Chapter 10

Rina sat cross-legged on her new bed in the main sleeping quarters of the hideout. Eyes closed, mind open, breath measured. From the next room, she heard the faint clink-clack of tools, the sound of things being moved. Something dropping to the floor. A muttered obscenity. All sounds that had grown quite familiar in the last few days.

In a routine now intuitive from years of practice, she focused inward on each breath, feeling its tide roll in through her nostrils, flood her stomach, and quietly wash back out through her lips. Once settled into a rhythm, she turned the spotlight of her inner attention on the rest of her body. Starting at the toes, she used the space of each breath to be present in how each part felt. Each breath, she worked her way upwards.

Every part of her hurt, in one way or another. Her feet and hands were cold and tingly, her arms and legs sore. Her stomach felt hollow and nauseous. Her chest was tight, her neck tense, her head ached. With each breath, she tried to release the discomfort and tension she felt. After several dozen breaths, she finally abandoned her effort. There was only so much meditation could do, even done perfectly. She sighed in frustration and opened her eyes, leaning back against the wall.

For the first time since she’d arrived, her body and heart had finally seemed to catch up with everything that had happened in the last week. The pursuit by the Choir. Being trapped in the Bazaar. The chase in Grid 14. The harm suffered by everyone. Tensor’s death. Her alchemical abilities. The looming sense that at any moment, the Ministry would kick down the hideout door and drag them screaming into the dark. It all hung thick and heavy in the air around her.

Sleep had been fitful and slow in coming the last couple of nights. It wasn’t just her, either. More than once, sobs had overtaken Sera in the dark. She held them close and quiet, quaking silently under her covers. Rina doubted any of the others could tell. But the poor girl felt like a glowing star of grief in the dark. Rina couldn’t help but feel every tear as it burned down her cheeks, the aching hole in the pit of her stomach. Instinctively, she understood it wasn’t just sadness Sera was feeling. It was loss. Rina had seen her sketching a surprisingly good portrait of Tensor in an old leather-bound notebook the day after they’d returned, parts of his hair smudged by teardrops.

The next night, as the girl lay there shaking in the dark, Rina’s compassion finally got the better of her. Quill had been right about taking emotions away. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She reached out, slowly and gently caressing the star of Sera’s grief. Bit by bit, she siphoned off some of its energy. Not much, but enough that its gravity was no longer overwhelming. As she did so, she replaced the siphoned energy not with happiness or acceptance, but gratitude. Gratitude for having known Tensor, for the experiences they’d shared, the memories she’d carry. She didn’t add much. To her surprise, even a tiny bit fully replaced the emotional space left behind from the grief she’d siphoned. The resulting mix was still painful to hold, but it was no longer overwhelming. Within a few minutes, the star’s brightness began to fade, then vanished as Sera finally drifted into a fitful sleep. Every night after, Rina had done the same thing again. She didn’t know if what she was doing was the right thing to do, but Sera deserved relief and rest, even if only in sleep.

When Rina left the bedroom, she found Castor sitting at one of the workbenches in the workshop, making fine adjustments to the half-built metal limb held between her legs. She had a couple of small bolts pinched between her lips. One by one, she took them out and tightened them into place with the spanner in her hand. Once she was finished, she adjusted the limb and pressed on one of the internal components. One of the thick metal fingers of the metal arm curled and straightened. Seeming satisfied, she stuck a few more bolts in her mouth, and set back to work on the next finger.

After they’d gotten back from Grid 14 and slept, Castor had disappeared the next afternoon. Most of the structural components and some of the fine motors below the shoulder on her arm had been destroyed when she’d punched the wall. When she’d returned, she carried a backpack full of mechanical components to build a new one. It seemed generally understood by the rest of the crew that she’d stolen them, though where or how a woman looking like her could get away with stealing anything, especially with only one arm, was difficult to imagine.

Kessa sat off to the side on one of the few armchairs in the room, reading a book. She grimaced in pain as she shifted in her seat for the third or fourth time in as many minutes. The makeshift exoskeleton bracing her broken leg creaked and clacked every time she did. She didn’t seem to be taking her immobility well, a fact her grumbling and cursing continually reinforced. When Rina asked about the book, Kessa grew surprisingly shy and defensive. When she got up to limp to the bathroom, she left it open on the chair. Rina’s curiosity got the better of her, and she walked over and looked down at it. After reading a few lines, her face grew red with embarrassment. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t that.

The bathroom door opened. Kessa looked up to see Rina standing flustered by her chair, and went red. Rina cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Uh, sorry, I got curious, and… ”

A frantic look swelled on Kessa’s face, and she awkwardly stumble-scrambled over to the chair, snatching the book up. The reaction was so amusing that Rina couldn’t help but giggle.

“There’s no reason to be embarrassed,” she said. “My mom used to love books like that.”

She turned to leave, then had a thought.

“Wait, isn’t pleasure one of the things the Bazaar steals?”

“Pleasure is. Arousal isn’t,” Castor chimed in from the background. “‘Excitement at the thought of pleasure is a valuable motivator for human behavior’, according to the Ministry.”

“But if you can’t ever enjoy…that, then what’s the point of reading about it?”

Kessa pulled the book close to her chest and stuck her tongue out at Rina.

“Oh swive off. What’s the point of listening to music if you can’t make it yourself?”

Castor snapped her fingers and pointed in the air above her head.

“That. Right there.”

Rina was about to reply when the faint sound of approaching voices outside the hideout caught her attention. They rapidly grew closer. Then the concealed front entrance of the hideout slid open. Kaji stomped in first, spewing a very loud and admittedly inventive series of obscenities. Zimmer followed closely behind, his earth-dark skin nearly ashen-pale. Behind them was a girl Rina didn’t recognize. Quill closed the entrance behind the four of them, his face grim.

“Whoa, what’s going on?” Rina asked, stepping toward them.

“It’s swivin’ gone. All of it. Gods-swiving-” Kaji snarled, punctuating his unfinished sentence by hurling a screwdriver off the nearest toolbench at the wall. It stuck tip-first into the plaster.

“Wait, what’s gone?” Kessa asked. She moved to get up, but the pain in her leg made her rethink her decision.

Quill dropped his backpack and flopped heavily into one of the nearby armchairs.

“The Black Hands hideout. The entire thing’s burned to the ground.”

Rina gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth. Castor set the half-finished arm on the workbench and stood up, brushing off the front of her shirt and pants.

“How do we know?”

Zimmer pulled his hair back with both hands, tying the blonde dreadlocks with a length of twine. He motioned toward the girl with his head as he did so.

“Tasha’s a street-doc who’s got a shop a block over from us. Always patches us up. She saw it happen,” he said. His voice was deep and musical, like a singer’s. “We ran into her by accident while we were out.”

The girl named Tasha watched him talk. She had his same dark skin, but her hair was clipped close to her scalp and dyed a grey that matched the color of her eyes. When everyone’s attention turned to her, she looked around, confused, then looked up at him for an explanation.

He raised his hands and made a series of sharp gestures with his fingers with enough speed and force that they seemed to almost snap in the air. Tasha followed the movements with her eyes, then replied back in the same way. This back and forth continued for several long moments, then Tasha produced a small object out of her pocket that looked a lot like a smartphone. She tapped on it a couple times, then held it out in front of her.

A three-dimensional image materialized above it, hovering in the air between them. It showed a squat three-story brick building that sat just off a small street. Ministry transports blocked the street. Enforcers with weapons trained on the building. There was a brief firefight as weapons poking out of building windows fired and enforcers fired back. Then a turret on one of the transports rotated. It fired. The second story wall exploded outward. The footage cut forward to the smoldering wreck of the building, the blackened remains of its support beams biting at the sky like rotting teeth. Picking in the remains was a team of enforcers, one of whom drug a body from under the rubble to throw in the back of a large truck. As the video played, Zimmer spoke.

“A full enforcer battalion rolled up on the place while Tasha was there treating Radik. She managed to get out the back before they stormed the place. She recorded the raid from a nearby storefront.”

“It was raided shortly after us fleeing the scene,” Quill said, leaning back in the chair and staring up at the ceiling. “Probably not more than a couple hours.”

“That means they must’ve gotten remote-view footage of the van, and saw its markings. They probably expected us all to go there first,” Castor said. “Remote-view ports on the suppression vehicles?”

“Probably,” Quill said, nodding.

“If they’ve got footage of the van and could figure that out, then they could track us through the Grids to here,” Kessa said, horror dawning on her face.

“And they know exactly what we all look like. If anyone here was sloppy about masking their biometrics, they’ve probably got those too,” Castor added grimly.

Kaji swore even louder. Rina couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Then a thought crossed her mind.

“Wait, how did Tasha manage to escape without drawing attention, when no one else did?” She asked.

There was a moment of silence.

“Good question,” Quill said, leaning forward. He looked at Zimmer, who nodded, then signed something to Tasha.

Tasha gestured something quickly, then dropped the large pack on her back. She opened it and pulled out a grey enforcer’s uniform, then a matching helmet. Then she reached down and lifted up on the side of her boot, revealing it to actually be a costume sheath covering a pair of enforcer boots.

“She was dressed as an enforcer when she made her visit. She does that on field visits to groups like ours. Helps hide her identity and divert attention. She was able to sneak away by blending in with the rest of the enforcers when they rolled up for the raid,” he said.

That answer seemed to satisfy everyone, for the moment. Then Kaji spoke.

“So they know what we look like and where we are. And thanks to little miss alchemist here, we’re probably the most wanted gonks in the entire swivin’ Bazaar now. What’s stopping the shellheads from locking the entire Grid down and-”

The device in Tasha’s hand emitted a shrill series of beeps. All at once, everyone’s attention snapped to it. The image display flared to life again, projecting the digital bust of an older man with greying hair and severe expression.

“That’s the Arch-Praetor-!” Kessa started, but fell silent when several voices shushed her. The projection of the man spoke.

“Citizens of Transel, I am Arch-Praetor Dionysus Caliban of the Ministry of Order. Due to an imminent threat to the well-being of all citizens within the Grid network, Grid 19 is temporarily being placed on full martial lockdown.”

His face was replaced by a collection of side-by side images of the group of them in the alleyway. Separate facial images of Quill, Castor, Kessa, Sera, Kaji, and Zimmer appeared above the others, alongside names for each, although, to Rina’s relief, none of the names projected were correct. There was also a simulated image of her face as well, with the words “no biometric record found/Name unknown”.

“The individuals pictured are wanted by the Ministry for theft of sensitive TranCorp property, murder of Ministry officers, unlawful emotional manipulation, and conspiracy to commit emotional terrorism. Any sighting of these criminals must be reported to the Ministry immediately. Failure to disclose such knowledge is punishable by incarceration or elimination. Until lockdown has been lifted, no travel in or out of Grid 19 will be permitted. Intra-Grid travel and commerce will be tightly regulated, an ongoing curfew will be in effect, and block by block searches will be performed until the situation of concern is resolved. The Vaulted Senate and Ministry leadership thank you for your compliance in this matter.”

The projection vanished. The room was silent.

“You just had to say something…” Kessa started sarcastically, but trailed off when several of the others gave her grim looks.

“Now what?” Rina finally asked, quietly. The weight of what was happening sat heavy on her. This was her fault, at the root of it all. The Ministry would be hunting everyone in this room solely because they wanted to get to her. She looked around at Quill, Castor, Kessa, Kaji, Zimmer…

Sera?

She looked around. The girl hadn’t been in the bedroom with her. The bathroom was open and dark, she wouldn’t have been in the spare room….

“Hey, where’s Sera?” She finally asked.

Seeming to suddenly recognize her absence too, the group of them looked around. Quill’s body tensed.

“She isn’t here?” He asked.

Castor stiffened.

“Wait, she didn’t go with you?”

Quill his head, his face anxious.

“No. I told her to stay here. I didn’t want her dealing with more unwanted attention from the creeps in Southside,” he said.

“...I’m sorry,” Kessa said quietly.

They all turned to her in unison.

“She said she wanted to go buy supplies from Jakken to make a proper memorial for Tensor. She left about an hour ago. No one else was around, so I told her to be quick. I… I didn’t know….”