When Mal sat down at Goose's computer console, she laboriously typed in her name out of habit and obligation, a teenage ritual revived with more ease than everything else. It came as no relief when she was faced with a blank page.
Her fingers left the keyboard and began to comb the tangles out of her freshly-washed hair, eager for a distraction. A file on her had existed, once — when she was fourteen, a war-drone had chased her and Tai-Song out of an abandoned district in Borough Park, and she had been too busy running away to think of covering her face, or worrying about the blood she had left on the pavement. With her anonymity gone, Yuen-Fa had deemed her too much of a liability to aid in the war effort, and no amount of arguing had changed her mind.
Mal would have done anything to be allowed back into the fight, and meeting Gwenh had only thrown fuel on the fire. Her opportunity to impress was a scouting mission that no one else would touch, too big of a risk for too little gains, even with a full crew — but in the moment, Mal had only been thinking about Gwenh’s laughing eyes. Even though Goose had insisted on chaperoning, it seemed like the perfect way to get closer to her. And then reality came crashing back in with an ambush of war drones.
At least the drones were all dead now — she had Goose to thank for that, just like her missing file. She glanced over at their bed, where they were making a valiant attempt at sleep; she had about ten minutes before they grew bored and got up to investigate her midnight activities. She could see where their right leg ended at the knee, lost back then to a round of badly-placed bullets. After their recovery they had retreated to the warehouse and refused all visitors, and the consensus was to give them some space. Once the war drones started to catastrophically fail en-masse, it became clear that whatever they were doing warranted some kind of supervision. And maybe an intervention too, once the Database started to eat itself alive: by the time Goose had managed to euthanize their virus, over three quarters of the Database’s files — tracking things like earnings and employment records from day-work in Midtown — had been wiped out, Gwenh and Mal’s included.
Her hair was finger-combed and re-braided, and she had no more distractions. She purged her search history, though the lump in her throat was not banished so easily, and looked up Tai-Song’s name. He always had more short-term luck, but he had lost the long game: his full name was listed beside a crisp and clear mugshot and a DNA sample. His net worth was only changed in that now he had one, confirming that he was doing day-work for Midtowners — with a thousand and two of their dollars to his name, he was almost rich enough to buy himself a meal in Astoria. She didn’t recognize the name Naloss Pharmaceuticals, appended to the first year of his earnings, nor the abbreviation MEC, appended to the last two weeks, but she scribbled them down anyway; day-work guaranteed that he was crossing at least one of eight bridges twice a day, and between the two companies she could probably narrow that number down significantly. That was, unless he had taken a very stupid plunge into board-work, which generally entailed abandoning your home — willingly, permanently — to go and work yourself to death in a factory warehouse.
She stared at the picture; her almost-brother was all grown up, and she couldn’t name half the changes she saw in his face. His jaw was sharper, with more than a whisper of stubble now, and his white spots had grown more numerous, stretching from his right eyebrow to his hairline. His eyes hadn’t lost their doe-like shine, but his constant smile was gone, replaced with a half-snarling-half-resigned set to his mouth. She could take comfort in the fact that he was still alive, somewhere: if he had been killed, the bond for his body would have been posted here, superimposing all the other details.
When she couldn’t bear to look any longer she turned her attention to Zed Yeung, and found another photo of Tai-Song, this one blurry and off-centre, the light casting a strange shadow beside him. She leaned closer; the pixels made it impossible to tell where he was, but the parcel he was cradling against his chest was the right size and shape to be a swaddled infant. She chewed her lip in thought, deciding that it couldn’t be an adoption: if Tai-Song suddenly had custody of someone else’s baby, the secret would have been out by the end of the day and Yuen-Fa would have been hunting him down with a sharpened stick for trying to hide it. No, it was more likely that he had gotten someone pregnant.
She laid her head on the desk, resting her eyes for a moment. Beyond the betrayal it spelled for his other relationships, she couldn’t think of anyone less suited to children than Tai-Song; he loved life’s vices too much to put them aside for anyone, even a baby. And yet, he had acquired one and had done every other stupid thing in the book, far outstripping any of his previous escapades. She briefly indulged the thought of letting him rot wherever he was and getting on with her own life — but no, she wouldn’t. She would rather have him by her side, even when he was being selfish and inconsiderate, parading his flaws past her without a trace of shame.
His day-work and subsequent disappearing act was probably for the baby’s sake. Maybe the child was smoothing out all those irritating edges and making him better, just as Clover was doing for her. Her thoughts drifted aimlessly, wondering whether the baby had his spots, his ink-black hair, the face that only knew how to smile. Whether they and Clover would be as close as brother and sister, just like their parents had been. A smile pulled across her lips, cloaking her entire body in a soft glow.
She jolted upright to the sound of a baby crying. She staggered over to the bassinet that Jay had delivered, lifting her daughter into her arms and bouncing her gently on the way to the old rocking chair. Goose’s bed was empty, and she could hear the quietest plucking of guitar strings in a far-off corner of the warehouse — a sound soft and soothing like only they could produce.
Clover yelled impatiently as she fumbled with unbuttoning her shirt; the soft pickings paused for a moment, starting up again once she was latched. Mal listened faithfully to the contemplative notes, imagining that she was listening to Goose and Gwenh workshopping a song together, that she just had to wait a little while longer to hear Gwenh's voice again.
Goose hit a discordant note, and quietly cursed as they scratched out some notes into their sheet music. Broken free of the spell, Mal sat back in her chair with a pained groan — her aching back told her that she must have slept for hours at that desk, but she couldn’t delay her plans. Once Clover was fed, she would start the day.