The bunks had been dark and still for hours by the time Mal finally made herself crawl out of her bed, gathering her trove of hidden things — blanket, radio, Gwenh's last cigarette — and heading for the bathroom. She drew her blanket tighter around her shoulders like a shield as she inevitably passed the last bed, where the drone was sitting upright and appeared to be in a resting state, the orange glow in her chest barely visible. Mal flicked a folded-up note onto the pillow without losing her stride, and the bathroom door was swinging shut when the orange light began to brighten.
Wait ten minutes, then follow me. Hopefully the drone could read English, though with the way Mal's heart was thumping throughout her body it might be a boon if she couldn't. She shut herself inside the stall furthest from the door and climbed onto the toilet to wait, drawing the blanket closer around herself with a shiver, radio held gingerly in her lap. The whole room was freezing, and she kept expecting to see her breath pluming in the air as she tuned the dial to the frequency of Kawehno:ke’s Partridge Radio, soothed by the wheel's segmented, sturdy clicks. The familiar strains of bluesy music were clouded with noise and static, trapped under hundreds of kilometres and interfering pollution like three layers of blankets; she could hear most of the song’s last few words if she cranked up the volume, and the smile in Nick’s voice as he came back on the air was audible no matter the signal's strength. “Fast approaches the end of the day-program, my friends, but don’t turn off that radio just yet: arriving soon is Old Man River, who will be your graveyard-host as long for as his daughter is out of town and can’t stop him from working nights. As always, playing me out is some Logan Staats — and with that, I bid you lovely folks goodnight.”
She forced a shiver and rubbed her arms as the song swirled some peace in with her thoughts, leaning back against the tiled wall with a sigh. If not for the chill, it would feel like the many nights she’d spent curled up on the couch in the radio station’s lounge, dozing under the on-air sign’s ghostly light while waiting for her dad to finish up his shift — she could have probably fallen asleep here too, cold be damned, but the day's events still gripped her with a much deeper chill. The cigarette she rolled between her fingers smelled rancid, poised six inches from her face and whispering, you could have done something — why didn't you do something?
Maybe if she hadn't told Render that she was pregnant, she would have had a spare pack of cigarettes to keep things civil. Maybe if she hadn't let Isaiah stand so close to her, he wouldn't have triggered Gwenh's protective instinct. Maybe if she had put the pieces together sooner, if she had forced herself to see past the person she loved and focus on the tool she had been groomed into being, Mal wouldn't have to actively suppress the little voice in her head that whispered, maybe he deserved it. She felt worse than useless, fingers itching without the task of preparing Isaiah's body for burial, while her brain fixated on what he had plainly told her days ago, and how wrong she had known it to be even then: she’s all bark. The cigarette fell from her fingers onto the floor, and she had no will or desire to pick it back up.
It felt like years before the song finally ended and her dad’s voice came onto the broadcast, mellow and smooth just like the rest of his show, fluidly shifting between Kanien’kéha and the odd word in English or Quebecois. “Welcome, Kawehno:ke, to Partridge Radio Nights! This is River, bringing you all the best of music and gossip to make these hours go by a little faster." Paper flapped as a bulletin was passed under the mic. "The animal traffic appears to be slowing down some on the southern river shores, but as usual keep your distance from the megafauna, especially the young ones — we don’t need a repeat of last week’s circus. We’re still looking for volunteers for the Friends-Across-Fields caravan bound for Cayuga Lake, heading out the day after tomorrow at seven o’clock sharp, and I heartily encourage all the young people listening to sign up now for this exclusive event of the season: strengthening relations with our fellows of the Six Nations will always be cool!” More flapping, as he turned the paper over to read the other side: the sound was suddenly much cleaner, the unencumbered tenor of his voice becoming too loud for the quiet space, and Mal dutifully cranked down the volume by half. “Tomorrow’s weather is looking chilly with some precipitation, according to cloud activity coming down from the north — if we’re lucky, we might even get some snow! As always, this report subject to dramatic change, so keep an eye on your barometers and your weathervanes. And finally, for those of you keeping up with Project Proxima, we’re still a year out from worldwide takeoff of the second-wave ships, but two crafts are launching ahead of schedule: the first pilgrims of this quarter-century are safely aboard a ship from Barcelona, having successfully launched earlier this week, and the Niña of Turtle Island’s east coast is projected to launch at the end of this month. To those of you making the long trek to a new life, good luck and godspeed — we’re all rooting for you back home, and we’ll try to have the place fixed up by the time you get back.” His voice caught slightly, a tiny moment of emotion before he cleared his throat and quickly moved on: “For our opening numbers, we’ve got some sad songs picked out for all the people we wish were still with us: if you’re looking for some Weighing Down, come join us in the Heavy Hearts Club, toast with some Cherry Coke, and enjoy.”
The opening twang of guitar strings made tears spring from beneath her heavy eyelids, and she craned her face down to her shoulder to soak up some of the wetness. Her hands clasped tightly around the radio, muffling it against her belly as the sound grew steadily cleaner, louder, the speaker vibrating against her in tandem with the song rather than as an indiscriminatory buzz — she'd sooner die than turn the volume down again, and pile on more distance between herself and home. It didn't occur to her to question why the signal was improving, not until the door to the bathroom quietly swung open and then thumped shut. She fumbled to switch off the radio, the cold and exhaustion making her sluggish — when she managed it, the only noise breaking the silence was the sound of the drone’s pistons, the gentle hiss-and-whir of machinery on standby.
After a moment of paralysis, she stuffed the radio into her pocket and stepped down from the toilet, her gaze low as she walked to the sink and thrust her hands under a stream of warm, bubbling water. The drone did nothing but cross her arms and lean expectantly against the countertop, and Mal found herself fixating on her right hand: war drones didn’t have hands, but this one did, with articulated fingers that drummed rhythmically against the linen-covered strut of her bicep. She could see that they were painstakingly crafted from copper piping cut lengthwise, providing a framework for the wiring within that mimicked the tendons.
The water was starting to scald her fingers; she turned off the faucet and told herself to focus, trying not to think of the deep wounds that might expose the same road-maps in her own hands. “Are you linked to the Database? Any chance of it listening in, right now?”
The drone probably would have rolled her eyes, if she had any. “I don’t speak English.”
She would have appreciated a little warning that the drone had Tai-Song’s voice — somehow this was worse than everything else that unsettled her, the way Mal's body knew and hated that it wasn’t her brother speaking, that it was just a library of all the sounds he had ever made, clipped together in someone else’s mouth — but the soft, overly casual Cantonese was comforting to hear and comforting to speak. "Is it safe to talk?"
The drone nodded, a single, sharp jut of her head. Mal relaxed; she wasn’t on the same level of fluency as Yuen-Fa or even Tai-Song, but she could keep up, and it would delay interception if there turned out to be someone listening. She barely even minded that the drone was telling stone-cold lies, given that Gwenh had certainly never learned any Cantonese beyond hello and go fuck yourself. “I hear you’re the one to talk to about Tai-Song.”
“That depends on who’s asking.”
“The one who’s having his baby.” She had barely finished the sentence when her breath caught in a slight gasp, body curling around the dull pain that had sunk its broad claws into her gut. It radiated into her back as she forced herself upright, starting in her sacrum before prickling up her spine, and with grim dread it became clear that Mal could no longer pretend that she was forever done with menstruation. With the cramps coming in this hot and sudden, she only had a few days before the bleeding started, during which it would be difficult to keep pretending to be pregnant. Kaia had offhandedly told her that her first postpartum cycle would likely have more pain and more volume than her typical fair, and Mal dearly wished that she had asked more questions, instead of tuning them out after they said but it won't be coming back for a few months, maybe a year, so need to worry about that right now—
The drone scoffed, sounding less and less like Tai-Song — he would never be so dismissive. “I'm not stupid. I know you aren’t pregnant.”
She straightened up, digging her fingers into her gut to try to subtly massage away the pain. “You don’t know shit.”
The drone was suddenly in her space, grabbing onto her wrist to read her pulse, metal fingers made skin-warm by the electricity running through the wires. “Not pregnant. I can tell.”
She wrenched herself free and quickly stepped back, trying to wade past her fear and the urge to start screaming in terror. “If you touch me again—“ She cut herself off and pinched her hip until it bruised. Looking past the exterior, the drone was just an angrier version of the teenagers she had known in Kawehno:ke, desperate to be heard and considered as equals rather than children: that was hardly worth getting worked up over, and issuing threats would get her nowhere. Mal had to be the well-adjusted adult, here — a frightening concept.
“What, you’ll sic the guards on me?” The drone had already retreated anyway, boosting herself onto the countertop, crossed ankles swinging back and forth. She was a good mimic in posture, as well: that was Tai-Song in her sloping shoulders, her tilting head. The scratches on her faceplate even suggested a likeness to his vitiligo. “Do it, if your guilt will let you — all I want is the truth.”
Mal gritted her teeth, looking away. “I’m not lying.”
“If you really were pregnant, you wouldn’t admit it to me — you're too scared of what a war drone would do with that information.” Her head tilted further, and Mal wanted to curse Tai-Song and every one of his descendants — if he was going to create sentient life, the least he could have done was make her less perceptive. “And you haven’t admitted it to anyone else, either. If you were protecting yourself, you would have told everyone: how else would anyone ensure that you had a lighter workload? But you haven't told anyone, besides Render, and you accept all the work that is given to you even when it could pose danger to a fetus.”
“Get to it, Gumshoe, I haven’t got all night.”
“Don’t call me that.” She tapped her fingers against where her mouth would be, like Tai-Song did when he was allowed the chance to monologue. The way his presence was welded in every movement was eerie to witness, a version of her brother trapped in amber. “ I think Render made an assumption, and you let him believe it because it was safer than the truth. A lie like that is risky, but it's a good cover for why you duck away every morning, noon, and night — it could be morning sickness, except you never look as though you’ve been vomiting, and such a rigid schedule suggests that you’re consciously maintaining a routine.”
Mal reached over and turned the faucet back on with more force than necessary. “Lower your voice,” she tersely said to the streaming faucet, steadying herself on the counter. “And be very careful of what you say next.”
The drone's back curved slightly, the weight of realization settling on her shoulders. “You’ve already given birth.” Her tone was contemplative rather than disdainful, barely audible over the rushing water. “Recently, if you're still breastfeeding. You’re afraid that Render will use your child against you?”
Mal bowed her head, squeezing her eyes shut at the relentless tide of I'm tired, I'm hungry, I want to go home. When she opened her eyes, the freezing-cold bathroom of the MEC still greeted her, and she slammed her hands against the counter in helpless frustration. The impact twinged her wrist anew, and the sudden, sharp noise made the drone flinch away in fear.
Instant regret poured through her — she made a poor replacement for a well-adjusted adult, it seemed. “Sorry, I’m sorry— I didn't mean to scare you.”
"You didn't scare me."
Part of being the adult was not taking the opportunity to tease, Mal told herself, even when it would be so easy. She lifted her head and stared at the drone through the mirror, expression grimly serious. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” She sounded almost insulted at the insinuation.
Mal rubbed her sore, bloodshot eyes. “I’m sorry for what happened, on my first day — for what I did to you.”
She’d be shocked if anyone could understand her rusty, emotional Cantonese, but the drone seemed to have no trouble, crossing her arms with a defiant turn to her head. “I’m not forgiving you.”
“You don’t have to. I wouldn’t forgive me either.” For lack of any other ideas, she carefully stepped closer to the drone's side of the counter, offering her hand in a bid to start over. “My name is Mal; Tai-Song is my brother. May I call you Zed?”
“You may.” Zed had leaned away slightly from the encroachment, pointedly rejecting Mal's outstretched hand. “Tai-Song is my brother, too.”
Her hand fell back to her side of its own accord. The shock was mostly obscured by a sudden recall to the character she had seen in Tai-Song’s notebook, kneeling on the disgusting carpet of a disgusting hotel room: she couldn’t believe she had let it slip by, half of the one term she knew front-and-back, little sister. He had always been insufferable about being two months older.
The shock rebounded and doubled down, forcing an incredulous question from her lips to try and reboot: “Does he call you Sai Mui?”
“Sometimes.” She paused, and added, “He called me Sai Loh once, and I shocked him.”
Mal snorted, imagining Tai-Song’s face upon being zapped by a teenager exactly as willful as he had been, and gaining yet another irritating sister. “Smartened up after that, did he?”
“Very quickly.” She was whirring gently, a little like hitching laughter. Something soft and warm broke open in Mal’s chest at the sight, and it left her ill-prepared for the sudden switch-up that Zed then hit her with: “Why did you do that with Isaiah, as he died?”
Just as one thing broken open, another slammed tightly shut. Mal turned away like a flinch, feeling vulnerable and exposed and not unlike she was trying to persuade her childhood bullies to leave her be. She pulled her blanket more securely around her shoulders and tersely replied, “Why do you ask?”
“Because I want to know. And because I don't trust you yet.”
Mal's arms crossed tightly over her chest, the tattered inside of her cheek catching between her incisors as she forced herself to reach not for the palatable lie but for the damning truth. “It’s a part of my trade — stewarding the dead. It’s my responsibility to help ease someone’s passing and offer comfort, when I can. After, I would carry his body to the crematorium and prepare him for the last step of his journey, but that’s obviously not possible right now.” She owed that to him like she owed it to anyone, but it burned her up just a little more inside when she couldn't follow through, when his final moments had been poisoned by her careless lies.
“Why does that matter? The 'after' part?”
Her back hunched defensively, though there was nothing to Zed's tone besides curiosity. “It depends,” she hedged, shoulders tucked around her ears. “Some believe that burial is intrinsic to helping the spirit get to wherever they’re supposed to go — I don’t know if I believe in that, but I know that seeing someone to their grave is better than letting them sit in a morgue. And it's not just for him: the people who loved him deserve a chance to say goodbye, to see his body laid to rest. It's closure.” Her arms squeezed tighter over her chest, as though they could catch hold of the vulnerable admissions and reel them back into the space between her heart and lungs. “I believed that Gwenh was dead, before I was brought here. If she really had died that day, if I had been able to bring her body home, we could have laid her to rest properly."
"But she's not dead, so what does that matter anymore?"
"That doesn't undo all the time I spent thinking otherwise, or that when I wake up in the mornings, my body still believes that she's dead. That day has taken so much from me, for so long, and if it hadn't happened — or, if it had happened differently — then the past nine years might have been better to me. I might have healed like I was supposed to, and I might not have been so eager to go to Proxima.”
The clumsy admission burned as it left her mouth, especially the implication that Gwenh's death could ever be associated with the word 'better', but it was a cleansing, honest burn, leading the way for something happier to grow.
Zed whirred thoughtfully, brass fingers quietly drumming against her arm. "You would do this for Isaiah, even though he was unkind to you?"
"We are only as good as our actions show us to be," Mal recited; as a child she had been somewhat lacking in the humanitarian understanding of their work, and had required many lectures on the topic. "Only the worst of people desecrate the dead, and I will not allow myself to be considered in the same breath as a Vulture, or a golf-course development. If it were in my power, I'd take every stolen Untouchable with me when I leave, to give them their proper burials in their own home."
Zed was quiet for a long time, considering Mal's words at length. The shivering child inside began to lose her temper, tired of bracing for a blow and instead protecting her vulnerable underbelly with a lashing, defensive tongue:
"What, is that not the right answer?"
"No, I think it is — but I'm never sure." Zed slid down from the countertop, gesturing for her to follow. “Stay close.”