by Ethan Cooper
“You’ll get your memories back,” JACK says. “I’m sure of it.” Does she think she needs to say things like that to make me feel better? Is that what she thinks friends are supposed to do?
“Thanks,” I say, because that’s what I think I’m supposed to say back.
“Assuming you actually have memories.”
“What do you mean?” I ask as the spark of hope I was just about to reach for is extinguished.
“Not everybody has memories,” JACK says as if this is something that somebody who’s missing memories might not remember.
“That’s not possible.”
“Babies don’t have memories.”
“I wasn’t born last week.”
“You don’t know that.”
And there it is, because she’s right. I don’t know what I don’t know. I really don’t want to pursue that line of thought, but I can’t help myself. “So what, I have to sit here and wonder whether I was grown in a vat, programmed with whatever knowledge my creators wanted me to have, then discarded on the street?”
JACK doesn’t look away, but she doesn’t answer either.
Closing my eyes to shut it out, to shut it all out. Sitting there, listening to the sound of my breath, the scrape of JACK’s hairstalks against the floor and sometimes against my ankle. Is she doing that on purpose? Are the hairstalks under her control, or are they more akin to a dog’s tail, wagging based on her moods? Maybe I’ll ask her sometime. Some other time.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, Syl.”
“You didn’t. Well, not really, and anyway it’s not your fault.” Is that the truth, or am I just saying that to make her feel better? Great, we’ve only been friends for a few minutes, and we’re already lying to each other.
“Don’t be scared,” she says, and she’s trying her best to sound comforting, but I’m not sure how much I can be comforted right now by a teenage wirewitch whose voice buzzes like grinding gears with every syllable. “You’ll get through this. We’re strong, and we’re doing this together.”
“And what exactly is it we’re doing?”
“Surviving.”
16/Wound
2195.12.11/Morning
“Did your technomancer friend tell you when he was coming back?” JACK asks as she pushes herself to a standing position.
(did you see that look)
(how she moves she’s a)
(predator)
It’s undeniable. Even in that simple, routine movement, she looks like she’s tensing to pounce. Some base part of me panics, tensing, ready for flight.
Let’s be honest, this friendship—if that’s what’s starting here—exists at her whim. I just can’t bring myself to believe what she said—that she won’t survive out there on her own. She could; I wouldn’t. She doesn’t need me. She could end this at any time. I…can’t. At least not until I find somebody else I could trust. Right now, Aran is the only other person I’ve met. He may have helped us, but that doesn’t make him trustworthy.
“Are you okay?” JACK asks, standing over me.
I manage a nod, but can’t look her in the eyes. “As okay as I can be.”
JACK holds out her hand. I take it, let her pull me up.
When you have to be friends with a witch, at least make it the witch you know.
“What are we doing?” I ask, and my voice is that of a small child who’s lost her mother.
“We can’t stay here forever,” JACK replies, already turning away toward the doorway. “We need supplies.”
I follow her into the next room. She moves to the closet where we found the boxes of food packets and opens the door.
“Aran said to stay here.” I say. The thought of leaving here seems like a cosmically bad idea right now.
Food packets begin to skid across the floor toward me.
“I’ve never seen a technomancer like him,” JACK says.
“Have you seen many?”
“More than a few. Never one with wings. All of them were lethal fighters. Very dangerous.”
Not knowing what else to do, I begin to look for something to put the food packets in. There are a lot of containers, cabinets, and closets in this place, but most of them are locked, and I’m hesitant to have JACK tear this place apart. Still, a few minutes later, I’m about to give up and ask her to punch a hole in everything when she appears behind me, holding out a backpack. It’s black and gray, just like everything else in Aran’s secret hideout.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is his secret hideout.
I take the backpack. It’s made out of some fabric I don’t recognize, soft and pliable in my hand. There are numerous pockets and zippers scattered all over it. It looks well used. Though it’s not dirty, there are darkened areas where some liquid has stained its surface.
“Is that blood?” I ask.
JACK touches one of the darkened areas. “Yes,” she says, “but it’s the only backpack I could find.”
Ew.
I open the backpack’s main compartment and start shoving packets inside. I’m not sure what else we’re going to be taking, but food is certainly on the list.
JACK touches my shoulder. “Did the technomancer tell you where he was going?”
“No. Didn’t say when he’d be back either. He didn’t seem like he was interested in a long discussion.” Fingers are needlessly fiddling with the smooth edge of the one of the food packets when I add, “I don’t know him. He’s not my friend.”
(but what about)
(the alley)
JACK withdraws her hand. “Got it. Is he coming back? Do you think he’s coming back?”
Is that just how she talks, or does she just repeat herself when she’s nervous? Whichever, for some reason, hearing her do that makes me like her more. “I don’t know.”
“I think we need to leave before he gets back.”
Well, there it is. “What else do we need to take with us? Did you find any weapons?”
“No.”
“He’s got to have something here. If this is his—” I almost say secret hideout. “—safe place, then there’s something. He doesn’t seem like the type to not have an…arsenal.”
JACK shrugs her shoulders. I think if she were a normal human teenager, she would have rolled her eyes. “Probably, but I guess he’s good at hiding things.”
“I’d feel safer if we could find something.”
“What weapons do you know how to use?”
While frantically scavenging though my brain for any useful memories, I manage to hold JACK’s gaze for a grand total of four seconds before I have to look down at the ground. “Good question,” I mutter. “I guess I can’t think of any.”
“Trying to use a weapon you don’t know how to use is dangerous. Maybe you should just stay close to me. Let me be your weapon.” Her last sentence is filtered through a smile, a flash of sharp teeth, and a sense of invincibility that comes from either hubris or experience.
“Okay,” I say, because really, my options are limited here, and I’m not sure what’s gonna make me feel safe. “You’re my weapon.”
(for now)
Her hand is on my shoulder before I can react. This close, I can see the circuitstreams in her skin. The surfaces of her fingernails are grooved, as if a skilled artist had chosen them as the canvas for the finest of etchings. “Like I said, it’ll come back to you.”
I nod because if I open my mouth, there’s no way I’ll be able to stop myself from crying.
So damn pathetic.
Following JACK back into the big room, where she moves to a small pile of items she’s collected, I drop the backpack and sit down.
JACK hands me a flat silver package. Whatever’s inside is folded. “It’s a blanket,” she says. “It’s big enough for at least one of us, probably both of us.” Then she’s rapid-firing a list of everything else as she fills the backpack. “Pain meds, flashlight and some power cells. This is a Firestarter 900. Do you smoke?”
“I don’t
think so?”
Her hairstalks jerk in what I can only assume is a shrug. She slides the thin gray tube into one of the backpack’s outside pockets and continues, “Tissues, bandages, antibiotic ointment. You might need that, but I don’t.” She pauses. “Maybe you already knew that about me?”
“Uh, maybe. I guess your body takes care of that for you.”
“Yeah.”
You mean the technosites take care of that for you. I prevent myself from saying that part out loud. “Do you ever get sick?”
“No,” JACK says, and she’s smiling when she says it. I think she’s sort of gloating. Wonderful. She really is a teenager.
(so are you)
Still, her air of superiority is expressed with such confidence, such innocence, that it makes her seem cute, like a cuddly animal that you just want to grab and hug. Hate to admit that. I can feel it—the pull, the attraction. The endearment. And that’s scary.
(did you see that look)
(how she moves she’s a)
No, it’s not right to feel this way. She’s a wirewitch. She’s a—
(predator)
“Another couple of skinsuits,” JACK says, tossing them in and closing the backpack. “Are we wearing the technomancer’s girlfriend’s clothes?”
“What, and her—” I give JACK an appraising glance. “—teenage daughter’s clothes?”
“Okay, it does seem strange that he has clothes that fit us here.”
“Maybe he’s married.” I laugh, because the image of that winged machine-man sleeping next to a woman is ludicrous. I just cannot picture it.
JACK’s head swivels as she surveys the area. “No.”
“We know nothing about him,” I say, for some reason feeling entirely ungrateful. There are female technomancers, so no reason he couldn’t be partnered with one of them.
“We really don’t.” JACK hands me the backpack as she stands up. “But we don’t need to. Probably won’t see him again anyway. The city is big.”
Didn’t stop me from meeting him twice already.
JACK is holding something out to me.
I take it, asking, “This wouldn’t fit in the backpack?”
“It would, but I’m a wirewitch, and you’re very pretty.”
She says that last part so matter-of-factly, as if it’s something I should accept, as if the whole world already knows and believes it. Me, I guess my body is okay, but I can’t even remember what my face looks like. Running my hand through my hair, brushing it behind my ears, I manage a, “Thank you” as I unfold the garment JACK gave me.
“It’s a cloak,” JACK explains as I hold up the dark material till the edge falls almost to the floor. “It has a hood to hide your face and hair.”
I drape the cloak over my shoulders and pull the hood down over my head, fastening the clasp at my neck. The edges of the cloak fall together, completely enclosing my body except for a few inches at the bottom where my boots poke out. The dark gray material is synthetic and smooth against the bare skin of my arms.
“Perfect,” JACK says from beneath her own hood, her form as human as mine. Her hairstalks are at the base of her skull, and under her cloak they aren’t visible, though every few seconds the cloak twitches. “What is it?” she asks.
“You really think these are necessary?”
Her cloak undulates, as if blown by a breeze. “Do you have any tech inside you? Never mind. I know you don’t.”
“How do you—”
“If you don’t have any tech inside you—if you’re pure like I believe you are—do you know how much your hair alone is worth out there? How much your legs and arms are worth? Your eyes? Your heart? Your kidneys? How about your ovaries? And your eggs? Do you have any idea how much all your pretty little parts are worth?”
“N-No.”
“Well, it’s a lot. Enough to bring us a constant stream of unwanted attention. We need to be able to walk around without attracting every flesh freak in this city. And as for me—well, it’s almost always a good idea to hide that you’re a wirewitch. But I’m sure you already know that.”
(she can see it in your eyes the way you look at her the way you’re)
(afraid)
I have no response to her other than the one she can read in my face.
JACK’s expression, which had gone hard—the swirling in her eyes had stopped—softens. “Out there, people will think we’re weak.”
They’re not necessarily wrong. I sigh, asking, “Because we’re what…female?”
“Yes.”
“Are they wrong?” I know my answer to that question, but I want to know what JACK thinks. Still struggling to understand her. She’s so young, but she knows so much that I don’t, so much that I’ve forgotten.
“They’re wrong, but predators who think you’re weak always attack. So, it’s best to conceal as much about ourselves as possible. The less they know, the less prepared they are, and the more power we retain.”
“I’ll follow your lead, JACK, no matter what’s out there.”
“When it comes to safety, you should definitely do that. I’ll keep us as safe as I can. But we do really need to figure out where we’re going. I want to get out of this place, but I don’t really know where we should go. We need to decide that.”
“Also, what we’re doing,” I say. “We need a goal. You said we were surviving, but we have to do more than that. Surviving isn’t a goal.”
“Sometimes it seems that way though.”
It hits me, as I watch the slow churn of clouds in her eyes: I know next to nothing about wirewitches. Sure, I know they congregate in covens, and I know enough to be afraid of them and what they can do, but I don’t know anything about how they live their lives. How do they make money? Do they need money? Do they have jobs? What do they do?
“I…I’d like to hear more sometime—about what you’ve experienced.” A little surprised to hear those words come out of my mouth. Words like those imply something about our relationship that I’m not sure is gonna happen. And yet, my desire to know more about her is real, and it’s not just because I need her to keep me alive.
“You do?” There is genuine wonder in her eyes, but also a smile on her lips. “Okay, sure. I’ll tell you…sometime. You can ask me anything.”
“A goal.”
“A goal,” she repeats. “That’s easy. We have to find out who you are.”
“Any idea on how to start doing that?”
“No.”
“We’re just gonna go out there and wander around then?”
“If Cyberspace was online, it would probably be a whole lot easier. Since it’s not, the best we can do is go can go looking for data, but we may have to let the data come to us.”
“You mean we’re going to have to get lucky.”
“I think we can do a little better than that. I’m sure we’ll be able find some clue about your past. This island isn’t that big.”
“An island? We’re on an island?!?” Should have known that. How could I not have known that? Losing the specifics of my past is one thing, losing general knowledge is another. What else don’t I remember? Am I a criminal? Am I married? My cloak is suddenly an oppressive, unwanted presence around me. I grope at the clasp for several desperate moments before it comes undone, and I throw the cloak back off my shoulders, taking deep gulps of oxygen as if I’d just been holding my breath for the past thirty seconds.
JACK puts her hand on my back, her movement deliberate but cautious, as if our situations are reversed and I’m the predator she’s trying not to spook. “We are on an island, Syl, but don’t worry, we’re safe in here right now, and we’re together right now. No matter what happens, no matter what we find out there, you don’t have to go through this by yourself.”
Dammit, now there’s no stopping the tears in my eyes, some escaping, splattering on the floor. The words that escape along with them, are laced with a bitterness, a helplessness that I didn’t know I was feeling. “Why? I don’t underst
and why you’re doing this. You don’t need me. You don’t have to help me.”
I feel the warmth of her hand leave. Her cloak drops to the floor beside mine. Her arms crossed, her hairstalks dancing against the backs of her thighs, I can see her lower lip protruding.
“You’re wrong,” JACK says, standing in a way that in all likelihood gives me a brief glance of what it might like to be a parent one day. “And we already talked about this. You’ll die out there. I don’t want to be alone out there any more than you do. I may not survive much longer than you would. We’re stronger together, and even if you don’t remember everything, you know that’s true. Even together we might not be strong enough, but you and I are all we’ve got.”
Then she throws her arms around me and hugs me tight, laying her cheek against my breast.
“I’m sorry,” I say, holding her to me, and it feels good, better than it should be given what she is.
“Out there…” she begins, talking through tears of her own, “…before…when the eoa was…”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
All I did was hold her. Hold and wait for the end. That’s not much is it? But maybe, with death just a few seconds away, maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s more than many of us get in our last moment.
“Nobody ever did that for me before.” Her hairstalks move like serpents. Every few seconds one flicks forward to brush against my hip, like a tight bundle of straw but strangely warm.
“Hug you? Nobody ever gave you a hug?”
“Yeah. It’s not how we comfort each other.” She’s not letting go. Her strength is amazing for a wirewitch her size. “Anyway, like I said, I want to be with you. I want to help you find out who you are.”
“Okay,” I say. The tears certainly aren’t stopping, but I feel better. “I’m sorry about your coven, I really am.”
JACK mumbles something I can’t quite make out, but I don’t think it matters. What matters is her and me—a blue-haired girl and a youngling wirewitch—right here, right now. It feels like the beginning of something.
Not sure how long we stand there clinging to each other. Too long. Not long enough.