Rise of the Red Hand

by Olivia Chadha

  When the pair had finished stitching him up, he was reborn: cyborg.

  Like me.

  His perfect face is no more.

  I don’t know what to feel. Terrible that he almost died. Happy that he is alive. Scared that he’ll hate me for turning him into this human machine. Glad he is like me. Mad at him for being so stupid and selfish. A typhoon spins round and round in my chest. I pace.

  Zami gives me a five-hour sleeping tablet and I take it, knowing that rest is valuable and there’s no way I’ll be able to close my eyes on my own.

  Saachi is starting on the woman I rescued from the transport.

  “Wake me if—”

  “Yeah, behanji. I’ll wake you if anything happens. Now get some beauty sleep,” Zami’s smile is life. “You need it.”

  After our chores were done for the day in the Narrows, I would take Taru and Zami to the edge of the Arabian Sea to watch the fisherfolk come in with their daily catch. The fisherfolk didn’t mind our watching, and fishing was the last remnant of times past in the Narrows. The fish all disappeared the following year, after the bloom of algae thickened their waters, and the ocean heated up past their ability to adapt. Most of the fisherfolk left shortly after that, to the open, rising seas, on massive floating raft-cities. Without fish, we were left with manufactured foods, and bulk lentils and grains that made their way to us through the undermarket, with which we could make flatbreads from, like roti, paratha, and naan. Not like the exotic foods in Central, meats, fruits, sweets.

  No matter how much time passes, I still dream of being near the coast, watching the fisherfolk pull fish from the dark waters. There’s something so comforting about the whole scene. So natural. Not like now.

  I’m thankful for the rest. My heart feels settled by the gauze of happiness that dreaming gives, but as soon as my eyes open, the rush lifts my chest.

  Where, when, how, what—all kinds of questions hiss in my head like a viper and into the surrounding darkness. Zami is asleep on the floor beside me, in the same position we slept in our whole lives. Saachi is crashed in a chair nearby. It’s too quiet.

  “Synch . . .”

  I find him on the surgery table, asleep. Probably forced into unconsciousness by Saachi’s meds. I look at the bags he’s hooked up to: serum to fill his veins, genetic meds that will speed his natural tissue’s healing, anti-rejection and immunosuppressant meds to force his system to accept the change. It’s probably all that Saachi has in her arsenal. I owe her big. Now, if only I can give him a drug to force him to accept the change, that would be excellent.

  He looks peaceful enough. The curve of his nose reminds me of the face of a mountain Masiji showed me in a book. It’s far away in the Northern District, still, perfect, never summer and always covered in snow. I reach out to touch Synch’s cheek, to see if he’s comfortable, warm.

  His hand takes mine, his unfocused eyes looking into space.

  We don’t say anything. Just sit there for thirty seconds or more, his replacement hand holding mine. All that keeps running through my head is that he can’t see what I can. He doesn’t know what’s happened to his body. He’ll blame me for everything. I want to hide. But I also just want to get this over with.

  “Am I alive?” His voice is scratchy.

  “Yeah, you’re alive. You probably shouldn’t move.” I point to all the wires and tubes he’s connected to. “Saachi fixed you.”

  “What happened?”

  The big question. Can I find better words, words that won’t hurt so much? All sorts of things stick in my throat like warm concrete and I shake my head, wiping tears from my cheeks.

  “Ashiva?”

  “What do you remember?” I say, not wanting to repeat any of the massive tragedy that I don’t have to.

  “First, water,” he says.

  I bring him a sip of water and wait.

  “I left you. Then a transport picked me up. Geena took me somewhere. After that, I can’t remember . . . I’m sorry I left you. I shouldn’t have,” he says and winces when he moves.

  “Don’t be sorry, Synch. We’ve said enough sorries to last ten million lifetimes.”

  His eyes search my face, then the room. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” He coughs.

  “Take it easy. Your lung had to be replaced.”

  His eyes widen. “Just tell me, will I walk again?” His voice is a whisper.

  “Your legs are in good shape.” I take a deep breath. “It was an accident, a crash. Then you were stabbed in the chest. That ruptured your lung. And the transport accident ruined your shoulder and broke your face. But it’s all fixed, I think.” I clear my throat; the words burn a path through my heart.

  His eyes are moons. “That’s all?” His crooked smile puts me at ease. The facial muscle nerves will probably take time to catch up to the jawbone replacement.

  I hold his hand and think about what I should say, and what I’d want to hear if I was on the table instead, and they are in total and complete conflict. I wouldn’t believe anyone if they told me I’d be fine. But authorities always want to put people at ease. I gamble on truth.

  “It’s not going to be easy. There’s a huge learning curve. And the Upland will never accept you like this. But you will get through. I will help you adjust. You are alive.”

  I see a single tear fall from his eye down to the top of the chrome replacement that now colonizes his face.

  “I need to see.”

  I know he has to, but I wish he’d just forget. There’s a hand mirror on a shelf in the surgery room. It’s cold in my hands, unframed, endless. I wish I could slip inside and fall down into the forever it presents. I have no words left, nothing to negotiate, so I hand the mirror to him.

  It’s quiet as he looks and looks and looks.

  I don’t like the silence. “It took Zami a while to get used to it, but I think he’s handsome with the chrome on his face.”

  He keeps looking, turning the mirror. I can’t tell if he’s going to laugh, cry, scream or all three.

  “If the metal bothers you,” I continue, “we could try silicone skin on the surface, but Saachi says that not for six months at least, to make sure all is adjusted and fitting properly.”

  “But why would I want to do that?” He isn’t laughing, but he isn’t crying either, so I guess we are in the positive.

  “Huh? Oh, some like to give a human look to their replacements. I tore mine off. The skin isn’t very strong, and I tend to bang it up. Too expensive to keep up. But Saachi’s biohacker team has been studying this for years, so it should be pretty close to Masiji’s work. But you’re the first.”

  “No, I mean, why would anyone cover up their replacement at all, ever? It’s amazing.” He sits up from the table and hands me the mirror. “I’ve always been amazed by technology’s ability to fix human problems. This is undermarket hacker shit. Saachi’s a master.”

  “Oh, thank god. I thought you were going to cry or yell, or something. That would be acceptable too. Masiji said I was a tiger when I woke from my first surgery. Not pleasant.”

  “Nah. It’s insane, yes, but I can get used to it. With time.” He reaches his hand to take mine. To take my replacement. “My buddies on the underweb are going to be jealous.”

  I notice his eyes are watering a bit, and I hand him a cloth. Even when we accept our fate, change like this is impossible.

  36 //

  Kid Synch

  There’s a fine line between engineering a solution and creating a new problem. Scientists and technologists can be addicted to their research processes. Sometimes we get so deep into it that we fail to see the impacts of our work on the world around us. We don’t even look outside our windows. It’s not totally our fault; genius comes at a price. Our challenge has been impossible: find a way to survive this world with limited resources. My uncle wasn’t evil. He was a curious engineer who fought to design machines to help us survive. But still, his work impacts the world, and the wrong people will make the wrong choices,
as always. People like my mother. When I was eleven, Mother found my early plans for a unique, wearable cyborg arm piece. She shook her head and called me a child.

  “Do you want to end up like your uncle, huh?” she’d say.

  But now, she steals my plans. Profits from them. Turns my projects into monsters. Uses me and then wants to set me straight in a reeducation program. All of her steps have led me to where I am right now. Something she’d consider monstrous, with an exposed facial replacement. How could a mother do this to her son? Perhaps I’m not her son after all. Just an experiment. Like everything in her life.

  Broken.

  Rebuilt.

  She thinks I’m dead, and all her secrets are buried. But I’m more alive than I’ve ever been. There’s nothing more lethal than a clear mind with goals.

  Here, in Saachi’s lab, for the first time ever, I feel like I’m on the right side. That I’m asking the right questions, beyond my comfortable life.

  Saachi, Zami, Ashiva, and I sit around a small table for a meal. I don’t know the time, day or anything, but I don’t care. “What’s in this thing?” I ask. The beverage they hand me is fluorescent green and thick.

  Saachi says, “It’s a protein-building drink. It’ll give you energy and focus. Your jaw is still healing so liquid food is best for now.”

  I take a sip and the cold, smooth mixture slides down my throat magically, sweet and sour. Perfect. The others share two portions of rations and mix the bread with some watery daal. It’s the smallest meal I’ve ever seen, and it’s the best.

  I watch Zami eat. He’s handsome for a kid. All arms and legs, but his thick hair and chrome bits on his face make him seem older. Or maybe his appearance is the product of living in the Narrows as an orphan.

  “Eh, don’t worry about it, Synch. You’ll get used to it. There are benefits, you know. I can crush rocks with my molars,” Zami says.

  “And when exactly would that come in handy?” Ashiva asks.

  “Maybe when a rock monster attacks you,” Zami says with his arms waving.

  “Or, maybe you’d really fancy eating a wall,” I say.

  “I’ll tell you what, though, having a replacement arm is really where it’s at,” Zami says. “I’ve long dreamt of having one of those.”

  “Oh, come on, Zami,” Ashiva says, taking a bite of food.

  “Yeah, I’ve watched you, behanji, cracking open a ration can or fixing a fence or whatever with a flick of your finger. I know you keep it on the low, but I’ve seen it.”

  Ashiva shifts in her seat and puts her replacement arm under the lip of the table. “It’s okay, I guess. Better than the alternative. It’s not doing so well now, though.”

  “So much better. You’re like a superhero.” Zami laughs and then turns to me. “You’ll figure it out. Saachi here is a perfectionist.”

  They agree. I find Saachi strange, and her knowledge comforting.

  “I’m just happy to be alive.” As I lift my stainless cup into the air towards them all and say, “Thank you.” The cup flies out of my hand and travels halfway across the room. “Guess I have to work on that grip.”

  We laugh. Half my face lifts and the other doesn’t. This will take some getting used to.

  “Well, I was going to leave you, but then I thought the Red Hand could use someone like you,” Ashiva says.

  “I’m honored.”

  Saachi looks full of thought, uncomfortable. “Spit it out,” I say, desperate to ease her fidgeting.

  “While you were, well, in Central, I did a deep dive into External Hand’s records for your uncle.”

  I sit up straight. “And?”

  “I think you just need to see it for yourself.” She turns on a screen and flips through a series of images. “It was easy to uncover the basic comms about the event that killed your uncle. But, like, it was strange that the events were recorded, in detail, in Red Hand’s internal network records. Why would they have records of the whereabouts and death of a civilian engineer?”

  I read the headlines: “Zealot Scientist Killed in Lab Explosion.” “Solace Employee & Workplace Rage.”

  “I’ve seen it before.” After his death, the SA framed his life as a crazy scientist to make an example of him.

  “I figured,” she says, “but something’s off. The day of his death, he met with the SA government to discuss their progress on his projects. He wasn’t just in his lab.”

  “His agribots,” I say proudly.

  She nods. “Do you remember anything specific about his project?”

  “He’d been working on agribots that could withstand the electrical storms and acid rain of the Barrens. Here, this is all I have left of him.” I pull the rolled-up plans from my pocket and hand them to Saachi.

  “Amazing. This is for a battery power system of some kind. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She inspects the plans.

  “I think it might be a perpetual rare earths magnet, but I’m not sure.”

  “Oh.” Saachi’s face goes white.

  “Well, speak up, sister,” Ashiva says.

  “I’ve been tracking the construction on the Alliance Space Colony through the underweb. There’s been some chatter about their sudden increased funding to build a battery that will be able to power the Colony, well, forever. But they’ve stalled because they don’t have the proper materials to build it. This is similar to the type of system they’re building.”

  “They stole his plans?”

  She shook her head. “Worse. It looks like your uncle reached out to the Red Hand months before his death. He was made an asset for the External Hand. Also, around the time of your uncle’s death, there was a payment from the PAC to an independent transport company, the same one we employ to smuggle members to the Liberation Hand. It’s safer to use locals for transports. They know whom to bribe, whom to stay away from.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “The PAC disappeared him. They probably still have him. Brains like his are too valuable.”

  Ashiva says, “Maybe they found out he was a Red Hand operative? Maybe he wanted out of his contract with the SA because they don’t tend to let important employees go.”

  I sit down. “He could be alive. Thank you, Saachi. You really are the best of everyone.” My mind buzzes with possibilities and plans to follow up with a trip to Greenland and the PAC, to see what else I can dig up.

  Suddenly, an alert rings in my brain. The right corner of my vision flashes with white text over the world I see around me and, by the looks of it, all of us are having an identical experience. Info-Run.

  URGENT I.R.

  *Ministry of Communications*

  In 24 hours, we will launch the next phase of Solace Corp’s Shaanti. It will be an event not to miss. All in Central are invited.

  Brief, clear, and concise. That means trouble. We know they will wipe the Narrows off the face of the planet, and all its inhabitants as well, one way or another. This might be the moment.

  Ashiva says, “This has to be stage two of her master plan. You sure you don’t know anything about it?”

  “She’d rather tell her assistant than me.”

  Geena is in recovery from surgery. Just some banged up ribs and a few broken bones. She’s lucky to be alive. Lucky I didn’t kill her. Saachi sedated her and tied her to a chair. She was kind to set Geena’s bones and wrap her leg in a silicone cast.

  “And you all were mad that I dragged her out of the wreckage,” Ashiva speaks up. “Sometimes my plans do work out, you know.”

  “Sure, Shivs. Whatever you need to tell yourself.” Zami stands and rings his hands. “So, how do we do this?”

  I put my empty glass down and speak. “We don’t. I do.”

  Before Saachi doses Geena with a mixture of energy meds, I ready myself. I clean up, lean a few sheets of metal like a partition to block the laboratory and the Lal Hath, place a cup of water within her reach, and sit right in front of her to hold her focus.

  “Go ahead,
” I say. And Saachi unties her hands and gives Geena the cocktail in her neck.

  She comes to, and I’m not prepared for the hate that enters my being from breath to bone. She is everything that pains me, everything that causes suffering in the world. She is my mother’s hand.

  Steady. Steady now. Put it away.

  I hold the cup of water out to her. “You must be thirsty.”

  Her eyes are terrified and disoriented, and she gulps the water greedily.

  “Geena, how are you feeling? My friends set your broken leg and made sure you weren’t going to bleed internally. You’re going to be okay.”

  She looks at me like she’s seen a ghost. “What happened to—”

  “Oh, I didn’t fare so well. But I’ll be great. Put back together and all.”

  She inches away from me on her chair, just a touch. That movement tells me everything. I lean in and narrow the space between us.

  “You are a cyborg now? Am I . . . ?”

  “No, you’re still one hundred percent Uplander gold on the outside. Just a little tarnished. Your insides are pretty much kachara, though. We both know that. Oh, and my mother thinks you’re dead. Did I mention that? She thinks we all died in a tragic accident. I bet she’s relieved. One of your guards was alive and he delivered the message to her. I’m sure he’s dead now too. When did my mother become so bloodthirsty?”

  “It runs in the family, Riza.” She leers, but doesn’t know how to hurt me.

  “The funniest thing about all this? Is that you’ve always been so jealous of me. The whole time you’ve worked for my mother, you’ve been just on the outside. You’ll never be fully accepted. You’ll always be a reject of both sides. That’s what happens when you sell out your people to be a servant of the Upland. No loyalty. You have nowhere to go now.”