by Loren Walker
Sydel closed her eyes. So it was true. It wasn't just in her head.
"Sydel. Whose bloodwork is this?"
She felt the heat of tears between her eyelids.
"Tell me this isn't yours."
Even though she knew he couldn't see, Sydel shook her head.
“You need to see a hematologist."
"I’m far from any city," Sydel said. "And I don’t have the rana to pay for treatment."
"I’ll wire you the funds. I’ll arrange for transportation."
"And when Anandi finds out what you did? That you’re involved with us again?"
"I can function without her approval, Sydel. I’m her father."
"No," Sydel told him, gripping the Lissome in two hands. "I don’t want to cause strife between you. Not when you’ve been given a second chance at life."
Second chance at life. The words resounded in her head.
"Then I’ll come to you. I’ll bring medications. We can talk about treatment options. I can run the tests again and make sure they’re correct. At least we will know for certain, and it could buy you some time..."
Emir's words drifted into silence.
So strange, she thought. I thought I might have a family one day.
“I’m so sorry,” Emir said, a strangled hitch to his voice. “If I’d known sooner, if I’d thought to even check for something other than your mental status… I never saw the need to check physically.” The man was near tears, she could hear it.
“Thank you for everything,” Sydel said quietly. “Thank you for treating me with such respect, and teaching me so much about medicine. I learned so much. And I enjoyed your company. I need time to think about my options. Please don’t tell anyone about this.”
And she disconnected the call.
"I'm keeping this," she told Tomo when he returned, closing the Lissome into its dormant form.
The healer opened his mouth to protest, but Sydel lifted a finger. "Not a word," she instructed. "To anyone about what you've seen, and what we have discussed."
"Answer one question for me, then," the doctor said, deflating. "Who are you?"
"I'm no one," Sydel said. "I never have been."
IV.
"What's going on?" Phaira demanded, springing to her feet as soon as Sydel came through the hut door. "You've been gone all afternoon. Cohen was asking all kinds of questions, and I had to lie, tell him that you were meditating. What happened? What did the healer say?"
A warm flicker of affection grew in Sydel. My friend, she thought. I don’t want you looking at me with sad eyes. If this is the end for me, I want to make the decisions. Even if it means lying. Even if it means something worse in the end. Let them see me as I want to be: strong and confident, always ready to help. That's how I want to be remembered.
Sydel smiled at Phaira. "Cohen worries too much. Just like I said, I’ve caught a virus, and I’ve overextended myself. I need to rest."
Then she lifted her right hand, showing the Lissome in her palm.
Phaira gasped. "Where did you get that? We can finally get out of this place! We need to tell Renzo and Cohen. Maybe we can get a connection to the Arazura, figure out where it is, if CaLarca still has it or not. If she does, I'm telling you, I won't be -"
"What about CaLarca?" It was Cohen interrupting, bending low to enter the hut, and eyeing both women.
Sydel sent an unspoken message to Phaira: Say nothing.
She heard Phaira's response: Likewise.
"We've got a Lissome, finally," Phaira announced. "Who would have thought it would be so difficult to find one? Where's Renzo?"
"I was hoping that he was here, with you," Cohen said grimly. "I haven't seen him since last night, and I’ve searched everywhere.”
Sydel frowned. She reached out with her senses, trying to feel where the man might be in the valley.
There was nothing to hold onto. He wasn’t in the vicinity.
Sydel walked to the window, staring out at the edge of the valley. The entrances weren't guarded, so he could have snuck out. But to where? Despite his state-of-the-art prosthesis, he couldn't walk for the hundreds of kilometers needed to reach a city.
Cohen’s voice broke through. “What if he's in trouble?"
"He's not," Phaira said brusquely. "I bet he's with Anandi. Look, we'll call her now and she'll tell us, watch." She clicked open the Lissome and typed.
Sydel opened her mouth to protest. But she couldn’t say anything without giving away her previous conversation with Emir. Hopefully, Anandi wouldn’t mention anything.
A click, a buzz, and the audio-only light came on: "What do you want now?"
"It's Phaira. Is Renzo with you?"
"What? No. I haven't spoken to him in ages. Why, did you think he was?"
"We can’t find him," Phaira said. "No note, nothing. It's not like him."
"No, that's more like you."
Phaira scowled at the Lissome. "What is it going to take for you to treat me like you used to? We were friends, Anandi. I always treated you - "
"You chose your path when you got involved with the Savas. You should have let that Red kill Theron. Now look what's happened. I might not like CaLarca much, but she didn't deserve to be assaulted like that - "
"Assaulted?" Sydel broke in. "What are you talking about?"
"You don't know?"
"We haven't had any access to technology," Phaira snapped. "If you cared enough to ask. CaLarca stole the Arazura, and we've been stuck in a village in the mountains."
Sydel heard the sound of rustlings, and clicks, a swooshing sound that she now recognized from Emir; a file had been transferred to the Lissome.
Then Anandi’s bitter voice came through. "You all better figure out where you stand in all of this. Lines are being drawn."
The call disconnected.
And the video started: projected on the hut’s stone wall, hazy with the sunlight outside, so everything looked muddy and blood-tinged. But Sydel could make out the outline of a towering gold building at the end of a long entryway. The video was shot through the latticework of black gates.
A deep, gruff voice came through, off-screen. "Hold this."
Phaira went very still. That was Theron Sava’s voice, Sydel realized.
Then came CaLarca's pinched voice, retorting: "I'm coming with you."
"You're both staying here, and shielding my men," Theron shot back, still out of frame. "Remember the deal."
What had CaLarca done? Sydel could hear the whispers of another man, somewhere off-screen. Had CaLarca reunited with her husband and son, after all?
The video continued to roll.
Sounds of gunfire, distant and tinny. Footsteps. Short, quick breaths.
When Sydel squinted, she could see smoke coming out of the gold building, billowing through the door. The camera started to shake, but kept filming.
"He’s not there," a whisper floated through, another man’s voice. “He’s not there.”
"Quiet, Voss," CaLarca snapped. "Concentrate."
Voss. Sydel knew that name. She wracked her brain. One of the NINE, Sydel finally remembered. Zarek Voss. CaLarca was with him?
More rattling gunfire echoing from the house.
Then silhouettes appeared through the smoke at the door. Another shadow emerged, so tall his head almost hit the doorframe.
Theron Sava stalked down the path to the gates, carrying something small, and wiggling.
No, someone: a toddler boy, covered in dirt and blood, screaming.
The Lissome dropped to the ground, making Sydel wince with the loud jolt of feedback. But it continued to film, angled up enough to record the transfer; Theron dropping the child roughly into CaLarca's arms, her knees collapsing under the weight, the boy clawing at CaLarca's braids.
In the background, Sydel saw another silhouette emerge, stumbling closer: a man with grey-streaked hair, and hollow grooves in his cheeks.
"Ganasan!" came CaLarca’s shriek.
In the corne
r of the frame, Sydel saw Theron's profile, dark with disgust. He was reaching into his pocket.
The Lissome shook, and CaLarca was screaming.
Then the video cut, and there was nothing but static.
Cohen was the first to break the silence. "I don't get it. Those two hate each other. And was that her partner and kid? The ones being dragged out?"
"Yes," Sydel said faintly.
"So, Theron sent in guys to save CaLarca's family," Cohen pieced together. "But then he did something to incapacitate them. Why would he do that?"
Sydel glanced at Phaira. The woman was muttering to herself, running her hands through her blue hair again and again. The energy in the hut was taut and vibrating.
No, not just in here, she realized. Something’s happening outside.
She turned to the door, stretching out with her mind, dreading what she might see in the distance.
Something was approaching the valley.
She couldn't get a sense of who it was, but it was a mass of several bodies moving like a swarm, full of determination and aggression.
A strike of fear went through her. Maybe Theron Sava had sent his men to the valley, just as he had done on the video. Was he really so evil? She never thought that of him, but that video showed a different man than she remembered.
“Someone is coming,” she announced to the others. “We need to go.”
The sunlight was blinding. Cohen's warm hand pressed into the small of her back. Phaira’s blue head and broad shoulders were in front of her, approaching the crowd that had gathered at the edge of the valley, a sea of scalps and loose hair and straight spines.
"Phaira Lore!"
Phaira skidded to a stop, so abrupt that Sydel ricocheted off the woman’s back with a thump, and only stayed upright with Cohen’s help.
Every head in the crowd turned to stare at them.
Then the residents began to part, stepping aside to create a long divide to the village gate, where a dark cluster of people waited.
Part Three
I.
Under Anandi's direction, the hacktivist group turned super-collective, the Hitodama, had shifted its focus. Instead of individual searches for random information, Hitodama members were now focused on one thing: the Sava Syndicate; what it was doing; how they could stop what they were doing, and how could they dismantle it for good.
Hitodama members worked daily on a variety of tasks: scrambling communications; intercepting messages and shifting them slightly to cause confusion; taking inventory of all Sava-related businesses and persons in Osha; monitoring active bounty contracts; and, most importantly, tracking where Theron Sava was every day since that video was released of the Galee ambush. Anandi’s Lissome was a near-constant buzz of information and pixels. The speed of the feedback often correlated to major activity happening within the Savas. But there was little information, unfortunately, when it came to Theron Sava. She caught glimmers of where he was, and who he was speaking to, but he was good at hiding his movements.
Leaning in her deep pink chair, Anandi flicked her finger to expand the pixelated picture she’d just been forwarded. That familiar dark head ducking under a door, his long black hair always tied back with red cord, like some stupid monk.
It was still surreal, equating the stories told with the boy she remembered as a child, when they were forced to ‘play’ together during family meetings. With such an age difference between the two, eight years at least, there was no shared interest. So instead, they just orbited each other, distracting themselves with books, eavesdropping (a mutual interest, it turned out), and peppering each other with uncomfortable, sometimes offensive questions, just to see who could make the other flinch. Theron was skinny and tall, even back then, with that straight black hair falling in his face, his features too big for his face, his eyes dyed to the golden Sava shade since the day he arrived at his grandfather's house. He was weirdly obsessive about certain things, movies, or characters in books, watching the same things again and again. She saw him teased relentlessly by his cousins, Keller, Xanto and Kadise; even though they were all the same age, they still treated him like a joke. And he took the abuse, always. Anandi couldn’t remember a time when he ever fought back. Instead, she noted evidence of outbursts in the house, when she managed to break away and wander. A hole punched in the wall. A chair, legs broken, in the corner.
Theron even had a seizure once, in front of her, and it scared her so badly she almost wet herself. She had run over, pushed down his shoulders, tried to hold his head as it jerked back and forth, and hollered for help. Instead of rushing over, Anandi remembered how the adults’ heads turned, and how their faces showed embarrassment, instead of panic. Eventually, the household staff came over, working with silent expertise to remove Theron from view, leaving Anandi on her knees, wondering what she just witnessed.
How strange, Anandi thought, swiveling in her chair, bringing up her legs to cross on the cushion. How strange the way things turn out, how we have circled back to each other, but this time, each of us with power. How odd that stealing secrets had led her to this point.
"I wish you'd share with me what you’ve found." Her father was fond of saying to her, when she had a moment to breathe, and he snuck up on her. "I can never tell what you're thinking anymore. You're so sad all the time."
No, Anandi thought, dissolving the image of Theron Sava in her mind. Not sad, but not as carefree as I once was. Once pretended to be. Everything in the past few months had sobered her positivity, to the point where she couldn't quite remember what it was to just laugh, without wondering who might overhear.
Maybe it was a part of growing up, something Anandi had been determined never to do. She wanted to be travelling, untethered, until her likely death at thirty (she could never picture herself past the age of thirty, for whatever reason). She turned down numerous job offers in her teenage years for that reason. She'd dragged her father all over Osha for that reason.
Now everything was different, since the Hitodama had come to Anandi for leadership, in the wake of the fears that shivered over Osha every day. The members of the Hitodama were all hungry for purpose, men and women, young and old alike, Anandi discovered. They all wanted to be productive, and hold true to their forward-thinking beliefs.
And what better project to disassemble than the archaic, outdated system that was the Sava Syndicate?
But being a leader did not come easily to Anandi. She spent many hours contemplating running away. Surely, there was someone more suited to this leadership position. She got drunk; she complained to whoever was still awake in her bed; she made threats to expose the Hitodama to the public; she made motions to smash every Lissome she owned, but always stopped before the final blow.
And when she could, Anandi stole away from visibility, looking for guidance in the most unlikely place she could have imagined.
By all accounts, she was the only visitor that Lander had anymore. Even the other Hitodama, the ones that Lander used to lead and command, they all steered clear. Was that her future, too? Forever replaceable?
“Before I bring him out,” the nurse said, a new one, Anandi noted, with a suspicious eye, “I need to register you at the front desk.”
Anandi unzipped the cargo-pants pocket on her thigh, and withdrew the passport, stamped with a blurry photo of a blue-haired woman, labeled as Mala, Ikani. In retrospect, she wondered why she ever thought she could pass for Phaira; all it would take is a concentrated look at the picture. But it was all she had, and she presented it to the nurse, who looked down with a frown and back again.
“Is there a problem?” Anandi asked.
“Not at all,” the nurse said, handing back the passport. “Are you a relative, or a friend?”
“Relative.” It was easier to say that. “I’m here every week.”
“Sorry, I’m new,” the nurse said, though her clipped tone didn’t suggest an apology.
“Any updates?” Anandi asked. “The last time I was here, the
doctor said that there were some improvements?”
“Well, his motor function was still a concern, and speech, but his brain activity seemed to be increasing in complexity. But he’s taken a downturn, unfortunately. His behavior has grown erratic. I’m afraid that the doctor has chosen to postpone plans to release him at this time, until we determine what’s gone wrong.”
“That’s sad to hear,” Anandi said quietly.
The nurse handed back her passport. “I know. But please, enjoy your visit.” The nurse gestured at her coworker, who was pushing Lander’s wheelchair down the hallway.
“How are you, Lander?” Anandi called out, sliding the passport back into her pocket. “I hope you don’t mind another visit from boring me.”
Lander lolled his head at her, and smiled with only one half of his face. His hair had grown out, long and black and shaggy around his face. He’d grown thinner, too.
“How’s that new nurse?” she asked when they were alone. “Treating you decent? Seems like a big pain.”
One shoulder rose and fell. Lander’s eyes narrowed at her, asking a question without saying a word: What are you doing here? There was a trace of old haughtiness in those piercing eyes, like he used to be, when she was playing pretend at being a Hitodama. How long ago that seemed.
“Not much has changed since last week,” Anandi told him. “But we’ve managed to stop some shipments and scramble some communications. Everyone is working really hard. I just hope I’m doing the right thing. Telling them to do the right thing.”
The shoulder lifted and fell again.
“You’re right,” Anandi agreed. “Who can say what’s right? Everyone does terrible things, including me. There’s a line that crosses somewhere. I wish it was clearer sometimes.”
Lander was staring at her, his head shaking in tight little bursts.
“You’re safe,” Anandi soothed him. “No one is going to touch you.”
“NINE,” Lander spat the words.
“They aren’t here,” Anandi said, rubbing his arm. “They won’t find you, I promise.”