Chapter 4

The world returned to Rina one breath at a time.

When she finally opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a ceiling made of bolted metal plates. She laid on a narrow cot pushed against one wall of a small room under a patchwork quilt. Across from her, on a bench made from some kind of salvaged vehicle panel, Quill sat slumped forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. He looked up at the sound of her shifting.

"Hey," he said, voice low. Relieved. "You're awake."

Rina blinked. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. Her thoughts were fuzzy and brittle.

"Where..."

"Still the hideout," he said. "You're in the spare sleeping quarters."

She pushed herself upright slowly. The movement made her head spin. Quill rose to steady her, but she waved him off. Her stomach turned, but it passed.

“What happened?”

"You passed out," he said. "Panic attack. Pretty bad one."

Rina rubbed her eyes. Her head throbbed. It’d been a long time since she’d felt like this. She pulled the blanket down and rotated around to put her feet on the floor. She stared at her shoes for a long moment before mustering the strength to stand up. As soon as she did, the world swam around her again, and she nearly lost her balance. Quill caught her to keep her from falling over.

“Whoa, easy there.”

Once she felt stable enough to move, Rina pulled out of Quill’s arms.

“What time is it?” She asked.

“Morning. You slept through pretty much all of yesterday.”

Rina’s stomach rumbled. She looked at him questioningly.

“There’s still some breakfast left in the kitchen. I made sure of that. Everyone else should still be finishing up theirs. Head out into the main room, take the second door on the right.”

Rina nodded.

“Thank you, Quill.”

The main room she entered was the workshop from the night before. Tools and parts of all kinds were still strewn about the space, but it looked a little cleaner and better organized than she remembered from the night before. She looked at the mangled remains of the gate generator, and a wave of emotion washed over her as memories of the last 24 hours flooded back into her mind. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the feelings wash over her. Fear, anger, sadness, loss. All of it circled around and rushed through her. Rina kept her attention on her breath, one breath at a time.

In. Out.

This will pass. Keep breathing.

In. Out.

After a few moments the roaring in her head began to subside.

That’s better.

There was movement in the doorway to her right. She opened her eyes and turned to see two unfamiliar faces standing in it. They eyed her curiously.

The first was a broad-shouldered man with a round face and thinning dark hair streaked here and there with grey. He was older than her, but by how much was impossible to determine. His face was rough, but his eyes were clear and curious. Beside him was a fit younger woman, maybe Rina’s age, with dark skin and close-cropped hair streaked with orange dye. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of oversized goggles that she didn’t bother removing.

“Oh hey,” the younger one said. She turned and motioned past her. “Food’s in here. We saved you some. Come eat.”

Rina walked into the kitchen. There, on a makeshift table, was a bowl of something beige and pasty. Oatmeal, maybe. Chunks of brightly-colored fruit sat in it. Rina took a seat and pulled it towards her. She looked around for a spoon. The older man pulled one out of a pouch on his belt and handed it to her as he took a seat at the table.

“We each carry our own. You can use mine,” he said.

“Oh, thanks, uh….”

The older man grinned. Much like Sera’s smile from the night before, it didn’t reach his eyes.

"Name's Tensor," he said. "Tinkerer. Breaker of things. Sometimes fixer of them too."

The woman took a seat opposite of him and gave Rina a lift of her chin.

"Kessa," she said, grabbing a spoonful from the mostly empty bowl in front of her. "Muscle and moral support. Mostly the former. So, your name’s Rina, right? What do you do?"

“Yeah, it is,” Rina said between mouthfuls. “I do social work.”

Kessa tilted her head.

“Social work? Like, talking to people?”

“Basically. I help people process their feelings and trauma.”

Kessa looked at her blankly, then sideways at Tensor, who shrugged.

“What’s trauma?” She asked.

Rina’s mouth froze half-open, the spoon held in mid-air.

“You don’t know what trauma is?”

Kessa looked confused.

“Should I?”

Rina looked from her to Tensor, who shook his head to indicate that no, he didn’t know what it was either. Before she could reply, Quill dropped into the chair at the far end of the table.

“Trauma’s what people in Rina’s world call the hurt that bad things cause people’s minds. In her world, she’s an expert in helping healing that hurt in other people,” He explained.

Rina looked at him gratefully and nodded.

“That’s pretty much it.”

Kessa’s eyes went wide.

“You’re an emotional alchemist?!”

Rina looked at her, confused. Quill shook his head.

“No, she’s not. Feelings don’t work the same there as they do here. In her world, feelings don’t exist outside of people’s minds. When Rina says she could help people feel better, what she did was talk to them and help them find their own inner hope or happiness, or to help them let go of their own inner anger or sadness. She couldn’t just change them.” he explained.

Rina listened to his explanation, and while he was right about her and what she did, the more he explained the more questions she had. Finally, she settled on what seemed to be the most important one.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘feelings don’t work the same here’?” She asked.

Quill crossed his arms.

“In the Bazaar, at least, feelings are external, physical things. Material commodities. Well, positive emotions are. In order to feel them, you’ve got to pay for the privilege. Happiness, Pleasure, Peace, Hope… they’re all products here, sold by the dose. Negative emotions are unregulated though, of course. You can feel those for free.”

Rina dropped the spoon in her bowl, horrified.

“What? That’s awful! But how? How is that possible?”

“The Ministry built a network of siphons all over the Bazaar that can pull emotion from people’s minds, like pulling water from a well,” Tensor said. “Only, they’ve made the siphons so good that the water never even enters the well. It flows straight into their cisterns, so to speak.”

Kessa nodded.

“Don’t have the money to buy them? You don’t get to feel them,” she said.

“And,” Quill continued, “if you object to them doing it, or speak out about it, or try to resist or stop them, you’ll wake up one morning to a squad of enforcers kicking down your door.”

“If you’re lucky,” Tensor snorted.

Rina looked at him.

“And if you’re not?”

“Then the Silent Choir comes for you. Just like they came for me in Tokyo,” Quill said.

Rina leaned back limply in her chair, her mind processing everything she’d just been told.

“That’s why all of your smiles aren’t real,” she said, realizing.

“Just because we aren’t happy doesn’t mean we can’t still play the part for everyone else,” Tensor said.

“But what’s the point, if they can’t feel happy by seeing you smile?” Rina asked.

“They can steal our happiness, but they can’t steal our reasons to want to be happy, or our appreciation for people who we’d feel happy with if we could. Just because they can’t feel what we show doesn’t mean we can’t try anyways,” Quill said.

Tensor and Kessa nodded in agreement.

“That’s… a surprisingly healthy perspective.” Rina admitted. She thought for a moment, then realized she still had another question.

“What’s an emotional alchemist?” she asked.

“Emotional alchemists have the ability to change and control the emotions of other people. They could turn tears into joy, or peace into rage. They could give people hope. They could also make people numb, fill them with fear and despair, or even remove their will to live,” Quill said. “And I don’t mean ‘could nudge people that way with their words’ like you did in the support group. I mean in the same way the Bazaar strip-mines people’s feelings.”

“But, if they can do that, why aren’t all of them trying to stop this Ministry thing or fix what the Bazaar’s doing to people?” Rina asked.

“They did, at first,” Tensor said.

“Until the Ministry rounded them all up.” Kessa added. “Most were executed. The rest that weren't? Well, you’ve met them.”

“The Choir?” Rina asked.

Quill nodded.

“Some alchemists decided working for the Ministry was preferable to dying. In exchange for their lives, they surrendered their humanity and autonomy. Now, they stalk the streets, using their gifts to spread fear and despair.”

“Are there any of them left?” Rina asked.

“Alchemists? I’m sure there might be one or two out there somewhere. But none of them are stupid enough to let the Bazaar know they exist.”

“Why?”

“An alchemist even existing is a threat to the Bazaar,” Kessa said. “They’re immune to the Bazaar’s siphons, for one. They can also resist the Choir’s influences and help others do the same.”

“And more importantly, why would anyone spend a fortune buying doses of happiness from the Ministry when someone they know can give it to them for free?” Tensor added.

“But that’s not the real reason why,” Quill said quietly. “The real reason is that they can give people hope.”

“Hope?”

“Hope that things could get better. That resisting the Ministry could work. That it’s possible to live in a world where happiness is free and people don’t have to spend their lives slaving away to afford fleeting moments of it. Without hope, most people don’t even think of resisting. Most that do immediately assume it’s pointless. After all, why would you fight back if you’re certain you’re destined to fail?”

Rina listened quietly, processing everything.

“But you fight back anyways. Or, you did, before we met,” She said. “Why? If you don’t have any hope that things will get better, why keep fighting?”

Quill leaned back in his chair. He chewed on the inside of his lip, seeming to ponder how to reply.

“Because the absence of hope isn’t proof that something isn’t worth hoping for,” he said, finally.

A noise that sounded like metal scraping on concrete came from the main room behind him, and he glanced back.

“Castor and Sera are back. Early, too. That’s a good sign.”

He stood and walked into the workshop. Tensor and Kessa followed.

Rina looked down at the bowl in front of her, her mind spinning. She hadn’t really processed everything that had happened to her yet, but she could already feel herself beginning to make peace with being here. Things were clearly tough for the rest of them. The pain she could sense bubbling below the surface inside each made her heart ache. Instinctively, she found herself wanting to help them. She wasn’t sure how that would work, if they couldn’t ever feel happy or at peace. But maybe she could help them work through the bad, at least.

But that still doesn’t make this home, though.

The only way she could maybe get home lay in pieces in the other room. No, she wasn’t a fighter, or good at building things, but she had a good head on her shoulders. She’d find a way to be useful, if they’d let her. For better or worse, she seemed to be able to resist the waves of negative emotion the Choir had tried to use to overwhelm her. That had to be good for something, at least.

Rina stirred the contents of the bowl. Whatever it was, it was cold and clumpy now, and she was admittedly now far too preoccupied to eat it. After picking and eating the fruit off the top, she got up and followed the rest of them in.

“...We’ll have to move after dark, but the intel’s solid. I trust Restel on this one,” Castor said as she unloaded mechanical parts from a brown canvas bag. Sera took the parts as they were unloaded and carried them to the base of the broken gate generator.

“Any security?” Quill asked.

“He said they’re expecting some enforcer presence, but nothing we haven’t dealt with before. The delivery’s also in the middle of Black Hand territory, so you can guarantee they’re at least aware of it,” Castor replied.

Quill crossed his arms.

“If you trust it, let’s do it. Spectrum conversion coils aren’t an easy find outside of one of the Grid reactors,” he said. “We can deal with a couple enforcers or street thugs, if that’s what it takes.”

Rina joined the rest of them.

“What’s going on?” She asked.

“Castor’s gotten a lead on a part we’ll need to fix the gate generator,” Quill said. “We’re going out to acquire it tonight.”

Rina looked around the group.

“How can I help?” She asked.

Quill shook his head.

“Oh no, you’re staying here. The Grid’s not safe at night where we’re going, especially for someone who’s not used to it.”

Rina looked him in the eye.

“Quill, yesterday I was arranging cookies on a plate in a basement and listening to old women complain about their kids. Since then, thanks to you, I’ve been chased through downtown by monsters, brought to a world where an evil organization literally robs everyone of happiness, and the only way back to anything that is safe or familiar to me is you all fixing a device that literally none of you really understand how to use,” she said.

Quill opened his mouth to protest, but Rina held a finger up.

“No. Let me talk. I don’t know anything about this place besides what you’ve told me. That’s true. But thanks to you, I live here now, and I’ve got to learn how to survive. I am never going to learn how to get by in this place if I’m always sitting here waiting for you to come back, and I’m certainly not going to get home any faster either. So I’m coming, and unless you plan to tie me to a chair, you’re not going to stop me. Now, how can I help?”

Quill looked at her, his mouth opening and closing as he seemed to try and find the words to reply. Tensor whistled and looked at Kessa, who quirked an eyebrow at her. Castor gave her a faint nod of approval. Finally, Quill shrugged.

“...Alright then. We leave at dark. Welcome to the Rebel Hearts.”