THE ASTRONAUT'S FORBIDDEN GIRL
Chapter Five: Funding Cut
The message from her mother came through during breakfast, four days after the Partnered Trial, and it took Wren exactly one sentence to understand that everything she'd been fighting for was about to get a great deal more complicated.
Combine Council voted on the Lower Ring dome budget last night. They're cutting air recycler maintenance funding by sixty percent starting next quarter. Milo's clinic subscription is tied to district health allocations. If they cut this, I don't know how we cover him even with your stipend coming.
That was the whole message. It did not need to be longer.
This part of the story actually starts the evening before, at a mandatory Trials media event Wren had been dreading since the schedule was announced.
The event was called a Fan Engagement Showcase, which turned out to mean a room full of cameras, sponsor banners, and exactly the kind of polished small talk Wren had spent sixteen years successfully avoiding. She stood near the edge of it in a borrowed jacket that didn't quite fit, watching Kai work the room with the easy, practiced charm of someone raised for exactly this, and felt more out of place than she had in the Compliance waiting room.
"You look like you're calculating an escape route," Doyle said, appearing at her elbow with two drinks he'd clearly acquired through sheer force of intimidating the catering staff.
"I am calculating an escape route."
"Don't use it yet. This is the part of the job nobody warns you about. Sponsors don't just watch matches. They watch how you carry yourself in a room like this. It's shallow. It's also how funding decisions get made, so I'd rather you hate it and survive it than skip it and hand Compliance one more excuse."
She hated it and survived it, mostly by finding a corner and answering questions from a small cluster of reporters who, to her surprise, seemed genuinely more interested in Junker's engineering than in her origin story. It was the first conversation all week that hadn't made her feel like an exhibit.
Then one of the reporters, a sharp-eyed woman with a Combine Press credential, asked a question that changed the shape of the evening entirely.
"There's a Council budget vote tomorrow that would cut Lower Ring infrastructure maintenance funding significantly, including the district health allocations tied to air quality conditions. Your own district. As the first Wildcard qualifier in six years, someone the Combine is currently using rather heavily in its own promotional material, do you have a comment?"
Wren had not known about the vote until that exact second, and it showed.
"I didn't know that was happening," she said, honestly, and watched the reporter's expression sharpen with interest at the answer instead of the polished non-answer she'd clearly expected.
"Would you like to know more before you comment, or would you like to comment on the fact that the Combine appears comfortable promoting a Lower Ring success story while simultaneously voting to cut funding to the district that produced her?"
That was the question still ringing in Wren's ears when her mother's message arrived the next morning.
She found Doyle before the day's practice session started, message still open on her comm screen, and put it in front of him without preamble.
"They can't do this."
"They can," Doyle said, reading it twice, his expression going carefully neutral in the specific way she now recognized as him deciding how much bad news to deliver at once. "Council budget votes happen every quarter. Lower Ring allocations get proposed for cuts almost every cycle. Most years it doesn't pass. This year, with Trials ratings up and the Combine spending heavily on promotion around you specifically, some Council members are arguing the district's gotten its return on investment already, in publicity, and doesn't need the maintenance spend anymore."
"That's insane. Publicity doesn't fix air recyclers."
"I know that. You know that. The people voting on it mostly don't live anywhere near a recycler that's forty years overdue for replacement." He set the comm down. "There's a public comment period before the final vote. Twelve hours. If enough attention lands on it, it gets harder to quietly pass."
"And if I go to the press with this. If I say something."
"Then you become the story instead of the Trials, and Compliance, who is still one irregularity away from finding a reason to pull your provisional status, gets to decide whether a Wildcard pilot making political statements counts as bringing the Institute into disrepute." Doyle didn't sugarcoat it. "You'd be trading your own safety margin for your district's. I won't pretend that's a small trade."
"And if I don't say anything?"
"Then the vote probably passes, your mother spends the next six months finding another way to cover Milo's care, and you keep your head down and finish the season quietly." He met her eyes. "I'm not going to tell you which one to pick, kid. Both of them cost something real."
Selene found her before Kai did, which Wren had not expected and liked even less than expected. She appeared in the practice bay doorway with none of her usual composure, arms crossed tight against herself like she was cold in a room that wasn't.
"I heard about the vote," Selene said, without any of her usual bite.
"Here to tell me it's not your problem?"
"Here to tell you it's not that simple." Selene's jaw worked, like she was deciding how much to say and regretting most of the options. "My family's company sits on the Council subcommittee that reviews district allocations. I don't get told how they vote. I get told to smile at the gala afterward regardless of how they voted. That's the whole extent of my influence, in case you were wondering whether being sponsored makes any of this easier."
"That almost sounded like sympathy."
"Don't get used to it." But she lingered a moment longer, something unreadable passing behind her eyes, before she turned to go. "For what it's worth, scrapyard girl, I hope it doesn't pass. I have several reasons for hoping that, and being a decent person is only reluctantly one of them."
She left before Wren could decide whether that was an insult, an apology, or something else entirely that didn't have a name yet.
Kai found her an hour later, in the practice bay, staring at Junker's loaner rig without actually seeing it.
"Doyle told me," he said, without preamble. "About the vote."
"Come to talk me out of it?"
"I came to tell you that if you do decide to say something, Osei Dynetics has significant Council influence, and I can make one phone call that puts real pressure behind public comment on this vote. I want to be clear that it would use my family's name for something they did not authorize me to use it for, and that it would very likely start a fight with people who do not lose fights gracefully." He said it steadily, like he'd already weighed the cost several times before saying it out loud. "I'm offering anyway."
"Why?"
"Because I've spent this entire week learning that the difference between you and me was never talent. It was resources. And I don't think I can keep pretending that's fair now that I've seen the gap up close." He held her gaze, something unusually open in his expression. "Also because Milo drew me a very insulting picture of my Frame after the match and I feel, inexplicably, invested in his continued access to clean air."
That startled a laugh out of her, sharp and real, the first one all day. "He sent you that?"
"He said, and I'm quoting directly, that my Frame looks like it's compensating for something. I don't fully understand what that means and I am choosing not to ask."
"It means exactly what you think it means."
"Wonderful. I'm being insulted by an eleven year old and I still like him more than most of my sponsors."
The laugh faded slower this time, replaced by the actual weight of the decision in front of her. Wren thought about the reporter's question, about Milo's clinic, about her mother's steady, careful message that hadn't once asked Wren to fix it, because her mother never asked, she just told her the facts and let Wren decide what kind of person she wanted to be.
"Set up the call," Wren said. "And get me in front of that reporter before the comment period closes. If I'm going to become the story instead of the Trials, I want to at least pick which story."
Kai nodded once, already reaching for his comm, and it was only after he'd stepped away to make the call that Wren let herself feel the full size of what she'd just chosen. Compliance would notice. Selene's people would notice. Somewhere, whoever had buried Subject EMBER fifteen years ago might notice too, if they were watching this closely, and Wren had absolutely no way of knowing anymore whether they were.
She sent the reporter a message anyway, three words that would be broadcast across the Combine before the next day's session even started.
I want to talk.