Chapter Five-A

  Their mom was murdered on a quiet Thursday night, and Malory watched it happen, cowering in a closet trussed shut with an old extension cord and hope. At the time, the Bennet family lived in Megabuilding 4A, in an upscale little apartment paid for by the life insurance of their father. The interior was decorated in dull yellows and muted brown, and had a small shrine that billowed incense and held hologram portraits of their ancestors—the living room was dominated by a top-of-the-line entertainment system the sisters spent hours in front of watching silly cartoons and educational programs and terrible horror movies while their mom was working shifts at an implant distributor in the market three floors down. They had never been outside; the megabuildings were self-sustaining ecosystems complete with hydroponics and energy generation floors, shopping centers that provided any goods or services imaginable, and adult recreation ranging from bars to brothels all enclosed nicely in a little corporate fiefdom. The grandfather clock chimed in the hall. That night, Maya was away at a friend’s first sleepover, and Malory had sat in front of their window and stared out at the city, the glittering expanse, and counted aerial vehicles flying by until she went to sleep.

  She woke to the shadow of her mother in the bedroom shaking her hard enough to hurt. There was a gash on her forehead that dripped on the sheets. Red. Animating force shed cleanly. Malory remembered being more upset at her stained bedding than whatever was happening—it was her favorite, decorated with little black cats in various poses playing with yarn and stuffed mice and each other. Hands reached out and grabbed her face to force attention and the fragments of repression and the haze of years coalesced into how her mother used to look. She had the same mole as Maya, sharp brows, eye implants the striking color of violet lit up in emergency service call on hold. Her skin was alabaster smooth, marred by the fresh wound and the procession of time. Panic permeated stern features and her mouth moved in words the sleep disturbed girl couldn’t understand, high-pitched and grating. She gave up and yanked Malory from the bed, clutched blanket trailing behind. She knocked over the mirror as she dragged her to the louvered closet and shut her in the dark.

  “Always remember that I love you,” her mother said. She ripped an extension cord from the wall that powered assorted night-lights and holograms and wrapped it around the handles to seal the girl in false safety.

  The bedroom door, hastily barricaded with a synth-plastic child’s chair, exploded inward. There, in the frame, stood a man. Malory watched him through the slats, the way he crossed the threshold, the hatchet he carried. He could have been anyone in her mind: a blank slate boring banker, or a mega corpo deal closer, a street food vendor working to put his kids through college, or a greenhouse recycling supervisor on break. He wore a gray tracksuit, logos faded by sun and repeated washing, sported a close-trimmed beard, and seemed to encompass the world as he moved chrome-fast and raised his instrument of death. Malory cringed at the sound it made as it met skin, met bone, the way it tangled with her mother’s screams, the splatter, and made sure to stand statue-still as she watched. Her heartbeat hammered in her head. The man was a brute, a butcher, and he grunted as he swung once, twice, over and over, long past the escape of a soul. He stood when he was done, and swayed in place grave-silent for fifteen minutes, eyes glowing in rewatched memory, before he left. He never looked at the closet, or found the girl. Her mother’s name was Reina, and Malory remembered. She used to smell of spring flowers.

  She woke alone on her eighteenth birthday with tears in her eyes. The room was cold, crowded with packed boxes of Nadia’s haphazard tech inventions. Her girlfriend had worked through the night. She sighed and rolled out of bed—she dressed in clothes from the day before, too apathetic to dig something clean out of her backpack. They were leaving at the end of the day, after the party. She headed out to the kitchen, sidestepped the other orphans decorating the halls, and started to cook breakfast. There wasn’t much left but bread, powdered synth-eggs, and a little strawberry jam she hid in the back of the empty fridge’s humidity drawer. As the eggs sizzled, she smeared it on toast and made tea. When everything was done, she took two plates on a tray down the hall to the closet. She nudged the door open with her foot and took in the sights: Nadia, hair pulled into a messy bun, face smeared with piston grease and exhaustion, surrounded by a veritable warehouse of circuit boards, machine parts, and scrap plastic molds primed for use, and in front of her a half-assembled four-legged robot that looked like an iteration of Malory’s pilfered cat earrings.

  “Room service,” she called. She climbed through the mess while balancing the tray, shoved parts aside, and sat beside her tiny tech lover.

  “It’s morning?” Nadia asked. Her eyes were dull, half-focused, and she’d been gnawing on her lip until it split.

  “I think it’s closer to noon,” she said. She set the food down between them. The tea let out a wisp of steam that curled and died.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Oh,” Nadia said. She reached for a cup, and her eyes went wide in alarm. “The party!”

  “Don’t worry,” Malory said. She stabbed her eggs with a fork. “Everyone else is already working on it. Pretty sure they knew you’d forget.”

  “No,” Nadia said. She rubbed filthy hands on her overalls. “You don’t understand.” Her breathing picked up like she was barreling toward a panic attack.

  “So tell me,” Mal said. Her mouth was full of imitation poultry, so it came out jumbled. “And eat something, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I haven’t finished,” Nadia said.

  “Big deal,” she said. She lifted a piece of flaccid bread covered in jam. “I’ve spent years sleeping in a room with all the things you never finished.”

  “It was for you,” Nadia said. She stared at the food, but didn’t eat. “Your present.”

  Malory didn’t know what to say. It would have been far too easy to act like it didn’t matter, since the last time she received anything she didn’t steal herself was a digital snow globe that showed the old moon in a sea of stars from her mother.

  “It was supposed to be done by now,” Nadia said. She squinted at the half-assembled mechanical cat. “The little bastard’s actuators won’t work.”

  “I’ll make sure to name him that,” Malory joked. She chewed another lackluster mouthful and took a sip of tea. It had gone cold. “Besides, you can just give it to me when you’re finished. A late gift is still a gift.”

  “Right,” Nadia said. She went to say something else, but stopped. She picked up her cup, considered a moment, kept a secret. “Right.”

  They ate together, and then Malory watched her work. Metal, wrenches, compact fabricators, the raw sheen of unpainted steel. She stared at the way the smaller girl’s hands moved, swift and calculated, riddled by calluses and wear. The concentration, the way the world dissolved down to only the project and the steps to finish. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, but it couldn’t last—the party wouldn’t wait.

  “Alright,” Mal said. She reached out a hand and put the assembly to an end. “Go shower. You smell worse than the boys after they’ve been running laps around the block.”

  “Fine,” Nadia said. She flashed a shit-eating grin. “You’re just mad I won’t let you shower with me. You can’t tell me otherwise.”

  “You’ll cave one of these days,” she said.

  They came out of the closet to a flurry of activity—two of the younger generation were hanging a banner in the hall, August, Lilah, and Khalidah were dragging an old soda fountain through the front door they’d stolen from gods knew where, and someone had turned on the system speakers well past necessary and set it to play lo-fi pop instrumentals. Every cohort shared the same birthday. It simplified paperwork for the director and provided the perfect opportunity to cycle the groups when they aged out. When they knew they were leaving, they all wanted a spectacle when it happened—most would never see each other again once they were spat out into the bowels of the city and told to survive. Gang warfare, corporate liquidation, the NDPD, a failed Purgatory gig, it was a coin flip on what would take them first, and so it was one last celebration for the others to remember them by, a final snapshot of faded friendship. Nadia headed upstairs to shower, while Malory went outside and sat on the stairs in the same place where she and her sister watched the others play hopscotch before skyfall so many years before. She never expected to survive so long. She watched the slow setting of the sun.

  When Malory was ready to go inside, she was interrupted by the sound of high-pitched buzzing and propeller blades. An industrial drone swooped down, kicked up dust and debris, and scanned her with facial recognition software. It blooped, happy in confirmation, and dropped a wooden weapons crate at the base of the stone steps. She approached with caution after the drone ascended, a thousand possibilities swirling through her head, and almost none of them good. She saw the words ‘From Oscar’ spray painted lazily across the lid and sighed. She cracked it open and fished out a handwritten note:

  Hey kids,

  It’s been a while. I wanted to stop by in person to see you all out, but my assignment has kept me busy as shit. I know some of you are planning to join the Black Hands, and I sometimes think it would have been better to sign my soul away to a corpo rep, but I wanted to let you know I’ll be here to help you feel welcome and get settled in. I’ve earned at least that much leeway since joining. Anyway, to make up for my absence at your party, I’ve sent something quite special. A little taste of freedom, you could say. Just make sure if you let the younger ones share it that the director doesn’t find out. You know how they can be if you give cause. Good luck, have a blast, and I’ll see some of you soon.

  Oscar