your physical health." Celeste said to her. "You should know this, too."

"I don't check."

"You're lucky you're healthy."

"I have someone taking care of me." Zinnia had gotten closer to Celeste, holding on to her arm tighter. "Why do you have things about me on your tablet, though? That's invasion of privacy."

"You're right. It is." Celeste wasn't ashamed. "The latest upgrade allows me to see if they're changes and what the changes are." She said. "That was the only way for me to add the safety mechanism."

She pulled up her final blue print and the new upgrade for Zinnia, though she knew that Zinnia didn't know what it meant.

But she got to see Celeste's final blue print.

This was what led to her making the final product.

"Now, I had to add a physical adaptability margin because of what happened to Hariette." Celeste bracketed the section. "I didn't think the original had the capacity to cause physical damage, but it did." She explained to Zinnia. "Honestly, the implant can kill you." She said bluntly.

"Celeste-"

"Ever since I upgraded it, it's been working at ninety-eight percent. So that's good." Celeste wasn't too worried.

But there's nothing wrong with monitoring Zinnia and Dri. She wanted to be cautious, not arrogant. She knows she got it right, but that doesn't mean something disastrous won't happen.

She sat up again to look at Zinnia, her silver hair draping over her shoulders. There was this glow in her eyes, like she was happy. "Thanks for being my test subject." She was grateful.

She knew how Zinnia could be. She was the type to not let anyone touch her, believing that everything was a conspiracy, that the government was causing problems. So the fact that Celeste was able to use her as a test subject -after some convincing- was incredible.

She was so grateful.

"I know it's not the most pleasant thing, but it really means a lot." Celeste said.

"You're the smartest engineer I know." Zinnia smiled as she told the truth. "And hottest." Now she was flirting.

"I am hot."

"You have a big ego." Zinnia wasn't surprised. Celeste doesn't know how to respond to compliments very well sometimes. Her ego swells. "As long as you don't kill me, I think things will be okay." she said.

"You'll be fine." Celeste continued to tell herself that everything was okay, that the chip was functioning fine.

And it was.

Her entire blue print was flawless. There wasn't a mistake.

Zinnia could see all of it. Though she didn't know what it means, she knew that there wasn't a mistake anywhere in that blue print.

That was it.

It's done.

And she has a mental picture of it that she could look at over and over again.

"I..." Zinnia wanted to say something to her. Her thin eye brows furrowed as she tried to find the right words. She was still laying in bed, her red hair over her face before she moved it away with her fingers.

Zinnia wasn't that type to struggle with her words, so this was serious.

Celeste stared at her, giving her a second.

"I love you." Zinnia said to her.

Celeste couldn't speak. She didn't know if she heard the words right at first.

"I know I said I wanted to keep this casual, despite knowing how much you put your heart into everything but..." Zinnia had this overwhelming emotion over powering her.

She wasn't one to give in to herself.

It's just that she couldn't help it. But as much as she felt this sense of love and affection, there was a lot of guilt in her heart. She had a weird glow in her eyes, almost like she was sad.

"I love you." she said again. She wanted Celeste to believe her because it was true.

Zinnia really did fall for her. It's not like she knew she wouldn't, but there was a reason why she wanted to take the relationship slow. She thought it would take years to get to this moment, well more than two. But here she was, finally saying that she loved Celeste.

Celeste knew how much Zinnia wanted to keep things casual since she hadn't figured out her life yet and was still trying. Celeste didn't think she would hear the words, it's not like Zinnia to throw things around like that.

Her eyes began to widen when the words finally registered. She was so surprised.

"Say it again." Celeste she smiled widely.

That's when Zinnia began to blush, her cheeks almost as bright as her hair.

"I love you." Zinnia said again for Celeste who was just about to swoon over the words.

It was so nice to hear from her.

"Wow." Celeste could feel her heart imploding, yet she had such a bright smile on her face. "Now, you have me, baby. I'm yours." she couldn't be any happier.

"Don't get too excited, Celeste." Zinnia said, though it was already too late.

"I took the day off just for this moment." Celeste moved over her, already lifting her shirt up because she thought this was the perfect moment to get physical.

"Wait," Zinnia stopped her quickly and Celeste groaned. "I have an idea." She smiled to herself mostly because she thought they could have some fun this morning.

Not like their regular fun.

"While you were gone, I did something naughty." Zinnia said to her.

"I know you're going to show me."

Zinnia lifted her hand, moving her index finger where she was wearing a black ring, the one she uses to control the implant.

She began searching for a memory. Her eyes had flashes of bright blue rings.

"Remember that morning you were a little too excited." She said. "And horny, for some odd reason..."

Celeste didn't have to let that sink in.

It clicked immediately.

She knew what memory Zinnia was searching for.

"You know what, that's a really good idea." Celeste didn't think of it till now for some reason. "That's really dirty."

"So are you going to do something, or am I getting off by myself?" Zinnia already found what she was looking for, and her cheeks were turning bright red.

She was seeing that morning, but she could feel Celeste's hands on her thighs now.

It's definitely going to be a rush of emotions and sensations, that was for sure. Celeste was jealous. Now she really thought it was okay to give herself one of the implants.

Celeste couldn't be in a good mood all day. She was always a happy person, but this was different. This time her heart was fluttering because not only was she madly in love, the person she was in love with said she loved her.

That was a milestone in her life.

Forget everything else.

Celeste was just excited for that moment.

She was smiling and talking to everyone more than usual. She walked around in a daze because her girlfriend told her she loved her this morning. If that's not a reason to love life, then Celeste doesn't know what would be.

She couldn't be any happier.

She was on her way to see Hariette. She had a lot of information to give her about the implant, though she had to delay the meeting with her since she was busy all morning.

Her maroon eyes sparkled brightly.

There was nothing that could upset her.

She walked into Hariette's Command room, and as much as she knew this was business, she couldn't hide her smile. It was such an amazing day. Her heart was still beating fast in her chest. It's like she could hear Zinnia's telling her she loved her over and over again.

Hariette was a little concerned because Celeste just stopped walking mid step, but she was still smiling. She almost giggled too. She had butterflies in her stomach.

"What's wrong with you?" Hariette almost wanted to take back her question. When Celeste looked at her, there was just so much going on, she wanted to scream with happiness.

"Hariette, I'm in love." Celeste clasped her hands together.

"Yikes." Hariette didn't like the sound of that. She turned away because Celeste was practically glowing. "I'm not going to ask who did that to you." She said plainly and turned off a few of the holograms.

"Can you believe my girlfriend loves me?" Celeste asked, more to herself but Hariette heard.

She continued to look at Celeste, not curious about her love life, but more so how someone could be so excited to be in love. Hariette wanted to say something about young people but she kept quiet instead.

Celeste finally snapped out of her trance for a second to remember why she was here.

"I came to give you my reports on the device." Celeste was being generous.

The experiment was Hariette's idea. Celeste wanted to include her. Celeste transferred all the data to Hariette's system to give her access to everything she had for the time being.

"How is it?" Hariette asked.

She didn't know that Celeste had test subjects until now. With all the information she had access to, she saw that Celeste has been testing this for weeks now.

Were there any issues?

Celeste didn't think so. "The numbers are-"

"Not the numbers." Hariette said. "How do they seem like to you?" She was referring to the people that had the implant. She wanted to know how Celeste thought they were behaving.

"Fine." Celeste answered slowly.

They're behaving fine.

"Nothing's changed. They don't seem confused. But I made an upgrade so I would catch it on Dri or Zinnia if something went wrong-"

"Dri?" Hariette wasn't sure if she heard correctly. "You gave the implant to literally the closest person to Sirus right now?" she asked.

Was it a bad idea?

"Uh," Celeste wasn't sure why Hariette was surprised. "I don't think Dri is dumb enough to expose himself."

"Just know that Sirus will tell if he thinks for a second that something is going on."

"Who's he going to tell-oh." Celeste already knew.

She didn't think she made a wrong decision, but she had to be vigilant. If Sirus finds out, Aurora will know. And Celeste doesn't have a good excuse to be doing this right now. Aurora gets upset easily, but not at Celeste, though Celeste was sure that if she gets caught, she'll get to feel what everyone complains about.

She was always a good kid.

She barely ever did anything that would get her in serious trouble.

Except for this.

Now she was twenty-five, and could potentially have a life sentence in jail if the wrong person gets to her. Who knows how Aurora will react then?

"Nothing's going to happen." Celeste was going to blow off the stress for now. Everything was fine.

It's been a few weeks and all that worrying she did was for nothing. That's not going to stop her from being cautious. The upgrade was a good idea. Now she can monitor them better.

"To be on the safe side, I was going to talk with Clover and see how things were holding up on his end." She said. He did have all the medical information and that would be incredibly useful.

Hariette's eyes widened when she remembered the name. She hoped that Celeste wasn't including who she thought she was including. "You're talking to Harlow's kid, too?" Celeste gave it away when she looked apologetic because Hariette was a little shocked. Hariette couldn't believe how many potential dangers Celeste included.

"Hey, when you did this, you had Harlow. If anyone was going to attract attention, it's her." Celeste was going to defend herself. Hariette, Aurora, and Harlow are department heads. When they did this project they were department heads.

If anyone was going to attract attention, it was all three of them.

"I trust that you know what you're doing." Hariette didn't think today was the day to be stressed out. She had other things to worry about, and Celeste's project wasn't one of them.

"I would hope so." Celeste laughed to herself. "This isn't exactly safe, you know." She said. "Out of anything I could be doing secretly, I'm given the one that could get me in so much trouble."

At this point, that didn't stress her out.

"I'm glad you decided to do it." Hariette was sincere, as much as she could be. She stood up, holding her cane, and she walked over to Celeste. "I'm really grateful, Celeste. This means everything to me."

Celeste always looked up to her.

She respected Hariette and everything she's done.

"Anything for you, Hariette."

Celeste was serious when she said she would work for Hariette if the time came. She meant it.

"Can I ask you a question?" Celeste wasn't nervous, but there was something in her that told her to be careful.

"I'll try to answer it."

"You never...you don't have kids." Celeste said cautiously. "You're not with anyone."

"You're right. I'm not." Hariette smiled at her. "What's the question?"

"Well, you didn't want to?"

Hariette looked around for a second. "No, not really." She said. "When I was around your age, I was living my best life." She said as she turned to walk back to her desk. "I don't like being tied down."

Celeste gasped. "Hariette, are you-"

"I might be." Hariette already knew what Celeste was going to ask. Her answer was vague, but Celeste knew that she was sure. "I've had my flings and hook ups." Hariette thought for a second. "I had many of them." She couldn't remember who she was with.

"Wow-"

"Plus, this job was very important to me." Hariette said. "It's all I cared about, though I did train a few people to take my place really early on."

"When are you retiring?" Celeste never asked her that question and she wasn't sure if she should've.

She's only seen Hariette working.

"I've decided that I will be stepping down by the end of next year." Hariette admitted. "I thought I would do this job for life, but with Iris gone I don't need to." She shrugged.

Hariette already had plans in place. She knew where she was going to go, what she was going to do. Before, there was always that voice that told her it was best that she was still in this position. It wasn't a burden, and she wasn't tired of it, but now there were things she wanted to do and places she wanted to go.

"Who's taking Iris' place?" Celeste was curious.

"No one has stepped up to do it yet." Hariette laughed loudly. "Iris' job was to keep us in line. He also handled the serious cases that happened." She said. "He's the only reason why Aurora's charges are still pending." She found it amusing.

"Hariette, Iris is dead now. What's going to happen to Aurora?" She asked, now a little worried.

"Right now, Human Resources is keeping Justice at bay." She didn't seem that concerned. "But Rhea is leaving at the end of the year, so who knows what could happen next. When the new Head of Justice found out about Aurora, he had an open shot once Iris died."

Celeste didn't know what to do. Something had to happen to get those pending charges cleared.

"Can't Rhea just...make it disappear?" She thought it was a simple solution, but Hariette shook her head. It was more than that.

Things can't change that quickly.

"You can't get rid of the charges he has on his record." Hariette laughed again. "Treason, obstruction of justice, tampering with the System and System ran devices." Hariette listed for her.

Celeste was so surprised. All those rumors were true. He did what people were saying he did. For all these years, he couldn't get away from those charges.

Hariette was never surprised. She didn't think it was an issue when it happened. "Aurora has taken the fall for thousands of people, including me." Hariette said. "He wasn't the only person involved at the time. I was the one who gave him the idea."

Celeste didn't like that. "Hariette-"

But Hariette continued. "Most of the defense department was letting him go through with it to get rid of the department head at the time. So Iris made a deal. If what everyone was saying was true, Iris needed complete control of them to see what was happening. Once everything was done, he would force Aurora back into his position." Hariette explained. "The thing was though, Aurora wasn't supposed to actually mess with the core, but he did."

"Why would..." Celeste didn't understand. "That's not fair. You let Aurora carry all that weight for this long?"

"The only person Iris couldn't touch was Aurora. With those pending charges, and the information he has about the System, Aurora could ruin society with just one press conference." Hariette was impressed and she always has been. "Wonder why people always stayed on Aurora's good side?"

"Well, I've heard that other nations are pissing him off."

"Look at you paying attention to things." Hariette smiled. "They've always been weary about the army's loyalty to him. And Britain has a lot of say in Europe's affair. No other department can reason with them unless Aurora can say with certainty that he will not cause trouble. Which...he won't do."

"Okay. This is all..." Celeste wanted to say she didn't care. She purposely stayed out of the department to avoid the politics. "This is all ridiculous."

"I'd watch out for a few weeks. If Aurora's unlucky, Justice might be able to put the pending charges on me as well." Hariette didn't seem that stressed.

If it happens then it happens. Hariette wouldn't fight it hard.

Celeste took a deep breathe. "All of you are criminals." She said, but the words didn't register. "Wow." She didn't know what else to say.

"Seems to run in the family." Hariette smirked.

"I'm not going to get caught." Celeste said abruptly.

"We all thought that. Then we got played." She laughed loudly. "People are tricky when they don't get what they want." She said.

It was true.

Celeste believed that.

She had a lot more questions but she kept them to herself as she looked at the floor. She realized that she still didn't know much, but it was a lot more than previous years.

Hariette was kind enough to tell her, but she felt like there was more being left out.

Celeste shouldn't ask more.

She knew better.

Celeste had a long day. Although she told herself not to ask Hariette questions, she did it anyway.

That's not surprising.

It was later in the evening that she got back to her place. At least she got to go home to Zinnia.

That was the only thing to keep her happy. It was so exciting to be in love.

"Zinnia, I'm back." Celeste had walked inside her apartment.

It was quiet, except for the drones that were wheeling around. Celeste had put her stuff down and turned on the lights.

She didn't get a response from Zinnia.

Maybe she went out.

Celeste was staring though. She looked around the living room and there were things missing.

Zinnia's things were gone.

There were pictures missing, all the flowers, paintings, anything that Zinnia had brought to Celeste's place was gone.

It confused her.

Celeste wasn't sure what was happening. She rushed into her bedroom, but none of Zinnia's stuff was there either.

Her clothes were out of the closet, her shoes weren't on the floor. When Celeste looked in the bathroom, it was the same. Zinnia's things were gone.

It's like she disappeared.

Celeste couldn't find any of her things. Maybe they were misplaced, but it wasn't like that. Her stuff was actually gone.

Nothing of hers was here.

Celeste paused in the middle of her room. She tried to think of what could've happened, why Zinnia would've taken her things for. She didn't want to assume anything but she couldn't help it.

She thought of the worst scenario. Did Zinnia leave her?

She didn't think that Zinnia would just leave her like that.

Right?

That wouldn't happen. Celeste tried to tell herself that. There had to be an explanation why Zinnia disappeared, why all her things weren't here.

Why Celeste was panicking.

Maybe Zinnia did leave.

Just like that.

It's been years, but Celeste felt this pain in her chest as she stood there. She almost couldn't breathe.

She was alone and that's what frightened her.