Chapter 6

Six months ago.

Valerie stepped through the door, into to the apartment that she and Heather shared. She was shivering from the cold and the fog outside. The apartment was dark, and silent- normally Heather would on the couch, murdering a bottle of wine while watching something inane on the TV.

Instead, Valerie found a scribbled note on the coffee table saying that Heather had caught a flight back to her mother’s place in Idaho, to stay “for a few days”.

The two had been together for nearly five years; they had started seeing each other a couple months before Valerie started her transition, and stayed together through it. A rarity, she thought, for a while; but Valerie never thought Heather had truly been supportive.

The night before, they’d fought. They fought almost every night, now- about Heather’s drinking; about money (Heather hadn’t worked a day since they moved from Bend to San Francisco); about where to go for dinner; about what shows to watch; about nothing; about everything. This fight had been their worst to date.

Even the next day, Valerie couldn’t remember exactly what they had fought about. She only remembered that Heather had talked about Valerie’s transition like it was some kind of sexual perversion; and that she had gotten physical. At six inches shorter and almost thirty pounds lighter than Valerie, Heather’s swings and shoves didn’t carry the threat of real injury, despite the anger behind them; but the uncontrolled fury there had frightened Valerie, and Heather had shown no signs of guilt about it.

Valerie had said the cruelest, meanest things she could think of to Heather, and she was not proud of that. She consoled herself in knowing that it’s what Heather had been doing to her for months, by then. She wanted Heather to feel as hurt and sad as she felt, and a darker part of her hoped to finally get Heather to give up and leave. Still, it didn’t feel like balance or justice- just more pain for both of them, heaped on top of the rest.

Valerie had tried to break up with Heather, before; asked her to leave; told her to leave; even fled the apartment a couple times, and spent the night alone in a motel, or, one cold and uncomfortable evening, asleep in the back seat of her car.

Each time, Heather had begged her to come back; once, she enlisted Valerie’s mother to call her- it was the first time Valerie had spoken to the woman in more than a year.

Each time, Valerie relented, wanting to believe in the promise that things would get better.

That last night, Valerie had slept on the couch, and crept out early in the morning to head to work, before Heather had slept off the wine she’d drank while they fought.

It was already dark when she returned; she’d stayed a few hours late at the office, as she often did when she didn’t want to face Heather, waiting for her at home. It turns out that this time, she need not have worried.

Valerie sorted through their things over the next couple weeks, packing Heather’s belongings and paying the several hundred dollars to ship them back north. She found a stack of letters written from her mother to Heather, some postmarked as recently as a month before. She didn’t read them; couldn’t imagine and didn’t want to know what the two had found to discuss with each other.

Valerie had not spoken to her mother, who absolutely rejected the idea of her gender transition, in two years at that point. She was sure that the letters would be full of deadnaming and self-righteous judgment; accusations of mental illness, and pleas for Heather to get Valerie to go back to church.. She burned the letters in her apartment’s tiny, vestigial fireplace.

She moved out of that apartment two months later, when the lease was up for renewal. She hated the memories that had soaked into the walls, and was uncomfortable with the idea that her mother knew her address.

Chapter 7

Present day.

It took a few days for Dana to draft her idea into legal language, with a little help from some lawyer friends. She didn’t share full context with them; but, in any case, they were people she knew from the kink community, and they could probably read between the lines.

With their help and consultation, she put together a package of contracts for Valerie to sign.

Dana thought the initial phone call had gone well. Valerie didn’t reject the outline of her proposal out of hand, and the next evening she sent over the formal contract. She called Valerie again and they walked through the details together.

The girl had seemed tired and dazed as Dana explained each part of the agreement and what it meant, what it would do. Dana suspected Valerie absorbed very little of what she said, but Valerie promised she’d read over contract in detail. Dana told her not to decide without sleeping on it for a few nights.

Dana distracted herself the rest of the time by working on freelance bug bounty work. She didn’t need the money, but she enjoyed the challenge and satisfaction of finding issues buried in the overwrought systems of major corporations. The work helped take her mind off of the world, helped her keep her skills sharp, and, on occasion, let her turn some of her time and energy into something good.

Sometimes the vulnerabilities she found were reported back to the companies, and if they paid her out for it, so much the better. Many times, these cases would result in truly lucrative contracting deals, either with Dana herself or one of a small army of freelancers (the vast majority of them queer and trans, like herself) that she helped coordinate, for a small cut. Often she’d direct the companies to donate the bounty proceeds directly to charities; or she’d channel them into mutual-aid fundraisers, herself.

If the company she targeted was less savory- a major social network and a particularly toxic car manufacturer, tonight- she would keep her findings to herself, or offer the details to less legitimate contacts within the information security industry, to repay past favors or curry the promise of future ones. The difference between a “good” hacker and a “bad” hacker was often just who was signing the checks that week.

Her favorite contact was an enby she knew named Lucca. The two of them had been friends and off-and-on colleagues since before either of them transitioned. Lucca had come out first, and in some ways their transition inspired Dana to do the same. The grew close after Dana’s transition, and they had stayed close ever since- even been lovers, on more than one occasion.

Lucca lived three hours away— in good traffic— across the border in Nevada, on a full square mile of desert out near Reno, where razor wire fences and a large number of “trespassers will be shot” signs discouraged any visitors. They had sunk all of their money into purchasing the compound, shortly before the two became truly close; and Lucca continued to invest every cent they earned into improvements, new structures, and off-grid enhancements.

Dana and Lucca made an odd pair, a fascinating case study in horseshoe theory. Dana was an avowed leftist, and Lucca was a hardcore libertarian. They got along because Lucca believed in individual sovereignty over all things, so strongly that they would fight tooth and nail to protect anyone’s right to it, including against corporate market manipulation, right-wing hypocrisy, and religious propaganda.

The two might disagree vehemently about what ought to replace capitalist kleptocracy, but they both recognized that the world would be better off if that disagreement became relevant instead of academic, and that escaping capitalism and fascism was the first step. When they had these discussions in person, the fervent but good-natured discourse frequently devolved into energetic and athletic intercourse. Dana enjoyed these debates, even if — more accurately because — they most often ended up with her naked, sweating, out of breath, and handcuffed to Lucca’s bed.

Two days later, Dana was in a video call with Lucca talking over a vulnerability she had discovered. She was interrupted by her phone pinging with the first text message from Valerie- the word okay, followed by the typing... indicator. Dana felt weightless and light-headed, like a heavy stone that had been slowly pressing down on her chest suddenly had disappeared, and she could breathe again.

“— this is insane, they’re adding license plate tracking to every car and sending the data back without even—” Lucca was picking through the write-up Dana had provided when the woman interrupted them.

“Hey, Lucky, sorry- something just came up, can we pick this up later?”

“I hear that smile in your voice, girl.” Lucca never really voice trained, but over time their voice had evolved into something unique and androgynous. Dana quite liked the way they spoke.

“Whaaat?” Dana threw back, her eyes crinkling, but not denying it. “Look, it’s closed alpha right now but maybe I’ll tell you about it soon.”

“Okay, Dee.” If anybody but Lucca called her that, they’d be risking their life, or at least their eardrums. “I’m gonna finish giving this a once-over, then hit the gym.”

“Stay warm, Lucca.”

“Keep your eyes open, Dana.”

Dana ended the video call, and sat staring at her phone, feeling excited and a little giddy. Another message came in a moment later, i have some questions.. and then the typing.. indicator.