by Matt Doyle
“If you knew all that, why didn’t you say anything?” He asks, offering to refill my glass by way of shaking the water jug. I nod and hold my glass out. For a moment the silence is broken by a loud giggle coming from the main room, causing us both to look over toward the bedroom door before continuing.
“Like I said earlier, I’m not a good person. At the time, I didn’t give a shit. I was more concerned with what I was going to be doing for a living. There aren’t many places that’ll hire a healthy Offlander, let alone one that’s legally classified as a cripple. Plus, a lot of what I believe now I only figured out a few years ago. Look, everything I’ve told you so far doesn’t really matter, I just wanted you to understand how this all started.” I pause, trying to find a way to stall while I gather my thoughts. “So how about you tell me about how you met Meera?” I try.
“I thought you wanted to tell me something,” he states evenly.
“Humour me Hong Chan,” I reply, “It’s important.”
He looks at me, his face screwing up as he considers whether to continue. Finally, he relaxes and decides to go with it. “About two years ago, I found a young girl outside my flat. She was soaked through, shivering like crazy. Apparently, she’d been knocking on every door until she found someone willing to give her my flat number. If they hadn’t, she would’ve just knocked on every door until she found me, I don’t doubt that. Truth be told, I figured she was just some crazy, but I couldn’t leave her there like that, so I invited her in to dry off.”
“Why you?” I ask.
“She’d seen me on TV. Or more importantly, she’d seen me play against you.”
“The night you swore to retire if you didn’t qualify for the next tournament?”
“Yeah. She said she’d watched it in some shop window down the road. It was you she really wanted to see, but I was the first link she’d found. One of the staff caught her watching and told her that I lived in one of the local tower blocks if she wanted to meet me. He probably just wanted to shoo her away from the window without causing a scene, but it got Meera thinking. She wanted me to introduce her to you or tell her how to contact you. I told her that I didn’t really know you and that even if I did, I wouldn’t feel comfortable just giving your details out to a complete stranger. At the same time, I was pretty sure that she was homeless so I offered to let her stay the night and get cleaned up. She seemed happy with that. I figured I’d give her a decent breakfast, maybe see if I could find some warmer clothes for her and send her on her way.”
“You didn’t though.”
“No. I was curious why she wanted to meet you so badly that she’d go door-to-door on the off-chance that I’d help her. So, I asked her, and she burst into tears right in the middle of my kitchen.”
“And suddenly the idea of kicking her out on the streets again didn’t seem so easy, did it?”
He shakes his head. “Honestly, I didn’t know what to do. I got her to calm down eventually, at least enough to curl up on the sofa with some hot chocolate, but asking her any more questions was clearly a bad idea. The problem was, without knowing what had happened, I couldn’t be sure how to help her. I wanted to, but I didn’t have a clue where to start. Luckily, while I was trying to figure it out, she decided to just tell me.”
“About me, or about what happened after the Halo?”
“All of it, as best as she could remember. She said that a lot of things were really mixed up though, like there were gaps or sometimes there were two or three different versions of what happened in her head. The short version is like you said though. After the orphanage closed, she was out on the streets and spent her time port hopping. It was when she saw our match that she remembered you. I guess she just panicked and latched on to the first link that she could see.”
That’s not true. Not literally at least. I don’t doubt that she believed it at the time, so from her standpoint, she wasn’t lying. There’s a lot missing though. “OK,” I reply. “So how did you end up here?”
Hong Chan holds the jug up again. “You want a refill?” he asks and I shake my head. He pours the remainder of the jug into his glass and continues, “I told her she could stay another night while I try to figure out how to help her. She’d slept on the sofa the night before, but I figured that a warm bed might do her some good so I let her take my room this time. Once she was asleep I rang a friend of mine, Henry Russen. He’s an Earth psychiatrist that …”
I know that name. “He didn’t want to know, did he?” I growl through gritted teeth.
“No,” he replies, suddenly concerned. “He said he had a full client base so couldn’t fit her in. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “Continue.”
Hong Chan blinks in confusion, but decides to continue as ordered. “I explained a little about what had happened and he said that in his professional opinion, I should try to help her track you down and that you would know what to do with her. He said you had some experience with this sort of thing actually. Any idea what he meant?”
I nod, not even trying to keep the anger out of my eyes. “Continue.”
Another pause as Hong Chan stares at me, but once again he decides it’s best not to ask why his friend is getting to me. That’s a smart move right now. If I ever see Dr Russen again, I’m going to break the bastard’s neck.
“The next morning, I told Meera that I was going to try to help her. She seemed relieved by that. I was working on a project with Emblem so I figured that they could probably tell me how to contact you, or maybe set something up. It seemed to be going well at first, the paperwork took a few days, then there was the wait to get clearance on it for them to hand out your details, but it was going through pretty quickly by all accounts.
“I didn’t get to spend as much time at home as I’d like, which meant that Meera was alone for most of the day. She said that she didn’t really want to go outside though, so she was fine with it. I think she just liked having a roof over her head again. She started to relax a little over the next week or so, which was a good sign. She did ask the same thing every time I came through the door after work though. ‘Have you heard anything yet?’ The answer was always ‘no’, and she always ended up feeling sad, but she’d pick herself up again quick enough. Then, I got a call from the office one night and they told me my request had been refused.”
“Any idea why?” I ask. In some ways I’m glad that my privacy was respected, but it sucks that the first time that that happens is the one time it would have been better if it hadn’t.
“None. They wouldn’t give me an explanation. My bosses were pretty helpful though. I’d already explained to them why I needed to contact you, so they knew what was going on. They said that the best way to find you may be through the championships, which kind of tied in with what we’ve been working on anyway. There was no way to get to you that year, but if we worked at it then there was always the chance of qualifying for the next tournament.”
“So why didn’t you enter the qualifiers yourself?” I ask. “I know that you said you’d retire if I beat you, but it’s not like anyone would have cared that you broke a promise to some scummy reporter.”
“I would have. I gave my word, and publicly at that. It was a stupid thing to do, sure, but I stand by my decisions. ‘Honour your mistakes, not just your successes’, as they say.”
I can admire that at least. As someone who’s spent most of their life running from their mistakes, I can see the merit in what he’s saying. It’s just not a path that I’m strong enough to take.
“Like I said, I was already working on something with Emblem and getting to the championships tied in with what we were doing anyway, so they were happy to give me time to train Meera. I was told that we’d have to go through the Colony Five Qualifier rather than the Offland one because they had someone that they were already banking on taking the Offland spot, so that led us to the question of adoption. We all sat down together, myself, Meera and my bosses and discussed the idea, both
the benefits and the negatives. In the end, Meera decided to go with it. I was glad for that,” he says with a smile.
“Really?” I ask. “You really thought that the best way to help a sick child find a person from their past would be to adopt them?”
“No, I did not. I could have happily found a way to help her without adopting her if needed, that didn’t come into it. I wanted to adopt her because I found her story so heart-breaking. I wanted to adopt her because I wanted to make a difference and I thought that, even if I’m not the best person for the job, I’m still a lot better than the sort of people she’d end up with otherwise. I wanted to adopt her because she reminded me so much of my little sister, Dongmei. I grew up in a happy home Fahrn, is it really that wrong to want to give the same to someone else?”
I take another sip of my drink and don’t answer. I don’t agree with it, but maybe that’s just me being me. He said she chose to go along with it, which means she had a choice, but all things considered, was she capable of making the right one? If she does get better, I wonder if she’ll live to regret her decision.
“You know what, Fahrn? We trained hard, she was OK. She made it through the first few rounds on her own and we bribed her opponents from the quarter-finals on. She qualified. That’s it. You want to sit there getting pissy, then go right ahead. At least I’m actually trying to help that girl.”
“Oh fuck you,” I sneer. “I did more for that girl than you know.”
“Oh, really?” he says, being careful not to raise his voice.
“Three years ago,” I state firmly, taking his bait. “We were refuelling in South Quadro and this girl comes stumbling up to us, all bloodshot eyes and stinking like she hadn’t washed in months, babbling about knowing me. I figured she was a crackhead that had seen me in the championships and built up some fucked up delusion in her head. I tried to convince her to move on but she refused to go and started getting freaked out. I was about to call security when she said something about The Wandering Halo.
"See, the thing is, our names and faces were never publicised for that or any other job. It's one of the few legal protections you're given as a Merc. I even had to sign a contract when I retired to say that I wouldn't reveal names or anything else that could ID any of the team or the jobs that we’d done or I'd face criminal charges and lose my Injury in Service Pension. There were only two ways that she could have known that I was involved. Either she was a fucking incredible hacker or she was on board The Halo when everything went down.
“Jeez, looking at her there I remember thinking that life clearly hadn’t dealt her a good hand. What a fucking understatement that was. I asked Maria to take her inside and fix her something warm, but not before I took a photo of her Barcode. Once she was out of ear shot, I e-mailed the thing to an old colleague and gave him a quick call. He was happy enough to run a search for me, but not so happy with the results. Meera Thorne, aged fifteen, no known current address, formerly resident on The Wandering Halo. There was a bunch of other important stuff too like the lack of warrants for her arrest, some snippets of a few official files held on her post-Halo, but it was the ship confirmation that I really wanted.
“By the time I’d gotten back inside, she’d calmed down a bit. I found her staring blankly at a hot chocolate and some cheese on toast.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who instantly thinks ‘hot chocolate’ when I see a crying child,” he says.
“To be fair, Maria may have considered some other stuff but not felt comfortable making it. I had to fend for myself from an early age, so I learnt to cook early on. Maria didn’t. She’s a lot more adventurous now but she was definitely a slow learner. Great with numbers, crap with an oven, ya know?”
Another round of laughter floats in from the main room. “Sounds like she’s good with kids though,” Hong Chan says.
“Meera’s hardly a child any more, but yeah, she is,” I say, barely catching the smile before it can creep across my face. “Anyway, Meera snapped out of her daze when I used her name, but she was still pretty unresponsive compared to how she’d been outside. That changed when I tried explaining about our docking permit being up and that we needed to take off.”
“So you were considering kicking her out too, huh?”
“I still didn’t really know who she was or what she wanted. I dunno, maybe I expected her to try blackmailing me or something. Maria was adamant that we couldn’t kick her out while she was in that state though. In the end, I relented and agreed to let her stay until the next place we could find to dock, but only if she agreed to tell us why she seemed so to desperate to talk to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Hong Chan interjects, “I just … I don’t understand why she’d lie to me about meeting you. She seemed really desperate, like her life depended on finding you.”
“There are reasons she would have said what she did, but in her head she probably wasn’t lying. And if she did lie, then that’s my fault for failing her.”
There are times that Maria and I fight. We don’t shout or scream, and we don’t get physical. It’s more like a battle of wills, our eyes searching each other’s until one of us gives in and concedes defeat. The battle of whether or not I should blame myself for how Meera is or how she was when she left us is an old one, and we’ve fought it many times since we first met her. I’ve given in on a lot of issues with Maria, even if it goes against something I believe in, but never will I lose this one. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t for one moment doubt that she believes she’s right. Maria has always insisted that I give myself too hard a time over a lot of things, and in truth she probably has a point, but in this case I feel justified. “Sorry,” I say, “I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Meera panicked when she thought we were going to kick her out. Once she realised that we were going to let her stay for a while, you could see the relief. She was totally exhausted, probably from stress. It was like she knew that she wanted to reach the point that she could stay, but didn’t know what to do once she got there. I told her that she could go and get a shower and we’d get a guest bed sorted for her, but I wanted to know who she was first. She told me … she said that I tried to save her but she was too scared to go with me and that if she had been brave, I wouldn’t have been shot.” I pause for a moment, grimacing. “Maria sorted everything out that night, showing Meera to the shower, getting the bed ready, everything. I just sat there in silence. All those years. I spent almost every day thinking about my knee, but that was the first time that I remembered the girl. I felt like the scummiest person alive.”
I’m tapping my knee again. That’s been happening a lot lately. I guess I must have been dwelling on it a bit more than usual. “We spoke a lot more the next day. She probably told you a lot of the same stuff about how mixed up she was. She knew life on the Halo was bad because so many people told her it was, but she couldn’t remember anything bad ever happening before we came on board. The Orphanage looked after her well enough, but then it had to stop, just like her last home. Stuff like that, yeah?”
Hong Chan nods. “Pretty much. She mentioned something about another family, but couldn’t remember it clearly enough to explain everything.”
“That’ll be her first gang. She was twelve and homeless. Up until then, her life had been pretty sheltered too. She had no idea that the tattoo on her hand meant that it was OK for people to treat her like shit. Her whole world view had been flipped on its head, but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone else. The safe, secure place she’d been before was bad. This new home was cold and dangerous but that’s OK, because her new home was good and she was supposed to be grateful for being there, even if she couldn’t find any food for the first few days. Eventually, she started raiding bins for scraps but that was never going to be enough. For all her naivety, Meera knew that she had limits.
“She got desperate one day and made a grab at someone’s meal outside a restaurant, but she was too weak to have any real shot at getting away with it. From wha
t she said, she’d have probably ended up in jail if one of the local street gangs hadn’t spotted what was happening and made the save. The way I understood it, they took her in after that, gave her shelter and taught her how to survive. I don’t think that helped her much in the long run though. I mean, it gave her a lifeline and, like you said, a new family for a while, but all that really did was further the idea that this was how life was supposed to be, which still didn’t make sense to her when she compared it to life on The Wandering Halo.”
I push a few stray braids behind my ears and continue, “Somewhere down the line, the police started taking a more proactive approach to dealing with the gangs and she ended up running. Now she was hearing that her new good life was bad too. Meera knew what that meant, she’d been there before. She had to lose everything. That was how it worked. Now, look at her life up until then. She lived on a ship, then another ship came and took her to Minnis-Tirtha to start her new life.”
“So in her mind,” Hong Chan says, thinking out loud, “she’d need another ship to take her to her next life,”
“Exactly. She found a port and jumped in the first unguarded freight carrier she came across. We never did figure out where she ended up next or when she got there, but we’re pretty sure she was still twelve when she left Minnis-Tirtha. That would mean that she spent the next two and a half years reliving the same scenario over and over again. She’d settle in, assimilate herself with whatever local gang would take her, outstay her welcome and leave.”
“She told me that she repeated the cycle every six months, like clockwork,” he says, staring off into space.