Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  It lights a fire in me, a little ember compared to what just ignited a minute ago, but enough to square my shoulders again as I roll my gaze back to fix on Yasmin.

  Key’s fingers tighten on my shoulder. It strikes me as ridiculous that Key, furious and petulant Key, is the one holding me back, and I almost laugh.

  “Yasmin,” I say finally, trying for Malikah’s sake to keep my voice even and calm. “Where is Amar?”

  She tells me.

  Key expects me to snap when I hear Yasmin’s answer—I feel her press her feet more firmly into the floor, dropping her weight just in case she has to pry me off my aunt again. But there’s no fury that roars through me this time, no flare of violence unleashed.

  There’s only dullness.

  The dry, warm air of the Reliant. The red-handed children around me. The losses I’ve endured already. The inevitable things in a Seventh District life. I shrug off Key, bow my head, and walk back through the ranks of trembling orphans, down the narrow hall, through Yasmin’s dingy apartment, and into the kitchen. I collapse into the rickety chair at the breakfast table, ignoring how it protests under my new weight. Elbows on the table. Head in my hands. Her words sinking in until they’re as deep as the metal on my bones.

  My brother has been quarantined on the plague ship.

  When the wasting fever first broke out, the Fleet’s medical ships tried to handle it individually, each devoting a ward to treating the victims. But soon it became clear that the epidemic was burning through the Fleet. The General Body chose to sacrifice a single ship for the good of the many, and the Panacea fell to the rear of the Fleet, behind even the Seventh District ships.

  It trails us, a city of the dying.

  “We scraped enough together to get him on the third tier,” Yasmin says from over my shoulder.

  I hitch my head, intending a slight nod, but the exo exaggerates the gesture. Out in the hall, there’s the sound of the front door closing. Key, it seems, has had enough of our lower-class dramatics and decided to wait outside.

  “How much would it cost to get him to the first?” I ask, my voice cracking under the strain of asking a question I already know the answer to.

  “It would be everything. Your entire salary—no more left over for Malikah’s upkeep.”

  Like almost everything in the Fleet, the Panacea has tiers. Five of them, in this case. The upper levels for those who can afford proper care. The lower levels for those willing to be fodder for the experimental treatments that the labs are constantly synthesizing. Putting Amar in the middle gives him a shot, but he’s already so small and weak, and…

  I swallow, pushing away the images of my little brother’s face scarred with purple tracks, the feel of dead skin under my powerless hands. “Is that why you—”

  I have to fight back against the simmering anger threatening to boil inside me. Key’s gone—nothing could hold me back if I gave in. I pour my will against the exo like a prayer, trying to shape it into the kind of order the machine on my back will listen to. Please, God, don’t let me deck my sister’s only caretaker.

  Yasmin slides a hand onto my shoulder—a bold move, the exo notes with a grudging twinge of respect. “We had to do something to make the first payments with your money not coming in. Look, the kids in my care all work for their upkeep. I used to, when I first came here. It’s not as horrible as you make it out to be.”

  She wouldn’t know. When she and my mother were orphaned, Yasmin managed to secure work assisting the orphanage’s former owner. But my mother, young and small as she was, had to earn her keep with red-dyed hands. While Yasmin coordinated schedules and balanced finances, my mother toiled in the factory until the stain sank so deep that it never washed out for the rest of her days. Toiled until a lasting cough took root in her seared lungs. Toiled through sickness and broken bones, through inhuman hours, through accidents that claimed some of the other children working at her side.

  And now Malikah’s hands bear the same mark.

  “Aisha, I’m on your side,” Yasmin says, low and persuasive, the voice she must use to coax favors out of the children. “You’re so insistent on doing this yourself, but I want what’s best for all three of you, and we both know you’re taking too much of the load.”

  I think of our horrific training sessions after the Chancellor’s visit. The record-low times we clocked, despite the full rig’s power. The way Wooj plummeted off the climbing wall when his exo lost control of his body again. The paralyzing hatred that pours out of Key Tanaka’s every thought. The contents of the report Marshal Jesuit was on her way to deliver this morning. Our chances of making anything past patrol are slim.

  Maybe it’s the reality I have to accept: I can’t carry my family by myself.

  When I glance up, Yasmin is hovering. Waiting to strike, my exo warns. The machine doesn’t understand our history, doesn’t understand the way blood forges loyalty. All it’s seen is a woman who betrayed my trust, who knew my will and went against it—and if there’s anything an exo hates, it’s disobedience.

  Maybe I’d be wise to listen to my exo’s instincts.

  Then Yasmin sinks into the chair next to me. The machine on my back homes in on the moment she stops holding herself together and lets her true exhaustion show. “Aisha, I understand,” Yasmin says. “Really, I do. You want fairness. You want justice. You want the sacrifices you’ve made to balance out. You Un-Haad girls are obsessed with order and rightness. Your mother was the same way, and not a day goes by that I don’t regret the wedge it drove between us.”

  The exo prickles against my spine. I hold my breath.

  “Before you left, I tried to talk to you about something that I hoped you could do for me. A way to settle your debts. As Scela, you have access to information that’s outside the reach of an average citizen. Outside the reach of humans, really. Information”— Yasmin pauses, inhaling deeply—“that could be useful in the hands of certain groups. Groups fighting for…fairness, shall we say?”

  My exo panics more than I do. Notions of the laws surrounding treason, the way my bodily autonomy has been signed over to the General Body, the way the exo has to obey certain orders stir in the mechanical side of my mind. But in the rest, there’s just quiet certainty as the pieces snap into place. The way Yasmin lives alone, runs an orphanage, and seems to do little else. The way my mother cut her out in the span of an afternoon. The way she never even offered to help us until the day I turned up on her doorstep, announcing I was going to turn Scela.

  I know what she’s asking. I know what she is. And I can’t believe I haven’t realized before. I look my aunt straight in the eye and say, “You want me to be a spy for the Fractionists.”

  Yasmin nods. With a jolt, I grasp that this isn’t a game of manipulation and power—not the way my exo wants it to be, not the simple, animal method it understands. For Yasmin, this is a matter of life and death. My mother must have shielded us from her the moment she found out, trying to protect us from the family revolutionary.

  And now Yasmin’s just hauled me headlong into it. She tried to talk me out of taking the metal at first, no doubt spooked at the idea of a General Body weapon in the immediate family. But once it was clear that I was going through with my conversion, she wove a net, and now there’s no way I can escape. My aunt knows exactly what she’s doing. That the Scela recruitment drive was triggered by a series of raids that captured key Fractionist cells on frontend ships. That their movement is weakening day by day. And now Amar and Malikah are in her hands, not mine. If Yasmin goes down for her ties to the rebellion, my siblings will have no one left to take care of them.

  Their safety depends on me keeping her secret.

  I feel myself teetering on the edge of rage. I’ve walked right into her trap. I could snap at her again, scream in her face for forcing me to harbor this truth. But doing that wouldn’t put me any closer
to getting Amar and Malikah away from the danger I’ve led them into. The only way out is through.

  So I close my eyes, feeling the metal and wires and circuitry wrapped into my biology. Accepting the truth of it, the way Praava showed me. Understanding. The exo looks out for my best interests. It keeps me steady, helps me harness my will and focus it into this enhanced body. It will keep my secrets, and it will help me keep my secrets for as long as it’s able.

  I throw out an intention, trying to hone it down to something simple, a subroutine I can keep running even when my mind is elsewhere. Keep this part of my thoughts from the exosystem. I remember the barriers Key’s exo threw up between us yesterday during my meltdown on the Porthos and try to shape my will into something similar. A little wall. Something so small that no one will notice until they trip over it.

  When I’m sure it’s steady, when I’m sure I’ve built my protection up to the best of my ability, I let my eyes slide open again. “What information?” I ask, and Yasmin bares her teeth.

  “We’ve been struggling to get a Fractionist cell running aboard the Dread, especially with the recent crackdowns in First District. We have a few people who are willing, but there’s only so much humans can do on a ship full of Scela. For a Dread cell to be effective, we need information only you could get. Numbers, patrols, timetables, and the like. Nothing that would require anything close to snooping—all I ask for is your observations.”

  Sure, that’s all she asks for now, the exo notes, and I can’t help but agree with its suspicion. I’ve seen the look in her eyes before, in fellow janitors trying to get me to cover extra shifts on the intership deck. It starts with a small request—just a few hours tacked on to the end of one of mine. But it grows and grows, and since I never get less desperate, it never stops. I’ve been taken advantage of enough times before to know that Yasmin will only ask for more. One favor will lead to another. And then another and another. Being in her debt is a dangerous thing.

  But worse is the prospect of a Fleet without my brother.

  I see Yasmin’s game. Or at least, I think I do. I remember she tried to ask me something right before I left the Reliant. Did she stop herself in an effort to spare me the mental strain? Did she think it would be too much to ask, knowing what I was about to go through? Or did she realize how much it would play to her advantage to wait until after my conversion, after she had sent Malikah to the dyeworks, after Amar’s illness took a turn for the worse? Because now her leverage is guaranteed. Now she knows she has me.

  My fury seethes, but it’s accompanied by a curl of ambition that almost veers recklessly into hope. If I can spy for her and we make a good assignment—

  I sigh, rolling my shoulders in a way I hope makes me look bigger. “What’s to promise that you’ll keep my siblings safe if I do this for you? The very second I was out from under this roof, you had my sister doing the one thing I begged you to keep her away from.”

  Yasmin opens her mouth, but I’m not giving her a chance to defend herself. Not yet.

  “I know the fact that we’re family has a very loose hold on what you’re willing and not willing to do.”

  A nod.

  “And now I know I can’t trust you.”

  “Trust is nothing in the face of need. And we need each other, Aisha,” Yasmin says. “I can take care of your siblings. You can save the Fractionists before the General Body wipes us out entirely. I’ve given my whole life to this cause, and you’ve done something similar for yours,” she says, nodding to my body.

  A twinge of rejection rattles through me, uncomfortably close to the feeling that triggered my meltdown yesterday. So maybe my aunt understands me a little more than I’d like. And maybe I relate to her a little more than is comfortable. And maybe it won’t be so bad, owing her. As long as Amar gets his treatment. As long as Malikah stays out of the dyeworks.

  But I’ve never been great with optimism, and this dingy kitchen doesn’t seem like the place to start. “I need a guarantee. Something stronger than your word.”

  Yasmin holds out her hands. “Aisha, you know I can’t give you anything stronger than that. Look, this is why I’ve given my life over. Everything that ever mattered to me, my own sister included, I lost because I believe in what Fractionism will do. This is the greater fate of humanity at stake—we weren’t meant to be ruled by the General Body’s tyranny. We deserve a choice in the heading of our starships. It’s our only chance of finding a planet, our only chance of bringing this Fleet to the berth we’ve been seeking for three hundred years. Tell me you wouldn’t do anything to achieve that too.”

  I scowl, the exo deepening the expression until my face aches. I can walk away now. Leave my sister in Yasmin’s care and my brother at the mercy of the Panacea’s midtier doctors. There’s no threat, no leverage I can use that doesn’t put them in harm’s way. Briefly I entertain—and the exo can’t help but encourage—the idea of turning her over for a hefty reward from the General Body, but even that wouldn’t be enough to keep my siblings safe forever. I need Yasmin more than she needs me.

  My aunt draws a deep breath, her eyes closing. “I’ve lived far too long. My parents—your grandparents—died in their mid-twenties. Factory accidents, the both of them. Your parents were lucky to have as much time as they did. Every day I find myself holding people at arm’s length because I know an early end is just around the corner. For me, for the children in this orphanage, for everyone. It’s a fact of our district. A fact of the backend. And it shouldn’t be.”

  Her voice catches before she can say anything else. Yasmin draws a deep breath and bows her head. I take in the apartment around us—the battered walls, the distant noises of children in the dormitories adjacent. I understand the weight on my aunt’s shoulders. She owes her life to this place. It raised her, gave her purpose, and now it’s dragging its claws through her.

  I know I can’t trust Yasmin entirely. But I trust the General Body even less. I’ve felt the unfairness that deepens the lines in Yasmin’s face. I live with Key’s constant disdain for the backend echoing in my skull, and maybe there’s something in me that thrills at the thought of sticking it to the system she believes in, the system that’s already robbed us of so much.

  Maybe my sacrifice wasn’t in the surgery—a simple tradeoff, body for cash, one of the oldest human transactions. Maybe this is it here. To shoulder this danger, to do something not just for my family’s sake, but for the sake of humanity—that’s how I’ll earn my siblings’ safety. Fractionists believe that splitting the Fleet will bring us closer to finding the next good world. What if they’re on to something?

  I rise from the table, drawing myself up to my full height as if a string pulls me from the ridge of my exo. Yasmin stands with me, her eyes hooded and wary. I lock my gaze with hers. “If my sister goes back to the dyeworks, I’m burning your life to the ground.”

  “Understood.”

  “Then you’ve got yourself a deal,” I say, extending my hand. A wicked thing goes wild in me when she takes it. Both the exo and I enjoy the way her expression shifts as my grip winches just a little too tight.

  I don’t know what it says about me, that I like the feel of her bones under my metal, but for a moment I love being Scela.

  I’m trying to ignore how long this is taking. My exo ticks off the minutes we’ve been on the Reliant in an irritating little count, but I distract myself from the subprocess by making a careful study of the enhancements on my forearms, peeling back my sleeve so I can prod at the metal and ports. Yasmin’s stoop is mercifully tucked away from the bustle of the main street, but the reek of this place is inescapable, and I don’t want to know how much of it my ass is going to retain once I stand up.

  I still don’t know why I was assigned to this trip, and the sheer pointlessness of me sitting here is making my prodding a little too aggressive. A warning flashes as I pull at a port on my wrist. F
orget why I’m on this ship—I don’t even know why I’m in this body.

  My brain is stuck in a loop, attempting to dredge up the dream I had last night. All I can remember is a street much better than this one, a rip in the leg of the dress I was wearing, and the golden, camera-eyed boy watching me like he always does. With a computer in my head, you’d think my recollection would be perfect, but maybe the exo doesn’t play nice with the subconscious.

  Or maybe I have memory problems. I mean, I definitely have memory problems.

  I huff, pulling at a band of metal striping my face so hard that I feel something unstick inside my cheek. A dull pain flushes through me, followed by a wave of embarrassment that my exo wholeheartedly encourages. I glance back at the door, but there’s still no sign of Aisha wearing out her family’s welcome.

  I don’t let myself get jealous, and the exo is happy to beat back that particular urge. My request for leave was clearly denied. I wanted to go back to the Antilles and see my mother and father. Wanted to ask them to fill in my missing pieces, explain how I ended up in Scela metal. But apparently Aisha’s need to see her family was the more urgent concern in the eyes of the higher-ups. So no clean, elegant corridors for me. I’ve been shunted off to the backend. Apparently just to sit around and keep Aisha from beating up her aunt.

  I guess if I’m going to find any answers, I’ll have to do it myself. Keep throwing myself against the holes, exceed expectations as a Scela, and hope that it’s enough to unlock the memories I’ve lost.

  I tip my head back, staring up at the ceiling of the ship’s habitat. The buildings on this street crowd into each other, looking dangerously unstable and slightly menacing. Now I’m not sure if the sensation of being watched is an aftertaste of the dream or a real thing. I don’t know how people in the backend live like this. Everyone’s listening. Privacy’s unheard of. Even the air feels thicker.