The sphere rotated slowly above the table between them, indifferent to everything beneath it.
Ashe held Moira's gaze across the space it occupied and said nothing for a moment, while the question about the harmonic seeds still hung painfully between them.
The situation was simple enough when she broke it down. Moira had resources, knowledge, and authority over this place. She could certainly provide things that she herself didn't have. Research teams, transportation, supplies. All of that was useful. That was exactly the kind of leverage that could shorten any path lay between her and Threnos. And yet every time she considered it, the same counter thought returned in her mind. Power like Moira's surely didn't extend itself without expectation. There was no version of this arrangement that wouldn't, sooner or later, require something from her, and she wasn't sure giving into that was what she wanted. Freedom was all she really had, so belonging to Moira or Railen wasn't something she was ready to commit to. At least not yet.
Connor, on the other hand, was a different kind of problem. He was difficult and guarded and his circumstances had already complicated her situation twice over, true, but he had maps to Threnos, and knowledge of those routes, however incomplete. Their motivations didn't have to align perfectly. In fact, that might even work in her favor anyway. And regardless of what he was working on in that apartment, perhaps she could be of use in return. That sounded like a double win.
As her thoughts unfolded further and further, something on the wall behind Moira began to form. It was faint at first, barely distinguishable at all, but then the shapes gathered slowly, until actual letters appeared instead. Along with them came a low buzzing that settled into her ears as if the act of seeing them came at a strange physical cost. Her focus wavered for a moment, then steadied. When she managed to look properly, she saw it clearly. It was her name written on the wall. Ashe.
On her side of the room, Moira was still watching her from across the sphere with the same composed attention she had maintained until then, one hand resting lightly on the surface of the table. Behind her, the letters dissolved and started reforming one more time.
But as they did, Cral seemed to notice something Moira couldn't. It moved its head toward Ashe with a slow rotation. The pupils contracted sharply, then expanded, then contracted again as if it was processing something. Its attention was fixed on her specifically, not the wall behind her. So perhaps it wasn't the writing itself it was reacting to, perhaps the writing was truly only visible to her. So she tried to keep her expression as neutral as possible.
When the letters finally formed into something clear again, she read: "Moira isn't the way."
The impulse to speak Seven's name aloud arrived immediately after reading his words, but she managed to push it back down. She still had a difficult time getting used to these unannounced comings and goings, but there was no time to handle it now. She would ask him directly when circumstances allowed. If they ever did.
"So?" Moira eventually pressed. "Are the memories about harmonic seeds unclear as well? Because we do have ways to fix that."
Behind her, the letters reformed one last time, settling into a single word. "Connor."
Ashe looked at it, then back at Moira, doing her best to ignore Cral's persistent gaze. She had already decided she wouldn't mention Seven, but she could use the rest of what she knew as leverage.
"I found them by mistake," she said. "I was running from a drift so I took whatever turns were available trying to lose it. Eventually I reached the outer section of the facility and that's where the cluster was."
Moira pushed back from the table and began to walk slowly, tracing the edge of the room. "And how did you know how to use them?" She stopped briefly, turning slightly without fully facing her. "Emergents in my time had no prior knowledge of anything. There were mistakes made. Many lives lost." She resumed moving. "And you emerged alone, with nobody to guide you. How do you explain that?"
"I can't," Ashe replied, and held her gaze when Moira turned to look at her. "I just did."
Moira slowed her pacing and came to stand near the edge of the table again, though she didn't sit this time.
"Emergence…" she then said, speaking more to the walls around them than to anyone in particular. For a moment a thought seemed to fully take over her, an old one that had been put down a long time ago. "It's a painful process, isn't it? Almost like being born into this world. Only this time you're deprived of the innocence of it."
The moment was brief, barely visible, until it passed, and she was back.
"Tell me," Moira said. "How was it for you?"
Ashe took in the question, and her mind instinctively rewound everything, from the drift chase to the immense pathways and corridors inside that facility, torn apart by something that no longer seemed to have a history.
"Confusing," Ashe replied. "If I had to pick a word, that would be it. Waking up inside a pod, breathing some kind of fluid, then stepping out into a room filled with more of it… and flowers. It made no sense." She paused. "Yeah. Confusing covers it."
Moira's attention snapped right toward her. It was involuntary, that was the first thing Ashe noticed. Every other reaction she had seen from the woman had been carefully controlled, as if she always knew exactly how it would land and which nerves it would strike. But this one wasn't.
"What kind of flowers?" Moira asked.
"All kinds, I suppose. They were growing from the floor, from the walls, clustered around the base of the pod. I wasn't exactly in the right state of mind to pay too much attention, but they were everywhere."
Moira looked down at the floor. She stayed there for a long moment, and Ashe watched the silence move through her. Something was turning over behind those eyes, some set of conclusions fighting one another, Ashe couldn't follow. But whatever it was, she understood quickly that it was important.
"I can show you where that chamber is," she said, testing the ground.
Moira glanced up.
"...If you help me with this."
She turned her wrist upward and held it toward her across the table. The dragonfly mark was visible in the light, fine and almost delicate against her pale skin.
It was a gamble, she knew that. She had no way of knowing whether Moira had ever seen it before, whether it meant anything to her at all. Still, it was worth the shot.
Moira looked at the mark, then at Ashe, until she finally released a scoff alongside a prolonged smile at the corner of her lips. She glanced sideways toward Cral who kept as unmoving as ever.
"I like her, don't you?"
But Cral offered nothing in return.
"And I want Connor to come with us," Ashe added, before Moira could move or speak again.