Lost Boy, Found Boy

by Jenn Polish

  He’d noticed those eyes.

  And he couldn’t help but stare at them now. So different, so much more steely, more broken, since he’d first seen them. But somehow, at the same time, more focused. Less hopeful, maybe, but the hope wasn’t gone. It was afraid. James nodded to himself and stroked the curve of his hook absently. Peter’s hope was afraid.

  No wonder the boy had been falling out of the sky so much of late.

  But the hope seemed to be back in full force as Peter stared up at the vortex, oblivious to everyone and everything else on the island. His coarse hair waved back behind him with the force of the whirling vortex, but his slim body stayed firm, stayed unmoving, unmovable.

  What would it take to move him? James slid his gaze down Peter’s body and found that his hands were fully extended, fully flexed, in tension, in anticipation. In eagerness.

  For my name to be Mir. He was surprised at his own bitterness, at the swirling in his stomach that felt, just a little, like jealousy.

  He shook his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears and kept his attention on Peter.

  His stare wavered, though, when Peter jumped, stepping dangerously close to the portal like he was called by some kind of trance. James looked to the portal in time to see a shadow slip past the hole, possibly dropping into that pocket behind the opening that James himself had fallen into. Peter moved so close to the portal that Nibs almost lurched himself forward in a protective stance. Slightly put a hand on his forearm, and Nib’s breath hitched at the contact. Gwen turned to James and winked with an arch of her eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t comment on the exchange.

  “He’ll be fine,” Slightly assured Nibs, and James sighed at the ease of their closeness.

  Sure enough, Peter stopped just short of the portal, just short of the shearing forces that made him tilt his head back to protect his eyes from getting the brunt of the wind.

  “Mir?” he called, sounding uncertain.

  The hand that appeared, just as James’s hook had, made everyone—even James, standing farther back on the beach—shift backward. Everyone except Peter, who gasped so hard, so loudly, so happily, that he seemed to inhale a massive gust of sandy water that had been whipped up by the vortex.

  It was just a hand, to be sure, but James knew whose hand it was by the strength of Peter’s reaction alone.

  Mir had reached Neverland.

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  Chapter Ten

  PETER KNEW IT was them. He knew.

  Solid and steady and tearful, he knew.

  But Peter couldn’t see them, couldn’t reach out and help them clamber out of the vortex as he’d fantasized. He couldn’t see, couldn’t reach, couldn’t help, because he was too busy choking on the glob of sandy water he’d inhaled on seeing Mir’s hand. He doubled over, everything else pushed from his mind, as he tried to breathe despite having gritty water down the wrong pipe.

  The next thing he knew, a pair of warm hands were caressing his back, thumping him somehow gently and firmly at the same time. A pair of hands that didn’t feel new like Gwen’s, heady like James’s, mechanical like Tink’s, or confident like Michael’s. It was a familiar pair of hands, perfect.

  As soon as the tears cleared his eyes and he was breathing, not wheezing, Peter straightened up and tossed himself right into those hands, into those arms, that had so caringly helped him avoid choking, helped him breathe again.

  The metaphor’s ridiculous. He laughed to himself as he breathed in the scent that was not tainted by fighter fluid, but was fully, completely Mir.

  They’re not angry. Peter’s heart soared at the thought. They still love me. They helped me. They were worried. They still love me. The programming worked. They forgot that they wanted to join the Hub. But they remember everything else. Because they still love me. They still love me.

  But the newcomer to Neverland stiffened in Peter’s arms, their hands leaving his back even as their arms were trapped between his.

  On feeling the retreat, Peter stiffened too and pulled back, his hands shifting to Mir’s shoulders, their face.

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” He understood if Mir didn’t want to kiss—if they were disoriented, if they were scared, if they were confused, if they just plain didn’t want to kiss Peter, not right now or not anymore—but not wanting to hug? That wasn’t like Mir at all.

  Neither was the way Mir was looking at him, their face the perfect picture of confusion, bafflement, concern. Fear.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—who are you?”

  Peter’s stomach dropped like a stone, and his arms followed.

  “Mir, it’s me. It’s Peter. You—it’s me.”

  The corners of Mir’s eyes tightened as their eyes narrowed. Their tongue poked out of the side of their mouth, just a tad, the way it always did when they concentrated. Somewhere inside him, despite himself, despite his fear, a part of Peter registered the action with pride and joy; only Mir would give someone they think is a stranger the benefit of the doubt. Even after getting shuttled through a random portal and suddenly popping out on a random island. But come on, Mir. I’m not a stranger. Come on.

  Mir considered Peter carefully for a few long seconds.

  “Peter.” It sounded strange on Mir’s tongue. Unfamiliar. Like they were trying out empty syllables, syllables that meant nothing to them. Syllables that weren’t infused with anything special. Syllables that weren’t infused with anything at all.

  Peter’s heart shattered.

  “Peter.” It shattered again. “No. No, I’m sorry, I don’t…” Mir pulled back, as though noticing for the first time their new surroundings, the new colors, sounds, tastes, scents. The new people.

  “I don’t…I don’t know how I got here. Where is here, anyway? What… Did we train together? Is this…” They looked around, their eyes scanning the extent of the island, the treeline, the depth of the ocean. They turned then, like they’d just remembered something, looking for the portal. Not finding it, Mir rotated back to Peter incredulously. “Is this part of training? A mission? I’m sorry, I don’t—where are we?”

  Peter just gaped, openmouthed.

  The programming went too far. It took too much. I erased too much. I only wanted to… They were only supposed to forget one thing. That they wanted to join the Hub. They weren’t supposed to forget everything. They weren’t supposed to forget me.

  His head shook, and the rest of his body followed. “It’s me,” he whispered weakly, just the once more. A tear slipped out of his eye without his blinking, and confused concern flickered across Mir’s face. He put a hand on Peter’s shoulder uncertainly, but Peter shrugged it off. It felt heavy. Unfamiliar. Just like his name on Mir’s tongue.

  Nothing like what it used to feel like.

  “I’M SORRY,” MIR muttered again, studying Peter for a moment longer before turning to the others.

  Their gaze fell first on James, and something heated up in the core of their body. They swallowed and instinctively lifted their hands to sweep their hair into a pattern they knew was attractive, somehow, even though they couldn’t remember who they knew it’d been attractive to.

  “I’m…well, I can’t actually remember my name just now.” They scratched at their head and ignored the terrible panic building in their stomach. “But I know I’m Trainee 6729. I was prepping for a flight test… How’d I get here? And, you know, where is here?” All this, they addressed to James, who’d stepped forward with sad eyes and parted lips.

  “You uh…you should talk
to Peter. He’s…he’s the guy who knows everything about this island. Well, and Tink here. She…she kind of…is the island.”

  “Which sucks for us when she blips out and we get quakes,” Slightly muttered, and Michael punched him lightly in the stomach.

  “Be nice to her!” Michael scolded, and Gwen murmured that she’d synthesize some ice cream for the kid later.

  “How…but you’re—sorry, you’re a machine—well, I suppose both of you are, it looks like, sort of, and that’s okay, of course, I just… Does that… Are we in a VR? Is that how I got here? Well, fine, I can just reverse the feed. I can get back into my flight VR. I can—”

  “Thing is—” Nibs stepped forward cautiously, the last remaining cuticle of his index finger in his mouth, his ghostly pale skin slick with sweat. “—you’re actually here, bud. Your body, I mean. That’s why the power keeps shorting out. Er, Tink keeps shorting out. I mean, you’re doing a great job. It’s nothing personal, Tink, just—you’re actually here. Your body’s like…here.”

  Mir put their hands to their chest, their stomach, their own arms, searching for an answer in their own trembling body. Finding none, they turned back to Peter.

  “And where exactly is here?”

  Peter’s eyes were swimming with tears as he croaked an answer with a voice so broken it brought tears to Mir’s eyes, too.

  “You and I, we…we made a hideaway. Back home. Just for us. This projection, all of us—we’re in our hideaway. It’s a small place, but it… I programmed the holomax—”

  Tink chimed, loud and indignant, and her stomach screen flashed red. Gwen reached for her extensor fingers, and Tink took her hand.

  “Tink somehow poofed into existence,” he corrected somewhat mockingly, “to make our reality seem…well…bigger than it is. But we are all actually here. It’s not just a mind projection. You actually did travel through a portal, physically.” He grinned and bounced on the balls of his feet. “This is the kind of stuff we used to dream about. You don’t remember?”

  Mir pursed his lips and stared at Peter, deep and long and hard. “No. No, I’m so…I’m so sorry. I don’t.”

  Something bitter passed over Peter’s face, but he gave Mir a close-lipped smile. “It’s okay. It’s not…it’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

  And then Peter ran.

  He ran before anyone could stop him, even though Mir reached out to try.

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  Chapter Eleven

  NONE OF THE children—save for Gwen—had seen Tink for days.

  She wasn’t near the lagoon where Slightly swore he’d seen more mermaids with Nibs. She wasn’t in the trees that Jon had scaled to pick Michael the freshest, juiciest fruit that could be synthesized. She wasn’t in the clearing where the swarm of butterflies created stories of dragons and flight that usually left her chiming in what they perceived as delight. She wasn’t in any of the caves they’d found when, led by Mir—who didn’t know the island at all, but knew he’d hurt the boy terribly somehow—they had discovered Peter sobbing and sniffling, a dehydrated mess. She wasn’t in their camp when they’d brought Peter back that night, led, again, by Mir.

  Hey, they’d told him, touching his arm gently. I’m sorry I don’t remember you. Hey, but I don’t want to see you cry. Okay? I don’t want to make you cry. If something’s wrong with my memory—and I believe you, that you know me, okay? Hey, look at me. I believe you—then we’ll figure it out. You’re obviously great with computers if you programmed this place and got us all to come here. And I have questions, okay, like why this kid is half metal and what we’re all doing here and why the hell I can fly on this trippy island. But we can answer them together, okay? Because I don’t remember you, Peter, but maybe I can, somehow. Okay?

  That had been days and days ago.

  Days and days of Gwen reassuring them that Tink was fine. Despite the earthquakes that rocked the island. Despite the fact that she admitted that Tink wasn’t able to fly anymore. Despite the fact that the synthesized food had started to get sour and the nights had gotten too bright while the days had grown too dark.

  Despite the fact that Gwen was developing worry lines on her face while she was living on an island that she herself called paradise.

  So James sat alone on the sand, well above the shoreline. His metal knees were drawn up to his sometimes-fleshy chest. He sighed as he shook sand out of his hook connector panel absently, but his eyes weren’t on his task. They were on the other children, playing, yelping, screaming in the ocean. Without him.

  He’d told Gwen and the others it was fine—Gwen and Mir were the most concerned, but he shook them off with a casual disregard for his mental well-being, a skill honed from years of being a lab experiment—and he wasn’t entirely lying to them. Because largely, he believed it himself: that watching was enough. They all needed to blow off steam, stress. And watching, he promised them, was just fine for him.

  Initially, when he realized he wasn’t watching them alone after all, he’d jumped. He’d raised his hook in instinctive defense. He’d prepared to call out for the others. But then he’d seen Tink’s silver wings, her squareish, silver body. The green shawl, complete with holes for her wings, that Gwen must have made her to cover her stomach screen. So that people couldn’t read what she was thinking, what she was saying, if she didn’t want them to. And also, James guessed, for some kind of comfort. Because, though she had a keen set of handlike sensors at her sides and a blinking, rectangular information processor where her head would be if she were human, somehow she still managed to look like she needed comfort.

  After James’s initial shock at her presence faded, he nodded. A long moment later, she inclined her processor toward him. Her own kind of nod. She turned, and he turned, and they continued to watch the children in their joined solitude.

  “Tink,” he ventured after a long silence, wondering if she would shock him like she’d shocked Peter the first time he used Gwen’s name for her, “I haven’t asked…can I call you Tink too? I know you like it when Gwen and the others do it, but I wanted to make sure.” She hovered lower, nearer his eye level. He wondered if it was easier for her to fly when she was isolated from the others. But right then, her company was nice, and her silence was companionable. Still, he didn’t want to drown in his silence when he couldn’t swim in the sea with the others.

  Tink rang out three light, simple chimes. James smiled at her consent, still not taking his attention off the other children. Michael was climbing onto Mir’s shoulders now, and Gwen was gathering Jon up onto her own shoulders, laughing when they overbalanced into the ocean because he was so much taller than she. Peter was leading Nibs and Slightly in a rather loud sword fight with particularly sturdy sticks they’d scavenged from the forest. He kept glancing at Mir, clearly hoping to impress them. Hoping for their attention. For a spark of their memory. For their love.

  James sighed, and Ti
nk let out a series of disconnected but delightful, twinkling chimes. Laughter. James shifted his gaze to Gwen and wondered about a machine’s ability to fall in love.

  Hell, he was part machine. Sometimes, he felt like he was mostly machine. His eyes switched back to Peter. To Mir. He heaved another sigh, the air wheezing out of his duraflex metallic esophagus with a slight rasp.

  “Do you ever wish we could join them? Or that Peter would program us to somehow be able to? Can you program water that’s not…well, wet?” James chuckled at his own question, digging his hook into the sand near his feet.

  “Wishing is a concept this Tinker Bell unit is only beginning to grasp.” Tink spoke instead of chiming, and James shook his head.

  “You don’t have to do that with me. Auto translation matrix, remember?” He bent his head and tapped the nape of his neck with the blunt end of his hook.

  Tink sounded her laughter again and repeated herself, rather unnecessarily, in chimes. “However,” she added with her chosen interface tones, “Peter does not control this island, you know. Peter operates under the illusion that he created it. Created this unit. Stupid, arrogant boy. He refuses to believe that this unit heard him crying. This unit saw his nightmares. Before he started programming anything here. Sometimes…this unit requests that you say nothing of this to the others, except Gwen. Gwen has already been informed. Gwen is trustworthy. Are you?”

  “Mechanicals gotta stick together, right?”

  That delightful laughter chimed again, but it faded quickly as a scream from the surf poured into both of their vibrational sensors instead. Gwen and Slightly were shrieking with laughter as they cornered Peter—Gwen had somehow gotten hold of a stick-sword of her own—against a dune.

  The island itself shimmered, shook. Like night had fallen without sunset, like the stars had come and gone without permission from the moon. Only for a moment, a moment that was too fast perhaps for the flesh humans to notice. But James and Tink did. He glanced up at her trembling wings, and he rose to catch her just in time. Just as her wings gave out. His hook looped into the circular groove on her otherwise human-shaped back, and he jerked his arm up, unearthly strength giving his unearthly friend a reprieve from falling right out of the unforgiving air.