Leahara lifted her head and eyed Mimi for a moment and then opened her mouth to speak. She coughed a little and cleared her throat and then looked toward Mimi’s door for a moment. “She was only twenty-nine.”
Leahara’s eyes were glassy and the streaks of tears left a silver sheen down her face. “It wasn’t even really her fault. She was just out one night with friends celebrating her birthday. She had started a job working in the sanitation department. It was a stable job. You know how hard it is to find a stable job in this city, right?”
Mimi nodded. She had tried for more than a century to live as a Lower, but was never able to find a steady or stable job for more than a few years and so eventually gave up. It was easier to live in her hovel than it was to keep an apartment.
“She was grateful. You know, some people who work hard in the sanitation department and pick up extra shifts can sometimes move up into the Lower-Mids, only the 10th - 12th levels in the buildings, but it extends their life for a few more centuries and gives them a chance to have more than one child and it’s much more comfortable.”
Mimi nodded. Leahara put her head in her hands again and started to sob.
Through her tears she continued, occasionally pausing to catch her breath. “I thought she was safe. Lucy wasn’t the prettiest of girls. You know how dangerous it is to be pretty in the Lowers. But still, somehow she caught the eye of an SO. Apparently, from what I heard later, he had been following her around for weeks, making propositions. He even cornered her one night and forced her to kiss him. She got away, thank god, but after that first encounter she never walked alone again.”
“The night of her birthday she was with four friends. I don’t know what happened, but somehow she got separated. Maybe the SO figured out a way to separate her from her group, or maybe she was intoxicated and wandered off without thinking. In either case, she ended up alone and of course, who should appear?”
Mimi shivered. She had narrowly escaped similar encounters several times. If she had not been able to skim minds, she might have ended up on the wrong side of that situation. Being a woman on the streets was a dangerous game, much worse for the homeless because you had to worry about every male predator out there and without shelter, there was almost no escape from the endless moments of watching your back. Without Mimi’s hovel and knowledge, she didn’t know how she would have survived so long. Somehow Shannon had avoided that fate. Shannon knew of the dangers, but she had managed to avoid almost all of them and without any special abilities.
“Lucy told me before they took her to the Runner Docks that he tried to get her to come home with him. But see, even though Lucy knew what the consequences would be, she started carrying a taser. Lord knows where she got it. It’s a black-market item. But when the Security Officer wouldn’t leave her alone... she pulled it out. She said she gave him a warning, and she told this to the judge. I watched her testimony.
“Apparently this man had a rare heart condition. The alcoves kept him from ever having to worry about any serious medical issues of course, but he was susceptible to heart attacks. When he grabbed at Lucy, she used the taser on him. He had a heart attack, and because it’s been centuries since anyone has had to treat one no one knew what to do. He died before they could get him to an alcove. He was dead just a little too long for the alcove to revive him.”
“But... it was an accident, wasn’t it?” said Mimi.
“The Supreme Justices didn’t seem to care about that. They said that Lucy had an illegal weapon that she must have obtained through illegal means. Then she used that weapon and took a life. You know how high of a crime it is to take human life in this city. It might seem like the two million or so we have here are a lot, that it’s crowded, but these cities are the only lifeboats left to us. So, they said murder, even an accident, is punishable by exile. And you know what exile means.”
“The Runnercore.” Mimi’s voice was just above a whisper. “But how did she end up recycled?”
Leahara shook her head through more tears. “Serah told me.”
“I thought you said none of the other sisters knew?”
“Serah does, and she promised to keep it secret if that’s what I wanted. No one but her knew about Lucy’s conviction.”
Mimi put a pin in that for a moment. She had to know why she wanted to keep this secret. Maybe there was something about the Order that Leahara didn’t trust? First, though, she wanted to know how Lucy became recycled. “So...how did it happen, then?”
“Did you know that when someone becomes a part of the Runnercore, they inject a bunch of chemicals in their body?”
Mimi nodded. She knew that they augmented strength to deal with the massive walking armor the Runners wore, and she had once skimmed that the chemicals also helped with keeping them in semi-stasis in the alcoves until they unboxed Runners for duty, but she wasn’t sure how it worked.
“Well,” said Leahara, “in rare cases, some people are allergic to the chemicals. Their body can’t tolerate them. Serah told me it’s less than one percent, but she has seen it happen before. She...”
Leahara wept. Her whole body shook. She started to moan like an animal injured and dying in the wilderness alone. Mimi gripped on to her tight. She focused her mind in the way she had been learning and tried to project happy thoughts of peace, love, and joy into Leahara.
It seemed to work a little. Leahara reached up and grabbed one of Mimi’s hands and squeezed it.
“Thank you, Mimi. This is why I came to you.”
Mimi didn’t entirely understand what Leahara meant, but it seemed that there was no time for asking.
“She died. On the table. Then they took her to that facility underground.”
Mimi had stood outside the doors. There was no apparent way in. When she had lost Daniel, she had gone to the giant doors and looked for one. She had wanted to stop his conversion.
Mimi asked, “Does Serah know... what they do in that place?”
Leahara shook her head. “No, she said she doesn’t think anyone does. She said she doesn’t even think that any humans work there. The rumors are, the recycled themselves do the processing. That the city AI directs them, but Serah said she has worked for a long time with the AI now, and she doesn’t see how the AI is capable of that. It isn’t fully aware, but she said that she doesn’t think the AI can do harm, something about three laws or something.”
Mimi said, “Maybe the AI doesn’t think it’s doing any harm because the people it converts to recycled are already dead?”
Leahara’s face was pale. “Maybe.”
“Does Serah know why they recycle them? Why they bring them back to life?”
Again, Leahara shook her head. “Serah says that in this city nothing should be wasted, at least that’s the idea. When the city started running the biorecyclers and breaking down organic components into ingredients for the algae pools, everyone decided immediately that human corpses wouldn’t be a part of that process. No one, Lowers, Mids, or Uppers, could tolerate the idea that they might be eating human remains, even though the biorecycler breaks all organics down into subatomic material and reassembles it again. Still, the idea was intolerable.”
Mimi said, “So Serah says the recycled were a way of making sure that the parts still got used even though they were dead?”
Leahara nodded.
Mimi asked, “But what if the body is damaged beyond repair? Like, all of the recycled have a full body and a head, I’ve never seen one that was... incomplete.”
“I don’t know, Mimi. All I know is, she is down there now.”
“Did you... did you see her after?”
Leahara leaked fresh tears and nodded her head.
“But how?”
Leahara wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I begged Serah. She didn’t want me to see. She said that no good would come of it, but I begged her until she relented. Now, I wish I hadn’t.”
Mimi had never seen Daniel’s face in person, but she would never be able to forget what she saw jus
t before Shannon’s abduction, that vision or whatever it was, was burned into her memory. She had seen other recycled Runners before, and she knew how terrifying they looked.
“It was horrible, Mimi. Her face was blank and pale white with these strange blue lines all over it. I think they were her veins but there were so many. And her eyes...”
Mimi tried to keep the image of those white on white on white orbs out of her head, but she couldn’t. It was as if someone had scooped out the eyes and replaced it with a pure white marble.
“But still. I was her mother. And despite it all, I ran for her. I ran to hold her in my arms, even though she was in one of those giant metallic suits. Serah tried to stop me but she couldn’t. I wrapped my arms around her as best I could. I tried to feel her warmth, but her face was far too high up because she was in one of the suits. More than anything, I wanted to kiss her forehead, but do you know what happened?”
Mimi shook her head.
“Nothing. Nothing happened. She acted as if she was a lifeless doll, some kind of manikin. I screamed at her to respond, to let me know she was alive but... Lucy wasn’t in there anymore.”
Leahara collapsed completely into Mimi’s arms. She gave up all her strength and let it run out of her as if it was some kind of liquid that filled the body and ran down into the ground.
Mimi didn’t want to ask. But she had to. “Leahara.” She stroked her hair gently, the way that she remembered her mother used to do to her when she was upset.
Leahara didn’t respond.
“Leahara, why can’t you tell the other sisters?”
More silence. Echoing moans. Sniffling.
Mimi didn’t think an answer would come. Then it did.
“What would the other sisters think of me? How could I let that happen to my child? I have this talent, this gift, and I was unable to use it to stop my own daughter from being taken from me. How could they accept me into their ranks if they knew I was such a failure? They would cast me out if they knew. It’s the only home I have left, Mimi.”
Mimi understood. Then she understood something else. Mimi thought of what her mother would have said to her.
“Leahara, do you really believe that your sisters are your family?”
She nodded.
“Then you have to trust them. You have to know they will understand. You have to know that they will want to help you through this, don’t you?”
Mimi was confused by the words that were coming out of her mouth for a moment; they had been so automatic. Buried treasure. Her mother had raised her as well as she could. Her mother had always been there for her, even if it was only until that terrible night. Yes, her mother might have been a drug addict at the end, but never had her mother failed to comfort her when she was sad or lonely. Never had her mother neglected her in any way and perhaps her mother had only turned to drugs to shoulder the burden that each man brought with him into her bed. For the first time in her life, Mimi thought she might understand all those things that her mother had said about family. It was like a faint outline of knowing, one that could, over time, be filled in.
“Family is there for each other Leahara, as best as they can be. Sometimes it’s the little things. Sometimes they are distanced because they have to be. Sometimes they do things that we don’t understand. And sometimes the best families are the ones that we make in life, not the ones we are born with. Trust them Leahara, tell them what happened. I can comfort you a little, but... I’m not so good at this. I... I haven’t had a family in a very long time.”
Leahara looked up. “You’re right. Tomorrow will you come with me? Will you help me tell them?”
“Yes.”
“Can I... Can I stay here with you tonight?”
“Yes.”
Mimi laid her sister down on the bed gently and then laid down next to her. She wrapped her arms around her and before long, they slept.
Chapter 10
News
MOST OF THE SISTERS gathered in a group around Leahara as she told her story. Noatla and Serah were absent on some errand, but the others listened eagerly.
After, tears and embraces were traded. Healing, like water on a smoldering fire. Even Mimi felt a sense of relief. She suspected that each sister was soothing the other in turn, calming one another’s emotions.
Leahara said, “Mimi, will you share your story of how your lover became recycled?”
Mimi frowned. She hadn’t been expecting this. She had thought she had gotten away with not telling Leahara the whole story, but she had been wrong. The other sisters waited patiently for her to begin.
“I... in truth, I haven’t even been able to speak of it to Shannon. I don’t know if I can tell it to all of you.”
Leahara said, “You’re in a safe space, Mimi.” She grabbed Mimi’s hand.
Mimi cleared her mind to transmit; rarely now was she using her mouth to communicate with her sisters. Then, the door to the library archive burst open and in walked Noatla and Serah. All was forgotten.
“Is Mimi here?” Noatla said, scanning the room.
Mimi’s heart sank. Noatla wasn’t blocking her. She let Mimi see everything. Serah couldn’t even look her in the face.
“Shannon’s already been sentenced?”
Noatla nodded.
Chapter 11
New Beginnings
FOR SHANNON, THE PASSAGE of time had elongated, days reached crooked fingers into the centuries and grasped tightly as she lay on her back and stare at the ceiling.
After the arrest she had been taken to central security, the building that had stood the highest in all of the city of Manhatsten. She had no idea what floor they had taken her to, but when she exited the lift, she swore it looked like the underground that she and Mimi had explored. There were only a handful of cells, but all were occupied, save two. One for Andrew and one for herself.
Andrew had been processed quickly. He had disappeared the morning after they had been arrested and had not returned. Shannon assumed that had meant one of two things. Either he was free, or he was now a Runner. She assumed that the second was far more likely, from what she had heard, once someone was arrested they almost always became a Runner.
There were low mutterings from the other prisoners but she couldn’t make them out. Occasionally she would hear someone weeping. The floor was cold and there was no way to hide when she needed to use the bathroom. She held it for as long as she could and then tried to wait ‘til none of the guards were around. None of them peeked in at her, but she still felt exposed.
The food came twice a day. The funny thing was, she was eating better and was probably safer then she had ever been on the street, except when she was with Mimi.
Why had Andrew been processed so quickly, but she so slowly? Was that a good sign? She couldn’t see how it would be considered a bad sign. If they were taking longer, did that mean they were unsure of what to do with her?
She marked the time by the change in the guards’ shifts. Her second and third day of captivity she spent most of her time imagining the moment when Mimi would sneak in to free her. Together, they would escape into the underground world that Mimi lived and they would live down there for the rest of their lives, never to surface again.
Maybe Shannon could even use the alcove that Mimi was using and maybe they would be happy, just the two of them, for centuries. Shannon thought she would like that, that it would be a wonderful way to spend the rest of her days. After all, the last few weeks with Mimi had been the best of her life, despite Mimi accidentally hurting her.
She decided that it had been an accident and that she forgave Mimi. It would be the first thing she said to her when she saw her. Shannon was certain that Mimi would never do something like that. She had one of the kindest hearts she had ever met, even if she always acted tough and empathetic.
EARLY ON HER FOURTH day of captivity, Shannon was summoned to trial.
She entered the courtroom. It almost looked like an office. Seven men and women sat in
chairs, deliberating. One of them, the one in the center who didn’t look a day over thirty-five but sat in the rigid posture of someone much older, was reviewing something on a data tablet.
His voice was gruff and deep. “Shannon, you have been charged with aggravated assault on a security officer and in trafficking in illicit substances. How do you plead?”
Shannon looked around the room. “I... I don’t understand.” She looked at her feet.
One of the women on the end gave a heavy sigh. “He is asking if you admit to dealing drugs and assaulting a security officer.”
“Oh. Um, no, I... um... of course I didn’t do those things.” Tears began to pour down her cheeks. It was involuntary. “Please your honors, I’ve never hurt anyone. Please don’t make me a Runner.”
One of the judges reclined in their chair. The others sat rigid. The one who reclined said, “Tell us your story. Please note that we will know if you are lying.”
So Shannon did. She did her best to leave Mimi out of the story, which made it difficult to tell. She was afraid that if she mentioned Mimi, they would go after her too. After all, how could she possibly explain that Mimi could read minds and needed Likatol to find a sense of peace from the voices of the city? She would sound crazy, and from what she understood, crazy people became Runners too.
“That’s quite a story. So you are telling us, that this man Andrew wanted to kidnap you because he believed he could get some leverage over another dealer? Why would he believe that?”
“Because the other dealer had a thing for me. I never dated him or anything, but he was always doing favors for me, and he clearly liked me. I think Andrew thought that we were a couple and that he could blackmail this man into working with him.”
That seemed to pause the judges for a moment. They leaned in and consulted one another. Mimi would have been proud. The story seemed to make some sense, at least. She was getting better at lying. Mimi was a good teacher.
“And what of the Security Officer, you said that he was a part of this too?”
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