The far wall of the studio had been knocked down to make space for a full kitchen and a bathroom. Render was working over a pot of soup on the stove, the table already laid with platters of food and a crystal pitcher of gently bubbling soda. Mal's stomach growled from missed dinner, and she couldn't even resent Lou for it: the food in front of her looked far more appetizing than what had been served in the mess hall. She drifted closer, so preoccupied with whether she could eat enough to last her the week that she almost didn’t notice her camera sitting unguarded on the corner of the table.
She glanced at Render, still focused on his work, and silently crept closer. The advancer clicked happily as she thumbed the lever out of habit, checking if she still had film to spare—
“I seem to remember you promising to smash any camera I put into your hands,” Render said, not turning around as he tossed something over his left shoulder — salt. “Or have you softened?”
She hurriedly placed the camera back on the table and stepped away, head drooping in submission. “I’ll be your photographer again, on one condition.” She hoped her unmitigated gall would carry her through the negotiations, since she had already given up half of her cards and wasn't confident that she could pull this off even with a full hand.
Render laughed. “I could just reinstate you, now that you’re so willing.”
She bit her lip, and offered, “I’ll be pleasant about it if you put Twenty-One back on the floor with us.”
He paused and turned to look at her, the pot abandoned for the moment. “Twenty-One? After what she did to my employee?”
At this point, she wouldn’t care if Gwenh had killed him. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, meeting his gaze head-on. “It wasn’t her fault. She was only trying to protect me.” She held eye contact for just a moment, before biting her lip and looking away, coaching herself to look afraid. “He said he wanted to hear me scream.”
The pot bubbled aggressively; he turned back to the stove to lower the heat, his movements stilted as he processed the story. Almost hesitantly, he asked, “And Anthony?”
“What about him?”
“He threatened you. I assume you want him to face some repercussions?”
“He’s learned his lesson.” If he faced disciplinary action now, he would know exactly who snitched. “I just want Twenty-One back: she won't be violent, if I’m there to help her.”
He dropped a handful of green things into the pot. “You called her Gwenh.”
Her adrenaline had crashed hours ago, but now it came roaring back — here she was, faced with the man who had kept Gwenh hostage all these years, playing nice. All she had to do was take the knife from the table and carve out Render’s heart, excise his presence from this city like the tumour it was—
She pulled the glasses off of her head, staring down at the smudged and scratched lenses, the plastic frames opaque with age. As much as it burned her, she couldn't kill him yet: she needed to wait for a better opportunity, where Gwenh was within reach and a quick escape could follow. “I thought she was dead. I thought it was my fault.”
He braced his hands on the counter with a sigh, craning his head to look at her. “I know you must hate me, keeping her here all these years," he said wearily. "But you have to understand that we have a duty of care to our workers, and we're not going to turn someone out onto the street who needs our help."
"What kind of help could she possibly need from you?"
"She's been very sick, almost from the moment we took her in. We’ve tried every drug program and dosing schedule that might help her symptoms, we've shipped in specialists in fields I'd never heard of, but none of it makes a dent.”
"What are the symptoms?" She couldn't pretend to make a diagnosis, but maybe she could make a guess.
"Paranoid hallucinations and delusions, mostly, which with her personality manifests with significant aggression. We see it very often in Untouchables — typically after many years of drug and alcohol abuse."
Her fingers curled tightly around her glasses, just shy of cracking the plastic, but she told herself not to waste time jumping on the defensive: even if every Untouchable was clean and sane, he would find a way to twist it into inferiority. “You should release her to her family — they can help her readjust."
“But we have the superior medicine, as I’m sure you know.” He picked up a ladle and nodded for her to sit down. “No shop-talk during dinner.”
Her resolve wasn’t strong enough to resist the bowl of creamy soup placed before her, nor the lamb chops served with a buttery, herby sauce and a side of spicy greens that followed. She barely tasted it at the speed she was eating, but when she set down her plate — licked-clean, just like the bowl — she was still beset with hunger, longing for the potato-mushroom stew that Jay would make when she and her cousins were small, the pickled sides Baba would serve alongside to cut through the richness.
The moment Render finished his food — several agonizing minutes later — she asked, “Why did you take her?”
“Pragmatism.” His tone was plain, no trace of pride or regret. He took a bread roll and passed the basket to her. “The same reason I allowed the HYAS to stay: I can’t afford to turn away opportunities when they come knocking, be it an extra set of hands or a body that someone will pay to repatriate.”
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, and she pried her hand from the edge of the table to grab a bread roll, hoping to hide how her fingernails cut into her palm. “Is that why you took me in?” The bread was warm and fragrant, even as her clenching fingers pierced through the crust.
“No.” He shook his head with a quiet laugh, and he nodded to the portraits lining the walls. “I recognized your camera — it belonged to my wife. I bought it for her as a wedding gift.”
She peered again at the portraits, feeling unsettled and exposed by this confirmation of a common thread between them. Though her father had worked on the Pinta from the day he turned twelve to the age of nineteen, he rarely talked about his days in construction, or the people he had known: Mal had no way of knowing if he remembered the shipyard sketch artist, if they had been close, how much Render might know about Mal's family through his wife. Was he coming to same conclusions as she was, that the camera had likely been traded for River's ticket aboard the Pinta? “What happened to her?”
His shoulders rose and fell with a deep sigh. “Twenty-five years ago, she asked how I would feel about boarding the Ellison; I told her I would rather she save me the slow, lingering death and just shoot me in the head. I asked her if she was really willing to leave me behind, and she said that there was nothing I could do to stop her.” He laughed to himself, though the sound was less mirth and more self-pity. He folded his hands together and sighed. “I reacted poorly, but can you blame me for that?"
Morbid curiosity had her prodding further: "And then what happened?"
"I tried to keep her from leaving, that night. I barred the exists, I had a friend take our son somewhere secure to keep him from seeing his mother like that, and to slow her down if she managed to escape — but I wasn't expecting her to cut and run so easily." He delicately brushed his thumb under his left eye. "I should have dosed her food. She never would have forgiven me, but I could have learned to live with it."
His expression was one she recognized from the mirror with some revulsion, and still, she couldn't resist digging deeper: “Why don’t you follow her? You have all the seats you want — you could go to her.”
He sat quietly for a moment, before heaving another deep sigh. “Do you put much stock in dreams?"
"A little." Certainly not as much as Tai-Song or Gwenh would, given that she could barely remember them half the time. "What do you dream about?"
"Her, lately. Twenty-four years of perfect sleep, and now every night I relive the last conversation we had: I hear her say that her own child means nothing to her, that she never loved me, that I was just a means to an end. Laugh if you like, but I'm a superstitious man. I think she must be dead, if she can finally make time to torment me after all these years.”
She bit down on the observation that he was thinking too highly of himself, if he truly believed that his ex-wife’s immortal soul had nothing better to do than haunt his dreams. He shook his head and continued:
“And really, what’s actually up there, for people like us? On Proxima, I would be a minor celebrity in a small town, but here, I’m the king of kings. Why on Earth should I give that up, even if she was alive?” His tone was placid as his gaze settled somewhere distant and no longer in the room. For a moment, he looked exactly his age, an old man lost in his past with a voice steeped in decades of white-hot resentment. “She made a mockery of our vows, sold all of her possessions for a ticket aboard the Ellison, abandoned her family in the dead of night — why should I chase after a woman like that?”
Mal stayed as still as possible, wondered what she could say to gracefully exit the conversation, but before long Render's mood switched like a light; he was suddenly manic, standing up to energetically collect the empty dishes with an unnerving smile on his face.
“Thank you for indulging an old man, Miss Y — you’re free to go and rest now. I’ll make things right with your Gwenh.”
***
The moment she stepped into the hall, a narrow hand wrapped around her elbow and pulled her aside, and she only just restrained herself from punching the boy-worker in the face.
"Get off—" She tugged herself free and tried to calm her racing heart so her voice wouldn’t shake, and stuck out her hand. “I don't know your name. I’m Mal — 2112.”
“Navy Crane, 2302-12.” He didn’t shake her hand, and she let it fall back to her side. “It doesn’t matter how well you know her — you have to leave Twenty-One alone, when she comes back.”
She pursed her lips and told herself to go slowly — if she made this particular kid cry, it would be even harder to gain back anyone’s trust. “Why?”
He glanced around surreptitiously and lowered his voice. “There was this guy, came through here last week and was hounding her like she owed him money: she had him gone in two days.”
Her eyes narrowed; Isaiah had been telling lies. “The guy — Chinese, black-and-white hair?" She hovered her hand about a foot over her head. "Yea high?"
“That’s him — 2110-12. He came with the HYAS.”
Relief was poisoned with dread: it was just her luck that the drone was involved. “And you saw her attack Tai-Song?”
He shook his head. “We went to bed, all of us. The next morning, the two of them and the HYAS were gone. He hasn’t been back since — Isaiah says he's probably gone for good.”
Annoyance violently clashed into the dread-and-relief — Tai-Song always had a talent for personally inconveniencing her. “How long has it been?”
“Almost a week. Standard punishment only takes three days.”
“What's the standard punishment?”
“I don't know— I've never had the pleasure.”
Her jaw clenched at the circular, dead-end nature of the conversation, and told herself that it was her own fault for interrogating a teenager. She’d have to pin Isaiah down later and demand whatever information he had — the truth, this time. It would have to wait until Gwenh came back, but hopefully Tai-Song wouldn’t resent her for it; ideally, he’d never find out, but even if he did he'd understand that Gwenh would always need more help. She loosened her teeth and tried to think of something to say, something that would set Navy at ease and make him see her as a friend.
“How old are you?”
“Old enough.”
“You’re young, to be an Untouchable in Midtown.”
“Good thing I’m not an Untouchable, then.” He said the words with the venom of a Midtowner. “Mister Render’s people found me wandering around Astoria when I was three. They think my parents left me for dead.”
She bit back the urge to assure him that they almost certainly had not — it was a knee-jerk reaction she couldn’t afford to give into, not when she needed him to regard her as a friend. “I’m sorry. It must be hard, not knowing where you came from.”
“This floor raised me: that’s all I really need. Besides, I have a better life here than I would have had out there.”
Again, she had to choose her words carefully. “I grew up in that time. Places we’d lived in for decades — places like Astoria — were being claimed as Midtown territory, and we were driven out. A lot of us died trying to stand our ground; maybe your parents were like them.”
“And maybe they weren’t.” He was growing tense. “Maybe Mister Render is right, and they abandoned me.”
“And what does Mister Render have to gain by telling you otherwise?”
The door to the studio suddenly opened, startling her as Render stepped through, carrying a stack of dishes and looking mildly surprised to see her — it didn’t seem as though he had been listening, thankfully. “Did I not say goodnight, Miss Y?”
She cleared her throat. “Sorry, sorry, I was just talking to Navy.”
His expression changed slightly as he turned to the boy in question — losing some warmth, becoming slightly more stern. “That reminds me,” he said, digging into his jacket pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. He handed it over to Navy with all the weight of a disappointed parent. “The cost of repairing that conveyor will be coming out of your wages.”
With a bitten lip to keep it from trembling, Navy snatched the paper out of his hand and quickly walked away, head down and shoulders stiff. Mal tried to protest on his behalf, “I didn’t mean to—“
“Perhaps on the way back to your bunks,” Render told her, nodding after Navy. “Run along, now.”
Mal couldn't help but fretfully look back as she scurried away: he stood there watching them until they turned the corner and left his sight, wearing an expression of stern disapproval. She had the sense she had pushed some boundary, broken some unspoken rule, but her head was beginning to ache too much for any of that — she tiredly pushed her glasses up and out of the way, the motion clumsy with her sprained-stiff wrist. Navy didn’t relax for another two left turns, and when he spoke it was clear that he had merely swapped fear for anger.
“You’ve cozied up fast. Were you a scarlet woman, before this?”
It took her a moment to decode what he meant, both in words and manner of insult — Untouchables didn’t euphemize professions like Midtowners did, and it seemed that those who sold sex for a living were much better respected for it. It was certainly much safer than many other jobs, so long as one didn’t cater to Midtowners, but Midtowners themselves clearly maintained a veneer of being above these things. “I was an undertaker," she replied, without thinking.
“Oh.” It was clear that he regretted asking, and she couldn’t even pretend to regret her sharp honesty; it gave him a chance to forget that she had caused him some trouble, after all. “I can’t imagine touching dead bodies all the time.”
“We help people go on their last journey with dignity.” Squeamishness was better than being treated like a bad omen, but both were easily enough dismissed with a small lie — as much as she wanted him to squirm, she didn’t actually want to ice out a potential ally. “It's good work, but I mostly help out at a clinic, these days.”
He shook his head, seeming uncomfortable with the very concept of death. “There’s talk that we might be close to extending life through cryogenic freezing,” he offered. “That’s what I’m gonna do, when I’m older.”
It was her turn to be squeamish. She wanted nothing to do with interrupting the flow of nature, cleaving death away from life as though it was something to be discarded like trash — but again the conversation required her to stifle her revulsion. “Room for all, I suppose.”
He picked up on her distaste, and took no care to hide his own as he turned to face her. “And what do you want? To die at thirty-five, like everyone else?”
He was blocking the door into the bunks, and despite all the avenues of escape she felt cornered. She used to be at peace with dying young, though she hoped for at least enough time to give Clover the tools to move through life on her own. But that was then: here and now, it was a painful reminder that her final wishes — cremation, a swift burial, her loved ones present to see her off — wouldn’t be respected, or possible. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly, reeling her vulnerabilities back into her chest where they belonged. “Not anymore.”
He grimaced remorsefully at her sadness, and his voice was so soft that it was barely audible: “Are you going home?”
She looked away. “Not with you. Render promised me a seat.”
“What makes you think he’ll follow through?”
She clenched her jaw, not willing to admit that her reasoning relied heavily on hunch. “What about Twenty-One?”
“Isaiah hasn’t told her.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise her — Navy was probably the only one who felt guilty about it. “How do you plan on getting her out, when the time comes?”
“That’s up to him.” He stepped away from the door, turning to go back to the lounge. “Don’t say anything. She’s a weak link, and we can’t afford anyone talking.”
She scowled as he walked away, slipping into the empty bunks and slamming the door behind her. She turned to the room at large, finding it empty and ripe for a search: Gwenh's bed was just past her own, so the empty bunk above the war drone’s bed had to be Tai-Song’s. She still had hope for his return, despite Navy’s conclusions: if he was truly gone, his bedding would have been stripped and remade for a new resident. She darted over and crouched down, starting with the space under the lower bed; finding nothing, she scanned over the walls for loose tiles and climbed up the ladder to check the mattress for a stitched-up hiding place. Still nothing, even on the underside. She let the mattress drop with a huff of disappointment, peering at the ceiling and considering whether Tai-Song could have reached it: it turned out not to matter, since her stretching fingers couldn't even come close. As she climbed down, she spotted a familiar shape tucked between the drone’s mattress and headboard: a yellow screwdriver with Tai-Song’s initials burned into the handle.
As she pulled it free from the gap to take a closer look, the door slowly clicked open with a hauntingly familiar whir. She was back under the covers of her own bed in the span of a second, peeking through one squinted eye as the drone walked unevenly past her bed, dragging its unresponsive left leg behind it, the protective plates at its joints blackened with scorch-marks. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as she saw the screwdriver on the floor beside its bed — her muscles tensed, preparing to throw the blanket back and race for the door. Maybe, if she got a head-start, she could make it out to the hallway before getting maimed—
It stooped to pick up the tool before she could commit, and didn't spare her a second glance as it turned and fell onto its bed, the two-inch orange square still faintly glowing from its chest. With a stuttering whir it positioned its dead leg to better access its inner thigh, using the screwdriver and brute force to pry open the inset panel. It clicked rapidly as though in pain as it combed through the wires and repaired some loose connections; once the panel was sealed back up, its good leg kicked open one of the drawers to retrieve a loose shirt, drawstring pants, and moulded shoes. Every movement seemed so uncanny as it stood to clumsily dress itself — she wasn’t sure whether she preferred this or the robotic drones she remembered, where it was clear that the thing trying to kill you was not a person.
Once repaired and redressed, the drone shuffled around to face the headboard, humming a familiar lullaby as it set the edge of the screwdriver to its forearm and began to etch. The scratching was quiet but insidious — Mal shifted inch by inch until her back was pressed against the cool brick wall, watching the drone with unwavering focus. Until the others began to turn in for the night, she would keep her eyes open and on the drone.