Help Me Feel Alive

DRUCE

The Tabby Family always struck when Selection for the current cycle was near. Though “Family” was in the name, very few members of the organization were related at all, belonging at most to one of the twenty-six factions operating under the Family name.

Each of the four Plates of the tower homed several factions of the Tabby Family, each faction holding between twenty and thirty members. Some factions boasted upwards of one hundred members and were always eager for new recruits. Though the Tabby Family was so abundant that members belonging to separate Plates often knew nothing of one another, all factions existed under the same motto:

Eliminate the dead weight.

The Tabby Family were hunters by profession, and the job was not exclusively theirs. In fact, hunters were backed by the Cerulean and Orchid Plate governments; thus, they were plentiful on each Plate in The Glass Tower, and many worked independently. However, the Tabbys were the most mature of these groups, the largest, and by far the most ferocious. Hunters preyed on the mentally and physically weak citizens in the tower, receiving tips from wide-eyed neighbors who feared their place on a new Plate might be jeopardized by an invalid—someone who hunters referred to as dead weight.

Though the term started out meaning someone critically disabled or sickly, unable to care for themselves, it soon became grossly inflated to refer to any individual who revealed a lasting health issue of any sort, no matter how minor. And as relocating to live near a Plate Travel Office near a time of Selection was illegal, hunters were there to ensure that those who could contribute meaningfully to society had better chances of getting to safety.

*** ***

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

“I’m going to need a few more weeks before I can conclude my assessment, sir.”

“A few more weeks…” The director’s voice took on an unamused tone.

“Yes, Director. What I have now is inconclusive information about the people here on Vermillion Plate. I’ve traveled from east to west on this Plate and despite rumors of some supposedly tough and heavily skilled candidates, I only know that most of the citizens I’ve encountered are amazingly unremarkable.”

“That’s a little… unusual coming from you, Miss Elliot.” There was a pause. Director Rusa Tabby pulled his face into a frown from where he sat at his desk back on Cerulean Plate. His projected image brimmed with a blue light that pushed back at the darkness of the nighttime city life. He continued, “Just to be clear, you have no confirmed leads as to who the Hunter Killer is? No clue of their identity?”

“Yes, that is correct.” Druce lied, “I’ve narrowed my search down to two specific locations, but I have no suspicious characters in mind yet. I’ll be able to confirm within a couple more weeks.”

The director of the Tabby Family Hunters considered this for such a time that Druce began to fidget, though only with her fingers, nothing that could be seen on her end of the projector screen. She released a massive sigh once the director left her with orders to send more updates and to return quickly, and then dropped the call.

Druce removed the flat, clear-screened telephone from its perch on the light post before her, where she had attached its magnetic backing for her video call with the director. The sounds of the Promotion Festival on Vermillion Plate flooded back to her ears, and she pondered once again where she was.

And more so, who she wanted to be.

She was Druce Elliot, member of the notorious family of hunters, the Tabby Family, where her sole purpose was to eliminate the dead weight of society, the same mission as her peers. She was the scout who passed along information to other hunters about who needed to be dealt with to benefit another person’s livelihood. She was the specialized hunter assigned to locate the individual who had annihilated two Tabby Family factions in one week.

But that was not who she wanted to be anymore.

Druce turned her gaze on Kian and Emi from afar. She had asked them to wait under the pretense of needing to use the restroom. Now that she had finished her report for the director, she knew she needed to head back, but she was not ready to return to this version of herself that she was having trouble understanding.

When Druce had “met” Kian and Emi earlier in the evening, it was like meeting herself for the first time, instead.

She watched Kian Kona, son of the woman in charge of Mid-East Vermillion, speak to the doctor named Martin Rallus along with Emi. Kian was the Hunter Killer, she'd determined it to be fact over a week ago, and she had just lied to her superior about never locating him. Druce was watching him like she had watched him for weeks before, secretly knowing that she wanted more. More like what Emi had with Kian and like what Kian had with her. She wasn't exactly sure what that was, but it was more than what she had now, which was nothing.

Druce was so very tired of having nothing.

She started her walk back toward the small group and felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips when Emi caught sight of her, the girl waving both hands wildly like Druce was her best friend. The smile reached her grey eyes when Kian’s gaze shifted to her own. He didn’t smile, just looked, and it made Druce fill up with something sweet just the same. She breathed it all in like fresh paint, high on the feeling.

Damnit, she thought, I wasn’t supposed to be this reckless.

But she couldn't make the smile go away.

*** ***

When Druce was born, it was without her eyesight. A blind child born into the Tabby Family was a child born to face an early death. Typically, a Tabby would prefer to handle the job on their own, wishing no others to harm their child. They’d report the birth of their disabled child to the director who’d allot a deadline to their life, depending on the approach of the next Selection. Children birthed just after Selection were the luckiest and lived at most three years. The same luck wasn’t granted to children born later in the cycle.

No matter what, most Tabby parents—despite crying, shaking, screaming—would do it with their own hands. As a result, they’d return to duty somewhat crazier, their hearts darker, but that was all part of the mission. Some were too distraught and asked another hunter to do the deed for them, choosing not to make such callousness the last memory they had with their child. Still others decided to leave the Plate chip necessary to live on Planet Vidrio out of their infant’s head altogether, allowing themselves just five days to become acquainted and to say goodbye.

Druce’s parents took the fourth option: They ran away.

Renouncing the Tabby Family name after once claiming it was more than just frowned upon, it was forbidden, seen as a threat, and punishable by death. And deserting the Family with an individual of any age who was labeled society’s dead weight was especially unforgiveable. Still, Druce’s parents took their chances. As Druce was born in alignment with a Selection year, she wouldn’t have made it to her first year of life. Although her parents were eventually hunted down on Rosewood Plate nine years later by three elite factions of the Tabby Family, Druce was overwhelmed with gratitude for her parents’ sacrifice.

She’d lived the first four years of her life in darkness, as well as in relative silence, isolation, and in fear of everything. Barred from ever stepping foot outside, most neighbors on the tower's second layer, Orchid Plate—the location of the family’s first hideout—hadn’t been aware that the Elliots, Druce’s parents, ever had a child. But thanks to old Earth technological advancements saved and hidden by many who embraced humanity’s history, Druce was able to use Braille to learn to read and underwent orientational and mobility training, as well as occupational therapy. It wasn’t until her parents took her to a master prosthetist when she was just under five years old that she learned what it meant to see with the eyes.

Mimicking the appearance of natural eyes, spherical devices inserted into the eye socket used electrodes to connect to and stimulate Druce’s brain activity in the occipital lobe. With the new eyes connecting to her optic nerve, Druce could see. The whites of her eyes were offset by misty grey irises which lay against a clear, synthetic casing, giving them a see-through appearance. With her new vision, she spent four years in a new form of development, until seeing and surviving became commonplace.

But when the Tabby Family showed up at the Elliots’ doorstep in her ninth year, normalcy became something unattainable to Druce. She listened to her parents’ pleas, imploring the two hunters standing in their living room to see reason—

“Our daughter can see! She has impeccable eyesight! Look at her, she deserves to live!”

When the members of the Family assigned to the hunt wouldn’t budge in their judgement of Druce, the Elliots grew emphatic, slipping down onto their knees. “Connor, we used to be the closest of friends. Frietta, we enlisted together, we gave up everything together.” Druce’s mother was speaking now. “Give our girl a chance. Let her live.”

“And what about you?” It was Frietta who asked. She had a pained look on her face.

Druce’s father replied this time, shaking his head, “Nothing. We know our fate. Just…” he looked over at Druce; she matched the sadness in his eyes. Tears were streaming down her face. “Take Druce with you. She qualifies—”

“She didn’t—”

“But she does now. They can’t deny that she fits the physical requirements. She can contribute. It's her right.”

The conversation ended there. Connor and Frietta were each holding vibrant blue, special issue handguns that only hunters were allowed to carry. Druce had seen them before. Her parents had used them more than once to keep other hunters off their tail. Now, the Elliots were in their third home after moving lower down the tower to Rosewood Plate, looking into the darkness of two gun barrels.

Druce saw her parents executed that day. She officially became a Tabby that day (though, no one would ever address her as one). That day, she met Director Rusa and heard from his very two lips that he would never trust her.

“You were born defected,” he stressed the word, “and to traitorous parents, no less, Druce Elliot. We will make use of the talents your parents taught you and you will be one of us. But just know, we believe in a little something called heredity. 'The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ Miss Elliot.

“We’ll be watching you.”

From then on, Druce had done everything she could to survive, living among her parents’ killers as a means of honoring their final wishes. But she felt dead inside, left with no one with whom she could share her thoughts, fears, and desires.

She had done everything she could to survive safely. But safety had left Druce with nothing.

I don’t want to be safe anymore. I want to survive, but I want a life. I want people to share it with. Friends… to help me feel alive and loved.

Before it’s too late.

For all of us.