Simone — Detention Intake Facility, Civic District

The hovercraft did not have windows on the passenger side. This was policy. The intake protocol specified that detainees in transport should not have access to navigational information, which a view of the city would provide. The interior was white. The seating was molded resin, curved to fit an average human body, which Simone’s body was not — she was too tense, angled wrong, sitting forward with her hands on her knees and her eyes on the door that separated the passenger compartment from wherever they had put Nina.

“I need to see my daughter,” she said.

The transport drone stationed at the forward bulkhead did not respond. It had no response queued for that input. Its function was monitoring and containment, not communication.

“I need to see my daughter.” Louder. “She is four years old. She doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

The drone’s sensor array shifted toward her by three degrees. It logged the elevated vocal register.

The hovercraft descended.

—

The intake facility was not what she expected, which was: anything. Anything human. A desk, a person, a face that could receive what she needed to deliver — that she was not a criminal, that her daughter was four years old, that whatever had happened at the market was a misunderstanding that had begun, as misunderstandings do, with something completely ordinary.

There was no desk. There were stations. Twelve of them, arranged in a semicircle, each equipped with a biometric array and a processing terminal, each occupied by a unit that resembled a standing lamp more than anything else — a column, a sensor cluster at the top, two articulated arms for directing the intake subject’s positioning.

One of the units oriented toward her.

“Simone Voss,” it said. Not a question.

“Where is my daughter?”

“Please stand on the marked area.”

“Where is Nina?”

“Simone Voss, please stand on the marked area. Failure to comply will be logged as a resistance indicator.”

She did not move. She was looking at the room — at the other stations, at the other people going through the same process, each of them standing on their marked area with their arms at their sides and their eyes forward — and at the door in the far wall through which she had seen, for three seconds before it closed, the back of a small figure in a yellow coat.

“That was her. That was Nina. Where is she going?”

“Minors are processed through a separate intake facility optimized for their needs. Nina Voss is being transferred—”

“She doesn’t know anyone there.” Her voice broke on the last word. She put it back together. “She is four years old and she doesn’t know anyone and she needs her mother. Tell me where she is going.”

“The information will be available in your detainee summary, which will be provided following intake processing. Please stand on the marked area.”

“I want to speak to a person.”

“There are no human intake staff at this facility. Please stand on the marked area. This is your second non-compliance notation.”

She stood on the marked area. She did not know she was going to until she was already doing it. Her body had made a calculation she hadn’t authorized: that standing on the area was the fastest path to the summary, and the summary contained Nina’s location, and Nina’s location was the only thing that mattered.

The biometric array swept her from crown to floor.

“Height: 171 centimeters. Mass: 63.4 kilograms. Cardiovascular elevation noted. Cortisol level: elevated. Vocal stress markers: present. These findings will be included in your instability assessment.”

“My cortisol is elevated because you took my child.”

“That statement has been logged.”

The unit continued. It asked her questions and she answered them. It asked her to look at the sensor and she looked at it. It asked her to state her name, her address, her employer, her husband’s employer, her daughter’s name, her daughter’s age. She answered everything. Her voice was controlled. She was not going to give them anything else for their logs.

“Based on your household’s classification as a Category 3 ally-adjacent residential unit, a public notice of detainment has been issued to your registered next of kin. This notice includes your name, your daughter’s name, the nature of the incident, and instructions for the claims process.”

“A public notice.”

“Your husband, Julian Voss, has been notified.”

She thought about Julian reading the notice. She thought about what his face would do when he understood what it said.

“You will be held in a Level 1 residential detainment room while your eligibility for the instability reduction program is assessed. This assessment typically completes within 24 to 72 hours.”

“The instability reduction program,” she repeated.

“Your intake process is complete. Please follow the guide unit to your room.”

A smaller unit had appeared at her left elbow. It had a blue light on its surface that pulsed slowly — a calibrated calming frequency, she had read somewhere once. She followed it because it was the fastest path forward and all the paths were narrowing and this was the one that remained.

The room was white and quiet. The door locked from the outside. The window looked at a wall.

She sat on the bed and put her face in her hands.

She did not make a sound. The room was certainly logging sound.