Eleven Days To Launch
In the morning, the air between them was still delicate and tender, like a pulled muscle that needed rest and gentle stretching; by mutual, silent agreement, Gwenh's touch was limited to a hand on Mal's elbow as they drifted through the work of harvesting, and Mal only asked the questions that could be answered in one syllable or less. It felt like the hardest part was over with: things were still raw, still not quite where they ought to be, but it was easier to believe that they'd get there, somehow.
After two hours, the group moved on from the orchard and entered a packing plant. The temperature inside was several degrees colder as the group lined up along the rows of conveyors, and it became impossible to ignore that they were being carefully watched by the rest of the workers, half of them craning their necks to keep them in sight. Mal ducked her head and tried to focus on the work in front of her, sorting out bruised or spoiled fruit from the belt as they churned by — it was much easier to spot the bad specimens with her new glasses, but she kept misjudging depth and accidentally punching the conveyor belt. Even as she got into the rhythm of it, her attention was split between the work and Gwenh’s shaking hands. She had been in good-if-quiet spirits throughout the morning, more herself with her hair pulled away from her face and off of her neck, but it seemed her mood was turning more irritable by the second. She seemed sluggish too, despite her double-portioned breakfast-plus-cigarette.
Mal leaned over to press her shoulder against hers. "How are you doing?"
Gwenh glanced at her with disdainfully squinted eyes, and replied in equally disdainful Welsh. It was hard not to ascribe meaning to the sharply-worded syllables, an educated guess based on tone and the rhythm of the question: what do you think, genius?
She shook her head. "You never did teach me Welsh, you know."
Gwenh grimaced and waved her off dismissively as she went back to work. In all likelihood, she was just griping about how she always had to speak English, or that her cigarettes were weaker than normal, or that her stomach hurt, but Mal's cheeks still burned, first with prickling irritation and then with embarrassment at how slighted she felt for being left out of the loop. Most days, the childish need to know everything was a sore spot that she could tamp down, even as something in her mind would always petulantly screech that it wasn't fair, that business should be discussed in a language she could understand — it was a deep-seated flaw that could not be excised, only planned around with strategic language acquisition. Today, her stomach was a yawning pit of incendiary frustration, in no small part because it was Gwenh holding something over her head, and it was Welsh she still had no grasp of.
"Fine, be that way, then," she snapped, crossing her arms and turning away, the words coming out in Kanien'kéha. "Not like I actually want to talk to you, or anything."
Gwenh's stunned silence needed no translation, but she soon recovered; she stifled a shocked laugh and stepping closer to poke Mal on the cheek, her tone turning on its head to become cajoling and mock-plaintive.
"No," Mal replied, still in Kanien'kéha, fending her off as she tried to wrap herself around her like an octopus. "I'm trying to get us out of here, and you're fucking around with me just like always—"
Gwenh burst out laughing, reaching past her batting hands to tap her nose. "I forgot how you scrunch up when you're mad," she told her breathlessly. Mal glared at her, and her grin fell into something a little kinder as she gave her some space. “Come on, Mal — can you forgive me?” She plucked the older glasses off of her head and tried them on, her wide eyes comically magnified behind the scratched lenses. Mal's heart nearly punched out of her chest at the sight, thrown back in time to watch a pretty girl put on her glasses to read a scribbled-down set-list, arguing with her middle brother over the opening number. “You already have old-lady eyes, you don't need to hold old-lady grudges."
"I'll hold a grudge if I damn well please,” she replied absently, hand automatically extended for the return, but Gwenh only grinned and held the glasses just out of reach. Normally, Mal wouldn't entertain the game at all and would end it with a swift kick to the shins, but letting her play keep-away would delay further badgering about when she would finally approach the drone, and they were Gwenh’s glasses, anyway; she could decide what she wanted to do with them. “I'm owed that, since my eyes are even worse now — those ones stopped working for me last year.”
“Sucks to be you.” She grew bored of the game and tried to hand them back; Mal's hands twitched toward them out of habit, before she remembered herself.
“They’re yours, remember?”
Gwenh froze, confusion flashing across her face before she gave herself a shake and slid the glasses back onto Mal's head. “Not anymore. My eyes are perfect.” She turned away quickly to light her next cigarette, before Mal could bring herself to ask for an explanation. The cherry sizzled as she look a long, continuous drag — when she paused for breath, she was halfway-down to the filter. “God, I love ration day.”
“Let me have one,” Mal said, holding out her hand. A territorial look passed over Gwenh’s face before she handed over the carton, and she watched like a hawk as Mal tapped a cigarette into her hand. “I found something weird in your last batch—“
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gwenh said, her voice on the edge of too-sharp as she snatched back the carton and stuffed it into her right-side pocket. "They're always like that."
The cigarette in her hand was dry and papery, no powder collecting in the fine lines of her palm. She lifted it to her nose as Gwenh chain-lit her next cigarette, detecting none of the unidentifiably foul herb she had noticed the day before. She couldn't say whether that was good or bad, just that it made her wary. “Maybe you should slow down, anyway.”
Gwenh grinned at her, snatching up an apple from the conveyor belt and taking a bite in between puffs. “Maybe you should check your pocket.”
She became aware of the weight on her hip as Gwenh's eyes darted down to it, and found a small apple tucked inside her pocket. She glanced up at the camera on the ceiling, trying to figure out how and when as she placed it back on the belt. “Aren’t you afraid of getting in trouble?”
“Why should I be?” She took another bite and frowned, turning her head to spit out her substandard mouthful into the garbage chute. The sound of the waste cut Mal deeply. “My best friend was born with a camera glued to her face — a terrible deformity, I know, but one learns how to step out of frame.”
Mal looked down, not-quite-chastened but not-quite-forgiven, either. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel uncomfortable, or exploited.”
“What are you apologizing to me for? I liked having my picture taken.”
“Some of my old photos ended up on the Database.” The conveyor belt rasped against her raw fingertips, scraping the top layer off of her knuckles when her hand turned. “Some people caught files, because I was too selfish to risk missing out on a good photo.”
“Your photography never struck me as selfish,” she replied, bemused, and stuffed another apple into Mal's pocket. “Where did your photos of me go, after I got lost?”
“I kept one.” She had it in a special case, tucked into a secret pocket of her duffel bag where she could be sure to never lose track of it, or accidentally look at it. Of the rest, she had given half to Goose and half to Rowan — Rowan’s hands had shaken violently as he flipped through the negatives, before reaching for the bottle of whisky they had been sharing between them. Upon finding it empty, he had thrown it against the floor with a snarl, and had burst into tears when Mal flinched and drew up her feet from the mess of shards. She had left him to his miasmic grief not long after, promising him that she would return the next day, unsure if she would be brave enough to follow through; the following morning, his body had been pulled from the bay, and not even Mal could say whether it had been an accident.
She tucked the truth behind her teeth with a grimace — Gwenh was confused enough without the bombshell that her last brother was almost nine years dead, it made better sense not to bring it up. It would only be until she saw the grave for herself, though Mal would spare her the pain forever if she could. “I gave the rest away — so everyone had something to remember you by.”
“See, that’s just kindness. Maybe it’s selfish, sometimes — but everything becomes a selfish indulgence, eventually. If it helps people feel close to each other along the way, doesn’t that make up for it?”
"Doesn't make up for the fact that my photos put people in danger." The film had been hidden somewhere safer than her shoe these past few days, but she could still feel the phantom rub of it against her ankle.
"Sure, if you want to look at it that way — but I know you wouldn't have uploaded them, and the people who let you take their photos understood the risks, right?"
"We barely cared, the chances were so small."
"But the chances were still there, and you were careful. People are allowed to take risks with their safety, your responsibility for that ended when you trusted them with their own negatives." Gwenh reached over and lightly pinched her bicep. Her hands were still shaking, but her grip-strength had improved since last night. "Don't borrow trouble, it's bad for your heart."
Mal hummed absently, sweeping her attention over the room as she came up with a counter-argument. Most people's gazes darted away, some more subtly than others, but in the corner Claudia was staring directly back at her with narrowed eyes. As soon as their eyes met, Claudia straightened up from her post and start walking toward them.
Mal sighed, and nudged Gwenh's arm to warn her — she had been hoping to make it through the whole day without trouble. “Who’s she going to take, you think?”
“Probably you, for stealing all that fruit.” Despite her easy tone, Gwenh was frozen in place like a statue, her nostrils flared and her brow pinched with worry.
“Jackass.” Mal lifted her chin to address Claudia as she approached, not missing how her hand seemed glued to her baton. “She hasn’t done anything — I can vouch for her.”
“It’s you he wants to see, 2112.”
“Uh, no.” Mal heroically resisted the urge to throw an apple at Gwenh's head when she snorted at the firm refusal. “I’m— I’m burnt out, I need a break. I won’t do good work.”
Claudia's lip curled. “His guests are waiting. I’m sure you can handle a couple of hours.”
“Piss off, Claudia.” Gwenh’s voice was as sharp as ever, though the effect of it was neutered by her hunched, defensive posture — she looked like a bristling cat. “Tell him this—“
Claudia cut her off with a single button-push on her drawn baton, letting out a threatening crackle of electricity. “I think you’re forgetting who has the power here, Twenty-One. Back off, or I’ll find you another floor to work on.”
Gwenh’s mouth snapped shut as she shrank away from the threat, eyes losing their defiance behind a cloud of fear and panic. The lunch bell rang shrilly over their heads; she took the opportunity to turn and run, leaving Mal to fend for herself. Claudia snorted at the sight, and Mal gritted her teeth, willing herself not to invite unequivocal punishment by punching a guard. Her hands shook as she dipped into her pocket, plucking out the scrips she had been saving for Gwenh's new diet plan: two in all, not much to trade with and almost certainly not enough for this particular favour, but she held them out to Claudia anyway, hoping her anger wasn't as obvious as it felt. "Let me stay with her. Tell him I’ve been throwing up all morning.”
Claudia silently considered Mal's offer, head tilting thoughtfully as her musing stretching to the point of absurdity; she finally shrugged and took the entirety of her meagre wealth, movements agonizingly slow as she smoothed the paper between her fingers to check for counterfeiting, before folding them in half and slipping them into her vest. Finally, with her hand back on her baton, she jerked her head to the door. Everyone else had already filed out for lunch. “You’d better go after her.”
Mal scowled and took off, cursing her slowness as she raced over to the crowd gathered by the picnic tables: the longer Gwenh was alone, the easier it would be for someone to take her away. She raised onto her toes to try and see past the throng of people, and spotted Gwenh on the other side of the gardens, a pair of pruning shears still sticking out of her back pocket, head bowed and shoulders drawn in as Anthony berated her. Small, indistinct alarm bells began to ring in her mind, set off by the odd set of Gwenh's shoulders and the way her fists rhythmically curled and released, but before she could rush over and intervene, a hand latched onto her shoulder and tethered her in place.
Isaiah wore a smile that dripped with forced friendliness. “I was just looking for you. I was hoping you could carry a message to the second, eighth, and fifteenth floors.” He held out a handful of fruits she didn’t recognize — berries, maybe. Was that the message, or the payment?
“Ask me later,” she said distractedly, shrugging away from him and continuing to push through the crowd, only half-succeeding. She gritted her teeth as she bounced off yet another unmoving body; Gwenh's posture was only growing tenser as Anthony loomed over her, and it would be inconvenient to have to wait another three days if she tried to claw out his eyes again.
Isaiah was following close at her shoulder, close enough to make her feel claustrophobic. “I'm afraid it can’t wait—“
“I’m really busy right now.” Anthony had unlocked a side of Gwenh seldom-seen: instead of bristling with anger and bracing for a hit, Gwenh's arms had crossed tightly around her ribs as she folded in on herself, face stricken and anxious, eyes threatening to well over as she stared at her feet. He dismissed her with a stern nod, and her shoulders were almost around her ears as she turned away and retreated from the altercation like a frightened animal. Still, she wasn't fast enough — Anthony had no trouble stepping in behind her to steal the cigarettes out of her pocket, glancing around for onlookers before he stuffed the carton into his vest.
The crowd seemed to be mobilizing to block Mal's path in as many directions as possible, preventing her from moving forward no matter how hard she pushed. She watched helplessly as Gwenh reached for her pocket, watched her face turn from upset to confused to incandescent when she found her ration missing, watched as her eyes lifted to scan over the room, clouded with something frightening. Her focus slid past Mal to snag hatefully on Isaiah, and the confusion was replaced with sneering rage as she stormed toward them, carving through the crowd like a knife through butter.
A gap opened in the crowd between them, and Mal took her chance. She threw her entire body behind the task of tackling her to the ground, and found that when taken by surprise, in an altered state, and outweighed by at least thirty pounds, Gwenh was prone to fighting dirty. After a wild struggle, only just managing to stay on top while dodging her snapping teeth and grappling legs, Mal managed to pin her wrists to her chest and hold her down. Her voice was raw from shouting her name, trying to reach her beyond the thick haze clouding her vision: she had nothing left when Gwenh suddenly broke free and surged upward, taking Mal by the shoulders and slamming her down into the soft dirt. While she was gasping for breath and trying to clear the ringing from her ears, Gwenh had launched herself at Isaiah, pruning shears raised high.
By the time the guards intervened, the wounds in Isaiah's torso were too many to count, each jagged hole weeping a startling mix of deep red and black. Gwenh screamed and snarled as Lou wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back in a flurry of kicking feet and clenched fists. She craned her neck to take a bloody bite out of his arm, but even when he dropped her she didn't get far: with one strike of Claudia's cattle-prod she was on the floor, body wracked with electricity, jaw clenched painfully tight as the whites of her eyes bloomed with broken blood vessels, a convulsing scream trapped behind her bloodstained teeth. Mal watched until she couldn't, and in the chaos no one noticed as she crawled to Isaiah’s side, pulling his head into her lap and taking his hand. "Stay still."
“What's happened?” Blood was pooling in his mouth, spilling from the corners of his lips as he spoke. His eyes were darting back and forth over her face, too fast to be taking in the details, and he seemed unable to gather oxygen no matter how deeply or quickly he heaved for air. She looked over his wounds once more, for as long as she could stomach: left side of the gut, both sides of the chest, several directly over his heart, one in his right shoulder. It was only a matter of minutes before the blood loss or the organ failure killed him — no one would be summoning a Midtown doctor to save an Untouchable's life. "Has something happened?"
“You're dying,” she whispered, bending down so he could hear her voice as she committed his face to memory, inscribing his name against the inside of her ribs. There was too much overwhelming detail; she pulled off her glasses and hooked them onto the collar of her shirt, reaching again for his wrist. She squeezed his hand as she tracked his pulse, trying to offer some comfort like Baba had done for thousands of others; she couldn't be sure that she was delivering. “You don’t have much time left — is there anything you want me to pass along?”
“You’re— you’re a healer,” he said hopefully, eyes still darting over her face, more sluggishly now. Blood trickled down his neck, and he kept smacking his lips as though his mouth was dry. “You can help me.”
She shook her head, suddenly incandescently angry with her past self for planting this seed. "I'm not, I'm— I'm sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”
Tears gathered in his eyes. “But I don’t want to die.”
“I know,” she said. The smell of blood clogged her nose, and she willed herself to breathe through it as she warbled over the scripted words: “Your memory will bring us strength, and your friends will speak of you fondly. It's almost over — the pain and fear, all of it will be gone soon.”
“I want to see Nicky,” he whispered, voice tight with pain, tears falling down his cheeks. “I want to tell her I’m sorry. Will you tell her I’m sorry?”
His eyes glazed over before she could answer, final breath cascading out of him as his pulse vanished. She stared at his slack face and wondered if this was how Baba felt when se felt someone pass on, if it would always feel like it took everything she had and still wasn’t enough. Her eyes slid off of his face and onto the shears, lying on the floor in a growing pool of viscera; her vision narrowed to just the worn rubber handles, faded orange slowly turning to a stark black-shifting-red.
Hands clasped around her shoulders and tried to pull her back from Isaiah's body, but she had no will to stand. Anthony’s boots stepped fastidiously around the pooling blood, instructing the crowd to return to the bunks, but her body refused to move — Isaiah’s body wasn’t even cold, her hands were still wet with his blood, it wasn't right to leave. Anthony’s boots stepped closer to her, voice growing louder and more aggressive, but it was just noise for her brain to filter out, until he hauled her upright by her elbow and snarled, three inches from her face:
“There’s no battle-axe to protect you now, 2112.” He tilted his head to the figure kneeling on the other side of Isaiah’s body, and shoved her toward him. “Get the kid out of here.”
The war drone was already there, kneeling at Navy’s side, hands hovering uncertainly as she tried to coax him upright — even when he didn't respond, she seemed hesitant to touch. The drone froze under Mal's wide-eyed stare, the both of them pinned down by each other's fear and apprehension; Mal shook herself free of it first, darting to Navy’s side and hauling him to the door, fighting back her panic as the drone followed at the perfect distance to shoot her in the back. Navy kept trying to turn back for Isaiah, voice weakly protesting that they had left him behind. It only got worse when they caught up with the group, walking stricken and silent back the bunks — the distance seemed to stretch on and on as Navy leaned heavily on her and keened in grief, calling out for someone who could never answer back.
Isaiah’s bunk had already been stripped bare, and so had Gwenh’s. Mal dumped Navy onto his bed where others could flock and comfort him, retreating quickly to try and gather her thoughts. The blood itched as it dried on her skin, smeared over her hands and her clothes, somehow on her cheek and brow. She turned to look at the drone, hoping to communicate some urgency or at least touch base, but the drone shied away from her gaze and retreated to her own bed, far away from everyone else.
The door swung open for Render and a flanking of guards, not the usual roster but a quartet of heavily armed strangers. The group turned to him with pained, open expressions, earnestly waiting for whatever he had to give them: all he had was a weak smile, spread thin over so many hurting people. Covered in blood and having failed in every way to prevent this from happening, Mal felt nothing but hatred as Render's eyes landed on her; maybe he could tell, by the way his gaze quickly skittered back to the room at large.
“My friends, let me just say that I am truly sorry that this has happened. Isaiah was a pillar of this community and a great man; he will be dearly missed.” Every word seemed scripted, even the pause he took to steady himself. “We’ve notified his family of his death, and we will hold his remains in stasis until they can collect him.”
“How much?”
The room froze, and then turned to face Mal as a unit. She fought back the urge to duck her head, lifting her chin as she half-met Render’s gaze: her attention was split between him and Navy, now sitting on Isaiah’s bed and looking as though he might be dissociating, staring through the woman kneeling before him with a blank expression on his face. The only sign of life was how, whenever the woman would try to clean the blood from his hands, he would snatch them back and shake his head.
She turned her full attention on Render, willing him to feel even a shred of the guilt for the mess he had made. “How much will it cost them to collect his body?”
“I can’t say for sure,” he finally allowed. The apologetic answer would have seemed genuine, had the sorry expression reached his eyes. “But going forward, we will be implementing some new restrictions to prevent this from happening again. We'll be cutting the cigarette ration to one pack every two weeks, and doing regular sweeps to prevent stockpiling and trading." He waved a hand for the guards. "Everyone out of bed, now: we’ll be doing a quick sweep of the bunks for contraband.”
Everyone obeyed without so much as a word in protest. Mal shuffled out of the way as her own bed was searched, biting her lip as unfamiliar hands touched her blanket before deeming it allowed and moving on. Sharp movement caught her attention from across the room: Navy, now on his feet with a burst of adrenaline, was shoving through the crowd to get to Render. She clumsily pawed for her glasses and hurriedly slid them back over her nose as she moved to intervene, staring hard past the dried blood smeared on the lens.
One of the guards had already stepped in to stop him from getting too close, but it didn’t stop him from demanding answers. “What are you going to do about Twenty-One, Mister Render?”
Render regarded him sternly, losing patience by the second. “We have her under control, Navy — we’ll be conducting an investigation into her mental state, and we’ll decide on a punishment from there. Don't concern yourself with these things."
“She killed Isaiah in cold blood — what more do you need?” The guard was trying to herd him back, and only Mal's hand on his shoulder and a lingering strand of self-preservation kept him from shoving the guard in retaliation. "I want a front-row seat when you give her the chair."
“That’s not for you to decide. The first step will be diagnosing her condition—“
“We all know what happened to the ninth floor! If you don’t put her down now, this is only going to happen again—” Navy cut himself off and whirled on Mal with desperate, bloodshot eyes. “You know, don't you? You knew she was dangerous, you saw how she was when anyone came near you!”
"She—" Mal didn't know what to say, when every right answer was the wrong one to give. She was trying to keep me safe, I never thought it would go this far, I thought I could keep her from doing something like this—
Render watched the two of them coolly, and meeting his dispassionate gaze Mal finally realized that she had no power here: Gwenh’s purpose had been fulfilled, and in all likelihood Render would have her forget everything and move to a new floor, beginning the cycle anew for whoever tried to agitate next. All of Mal's efforts to keep him happy were for naught, if he could just take Gwenh away like this, if he could machinate on such a grand scale.
It took real effort to tear her eyes away from Render, and in her distraction the grim desperation on Navy's young face had drained away to make room for a cold, cynical anger. His eyes flicked to Render, and then back to her. “I guess it doesn’t matter, so long as you’re safe, right?”
"Navy—"
“Watch your back, traitor,” he growled as he shoved past her, his head snapping left and right as he called the others to congregate around him — no doubt letting them know that she had graduated from untrustworthy to outright enemy. She couldn't even be sure that he was wrong.
"I'm sorry you had to witness that, Mal — grief makes people say terrible things." Render had stepped into her periphery, lightly touching her shoulder. She slapped his hand away, harder than she meant to, and flinched in anticipation of a strike in kind; he only sighed, sounding disappointed as he took out a handkerchief and dabbed away the blood she had left on the back of his knuckles. “Go and clean yourself up, Miss Y. I have some work waiting for you.”