Using the cues of her body's exhaustion and hunger, Mal's best guess at the current time was somewhere near the twelfth floor's lunch hour, which meant she had been wrestling with the studio door's magnetic lock for almost five hours. It had the slightest bit of give, and when using all of her weight she could budge the door about half an inch before it snapped shut again with a mocking whir; attempts to jam it open with anything long and thin were futile, and often sent painful shocks through her fingers. After an unfortunate slip of the hand that left her staggering back with black spots floating in her vision, she decided that the door had bested her for now, and that she would come back to it later. She turned her attention to the studio at large, leaning against the wall for balance: in a further renovation, Render had managed to cram a soft-looking bed into the space opposite of the kitchen corner, and had left a basket of strawberries on the counter like a peace offering. The fish-eye camera was where it always was, looking over the room imperiously, and the clock over the darkroom's door had been removed.
She ignored the strawberries, even when her aimless circuit of the room took her back to the kitchen. She had regained her balance and the majority of her vision, and her limbs felt loose and confident as she dragged a dining chair into the centre of the room, her body having already decided on a plan even as her brain lagged behind. Almost without conscious thought, she climbed onto the precariously spinning seat and reached up towards the camera, fingers digging unerringly into the housing, ripping out the eye and half a metre of assorted wires with brute force. She stared down at the black dome in her hands for a moment as she contemplated what to do next, long enough that the white dust settled gently on the dark glass; finally, her body took over once more, the cradle of her hands falling open to allow the camera to shatter against the floor. She climbed down and carefully toed through the wreckage, feeling a contrarian kind of relief when she found no audio pick-up; Render would never be satisfied with incomplete surveillance, and as long as she had a task to occupy herself she could stave off the panic for a while longer.
In a single sweep through the nooks and crannies of the studio, she found a handful of devices she suspected of being surveillance, and a dozen more that she was certain of: black disks no larger than her thumbnail, one side covered in fine mesh and the other blinking with soft blue light. She carried the little microphones into the kitchen, where she had drawn a sink-full of cloudy, foul-smelling water, and drowned them like fleas. The blue lights held on for a few seconds before winking out, the little black bodies sinking soon after; one or two stayed stubbornly near the surface, and she added a few pumps of dish soap to the water, just to be sure.
Once the last listener succumbed to its fate, she turned back to the counter, eyes glancing off of the strawberries and latching onto the radio she'd left there hours before. She managed to pry open the casing with a flimsy paring knife from one of the kitchen drawers, just far enough to check inside: there were no listeners that she could see, and a lot of wires that she didn’t want to risk damaging. She pressed the casing back into place, and figured that it was better to be paranoid: she turned the dial to the first music station she could find and cranked the volume as high as it would go, before wrapping the radio in a thick towel and tucking it under the bathroom sink. She flipped on the faucet for good measure, and shut the door firmly behind her.
The shards of glass from the camera crunched under her shoes and threatened to pierce through the rubberized soles as she circled back to the kitchen, finding a chef's knife to aid in her renewed assault on the door — the locks remained well-defended even in the gap between the latch-plate and the door-frame, the magnetic force violently repelling the tip of the knife no matter how much of her weight she threw behind the handle. She slipped, again, and the knife jumped out of her hands, narrowly missing her thigh before landing point-first between her feet. She braced herself against the wall for a moment before leaning down to retrieve it, eyeing the latch-plate with hatred before turning to plunge the knife into the wall adjacent to the door, carving out long, thick chunks of drywall with every jerk of her hands, every wrench of her shoulders. She only paused when there was nothing left in the entryway to slice apart, sweat trickling over her face and down her back.
She staggered breathlessly back into the studio, the knife clenched painfully tight in her hand as she surveyed the room, mentally calculating the most amount of damage she could do, what deconstruction would be the most involving, the most distracting. The flooring looked expensive; she chose a spot away from the broken glass and set to methodically cutting up the first layer of thin linoleum in long strips, tearing them up and throwing them aside without a second glance. The underlay was yellow-flecked pink and spongey beneath her knees, yielding easily to her knife. Her arms shook with something far past the constraints of exhaustion.
Several long strips of underlay later, the blade chipped on an unlucky staple and warped on a slight angle, slowing her down significantly. After struggling through another few passes with an increasingly dull blade, she finally gave it up and sat back on her knees, taking stock of herself. Settled, somewhat more than when she started, and pleasantly achy from manual labour, though a long cut on her shin bled profusely and stung fiercely with sweat and contaminants. She shakily pushed herself to her feet and stomped toward the bed, balling up the thin top sheet and pressing it against the scratch as she knelt down to open up the drawers. Spare linens and pillows, her extra clothes left behind in the bunks — the canvas bag that she had carried into Newark, with its tattered strap and a patched-up hole along the bottom that would need more attention soon, assumed destroyed and long-since accepted. She spared herself less than a second of confused relief before upending the contents onto the floor, taking stock of all the detritus she had amassed over the years: pencil ends and pen caps, crumpled notes and pieces of fabric, tiny spools of twine and string. With a haggard sigh she swept away the trash to make room for the essentials — the radio, her blanket, Gwenh’s glasses, her camera. After a moment's thought she rose and padded to the kitchen, selecting two cans of soup and a jar of nearly colourless honey from the sparsely-stocked cupboards, and then to the darkroom to fill the empty spaces with as many rolls of film as she could manage. She placed the bag back in the drawer under the bed, keeping the path to it clear and accessible: when the time came, she had to be ready to leave immediately.
Hidden from sight by the architecture of the room, the studio door chimed and began to hesitantly creak open, and once again Mal's body took control, her thoughts running on a two-second delay but in perfect agreement. She slid the drawer shut and straightened up in eerie calm, knife still held loosely in her hand as she silently approached the threshold. Render had chosen an awful time to be impatient, when she still had energy to burn and the memory of betrayal was still so fresh in her mind. Her grip tightened as she heard the door click shut and re-lock, the sound of another person's breathing in a small space, and she promised herself that she would kill him, here and now — no more squeamish excuses, no more passing off responsibility to someone else, no more flinching at the mere thought of taking a life.
She turned the corner, knife raised, and threw herself at the intruder — not Render, her thoughts were screaming, coming to the conclusion faster than she could process the visual confirmation, this is not Render, but her body was already in motion. A familiar voice yelped in surprise and then terror, as a matching hand clasped around her wrist and forced her knife to redirect, the point slamming into the wood three inches from their ear. The breath was crushed from their lungs as Mal slammed against their tall and narrow chest, pinning them to the door.
She fully recognized Kaia by smell first, faintly of strawberries and bear grease and something that was almost of-Clover. She jerked back half a step, one hand still pinning them against the door, so confused by their sudden appearance that she could only take in a single detail at a time: their dark skin was freckled by several weeks’ travel under the north’s meagre sunlight, the fingers wrapped around her wrist still carried some road-grime around the nails, and their body was no longer plush and soft with the layer of fat as she had always known them to carry — their face was worryingly thin from the loss, lips cracked and dark eyes heavy with exhaustion.
While Mal was busy cataloguing all the evidence of harried, reckless travel, Kaia was drawing breath to speak or maybe scream. She dropped the knife and pressed closer, clamping her hand over their mouth, directing every ounce of her energy to hold them still while she formed a coherent sentence in Kanien’kéha: “Don’t say a word. The walls have very sharp ears.”
Their chest continued to heave, huffing warm, panicked air over her fingers, but after a moment they blinked back their glossy-eyed fear and gave her a curt nod, otherwise staying completely still. She dropped her hands and backed away, assuring herself that they wouldn't breach the agreement before turning her attention to conducting a far more thorough second sweep. She was sure to check everywhere, including areas she had already cleared: the longer she searched, the longer it would be before Kaia could freely speak, and Mal was not looking forward to hearing what they had to say to her. The last time they had seen each other, she had lied to their face that nothing was amiss, that the news of Niña's impending launch had not affected her, and that she couldn't attend the weekly movie night because Clover was coming down with a cold — all this, knowing full well that they would be the last words she would ever say to a dear friend and the sire of her child.
Her second pass found two more listening devices — her head and eyes ached from the effort of combing through every possible hiding place multiple times over, and if there were any more to find she didn't think she could be paid to care. Kaia emerged from the threshold as she carried her bounty to the kitchen, eyebrows raising to ask if it was safe. She shook her head and threw the stragglers into the water, but with another person within her orbit to protect, that didn't feel like enough: after some searching, she upturned a box of crackers onto the countertop and swept the waterlogged listeners inside, wrapping the works in tinfoil before tossing it under the sink. She leaned against the counter with a sigh, and picked up the tall sleeve of crackers as she turned to face Kaia.
"When did you get here?" Her voice was hoarse, catching on every syllable of the Kanien'kéha she told herself to speak, just in case.
"Two days. Delany first, then here."
“Fast.” They were disguised in the same scrubs as what all the onsite medical staff wore, a royal blue that had her nervously looking around for a sheet to drape around their shoulders, but their shoes — falling apart at the seams, soles shredded and half-detached — were a comforting sight. She wanted her parents more than anyone else, but they were probably in Silver Lake, with Clover — Kaia was a good face to see in the interim, even if the circumstances could be better. She placed the sleeve of crackers down on the island between them, hoping to soften the brewing anger. “Jay only radioed out, what, a week ago?”
"I wouldn't know, I left a few days after you did." Their eyes were narrowed — Clover had that same expression for roughly half of her waking hours, and Mal's heart squeezed at the reminder — and their Kanien’kéha, normally soft and welcoming, was now rendered in sharp tones and angry consonants. “As far as I can tell, anyway: no one's really sure of exactly when you left.”
She straightened her back, hackles raising to meet their energy: “Tomazh and Emilio left way before I did, you know — why not go and track them down, if you’re going to be a dick?”
“We got to say goodbye to Tomazh and Emilio. They didn't make Murphy cry." They came closer, jabbing their pointer finger into the countertop between them to punctuate their words. "You didn’t even do us the courtesy of telling us you were leaving forever, and I'm the dick?”
“Well, I’m so sorry for hurting your feelings, but I’m not going back.”
“Don't be an asshole, Mal, that's not—” They huffed angrily and pulled their hair loose of their bun, throwing the pencil they were using to fasten it down on the counter. After a moment of testily finger-combing through their chestnut waves and picking out the tangles, they sighed heavily and picked up the crackers. “It's not about bringing you back. It wasn’t right that you took off like that, like we never meant anything to you. Of course our feelings were hurt.”
She looked away, feeling disarmed and caught unawares by their earnestness, barely holding back the defensive retorts that crowded her mouth. She took a strawberry from the basket, stalling for time as she ran her thumb over its firm, cold skin. The taste was watery with hardly any sweetness to balance the sour tang, and the bitter seeds lodged between her teeth with a vengeance, not unlike the mock strawberries that Murphy had once fed to her as a prank. She passed the fruit over to Kaia; upon the first taste they made the same face as she did, and sullenly finished the last bite. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you would try to convince me to stay. I’m sorry I made you feel like I didn’t care about you. Niña just— changed things, that’s all.”
“You told us that you weren't planning on leaving.”
She couldn’t look them in the face — not when she had been caught out in an eight-year lie. “I changed my mind.”
“Have you lost your mind? She’s six months old, she hasn’t even seen her first snow yet!”
“And when we get to Proxima, I will roll her in the first snowdrift I see!” If in fact there was snow to be found on Proxima, but there was no reason to hand them even more ammunition when she was already on the back-foot. “Things aren’t getting any better here, Kaia. When’s the last time we had a cold winter? Frost?”
“It’s just around the corner,” they said stubbornly. “What compels you to take an infant on a rocket ship?”
“She’s past the cutoff, it’s safe for her,” she snapped. “I thought she'd be older, I thought I would have more time, but Niña primed early, so—”
They held up a hand to interrupt her, brow pinching in hurt confusion. “So, wait— you were planning on leaving, when you asked for my help? All this time?”
She couldn’t think of an answer that was both truthful and considerate of their feelings. She hadn’t been consciously thinking about Proxima until after the news reached Kawehno:ke, had only been thinking about her desire to be a mother and to nurture a child, but in retrospect the baby fever kicking in with plenty of time for an infant to age past the cut-off probably hadn’t been a coincidence.
“Jesus, Mal—“
“She’s not yours, Kaia!” Her fists clenched as she turned away to hide her face and her guilt, opening up the cupboards and digging through the contents so she wouldn't have to look at them. “She’s mine to raise, not yours — I thought our arrangement was clear, but if you’re going to act like we’re married—“
“You know that's not what I'm doing,” they said coldly, contained fury licking at the edges of their voice. “You know what? Fine — if you want to fuck off and set up shop on another planet, you be my guest. But I had a right to the truth, and I don’t know that I would have agreed to help you if you had been honest from the start.”
“Hence the lies.” She grabbed a bottle of Vitamin E capsules for something to hold onto, and whirled around to face them. “In fact—“
All of the argument's momentum fell away as she spotted the tears in their eyes, the hunch of their back as they braced against the island, the way they were fighting to keep their bottom lip from trembling. The sudden loss of energy made her thoughts stumble and teeter off-balance for a moment, too noisy and clashing to force anything past the barrier of her lips. She shook her head and tried to reset, her cheeks flushing with shame as she set down the bottle. “Look— I’m sorry. I know that you don’t want me to leave, I know I should have handled it better, but my parents only stayed because they got pregnant at the wrong time. I’m just putting things right.”
They scoffed, pushing off of the countertop and crossing their arms. “Would you like to rephrase that? You appear to be implying that everything after the events of your conception was a mistake, and I take issue with that.” Their gaze shifted, drawn to the spots of blood Mal had left on the floor; they circled the island and fixated on the cut on her leg, still bleeding freely, fingers automatically reaching for the kit tied at their waist. “Sit down and let me have a look at that, while you do.”
She complied readily, letting them pull her leg into their lap as she crossed her arms and presented her case: “If I had been born there, I wouldn’t have to count the good things in my life on one hand.”
“If you had been born there, you wouldn’t have Clover. You wouldn't have me, or our friends, or—" They cut themself off with a sharp shake of their head, and she wanted to press, to make them to say what they were thinking. Their fingers were exceedingly gentle as they inspected and cleaned the cut, sharply contrasting the irritation in their voice. “Actually, I don’t care: ditch Earth, ditch all of us, whatever. Now explain why, when I come all the way to this godforsaken town to talk to you, it turns out that you've gotten yourself stuck in the stupidest place possible, explain how that helps your plan—”
“Tai-Song is dead!” she shouted, startling herself with her own outburst. Kaia flinched in surprise, almost dropping a length of gauze on the floor. She scrubbed her hand over her face with a heavy sigh and shook her head, adjusting her tone and her volume. “My friend— he was killed here. I’m trying to bring his body home.”
They stayed quiet as they wrapped the bandage around her calf and rolled the hem of her pants down to protect it. “I’m sorry for your loss.” They set her leg back on the floor and stood up, standing too close and looking down at her with a pinning stare — they were lucky that she found their insistence on not moving until the problem was solved more endearing than annoying, these days. “Do you need to talk about it?”
She looked away and swallowed thickly: they wouldn’t understand how 'talking about it' was the furthest thing from her mind, how the responsible and appropriate thing was to pack away her grief and ration it out in small, digestible pieces, or not at all. “I’m not leaving without him.”
They sighed and rubbed their forehead tiredly. “Okay, then I'll help.”
“Zed, either.”
“That’s the robot, right?”
“And Gwenh.”
Their hand dropped, losing their pinched expression for one of surprise. “Your Gwenh’s alive?”
“Yes, old news, keep up — and after that, my daughter and I are getting on that ship. Don’t try to stop me.”
After the briefest hesitation, they nodded grimly, rocking back on their feet so that they were no longer looming over her. “I won’t.”
“Good.” Before they could get too far, she caught hold of the badge hanging from their neck and lifted it closer to her eyes: Kaia Non-Applicable, RN, BSN. “How did you get this?”
“I told the front desk that it was my first day and needed a badge, they didn't question it — they didn’t even check to see if Akwesasne Med was a real school. Anyone could just walk in here.”
She scoffed and pushed herself upright, moving Kaia out of the way to retrieve a jug of vitamin soda from the refrigerator. “Thank God for lazy people.”
They hummed, watching her pour herself a glass; they took it from her hand before she could lift it to her lips, sniffing the carbonated drink distrustfully. “What is this?”
“The tap water’s polluted — we’re drinking that right now.”
"All these fancy rich people can't dodge a boil-water advisory?" They sniffed it again. “It smells like soda.”
“It’s got vitamins in it, it’s healthy.”
“Mm, debatable — besides, too much can lead to vitamin toxicity.” They eyed the bubbles dubiously before giving the glass back to her, gaze sliding to the vitamins on the counter. “I’ve seen how you eat — you don’t need to supplement.”
She sighed and set the drink down, convinced for the moment. "You haven't seen how I've eaten this past month. This place leaves a lot to be desired."
"I gathered that, yes." Kaia dipped into their baggy pocket and pulled out a yellow bottle filled with oblong capsules, placing it beside the abandoned bottle of Vitamin E supplements. "Why was I instructed to give you second-trimester prenatal vitamins? By force, if necessary?"
"They think I'm pregnant." She picked up the bottle, already knowing that she wouldn't be taking any of them: she would have to get good at hiding pills under her tongue, just in case. "And I've been uncooperative, lately."
"Are you ever cooperative?" They regarded bottle with disgust, seeming almost ashamed to have brought it into the room. "Wait, you aren't pregnant, right?"
"Not unless we both have amnesia." She braced her hands on the counter and pursed her lips, agonizing over whether it was safe to ask the question sitting sourly on her tongue. “How is she?”
“Healthy.” Their face softened. “She recognized me — I wasn't sure she would, but she knew exactly who I was. She can almost say my name now.”
“Good.” She took a deep breath, fortifying her resolve. “You’ve met Zed? The robot?”
“Sure, interesting kid. Is the attitude a permanent feature?”
“What about Dominik and Willow?”
“Uh, no— but I met Goose.” They smiled bashfully as they held out the pager that Goose had tested on her, one message waiting from 7151519: answer soon. There was a small clock in the upper corner, blinking steadily through the minutes and seconds — the twelfth-floor workers were twenty minutes out from the end of their work-day, and she had been trapped in this room for nearly twenty hours. “They’re cool. It was really nice of them to lend me a bed, and feed me.”
“Be careful,” she said absently, sending a quartet of messages back to Goose: send help, pass along message to 2391212, pass along message to 651291, answer soon. Kaia was usually moving too fast for people to dote on them, between their day-work as a physician and everything else they did for the community — normally she would be happy for Goose to fill that role, but Kaia was much like Gwenh in their preference for a specific type of affection, and Goose was decidedly more like Mal, still grieving and accustomed to more traditional relationships.
“What for?”
“They used to work in Niña’s construction, with their boyfriend — Sulien, Gwenh's older brother.” She wished she could gloss over the topic entirely, but Kaia deserved to go in with their eyes open, when their easily-bruised heart was in the crossfire. “They weren’t quick enough to catch him, when he fell.”
Kaia’s face turned ashen and mournful, and once again she was struck by their ability to grieve over people they’d never met. “That’s awful — I’d have never guessed.”
“They hide it well. Just— just be aware of it, and maybe adjust your expectations.” She set the pager down on the counter, telling herself not to look at it. Goose would reply in their own time — hopefully soon. She shook her head with a sigh, bracing herself to ask her other sour question: "Does everyone think I'm dead?"
"Goose was never in doubt that you were still alive," they dutifully reported, taking a seat to massage the ankle that always gave them trouble after a long day. "They said, 'I'll believe it when I see a body.' Your uncle was holding out hope, but your cousins were grieving."
She mechanically thumbed under her eyes, though she didn't feel any tears gathering. "Were my parents there?"
Their lips pursed, and shook their head. "Not that I saw."
She scoffed angrily, and shook her head when they tried to press. Goose had replied: acknowledged, timeline: 2 hours, be safe. She wished she could feel some relief, but that wouldn't come until the plan was in motion, and all the moving parts were corralled toward a single goal. "It's not safe for you to cross back and forth over the boundary — I'm shocked you got through once."
"Thank you?"
"Hush, I'm thinking." She tilted her head back and sighed, swaying on her feet. "You have a place to hide, in the building?"
"Medical staff's housing. I can blend in for another week, probably."
She shook her head. "Call it three days, before someone gets wise. Anywhere you can't go, with that badge?"
"I can't access the top three floors, and some doors need two different badges to open, but everywhere else is open to me, I think."
She nodded, letting her head hang forward as she turned over the first inklings of a plan in her mind, convincing herself not to ask the thousands of pointless questions that Kaia wouldn't have the answers to — if she poked too hard at some of the ephemeral details, the whole thing would unspool. "Zed is ready to move Tai-Song's body, as soon as there's someone to meet her on the other side. Goose will patch in Dominik and Willow for a get-away car — you need stick close to Zed and make sure she can break out cleanly, when the time comes. Focus on getting those two out of Midtown so that I don't have to think about it, and I'll focus on Gwenh."
They nodded, tying their hair back into a bun, fastening it with the pencil. “Right. And what about getting you out of here?”
“Just focus on getting Zed and Tai-Song out first.”
"You said it's not safe for me to cross the boundary — if I do as you say and go with Zed, that means I can't come back for you."
"I've got it covered." She put on a false smile. "Don't ask me how, but I have it under control."
They didn't look convinced. "You can't just ask me to leave you behind."
“You’re not leaving me behind — just delaying rescue, for the moment.” She massaged her navel, feeling her cramps returning with a vengeance, and picked up the pager. “I'll be in touch; just get Zed and Tai-Song out of here, and off my plate. Once I have Gwenh, we’ll be right behind you.”