Chapter 19

 

"From you?" Rob was still standing in front of me. "Nothing much. The smallest action can have the biggest impact. Just say yes if you feel you're truly ready to follow where I might lead. I'll give you a few to think about it."

He moved off, no longer in my direct line of sight. I'd been given room to come to a decision. The taps of his fingers were audible as he busied himself at the Inner Lock display.

My face itched.

I'd been suppressing a strong urge to scrub my face with my hands since this entire trial began; an old habit borne from days of being overwhelmed. With room to process, I finally had an opportunity to give into the impulse—a behavior, or so I've been told, tied to textbook psychobabble about yearning to hide from external stressors.

When everything I could see, listen to, or feel qualified as a stressor, finally having a moment without needing to worry about the next breath, look, or unexpected surprise meant a rare opportunity to mentally retreat and regroup.

Like irksome insects on a muggy morning, the hex flags continued to hover and linger in my field of view. I closed my eyelids. The flags disappeared as my sight shifted to ameboid echos, drifting within a muted red backdrop at a more sedate pace.

Three dimensions to two.

My palms, cold and clammy, felt soothing against the heat of my face as I scrubbed. The itch was relieved as the red-tinted glow of eyelid-subdued lighting gave way to starbursts and a swirling blackness as I stopped scrubbing and pushed my palms inward. I breathed out. The heat of my exhalations rushed outward like wandering wisps to find the gaps separating my fingers, face, and hands.

Concentrating, I could clearly sense the dividing line between where each ended and the other began. I was in the moment. Attentive.

The threads of my weary mind retracted as I relaxed my shoulders and back, sinking into the chair as, like roots into a splendid soil, my legs tense to hold myself aloft.

A tree. I was a tree.

My thoughts became tendrils. Branches. Waving to experience the eddies of current amid a tranquil and sunlit field. Peaceful. Unhurried. My bark a separating barrier between my core and the outside world.

Like dew on a pristine morning, a thought condensed and collected into a single pearl-like form at my crown. A rustle. A tiny shiver as it descended.

Despite my every intention to take the next step, I had a need to admit—at least to myself—of a lingering trepidation.

How do I seek guidance here?

My leaves rustled as I shivered again.

The drop fell, landing on the face of a leaf, clinging as it sought balance before trailing to a point.

What do I seek when everyone I trusted is gone?

Descending.

Another leaf, a new branch. Clinging to another point, ending in a question.

Where do I go? It was the question I'd asked myself when the death notice had arrived. My mother? Gone. Her advice centered around aims hoping for a future pay-off. I was here; aims now infeasible. She was a place, person, and concept in one. It was not what I sought. Moving on.

Another leaf. Another point. Another question.

What now? The question I'd asked when everything was unknown. I hadn't known what was going on. Where everyTHING had gone. Dora? At the time she was missing in my mind. Compromised mods were a mere drop in comparison to the gulf of self-delusion I'd surrounded myself in before I'd learned the truth. Time moves forward. What I had done wasn't quite as important as what I was going to do.

Another leaf, a new branch. Another question.

Should I ask Rob?

No. Rob was adamant I make my own decisions here, and he was right. What was it he said? "I think you’ve let others have a say on where you get to go or not go for far too long."

He was right. For better or worse, this should be my own choice. Even if I wished it were easier.

A gust of wind blew.

The drop had grown, swelling as it gathered mass, rustling from limb to limb on its way downward. The surface sparkled in the soft rays of the burning sun. Scattering and collecting simultaneously.

With a shiver, a limb bowed but didn't break. Tension was added until the droplet finally released, gaining upward momentum in an arching trajectory forward. Toward the future.

A hidden seed absorbed the dew, lapping hungrily at the chances for a new beginning. I lowered my hands from my face and opened my eyes. The flags remained disabled, and I blinked to ensure they wouldn't appear again.

I leaned back, tucking my palms beneath my armpits. My eyes traced the blurry zone of the table, where the holocard lay. I still had no clue what was causing the option for the choice nor why Rob had been so upset.

I was asking myself the wrong questions.

Everything centers around what's on that card. But why, and why me?

I turned my face, looking somewhat over my shoulder as I observed Rob, softly tapping on the screen. The font, too tiny to be read from here, was brimming with tallying metrics and gauges. I can't make a decision without knowing.

He'd detected me observing him, letting out a rumble of frustration as he swept the screen clear. It returned to the stock interface, which showed an empty walkway outside.

"Decided already?" he asked as he approached to retake his seat. His jaw was tight, not quite clenched but definitely strained. It gave him an irate expression as he sat down. Both hands were balled, forming half fists.

"Rob," I asked after he'd settled. "What's on the card?"

His face went stonily cold as his eyes flared up again. The hex flags didn't return this time, making me wonder how they'd triggered in the first place.

"Bad news," he said; he was still looking at the card. "McCreed was offering you up."

"Offering?" I asked, "You mean like a virgin at an altar? That kind of offering?"

His jaw clenched as he continued glaring at the card. The half-fists became full. "And he was going to make you walk there so he wouldn't have to deliver you."

I still couldn't wrap my mind around what possible qualifier would've made me his sacrifice, but Rob answered before I had to ask, "It's horrible luck," he said, his tone brooding. "Worse? You weren't the only one. There are some major issues we'll need to investigate once we get you to a safe house if you decide to come."

Safe house? What is this...a spy holo-drama?

"Safe house? horrible luck? Wait a second..." I began, but Rob's arms were catching my attention first. They were swelling. Growing in size.

Rob spoke coldly, ignorant of or uncaring of the fact it looked like there was an allergic reaction going on with his forearms. "From what you've told me so far, Price? Karl's death was the trigger to just about everything leading up to this morning. I'm still unclear on how..." and he spat her name, a look of hate crossing his features as the vein erupted again upon his forehead, "Dora, fits into all this, but trust me—" Rob's eyes flashed dangerously, "we'll find out and make them pay!"

"Pay?!" I asked, surprised at his emergent anger. Since he'd first seen the card, it seemed like he was just on the verge of being beyond upset. I still didn't know what was exactly on the card. I hope it's not something I did.

"Yes!" he shouted, probably louder than he meant to as his left arm tightened. I had to involuntarily lean away.

FAR away.

The clothing he was wearing had been loose and somewhat flowing, but hidden musculature beneath his skin had pumped outward in volume.

In a blink of my cybernetic eyes, warning flags projected around his frame, a counter displaying exponential growth. It ticked upward as more than just his arm began to swell and inflate. It was something I'd never seen before, at least not in person. Analog-age comics I'd read as a child had a character with green skin and something about radiation exposure. I was abruptly reminded of it before a single blinking notice in hazard orange splashed across my field of vision.

[WARNING] [APM: Class Fifteen] IDENTIFIED! [Effects: High Strength, Tissue Constriction, Mass Expansion, Durability Enhancement] [STATUS: UNLICENSED] [WARNING]

I goggled at the notice, the first of its kind I'd ever seen without a connected Outerall Processing Unit. It was identical to the one informing me of the nitrogen imbalance in the feed tunnels, and I hadn't even known it was possible to see them without a LiNC-up.

Equally alarming was the overlay informing me of a mod type I'd never heard of; proof It wasn't just some freakish allergic reaction but a cybernetic enhancement.

I felt like I was observing a puffer fish ready to ward off threats, the key difference being this puffer fish—instead of looking ball-like and comical—could've crushed skulls between his fingers or crumbled load-bearing girders into pixie dust with his bare hands.

Once just a man, he had become a Titan or Goliath in miniature.

Nearly double his original volume—if the gauges and their ratios were any indicator—Rob had grown in size and impression. While he wasn't a particularly large person normally, the increased sizing made him look...dense. Immovable. The table dented under his left elbow as his seat creaked out a strained warning.

A thought blistered its way through my brain, down logical pathways and between electrodes to hit the communication centers of my frontal lobe. My mouth, a bullhorn stuck on broadcast, yelled out, "WHAT THE HELL IS AN APM MOD?!"

I have no clue why, of all the zinging questions I had in my skull, it was the first to be vocalized, but there it was. It seemed to do the job of snapping Rob out of it.

He looked down at himself, blinking several times before giving me a frown. Just as quickly as he had swollen, he...deflated? That's about the only word I could've called it. His body shrank like a time-lapse photo of the expansion in reverse. The vein in his forehead even managed to shrink as he closed his eyes and breathed calmly. The same exercise I did when I needed some time to still my nerves, but this one seemed to work for him in an almost mystical way.

I was a little jealous. The key word being "little" compared to the powerfully built form he'd accidentally turned into.

"Sorry," he said, after returning to normal size, his eyes still closed. "Amplified Physique Mods. You can't tell anyone. Got it?" He said, opening one of his eyes to peek out at me, it was brown again. "That...was an accident. I let myself lose control when I shouldn't have."

I mimed locking my lips with a keycode strip and wiping my memory with a flasher as I stared at him wide-eyed. "So...how long—" I asked before he cut me off.

"Too young," he said, eyes closed again as he breathed in and out, "and that's why I want you to have one. A choice. This is the future I was put into. Yours can be a future you choose."

Chapter 18

 

“Son-of-a-bitch.” Rob had spoken the words in a cold, spine-tingling way, his eyes never leaving mine as I fought not to crumple.

Purposefully. Slowly. I blinked under the unexpected scrutiny.

A hex code flag was visible in front of my vision; a thin line was sticking out from the mass of a pulsing vein peeking out from Rob's forehead like a rising summit. It was incredibly distracting.

"Uh. So...what's going on?" I asked, trying to act as casually as I could. My voice wavered in the delivery. Ultimately? The specific shades of the floor, ceiling, and Rob's face, which had settled onto a puddled maroon or muddled vermilion, were not the kind of data I had an immediate need for right now.

His rage, or rather the target of his rage, was.

His eyes were still emberlike discs, spiraling like flaming windmills planted on any of the four montes of Venus. The hex value flags attached to them were fluctuating, the characters ticking by at an alarmingly rapid rate. I couldn't judge to whom his ire was being directed, but the flag pointers were sure giving my optical processing unit a run for its scrit as an overclock triggered, making the workings feel like they could've bored holes into the back of my skull.

“You’re a techie kind of guy,” he said. “You seriously didn’t think to do a surface scan? Maybe even a refraction filter or thermal underlay?" Rob held up the card, which was now causing a new style of flag to go haywire. I felt my sinus cavities begin to burn. The image on the face remained blurred.

“Scan it? I can’t even see it,” I said, head aching as I attempted to look directly at it again. “It’s a weird, blurry spot where the card should be. Is that not how it looks to you?”

He stopped turning it, a contemplative look on his face as his eyes probed the surface.

I felt the heat creep along my neck as I mentally searched for a way out of needing to answer what was likely to be his next question. It was my turn to change colors now.

"Dora yanked my Cortex Rig, remember?" I said feebly, trying to buy time.

Crud. I'm coming up blank!

Rob frowned, sweeping the end of the card around my head in a small circle, the suspicion tightening the corners of his eyes.

“Couldn’t use your optics?” he asked.

“Uh—” I said with uncertainty.

“You’ve got what, Mark Tens? Nines?” He leaned forward.

“The thing is—” I began to sputter, but he had already begun scanning. One of the last things I would've ever wanted him to do in the moment. An active lectonalysis request: infrared tight-beam, straight from his optics to mine.

Oh no. I thought just as a warning indicator flashed along my vision. There was a shift in color as both iris rings focused, and I felt my vision stutter momentarily while I tried not to squint. From the putrid darkness of the Capsule Bays to the brighter shades of the Port, Stacks, and loftily lit corridors of CorpoLand and the Spires. Admittance of "inferior" mod use was oft taken as the sign of a deeper shame.

Bad enough to exist in squalor. To not seek out and obtain better?

You were a castoff. A Scrabbager.

“Oh...” he said. His voice had become soft. Delicate. “Mark Fours?”

A strong and immediate urge to sink below the table washed over me as I found it hard to meet his gaze.

Now he knows. My cheeks were hot. Burning.

"Tanta Mark Two's," I said. The shame was a typecast, settling perfectly over my face as I tried not to look up. The color of his eyes shifted from molten red to one resembling their normal shade of brown. Where before there existed anger and outright suspicion, now there was only pity.

“Price,” he said, his voice firm but steady, “Level Six means you were supposed to get a set of Nines basically for free to do what you wanted with when you hit Line."

I remained silent.

Before now, I'd never had to say anything aloud about them, at least in a way audible for others to hear. In front of someone I respected and didn't want to risk further judgment from? I found it...difficult. Even if I logically knew better. My Corpo-minded stepfather had managed to drill into the folds of my mod-addled brain the need to keep up appearances. Dora had only reinforced it.

"Hell." Rob continued, "Five was supposed to also give you a DIFFERENT set; they fully expected you to upgrade. Why aren’t you using them? You sell em?”

I nodded.

He leaned back grimly, examining my face.

I spoke up, quietly. “Except for the Nines. We, that is Pandora and I, figured she’d get better chances at generating scrit if...” I stopped to trail off.

“And whose idea was that? Originally?” Rob asked.

I didn’t answer. We both knew.

“You know?" He said coldly. His eyes brightened as his jaw clenched in irritation. "It’s surprising how much more you can hate someone in such a short amount of time."

There was a stretching noise as his right hand squeezed. The sound was not unlike a synthleather glove being pulled onto a hand far too large for its capacity. His expression looked like he wanted to strangle something.

“So, even without the total amount from the sales. With what Dora was likely pulling in working at InCorporeal and whatever else you were squirreling away in between the side work, extra shifts, and overtime from the Port. You’re telling me you’ve been, for the better part of the past two Lines, stuck with an ancient pair of Tanta Mark Twos?”

I nodded again.

“That’s basically the entire time you've known me!” He nearly shouted, and I winced.

I'd always had difficulty dealing with the internal struggle over the illogical sense of shame. Existence within the envelope of Corporate Citizenship meant different standings. Different structures. In my own mind, I'd always been quietly happy, maybe even strongly prideful of my ability to take discarded parts and make them work. Even recognizing it was Rob who taught me how to weave miracles with a few scrap pieces of wire and a toothpick, it had always been on current spec machinery and never on an implant. Implants were different.

I shrugged, still unable to meet his gaze.

“Owen, Mark Twos can’t even do some of the stuff I’ve seen you do at work,” he said, a tinge of vexation in his voice now.

“Funny what you can get away with when you insist on always wearing a Hardset. You know,” I did double air quotes with my fingers, “for safety?”

Rob frowned. “It bothers me they gave you so much grief about that."

The Hardsets, a bulky protective head rig that included noise, vision, and breathing filters for loud and potentially risky environments like the Port, were a not-so-popular option among most of the, shall we say, less-than-safety-oriented members on the Port roster. My insistence on wearing the goggle-like protective rig—with its collection of strategically placed impact plates, digital feeds, and sensors—was often a subject of much ridicule in certain circles but allowed me to complete tasks like optical scanning and visual marking confirmation my Mark Twos couldn't.

“What about the visual and audio lag?” Rob asked, genuinely curious.

“Bypassed.” I said, “There were limiters on the sensor suites for some design reason." I paused. The hex codes were still furiously tagging every item, shade, and color within view. I'd just gotten better at ignoring them. I made a mental link, which felt like it snapped into place with a satisfying snick.

"Inhibitors and limiters," I said aloud. A sudden flash of hindsight thumped me like a flick to the forehead as I looked at Rob. "Do you ever find it weird we keep running into things locked out all the time?"

He was nodding now. Slowly.

Very slowly.

“Hmm,” he said, after a moment of silent contemplation.

I filed the idea away for another time as he spoke again.

“Owen. You’ve always been much better at the work we do.” He said, without sarcasm or heat. I felt inordinately pleased with myself, truth be told. “And I always had my suspicions you knew more than you ever let on.”

I grinned at him.

“Even if they said you were an idiot savant or something.”

I felt the grin disappear.

“Peterson used to say you might have been, like, injured or dropped as a kid—"

“Well Peterson used to lock himself in the Loader Bays because he’s a fu—” I began.

“Still doesn’t explain why they look so much less artificial,” Rob said, totally ignoring my protests as he pointed at his own eyes, “Like I wouldn’t have mistaken them for Fifteens or anything, but I definitely didn’t think those were Twos. That's insanity.”

I shrugged. “It’s not hard to find some cheap cosmetic work to make them look better. So long as nobody gets too close, they work out alright.”

Rob’s face was quizzical, head tilted slightly to the side: “So you couldn’t afford upgrades, but you could afford cosmetic work?”

“Cosmetics are cheaper,” I said, “and, uh, Dora insisted.”

“Dora? Why’d she consider that more important than just upgrading?”

“She said it’d be embarrassing if someone saw her with me. If they looked like they—uh. I...did.” I stopped, pondering on what I had just repeated from the memory of her arguments.

Mm.

Ouch. Okay... So let me clarify something.

In this moment, I was feeling something. What that feeling was was new to me. What it was...unexpected.

More mallet than finger, the impact was like a meteorite. Before I'd felt an ice pick between the ribs and right into the heart.

This? Feeling every part the fool as you realize the foolish things you put up with without being aware are, of all experiences, not one I would recommend to anyone. Like Karl and the heavy loader, the full force had come to bear. Once the threshold was crossed, it was irreversible.

It wasn’t a good feeling. Nor a pleasant one.

It was—ah...Oozy? Smearish? Smeary? Smeagoly? Is that a word?

Slimy. It felt slimy.

In summary, it was a sensation not entirely unlike having your skin suddenly and unexpectedly come in contact with something of a slimy, unidentified nature. Wiping freehanded in search of the initial point of contact might only serve to enlighten one about other places unexpectedly reached.

First it started as a slow creep into the gut like icy tendrils, inching their way through my belly.

I tried to make sense of it but couldn't.

Second: A lurch. Like the feeling of missing a step I hadn’t expected to. My mind raced to box up all the ramifications and -isms of the situations I’ve found myself in.

Despite trying, in the moment, I couldn't feel the edges.

Third: The Depth Charge. A sudden boom of shock, followed by the sensation of confusion.

I was abandoning the search for the edges and was now just trying to figure out how badly I'd been hurt. I was, at once, all too worried the lack of immediate pain meant severe and irreparable damage, silently wishing the best but expecting the worst. It was a sudden, unintentional, and entirely unexpected journey of discovery.

Maybe it was true what they said about not being able to see your situation when you are in it, only able to see anything once you’ve exited through to the other side because, holy scrit-in-a-jackpot, I was getting mine.

A thin mental spotlight marked where I now stood, smack in the middle of a pool of light in the emptiness of a forlorn darkness. I flashed in a breakneck transition through all the odd moments, snarky comments, eye rolls, and insistent directives or withheld discontent like a clip reel of outtakes and montages.

Each one centered around very obvious actions featured to hallmark her choice of leaving me the way she had. Many of which I had just ignored. It was easy to at the time. After this? I couldn’t ignore them anymore. Like a lonely fisherman on a wharf staring off to observe a ship which had long ago set sail, I was alone and cast ashore. The journey no longer mine.

Dang.

Rob's voice pulled me back into reality. There was a very serious look on his face, which was sobering. “I want it clear, right now,” he said, tapping the card he held onto the table three times. “I’ve already paid you back the few favors I still owe you. Understand?”

I looked at him in surprise at the change of tone. “Paid me back? Hell, Rob. You’ve more than paid me back. Why the shift?”

“Because,” he said, pointing the card at me, “I need you to understand from this point forward we’re starting on even ground. This isn’t me trying to pay you back. This isn’t you trying to gain a favor. Understood?”

“Deal. Even. Now what’s up? Are you kicking me to the curb already?” I gave a nervous laugh, tinged with a dash of desperation. I wasn't actually certain he wasn’t about to give me the boot with a quick, “So Long, Sucker!” imprinted on my ass, but I hoped he wouldn't.

He smiled at that, but what was more worrying was the little bit of sadness now creeping in to the edges of his expression as he cleared his throat and sat up.

“Owen Price,” he said in his serious Rob voice, “this is the moment that’ll change everything you do from this point forward, so pay attention.”

I sat up straighter, preparing myself to absorb whatever he was about to tell me.

“Listen, kid," he said, putting the card onto the tabletop before leaning over it, "you’ve been hit pretty hard the past few days, so I'm not going to do a song and dance, but what I'm about to say is an offer. Straight up.”

“Offer?” I had to stop my brain from going into overdrive as I gave him my full focus.

“This is your one and only chance at this offer."

I was more than a little off balance as he continued to speak.

“Chance at a future. Maybe not the future you wanted, but a future you might get to call your own at least.” He rubbed his chin in his hand as he took in a breath. “As for whom, let’s say it’s for me—for now. But it should also be made clear that I work for others. Others with end goals matching my own enough, I’ve been willing to stay in this hellhole to make better things happen for good people. You and your mother were two of them.”

I looked up at him in shock. Of all things I hadn't expected...this.

He held up a hand to forestall my comment, "It's more complicated than that, and a very long story. The summary is, it was me and one other who helped your mother escape Ian. I never knew she'd fled here until the day her death letter asked me to keep an eye on you. It's how you got the position at the port."

He'd said my biological father's name. Ian. Ian Price.

"I..." I started, hanging up on the word. My mind was racing. Rob was the one who brought us here?!

Admittedly, I wasn't in as much shock if I hadn't already had a hell of a night. More pieces of the puzzle were snicking into place, and I finally knew how and why Rob had been so upset finding out we'd been in the Capsule Bays. He hadn't known.

"Answer me this, then." I said, "Why not tell me after she died then?"

He was silent for a moment, thinking on what to say.

"She didn't want that," he said, frowning. There were creases from doubt and worry across his face, making him look...older. "She specifically requested I not do anything to compromise your chances for Citizenship." He tilted his head toward the holo-card which was still blurry to my own eyes. "Things have changed."

I mulled over this for a moment. Rob had been the only good thing, good friend of these whole past few hours and I was indebted to him. But hadn’t he just made it clear I shouldn’t be?

As if reading my mind, he spoke, answering the unvoiced questions, “You owe me nothing, Owen. Get me? NOTHING. Don’t choose yes because of some sense of obligation or loyalty. I will seriously kick your ass right now.” I figured it would be a joke, but his face remained stoic, his body stiff and still.

“You. You’ve got to be the one to choose. For yourself, even if the future is uncertain here,” he paused, forcing himself to relax as if realizing how wound up he was becoming. “If you say no? You say no. I’ll still help get you out of the Stacks to wherever you wanna try to go for a dust-off.”

“Why though?” I asked, touched but also wary. “Why do that for me if you owe me nothing and I owe you nothing?”

“Because,” he said, smiling sadly, “I think you’ve let others have a say on where you get to go or not go for far too long.”

The Power Cell on the table between us ticked upward again. The glowing amber "49%" facing me like a luminous sun.

Rob's emphasis on ensuring I understood I could truly make my own choice here was a bit of an epiphany.

Even with my mother, her actions were done to achieve a dream she had envisioned for me. I, in turn, took up the vision as my own, viewing it as my life’s goal, framed by the worry her sacrifices would be taken in vain otherwise. McCreed having taken away that touchstone was an action that I could never forgive, an action designed to manipulate and force me to concede to the plans he had deigned I follow because he willed it, and ultimately Dora’s choices had been a directive force pushing me toward a slowly decreasing number of already limited options.

Rob unplugged the Power Cell from its cradle as I made up my mind. Like a baton passing between members of a relay team, he handed it to me, and I placed it onto the surface of the table next to the blurry holo-card as I looked up at him, my face forming into what I hoped was determination as I spoke.

"What do I need to do?"

Chapter 17

 

A gruff voice at high volume issued forth from the multi-control interface.

"SECURITY!"

There was a thud as Rob tripped near the sleeping area.

“Hold your damn horses!” he yelled as his footsteps, thudding and rapid, flew by, causing the curtain to flutter as he made his way toward the front of the Pod. It was all an act, but a good one. By the reaction time and level of credibility given by his presentation, I was convinced he'd been savvy to the security bypass as a "feature" all along. His previous surprise had just been about my awareness of it.

“Yeah? What is it?!" His tone was bleary, like someone just rudely woken up from a dead sleep.

"TxCorp Security," an authoritative voice said. "Any resistance or refusal to an official security order will constitute grounds for investigation as established by Corporate Employment Protocol and the Corporate Security Rights Act."

Rob interceded, his voice a near shout, timing for when the goon had stopped to take a breath. "It's about damn time! I've been waiting over a week for you guys to send somebody."

"You must comply...I...what?!" The security goon sputtered, clearly caught by surprise at being thrown off script.

Rob injected an undercurrent of aggravation suitable for someone who'd been ignored and knew it, "Yeah! I submitted the proper request for an investigation because someone stole—"

"I'm not here for that!" The goon snapped, "I need your acknowledgment you're aware of my right to issue a lawful security order."

"Security order? Hang on now," Rob said, "Someone stole..."

"ACKNOWLEDGE!" The goon bayed loudly, irritation clear in his voice as he tried, by his perception, to take control of the conversation again.

"Okay. Geez!" Rob said in reluctant surrender, "I acknowledge. But, hey...listen..."

The goon, unsurprisingly, didn't seem to care as he ignored Rob's protest with a dismissive air, which seeped into his words as he spoke. "We’re in pursuit of a suspicious individual spotted within this Block. Were there any unusual events occurring within the past hour in pick-up distance of your entryway feed? I remind you: Refusal to comply is grounds for investigation."

“Wait...” Rob said, speaking in a stage whisper loud enough for me to hear from behind the curtain. His voice reverberated through the room theatrically. “Am I..." he asked, putting his face conspiratorially closer to the screen, dragging out the moment with an extended pause, "...in danger?”

I struggled to not make a sound. If Rob wanted to waste your time? He knew all the right buttons to push, and by the Goon's attitude, Rob was playing him like a grid sound sequencer.

I was finding it very difficult not to laugh.

"No." The goon said shortly. "Just 'standard protocol'." I could hear a clip to the words as he fought to keep it together. "Again. Have you noticed anything suspicious within the past hour?"

"Like what?" Rob asked in a suitably clueless tone.

"Suspicious behavior," the goon said, still managing by a mere thread to keep his voice somewhat level.

"It's the middle of the night." Rob said in a deadpan delivery of pompous annoyance. I checked the curtain to be sure it was still in place. I didn't want the camera to pick up the shaking of my shoulders.

"We're aware." The security goon said dryly. It seemed he was slowly losing his willpower to stay civil. "Has anyone been—"

Rob interrupted with a scoff, "I mean, you woke me up; that's suspicious, isn't it?" There was a pause. The Goon was counting, and I had to give him credit; most people would've started screaming by now. Rob, like a dancing boxer, pounced on the moment like a perfectly timed jab as the opening presented itself.

"Well, I've got suspicions about who stole—" he began eagerly, sounding so certain of himself.

The goon snapped. The last thread of patience, which he had thus far managed to clutch valiantly onto, was gone. Adrift in the void. "That will be all," he said.

Rather than retracting, Rob extended a metaphorical finger to prod further, like a probe to test the wellness of a synthsteak set to broil.

"Hang on now. I submitted a report! I've got some serious suspicions..."

The Goon's voice was now a shout as it was all let out in an explosive delivery.

“THAT WILL BE ALL!”

With a short chirp, we were left alone save for the sound of three dull thuds near the front of the Pod as the wall vibrated furiously. A few skipped heartbeats later, Rob’s voice filled the dead silence that followed.

“It’s gotta be Bill.” He said, still using his pompous character voice. The tone was one only the truly clueless or unaware use when they believe they're right, in spite of evidence to the contrary. “I knew it’d be that asshole.” He sniffed with the air of a Spirelite complaining about the quality of the bottled water in their penthouse suite.

I lost it. I must've looked like an idiot once the tension of the moment passed.

Rob yanked the curtain aside, a huge cheek-splitting grin plastered on his face. "You know the best way to keep Security from investigating you? Threaten them with the risk of actual work by asking for legitimate help. Guaranteed to clear out before you can file a complaint, like that!" He snapped his fingers, pointing his hand at me like it was a gun.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, thankfully from laughter this time, I couldn't refute the claim.

Rob turned, taking up position in front of the panel as he prodded it back to life. I eventually calmed down enough to ask, "So now what?"

"Now? On to stage two of Plan—er, whatever. Grab the bags and pull them over here,” he said, gesturing for me to sit in the kitchen area. "We're going to be in for a bit of a wait. Might want to take a load off so we can chat for a second. It's my turn for questions."

I did as instructed, moving the bags to the front of the Pod for easy access before sitting.

"You sure he isn't coming back?" I asked once I'd settled.

Engrossed in reading the data stream, Rob didn't answer immediately. "Pretty certain. Based off his movements, he's fishing for information by going door to door. Most of the neighbors are from our shift, so the Pods in this Stack will be mostly empty this time of—" He glanced up, eyes focusing toward the chrono line of the upper display. "morning."

Feels like it's been a year, I mused morosely as I confirmed his words by checking my own interface. Officially, the digital readout placed us just past midnight as the chrono's first pair of digits clicked over from a golden twenty-three to a set of double zeros. My aching limbs and persisting fatigue reminded me well enough of where the time had gone. However, even knowing was still like taking an abrupt hammer to the skull. It was a new day.

Rob tapped the screen a few times to toggle between readouts. "Fact is," he said, "he's the only one in this Stack I can detect. If they've sent only one guy to do the scutwork of getting intel out this way, it means they're running light and not actually certain when and where Sa—" He went quiet as he pressed his lips together to seal them. It was the same expression I was becoming all too familiar with; he was keeping something from me but was still stuck on deciding if he wanted to share.

There was a pregnant pause between us as, eventually, he made up his mind.

"Price," he said, turning to lean up against the wall next to the display to face me. "You told me he had to call off Golrich, right?" He had tucked one hand into an armpit, raising the other to bite his thumb in what I liked to call his "thinking" pose. I sat up straighter, making sure to pay attention; there was a quality to his voice hinting I was in for an interesting conversation.

"If by 'he' you mean McCreed? Then yes." I said, nodding along.

“So McCreed stopped Golrich and the Goons, and then—what exactly?” he asked, eyes reading my every move.

I looked up at the ceiling, leaning back in the chair to try recalling the exact phrasings McCreed had given me. “He told the group he wanted to speak with me in private," I said. "First thing McCreed started on was an odd discussion about ‘Lords’ and how they ‘deign rather than request’ things from people. You know, patter.”

“Patter?” Rob said in a question, his eyebrows high in surprise as if not expecting me to know the word.

“A prepared talk." I said, "More like—what? A sales thing or something, you know? Where they try to convince you of the marvels of their products or services? It was too smooth, too practiced to be anything else.”

The ghost of a smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Where’d you learn the term?” he asked.

“My biological father,” I said.

I caught yet another flash of familiarity I hadn't expected as the smirk disappeared.

I faltered, trying to remember the exact word my father had used, but it was like trying to grab a fistful of smoke, “the—uh, art of the...drift?”

Rob corrected me immediately. “Grift."

“Uh...What?” I said, nervous now, suddenly feeling seven years old again.

“Guh. GEE. Grift,” He said, “It’s Art of the Grift. As in 'a swindle'?”

“I thought it was drift,” I said, honestly.

Rob's eyes lost a little of their hardness as a faint amusement subbed in, “What would a drift be?”

“Like a sideways move? lateral? Kind of like flanking or sideswiping?” I used my hand to sweep right to left, “Swoosh!”

He paused, actually taking the time to absorb my words. “Yeah, okay. I could see that as a kind of correlation. But no,“ he shook his head, “it's far more likely he meant 'grift’, which is a swindle, and far better for the context." He leaned forward, hands positioned as if he were going to grab items off an imaginary flat surface as he talked. His palms were cupped and his fingers were loose; a classic sleight of hand position.

“Usually, at least in the context of how most people use them, a grift is a quick way to make chits or scrit dishonestly by using deception and misdirection." He moved his hands as if juggling the nondescript items over and under each other across the imaginary surface. The movements were smooth, practiced, and, oddly, intrinsically familiar to me. After a few rotations, I spotted one movement different from the others. His palms had clenched, the pinkie and thumb pressing toward each other like the pincers of a claw. The movement was at a near imperceptible level, and if I hadn't been weirdly familiar with the positioning, I wouldn't have sensed it.

Rob stopped the motions, letting his hands drop. "It's a means to convince someone to do what you want, how you want, so you can take advantage of them. The best part," he said, "is normally they're the ones to approach you, not the other way around. The real trick is in setting up the rules of the game so the mark thinks they're the one enforcing them. The rest is making sure they only see what you want them to see." He leaned back against the wall, tucking a hand back under his arm to resume his thinking posture.

“Ah, okay.” I said, grimacing inside as it became clear the talk hadn't just rung true about the three-card game he was using as a demonstration. Thoughts of my biological father's dexterous hands trying, and failing, to demonstrate to me the reasoning for the same techniques Rob had just done pushed forward. The how's of the technique were always limited by my small fingers, unable to copy the movements accurately enough for my father's exacting standards, but, at the time, the why's had actually been the true barrier to my lack of progress.

Now? I think I understood. I made sure to mentally file both the specific technique and word for later perusal.

“'Art of the Grift,' then.” I said aloud, molting myself of the childhood memory.

Rob looked like he was going to laugh as he looked at my expression.

“What?” I asked, suspiciously.

He was shaking his head, a grin spreading across his face in amusement as he looked down toward the floor and onto the tops of his bare feet. “Owen. I can already tell it was the right decision to help you.”

I glared at him. Was he making fun of me? I wasn’t exactly sure how to take his words.

Whether he saw something in my expression or just knew, he stopped me by speaking first. “No. It’s a good thing you don’t just instantly know things like all that; it’s—” He paused, looking up to try to find the right words. “Actually kind of refreshing."

He flashed a genuine smile. One which crinkled the edge of his eyes with warmth and, possibly, a little pride. "Means my first instincts about you were always right, and it's just so rare right now I can't help but be happy." The smile spread. The kind of smile that only served to solidify the feeling I'd had earlier. The one where the Rob I'd known all along might not entirely be just part of some fake persona.

It was comforting.

"Sorry, Owen," he said, the smile disappearing slowly in the presence of a world-weary sigh. "Despite the regular astonishment you keep surprising me with, I can't help but smile sometimes when you prove just how you retained being so pure of heart. Worrying what the intentions are from everyone all the time? It's exhausting."

His expression remained contemplative. He scratched his chin slowly, staring off beyond the tiny window at the back of the Pod. His mind was a million miles away, further than the hillsides surrounding the City 17 boundaries. The clouds were thickening again.

“Thanks? I guess?” I said, uncertainly. I was felt self-conscious as Rob's mind wandered through the ghosts of a past I couldn't see.

He eventually returned from wherever his mind had taken him with a shudder. “Just ignore me," he said wistfully, before resuming his thinking pose. "Continue. Sorry.”

He settled his attention and waited for me to speak.

“So, McCreed,” I paused, glancing up at him to see if he needed to interrupt. He didn’t move.

“McCreed had an odd pattern of talking. Once the patter started, it was like he was setting me up for a sale or trying to convince me to do something. Kept asking about my past before presenting me with a—” I stopped, realizing I still had the strange card.

Uh oh. It dawned on me. I hadn't remembered exactly where I'd put the card after it had been handed to me.

"Hang on, I've gotta find something." I said to Rob, using my hands to frantically feel along the outside of the pockets of the jacket. By the feel of the lumps I sensed with my fingers, there were a number of other smaller items like the Plat, stashed within the abundance of pockets hidden in the folds.

The multi-display softly beeped, calling Rob's attention as I began reaching into a few of these to examine the items within. One such item, a triangular pendant affixed to a chain and made up of a curious metallic material, made me stop to examine it as I coiled it around a finger before stowing it away again. I made another mental note to ask Rob about it later as I came across more plat chits, a thin container holding a tiny data chip, and the sporadic collection of strings, fluff, and even a nut and screw.

Having examined every pocket I could find, I lastly extracted the Outerall suit's cylindrical Power Pack and laid it onto the table in front of me. A sense of mild panic took over as I fought to remember where I'd last seen the oddly hard-to-see card.

Suddenly. It came to me. I jumped out of my seat, causing Rob to glare at me with one hand half positioned toward his rear waistband as I rushed toward the bags I'd arranged at the front of the Pod. I had a vivid mental image of the card as I shoved it into one of the outer pockets of the work satchel. It had been during my retreat from the goons after my talk with McCreed while I'd made my way to ground level.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I found it, safely tucked within the zippered side just as I remembered. I stuffed it into a jacket pocket as I zipped the compartment on the satchel shut, and repositioned the bags.

"He's gone," Rob said, closing the interface on the multi-display as I reached the seat at the table, "Just finished his rounds and is heading for a ground stairwell. We should be clear in a few minutes. I'd say half an hour at most."

"Well, that's good news at least," I said, sitting back down.

Spotting the power feed on the wall, identical to where it was in my old place, I pressed the status control on the Power Cell which lay on the table, to get a feel for how much power remained. A glowing amber "39%" indicated it was at less than half capacity.

"You mind plugging this in?” I asked, gesturing to the cell and eyeing the single power port pointedly.

"Sure," Rob said, holding out his hand as he neared the table. He extracted the integrated cable, setting the cell on the counter to regenerate as a blinking “40%” ticked upward.

Pulling out the Holocard from the jacket pocket, I tossed it in front of Rob as he settled back into the seat. The card face remained blurry, just as it had been while standing at the railing with McCreed. It was like reality smudged the makeup of the universe to keep it just out of my vision, and no amount of blinking, squinting, or side-eyeing could make it change.

Rob's body language was suddenly rigid again as his eyes narrowed. “Owen. Do you know who McCreed wanted you to deliver this to?”

“Sure?” I said, actually not sounding it, “He said to take the ‘Introduction’ to someone my girlfr—uh, Dora—works for.”

Rob paused. "Did he say a name?" His voice was steady as ever but I had to look at him, concerned.

"Yeah," I said, trying to ignore the tremor of worry building within my gut. Like a snake uncoiling slowly. Carefully. "Uh. Ruby? I think he said Ruby. I've never met her, but he said she knew who I was, or rather, she was 'familiar' with me."

Rob's iris rings spun like tops, glowing with an inner golden light as they locked onto the card in a furious glare. His expression read like he felt it had done something to personally harm him. His voice, scary now and delivered in a dead drone, rang out to me as he asked aloud, "Ruby? Are you certain he gave you this to hand directly to Ruby?"

"Yes?" I said, apprehensively. The dangerous timbre for "Scary Rob" had returned unexpectedly. I began to sweat.

His complexion, normally ruddy but pinkish, began to change to an alarmingly peculiar shade of red. Beginning at the base of his neck, the color crept upward along the surface of his roughened cheeks before shuttling across the bridge of his sharply angled nose, around the tips of his rounded ears, and straight up to his scalp line as it disappeared into his thick mane of hair. It was as if a fire were spreading from the inside. All the while the color worked to burst out from underneath his skin, the only barrier keeping the room from igniting into a blistering inferno.

With the finality of a last nail being pounded into a coffin, Rob turned his head and looked me right in the eyes. His voice spoke three words with a dreadful intensity, delivered in an eerily calm yet enraged tenor.

"This changes things.”

Beside us, the Power Cell's counter ticked to 41.

Chapter 16

"I'm sorry," I said to Rob.

I felt wrung out, like a sponge, drained and bereft of all liquid once the tears ended. He guided me into the chair once the surge had passed. I resumed function. The overwhelming characteristic of the vivid memories no longer as intense or overriding.

Rob's voice was grave. "Memories have power," he said. "Yours have been so suppressed; I'm actually still a little worried, but you're taking it pretty well, all things considered."

I had to wonder: was I?

Looking at the floor where the tears had already evaporated without a trace, my heart still felt the ache. The reclaimed loss had torn open a lesion I hadn't known of, the fissure concealed by the layer of corporate shade I endured for so long.

"I don't really feel that way. They're just so—" I paused, gesturing with a hand as I searched for the right words to represent the unexpected clarity. "Vivid? I've never experienced anything like it before now or ever. Is it always going to be like this?"

Pinching his lip between thumb and forefinger absentmindedly, a nervous habit I was glad remained unfeigned, Rob leaned back in his chair and made the slow grumble he often did for time when he needed to think.

"To be honest, Owen? Usually the protocols are disabled before they're implanted," he said. "It's like that one story: 'Minds that’d been integrated are at greater risk, so we usually won't grab them.' You've had some suppressed past trauma most others might not have to contend with, like..." He stopped talking.

I wasn't sure he was getting the quote right, but I believed I understood what he was saying. "Like who? My mother?"

He pulled on his lip harder as he stared toward the hidden compartment but didn't answer.

I had a sudden surge of stubbornness: I'd decided I had enough of the mysteries and uncertainties. Time to be direct.

"I have questions." I said, firmly but gently.

"Okay, but I get to say if I'll answer them now or not. Deal?"

I nodded as he gestured for me to continue.

"Well, first. Are we safe?" I asked.

"Safe?" he repeated with a cocked eyebrow.

"From being pursued to your Pod?"

The eyebrow lowered a fraction. "Tell me. Did you feel you managed to throw them off?"

"I think so," I said, thinking back to the runner who'd led the hunting teams away, "It was a ghost town after I'd circled a few times, and the roving groups were too busy chasing someone else."

"Huh," he said, leaning back, "Just one person? Did you actually see who?"

"No," I said, "I didn't get a look, but they must've been fast; light steps. Two teams sounded like they were having issues keeping up and were spending more time trying to get others to get ahead of...whoever it was."

He eyed me quietly before resuming his lip pinching. "I reckon we're fine." It was obvious he knew more.

"Huh?" I was skeptical. "How can you be so sure?"

"Besides finally shedding some light on a little mystery I've had since you've gotten here?" he said, standing up to purposefully walk toward the Inner Lock door. "I've got more than a few tricks up my sleeve."

I turned in my seat to track him but held my momentary confusion in check as he tapped the multi-control interface onto a blue-tinged screen I'd never seen before. "Vibration sensors?" I said aloud after spotting the tagged labels, "How did you...?"

"Hang on," Rob said over his shoulder as he worked.

I remained silent.

"Nobody triggered any of the proximity conditions except you," he said with an air of certainty as he closed out the interface.

"How can you know that? You didn't know I was coming."

He gave me a pointed look, making me feel rather stupid with comprehension.

"You totally knew I was coming, didn't you?"

"The moment you set foot on level five," he said with a smirk. "The suite is configured to only notify me if anyone doesn't match the usual profile characteristics, and you didn't."

"Profiles?" I asked, intrigued, "Characteristics?"

"This time of night, how many people you think are out and walking around?"

"Okay, but there has to be holes in the system," I said, "Ways to bypass?" My brain had shifted over to what it liked to do best: find the constraints of a system to seek out improvements or ways to bypass problem locations. A personal flaw, but one I was enjoying because it kept my mind off of...other things.

Rob nodded once to concede, "Sure. Every system has holes, but McCreed and Golrich's Goons aren't exactly the brightest stars in the sky, so most of the major ones w--" He stopped, smoothing over his near slip-up, "I...that I've already taken into consideration."

"What about the railings?"

"...the railings?" Rob asked quizzically.

"Yeah, couldn't someone just climb up?"

"At fifteen levels?!"

"It's not unheard of," I said, matter-of-factly, as he stared at me in disbelief, not realizing the other reason why I'd been called the "Bluebell Winter King.".

I actually wasn't certain he knew about the game...

"Why in the f--" Rob started as the harsh bleat of the Lock caller button made me jump in fright.

With the suddenness of being ejected out of a crashing flitter, I felt an odd tugging sensation followed by the feeling of acceleration and deceleration as the smoothness of the wall softly thumped against my back.

My mind was struggling to retrieve snapshots of the events as I deconstructed what had just happened.

Rob had exploded into action with a sharp mechanical efficiency even the drones would've had problems mimicking. In what felt like a single smooth move, I'd been approached, yanked out of a chair, safely pressed against a wall, and moved out of sight of the inner door's pickup and tiny viewport before I could blink.

The chair was now sitting somewhat askew from where I'd been seated less than a fraction of a second ago, and I goggled at Rob as he pressed a warning finger to his lips before snapping his revolver into existence in his right hand, finger resting on the enlarged trigger guard's ring as he stared into the multi-display's video feed.

My eyes shifted to the screen as he tapped a few times, rewinding the entry video feed until we could see a hooded figure. The figure paused, kneeling to tighten a loose boot buckle as a slender hand snaked down and poked a gloved finger in between the slats of the gantry grate. With a blinking icon, there was a flashing on the top right of the screen, indicating the time and date of an external entry request notification from a hidden trigger.

Interesting.

The figure resumed, or rather appeared to resume, adjusting the buckle with one hand as the other stayed obscured for anything but the outer door feed. A quick flash of digits, and the figure leaned over to peer past the lip of the gantry and into the darkness below.

The audio spectralizer on the top left of the feed spiked in time as the figure stood, clomping the adjusted boot in an irregular pattern before appearing satisfied with the changes. Backing up, they approached the railing off-center of the screen's visual before executing a turning vault that would've made any parent's heart drop if they'd seen their kids trying it from so high up.

It was smooth and controlled, the movements of a gymnast or dancer as they faced the outer door's feed from the other side of the railing, hanging out into open air as they looked side to side to check for observers. I had to be impressed as they dropped in a clean dismount. Out of sight, but not out of audio range as the spikes peaked in time with softly audible clanks from the railings below until they could no longer be tracked. The roll of the distant thunder caused the visualization to dance until the feed was cut. The absence of movement signaling for the system to stop recording.

Rob swore softly, making me assume the use of the hidden call trigger and the subsequent Port-Sign-flashed number sequence hadn't been good news. A series of rapid taps on the display caused his face to go grim as he cleared the data with a sweeping hand; from where I could see, all signs of the multi-display's hidden functionality were made non-existent.

Turning as if on a swivel, he put the gun back into his waistband, at normal speed this time, before walking back to his sleeping area to scoop up the small pile of random items he'd been amassing. It mostly looked like the smaller versions of shock boxes we used for loading items into containers; a few were perfectly sized for cases of ammunition.

“Change of plans, Price,” he said, handing me a double-strapped pack he'd snagged on the way over. He dumped the stack into the area with the privacy curtain.

"Stuff all the uniform gear except your power pack into your work satchel," he said sternly, "everything else goes into this bag. No questions. Not yet. Go.”

When it came to Rob, especially over the years, there were times to ask questions and times to focus on what needed to be done as soon as Rob said.

This...was one of those times to do what Rob said. Without hesitation, I moved to grab the now dried Outeralls from their hook before moving toward the privacy area where he'd dumped the rest of the equipment and clothing.

"Listen," he said, holding the curtain with one hand, "Security is going to pass by in a minute. They might bypass us entirely, but if they ring us? I’ll handle them. You? Stay quiet.”

I nodded, kneeling as he closed the curtain, trying to force myself to be calm. I focused on quietly sorting the gear, laying out the parts still inside my work satchel onto a spare shirt Rob had provided in order to bundle them for easier transport.

The sound of running water and splashing filled the Pod's interior as Rob prepared himself, making up the appearance of being disheveled and awoken from a sweating slumber, if I had to guess.

The Outeralls were the biggest issue. They were bulky and hard to package. There is a trick to strapping it down for storage, kind of like trying to collapse a self-deploying survival habitat. The process? Isn't so important.

What was important: after much silent swearing, finagling, and pulling, the bulky suit, stowed soft hood, jacket, and accessories were eventually squeezed into the compartments of the work satchel minus the cylindrical power pack, which I'd extracted from the processing unit on the suit's belt and stuffed into a jacket as instructed.

It had not been easy, and there remained little room for much of anything else, but...it fit.

Barely.

The rest of the equipment was easy in comparison. The bag Rob had given me was more of a giant sack with straps and made from a similar material to the pants. It had a single open top with a black pull-string fitted mouth serving as the sole opening into the gullet-like body. A wide buckled flap ensured the contents could stay dry and featured a pair of polymerized zipper openings positioned to keep some of the smaller items within reach. It was in these I stuffed the boxes, which looked like they held ammunition, figuring Rob would need them at some point.

Lining the bottom of the pack with the spare clothing Rob had given me, I stuffed the bundle of Rig parts on top before stacking in the remainders of the pile. Overall, the entire process took less than fifteen minutes. Securing the drawstring and flap as quietly as I could, I positioned the two bags within easy reach as the outer entry buzzer sounded, causing me to jolt awake as adrenaline flooded my system.

They'd arrived.

Chapter 15

We continued to sit in the soured air as the air cycler whirred on in its valiant struggle to cleanse the atmosphere. As if touched by an invisible hand, the privacy curtain fluttered like a ghost in passing as Rob’s voice broke the silence.

“How,” he demanded, “...do you know that number?” His tone wasn’t aggressive, just carefully guarded.

My recitation of the CCN had been so sudden and unexpected; he was truly as shocked as I seemed to be; it had been more than just a feeling; it was a memory.

I felt hyper-recollective. These flashes were tangible. Almost corporeal. I could smell her perfume. Feel the movement of my mother’s breath in the tiny capsule as she wrapped her arms around me like a cocoon. Hear the softly recited numbers as she enunciated each digit like the punching of a press writer onto a memory stick.

There had been a steadfast look in her eyes when she’d entered the capsule we’d been forced to stay in. It had been so tiny, a child and slender woman could barely move for fear of being entrapped. Why and how we'd ended up there, I couldn’t fully remember. All I'd sensed was a sudden need to leave our home. An intense desperation as we bundled what could be gathered from the door to...

There was a door.

A WOODEN door. An honest-to-carbon wooden door she'd slammed on our way out. I'd been crying. Wondering why the changes had happened as she'd held me.

The bitter taste of the cheap meal she'd purchased from a vending kiosk within the Capsule Bay's badly maintained facility felt like it was still on my tongue. I fought to not be sick. To make our already confined situation worse as I swallowed the bile.

How? How could I have forgotten?

How could I have EVER forgotten?!

The cloying taste of the congealed sauce and poorly constituted protein mix served as an olfactory marker as I worked to remember the fleeting number at her insistence.

"Owen?" Rob's voice said as his burly hand shook my arm. I'd been so lost in the memories I'd zagged out.

"Who-What-Now?" I said, only now realizing he'd been speaking to me. It came out as a rush, and I snapped out of it. The memory had come back so strongly, it hurt.

"Owen. I need to know. Aggie was the only one who knew that number.” He had a concerned but focused look on his face. “When did she tell you?”

"What do you mean 'when'?" I asked, blinking a few times in confusion. I was...stunned. “Wait. No one ever called her Aggie except--” I said, trailing off.

"Your father. I know, but answer me, Owen. It's important. When?" His brow was scrunched in concern, not anger, as he continued to stare into my face. Searching for...something.

The puzzle I'd thought was nearing completion had just been picked up and tumbled along with several others. It had happened with so little warning. So little time; my mind joggled around as I fought to understand what was happening.

"When I was, I don't know...Eight? Nine?" I said, not even questioning why he'd want to know. 'Bamboozled' might be the word I was looking for. My mental wheels were still spinning. "We had to leave somewhere suddenly. Barely had anything in a bag before we went straight to stay in the Capsule Bays. She said we couldn't find anything else because there was nowhere else we could go."

He was whispering, almost to himself, a look of real pain washing over his expression. "I'm so sorry, Owen. She never said. Never told me."

"Why would she tell you?" I asked, entirely confused by this point. Finding out Rob even knew my mother was a surprise in itself, but now? I had ZERO clue.

"Eight. You were in the Bays as far back as Eight," he said, seemingly genuinely broken up.

"You were the one who told me never to talk about it, remember?" I said, dazedly. "We eventually moved to the Stacks, and..." He straightened and looked at me contemplatively. "I don't think there ever was a chance for it to come up, was there?" I asked.

I didn't hear his answer as another flash of memory came forth unexpectedly.

I heard another voice.

It was my father.

My biological father.

I couldn't remember the details of his appearance, but I'd known who he was. The bulky shoulders, draped in the finery of a silk shirt and vest, were locked tight as he stabbed a thick finger into my mother's frightened face. He had not been a small man. At least not physically.

"Once you've dipped in the Bay? You'll never get the stink off you! Don't make me catch you around there. EVER. Am I clear?!" The tone had been bladed and sharp, slicing through the air even to where I had been partially hidden, across the short entryway in my room. I'd been hiding beneath a blanket to stay out of sight when he began accusing my mother of cavorting with the "wrong sorts of people.". It had happened shortly before we'd left. Before we'd been forced to flee to the Bays.

Rob's eyes continued to search my face from across the table as he realized I'd zoned out again. His eyes filled with an unspoken sorrow as a voice, HIS voice, flooded my senses.

"Others will see it as a sign of weakness." he'd said, "Like you're tainted goods. Keep it close to your chest, Kid, because they don't know. See? They don't! Some legitimately can't. Some of the best people I've ever known were from the Bays, and some of the worst? Well...never, and I mean NEVER, say anything around Golrich and his like. You hear? Bad news. I'd tell ya more, but then I'd have to kill ya. HA!"

I shook my head to clear it, fighting to return back to the present. The Rob in front of me had shifted by leaning forward, both forearms planted on his knees as his head drooped down. He sighed. More wearily than I'd ever heard him do as his hands rubbed his scalp in frustration. His hair fluttered in alternating directions, which gave him a steadily deranged look with every passing of his hands. A trick of the light made the hairs match what I felt like my brain was doing. The stray tendrils whipped outward. Flailing as if to escape. My mind was a whirlwind of activity as all I could do was bear witness to the scenes before me as I was carried along.

Before tonight? Before I'd come to Rob's, I'd never had such vivid recollections. Everything had been muted, and I'd had issues concentrating. It had been hard to think. Something else always seemed more important. They had been suppressing our memories and emotions, and it seemed I wasn't yet fully prepared for the unrestricted flow of an unfiltered mind.

The sudden urge to do something with my hands took over as I continued with my internal struggle. If I had to be honest, I'd identified it a long time ago as my way of coping with unusual situations where I felt overloaded. "To be idle was to be useless," as my father had once said to me. It eventually became how I gave myself time to think. A way of forcing my muscles to assist my churning brain while I worked things over. More often than not, it ended in success.

So, I did it now.

Trying not to trigger another memory, I stood, turning toward the dirty dish and cup sitting in the spilled puddle of Caf.

Rob watched silently as I set to task. A stoic look of analysis on his face as he monitored my actions without comment, his eyes taking in everything as I gently lifted both items and stepped over to the sole source of running water in the tiny kitchen besides a tiny hydration dispenser where he'd been filling my cups.

It was a standardized and hidden sink of a design just like the one in my old Pod. Tapping a toe leveled control allowed the surface of the counter to slide back as it nestled itself within the wall. A hidden mechanism I'd never bothered to study, but knew the principle for extended a spigot, which automatically produced an aerated stream of tepid water. Running the plate below the stream caused the gelatinous brown smear of the protein puck's remaining traces to sluice and flow into the tiny basin, which sat exposed below it.

The light plopping noise of the water hitting the slowly growing pool and the hissing of the running faucet was almost hypnotizing. I imagined a similar flow to my memories as I thought back to the first time Rob and I had met. He'd taken me aside and told me, under no uncertain terms, should I tell people where I'd grown up.

He'd known we'd been there but apparently hadn't known exactly when.

One of the reasons I'd gotten along with Rob. Glossed over all the oddness. The weirdness of his personality when I'd first met him: he'd never, not once, held having lived in the Bays against me.

The Bays had been dangerous.

There had been all manner of people in the community: the unstable, the malicious, and the conniving. There had been...predators; and yet, despite the dregs of the Stacks, the Borderlanes, and the Spires ending up in the broken petri dish of the Capsule Bays, there were also bright shards of humanity. Supernova bright to offset the darkness hidden within the drudgery.

"Shard-Keeper" was a term my mother had used often when mentioning the kinds of people willing to do best by one another. She'd referenced it when I'd read the missive she'd posthumously had delivered, which arrived minutes before my first notice to leave.

"It's better than the Bays." I whispered to myself, repeating what my mother had often said to me in the first few months of living in the NS-Housing Pods. The saying hadn't been entirely true for me. Barring a few bright points and tiny, eeked moments of comfort and bliss, the Bays had been a much less cold and calculating environment than the Stacks had ever become.

We'd gotten out when she'd remarried, to a junior executive on his way up the ladder. When we'd moved to the Stacks for the first time, he'd treated me like I wasn't important. He hadn't been violent or abusive, but I'd spent most of my time alone, as far and as quiet as I could've been without being seen, for fear of cold, analytical judgment or casual indifference.

Being the wife of a supervisor-class worker for the Processing Plants allowed some benefits my mother hadn't had access to otherwise. The chief among them: corporation-sponsored mods. TxCorp supplied, installed, and managed. In light of the recent discoveries? I could see, very clearly, how my mother had become who she was, and what she'd become saddened me.

After the implants...she'd changed. Dramatically. He'd become a subdued version of herself, like a shade, lacking solidity or definition. A little less bright. Less...caring. Unable to say no to things she had never compromised on.

I'd kept my name, despite the fact my mother remarried. When she and my father died by what was deemed an "...accidental malfunction of safety protocols." There were no further details. I wasn't allowed to see her body.

At the time it hadn't occurred to me to be bothered by it, but I was bothered now. Why hadn't they let me see her body?

The filisheet had been fresh. Recently pressed, smelling vaguely of heated polymer and ink as I absorbed the words in the emptied room of distant memory.

The world can be fractured and made whole again, Owen.
As children, we were taught the heavens and stars above were shattered. We picked up the pieces and formed them back into a whole so people might live, and even though our life was a difficult one, that's why it's important for someone to keep the shards safe.
Together.
It's my final hope you'll gain your citizenship and finish your education. Make our shards whole again. I love you, my Little Wish.

I'm sorry.
Become better than we ever were.
- Mom.

The dish and cup were clear. Their surfaces were shining as they sat within the nearly overflowing sink.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been standing there.

I extracted the dish and cup before tapping the closing mechanism with my toe, futilely trying to wipe clear the hot tears on my cheeks as the counter reappeared over the face of the hidden basin. The clunk of an opening outlet followed by a hiss of spraying water met my ears as the contents of the basin were jettisoned and whisked away along a feedline into a substation processing facility far, far from here.

It seemed like an oddly specific term, but it had stuck with me. It was what I was reminded of when I'd met Rob.

When all others spoke about Rob in hushed tones and mocking laughter where they thought he couldn't hear. I hadn't. Instead, I'd viewed him with open curiosity. Listened when he taught and laughed when he told me the rules of the world by challenging them.

She'd called me that. Her "Little Wish.". It had been something she'd only called me before we'd fled to the Bays. Back when she'd been who she was. The thought triggered the memory of a phrase she'd taught me for when someone died in the place of her birth.

The Canals.

"We pick up the pieces and form them back into a whole so people might live," I said quietly to myself, leaning forward to grip the counter as the tears began to fall.

He'd said the last part along with me. Rob's expression was full of understanding, the sorrow plainly written on his haggard face as his mouth pressed into a thin line. He'd known the words. How? I didn't understand or care in the moment.

Gripping my shoulder securely, he pulled me into a crushing hug. The emotional outbreak earlier had been a pressure release. This? Was something else...

I began to tremble.

Then shake. It was uncontrollable.

"I'm sorry, Kid," he said, simply. I clung to him and began to sob, my breaths coming out in ragged gasps as I squeezed tightly and didn't let go.

The grief of losing my mother again. The fear, anger, and helplessness of seeing Karl pointlessly kill himself right below me. My abandonment by Pandora and the future I had hoped to share. The futility and forlornness of Branch's last act, and the unfairness of all of us becoming pawns in a game we were never meant to play, with senses we couldn't trust.

Through it all, like a behemoth holding the world upon his shoulders, Rob kept me standing as the feelings crashed over me like a tidal wave.

Enveloping me.

I mourned.

Finally. I mourned.