by Ryan Tang
Her dad just shook his head and cursed.
"It's an absolute nightmare. I just said I'd do it because nobody else wanted to. When they asked Hector, he ducked away."
He scoffed.
"That was smart of him."
"What's Hector been doing?"
It didn't sound like him to slack off.
Her dad laughed.
"I was just joking. His job is way harder than mine. He's bringing in asteroids with people from his church. The people who worked with Steel acted like they were on our side..."
He trailed off and shook his head angrily.
"Then they took everything and left in the middle of the night. They busted up all our equipment too."
Diligence's asteroid miners brought in the raw materials that were later used by all the colonies. The job was incredibly dangerous. Asteroid mining had been simple in the days of the Paragons, but it pushed currently available technology to its very limit. It involved flying millions of miles in tiny machines.
Her father cursed again and shook his head. Alex recognized his tone. It was how the survivors of Plenty talked about Stock.
"We need to rebuild everything from scratch. Not just the mining crafts. The refineries too. They even shattered the greenhouses. Most of the meat production plants were burned completely to the ground, we're splitting surviving cultures into new machines. Hector and his people are using some badly damaged machines. We haven't had an accident yet, but..."
He trailed off again and shook his head.
Alex sighed.
She couldn't believe the former executives had fled in the dead of night while destroying everything behind them. Claudia, Ben, and Hank were the same bullies she'd remembered, but she this seemed too evil even for them. The people of Diligence had forgiven everyone who'd collaborated with Steel.
There was nothing to say.
She just shook her head as her father went on.
"I've just been focused on rallying up everyone to join in the rebuild. But lots of people are tired. Steel had us on 20 hour days at one point. And they're burnt out by the fake promises. Steel said everything would be better, why should they believe us?"
Her dad glowered.
"I think your announcement will help. We just got to show people the Plenty model works. A lot of people just don't believe it. They think it's always just going to be people taking advantage of them."
"Yeah. We'll do our best to convince them."
It was a heavy burden, now that she'd thought of it. Leanne felt the same way about the people on Generosity. Alex's fierce friend wanted Plenty to show everyone that things could be better.
"I can't wait for you guys to come."
They nodded and grinned.
"We will come as soon as we're finished here. We just want to make sure we're doing this right."
Her parents still felt guilty about falling for Steel's scam, but she hadn't seen them so happy since the day they'd sent her off to school.
They continued talking for the next hour, and then Alex brought the bits to her fingers and showed her parents the music she'd been practicing.
They gasped with delight.
Alex giggled.
It was all thanks to them.
They'd scraped by so she could afford cello lessons back on Diligence.
They'd gotten her here to Plenty.
It was their story, more than anything else, that'd saved her against Stock and his monstrous goddess.
It was all thanks to them.
She never could pay them back no matter what she did.
____
When their call ended, Alex returned to the fiftieth-floor elevator inside the book-corridors. To her relief, there was fresh scuttling, and the food was gone.
The Paragons were gone too, except for the two Southern Robotics models, which had been bashed to pieces. The girl still hadn't dropped her laptop or cup holder. Alex could see the indentations on the remains of the machines. Strangest of all was how she'd arranged the shattered plastic pieces. The bits formed a T and a Y.
Thank you.
Alex stared at the destroyed models.
Why hadn't the girl just written something back? She'd discarded the pens and notebook from the basket.
The models she'd destroyed were the ones modeled after Southern Robotics's machines. Was the girl angry with Stock? Had her parents signed Contracts?
Alex stared at the destroyed parts for a moment longer, and then shrugged.
The girl would tell her when she was ready. The librarian returned to Margaret's kitchens to bring more food.
The next day Alex brought breakfast in addition to lunch and dinner. On the morning of the second day, the girl left Paragons and Pilots behind and once again arranged the broken model pieces to say thank you.
When she returned with lunch, she put a copy of Captain Ray's autobiography inside the basket. She'd strongly considered The Familiars, but by then, she'd decided to read it aloud for the girl once she came out of the book-corridors. The story was meant to be spoken.
She brought a pen and some papers as well, just in case the girl changed her mind and decided to start writing.
When she returned with dinner, the pen and paper had been removed from the basket and respectfully placed aside, but the book was gone.
The next morning was the day of her announcement.
The people of Plenty assembled in the courtyard, and Alex summoned her Paragon. Her office on the tenth floor became her cockpit. The panoramic view blossomed as the walls shifted. Eternium coiled from the walls and gathered around her hands. The controls were the precise weight and feel of the familiar plastic she'd spent her whole life training on.
One blue arm formed and then another. The machine's paint was an elegant swirl of every shade of blue mixed together. The colors splashed together like the ocean's waves.
The head loomed fifty feet high in the air. One eye was as dark as the sea at storm. The other was the blue of a cloudless sky. The menacing row of shark's teeth smiled down at the courtyard.
The torso emerged from the massive crescent moon. Alex's machine had no need for legs. She never wanted to stand when she could soar through the skies and surf through the seas.
Her Paragon held a composite rifle in its right hand, an extravagant and masterfully forged weapon that placed a premium on flexibility. The barrel could shift from everything between a battery of rapid-fire bullets to a single high-powered sniper shot. A long bayonet hung at the base.
The rest of her armaments were built into her machine. She could fire chains from underneath the wrists, and she'd tucked missile launchers inside the moon-shaped arc in her back.
Jared, Emile, Arthur, Miles, and Duncan flanked her in their machines.
Old Paragons and new ones.
The implicit threat of posing alongside their machines bothered Alex, but they didn't have a choice. They had to send a clear message. Plenty was willing to open its doors to any citizen from any colony, but it wouldn't be trifled with. Their colony would have no Joshua Steels.
On the ground, Leanne and Courtney were furiously arguing with each other. The doctor refused to let Leanne inside a cockpit. It'd taken everything just to convince her to let Leanne walk in on her own two feet. Courtney initially wanted to put her in a wheelchair.
"I'm fine! I'm fine! You're not making me make this announcement from my hospital bed. I've waited a long time for this. I'm not a useless little sister anymore. There's nothing they can do now that I'm on Plenty!"
Courtney's mouth was a thin white line. Leanne might have been a full foot taller than her, but she wouldn't back down.
"You're not getting in a machine. It's a danger to you and a danger to everyone else."
At the end, Leanne turned to Alex instead.
"Hey! Put me on your palm!"
"Are you sure?"
Alex called down to Courtney.
"Is that alright?"
The doctor rolled her eyes.
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"I mean, it should be. It might be better if she sat down."
Leanne shook her head.
"No way. No way. I'm standing. Standing tall and proud."
Leanne still looked a little woozy, and one of her eyes was still out of focus.
Alex sighed. If it were her, she'd still be in bed.
"Make sure you get me by my good side too."
Leanne turned to the right and posed.
She wore a shimmering gold dress with a high cut at the leg. Her hair flowed down to her waist. Even after taking a blow to the head, she moved with an elegance nobody else on Plenty could hope to match. Alex had once admired Leanne's natural grace, but now it reminded her too much of Steel. The Families of Generosity were so rich they were almost like royalty, and their children trained from birth to act accordingly.
Her fierce-eyed friend chuckled.
"If I stand this way, they can't see my lazy eye."
Alex laughed, but Courtney was getting nervous.
"I don't know about posing."
Nico was quick to agree.
"Mom, if you fall, it's going to be pretty risky...”
Leanne just shrugged.
"Then Alex better not drop me. I've been waiting my whole life for this."
She ruffled her son's hair.
"You were lucky to be born here. I was always just the last daughter, always the one they were happy to see leave, always the one who was just going to be a failure. Look at us now. They always said I was weak. They always said I couldn't do anything. Well, now I've found some friends and look at what we did together. We even beat them on Diligence."
Alex's heart swelled with pride every word her friend spoke.
The librarian didn't understand Leanne's Family. Based on the few scraps she'd gleaned from Steel's office, the culture of Generosity seemed almost as alien as the culture of the Mad Nobles. But it didn't matter. Leanne had left the colony and had no intention of going back. She'd given up being a princess to be a citizen of Plenty.
Alex knew they were doing something great together. It was a swelling warmth in her stomach. It was the strangely forceful beating of her heart. It was a fire that burned through her brain.
Alex had once been terrified of fierce-eyed Leanne, but in the days since Stock's defeat, they'd grown very close. It was Leanne who'd solved the mystery of the Eternium ghosts, and Leanne who'd realized the truth about Steel.
"I won't let you fall."
Alex lifted her high into the air as she and her son grinned from ear to ear.
Mark began filming.
They spoke together from the speakers of their Paragons and explained everything that had happened to them as the gathered people of Plenty cheered and cheered.
They talked about the evil of Stock and Waters, how Stock mined the colony's core to create his own Paragon. They talked about how he tried to rule Plenty as a god. They explained the lie of overpopulation. Stock had tried pinning all the colony's struggles on the fact that there were too many people. He wanted to make it acceptable to kill them. He wanted to pit them against each other.
They left out the Familiars and the goddess in the Spire. It just seemed a little too out of the ordinary. And they still hadn't decided what they might do about the relics on other colonies. Every colony but Diligence had a massive Eternium structure like the Library Spire. There could be more sinful gods in hiding.
Lastly, they explained how they defeated Stock through their unity and the superior technologies they discovered. They'd harnessed Eternium to create Alex's mention, and built the Peacetime models using a particularly innovative design.
At the very end, the camera panned over what they create, showing the Paragon carts high in the sky, the beautifully mismatched apartments, the enormous pot-shaped restaurant, and the lush greenhouses. Alex and her friends promised that in two weeks' time, Plenty would open their Gate for anyone who wanted to join them.
When the video ended, Alex set Leanne and Nico back on the ground. She thought Leanne might make another boastful quip, but instead, she grabbed her temple and winced.
Nico cried out in surprise.
"Mom! Are you alright?"
Leanne's arm jerked and pushed her son to the side. She let out a low moan and fell to one knee.
Courtney ran forward, shaking her head back and forth.
"She's fine. She's fine. Just pushing too hard."
Leanne grimaced and rose back to her feet. She leaned awkwardly on Courtney as she stumbled forward. Alex's heart filled with guilt. She should have been more careful. She shouldn't have attempted such a risky grab.
Leanne pointed up at the cockpit of Alex's blue machine.
"Alex! I know you're feeling bad! Don't feel bad."
She coughed.
"What are we doing for the event? What are we going to do to train? Think about that instead, don't think about me!"
She coughed again, and her shoulder spasmed. She angrily shook her head.
"I'm going to be fine. There's nothing they can do now that I'm on Plenty. But we need to put on a show!"
Alex did her best to push the guilt aside. Leanne was so strong. She was such an inspiration. The librarian brought the fingers of her Paragon together and began to play. She hadn't had too much time to practice, and it was the best she could do.
But Eternium made it beautiful.
The crowd gasped, and Alex beamed with pride.
"Practice starts tomorrow. This is how we'll hone our precision."
Leanne grinned.
"I'll be there for that."
Courtney practically pushed her back into the transport.
"You won't if you keep pushing yourself like this!"
Alex smiled. Courtney would take care of Leanne. Things would be alright. The librarian returned her Paragon to the Spire, and her cockpit became an office again. As soon as she stepped out the door the girl was waiting in the hallway.
"I heard what you said. He's gone then? He's gone right?"
Alex stared in shock at the girl's hands – or what remained of them.
The mutilated girl's voice was high and quavery, despondent longing built on a rotting foundation of fear.
"He can't hurt me anymore, right? That's what you said?"
Alex tried to speak, but the words couldn't quite form in her throat.
The girl's eyes widened.
"He can't hurt me, right? That's what you said? He can't hurt me again?
"Who's he?"
The words trickled out of her mouth, but she already knew. Only Stock would do something like this.
Alex tried not to stare at what remained of the girl's hands. She tried not to shudder. Shuddering would be rude. It would make the girl think Alex thought she was some sort of freak.
"The Director. He makes me call him Director. I think...I think..."
She trailed off and shuddered so hard it was like she was going to shake herself apart. She let out a low moan.
"Sorry. I can't. Don't know his real name. Don't know it. Can't know it. He hit me when I heard it. He said I can only call him Director."
She whimpered.
"Don't know it. Can't say it. Can't say it."
Her hands....
Alex let out a shaky breath.
"Yeah. We beat him. He's locked up. He can't hurt you."
But a small part of her whispered in the back of her mind. Stock might not be able to hurt her anymore. But wasn't the damage already done?
During the Southern Robotics crisis, Stock had forced people to mine and refine raw Eternium. It'd broken and shattered their hands. Palms were cut to bits. Fingers were torn off.
None of it had come close to this.
It was a surprise the girl could even walk. She hadn't been carrying those things in her hands.
They were her hands.
The laptop and cup holder had been grafted straight onto her arms. The metal and plastic were entwined and fused with her flesh. The weight of tools dragged her u
pper torso a third of the way to the floor, forcing her into a painfully hunchbacked position. Her left arm, the one with the laptop on it, was tight with muscle despite her thinness.
The sight was like an icy knife in her heart.
Stock had cut off her hands so he could play games and have drinks. He was monstrous enough to want something like that, monstrous enough to do it.
Sudden warmth oozed down Alex's cheeks. She tried to walk forward, but she stumbled. She tried taking another step, but then she fell to her knees, and she began to cry.
Somehow, it fell to the girl to comfort her instead. The girl had been attacked and mutilated. She'd lived her life in terror. But she stepped forward and awkwardly hugged Alex. The two strange tool-hands pressed around the librarian's neck. The computer and cup holder were icy cold and built with rigid plastic.
"Miss, are you okay?"
Alex cried harder.
She sobbed and sobbed until she was no longer able to see through the veil of tears. This wouldn't do. This was fitting for the colony's ace.
She hugged the girl back, hugged her tight.
"Why are you crying?"
"It's just good to see you. I wanted to see you."
The girl looked at her strangely. Her face was very pinched. She'd eaten a little better in the last few days, but it wasn't showing yet. She had a messy mop of red hair and a very wide forehead. Her eyes were mismatched. One was brown, but the other was gray. She was very dirty. A sour and musty smell hung around her, and her grime-colored skin was a strange tone of grayish-green.
"How could you be happy to see me? You just met me?"
Her confusion brought a chuckle to Alex's lips.
A trickle of life flowed from her heart to her throat, and then she found it a little easier to talk again.
"It's just good to find someone who likes to read. I'm a librarian."
"I guessed who you are. I've heard some of your lessons. Through the walls."
The girl shot her a keen look.
"How did you walk through the walls, by the way? The way it turns blue. I did that too, but it turned pink and gray."
She made a face.
"Is that why you gave me so many pink and gray toys?"
She shook her head.
"I don't like pink and gray. I want mine to be blue too. How can I make it blue?"