Point of Origin, Chapter 16 - Birdsong

 A few months before all the chaos….

  The Bot knelt on the ground, hunched over to examine his work like a painter would examine his canvas– and with the same precision and scrutiny. The port’s 134th window pane appeared sparkling clean, but Lewis brought his cloth up to the glass, removing an imperfection no Organic eye would have seen.

“Keep reading,” the Bot called over his shoulder. “You’re nearly done.” 

  The small girl that sat cross-legged behind him assumed a violent pout, deflating backwards onto the concrete floor of the Port like a sad balloon. “This doesn’t even seem to be a little bit helping… And it’s giving me a headache. These stupid words are all… wiggly.” 

  Lewis calmly started on a new window pane. “It’s never going to get easier,” the robot said, “so you need to stop waiting for it to feel less hard. Re-learning how to read is your first priority.” 

  Evren sat up, pointing a suspicious look at the back of the Bot’s head. “Well, here's the thing… How do we know that I knew how to read in the first place?” 

  Lewis rewarded that question with silence. Because you absolutely knew how to read the day I met you, he thought to himself, not daring to look down at his operating numbers. Behind his impassive mask of metal and wiring, Lewis desperately dug through years of old programming to see if any of it related to motivating an Astrostorm survivor to read.  Nothing came up. He squinted– he’d have to make something up again. “If you don’t finish that file,” he stated quietly, “I’m not teaching you how to steal from the Port Vending Units."

Evren shifted, picking up her Data Tab with unhappy mumblings. “Alright, alright, no need to get drastic.” 

  Lewis didn’t simulate a relieved sigh as he turned back to the windows, but he wanted to. He looked up past the glass, blue sensors sliding across the heavy, reinforced landing platforms of the cliff docks. They sat low and dark, waiting to be used.

Waiting for them. 

  Zero trundled into his peripheral vision, interrupting his lines of unhappy code. The small Bot held a bucket of steaming water. 

  Lewis took it gratefully.  “Thank you, Zero–” the Bot stopped himself, looking into the bucket. Only an inch of liquid remained. Slowly, Lewis looked across the Port to find a long, snaking trail of soapy water. He looked back down at the partially full bucket, sighing. 

  Optimal performance? queried the yellow Bot in a silent signal. 

  Lewis put the bucket down tiredly, turning back to the window where he knelt. “Yes, Zero, optimal performance.” 

  As Zero left, the small janitorial Bot made a series of self-congratulatory signals, ones that Lewis didn’t bother translating into actual words. 

  “Good job, Zero!” Lewis heard Evren say behind him, “you should feel proud of yourself.” 

  Lewis twisted around, pointing a finger at Evren and Zero. The girl had been in the process of patting the Bot, and Zero’s eye had closed in glee. “Don’t do that,” he instructed seriously. “It’s not natural for Organics to receive relay signals. If anyone finds out–”

  “I’ll be in big trouble.” Evren winced as she patted the little Bot, cradling her arm that was still in the process of healing. “Yeah– you've said.” She let her hand drop gently, but leant closer to the yellow Bot, all the same, and whispered, “I’m still proud of you, buddy.” 

  Lewis gave Evren a pointed stare, one she ignored wholeheartedly as she resumed her posture to read– her face the picture of someone who had never done anything wrong, ever. 

   “Okay, second line– where was I…? Oh, right.  'A-all whoe co–co–come',” Evren started. 

  “Who,” Lewis corrected, plunging his cloth into the bucket.  

  Evren nodded, squinting back down at the Tab. “All who come… beh… bef… befor-a?” 

  “Before,” the Bot explained.  “That's an 'e' not an 'a', and it's silent.” 

  Behind him, the small Geodian continued. “'An-and af-afterr…' Okay so, all who come before and after…” Evren hesitated as she read the next line. “'Be off?' No, of. 'Be of greet'–"

"Great."

   “Oh, okay, 'be of great colours–'”

  “Courage.” The Bot sighed loudly. “Are you even trying to read the symbols, or are you guessing?” 

  Evren ignored his question, continuing. “Be of great courage, an… nd… full of breh– breh– breh–” 

 Lewis exhaled the air inside his cooling processors. “If you don’t understand it, stop and sound it out. You’re not a broken Relay, Evren. ” 

  Evren frowned all the harder at the word, brushing a finger on it as if to pin it down, then stopped, looking up pleadingly at the Bot. “I need help. I don’t know this word.” 

   Lewis frowned past the window he cleaned, vision sensors flicking to the docks again. “You don’t know most of those words. That’s why I picked that passage. You need to practice sounding them out.” 

  Evren made a noise of unhappiness. “I’m trying, Lew, but I–” 

  “Well, try harder.” 

  Evren fell quiet.

  Lewis stopped cleaning the windows. He shut his eyes. 

  Drawing more air into his processing units, the Bot pushed himself off the ground. Apprehensive, he turned to face Evren, who still sat cross-legged on the floor.

The small girl didn’t bother looking away as tears welled up around her eyes. Gazing up at the impossibly tall robot, her voice cracked. “I have been trying, Lewis. That’s all I do.”

  Lewis’s shoulder plates dropped. “I know.” He knelt down beside her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have shouted. That was wrong. I know you try. It’s just that… I’m worried that your reading abilities might inhibit your opportunities of getting offworld.” 

  Evren looked away, wiping at her tears. “So what? This is hard. And I… I don’t think I can do it.”

  Lewis sighed. “That’s not true, you just need to practise.” He gestured to the Data Tab. “Here, I will help.”

  Evren gave it to him with a sniff, and Lewis quickly scanned the simple reading exercise Evren had been trying. 

  “It’s ‘bravery.’” Lewis said, handing the Tab back to Evren. “‘Be of great courage and full of bravery.’” 

  Evren groaned, putting her head in her hands. "I still don't get it, though," she said. “That’s what makes it so frustrating. Even if I now know the sounds and letters, I don’t get what these people are trying to say.”

  The Bot tilted his head. “You don't know what bravery means?” Out of everyone he knew, the little survivor should have known the word best. 

  Evren put the Data Tab on the ground, folding her injured arm stubbornly across her good one. “It means being strong.” 

  Lewis narrowed his vision sensors, then stood, resuming his task while he had some semblance of warm water left. “Well, yes, but… not quite.”

  “What do you mean?” 

  Lewis was silent a moment as he processed the question, running it through several answering systems. After a moment, he gave in to the oldest system he had. “Well, I guess it means something different for everyone.” 

  Lewis heard Evren push herself off the ground, too. “How?” the small Geodian asked, curious, now. "Is it like, a different emotion for everyone? Can you explain it to me?” 

  Lewis reached up, cleaning a window that was nearly out of his range. In the window's reflection he caught sight of Evren's face, turned up to him in anticipation. 

  “Well, first of all, I don’t think bravery is an emotion,” Lewis started, bending down to rinse his cloth. “I think it’s more like a choice. To most, bravery is standing up, to rebel or fight back. But to others, bravery could also be standing down. To accept or surrender.”

Straightening, Lewis reached up for the window pane. “For some people, the bravest thing they could ever do is speak up, and for others, the bravest thing would be becoming quiet– to listen. To one person, bravery could mean… holding on to something…” 

  Lewis paused for a moment, looking at Evren's reflection in the glass before looking away. “While to another, bravery would mean letting it go."

  Evren tilted her head in thought, looking down. “There are… so many ways to be brave. No wonder I don’t understand anything.” She looked out of the windows unhappily, but her eyes landed not on the docks, but the Hollow Wastes beyond them. “If there are so many ways to be brave, then how will I know what to do when I need to be brave?”

  Lewis allowed himself a silent chuckle. “Well, that’s easy. All you’ll have to do is find the thing that terrifies you the most. And then do that.” 

  Evren looked up, thoughtfulness turning into gentle confusion. “Why would I do something if I thought it was dangerous? Didn't you say that’s stupidity?”  

  He drew in a breath of air into his cooling unit. “Well, yes, but sometimes… we find our greatest courage behind what we fear the most.” 

  Evren rubbed where the bandages covered the scars at her throat. It looked like the injury was bothering her again. “I’m sorry Lewis, but… I still don’t understand.” 

  Lewis found himself looking back at the docks, eyes tracing the landing pads for any fault, any crack– any reason at all that he might use to shut them down or petition them to be re-made. But he found nothing. His voice modulator was quiet when he spoke again.

  “I know you don't, not yet. But one day you will, and you will do fine. I know it.”

  “How do you know?”

  Lewis didn’t dare to look out the window again. Instead, he picked up his bucket and handed it to Evren, who took it awkwardly with her right hand.

  “I think that’s enough reading practice for today,” Lewis gestured to the row of windows on the other side of the Port, where Zero was happily washing the same window pane over and over again. “Why don’t you go help Zero. I think he’s going to overheat himself.” 

   The unhappy moment now forgotten, Evren all but skipped to the other window, where she grabbed a cloth and started to help the little janitorial Bot with its chores– chatting to it happily.  

  Lewis found himself looking back at the skies as he listened, gazing vacantly at the cosmic blur that smeared itself across Covien’s sky. 

Astrostorm Evren. 

 Dangerous. Present. Unstoppable in every kind of way. Unmovable in even more. Parts of the storm were breaking up, smoothing themselves into little blobs that would dissipate over the next few phases. But as he looked down at the docks, the robot knew the truth. 

  The real storm was only beginning. 

Present Day: Seventhday– A little after dinner time.

  Loose’s stall was exactly where I thought it would be– which was reason for concern all on its own. 

 Batter bubbled in its bowl, raising agents uncooked and abandoned– but that wasn’t what bothered me as I came close. 

  Gravy gurgled on the warmer, as it always did. A large wooden spoon rested gently against her tub of grated white powder, where it always seemed to rest; even little frycakes screamed to be taken from the grill that was still alight with a blue-white flame. Everything was organized, normal, and there. 

  Everything except Loose. 

  Quickly searching the street, I turned back to the empty stall, confusion rising in my voice. “Loose?” 

  The frycakes were the ones to answer; they screamed. 

  Standing frozen, I watched the stall suspiciously, waiting patiently for the universe to fix this obvious glitch. Loose was never without her stall. It would be stranger for Loose to be away from it than for the Vieni sun to decide to turn purple, or blue. 

  I drew closer as a vent above shrieked oxygen into the air, deafening the noise of the whole level for exactly three seconds. When it finished, I cleared my throat. “Loose? It’s Evren.” I looked behind her stall. “I’ve come to say goodbye… and ask…” 

  I trailed away as a half full sack of flour greeted me with a stale, crumpled look– almost like it was mocking me for even looking behind the stall for its missing owner.

How stupid, it seemed to say, sounding much like Smiley. Use your brain. She’s not here. 

  Another release of air screamed above me as I surveyed Loose’s workbench. Four cakes yelled unhappily in blackened, charcoal-flavoured agony, while half a dozen more busied themselves with becoming strange and soggy on the warming plate next to it. 

  I looked around, completely lost at what to do. With no clear course of action, I reached up my hand and picked up Loose’s spoon, carefully sliding the cakes onto the warmer. 

  The griddle was hot. Too hot. I turned it off as the air screamed again, sending the atoms above ringing with unease, almost as if it was trying to fill the empty hole inside me that was gnawing its way to my edges. Inside the hole, I heard only four words–  Loose should be here, Loose should be here, Loose should be here–

  Nervous chittering drew my eyes to the pushing handle of Loose’s stall.

  A bronze and yellow beetle stared at me from its one working eye, making small noises of protest like it simultaneously knew I shouldn’t be there, and who should’ve been, instead. 

  “You seem upset,” I told it.  

  It only seemed more upset by the redundancy of my statement. 

  Jumping under a collapsed bag of seasonings, the beetle studied me suspiciously with its one eye. I knew I should be wondering where Loose was, but all I could think about was what happened to its other eye? 

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where Loose was, would you?” I asked. 

  I really wasn’t expecting an answer, but the beetle wanted to give me one. It shrieked and chittered and blinked rapidly. Leaning closer, I held my hand out for it. “I get it, I’m upset, too. But we can find her together, if you’d like?” 

  The beetle flapped to my shoulder, hiding behind a strand of hair like it was afraid.

It seemed ridiculous to think it understood me, but I liked the company, so I didn’t mind the act. Even if I was the one pretending. 

  With my back to her stall, I thought about Loose– where she might have gone and why. “Perhaps she went home?” I queried to the air around me, which still screamed and hissed like an unwanted intruder. “Does she even have one?” 

  For being my second-oldest acquaintance in Lisk, I didn’t actually know that much about Loose– where she came from, or how she lived, or how she got her stutter. Loose was just one of the chaotic constants of Covien. Ever changing and never changing. A perpetual, wild kind of thing, like the stroke of a broken clock that knew no time nor master, and was freer for it. 

  Something in the air didn’t feel right. Or maybe I didn’t feel right, and I was breathing the air, so I just thought it didn't. It was hard to tell what I was feeling, really, when every three seconds the vents above would scream new air into the level like an outraged Titholian cat.

  I decided to jog to the end of the side street, searching the main one for a scraggly head of silver hair. I saw none. At least, none attached to a seven-foot-tall old woman who didn’t like birds. 

  After going around the stall once more looking for clues, I turned, eyes darting up the darkened, minnowing street that ran off into residential blocks, storehouses, and many more small, unmapped sub-levels. 

  I watched the Liskian light fight the deep, undisrupted shadows to no avail, and the hair on my arms stiffened. Looking down at the precious money in my crate, I decided that was the last place I wanted to go today.  

  “Do you you think she'd just leave like this?” I asked the beetle, who had become silent as I searched.

 She’s probably out chasing ghosts, Smiley said (or maybe it was flour sack) in the back of my mind, as if to ease my worried thoughts. 

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I replied. “The ghosts are not kind here.” 

  Scratching my head, I looked up the tangled street again and tried to review my options– which was hard to do because something in the distance was reflecting the light of the valiantly struggling street-lamp.

  Think, Evren, what would have happened to make Loose leave her stall? The things that came to mind seemed just as out of place as the light up the darkened street. I blinked it away, trying to concentrate.  Maybe she had enemies, or she hurt her– the reflection flickered again.

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, I turned my attention to it, squinting. Distance obscured the true form of the object– all I knew was it was shiny. Annoyingly shiny. 

  I padded down the street to investigate. Standing above it, I held nothing but my crate and a frown. It was a long barrel, with a squarish looking handle and body, with a glass chamber in its side. A weapon– one that I had seen before.  

  “A Pulse rifle?” I looked around worriedly. “Why would someone leave their–” My eyes drifted to Loose’s abandoned stall, then to the weapon. 

  The vent above screamed behind me, voicing my concern in an airy, violent hiss. 

   I stumbled back like something had physically pushed me, the cold concrete biting my bare feet. "Oh, no."

  Check it, Smiley told me curtly. 

  “Check it?” I repeated, appalled. “For what? Blood?” 

  No, Smiley reprimanded. For how warm it is. 

  “Oh, right, good idea.” I stepped closer, leaning down and running my palm across the barrel of the gun. It felt warm, almost pleasantly so. “It’s been fired recently,” I told Smiley, who I imagined on the wall next to me. “Doesn’t that mean that the owner should be nearby, or whoever–” I stopped.

  And whoever it was used on, Smiley finished for me.

  Something like dread starting to crawl up from the concrete cracks, encircling my feet, slithering up my body and burying itself in my nerves. I started to shiver a little. Bending down, I picked up the weapon, studying it. 

  To touch the gun– to hold it– felt like some kind of unspoken agreement with the universe that I didn't want to make, but I kept the gun, turning up the street and taking a step forward.

  “Loose!” I called, "where are you?" I started to run down the lane, the beetle flapping its wings in protest at my speed. I ignored it. 

  “Hello?” I yelled into a nearby alley, but only managed to disturb a large family of moths.

  I skipped to each alley mouth, shouting my friend’s name over and over, only to be answered in echoes. Agitated, the beetle jumped from my shoulder and onto the ground, chittering once more.

“Would you stop that? We’re on a rescue mission.” I went to collect it off the ground, tucking my crate under my arm. “Now is not the time for–” I trailed away, double-taking where the beetle had landed. 

  This time, even Smiley didn’t want to say what it was– but I knew. I had been scraped and cut enough to know blood on concrete when I saw it. Lifting my face slowly, I saw the trail of red disappear up the street. 

  The dread I was trying not to feel materialised, turning into just another nameless creature that haunted Lisk’s shadows, watching me from behind– waiting– almost daring me to turn back. I had a feeling this was my last chance to, but like all my other gut feelings, I took a deep breath, and ignored it. 

  Me and the beetle shared a look. I think. It was hard to tell when all it had for an expression was one eye and a set of pincers. 

  “Come on,” I told it, putting him back on my arm and following the trail on the ground. “No use in pretending it’s not there.”

  The trail led us to the mouth of a dark, narrow alley filled with the sounds of gushing liquid and noisy pipes. I paused next to the opening, pressing my back against the wall of the main street as I strained my ears to hear above the mechanic calamity. 

  Through the thicket of noise, a new one arose– one that did not belong among the tapestry of cogs, pipes, or tanks. It was a dragging kind of noise– something heavy and limp being scraped across Lisk’s crumbly concrete ground. Then, muttering.

 “Two. Five. Quarter fifth equals signal.”  The dragging noise followed once more. “Eighty nine. Eighty nine? Yes, eighty nine.” 

  I stepped out from behind the corner, confusion pushing me forward as I peered into the dark. Tanks of all shapes and sizes lined each wall, and water pumps could be heard down the alley’s throat, yelling a senseless song as they carried water to other parts of Lisk.

  Loose, my friend and companion, was halfway down the alley, bent over double as she dragged something that suspiciously looked like a cold, limp body. 

  The crate and Pulse rifle left my arms of their own volition, clattering to the street floor, loudly– drawing the attention of Loose to her two shocked spectators. 

  Blood dripped from her hairline– clothes spotted in red, hair dishevelled. When she looked up, her features were consumed with terror. But then relief flooded her face, almost as if she had been waiting for me to come. 

  I abandoned my belongings on the concrete and ran to her.  

  “Loose, what’s happened?” I yelled. “The frycakes were burning– I thought something terrible–”

  “Can’t-can’t talk now–” Loose chattered, redoubling her efforts. “Two fives. Quarter fifth...” 

  I grabbed the arm of the unidentified person and started to help. A thick carpet of red hair trailed over their features, obscuring their face from view. “Are they dead? Did you kill them? Did they attack you? I saw a gun, was it yours? Who did that to your face? Where are we hiding them?”  

  Loose shook her head, like she couldn’t hear me. A cold sheen of sweat covered her skin. Her eyes were a million taps away.  “Eighty nine, Evren. Eight-eighty nine– they kept on asking me over and over… Then this one t-t-tried to help…tried to help me.” 

  Panic squeezed the inside of my chest. "Who came? What's eighty-nine?" I dropped the arm I'd been dragging, bending down to get a better look. The person-shaped lump stirred as I brushed the hair back from their face. "And who is this?"

  I was so struck by the half-dead sheen across her face that I nearly missed the dis-jointed Tironian markings on their skin and the one, Mixling pointed ear. 

  Kan Oh'Krean.

  Lunging backwards, I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Loose’s arm, dragging her from the alley. “What are you thinking?” I cried hysterically. “Don’t you know who that is? What she's done? I thought you knew better!”

  It was only after we had rounded the corner, and were back in the light of the dimly lit mainstreet, that I looked back and saw the expression on Loose’s features. She was shaking her head as she pulled her hand from my grasp. “You. Asking. You were asking.”

  I shook my head, confused as I took a step towards her. “No, I just got here.” I put a hand on her arm to ground her a little, but Loose smacked it away. If I hadn’t known her better, I would have missed the fear in the abrupt action. 

  “No, because of you!”  Her fingers went up to her head. It still weeped blood. “Eighty nine! Eighty nine, Evren. It’s you!” 

  I searched my head for any meaning the numbers and words together could mean, but I came up with nothing. “I… I don’t understand, Loose. Why is Kan unconscious in that alleyway?” 

  She took a step away from me, and it took me a small moment to realise what emotion had possessed her. She was scared– 

  Of me?

  “Can’t talk now,” she said, looking around wildly as if for an escape. “Can’t talk because they’ll come–” She started gesturing around, flailing her arms and smacking one against the street wall. Hard. She didn’t even register it while she talked. “They’ll come back and-and ask– but it’s about eighty nine!” 

  She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “It was too big– it wasn’t a good storm. I-I… I knew too much about it. It was eighty nine!” 

  I smiled tensely, trying to remember to breathe. Loose wasn’t going to tell me anything, not like this. “Listen, Loose. I’m here, okay? You’re safe. No one’s around. It’s just us right now. No one else.” 

  “They’re not here?” Loose asked, her stare so intense I thought I might crack under it. 

  I shook my head, assuming the air of an over-confident character from Lewis's many projections. “Nope. Just you and me– and Kan.” I tilted my head. “Kinda weird she’s just in the alley, huh…?” I let the question hang in the air.  

  Loose thought about it, then looked back at the alley mouth in thought. I was finally released from her grasp.  “Yes,” she answered, looking back at me. “Yes, that girl is hurt.” 

  “That’s odd, isn’t it?” I asked at length. “People don’t just end up in alleyways by themselves, right?” 

  Loose nodded, agreeing with me. “I brought her there…to-to get away– she used the rifle… they c-came, and h-hurt me. The girl… she-she m-made them go away… ” 

  Reaching up, I shifted a strand of Loose’s hair from where it had fallen out of a grey hair band. The gash underneath wasn’t deep enough to worry me, but it was deep enough to produce a sharp sense of hate in my gut. 

  “Did she do this to you?” 

  Loose grabbed my hands, pulling them from her face but still clinging to them tightly.

“You’re-you’re not listening! Eighty nine! That-that’s what they were asking!” Loose whispered forcefully, sweat over her skin like it had just rained– eyes wide with panic like she was still being attacked. “They-they-they were … looking for you.”

  My dark expression turned from anger to confusion. “What…?”  

  Loose carried on like she didn’t hear me. “Asking-asking-asking questions, they did… I couldn’t… couldn’t get away! Couldn’t find Hector!” Tears started to form in her eyes as she looked down at me intensely, hands still locked onto my arms like I was the only thing tethering her to the present. “And they were angry– and the girl– she came and made… made the birds d-d-disappear… with the ri-rifle.” 

  “The birds?” I asked, feeling like I had just been plunged head first into a freezing cold lake. There was nothing about this conversation I understood. “Kan attacked… the birds? As in the birds? The birds were here? Asking questions about me?” 

  “I couldn’t do anything! Again! And I lost-lost Hector…” Loose wailed, her grip on my arms getting tighter. “Eighty nine, Evren. Eighty nine… but I couldn’t tell them…” Tears started to roll down her face freely, and she leant closer. “That girl…got hurt…” Loose shook me slightly, searching my eyes for something I wasn’t sure she’d find. She was still searching my eyes for that intangible something– searching like she had been searching since the day I met her. “Help,” she finally struggled out, seeming more weary from her search than ever. “Evren– h-helps.” 

  The implication of what she wanted me to do hit me like a writhing mass of worms.

  She wanted me to go help Kan.  

  Evren helps. That’s all Loose knew right now. She didn’t know what had been done to me. She didn’t know that Kan had watched as Lou Koval destroyed my book, stole my ticket, and almost cut off my hand. She had been the one that warned me of  Kovals' cruelty, but she obviously wasn’t thinking that right now. Evren helps get Anti-bac cream for her injured leg. Evren helps push the stall from the rain. Evren helps.

Evren always helps.

  I took a deep breath, and Loose mirrored me subconsciously.

  Refusing to help would only plunge Loose further into whatever cloud of shock and confusion she was in. I had to help because saying no would not only distress Loose,  but she might try to help Kan herself– and I was not enthused with the thought of my friend getting anywhere close to that maniac’s assistant. 

   “Of course I’ll help,” I answered wearily, and the Covienian nodded, looking back desperately at the alleyway like she was waiting for either a miracle or a demon to emerge from it. 

  “Loose,” I started quietly, drawing her attention back to me. “Who’s Hector?” 

  Loose sniffed, wiping her face on the back of her blue shirt. “He’s got one eye. A friend, most days.” 

  “A friend?” I echoed, trying not to sound too surprised. Loose didn’t have friends. It was just me and Lewis. “A friend with one eye–” I stopped, looking at my shoulder. 

  The beetle chirped, emerging from my collar blinking loudly at me.

Why did I feel like everything was mocking me today? Sighing, I took the bug from my shoulder handed it to Loose. 

  “Is this him?” I asked flatly. 

  “Hector!” she cried, taking the beetle and cradling it in her hands. “I thought a damn bird had got him.” 

  Sighing, I turned away from Loose and her friend, eyeing the black mouth of the alley entrance. 

  With a bitter taste in my mouth, I stepped into the dark space, eyeing the pumps and waystations like imminent threats.

  My eyes landed on the Mixling at the end of the alley, still prone on the concrete of Lisk. With every step I took towards the crumpled pile of clothes and mechanic, I remembered another detail from the night before. The urge to turn around doubled.

The rain, pouring down on me as I ran. 

   Another step. 

 The strike across my head, inflicted by Kan’s own hand. 

  The book, the glare of the flashglows, the thunder, the sensation of my hair being pulled back to keep me in place as they readied the particle knife.

 Another step. 

  It was like the terror that had possessed me last night reached out of the past and found its way inside my mouth, drying it out and making my tongue feel wrong. I paused on the concrete, unmoving as I watched the Mixling breath shallowly a few spans away from me. 

  Give me one good reason why we help her, Smiley demanded. 

  “Because she’s… hurt.” The words sounded weak, even to me. “And Loose wants me to.”

  And you think that's a good enough reason to risk your life?

  “Um…” I looked around, suddenly unsure of why I was standing in this alley. 

  I shook myself at the words, suddenly feeling unbelievably foolish for being convinced to help a literal criminal by a crazy woman. Abruptly, I turned away. I walked back towards the light of the mainstreet, shaking my head. Smiley was right, this time. This wasn’t a very smart idea. Whatever Kan had mixed herself up in, it wasn’t going to help me buy more boots, get a coat, or be back at hangar 42 in the morning…

  As I walked away, cries of agony met my ear. 

  Unbreakable, invisible tendrils reached up from the concrete, grabbing me and holding me tight. Paralysed. 

  The crying tore at the fabric of the alley around me, growing louder and louder until it was all I could hear. The anguish in the voice ripped at my nerves as I stood, unmoving, as it destroyed my resolve like dripping acid.

  It wasn't Loose that cried out for help; it wasn't Kan, either. 

  I turned, as slow as growing grass, back to the helpless figure that lay behind me. 

  No longer was it the Mixling on the cold concrete of Lisk. It was a young Geodian covered in blood, crawling out of a burning transport on a windswept plain. Dying in the Hollow Wastes and pleading for someone to help them, but knowing, deep down, no one would. Helplessly, I watched the pathetic scene as the alley melted into a blur of burning grass, flames, and the distant, cosmic thunder of Astrostorm Evren. 

  As soon as the scene had come, it left– tearing itself from my mind and pushing me back into the dark flickering street of Lisk– exposed and breathless as I stumbled back from the memory.

  Regaining my footing, and my breath, I looked at the mouth of the alley, then to the mechanic. 

  A tight sense of frustration flooded me as I stared down at the shallowly breathing Mixling– who had rolled onto her stomach and was currently bleeding from an unseen wound in her side. It would be so easy to hate her right now if she didn’t look…. so pathetic.

 “Damn your morals, Evren West,” I muttered, bowing my head. 

  The next moment, I was at Kan’s side. 

  I rolled her onto her back– she was a lot heavier than she looked– and pulled off a heavy brown satchel from her shoulder. Lifting  her shirt, I got a look at the wound below her ribs. 

  I winced, lowering the shirt and glancing at her ashen face.

  “I’ve just decided that’s not fatal,” Smiley said as I searched the rest of her for any more injuries. I was checking a small cut on her arm when the limb came alive with a jerk, and the hand tightened around my wrist. 

  I gasped, an unflatteringly noise of shock, and looked up fearfully. I saw Kan’s eyes had opened, dark as a Great Sine’s, and as just as deep as Covien’s abandoned mines. 

  “What are you doing?” 

  I looked to where her hand gripped my wrist like a vice, not daring to move. 

  “I was trying to help you?” 

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Kan wheezed, her grip tightening– eyes unwavering. “I got them… away, but you need to go–”

  I glanced at my fingers. They were white now. “Yeah, tell me about it– hey, um, how about you just, loosen your grip a little? My hand is kinda starting to–” 

  Kan used what little strength she had to jerk me closer. “They’re coming. Here. I don’t know how  much time you have.” She tried to sit up a little, struggling. “Evren, I’m sorry about Loose– I’m so, so… sorry. But they’re coming back. Now.”

  My eyes darted around the alley, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Who? The Scavengers?”

  Kan closed her eyes as a wave of pain must have torn through her concentration. 

  She managed to breathe out one word. “Worse.”

  “Worse?!” I yelled at her as her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Before I could shake her awake again, I heard a panicked yelp from the mouth of the alley. 

  Kan’s grip fell away as I twisted around. Loose was running down the alley with all my things and the Mixling's Puls ` e.

   “Kovals'!” Loose shouted as she sped towards me, Hector struggling to keep up behind her. “They’re coming! Three of them!” 

  “Did they see you?” I asked, and Loose shook her head as she sped closer. 

  “Down the street. Looking at the stall!”

  It wasn’t really an answer to my question, but it would have to do. 

  I jumped to my feet, looking between Kan, Loose and the alley mouth– and I felt like they were all watching me. We’d have to be faster than a Lightjump to get out the end of the alley unseen. I shut my eyes, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to think fast enough to find a way out. Thankfully, Smiley organised my options with distressing efficiency. 

  Can’t use the main street. Have to stay in this alley. You have one rifle against three mechanics. Those aren’t great odds. No stairways, no adjoining streets, just pipes.

  I stopped, looking down at the alley. “The pipes! 

  Rushing to the end of the alley, I scanned the hundreds of pipes that carried the level’s water in every direction. Loose followed me, babbling worriedly about eights and fives and birds and mechanics.

  The alley terminated like most other alleyways did in Lisk, but with one exception. Instead of just cold, hard concrete, a large hole covered in a metal grate had been hewn away to let a gargantuan pipe into the infrastructure of Lisk itself. The overgrown waterway rested on the ground, disappearing into the grate instead of the concrete– carrying gallons of water inside it and sending out a ribcage-shaking whoosh every nanosecond. Huge pipes like these couldn’t be left un-monitored, so I pressed my eyes to the grate, seeing a great wide panel set into the water pipe  to check the pressure and flow, and a small space for a Covienian to lean over and make changes to that interface if need be. The panel glowed a sickly yellow in the damp shadows of the maintenance hatch, illuminating just how little space I would have to work with. A few attempts against the grate made me realise the metal had been sealed around the pipe to keep people from messing with the equipment inside the hatch. 

  “Pillars of the Universe,” I echoed Xander’s words, digging my fingers into the grate’s edging painfully. With every ounce of Geodian heritage I could muster, I leant back and pulled. I tried to focus on my panic instead of the sharp memories that jumped out of the metal and into my brain– memories of Scelirian maintenance personnel, of aching bones and long hours. Just like with the Passerine’s table, none of the memories were mine, and none of them were helpful.

  A moment later, the grate came away. I took a step back as it slipped from my hands, but then realised just how loud it would be when it hit the ground. I put my bandaged foot out to stop it. That should make it quieter–

  Loose was at my side as I held my head in my hands, biting back curse words that I had heard in all the mechshops I had worked in. That… was a stupid idea, I thought, looking at my aching foot. 

  “Evren’s o-o-okay?” Loose quaked out. 

  I nodded wordlessly, pushing her into the hole. “Just get in,” I wheezed, trying not to put any weight on my foot. 

  Once Loose was at the back of the hatch, I rushed back to Kan in a hasty limp. She was still unconscious. 

  Ugh. Lucky her. 

  I ripped one of the bandages off my arm and pressed it to her middle to stop the trail of blood. Then, picking her up under the arms, I dragged her to the end of the alley.

Loose helped me get her limp body into the hole, but we had to bend her long legs awkwardly and press her neck into an odd shape that, if she had been conscious, she would have been very upset about. 

  Kan may have been half Tironian, but her Covienian side was in no way lacking. Trying to move the long, spindly creature was like trying to jam a half-dead giant spider into a bottle cap. 

  Down the street, I could hear the shouts of a man as I crawled in after Kan. Don’t picture Lou Koval with his particle knife, don’t picture Lou Koval with his particle knife was all I could think– so of course, that was all I could picture. 

  Crouched awkwardly in the small hole, I twisted around and bent over, shoving my fingers into the holes of the grate and pulling it off the ground again. I had been so careful to be quiet when the grate came off, I hadn’t even thought about the loud and resounding slam! that echoed down the alley as it locked back into place and hid us from view. 

 Loose and I exchanged a wince as I drew my hands back. Do you think they heard? I signed in dim low-light of the maintenance panel above me. 

  Loose shook her head, hands already pressing on the wad of bandages at Kan’s side to keep her from bleeding out more. Whether it was a no or simply that she didn’t want to answer, I didn’t press further. Ignorance was a gift in moments of terrible panic. 

  I tried to ignore the sticky feeling of Kan’s shoulder digging into my hip as I looked out of the grate. All was silent– well, as silent as an alleyway full of pumps and pipes could be. Maybe it was more accurate to say that, briefly, all was still– so still that, for a moment, I wondered if Loose had actually mistaken normal civilians for the mech gang.

My hopes were shattered when I saw a form step into the mouth of the alley. 

 Tall. Blond. Jaw bruised and expression sour. He held a Pulse rifle, and at his hip, I saw a long, slender particle knife. It looked sleek, daringly expensive, and all too familiar. 

  Not a standard issue for a Covienian mechanic, if you ask me, Smiley commented calmly.  

  Shut up, I shot back, trying to concentrate.

  Lev Koval looked around the alley as two more mechanics and a Scavenger caught up with him. 

  I frowned, seeing a grey bird sewn onto the arm of the plains-dwelling Scavenger.  A bird, as Loose had so emphatically said. 

  “You said she was here,” Lev said, tone thick with aggravation. 

  The Scavenger looked around the ground, and I realised she was looking at the blood trail Kan had left. “She was here– they were both here,” she retorted, straightening. “She must have moved.” 

  “By herself?” Lev asked. “You said that Kan was injured.” 

  “Just not injured enough to send your lot packing,” a voice added behind her. One I didn’t recognise. It was another old mechanic from  Kovals'. 

  The Scavenger did not appreciate the questions. She bristled at the tone, eyeing him. “One of your mechanics has gone rogue– find a way to fix it before Gray Raven does, mechanic.”

  Lev turned, ignoring the Scavenger and addressing the other three mechanics. Two I didn’t know. But the one with a bandaged hand and badly bruised nose, him I recognised as none other than Gary. 

  Poor Gary. Well, not poor Gary, because he deserved what happened, but–

  “If she’s injured, then she needs care,” Lev continued. “We start at the med Poc the level above and work our way up. If she’s dead already, then we find the old woman.”

  I saw Gary stiffen as the two other mechanics nodded and headed back down the street. 

  The Scavenger followed suit and Lev activated a small wristcuff to consult with a small map. I gasped. They actually made maps of Lisk?

  As the young mechanic turned to leave, Gary caught his arm.“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked, already annoyed. 

  Lev frowned, following Gary where he paced closer to our hiding place. I had never been so still in my entire life. 

  “What are you doing?” Gary demanded. 

  Lev’s frown deepened. “What does it look like I’m doing? Lou wants Kan back at  Kovals', and we’re finding her.” 

  Gary spread his hands. “And have you thought about what that entails? We all know you want to be head mechanic in Kan’s place– but this is not the way to do it.”

  With a roll of his eyes, Lev turned to terminate the conversation. “Get a hold of yourself, Lome. Gray Raven needs Kan to fix what she did with that encryption. I’m following orders.” 

  “Since when?” Gary shot at the retreating figure. “You’ve never, not once in your life, wanted what your father has wanted.” 

  Lev stopped in his tracks, looking back at Gary with a dark expression. “Lou doesn't have time for employees who can't get the job done. If you can’t do this, get out of here.” 

  Gary took a step forward, his anger replaced with pleading. “Lev, I get it. We all need to listen to Lou, but don't you realise he’ll kill her? Hidden, she's safe. If we find her… she’s already dead.” Running a hand through his sand coloured hair, the young mechanic deflated. “We have to be careful about this. We have to think about what we’re sacrificing by following Gray Raven’s orders–” 

  “You think Lou will be any kinder to us if we don’t do what he asks?” Lev hissed quietly, as if his father might overhear them. “I’m not risking that. Not for Kan. Not for You. Not for anyone.” Lev turned, walking away as his words faded. “Go back to the shop, Lome. We don’t need–” he twisted around, gesturing to Gary– “Whatever this is.”

  Gary bristled at the retreating figure, balling up his fists. “Fine!” was all he managed to say, but Lev was already gone. 

  With a mutter and a curse, Gary followed, exiting the alley in the opposite direction. It appeared that he followed Lev’s instructions.   

  Very soon, we found ourselves alone in the alley again. Everyone had left. 

  What did not leave the alley was the burning questions that were in the process of searing themselves through my skull and into my thoughts. 

  Without looking, my hand went to the pendant I had around my neck as I tried to sort through my thoughts. The cool black stone calmed my clammy fingers as my eyes drifted to Kan’s prone form. 

  “Well, someone has got themselves into far too much trouble,” I murmured through a frown, looking back down the alley. 

  "And for once, I don’t think it’s me."

  If I thought that I had been paranoid before, I found that I had been sorely mistaken.

  Never before had every shadow felt so full of evil. Never before had every face and unexpressive Covienian glance my way felt so dangerous and full of ill-intent. Never before had the universe felt like it had so many eyes watching me as I cautiously made my way to another level, stole all the medicine I could from a Poc, and returned to the new alley where I had stowed the broken Mixling, Hector, and Loose. 

  Of course, I had left money on the shelf at the Poc. My… hard-earned, much sought for money. The money that I had endured burns, blisters, and Charge’s verbal harassment for. But who cares? And who’s counting, right? (It was twenty three Disks.)

  Kan’s wound was easy enough to care for, as far as fatal wounds went. The hardest part was waiting for the painkillers and other medicines I gave her to work. I needed her to wake up. I needed to ask her the one hundred and twenty seven questions that looped endlessly in my head— over, and over, and over again. 

  Kan did not heed my wants. She slept. And I waited.

  Perhaps it was midnight by the time I finally found myself sitting across from her— cross-legged and stiff, unable to take my eyes from her face. Perhaps it had only been an hour after we climbed out of the grate, sore and achy, and tired. Perhaps years had elapsed. I wouldn’t know.

  The dark made everything feel… so rhythmic. Maybe even a little non-existent, in a way. Nothing really felt real in the dark. Not me, or the wall I was leaning against, or the Mixling that had somehow risked her life for me. Not the huge gash on Loose’s temple or the beetle with one eye that judged me silently from any perch it could find. In the dark and the damp, everything could just be another paranoid dream I would wake up from soon. It was so wildly different from what I had set out to do, a part of me felt like it had to be fake. 

  Blowing a breath from my lungs, I hugged my knees tightly, closing my eyes. 

  “This sucks,” I found myself saying, because it had to be said. By someone.

  My eyes drifted to my crate next to me. Under its lid, I knew that the money Zara had paid me sat comfortably there. Well, minus the stuff I left at the Poc. I should have been spending it on good, strong boots, and a nice, warm coat, not sitting in this alley.

  I could even teach you a little about navigating.

Captain Rigg’s words came back to me, and I blinked. Holy Evering— navigating? It wasn’t enough that he offered me a position on his ship, but he said he would teach me how to navigate, too. It felt so unreal. Was that just a few hours ago? It felt like years.

  I rubbed my arms, keenly aware of my absence of poncho. Good ole' Kan was the last one with it, when she had grabbed it off me the night before. I wonder what she did with it. I lifted my head grumpily, glancing at her.

  Her eyes were wide open. Already staring at me. 

  I would like to say I didn’t start and give a terrified yelp, but that would only make me a coward and a liar. I clapped one hand over my mouth, heart pounding from the built-up adrenaline in my body.

  Kan lifted her head, looking down at herself with a soft rasp. “Do I look that bad?” 

  I dropped my hand, eyeing her.

  “You… you don’t make any sound when you wake up,” I accused her.

   I was tense with every emotion I hadn't let myself feel until right now. What should I even say to Kan now that she was awake?

Oh hi, remember when you tried to chop my hand off? Well, yeah, I haven't forgiven you for that, but I saved your life. You're welcome?

  The Mixling seemed to sense my discomfort. She shifted, trying to push herself onto her elbows, then frowned. Her gaze fell, and her expression went from strangely confused, to cold understanding as she found her left wrist tied firmly to an alley pipe.

  She inhaled, dropping her head back onto the concrete. Her right hand slid over her eyes. “Right, I guess… I guess I deserve that.” Kan’s chest rose, and fell, and rose again as I watched her.

Half a minute might have passed by the time she took one more lengthy, miserable inhale and said, “Sorry.” 

  I waited for something else to follow, but nothing came. That was it. Just a quiet, singular word filled with nothing, and everything.

  “For… anything in particular?” I prompted.

Kan took a hand off her eyes and stared at the Liskian ceiling— almost in resignation.

When she looked at me, her face held no expression, but her eyes were full of all those words she wasn’t going to say. “Take your pick," she offered weakly, awkwardly twisting the arm that I had restrained so she could sit up and rest her back against the wall. “For chasing you across Lisk, hunting you down, or for stealing the arm of your friend. My list of bad-guy activities kinda drag on, so… you can choose."

  I said nothing, but eyed the entrance to the alleyway.

  “I’m not going to try anything,” Kan tried to reassure me, gesturing to her restrained arm. “You made sure of that.”

  The words bit me, but I fought them off, stammering out,“You-you really think I wouldn’t tie you up after what you did last night?”

  “I ‘really thought’ you would leave me in that alley, actually,” Kan commented wearily, taking a laborious breath in as she flexed the hand held hostage.“So, I’m… a little shocked both ways.”

  Genuine surprise seemed to be seeping into her expression, like only now did she realise she wasn’t dead. She lifted up the side of her bloody shirt. Blue-striped fingers peeled back the bandage I had used to cover the long line of sutures in her skin, and the heavy smell of expensive painkillers and anti-bac leapt into the air. She fingered the wound gingerly with her left hand— almost uncomprehendingly. “You… gave me stitches."

  It wasn’t really a question. Just an emotionless statement meant to prompt me to answer. 

  “How do you know how to do that?”

I knew I’d have to say something eventually. I lifted my left arm, clearing my throat. With no poncho to shield my exposed forearm, it revealed a thin scar that ran down about four inches from my wrist. 

  “I slipped off a shelf scavenging for wire below The Shaft. Lewis, that servant Bot? He wouldn’t stitch it up,” I told her, dropping my hand. “But he taught me to do it myself.”

  Kan winced. “What a… caring robot.”

  Her tone made me frown. “Lewis is the reason I’m alive. And he’s not perfect, but he’s the only person who’s actually looked out for me here.” I gave her a disdainful look. “Unlike some people.”

  Kan’s dark eyes flicked up to mine, face as unexpressive as a dish cloth. “Haven’t you figured out why I’m here, yet?”

  I hugged me knees. “No,” I said, over-enouncing the word. “Which is the only reason why I’m still sitting in this alley.”

  Kan nodded. “Right. I… I thought as much.” Rapidly, she tapped her fingers on her kneecap, fascinated by the patch of concrete next to her. “Gods, I… I’m not sure how to even start.” The words were spoken in disbelief, far-off and dazed.

  “Kovals' searched the street after you passed out,” I prompted. “There was… a Gray Raven Scavenger with them.”

  Kan held my eyes for a second before nodding, rubbing her face with her free hand. “Yes, well, they’ll be looking for me, too,” she mumbled.

  I leant forward, hoping my voice sounded just as confused as I was. “Why?”  I glanced over at Loose, sleeping all the stress away that the last few hours had given her. “What happened?”

  Kan must have heard the lingering anger in my tone. She frowned. “Evren, it’s important that you understand that I’m not here to hurt you. Okay?”

  The words inflamed an already heavy weight in my gut, turning it bitter and cold. I stood. “Since when? You were gonna let Lou chop my hand off last night. What’s with this sudden burst of helpfulness?”

  Kan looked up at me from her place on the ground. She'd never had to look up at me before. “Do you really think that today was the first time I helped you?"

“What are you talking about?”

  Kan breathed in. “Lou was going to kill you.”

  I spread my arms again. “Wow. Great job. You talked him down to cutting just one of my limbs off.” I gave her a little clap. “Bravo.”

  The look Kan gave me was full of painkillers and amusement, like the face people give you while they wait for you to make some kind of realisation.

  What a stupid look, I thought as I folded my arms. There’s nothing for me to—

  Slowly, my arms dropped. I looked back at Kan, expression stolen from my face. “Wait. Why wouldn’t you want that? Don’t you hate me, too?”

  Kan’s flat, painkiller-look pinched with weariness. She moved her gaze around the alley. Either scanning for enemies, or trying to find the right words to say.

  Her next sentence was so not what I expected– I almost didn’t hear it right. “Lou was right. I was a lot like you when I was younger.”

  I came closer to her, standing just a few feet from where I had tied her up. I remembered Lou Koval saying something about how we were all similar in some way, but I was loathe to admit any kind of similarity to the Mechshop owner.

  “Why do you think I was Lou Koval’s head mechanic?”

  Kan was looking at my eyes– and she didn't look away when she talked. Almost as if our conversation would be lost if I broke eye contact. “Why do you think Kovals' has stayed in power for so long? How do you think we get all the best Offworld contracts?"

  I wasn't sure how this pertained to what I was saying. But the question had put me on my back-foot, and I was loosing balance.

  “I-I don't know. You guys must bully people for them, or something."

  “Because there's no one left to take those contracts," Kan said, still unexpressive, and still looking at me. “Why do you think that is? Because he asks nicely?" Her voice fell quiet, like she was wary of speaking the words too loud. “Covien has always been ruled by fear.” She nodded to herself, content she had found the words she was looking for. “We may not have slave masters anymore, and our mines might be closed, but the fear of our masters didn’t leave with the Sceliri. We kept it, like we kept the mine safety posters, and the old machinery, and the refinery we use as a market, now. Lou Koval uses that fear. That’s how he is what he is.”

  I stood a few feet away, feeling very weird about what she saying. Weird because I never expected those words to come from her mouth. And weird because I understood them.

  Kan kept her steady gaze fixed on me. She didn’t cry. Something inside me almost wished she would, because all that misery was building up in her face, and came out as ugly, weary-laden words. “What nearly happened to you would have been a walk through the Upperstreets compared to what he would do to us if I defied him.”

  Confusion sprang up in my head like springs of murky water, muddying my thoughts.

“So why not just run away? If… Lou Koval was that bad, and you didn’t want to work for him, why stay and hunt me down?” Running away came pretty naturally to me. If I didn’t like something, turning my back and running like I was on fire seemed like the most logical thing to do.

  Kan looked up at me, not quite-pleading, not-quite resigned. “It’s not as simple as that.” Her eyes found the alley floor. “Kovals' is the most dangerous organisation in Lisk. But… it’s the closest thing I have to…” She stopped herself, almost shaking her words away.

  “I’ve had no choice but to stay. Yesterday, though, I was given a choice. I chose wrong; I broke into that hangar and followed you home, then I told Lou where you were because I thought I had to. Today, I was given another choice, and I’m here because… I chose differently. I had to stop him.”

  The words sent a chill down my spine. Almost as if I had heard them somewhere else, before. I was looking at my hands. “And how did that get you here?”

  "You electrocuted Lou last night. With your bare hands."

  “And what?" I asked, my tone rising as I tried to push what happened out of my mind's eye. I hid my hands behind my back. Make a joke. Don’t think about it. “Did he… sprout leaves, or something?"

  “He went to Gray Raven and reported the survivor they’ve been looking for."

  I straightened. “Oh.” I blinked, searching the alley wall for a good reaction to that. “Oh, that’s… not great.”

  “Look, everyone knows that Gray Raven is looking for something here. That's why they're not gone yet. Lou put two and two together, and…" She glanced at her bag I had left beside her. She leant over with a wince, stretching uncomfortably with one hand still tied up. “Lou agreed to help Gray Raven find you. He told their guild head everything about you. Where you’ve been.” She faltered. “And who… who you might know–"

  “Why?" I asked, feeling strangely appalled. “What does he care about the Kore Guilds and what they do here?"

  Kan looked up. “Kore Guilds? Nothing. But power? Everything. They can give him something he can’t get himself: notoriety.” She hesitated. “Also, you aren’t… in his good books.”

  I wasn't in anyone's good books, so that wasn’t fair. I exhaled, pinching my nose. “So, now they're both looking for me. Fine. But this doesn’t explain how you ended up bleeding out in an alleyway with my friend.”

  Kan's eyes were on her fingers. I couldn't see what she held in her bag. “The first thing Gray Raven wanted help with was a Bot. They wanted Koval's to do a… very illegal kind of strip on it. I was put in charge, but…" She swallowed. “I couldn’t do it. It was too far. I couldn’t be responsible for an innocent girl’s capture, whose greatest crime so far had been caring about her friend.”

  I looked down. She obviously didn’t know about the Vending Units.

  I mulled over what Kan had said, then glanced over at her with a small frown. 

  “What could Lou tell Gray Raven to help them find me?” The more I thought about it, the more it confused me, and those murky waters started rising again, obscuring my thoughts. I shifted. “And what kind of Bot could possibly help–” 

  Kan lifted what she was holding out of her bag– wordlessly answering my question.

  The air above me seemed heavier. Everything felt heavier as I stared at Kan's hand. My hair pulling down on my skull. The fabric of my bandages. Even the weight of my own skin against me. 

  Pressing in, squeezing down, forcing me to acknowledge its presence. 

  I came closer. She reached up, and something was placed in my hands. I knew what it was even as the world smeared to a thick, watery blur. 

  It was dark string. It was munted, and old. Frayed badly from being tied around the arm of a type-C servant Bot for an interphase.

 It was mine.

  Holding the string, it was almost as if I could still feel his unimpressed blue gaze on me, filled with bionic light and all the hidden anxieties he kept from me– almost as if we were still on that shuttle let-out, arguing about how to cover the obvious designation on his arm. 

  “Taking a Tri-Dock 61 asset is no joke here,” the Mixling went on. “Kovals' got away with the arm, but taking the Bot completely? That’s something only a Kore Guild could do. Lou always knew you were close to the Bot because…” she trailed away, unable to finish the sentence. 

  “I stole the arm,” I gulped out, eyes still closed– breath still shallow as I pushed back all of Lewis’s warnings of going against Kovals'.

  Put the arm back, he had said– almost as if he had known this was going to happen. I was so angry at him for it at the time. I was so angry I didn’t even realise that he wasn’t just trying to protect me, but himself, too.

  I opened my eyes as hot, angry tears started to form in them. With a wordless, ugly kind of yell, I kicked my crate on the ground, sending the contents to spill over the street.

   Bandages that Lewis had given me, along with the many informationals he had told me to read, stared up at me as I tried not to cry. I turned to Kan, clenching the string in my hand. 

  “How did you get this?” 

  Kan held up a hand. “He gave it to me. They took him away after they found out what I did to him–” 

  I took a step closer to her, volume raising. “What did you do to him?”

  “Evren, I saved your life,” Kan hurried to explain. “They would have found you in minutes! It was his idea–"

  Coming closer to Kan, I tried to see past the blur that had overtaken the world around me. “What was his idea? What did he tell you to do?” 

  Kan kept her free hand up, almost seeming to lean back as I got closer. “He wanted to help you. He told me that Loose was going to meet him at the Port later to give a message to you. So he gave me that string. He wanted me to meet you instead so Loose wouldn’t be hurt, and he gave me that string so you would trust me. He didn’t want Gray Raven to use him to find you. He said… he hadn’t spent the last six phases making sure you survived just for a scientist to dig through his brain and find out how to capture you.”

  “You were the one that stole his arm!” I burst out. “Now you’re telling me you destroyed his memories?! Why should that make me trust you?”

  Kan gestured desperately. “They’re not destroyed, they’re just encrypted. Look, Lewis took a chance. One that will keep you safe for far longer than if he had done nothing.” Her eyes flicked down to my hands for a second. “The only thing is… Lou found out what I was doing before it was finished, and I was apprehended by Gray Raven. They managed to get one piece of information before the encryption fully loaded into his memory bank: there was an old, frycake-stall owner that would ferry messages between you two. The Scavengers were sent to find her. I was already too far in to change my grip, so I escaped to follow them.” Looking back at me, Kan’s brows pinched in an expression of acute misery. “I got them away from Loose, but the next thing I knew I was bleeding on the sidewalk.”

  Kan must have seen the firm, stubborn look of unbelief I gave her. A look that said you could be making this all up. She exhaled loudly, resting her elbow on her knees and looking away for a moment.

  “He said his was ‘letting go.’” Kan looked up, seeming so much older than what she really was. “His form of bravery was letting go. He said… you’d know what that meant.”

  The only thing that moved as I stared at Kan were the tears that rolled down my cheeks. My mind was thrust back. Phases ago, when I had been trying to read and Lewis had briefly explained to me the concept of bravery. If this afternoon had felt like years ago, then that felt like aeons.

  I broke the silence, sniffing. “Where is Lewis now?”

  Kan shook her head, red hair loose and wild around her shoulders. “Gray Raven has him, but in that state, it will take them…. interphases to find anything useful.”  Kan hesitated. “He said you’ll be gone by then, so it won’t matter.” 

  Sharpened knives could not have cut me deeper. I turned away, trailing past my crate and things as I wandered down the alley. Growing slower, until finally, I stopped.

Hugging myself, I rubbed my arms. I was so cold. There was no wind down here, so why was it always so damn cold? 

The cold of the concrete hit my knees like light against the dark. Sharp, painful, inevitable. I stared numbly down at the string in my hand.

  “Why…” I started, voice dangerously low, “did Lewis even ask you to help me? Why did you listen? What, after everything you’ve done, has changed?” 

  The silence behind me was longer than the first. 

  “Nothing,” Kan said, breaking the quiet with her weary tone. “Nothing ever changes on Covien. Not the polluted skies, or the missing oceans, or the angry people, or the mechshops or the weather. Nothing’s changed, Evren. That’s the whole point. I want to be better than that. I want to try.”

  “Why?” I asked, sniffling.

  “Because ten years ago, Lou promised a half-starved street urchin that he’d feed her as long as she did as he asked. That’s how I grew up. It’s how I am, and I hate it.”

  She continued hollowly, voice barely a murmur. “Every day since, I’ve been trying to find the courage to stand up to what he does, but… I was never strong enough. Or smart enough. Or fast enough. Or old enough to go against what everyone else was doing, so I just went along with it, telling myself it was the only way…”

  The pause that elapsed was filled with steam pipes and the ever-creaking infrastructure of Lisk. Kan’s voice was so hoarse and croaky, it almost melted into them.

  “It… wasn’t until I met a small Offworld mechscrubber who showed me that I didn’t have to be any of those things to do what I thought was right… that I started to believe it.”

  I twisted around to look at Kan, face probably a mess. “You what?” I asked, wiping my face with my shirt as I stood. That was sweet and everything, but did she just call me stupid?

  Kan twisted, and pulled something else out of her bag.

  “Every Scavenger’s weave is different,” she said, holding out my poncho with one hand. “It’s unique to a family or house. Yours belonged to a tribe that’s was said to be guardians of Covien.” She gestured for me to take it. “It belongs to you, now. It’s right that you should take it when you leave.”

  Stopping in front of Kan, I stared down dumbly at the folded fabric, daring not to touch it. 

  Kan had it in her bag. The whole time. Did that mean she always meant to give it back to me? Why did she take it in the first place? What was so important about it that it sent her into this spiral of morals and kindness?

  Sighing, I looked down, trying to hide all the questions that were rippling across my face. I ended up asking just one of them.

  “Gray Raven… really tried to kill you because of me?”

  Kan shifted, unsure as the hand holding the poncho dropped marginally. “They… tried.” After a moment, she cleared her throat. “But me and the Bot, we’ve bought you time.”

  I turned back to the string in my hand, shaking my head.

“Enough time for what?” I intoned, not bothering to look back at the Mixling. My eyes found the ceiling far above me, covered in its wires and cords and tubes like veins and nerve endings– twisted Liskian capillaries I would never understand. “What makes everyone think that more time makes anything better? Doesn’t everything always just… catch up with you at some point?” 

  “Don’t talk like that. You still have a chance,” Kan started, shifting against the pipe she was still tied to. “That Bot made sure of it. That’s why we did all this. To give you a chance to really run. To get the hell away from here and live as normal life as you can.” 

  I was already shaking my head.

  Nothing I thought of could chase the images away of the robot being dismantled, piece by piece. I didn’t even try to block them out. I let them come, one by one, each scene shredding a new hole in the sense of guilt I had been carrying around since I left him with Web Anang’ikwe on the mid-levels.

  “Lewis knows everything about me,” I muttered, rubbing a finger over the dark string. “The roads I take to avoid people, we mapped out together.” My hand found my neck. The bandages felt course and rough, like all of Lewis’s unpleasant but necessary solutions. “He’s the reason I’m alive,” I said, voice far away. 

  I heard Kan shift in agitation. She had heard the tone of my voice. “No, no, no, you can’t. You need to leave. It will take Gray Raven weeks to really–” She stopped, rearranging the words she was going to use. “To get,” she settled on, “the information they want from the Bot.”

  “But everyone who I know,” I started shakily, “I’ve told Lewis about…” I looked up from my hands to the mouth of the alley, and the yellow light at its end, hovering in the street like an imminent promise yet to be made. 

  Suddenly, I was thinking of Rusty Ris, and Avir, and I was thinking of Oli Preastigat– beautiful, selfish, struggling Oli Preastigat. I imagined him getting interrogated by Scavengers until he told them about the girl he hired, and the merchants he hid, and the hangar they were in. The sweat of his brow, the pain in his eyes– it was almost like I was right there watching, like it was already happening— and it was still all my fault. 

  I imagined myself far away from all this– far away from the crackers, and the dust, and the moths– I imagined myself content– somewhere where the skies were really blue, and the sun was warm and orange and filled with happy memories. And in my imaginings, I wondered if I could ever really be content, knowing that this was how I left Covien– a terrible trail of people for Gray Raven to find only discover, too late, that they were dead ends. 

  The air– it felt so familiar in that moment– like it was Web behind me instead of Kan, and instead of telling me my friend was about to end his life in a lab somewhere, she was telling me to run– just like before. Just like my entire life was the same desperate situation, playing out in a thousand convoluted ways– over and over and over again. 

  Different, but the same. 

  Kan was right.

Nothing changed on Covien. It was like this planet’s curse– cursed like the planets trapped within the clutches of the Ti’ineavi nebulas– too far to help, too weird to trust… What was it Captain Rigg had said? 

  Damned by their own circumstance? Now, who else did that remind me of, I wonder?

  The words echoed around my head as I looked down at my pants, pulling the Kletisian from my pocket– cracked and faded and abused but more than ready for a glue-flavoured war. 

I thought of my poncho. Guardians of Covien, right?

  My eyes drew up to the end of the alley again. My hands clenched around the Kletisian. A few streets over, I could swear I heard Smiley laugh.

  When I spun back around to Kan, she was already talking.

  “If you can’t get Offworld right now, then get across the plains,” Kan started as I strode back to her. “I know some people out there. Nofuel is a small settlement; no one will look for you there.”

  “No,” I said as I knelt, untying her wrist roughly.

  “Do you think you can hide from Kovals' and Gray Raven?” she asked incredulously, rubbing her wrist now that it was free.

  “No,” I said, grabbing my poncho from her other hand and pulling it over my head. “But we’re not going to try.”

  Kneeling in front of Kan, it was a strange feeling to feel somewhat equal to her, and not a few feet shorter.

  “Listen. Lou Koval sent his mechanics after you. To kill you. You know that right?”

  Kan nodded hollowly, still regarding me like the crazy person I had become.

  “How much more powerful do you think he’s going to get after this? How much money is Gray Raven going to pay him for my capture?”

  Kan shrugged unhappily. “Millions?”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “So we’re not going to let that happen, are we?”

  Kan pushed my arm off her shoulder, confused and angry about it. “No, we’re not, Evren." She struggled to her feet. “That’s why you need to get away.”

  I shook my head, standing but somehow feeling much taller than what I normally felt.

“No. It’s why we need to go get Lewis back.”

  Kan searched my eyes for the lunacy I knew she’d find.

  “That servant Bot,” Kan started, tone low and dangerously calm, “is not worth a lifetime of torture in a Gray Raven lab. With Lewis in their custody, your chances of survival have just gone from low to negative.”

 “What about Lewis’s chances?” I asked, gripping her arms, staring up at her and hoping I could muster enough manic energy to make her listen to me.  I nodded to where Loose was blinking herself awake blearily. “What about her chances?” I shook her gently, but something inside of me was rising, like storm clouds on the horizon. “Kan, what about you? What happens to you if I run away? What happens to the people that Lewis knows that I know? What happens when Gray Raven finds them, and how long will it be until they disappear in an alleyway, too?”

  Kan watched me with dark eyes, standing straight and rigid. The expensive painkillers must have kicked in, because she didn’t wince when she shifted. 

  “We’re not your responsibility, Evren.” 

  My fingers tightened around her arms. My voice was barely a whisper. “Then whose responsibility are you?”   

  Kan looked away, wearing that expression I couldn’t read– guilt, anger, frustration, grief– or all of them at once. 

  I let her go, studying her expression. “It wasn’t the Scavengers' responsibility to save me from the crash, but they did. It wasn’t Lewis’s responsibility to help me when he did, but he made himself do it. It’s not our responsibility to stop Lou Koval, but if it’s not ours, then whose is it?” 

  I still had the Kletisian clenched in my hand, and I held it up. “Out here, we don’t have Kletisians, or Enforcers, or even the light-forsaken Empirium to help us. But we have us. I have Lewis. You have me, and… I have…” I swallowed, gesturing to the Mixling. “You. Who saved Loose and kept Lewis from being dismantled.”

  The words felt bitter, but the taste wasn’t long-lasting. Forgiving Kan for the poor choices she had made would take time, but in the necessity of the moment, all I could think of were her merits.

  “We can change this, Kan. We don’t have to lie down and take it.”

  “That’s not how it works on this planet,” Kan said. There was no conviction in her words– just fear. Fear which wasn’t her own. Fear which she would have inherited from one of her parents. Fear that had kept anything good from changing on Covien for centuries.

Fear I was weary from feeling.

  “Well, then damn your planet,” I found myself saying. I turned away from her, taking a breath as I heard Loose stir from her position, pushing herself to her feet.

 “What-what did I miss?” she asked groggily. 

  “Gray Raven has Lewis. I’m gonna get him back,” I declared, finally feeling warm under my poncho. The sensation spread to every corner of my limbs. No more cold. “And I’m gonna do it tonight, because tomorrow morning…” I looked down at the figurine in my hand. “I have somewhere to be.” 

  Loose walked up to me, looking much better than she did before. She looked down at my hand seriously, studying the Kletisian there before making a noise of surprise. 

  “I thought they were all gone,” was all she said, looking back up to me with a relieved smile. When she looked into my eyes, this time it seemed like she had finally found what she'd been looking for.

   I reached for her arm, squeezing it tightly. “You’ve been a good friend, Loose. But you should go. I don’t want Gray Raven to find you again. The Shaft will be safest.” 

  Loose nodded. To my shock and awe, she rubbed a tear from her eye. 

  “No one’s ever… ever l-listened to me like… like… like you have.” Before I knew it, she had her scarecrow arms around me. “The ghosts will miss you, sh-shoeless girl.” 

  I swallowed, breathing in the strange scent of frycakes, untold stories, and salt. “Well, I’m gonna miss the ghosts.”

  Pulling back, Loose took Hector from where he perched on her shoulder. “Here– where one may falter…” she put him on my own shoulder, nodding seriously. “Two can reach.”

  I returned the nod. I wasn’t sure how much a strangely sentient beetle was going to help me, but it felt good to have back-up. 

  “But how?” Kan interrupted. “Gray Raven is… so big. We can’t just waltz into their labs and demand Lewis back. You’re just one kid… ” 

  I gave Kan a look. “I think that’s exactly what Lou Koval said before I electrocuted him, don’t you?”

  Kan didn’t smile at the joke. Just stared at me like the lunatic I had become. But eventually, I saw some kind of memory replay in her eyes. She looked down. I knew she was thinking about Lou Koval.

  “You’re really doing this?” she asked, and I nodded again. I felt, more than heard, the small tremor of hope in her voice– a tremor that made me wonder just how much hell Kan had been forced to endure over the years.

  The once-head-mechanic took a breath, looked straight ahead, and nodded to herself. “So we find the Bot. Get him out.” She twisted around to find her rifle on the ground. “But then get you to that hangar where your friends are waiting.” She straightened, swinging the weapon over her shoulder. “And you leave.”

  The surge of warmth that overtook me when I realised she was coming nearly made me laugh in hysteria.

“Then I leave,” I echoed. “But those painkillers I gave you will only last about six hours. If you don’t tear your stitches and bleed out and die, that is.” The bottle had been very clear. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read, so I just went on what felt right. Honestly, I had been mildly worried I might have killed her, but she seemed okay.

  “Six hours, huh?” Kan was busy readjusting the strap to her rifle. “Then we better get going, shouldn’t we?”

  I nodded, turning to the mouth of the alley– gazing at the yellow light pensively. This was it. After a week of hiding from Gray Raven, I was just going to walk right out of here and break into one of their labs. 

  It seemed absurd. It seemed crazy. It also seemed like the only thing that would actually work, and the only right thing to do. 

  That was enough.

  “There’s one problem, though,” Kan started behind me. 

  “Oh?” 

  “They didn’t exactly tell me where Lewis was taken from Kovals'– seeing as I was, you know, running for my life…” Kan cleared her throat. “So, I have no idea where the scientists took your friend.”

  I turned back to look at Kan, a wicked kind of grin on my face. Flicking the hood of my poncho up, I turned back up the alley. 

  On my shoulder, Hector chittered in anticipation.

“Then we find someone who does.”