Sour and Sweet
RECOMMENDED TRACK: Muse – The Resistance
I could not believe she had asked him.
“He’s working really hard at it, with Elliott and Jacob and some others, and—and I wish he’d ask you to work with him, too,” Emma was saying as I approached her, already primed for annoyance at Calloway’s presence.
When I say I could not believe it, I mean that almost literally. We had talked about it and she had agreed not to. She had never once broken her word to me before.
“Work with him on what, exactly?” Calloway asked in a blank voice.
“Yes, on what, Emma?” I asked, sliding up to her and putting my arm around her waist with a glare at Calloway, even though he had not done anything wrong. That I knew of. That day. Yet.
Emma froze, her cheeks pink like a kid with her hand caught in a cookie jar. She turned to look up at me, brows knit pleadingly, but I was too annoyed to let it slide.
“We should get going,” I told her with an extra squeeze around her waist. “I want to spend this time with you.”
She bit her lip and paused for a second before nodding. “’Bye, Adrian,” she said to him as she let me guide her away from the quad, Adrian’s eyes following us.
“What did you tell him?” I asked her through gritted teeth once we were out of hearing distance, walking in the direction of her apartment.
“None of the important stuff! But I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I shouldn’t have. I know I said I wouldn’t. I just—” She stopped herself and took a breath. I could almost hear her counting to five in her head, sifting through the nerves and anxieties she struggled with. “I only told him you were trying to impress your father,” she finally answered. “But not why, or anything about Moscow.”
“I’m sure he found that very compelling,” I seethed. “I’m sure he’s definitely not trying to figure out why this would matter so much.” Maybe I needed to count, too.
“Misha,” Emma said in a pleading tone. “He’s not evil. And even if he did work out the situation, he wouldn’t—”
I snorted. “Of course he would,” I said, dropping my arm from around her waist and pausing to give her my most skeptical expression. “Adrian Calloway is a snake. He knows how to wait.”
“I was going to say he wouldn’t change my mind,” she snapped, walking again so I had to keep up with her. “I’m not just going to fall into bed with the first person who looks at me if you’re not here. And I have not forgotten what he said on my birthday,” she added, wrinkling her nose. “But he just apologized for it. He wants to be a better person than that.”
Blyat. I could feel my anger turn down like water in a pot going from boiling down to just simmering. “That does not mean he will be, though,” I said, which I thought was a perfectly good point. “A person can only be who they are.”
She crossed her arms and lifted one eyebrow at me. “People are who they choose to be,” she said with a stubborn scowl. “You chose to stop being a ‘party god’ because you wanted to be more. And now you’re choosing to be someone who doesn’t just give in to his dad’s manipulation. Adrian can choose not to be a jerk.”
Okay, she had a point. “If he wants to,” I said, only half a concession.
“He said he went to apologize to you, too, but hadn’t been able to catch you,” she continued. “Which means you didn’t ask him for help in the end.”
“No,” I admitted. “I did not. I was sure he would say no.” I frowned as we climbed the steps to her place, thinking about it more. Maybe Calloway really would have said yes. Tried to prove himself worthy of her, or better than me, or both. Maybe he would have felt like he had to, because she would know if he just sat back and waited to see if the big Russian obstacle was yanked out of his way.
“But there’s a chance,” she said, so quietly I almost did not hear her.
We were silent until we entered her apartment, where we both took a breath and apologized. It was like any other quarrel we’d had, except the tension did not vanish so completely this time. Instead, the more I thought of it, the worse I felt. Going against her word and taking advantage of someone’s feelings—those things were so unlike Emma.
She must have been even more miserable than I thought. More than she let me see.
The irritation slipped away and was replaced with guilt and melancholy. It was the most Russian I had felt in ages.
That’s the effect business like my father’s tends to have on people. And there I was, trying to prove that I could do that kind of work instead of being with her, reassuring her.
Over the weeks following the argument, I did my best to remedy that by involving her more instead of trying to shelter her from it, instead of using her as my shelter. She spent more time at Sigma House, the two of us holed up in my room because I struggled to work while I was in her apartment. It felt too much like home. Like peace.
Peace would not get me where I needed to go.
We talked more about what I was doing with Jacob and with Marcus and why, and…honestly, I think it helped. We were both still on edge, and we had little snippy moments more often than usual, the sort that came with stress. But we were back in sync. I would rather drown in spreadsheets and presentations sitting next to her than alone, even when I was frustrated.
Slowly, things began working, starting with the paper I had written for Elliott, the one he had sent to his cousin Bill.
“My brother told me Billy was babbling to anyone who would listen about ‘developing opportunities in Moscow,’” he told us both one night in the kitchen, making that little quote gesture Americans like. He snickered with a malicious glee I would not have expected from him. “Billy wouldn’t know a ‘developing opportunity’ if one hit him upside the head with a hammer, but you can count on him to spread word like wildfire.”
Working with Marcus Bellamy was trickier because we only knew each other superficially, and, well, we did not live in the same house. But I knew he had introduced himself to me at the party because the senator he worked for, Cal Mercer, was already interested in encouraging soft partnerships with Russia. “If he can show that it’s better for business to avoid open conflict, tensions can miraculously ease,” I remarked to Emma when she asked why.
She made a face of disgust I should not have found amusing. To be honest, I did not like it either, but for the moment I was focused on changing my world. Changing the world could wait.
After several conversations by email and video call, I was invited to provide talking points the senator might consider using. I ultimately wrote them by borrowing some key notes from my white paper for Parker-Smith. I was coming to know those like the back of my hand, and Emma helped turn the thoughts into quippy speech-ready remarks so in the end, the writing was faster than the negotiation.
Working with Jacob felt better, much better. It turned out BioLantis was not just tech, it was an emerging pioneer in biomechanical engineering—honest-to-goodness life-saving medical work—and escaping oil and war was a relief.
“It’s funny you ask about Bio-L right now,” Jacob remarked over a plate of Nana’s khachapuri. (Nana adopted Jacob even faster than she had adopted Emma, if it were possible, cooing over the good boy, the smart boy, unlike that prokaznik Mishiko.) “The company has grown a lot over the last couple years, but I was just chatting with the Chief Science Officer and he mentioned they’ve got a division that’s struggling right now—pediatric treatments.” Jacob’s bright expression dimmed as he said the words. It seemed childhood disease was a soft spot.
“Why is that?” I asked, reaching out to tear off some of the bread to scoop up some of the cheesy filling.
He rubbed his forehead with a sigh. “Scaling, generally. Production is a challenge. Fulfillment. But scaling the trials, that’s been the biggest problem,” he said. “Can’t put something in the market until we know it works.”
“So you need, what, a lot of patients?” I asked.
“That…but also a medical system that’s capable of large-scale trial operations with advanced medicine,” he explained, reaching for some food.
“Russia has patients. More than most of Europe,” I observed. “No comparison with China, of course. Or India.”
“That’s why China and India are chock full of medical trials already,” he said, pausing in his doldrums long enough to take a bite of khachapuri and groan with delight. Nana smiled benevolently from across the room. She loves a new customer. “Russia is an interesting angle.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “People think Russia’s medical technology is less advanced than America’s, but it’s not true. Not in the big cities, at least,” I said with caution. “More advanced than India’s for sure. And the medical system is more centralized.” We left the authoritarian reasons for that centralization unsaid.
“What about sanctions?” Jacob asked, crossing his arms. “I don’t know who gets to do what in Russia these days.”
“American sanctions would be a problem, but BioLantis is incorporated in South Korea, yes?” Jacob nodded. I had prepared for this question. “America and Europe are blocking trials, but South Korean sanctions are narrower. Medical work in particular gets more latitude. Scaling operations would not be trivial, but it is doable.”
Jacob’s eyes widened a little and he nodded. “You did your homework,” he said.
“I did.” I grinned. “And those sanctions mean quite a few companies are eager to attract trials. I can point you to a company that’s hard-up, but has a good reputation.” It was one heavily funded by SKG, of course, but still true. I would not steer Jacob wrong.
He listened intently, asked more questions: facility standards, genetic diversity, laws and legal concerns. I did not have all the answers— “genetic diversity” was as far from my area of expertise as the moon. But I got more excited as we talked, knowing I could find the information, and by the end of dinner, we sketched out a plan to write a sort of dossier memo for Jacob to send to the executive.
“What is this all about, anyway?” He asked me as I insisted on paying for dinner. “Why the sudden interest in healthcare?”
I thought about Emma, who would meet me back at the house after dinner. “Just thinking about the future,” I said casually.
I thought things were going well. About three weeks after I sent my notes to Marcus, Senator Mercer actually used a couple of the talking points in a speech on the senate floor. Not a big speech, it was making the rounds on CSPAN, not social media. But Emma and I watched it together, and I felt a weird mix of pride and consternation. I had watched my father pull levers like these all my life, or at least order others to. The thought that I could do anything like it was both sour and sweet. Sour because I wanted to be nothing like him. Sweet because if I developed such skills, I could use them to work against him, someday.
Even if none of this worked, even if I had to board that plane in May, a future in Moscow still looked bleak—but maybe it would not be a life sentence.
By the time I shipped my final findings for BioLantis, I was ready for a break…except that it was midterms, so I had to wait a whole extra week before I got one at the Sigma Spring Break kickoff party. Emma and I danced and laughed and I taught her how to play beer pong and she was terrible at it but we laughed at that too.
In the end I was very glad we’d had that party, a chance to just…be together, enjoy each other, be college kids again.
A few days later, we were at Emma’s apartment and I flipped through my emails while she was finishing up her shower. My thumb stopped at one that made me stop breathing, and I tapped it.
I was still staring at its contents when she came out, all fluffy towel and soft skin that would normally have taken all my attention immediately.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, scrambling onto the bed next to me.
I did not know how to tell her. It was the one thing I had not planned for so I had no words. I just handed her the phone. She took it, eyes skimming the brief email.
It said:
I have booked your return flight for the day after graduation. I trust you will fulfill your obligations to your friends prior to your return.
-КS
Bonus Content:
Nana’s Sayings
Author’s Note
B-Side Track: Fall Out Boy – Immortals
Misha’s learned from Emma, to look beneath the action and think about what’s really going on in someone’s head…and respond to that. At least after he has his gut reaction.
Anyway!
FUN FACTS:
You guys only get to meet six Sigmas in this story, but the chapter at Crownbridge usually has about thirty members. Of that thirty, only around ten live in Sig House. Underclassmen aren’t usually eligible, and there’s a pretty even split of guys who want to move in and guys who’d just as soon get an apartment near campus with a friend or partner.
Sigma Theta Rho was founded in the mid-19th century around the same time that Crownbridge University was founded, which is why Sigma’s first chapter is there. (That’s why it’s Alpha Chapter. That’s not supposed to be some cute play on “alpha males” or something like that. These boys aren’t all doms, trust. 😏 The fraternity was basically a bunch of rich white dudes who wanted to become the Illuminati—there’s a reason four of the six Sigs you know come from big-business corpo families—and over the generations they’ve definitely accumulated a brotherhood with a lot of influence.
And the two non-corporate types? Travis is one, his parents are both movie stars. He wants to follow in their footsteps, not because they’ve pressured him but because he’s been exposed to that world all his life and he loves it.
The other is Dylan. Dylan doesn’t talk about his parents. He’s also a rare instance of an underclassman living in Sig House. He doesn’t talk about that either. I wonder what’s going on there? 🤔