Conics Unfortunately: 48

The station orbiting Planet Nestor proper really was almost a carbon copy of the earthling fold monitor, just without the fold generator and with awkward wooden stakes poking out of the textured cement walls.

Ellipse thought it looked stupid, but at least she did not have any trouble getting around. Once their newest shipment—wooden crates of fancy yellow pomegranite-looking fruits from Nestor—had been stacked and secured within the Conics’s hull, she bid the boys goodbye and set out to relieve herself before they all searched the station for Ami. And then, just like she predicted based off of the earthling fold monitor’s plan, she found a bathroom two docks down from where the Conics was parked.

A year of scrubbing down the bathroom between docks S-43 and S-45 had Ellipse completely prepared to walk through the heavy plastic door and find the standard stalls and sinks and unfortunately-patterned tile floors that earthling bathrooms had. Avians, evidently, had somewhat differing ideas about how to do their business.

There were still stalls, which thankfully still had doors, and the stall walls were the same dingy tan-grey that they were on the earthling fold monitor. The sinks had been lowered slightly to accommodate the generally shorter avian population, but at least they were still porcelain. The toilets, however, had vanished. Instead, Ellipse heard the constant trickle of a small, steady stream of water, which ran through a trench in the floor in a neat arc that caught the back end of each stall.

She gulped, eyes bulging. This was worse than the squat toilets.

“Heck it,” she muttered. An off-ship bathroom was an off-ship bathroom. She peeked inside the closest stall and then had the brilliant thought that maybe one or two of the stalls had been adapted for true upright bipeds and had a seat over the stream, kind of like the pictures of ancient Roman latrines. So of course, Ellipse’s next plan of action was to check every single stall in the bathroom.

As a matter of fact, one of the two large handicapped stalls had a Roman-style seat installed. When Ellipse pulled open the door and peered inside, she lit up at the sight of a porcelain stool stretching right over the waste stream.

“Thank the universe,” she said, already taking a step into the stall.

“Ah, ja.”

Ellipse froze. She had heard that voice speaking specifically in the Titan language before.

“Univers zu xie.”

Hecking heck. Ellipse whipped around, heart-rate skyrocketing. “Ni er-

Oh no. No no nonono. Ellipse locked eyes with the stocky earthling bounty hunter from Port Tubai, and every muscle in her body turned to stone. The trickle of the water in the trenches faded away, replaced by the shuddering thumps of her pulse.

“What is it with you and bathrooms?” the man asked, still in Titan. “This makes two separate occasions.”

“What is with you and bathrooms?” Ellipse fired back. She felt a little looser after that. Her shoulders lowered a few centimeters.

The man shoved one hand in the pocket of his work pants and leaned against the door frame. “Well, it’s a pretty good place to hide. And I’ve been having a streak of good luck.”

“You cannot prove anything.”

“Oh, but Elliott,” he said, his voice turning molasses-smooth, “I can prove anything. You know Andra Media isn’t subject to the exclusionary rule.”

Ellipse shoved both hands into her pockets and fished around a bit, fingers grasping for the twine Tejal had told her to start carrying around. “I am not Elliott Bei,” she spat. Her palm closed around the string. “You can check every document available, and you will never match me to her.”

“Who needs documents? I get one hair, one stray skin sample, a little patch of blood, and suddenly whatever new identity you’ve concocted is synonymous with Elliott Bei. You know, just in case my coworkers’ senses of smell aren’t enough.”

Ellipse pulled her hair up, eyes still trained on the man, and took one hard, stiff step forward. “No probable cause. You take a single sample from my body and I get the UN on your backs. I am not Elliott Bei, and you cannot legally take me in until you prove I am her.”

“Go ahead and sue,” the man challenged. He stepped forward, and his hands came out of his pockets, both free and poised to grab her. “The moment any evidence marks you as Elliott, people will pin you as her, regardless of how legal the process was.”

Choosing not to answer, Ellipse took another step forward. How could she draw the man away from the door? She needed an escape route, after all.

“Besides, that’s the great part about privately authorized bounties. The asking party is a little less concerned about legality.”

Aha. Sure, the toilets were different, but if the general plan of this station was the same as the earthling fold monitor, then there had to be a maintenance tunnel connecting this bathroom to the one across the hall. Ellipse had often used it to enter the men’s room without people seeing her. She glanced around, careful to keep the bounty hunter in view.

He took another step, and Ellipse’s eyes landed on a stall-sized space with no door, where the trench had been covered by a grate. Another step. She looked up at the man, snarled, and feinted to the left.

Then she bolted. Ellipse slipped into the doorless stall and flung open the wooden door. She felt a finger graze her arm, and icy electricity flew over her skin. She would have no time to turn on the lights, and maybe she would be better off without them. After all, Ellipse knew this tunnel better than the bounty hunter, and scary as total darkness was, at least she had muscle memory on her side.

Hopefully the avians did not leave cleaning supplies in the walkway.

Ellipse threw one last glance over her shoulder and leapt through the doorway. The bright fluorescent lights from the bathroom flooded the tunnel opening and reflected off of shiny elevator doors and the barely-used handrail of a staircase, and Ellipse dove for the stairs. She heard the bounty hunter’s pounding footsteps as he followed after her.

And then the door swung shut, and the whole world turned black.