A Time to Weep and a Time to Flee
Simonee walked away from Dalia's suite. Fast, not frantic. But her chest pulled tight and her legs wanted to run. She tried to look hurried, but not harried—like she wasn't fleeing the scene of a crime.
She glanced left and right. The corridor was empty. Not unusual.
This section of the Luxury Habitation Ring belonged to the Ledas family—just Dalia and her father. But Simonee had been coming here five years and never once saw the man. She was the only visitor Dalia ever had that she knew of.
Empty didn't mean unwatched. Cameras in the corners. Mics in the walls. All listening. All learning. The AI missed nothing. A young woman walking fast, breathless, eyes darting? That raised flags.
But Simonee had her own watchers. She managed a web of autonomous agents across the station’s net—listening, parsing, decrypting. With a series of blinks, the message stream floated into her right visual field, courtesy of her cybernetic implant and a wireless link to the smart communication device in her back pocket.
KeenKite, one of her agents, posted a message to the channel.
08:39:34 [KeenKite] Cams alive, boss 👀 Aggy's tracking (FaceID: Simonee Saran). Hooking the tracking API to this channel.
She gripped the strap on the satchel tight with one hand and twiddled the buckle with the other.
08:39:35 [AggyHook] -!- LEDAS CORRIDOR: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) BEHAVIOR(Agitated) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.00 → 0.06
08:39:46 [PrimPeacock] Stop fidgeting and slow up a bit, Sim.
She slowed. Let the satchel hang. Tried to keep her arms from pumping faster than her legs. But her calendar app pressed the issue.
08:40:00 [System] 📅 Reminder: 09:00 :: Date with the Devil. (20 Min Warning)
She sighed, blinked and the stream dimmed. Mason wanted the signal by nine. That left twenty minutes. Not enough. She needed to find a quiet place to transmit—outside this section.
The morning shift would be moving now, filling the common areas with people. That meant cover, but also friction.
Morning, though, was a fiction. Enceladus orbited Saturn every thirty-three hours, but the station kept a twenty-four-hour clock—humans clinging to Earthlike rhythm in a sky that never agreed.
Dalia always followed the light, or rather the lack of it. She liked the twilight hours in Saturn’s shadow, when the ringed giant loomed outside her window like a neon god straddling the galactic plane. They used to sit together in the gloaming, watching it spin around them at 376 kilometers an hour.
I’ve ruined that.
Her boots thumped against the paneled floor.
Thum-thum. Thum-thum. Thum-thum.
Like a heartbeat.
Dalia’s. Warm in her ear. Rising.
Falling with each breath.
Never again.
Her breath hitched.
Everything had gone so terribly wrong.
On mornings like this one, when the sun flared through Dalia’s windows, she wouldn’t wake until it set. Simonee had tried to help that along. Just a dose of antihistamine in her brandy.
That was her mistake.
She didn’t want to be caught.
She didn’t want to be doing this at all.
She broke character.
Easy in. Easy out. No harm. No foul. She’d repeated that mantra all week.
But the look in Dalia’s eyes twisted her stomach into knots.
Not easy. Plenty of harm.
Totally foul.
And if there was any doubt Dalia might report her, that look erased it.
The corridor ended at a frosted glass partition separating the Ledas wing from the LuxHab lobby. Diffused light shimmered through it—behind the blur, shapes moved: beige, blocky, busy.
From the inside, the door opened at the touch of a wall panel. From the outside, the guards controlled access.
They also recorded exits.
08:44:02 [AggyHook] -!- EXIT GATE: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) APPROACHING :: BEHAVIOR(Hurried) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.08 → 0.11
08:44:02 [PrimPeacock] Hold steady, hon, don't correct, "Hurried" is fine.
She blinked it away.
Simonee lingered by the door, eyes flicking from glass to plate, hand raised but unmoving. The corridor here was wide and bright. When the door opened, anyone near would see.
The system would, too. Every opening logged. Every anomaly flagged.
How long before Dalia alerted security?
It hadn’t happened—yet. Simonee would know. If her name surfaced, she’d see it. Still...
She pulled out her smartcomm and held it up as if checking a message.
"Greedy Goblin, you watching the ESSF bulletins?" she whispered, barely more than a breath—a practiced intonation that wouldn’t trip a mic within two meters.
08:45:20 [GreedyGoblin] Bulletins are clean. No Simonee Saran on report. 👌
Still, if Dalia followed through, she didn’t want to be here when it happened.
08:46:02 [AggyHook] -!- EXIT GATE: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) LOITERING 120s :: BEHAVIOR(Pensive) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.11 → 0.14
08:46:03 [PrimPeacock] 😬 Break it up or go, girl.
Simonee turned back to the corridor once, looked at her smartcomm, looked back, rocked on her heels then shook her head and faced the glass. BEHAVIOR(Waiting on someone).
She closed her left eye.
Through her implant, heat signatures bloomed red and yellow—amorphous blobs meandering the lobby. Two glowed bright at the desk a few meters in front of the door. One was massive.
Only one officer she knew fit that signature.
Gora.
He liked her. A lot. If he saw her, he'd stop her. He'd start a conversation.
He'd ruin everything.
She needed privacy; she needed to get the hell off this ring.
A denser blob of heat swayed toward the security desk. A crowd. A distraction. Perfect.
If she timed it right, she'd sneak out behind them. Her hand hovered over the touch plate. The partition would open about seven centimeters a second. She needed 21 centimeters sideways: three seconds on the clock. Three seconds that Gora might see her.
The blob shifted toward her. Satchel tight to her chest, she pressed the plate. The gap opened.
One, two, three.
She slid through.
The crowd was loud—barking at the security desk about accommodations, upgrades, something. Matching yellow kasaya robes flared over their shoulders.
A cult?
Maybe consultants. Expensive ones. Simonee couldn’t tell the difference—same bullshit, different packaging.
Gora was like a red-headed giant in front of them. He glanced at the sliding partition. Then back to the guests. When the door opened fully, he raised a massive hand and stood tall, eyes sweeping the corridor like a lighthouse beam.
The crowd went still. A dozen necks craned upward.
08:53:18 [GossipyGecko] Social commotion spike (12 devices monitoring).
08:53:19 [PrimPeacock] Blend in. You're just waiting in line.
08:53:20 [AggyHook] -!- LUXHAB LOBBY: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) :: BEHAVIOR(Waiting) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.11 → 0.10
Where Gora was ridiculously tall, Simonee was particularly short. She could stand behind the tallest kasaya in the crowd and look like she wasn't hiding.
08:53:22 But she couldn't wait forever.
She needed a place to work. A spot to unload the satchel. Scan the card. Fire the signal.
That meant no eyes.
That meant no cameras.
There weren’t many places like that on this station.
Dalia's suite was one. The plan was to transmit from the cocktail table, curled up on the soft couch. If Dalia walked in then, she'd play coy:
Whatcha doin'?
Oh, just working.
She needed to find another.
Blink-blink: a heat map of the LuxHab ring faded into view. Red for camera clusters. Blue for thin coverage. Black for blind spots.
She gave the air a subtle pinch, spread it, and the map zoomed in on the lobby, which was a bowl of red. By design, every exit stood in view of the security desk. The only black spots were a single office tucked behind that desk, and the women’s restroom just off the main entrance. The office had a privacy block, but privacy blocks were flagged—sure, you could have some privacy, but what are you trying to hide?.
The restroom, was noisier, with mics but no eyes. Either way, she’d have to cross the same open floor. Straight past Gora. Still scanning. Still standing.
08:55:00 [System] 📅 Reminder: 09:00 :: Date with the Devil. (5 Min Warning)
No time to wait him out.
She turned. Hoodie up. Satchel forward.
One breath in; one breath out: she walked.
A shrill whistle sliced through the lobby. Simonee cringed. Froze. Looked back.
Gora's eyes locked with hers. They twinkled. He smiled.
His arms upraised as if to say, You leave without saying hello?
The crowd turned too. A dozen pairs of eyes glared at her. A dozen witnesses.
A dozen faces recorded for further questioning.
08:56:11 [GossipyGecko] Social attention spike; The room just looked at you.
Simonee grimaced, teeth grinding.
No kidding!
08:56:12 [AggyHook] -!- PATTERN HINT: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) UNEXPECTED EXIT 77% :: BEHAVIOR(Hunted) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.10 → 0.25
08:56:12 [SaltySquid] Watch it! Aggy's got a child-agent poking your smartcomm—sandboxed for now 😬
Shit. Her stomach went cold. It's bad when they try cracking your system. Worse when they can't. Routing to a virtual image full of cat pics and boy band albums wouldn't keep them long. She needed to de-escalate.
08:56:13 [PrimPeacock] Cool and friendly, kiddo.
Miming a sad face; she threw her hands up in an exaggerated shrug, gestured at the crowd between them and then tapped her wrist.
Gora shook his head and waved her off. He barked at the crowd, who jumped, turned and resumed shouting about whatever they thought they deserved.
Simonee turned back to the big arch of the lobby entrance.
08:56:42 [AggyHook] -!- PATTERN HINT: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) FAMILIAR INTERACTION 89% :: BEHAVIOR(Hurried) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.25 → 0.06
08:56:42 [SaltySquid] Child-agent disengaged.
Her heart stuttered and slowed. Her legs wobbled, but she held steady. She couldn't faint. There'd be commotion and Mason was waiting.
08:56:43 [GossipyGecko] Social disturbance allayed.
08:56:43 [PrimPeacock] Smooth acting, sweety.
Simonee rushed out of the lobby, took two rights and a left into the women’s restroom. She ducked into a stall, shut the door, latched it.
08:57:24 [AggyHook] -!- LOST VISUAL: SUBJECT(Simonee Saran) ENTERED BATHROOM :: BEHAVIOR(Private) :: THREAT LEVEL 0.06 → 0.10
08:57:25 [KeenKite] No cams, but keep mum, mics are hot. You’ve got a plausible-stall window—fifteen minutes max. No loitering in the loo.
08:57:25 [System] ⏱ Added: 15:00
With her back against the cold metal door, she sank to the floor—breath shallow, arms shaking, chest shivering. Cortisol picked up where adrenaline left off.
The last thirty minutes crashed down all at once.
Dalia in the dark. Crying. Frowning. Hating Simonee for being everything that she was.
Her vision blurred. Her fingers fumbled with the satchel. She sniffed. Huffed. Gasped. She no longer cared what the mics might hear. It wasn't going to keep inside anymore.
08:57:51 [PrimPeacock] Privacy cloak engaged, sugar; 😿 and 🚽, let it out.
She yanked out the blue keycard and glared at it. She'd never seen anything like it. The replica that replaced it was a lame copy. This thing had serious tech. Whatever it opened outclassed any system she'd ever worked with.
But right then she didn't care what it was for, just what it had cost her.
She wanted to snap it in half. Grind it into dust.
To hell with Mason.
To hell with them all.
But she breathed.
She had to finish the job. It was everything now.
All she had left.
Next from the satchel came a translucent tablet. She set it on the floor. Powered it on.
Tears splatted the screen. She wiped them with her sleeve, her eyes with her shoulder.
Breathed again—slow and long—until the heat in her face faded.
She needed to think. Clearly. Now.
At any moment, security might light up the station with her face. She'd know first, but not soon enough to make a difference.
Petty theft was one thing. But the Ledas family ran Enceladus Station—they owned it.
And Simonee had just stolen from the governor’s daughter.
Even Gora might come after her for that.
And she liked Gora. A lot.
If he were the one to catch her, it'd be so much worse somehow.
There would be conversation.
There would be shame.
She'd been arrested. She'd been in cuffs.
But she'd never felt guilty about it.
Breaking the rules was how she survived.
But she'd broken a different rule this time.
More tears. She wiped.
The tablet’s loading icon spun.
Too slow.
08:58:00 [System] 📅 Reminder: 09:00 :: Date with the Devil. (2 Min Warning)
Less than two minutes left.
What if she missed the contact window?
Security might be the least of her worries.
Mason wasn’t known for mercy.
Or patience.
The tablet was his. He’d given it to her a week ago.
Along with the decoy keycard.
In the middle of the night.
She’d been sleeping naked in her own bed—the safest place she thought she could be.
She woke to the tink of ceramics, steam in the air, the earthy scent of tea.
And a stranger in her kitchenette.