Petra - Waiting

A Belafort Story

Petra sat in the small, dingy, rented room in silence, holding a torn photograph in her hand, her legs dangling listlessly down the side of the bed. Noise from the hustle and bustle of the city below blended with the murmur of several small receivers tuned to various live newsreels. The traffic and yells and skycabs blended with the voices of politicians, market analysts, and sports commentary until they blurred into meaningless static. Petra filtered it without thinking, passively searching for threads that might matter. A beautiful, well groomed and yet whimsical-looking woman looked back at her from the tattered picture in her hand, attired in a dress with accoutrement that implied very elevated social station.

She had everything she needed for the moment - shelter, cash, and Dr. Vahlen had pointed her toward a shell-owned "independent" biolab for her TNP cocktails. Survival was no longer an immediate concern. But long term direction was foggy. The only lead she had was the woman in the photograph, Vivienne Lauroux. And apparently, this woman was a part of the Belafort line - by blood, if not name. Not Dr. Teresa's daughter, but another woman's, by Director Belafort.

She was confused. Dr. Vahlen didn't tell her about any personal connection to Belafort International. People are entitled to privacy, of course, privacy made sense - constant personal exposition devalued everything that was exposed, every time it is exposed. Petra saw no malice in the omission itself, nor did she detect it from Dr. Vahlen at any point. But in context, it was strange.

Dr. Vahlen was always very forthright with Petra, even going as far to say that she didn't tell Petra everything she knew, or there was to know about her. Still, with the amount of time the two had spent together, the absence of any sort of personal exposition, even incidental, indicated clear intent. It didn't take much to find references to Dr. Teresa Vahlen in the German national archives - there were charges of ethics violations against her while she was a fellow at Max Planck University over her practices while developing the Vahlen Method. Those had been dropped promptly when Belafort had expressed interest in her work. Had Dr. Vahlen wanted her to find that out? What would the reason be for that? It was all easily discoverable - her marriage to Anselm Belafort, her daughter Siobhan, and Vivienne's connection to House Belafort. If Dr. Vahlen wanted Petra to seek out Vivienne, why maintain a clearly intentional policy of complete omission of personal information?

Petra's attention was periodically drawn away from her meditations on Dr. Vahlen's motives by the tried and true "breaking" and "this just in" or the novel "producer just informed me". She sighed in frustration - how are people supposed to take you seriously if you use the same attention hook for reporting war crimes and fashion choices? The question would have to wait. Petra put it on the stack, and returned to her line of inquiry.

Petra understood everything Dr. Vahlen had done for her. Petra also understood her rage, and grief - at least, academically. She could not fathom what something like that must feel like. All the literature that Dr. Vahlen had told her to read suggested what it was like - an unbidden pressure behind the eyes or in the chest that short circuits decision making. It sounded horribly incoherent. Petra could only wish there was something she could do to help more directly. Dr. Vahlen never told Petra she was feeling this way, but maybe that's because she knew Petra would see it anyway. That's what she was best at, after all. In any event, Dr. Vahlen no doubt had a reason for withholding her personal information, and Petra had no reason to suspect malice (at least, not directed at Petra). So, if following this trail was the best she can do to help, then she would follow it.

Currently, however, it seemed to lead nowhere particularly attractive or diplomatic. After Vivienne's mother, Seraphine, was killed, her face in public interviews suggested subtly that something deeply rooted had become unmoored. Matters were made worse by the fact that eyewitness accounts suggested that Seraphine was not the intended target. Petra had seen something vaguely similar in the eyes of disaster survivors or returning soldiers. It was difficult to surmise anything beyond that, but the woman would no doubt be swarmed with security, and how does some strange girl come out of the aether and just make contact with someone in that position?

"...Vivienne Lauroux, France's own face of classical piano..."

Petra went still, and focused in on the voice, all other sound filtered.

"... and daughter of the tragically slain opera alto, Serpahine, has confirmed her place as a contestant in the second Belafort International Combat Invitational."

Petra looked for a long moment at the receiver, processing the sudden expansion of her options. Then she slipped the photograph back into her combat weave jacket.

Serendipity.