Chapter 8

Rina stared numbly at the asphalt. She felt as if someone had picked her up and wrung every bit of feeling and life out of her like a wet rag. Quill bent down and said something to her, but she didn’t hear him. She felt him pull her to her feet. She didn’t resist.

Everything that came after was a blur. She didn’t remember getting into a vehicle. She heard Quill and Kessa talking over the low hum of an engine, but heard none of it. She looked around herself briefly. She didn’t recognize the interior. It was laid out similarly to Tensor’s…to Betsy, with a row of inward-facing seats against each wall. It was a bit more spacious too, which kept the four conversion coils stacked in the floor far enough from her feet that she would have to stretch her leg out to touch them.

I’m alive. Somehow. She thought, absent-mindedly tapping the closest coil with the bottom of her shoe. Shouldn’t I feel… something? The thought didn’t linger for long. In a moment, she felt woozy and nauseous again. She leaned back against the gently rocking wall, closing her eyes and letting the movement carry her away.

At some point, she must have fallen asleep, as the next thing she knew, she awoke in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, to the sound of running water. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry. The light coming through the window at the far end of the room was too bright. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, grimacing. Everything was too much. She looked down, and realized she wasn’t wearing her clothes. She was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt with some cartoon character she didn’t recognize on the front and a pair of black jogger pants. A moment’s inspection revealed she wasn’t wearing undergarments either. All at once, panic made her face go flush. Someone had completely undressed her while she slept. What else had happened while she slept?

The running water in the next room cut off. A few moments later, the door opened, and Quill stepped out, followed by a cloud of steam. He was naked, using a towel to dry his hair. He stopped in the doorway when he noticed she was awake.

“Oh, you’re up. Good.”

Rina stared at him, her eyes wide as he walked over beside one of the other beds. Then, panicking, she grabbed her pillow and covered her beet-red face.

“Please cover up! You’re naked!”

“Ah, right. Sorry. I forgot about Japanese modesty. Gimme a moment,” he said.

He pulled something out from under the bed, and opened it with a click. After some rustling cloth, he said “okay, you can look now.”

Rina tentatively opened her eyes. Quill now wore a loose-fitting pair of deep grey harem pants and a baggy black sweater. He closed the open foot locker and pushed it back under the bed with his foot.

“My apologies. Modesty in Bazaar culture is… not really a thing. Especially among close friends. I’ll try to be more careful about that.” He said, scratching the back of his head.

Rina gave him a small smile.

“Thank you.”

She lowered her gaze, which reminded her of the new clothes she was wearing. This sent a fresh wave of panic through her. She looked up to say something. Seeing her expression, Quill spoke first.

“You can relax. Sera changed you. The shirt’s hers. The pants are Kessa’s. I wasn’t even in the hideout when they did it.” He said. “Unfortunately, your other clothes were ruined. I probably don’t have to explain why.”

Rina nodded, feeling a faint sadness at losing the last things she’d brought with her from home. Now all she had left was her shoes. When they were gone, all she’d be left with would be her memories. That thought made the sadness worse. She took a deep breath and let it roll through and out of her. For better or worse, the Bazaar was her home now. She’d develop new attachments to things. Maybe, she’d one day be glad for this new life.

Quill walked back into the bathroom. When he came back out, he carried a pile of bloody clothes, which he dropped at the foot of his bed and began picking through. The sight of them suddenly brought Rina crashing back into the reality of what they’d just been through. The chase, the crash, Kessa’s leg, Castor’s arm, Tensor… the memory of the look on his face before he fell brought a hollow nauseous ache to the pit of her stomach. Then there was being trapped, and then… that happened. She didn’t know what it was, but she remembered how it felt. She remembered the sight of the enforcers falling all over themselves to get away. She remembered feeling the panic inside each one of them as if it had been her own. That had happened. She had done that.

“Quill, how are we alive right now? What happened in that lot?” She asked quietly.

Quill turned to look at her. He studied her, his face inscrutable. After a moment, he turned back to what he was doing.

“In short, you saved us.”

“That… what I did, that was emotional alchemy, wasn’t it?” She asked.

Quill nodded.

“Yes. It was. Very powerful emotional alchemy.”

Rina sat back, processing that thought. So, she was an emotional alchemist. But then that meant….

“I just used that on dozens of Ministry enforcers. At least one of them is going to figure out what happened. If that happens… oh, god, I’ve put you all in so much danger!”

Quill pursed his lips and nodded.

“There’s almost no doubt the Ministry knows there’s an alchemist on the loose now,” he said grimly. “The good news is that you did it in Grid 14, not here. But, they’ll be searching for everyone involved until they find us, however long it takes.“

A hollow pit swelled in Rina’s gut. She imagined enforcers going door to door, dragging people out of homes. All because of her.

“We got out in time, clearly,” She said. “Or, are we still…?“

“We’re in our hideout. This is the main bedroom. Kaji and his gangmate Zimmer are in the spare room you slept in yesterday,” He said. “I figured you’d rather lay on Tensor’s bed then share that room with those two.”

“You’re letting that jerk Kaji stay here? Why?”

“Kaji is the reason we escaped. When he realized what had happened, and who you were, he offered to get us out of the Grid, once we knew his van was the only one that ran. By the time we made it to the tunnel, the entire Grid was on high alert, and they locked it down only a few minutes after we were out. Since he got us out, I’m letting him lay low here for a few days while we wait for the heat to die down.”

The pit in Rina’s gut deepened.

“They’d have seen the van passing through the checkpoint on way out,” she said. “It has a big black hand on the side. It’s not really hard to pick it out.”

Quill nodded.

“I know. But I also know Grid 19 probably better than anyone else in the Bazaar. There are few bioscanners or remote viewers here, and even fewer that work right. We didn’t pass straight from 14 to 19 on our way back either. We went through 17 first. Even if they manage to figure out we made it to this Grid, they won’t know where we are in it, or if we moved on through to another. We’re probably safe. For a while, anyway.”

Rina leaned her back against the wall.

“Even so, I’ve put you all at risk with what I’ve done. I should’ve been more careful,” she said.

“What was the alternative?” Quill asked. “We were trapped. They were about to arrest or kill all of us. If you hadn’t done that, we’d all be dead or worse ourselves. You saved my life. And Sera’s. And Castor’s. And Kaji and Zimmer’s too.”

“Well, yeah, I guess… but-” Rina started.

Quill gave her a backward glance.

“What is it?”

“I dunno. I guess I still feel responsible for what could happen to you guys anyways. Even if what I did was right.

Quill dropped the last piece of clothing in one of the two sorted piles. He sighed and sat down on the bed, running his hands through his hair.

“I know what you mean,” He said.

“You do?”

He nodded.

“Yeah… I do,” he said. “Every day, with every loss, every senseless evil thing that happens, I feel like somehow, if I’d just done something differently, I could’ve kept it all from happening.

“It feels like somehow every bad thing that happens is your fault,” Rina said.

Quill looked down at his feet.

“...Yeah. It does.”

“That’s a really hard place to be,” Rina said.

“It is,” Quill said, looking down at his feet. He scratched the bottom of his foot against the floor. After a long moment of silence, he kept talking.

“It’s exhausting, carrying the weight of the cost your actions have made others pay. To feel responsible for every bad thing that happens to those you care about. To know that every decision you make could cost the ones you care about their freedom, or their lives. But… but someone’s got to keep fighting, even when it costs all this… even when you watch one of your best friends die because you…” He trailed off as his voice broke.

Rina could see now just how hard he was struggling to keep his composure. Beneath the surface, she could feel the grief burning inside him. It glowed like super-heated metal. The guilt coating his insides like an oil slick. The burn in his eyes from the tears he fought. It all threatened to overwhelm him. Seeing him in pain like this made Rina’s heart swell with empathy. She had only been here a day. She barely knew Tensor. And yet she felt buried with fear, and sadness, and guilt, and loss. Tensor and Quill had probably been friends and worked together for years. Quill had probably spent most of his life in the Bazaar surrounded by this kind of horror. The fact that he was still standing at all… he had to be resilient in ways she couldn’t imagine.

You can make this better for him, her instincts told her.

The thought struck her. If she could make people feel negative emotions, she could make them feel positive emotions too, right? If she could, then couldn’t she help him feel better? Give him peace and acceptance and happiness instead?

She tuned in to Quill’s emotions the way she had done before in the tunnel and again in the sidelot with the enforcers. His feelings throbbed hot in his bones and swirled in the pit of his stomach. As she did so, she felt them burn and swirl inside her too. It was awful. Steadying herself, she closed her eyes and imagined peace, acceptance, and calm. Soothing. Letting go. Gratitude. Happiness to still be alive. She let all of them fill her, soothing the discomfort inside. Then, when it felt right, she projected those feelings outwards, trying to gently press them inside Quill’s mind. For a brief moment, she felt the feelings enter and begin to spread. Then, all at once, she felt like someone had grabbed ahold of them and threw them out.

Quill shot up suddenly and looked at her. His expression was no longer sad. It was angry.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He asked.

Rina drew back, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“I-I was just trying to….” She stumbled out.

“Trying to what? Control how I feel?”

“But, I thought that if I could help… ”

Quill scowled at her, causing her to shrink involuntarily away from him. She’d seen him angry before. But this was different. He wasn’t just angry, she’d offended him.

“What makes you think you have a right to take away my sadness? Or my guilt? Or make me just accept that I watched one of my best friends get blown away last night like it was no big deal? My pain is real. I lost someone, Rina. He’s never coming back. And I’m still here, knowing I don’t deserve to be.”

He turned and walked towards the door.

“Quill, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize how that would feel!” Rina said, getting up to follow him. Shame bubbled over inside her, and tears followed it running down her face.

Quill turned back to her. Seeing her expression, something in him softened. He leaned against the doorway, his face fading from anger to something deeper, sadder.

“I want to be sad. I want to experience this pain. This guilt is the reason I choose to keep fighting. This pain is proof of how much this matters to me. If I let you take all of that from me, then it’s like none of it was ever really important. That losing Tensor isn’t really a big deal. That it’s okay that the Ministry kills everyone I love.”

“Quill…” Rina started, but Quill held up a hand.

“The only thing keeping me fighting is the belief that one day, maybe, all of this pain and suffering and loss will one day be worth it. That it’ll finally come to an end. Until then, I need the reminder of what they’ve cost me so I want to keep fighting. I deserve to remember it. I need to remember it.”

Rina nodded quietly. She understood that, probably more deeply than she was willing to admit to him or anyone else. After a long moment, she lowered her head.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have tried to change your mind without asking,” She said. “I’m sorry.”

Quill scratched the back of head. He seemed almost sheepish.

“It’s… it’s fine. I just.. I’m not a fan of having my emotions taken from me. I know you meant well.”

“Given all of this,” Rina said, gesturing around her, “I can’t say I blame you.”

The sound of scraping metal came from the other room, followed by the sound of voices.

“It sounds like the others are back,” Quill said, changing the subject. He stepped into the doorway, then, seeming to think of something, turned back.

“Hey, uh… Thanks. For trying. Even though I don’t want you to. It… it means a lot.”

He gave her a smile. But before she could reply, he stepped out, leaving her alone in the room.

“You’re welcome, Quill.” Rina said softly to herself.

She stood, brushed off her shirt, and followed after him, processing everything that had just happened.