Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not easy to hide in space. Meaning there aren’t a lot of places you can go. Eventually you’re going to hit a wall, and on the other side of it is cold, empty blackness. Two hundred fifteen stations between the Earth and Saturn sounds like a lot, but when you’re a genetically engineered girl on the run from an alarmingly decentralized world government, it’s amazing how limiting that can be.

Gillette Station 6—node 3 Restricted Access Zone: Classification 6. Non-Residential

Non-Residental. But that’s where I grew up. In an officially “non-residental” node of a restricted access zone, in a tiny little station on the dark side of the moon. I resided there for the first nine years of my life.

I remember thirty of us, but I knew there were loads more. We saw them in classrooms and training gymnasiums as we passed by in single file, beneath the flickering light of the hallways. They were dank, drippy hallways that always stank of a bit too much life in a bit too small of a space. Gillette Station 6—node 3 wasn’t a very well funded area, considering no one officially lived there, so it was usually filthy. The only areas in decent, working order were the labs.

We didn’t question it. We were just kids, so to us, that’s just how the world was. As far as we could tell, all children grew up in a facility like Manticore. That was the code name for the project that spawned us. We started learning about the outside world later—around the same time we started feeling like our situation was dangerous and unhappy in comparison.

Jack started having problems when he was only eight. He was blond and freckled and had grey eyes. He was always the shyest and he was always willing to share any extra rations. Jack was the kid who didn’t have any specific friends, because he loved everyone and didn’t notice or didn’t care that he didn’t get as much love back in return. I felt bad, but it was difficult to bond with him. I was younger and much smaller than he was, and I naively counted on his quiet generosity to always be there.

Usually he got the shakes—that’s what we all called it at first, before we learned more medical terms—in the morning. He would manage to get them under control before first check and breakfast, but he would often be late. I’m sure the adults suspected something when he’d go missing during drills, hiding someplace to ride out another seizure, but I don’t know what they thought. He missed things. He’d always had low marks, but after the seizures started they were worse.

We all did our best to help hide Jack’s seizures from the adults. We knew what happened to kids who weren’t right. Who weren’t what the staff were looking for. We passed them screaming in cages in the hallway. No more training, no more camaraderie, no more anything. Just cages to be kept for tests.

Then Krit and Seth started to have the seizures too. It was all we could do to hide them from the staff at Manticore. It was only a matter of time.

* * * *

Cryptodome—sector 7 Regular Access Unspecified

Eleven years later

I was lying about near the laundry bay. It’s a decent enough place to be if you’re trying to appear you belong someplace when you really don’t. It’s always warm, and it usually smells rather nice so long as you don’t position yourself in proximity to the dirty wash. Plus the people who actually do belong there tend to hang around looking just as useless while they wait for the machines to work.

Try being gutter trash on a space station, I dare you. It’s not like you can just blend in fucking anywhere—life is bustling everywhere you go, because if systems aren’t constantly running, everyone dies. Sitting around is obvious, but not sitting around gets you to the point where people know you, and could tell others who you are. Eventually people notice you’re hanging out somewhere you shouldn’t. At least to my benefit, my appearance was so boringly average most people forgot they’d ever seen me the moment I was out of their eye line.

I’m slightly more pale than your average white person, with short, light brown hair that’s always standing on end, pledging its unending worship to the gods of static electricity. I’m kind of alarmingly skinny and thus take up little space, so people notice me even less as I wisp by them unseen. The only noticeable thing about me is probably my eyes—they are big enough that saying they take up half my face is only slightly hyperbolic. However, they are just the right shade of blue to avoid being truly stunning. You say “big, blue eyes” and everyone pictures beautiful azure or sparkling cerulean. My eyes are cloudy skies, just this side of grey.

So yeah, I can get by unnoticed for an abnormally long amount of time.

You wouldn’t think it would matter how far you are from Earth—space is space no matter where you are, and should be just as bleak and isolating wherever the fuck you’re at. But it’s not like that.

Cryptodome—sector 7 is the furthest from Earth I’ve ever been, and the gravity of that just seeps into your soul. It’s one of the furthest out stations, and one of the few “dark stations,” that is to say, it’s wedged between Jupiter and one of its moons in such a way that we are always between the moon and Jupiter, so we never get a glimpse of the actual sun. Don’t ask me how; something about Jupiter’s incredibly strong gravitational field or some shit, means that stations orbiting its moons are less likely to be hit with space debris if the orbit stabilizes in this position.

However, as far away and tiny as the sun is from this distance, the knowledge that you will never see it, that constant object of light throughout all the solar system, is strange. I don’t think I’d notice it if no one had pointed it out, but once you have that knowledge, everything seems darker. Time seems to move more slowly and I find myself counting down the days to nothing. I imagine this is what winter would’ve been like back on Earth. Just dark and cold, never really letting up.

What we do have, however, is the occasionally alien light from gigantic volcanic eruptions on Io. Our station is named for this, Cryptodome being the word for a bulge formed on a mountainside by magmatic buildup beneath the surface. Someone clearly thought they were being fucking hilarious when they named it that.

I’d been keeping things incredibly low key since I arrived on Cryptodome. Manticore had been on my tail, so I didn’t want to start having any sort of profile by doing anything crazy like getting a job, or applying for residence—the sort of things a person would normally do directly after relocating. I’d been here for just over two months and so far had done nothing more than waste my days away, dumpster diving for scraps and trying to be unobtrusive. My last place had been where I’d spent most of my free life, on a beautiful station orbiting Mars.

On Francisco Station we did see the sun everyday, and while our day/night cycles were artificially created for us aboard the station, we did get the limited actual sunlight that is available at that distance. Which is obviously much more than we could get if we got any on Cryptodome. We could also see the few colonies set up on the planet below, which is a comforting thought. Out here if something goes wrong, there is no land to get to. If something goes wrong on any station, the most likely scenario is that everyone dies—but when you can see people planetside, it’s just a much more hopeful culture.

Francisco Station is my home, and I dwell on it too often. I need to move on, because I can never go back.

I slumped back on a pile of clean bedding and tried to imagine the possibilities that were in front of me. I’d been here long enough that I felt comfortable with the idea of finding work, but I was still wary to put my name on a residence application. That sort of information was too heavily circulated, and it’d be a smarter move to find a roommate who would have me under an unofficial agreement. That sort of thing wasn’t officially illegal, it just wasn’t… It didn’t look great. You couldn’t get a high profile job if you had that kind of arrangement. That was fine with me, since low profile was the name of the game.

On Francisco I’d found a job tending bar when I was sixteen. Zack, who still found it in his nature to be our commanding officer even outside the reins of Manticore, hated it. He always has and always will disapprove of everything I do. Somehow to him, bar tending was too risky. I’m guessing because it involved me interacting with people and actually being happy. I know he’d prefer it if we all lived in some underground bunker that doesn’t exist.

The chance run-ins are scary though. It’s not like my social net is cast very big, but I still ran into Krit last year, and in the end Zack was right. Krit and I were happy to see each other, so Krit hung around. It was always kind of a thing, where I wondered what had happened to the others since we escaped. I knew not all of us had made it, but I was also sure I wasn’t the only one besides Zack and now Krit—the way Zack made it obvious.

Then Krit ran into a nice seeming guy, and they were best buddies until it turned out Biggs was a Manticore spy—an X5 series like us, but from a different group, and on an assignment to hunt us down.

Hence all the running away, and hiding, and homelessness on a new station that I couldn’t imagine ever feeling like home.

Maybe I could get a job working in the laundry facilities, I thought. Half the people around probably thought I worked here already, given I was always loitering about. I’d just have to trick my way on to the payroll somehow. I knew most of the faces well enough by now that I wouldn’t feel shy about striking up a conversation. It would definitely be good to change things up from bartending. I had enjoyed that, but also I’d done that for over two years. I was ready to move on. Not to mention that if I were a Manticore solider looking for someone who was known to previously tend bar, that would be the first fucking place I’d look.

I supposed I could also look for work in sanitation. That work emphatically did not appeal to me, but I couldn’t imagine that it really appealed to anyone. It was work, and it was the very definition of low profile.

“Hey,” a gangly cycling courier strode up to me, stupid grin on his face. This was about the eighth time I’d seen him. Great, time for the daily hit-on Jondy patrol. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t seem to convince him the depths of my disinterest. Although with his arrival it did occur to me that perhaps I could get work as a cycling courier. On Francisco there had been five mail stations, all of which dealt both internal and outgoing packages. Cryptodome was much smaller however, so it was likely there was less work available.

“Hi Sketchy,” I said, making my mandatory eyeroll at his presence as obvious as possible.

“Still rollin’ with the laundry, yo?”

“Clearly,” I said, and then for good measure added, “I thought I might be able to pick up some babes here.”

“Well they’re all right here,” Sketchy waggled his eyebrows at me, and it was all I could do not to smash my head into the wall behind me. The only way I could be more obvious was if I shook him by the shoulders and shouted to his face, “I. Am. A. Lesbian.” But since I’d pretty much done that three days ago, I didn’t think it’d hold much weight with him.

“See ya around, Sketchy,” I said. “And tell me if you find any hot ladies who want to hook up.”

For some reason the clunky, drug addled gears in Sketchy’s head finally put all my comments together. He grinned big and pointed one of his lanky, oversized fingers at me. “Ahh, now I see why the Sketch is always striking out with you.”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “I’m pretty sure I told you so.”

“Yeah,” he looked sheepish. “You’d be surprised how often I hear that, but then turns out the girl didn’t really mean it, and was just ditchin’ me.”

“Bet you I wouldn’t.”

Sketchy wasn’t exactly a catch. He smelled like the pile of dirty laundry on the other side of the wall, and he didn’t look too far off from it either.

“Yo, you should come hang out with me and my girl Original Cindy. She’d be way into you.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You said I should tell you about any hot ladies.”

It was my turn to look sheepish. Sketchy was obviously not getting high marks for intelligence anytime soon. He’d probably had potential, but whatever drugs he’d used had wiped that from possibility. But he did have an endearing sweetness to him. There was no way he could ever be from Manticore, so maybe I should take him up on the offer. It was about time I made a friend.

“Okay, sure. Where should I meet up with you and your girl?”

“Can you get to Sector 5?”

“It has the same clearance level as 7, right?”

Sketchy nodded.

“Well there shouldn’t be a problem then. Where to?”

“We all chill at Crash. Uh, it’s a bar.”

“A bar? Great,” I frowned way too obviously. I didn’t want people to know I was actively avoiding bars, because that implied a reason. I just wanted to actively avoid bars.

“You don’t do bars?”

“Oh uh, no. Bars are fine. Sorry. I just haven’t been in awhile, so… It’s not really my scene? I can make an appearance though. Sure.”

Yeah. I didn’t sound nervous or fucked up the way I’d stammered that out. Great job, Jondy. You are the fucking queen of eloquence. No wonder it took you a week to successfully convince Sketchy of your orientation. I rolled my eyes at myself, but Sketchy probably thought I was rolling them at him again.

They probably had some classes on social interaction at Manticore, but we’d all escaped and missed them and look where it had got me. I looked around at the flickering overhead lamps, letting the way they buzzed seep into my brain until I couldn’t even think, and the dingy, windowless walls pressed in around me, but I couldn’t really care.

* * * *

I didn’t have a pass to go between sectors, required on the station because it basically listed which sectors you were cleared to be in, and which you weren’t. Some places have labs or medical equipment, or whatever other shit, that you needed to have clearance to get at. Which makes sense to start with, and isn’t a huge sign of corruption in and of itself. You don’t want people to be able to get in and mess with experiments, and computer servers are on a lockdown so people can’t go around messing with official shit, or transferring everyone else’s money around.

Back on Earth all this stuff would be in locked buildings, but on the station everything was all just one gigantic building. So there are sectors with clearance levels. It all makes sense, and I think everyone gets the reasoning behind it. Only then you factor in the fact that some people live in each of these sectors and it kind of creates this automatic class imbalance. It’s like this issue, I guess, but for me… Personally I’ve got bigger issues and I can get by just fine without going near any labs or computer servers. I’d rather stay away from any labs, to be completely honest.

Back on Francisco Station I’d had a pass that granted me access to most sectors. Here, I was no one. I wasn’t on any records and no one knew I was here, so I didn’t have a pass. Since sector 7 and sector 5 are both regular clearance levels—anyone can get in or out unless you have certain criminal records, I should be able to pass between them without a pass.

At least, unless I were to get stopped by an officer who didn’t run things “by the book” so much as “by the letter.” If they were really particular I could be detained for upwards of two weeks for no reason. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing, except then I’d have to escape before Manticore caught wind, and leave the station indefinitely.

I didn’t have a life here yet, so the risk was minimal. I wouldn’t miss it if I had to move again, it’d just be a hassle. Once I was in sector 5 however, it wouldn’t be worth the risk to get back to sector 7. I’d have to find a new place to crash for the night.

As such, I gathered my few personal items and tossed them back in my duffle bag. Two pairs of ill-fitting jeans with holes worn through the knees, six t-shirts with stupid slogans and pictures on them, two tank tops, some underwear, and a photo disc that contained hundreds of pictures from my life on Francisco. It was an incredibly incriminating item to have in my possession, the photo disc. Especially since it had pictures of me and Krit, and even a couple with the Manticore spy, Biggs. But there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be willing to part with it.

I shrugged on my oversized coat, a bulky, brown, leather thing I’d found way back on the Gillette station right after we’d escaped. It had fit even worse then, but I’d been so cold and it hid my entire smock from those on the look out for us. I loved that coat, and even though it would never fit me properly, I refused to ever get rid of it. I dug around in the pockets, making sure I had all my stuff. Wallet with a money card and my sector pass from Francisco—it didn’t count as a pass here, but it should at least prove I wasn’t a criminal if I were to be asked. So long as they didn’t want to run it through the system, which I couldn’t let them do, I should be okay.

I patted the big pocket to check for a small, hand-sized doll in a blue dress, that used to have several strands of yarn for hair. The hair had all fallen out years ago, so now she was just a bit of stuffed cotton. She looked like a bald girl in a blue smock, and since that’s exactly what I’d been when I she was given to me, I decided I preferred the look, even if the hair had fallen out the honest way—from me petting it and combing it too much, and not because I’d intentionally pulled it out.

And that was it. All personal belongings were present and accounted for. I said goodbye to the space I’d decided to occupy the last few weeks, and set out for the sector checkpoint.

I flipped up my collar before I reached the checkpoint, covering my barcode. Zack gets his removed every couple of weeks, and complains endlessly that I don’t do the same. “At least grow your hair out,” he’ll whine at me. To which I’ll respond with a very clever, “Fuck you.”

The gate officer didn’t even offer me a second glace as I walked though. Fortunately I’d chosen a busy time of day, so they breezed me right on through. Sector 5, I immediately found, was much more bustling and busy than sector 7. It was clear more people lived here, and more people wanted to live here, than in sector 7.

It smelled a little nicer—other than the smell of laundry soap, sector 7 was stuffy and a haze of humanity hung about the place, sector 5 clearly had better air circulation. Likely granted for the area owning to its larger population. The lighting was better too. Everything seemed a bit more crisp and bright, and even though there was just as much garbage and runoff from coolant systems littering the walkways, the whole place just seemed friendlier. The colors I would use to describe sector 5 were primarily grey and brown, but I guess that just went to show how unfortunate sector 7 was.

I was glad Sketchy had talked me into the upgrade in lifestyle.

It took about an hour of wandering around before I found the bar, and after just that amount of time I realized I’d completely chosen the wrong place to hide out. I think at least 40% if not 50% of the lighting was full spectrum light—the kind that put vitamin D into your body. I hadn’t felt this good since I’d arrived at Cryptodome.

Crash was one of those bars where you head down the stairs the moment you walked in the front door. There was a big screen playing videos of people doing bike and skateboard tricks to a loud soundtrack, and I wondered if there was a place on Cryptodome where people liked to do that. I still didn’t really know what was popular around here for people to do for fun, other than go watch volcanoes, and it was really expensive to get a spot at the big viewing windows when a large volcanic event was occurring.

At Crash nobody seemed to be short of things to do for fun. It was a noisy space, with lots of tables that looked like old porthole covers for access points into machinery. There were a few foosball tables, and two back rooms, one of which had billiard tables. Everyone already seemed to be talking to someone else and it was clearly the type of bar where the same people showed up every night, rather than going home after work. It was the sort of bar I used to work at, only this one was much noisier, probably owning to the videos playing and music playing. It was a bit much for my senses to wrap around.

I scanned the place, looking for any sign of Sketchy. I had no idea what “his girl” or any of his other friends looked like, even though they very likely were already here. There was no sign of the weirdo, so I found a perch at a table by myself and watched the people go by, hoping to catch him as he arrived. A lot of the people, like Sketchy, seemed to be from the cycling courier business nearby, Jam Pony. I could tell by the emblem on their jackets, hats, and messenger bags.

Two girls passed me, walking quickly and I felt a sudden pang of recognition. I did a double take, but could only see them from the back. I had barely seen them to begin with, so I couldn’t have recognized either of them anyway. Nonetheless, I couldn’t stop thinking of Maxie.

Gillette Station 6—node 3 Restricted Access Zone: Classification 6. Non-Residential

Ten Years Earlier

Max reached down to pick up her sports bra, getting dressed for a day of combat training. The staff at Manticore had decided about a month ago that Max should wear them now, and four sports bras had shown up in Max’s trunk. I was smaller than Maxie, despite being a couple months older, so I had no such garments of my own. This seemed an important distinction at the time. It made us nervous when we talked about it, and we’d giggle uncontrollably, trying to keep the laughter under our breath so not to wake the others. Maxie and I never seemed to sleep as much as the others.

That day though, she stood up and immediately dropped her bra to the ground. Not in a defiant gesture, the cloth simply slipped from her fingers. They trembled and wouldn’t grasp. Her hands were out of her control.

Her big eyes locked with mine. Scared.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. We both knew what was happening.

The muscles in Max’s shoulders began convulsing next and I was at her side, leading her to sit down on the bed before the seizure took hold of her legs and she fell to the floor. Instinct told me to wrap her in a blanket, even though I knew she wasn’t shaking from the cold. I did it anyway, and buried my face in her shoulder.

I’d cried before that day. I’d been hurt out in the field. I’d broken my leg once. Each of my fingers had been systematically snapped to help me practice withstanding torture. I’d cried many times before, up to that point, but none of them counted. None of those times were like this.

The day Maxie started to shake was the first time I cried. I felt it within my whole being and I wished that someone had been bending my thumb back out of its socket, because that would be so much better than this ache.

Maxie’s shaking arm pulled the blanket around my shoulders as well, and I wrapped myself into her, holding her body close. We lay down on her bed as her muscles jumped beneath her skin. Her knees smashed into my thighs repeatedly and they would bruise.

It went on for close to seven minutes, before finally her body started to calm. Finally her brain stopped storming and sending signals everywhere. She was breathing heavily and kissed the top of my head.

I still sobbed, but I needed to make the tears stop running. We had two minutes before morning check in and neither of us were dressed yet. Max was all covered in my tears and snot, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s okay, Jondy. We’ll hide it. Just like with the others.”

But I knew they’d seen Jack fall yesterday. He’d pretended not to be shaking. He’d gotten back up and pretended like the extra movement was just him shaking off an injury from said fall. But they’d seen him. They’d seen Jack, and now Maxie was having them, and… I gulped back another gigantic sob, and began patting my own mess off Max’s shoulder with the blanket.

She wiped my eyes with her thumbs and kissed my lips. Her eyes were still scared. “We need to get dressed,” she said.

“I know.”

I got up and pulled on my socks and boots, then folded the blanket back up on the end of Max’s bed while she finished dressing. We were only a minute late, but they knew.

Cryptodome—sector 5 Regular Access Unspecified

Ten years later

I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t stop thinking of Maxie. She was always somewhere in the back of my mind, even though I hadn’t seen her since we were nine. Not since the night of the escape. Something had reminded me of her, and my whole body thrummed for it.

She was the first person who’d ever shared a secret with me, and the first person I’d ever shared a secret of my own with. I don’t even remember what silly secrets we’d held as three and four year olds, but we had so many. Things that we’d keep to just us, and never tell the others. Things that were special, because they were ours.

We found little pebbles in the training center and carved our names along with little hearts and stars and stick figure people into secret places. We imagined stories for ourselves where we were more cat than human, because of our feline DNA, and how we’d look if that were the case. What we would do if we were outside Manticore and we looked like that. What if us cat people had to buy a house on Earth? Wouldn’t that be funny? What would we buy at the grocery store—I’m not buying cat food, but that is what we get for our babies! We’d laugh. We always laughed. Then we tickled each other and laughed more.

She’d been my first kiss. When we were seven years old and silly little girls who thought we’d try it. It was sweet, and never anything more than kissing every once in awhile, but by the time we were nine I knew I loved Maxie more than anything else in the world. She was my sister, my best friend, and more and everything. I’d never need anyone else in the world, so long as I had Max.

Here I was, in a crowded bar, about to meet people who could possibly be a new group of friends, and somehow my brain thought now was an appropriate time to get emotional about my long lost childhood. Fucking brilliant.

I scanned the place again for any sign of Sketchy, and a-ha, there he was. With his dopey grin smiling wide, and waving his hand wildly in my direction. His other hand held a pitcher beer, which he was spilling all over the bar. The former bar tender in me cringed.

He headed toward me, as I walked toward him, and we met in the middle. He gestured to a table where three other people sat, spilling more beer in the process. The blonde at the table turned around to yell at him. “Jeez, Sketch, that’s the last time we let you go get the beer. Next time just give Herbal your money.”

He gave a false, closed mouth smile. “And that charming woman is Asha. C’mon,” he craned his neck in a “this way” fashion. “We’re sitting over here.”

A black man with a bald head, who was introduced to me as the aforementioned Herbal, was graciously welcoming. “It is most pleasant to be meeting ya,” he said in an accent that I guessed was Jamaican. It also smacked of the familiarity of the Martian 3 colony accent. I guessed it was a combination of the two, but I really only knew of Jamaican accents from films, and fictional ones at that, so I didn’t trust my judgment. The Martian 3 colony accent was definitely there though. They had a rather specific way of speaking.

Asha was overenthusiastic and already quite drunk. I guessed it didn’t take a lot of alcohol to fill her tiny frame. She was shorter than me, and just as skinny. She couldn’t stop laughing at everything the dark haired woman was saying.

Original Cindy was the one I was required to meet. “You, my skinny, white friend, are just OC’s type,” Sketchy hiccupped at me.

I smiled, unsure of the approved social response in this situation.

Original Cindy didn’t seem to mind. She had a fabulous afro, accented with blonde highlights that made her dark curls stand out even more. She wore a lot more make-up than I was used to, and I didn’t know if I found that very attractive. Definitely a beautiful woman lurked underneath all the eye glitter.

When she put her arm around my shoulder, I could see her nails had been done with great detail. It struck me that she probably had to have them redone quite often if she was a cycling courier. I wondered how quickly they chipped. Tonight they looked fresh and shining, bright blue with little streaks of gold diagonally across.

“What’cha drinkin’ sista girl? We gotta get you,” she pointed at my chest, “a glass,” Original Cindy spoke with the confidence that everyone in the world would love her. I had to admit, I did love that.

“Hold up!” she hollered to one of the servers. “Can you get my girl here a glass? We got the pitcher, but Sketch here neglected to get her one.”

“No problem, Cindy,” the woman said, continuing to collect baskets of mostly eaten pretzels. The group was very obviously regulars here.

Asha turned to me, still smiling from whatever she and the other girl had been talking about. “So, Sketchy’s new friend,” she addressed me. “I hear you’ve been free loading it in sector 7?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a sector pass, so I figure I’ll stay around here, now that I’m through checkpoint.”

“Oh. If you’re looking for a place to stay—“

I held up my hand, shaking my head. “Oh, no. I can manage. I’m used to finding a good spot wherever. And I’ve slept in way dirtier streets than this—“

The other girl stopped fussing with her texter and looked up at me.

No way I could ever forget those eyes.

She recognized me too. Her throat clicked, a subtle sign of holding back a well of emotion.

“Jondy?”

“I—uh—yeah.” I hadn’t breathed. The rest of the bar fell aside and all I saw was Max like she was out of a dream. My brain scrambled to process.

Original Cindy removed her arm from around my shoulders, distancing herself from whatever history the two of us clearly had. She continued to play with the sleeve of my jacket.

“How did?” Max’s eyes were welling up with liquid that she quickly blinked back. “When?”

“Maxie?” I choked out the word before I realized it’d been lurking on the tip of my tongue. At some point one of us was going to have to manage a complete sentence, but the idea of speaking seemed absurd. What could possibly be said?

I just needed to look at her. She was beautiful, looking both exactly the same and totally different all at once. Her hair was shoulder length and curly, framing a face that wasn’t the same round child’s face I remembered. Her jaw line had grown defined and strong, her lips more full, and her eyes… Well those were the same. Deep brown and sparkling with their own cleverness.

She was without a doubt Max. My Maxie. I itched to reach out and touch her, but didn’t know where to begin. Two minutes ago I hadn’t even known if she was still alive, and now here she was, smiling and laughing in front of me.

“I—“ I stammered out, trying to begin again. There was nothing to be said. Nothing except everything in the whole universe. But there wasn’t a guide for where to begin.

Max nodded, understanding everything that was going through my mind without me saying a word.

“We should go,” she said finally.

Her friends had been staring at us for the last few minutes, unsure of how to interrupt this bizarre reunion. I didn’t know if they knew about Manticore or not. Did they know that I must be one of her genetically engineered siblings? Or were they just silent out of confusion? There was no way to ask without potentially outing Max, so I didn’t.

“Yeah, we should. We should talk. Catch up.”

Max looked at Original Cindy. “Meet you at home later?”

Cindy nodded. “Late.”

“Sorry I gotta steal your date,” Max joked, a laugh or a sob or a weird combination of both hiding beneath the sentiment.

“This girl? Just met ‘er.”

I picked up my duffle off the floor and followed Max wordlessly out of the bar.

Outside the lighting had been dimmed for evening hours, but the walkways were still bustling with people. Max set to unlocking her bike. I still couldn’t believe this was real; that she was really there in front of me… I’d somehow gotten high on laundry fumes and had imagined this excursion to sector 5. I grabbed Max by the arm, suddenly determined to prove her corporeal reality to myself.

She dropped her bike lock, letting it clatter on the concrete, and turned to look at me. A closed mouth smile and too much blinking, like she was afraid she was about to cry. She seemed scared to do anything that might prove that I wasn’t really there, but I desperately needed to do something to prove she actually was.

I pulled her into a hug, and immediately her arms fell around my shoulders, warm and tight and familiar. Her hand reached up to cup the back of my head. Mine swept passed her neck.

I was still shorter than she was, my face pressing against her clavicle, while hers leaned down to brush a soft cheek against my ear.

We stood like that, just hugging and breathing against each other, for I don’t know how long. Her scent was just the same as always, and obviously that was how I’d thought of her back at the bar. They say scent is the key to memory, and I must’ve caught hers when she’d walked past me in the bar. It was subtle and quick, so I hadn’t consciously noticed. But now it was thick and overwhelming. I couldn’t even begin to describe what she smelled like to me, because she was someone I’d always known. It was just… Max. It felt like my entire childhood, all the good parts I cherished, was coming back to me and holding me tight as Max’s arms were.

“Where have you been?” she murmured in my ear. “All this time, Jondy.”

We finally separated.

I glanced down at her bike where it had fallen. She picked it up, and looked at me another moment, waiting for me to say something, before setting out.

“I was on a station orbiting Mars,” I said, finding it easier to talk now that we were moving. “Have you been here all this time?”

“Nooo. I’ve only been here about a year. Before that I was on Ganymede B, I… Well I wasn’t very nice, I guess. I was a thief. Kind of fell into that right away as soon as I got there. It was the first place I wound up after the escape.”

I nodded. I hadn’t exactly followed the letter of the law my first few months out either. We’d had to scam to get our names on any files, just so we could apply for food or a place to live. My official name was Angela Castle, who was an actual person, only she was still born around 19 years ago. I’d doctored the death certificate, gave her an official name change when she was eleven, and stole her identity. Without Angela Castle, I wouldn’t exist in any records, which sounds absolutely ideal for a person in hiding, but it also makes it impossible to actually be a person.

“Anyway, Max continued. About a month before I left is when I met Asha. She had a thirst for adventure that I found intoxicating. She’s… a little nuts. Well, we heard about a freighter headed toward some Jupiter stations and stowed aboard. Been here ever since.”

“I can’t imagine being aboard such a huge station. Did it seem easier to hide from Manticore there?”

Ganymede B is named after Jupiter’s largest moon, but purely in reference to its size. The station itself is nowhere near the planet, but is actually in free space, orbiting the sun at the same distance as the Earth, only on the opposite side of the orbital ellipse. Up until recently it had been the largest space station in the system, but now the absurdly large Bajor station took that title.

“Well it wasn’t hard to hide from them. I’ve never had a run in. Always looking over my shoulder, but so far I’ve met with luck. Why, have you?”

“That’s why I’m here. Ran into Krit while I was working one night, totally by chance. Turned out this guy had followed him out to Francisco—that was the station I was on. Now that you’re here, I really hope I didn’t get myself followed.”

“How long have you been aboard?”

“About two months. I think I’m probably safe. Was feeling like it might even be safe to start looking for work.”

“Well, if you stick around here you could work at Jam Pony. The boss is an ass, but you get limited clearance to all sectors aboard the station. Have you seen the volcanoes yet?”

I shook my head no.

“Oh you have to. I know where we can see them for free. There’s a utility space with a larger than usual observation window. We’ll sneak in.”

We rounded a corner and headed down an alley surrounded with very cheap housing accommodations on both sides, at least eight stories high. Max hefted her bike up on her shoulder and led me through a door, down a hallway, and up several flights of rickety metal stairs that clanged loudly with every step.

“Sorry, I live way up on the fourth floor,” she said.

She had a humbly decorated place. The walls were in disrepair, patched up in places with posters and pictures of people, several of whom I already recognized from the group at Crash. The ceilings were very low, as was common in very cheap residences. A dilapidated couch and papasan chair filled the room, and had been given girly touches like a bright blue scarf and pink blanket draped over them.

“Welcome home,” Max smiled, leaning her bike against the wall and dropping her keycard and texter on the counter.

“It’s nice,” I said awkwardly. I still had my duffle bag in my hand, and dropped it awkwardly next to the papasan chair. Then kicked it underneath a bit, trying to make myself unobtrusive in her residence.

“Sit down, sit down,” Max gestured to both the chair and the couch, forcing me to chose a location. I was closer to the chair, so I plopped down it, shrugging off my jacket and letting it sit behind me.

Max plopped herself down next to me, squeezing into the space behind me so I was leaning against her. “So you were on Mars? Did you ever go down planetside? What was it like? How long were you there? And Krit! How is he? Tell me everything.”

I leaned my head back against Max’s shoulder, letting our legs tangle together. She ran her hands through my short hair, rounding around my ears and tickling there like she remembered would always make me smile, and I began talking.

I told her about my job, and my boss… My wonderful, forgiving boss, who’d taught me everything I knew about money and customer service and how to make friends. I told her about those friends, just the four of us, my found family. There was Anthony, Casey, and Jayda, and then there was me. I loved Anthony and Casey to pieces, but Jayda and I were closest. Technically we’d probably started dating shortly after we first met, when I was 17, but we didn’t start calling ourselves girlfriends until over a year later, just nine months before I was forced to leave. She’d known everything about me. Even about Manticore. She was the only one who knew.

“I’ve never told anyone,” said Max. “I always wondered what happened to everyone. If anyone else even made it past that first night. I’ve only ever seen Zack—I think he still thinks I’m on Ganymede B.” She laughed and it reverberated through my whole body in such a surprisingly pleasant way. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this comfortable.

I continued talking, explaining how beautiful the Martian colonies looked when the sunlight hit them, glimmering below us. So much steal and ultra reinforced glass that even though you could never actually make out the buildings from that distance, they seemed real, and you could just imagine all the people walking around beneath the gleaming domes. The outdoor atrium on Francisco had large windows out to space on all sides, so you could see down to planetside while you relaxed in the park. Or you could look out to the sun, or see if you could spot the tiny star blue star that was the Earth.

“You could never see anything but stars on Ganymede B,” said Max. “The sun too, of course, and the cluster of smaller stations nearby. Like the suburbs to a big city. But there weren’t any planets or moons. Not like here. There’s always something spectacular to see out the observation windows. I suppose eventually I’ll be bored of it, but it still seems like I see new things. There are so many moons. You’ll never bee able to see them all.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I feel like this place is so isolating compared to Francisco, and that for sure a larger station would be less confining.”

“In some ways yes. I never would’ve seen all of Ganymede B, even if I’d stayed there my entire life, but I’ve been all over the Cryptodome. There I’d seen everything outside, but here I’ve seen everything inside. Especially as a bike messenger, you get around.”

I shifted against Max so my shoulder was under her arm and I was sideways against her, so I could flop my arm across her and hold her a bit closer. I rubbed my thumb over her forearm. “How—How are the seizures? Are they worse?”

Max took a deep breath. “They’re better. I found out what caused them, so I take a supplement, which usually keeps them under control. It’s a serotonin imbalance. Some quack doc wanted me to pay out the fucking ass for antidepressants. I figured out I do okay if I just take Tryptophan.”

“The amino acid?”

“Yeah. Cool, huh? I guess that means the epilepsy never hit you. You must’ve been the good batch of DNA.”

I shrugged. “Nothing’s caught up with me yet. But you know it’s just a matter of time.”

She nodded and squeezed me closer.

The door opened behind us, and Original Cindy was home. “Hey girls.” She kicked off her shoes and went to the refrigerator. “You get all caught up?”

Max shifted to face her roommate. “Pretty much. You home already?”

“Sugar, it’s been two hours. Some of us gotta work in the morning. So, you gonna introduce me?”

“Yeah. Original Cindy, this is Jondy.”

I turned my head and waved, twinkling my fingers at her. “Hi.”

“Hi Jondy,” said Cindy. “So Max, how come you never told me you were into women? I mean, if anyone would be interested in that information…”

“What?”

“She’s your ex, right?”

“Why would—“ Max apparently took a moment to access the situation from Original Cindy’s point of view. There was me, clearly batting for the all girls team, curled up and wrapped around her in a chair meant for one, while the two of us clearly had some heavy, emotional past.

“We grew up together,” I blurted out. “And it’s a little more complicated than that, but in essence, we’ve been best friends since… I don’t remember there being a time before Maxie.”

Max stroked her hand down my arm and clasped my hand. “We haven’t seen each other since we were nine. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.”

Original Cindy nodded. “So you weren’t dating.”

“We were just kids,” said Max.

“But you’re dating now?”

“O.C!”

Original Cindy poured herself a glass of water and headed toward one of the bedroom doors. “Just calling ‘em like I see ‘em,” she said with a flourish, then disappeared behind the door.

“I can’t believe she just said that,” Max said. Her face was mere inches from my own. “I mean, how presumptuous do you have to be?”

“I know right?” I brought my hand up to stroke the space where her neck joined her jawline. “The nerve.”

“The nerve.”

I moved forward a fraction of an inch, testing the depths of Max’s sarcasm. Max’s eyes flashed up to mine, looking like she wasn’t quite sure where to go with this.

So I closed the gap. Our lips brushed together, then pressed more fervently. I could feel Max’s smile against my own, and kissed her again.

Cryptodome—sector 5 Regular Access Unspecified

Two weeks later

I woke up to Max watching me, a welcome first sight in the morning, Max’s warm eyes and a calm sigh. She snuggled against me and our mouths met in a quiet kiss. My fingers ran through her hair, snagging slightly on the curls. I pulled them through gently. Max slipped her tongue into my mouth and I sucked back on her lips. There was so much of them to suck on and I loved it.

I reached behind Max and began teasing the small of her back. She gave more attention to my front, pulling up my shirt to caress her palm across my belly. The muscles there twitched. My hands slid down beneath the waistband of the athletic shorts she’d worn to bed, playing at the elastic of her underwear. Max tickled the sensitive spot just above my hipbone.

Two weeks ago when we’d first been talking, I’d anticipated us falling back into how things were when we were kids. I still wasn’t sure exactly how we’d wound up here, but clearly our relationship had undergone some revisions.

Max had never been with a woman other than our playful kisses as children. She said she’d never given that much thought to it, having spent most of her life single anyway. Obviously that hadn’t been my experience, but to both of us, this felt right.

That first night I’d slept next to Max in her bed, and all our old ways fell immediately back into place. Max would kiss my head. I would rub the spot above her hip, below her ribs. We were just us. Overly affectionate, but nothing more.

For about a week.

I tore my mouth away from Max’s to kiss my way down her neck and down to her breast, mouthing gently at the flesh as Max started to squirm beside me. She trailed her hand across my stomach and down to my panties. Her hips moved against mine, and she wrapped a leg around mine, pulling the lower part of our bodies flush together.

I gasped, and Max took the opportunity to recapture my mouth with her own. She continued to move against me, a rhythm beginning to form. My hips found her pace, her hand wedged between both of us, but definitely paying closer attention to me. I clutched at her ass, where I still had a grip on her underwear, I teased underneath. Max bucked against me, and oh god that was just right.

I opened my eyes to see Max staring right back at me, expression of bliss and belonging. That first week we were back together was fantastic. Max introduced me to her friends; generous Herbal, confident Original Cindy, spunky beyond the definition of the word Asha, and of course ridiculous Sketchy. All along Max and I were inseparable. We had ten years of lost time to make up for.

We were cuddling before bed one night, kissing each other goodnight, when just like that we started pulling each other closer. Max’s fingers swept over my neck gently stroking, but when I looked into her eyes there was something there that put a fire in my belly. Our touches were less gentle and quickly becoming more wanting. I gripped her hip and pulled her closer. I don’t remember whose tongue slipped first, but after that…

I pulled Max closer to me, moving again, hips pushing in together, together until we both were gasping. Max moved her fingers and I was lost, my hips moved fast and more desperate. Max’s rhythm followed my lead, and the hand I’d had on Max’s ass found its way to the front. We awkwardly pulled at each other, too lost to remove any clothing and not needing to, bucking against each other. Our super strong legs pulled each other together, against her more and again and biting at her lips, grinding harder and better she was still looking right at me. Riding each other until we’d both had had our fill. I gave Max one more quick kiss, and she rubbed my cheek with the back of her fingers.

“Mmm,” I sighed. “How long until work?”

“Technically we’re on call now.”

“You mean we’re late? Max, it’s only my second day.”

Max rolled out of bed and began rooting around for clothes. “Whatever. Normal makes a fuss, but he can deal with it. I’m pretty sure I’ve been on time to work like twice. Ever.”

* * * *

“Good morning, sunshines,” Original Cindy greeted Max and I.

“Morning,” I said, shuffling to the fridge.

“I made us oatmeal,” Cindy said, passing me an empty bowl. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” said Max, Original Cindy passing her a bowl as well.

We shoveled the food down, then grabbed our bicycles—all three of them stacked up behind the front door, and headed off to work.

I hadn’t been so sure about working as a cycling courier, or as I’d been corrected, bike messenger—I guess that was a dialect difference between the Martian and Jupiter stations. Max and OC talked me into it though.

“You needa get a sector pass boo, and this way you getta work with us,” Original Cindy grinned and held out her fist for Max to tap, convinced that however unsure I was about a courier job, the awesomeness of being in her presence outweighed it. I was a little nervous. It was very different than what I’d done before, and not totally self-explanatory. I didn’t know the Cryptodome that well yet. I’d only even been to sectors 7 and 5.

The moment I walked into Jam Pony, it was clear that Max and Cindy had lied when they’d told me their boss would be happy to hire anyone. “Ah, who’s this free loading deadbeat you’re parading in here?”

“Jondy’s lookin’ for a job,” Max explained.

Max’s boss had short cropped blond hair and a permanently stressed out expression behind black-framed glasses, but it was his wardrobe that really sold it. Blue plaid pants that were just a bit too tight, a white button up shirt with a bolo tie, and to top off the ensemble, wildly decorated suspenders featuring CRUSH, which was a theme park style ride on Ganymede B.

Despite all this, I wished I’d dressed a little nicer. These were my most threadbare jeans—they had so many holes in them I wasn’t even sure what was holding them together anymore. And my shirt, ugh. Fucking ridiculous, several sizes too big, as were all my t-shirts, but this one featured a design of wild colors and polka dots, advertising a book series I’d not read, oh, and yep, there was a hole in that too. I should’ve borrowed one of Max’s. She had real clothing that fit proper human beings.

“We’re staffed up.”

“What about Sky?”

“Didn’t need him,” Normal dug a cylindrical package out of a pile. “Here, sector 2.”

“You haven’t hired a replacement. Hire Jondy,” Max said, and she was starting to sound a bit too much like she was pleading.

“It’s fine, Max,” I said. “I’ll find employment elsewhere. Thank you for your time, Mr. Normal.”

“Wait, did you actually just thank me?”

“She did,” said Original Cindy, “but don’t get used to it, because that’s gonna be the last time. Now you hirin’ my girl or not?”

Normal sighed. “It’ll take at least four days for your paperwork to clear with mail central, but you can start next Monday.”

Max and Original Cindy somehow managed to maintain their rude demeanor toward their boss, but I couldn’t help but smile. We’d succeeded at what we’d come here to do, and I hadn’t done much of anything for two months.

“Thank you, Normal.”

“You’re welcome. And it’s Reagan Ronald,” he turned to face several of his staff who had been watching our exchange, and probably sizing me up as a new coworker. “Beat it!” Normal shouted, “Or do you expect the packages to bike themselves to their destination? Huh? Bip, bip, bip!”

I’d spent most of my first day following around Herbal, who was touted as Jam Pony’s best rider. He showed me the ropes pretty well. I hadn’t ridden a bicycle before, but didn’t figure on that being a problem. It looked easy enough. Herbal laughed, but not in a teasing way, when it took me a couple minutes to find my bearings and catch my balance.

“Aye the most high looked down upon and saw it time young Jondy learn a new skill.”

“Either that or a coincidence landed me on a station with a person I’m not willing to ditch, in a social group comprised almost entirely of cycling couriers,” I shrugged. “Either way, seems easy enough.”

And we’d been off. Today was my first day going solo. I’d barely stepped over the threshold to the garage-type space Jam Pony was held in, before Normal crammed a medium sized box wrapped in brown paper into my hands. “Sector 9, Friedmont. And hustle; this one’s got a rush on it.”

I looked down at the package and didn’t move, mentally trying to map out what the fastest way to sector 9 would be. I’d never been there, but I knew it was the richest sector in the Cryptodome. Max pulled me aside by my arm before I could go rushing out the door.

“Relax,” she rolled her eyes. “Go to your locker, put your stuff away, and don’t let Normal phase you. He’s always like that; you have to learn to ignore everything he says.”

“Right,” I refocused my brain.

“Everything he says,” Max repeated.

I went to the locker bay to put away my lunch and change out of my big, clunky boots and into the athletic shoes I now had. They’d been an old pair of Max’s, so they were a little worn out and the heel was loose on the left foot, but they’d be workable until I got my first paycheck.

The package for sector 9 sat next to me on the bench. I rolled my shoulders and my neck, stretching the muscles. Okay, I had a job now.

* * * *

Two runs later and I was back at Jam Pony for lunch. The group was congregated on sort of an indoor balcony area with tables. I sat on one of the booth-style seats that lined the wall and realized I was feeling truly happy in a way I’d not even realized I’d been missing until now.

I’d been up and moving around, getting exercise and earning a living all morning. I’d had a few stumbles, in that it took me longer to find the correct address than it did the experienced couriers, but I wasn’t awful.

Not only that, but I was sitting next to my new girlfriend, who wasn’t just any girlfriend, but she was the love of my fucking life. She turned in her seat so she was leaning against the wall and flopped her legs over mine, popping potato crisps into her mouth. I took a big mouthful of my own ham sandwich and grinned at her, just happy in the fact that… everything.

Sketchy and Original Cindy were arguing over sector housing and exactly what it was about the class divide that created a human rights issue. This was a serious matter of discussion when Cindy and Asha got going on it, but with Sketchy it was mostly a comedy hour.

“All I’m sayin’ is it’s only a problem when the sector cops don’t let me through. Like what’m I gonna do? Steal all the nice vegetables from the market? We don’t got keycards to the banks.”

“Dumbass, keycards are a joke; dwelling units get broke into all the time. And not e’ryone has your sector pass, so lots of people don’t even have opportunity to shop at the nice markets—that’s a big issue. One among hundreds.”

“They do have way nicer food there,” said Sketchy, apparently convinced that the entire argument was about food. Probably because all he had for lunch was energy drink and stale popcorn. Sketchy wasn’t really known for managing his money.

”…in a medical bay on the remote station, Cryptodome—“

The news channel had been playing on a TV downstairs the entire time, but the word “Cryptodome” caught all our ears.

“This is happening here?” someone downstairs asked. “Shit. Not nothin’ ever goes down on the Cryptodome.”

“Yo Druid,” shouted Sketchy. “Turn it up.”

The news story was about a girl who’d been found mostly frozen on a food freighter that was servicing all the stations around Jupiter. This was its third stop, by the time they’d found her.

”The young girl, as of yet unidentified, was first pronounced dead by medical professionals, and it is a mystery how any human could have survived that amount of time in frozen storage.”

Max sat up, both of us had our full attention on the TV set. Then they showed the doctors rolling the patient onto a new gurney and we saw it. For just a second, just a glimpse hiding beneath long dark hair, but it was definitely there. A barcode on the back of her neck.

Max turned to me. “Did you see it?”

I nodded.

“Is it Tinga? They didn’t show her face.”

“Brin,” I said. I hadn’t been able to see the whole barcode, but I’d seen enough to be almost certain it was her.

“Shit, she’s checked into medical.”

“It’s all over the news, and that’s a multi-station report. They’ll know by now.”

“But it’ll take them days to get out here, probably. Who knows where the nearest spy is at, but—“

I cut myself off, because we were talking far, far too publicly. Herbal and Original Cindy were already staring. At least Sketchy was still immersed in the news report.

“You know that girl, boo?”

“Um…” Max stalled. “Uh, maybe. Reminded us both of one of our classmates growing up.” Max elbowed me and eyed the door. I nodded in agreement. “Anyway, just in case, we’d better go figure this out.”

Gillette Station 6—node 3 Restricted Access Zone: Classification 6. Non-Residential

Ten years ago

It had finally happened. We were all lined up for morning check, and Jack… Well he’d had the shakes pretty bad that morning, but he’d stabilized and was standing tall. This wasn’t the first time by far, so none of us thought about it. We weren’t particularly worried.

It was a normal day.

Right up until it wasn’t.

I wasn’t even looking at him. Rather, I was staring straight ahead as I was meant to be doing, looking toward a window out to the atrium yard where we ran all “outdoor” drills. So I didn’t see it when it happened, I only heard it.

A thump and a loud clapping sound as one of Jack’s palms slapped the floor when he landed. He looked to Zack, trying to lock eyes with him and I think we all thought maybe we should get out of line. Maybe we should run to his side. Despite the fact there were soldiers in front of us, looking big and intimidating… We could take them out. We were faster than all of them. We could take them all out… But then what?

Jack lay on the ground, seizing hard. I’d never seen it this bad with any of us. His eyes were going out of focus. I should move, but I couldn’t. My feet were rooted in place, unsure of even the basic mechanics of breaking the rules. The idea was there, but hadn’t had enough time to fester.

One of the guards grabbed him by the shoulders, and then they pulled him out of the room, bare feet dragging across the tile, and that was that. They told us later they’d taken him to the health facility. After a day went by and we still hadn’t seen him, we were all feeling anxious. Seizures didn’t last that long. What had they done with him?

Zack told her not to, but Max always had a mind of her own.

“Do you want me to go with?” asked Eva.

“No, it’ll be easier to sneak past just by myself,” said Max. “But cover me.”

Eva nodded, and Max slipped out of our barracks and down the hall, bare feet barely a whisper against the cold floor.

She didn’t come back for over a half hour.

The news was bad. So bad. Max was shaking and not from a seizure, not even out of fear. Out of horror. I hadn’t seen what she’d seen, but the extent of it was obvious. Her face was pale like she was going to be sick; she wasn’t even blinking, like if she did she’d see Jack again. It was at least a half hour before she could form the words to tell us.

“They were cutting him open,” she finally managed to stutter out. She pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to scrub out what she could never unsee. Images of Jack, his insides not where they should be. Cold on the table with a bone cutter going through his skull.

We didn’t know if they’d killed him, or if he’d died from the seizure. It had, after all, been the worst one we’d ever seen. But my gut told me Jack was dead because of Manticore. Because they wouldn’t let him live if he wasn’t as useful as they’d intended. Not if he was broken somehow.

And how long before they came after the others? Krit, and Seth, and Maxie? We needed to get out of there. We needed to make a plan.

Cryptodome—sector 3 Regular Access Residential and Medical

Ten years later

We needed to make a plan.

Max and I had gone home, changed into clothes that’d be better for infiltration and possibly combat, and packed our bags. We’d be leaving the Cryptodome, that much was certain. With Lydecker and possibly the rest of Manticore on the way, there was no way we could stay. We had to grab Brin and get out. Soon.

We arrived at the medical center and I was surprised by how run down it was. Just a door in the middle of a corridor, faded red paint labeling it, “Health Center.” I peeked inside through the small window and saw a dreary waiting room for a clinic. I presumed that behind the scenes there was more going on, but I couldn’t imagine this being a top facility. If you needed emergency surgery on the Cryptodome, you were probably fucked.

Max and I snuck into a disused market across the street and situated ourselves behind old shelves, so we couldn’t be seen from the corridor through the shop’s large panel windows. Max pulled out a medium-sized, rolled up paper from her pack and spread it on the floor in front of us. Turns out it was blue prints.

“So I’ve broken in here a couple times to get Typtophan,” Max explained. “There’s three private rooms, then a large room that holds half a dozen beds,” she pointed out various points on the blue prints, sliding her index finger over the smooth paper. “That’s all in the upper level. Street level’s got the clinic and pharmacy. Basement has the morgue. There’s a sub-basement level as well, but I think that’s access tunnels to station utilities.”

“What do you think’s our best bet? Can we check in as patients?”

“That puts us in the medical system. It’s policy to test our blood upon admission, in most cases.”

“We could sneak in through the laundry?” I started brainstorming out loud. “Somehow climb up to those second floor windows? Oh, and then the question—how’re we gonna sneak Brin out?”

“Well I don’t know if we can go in through the windows, but maybe we can go out that way? We could repel down with the ropes.” Max grabbed a dusty box of cookies off the shelf behind her and pulled the packaging off in one smooth motion. She offered me one before helping herself.

I accepted the cookie, but shook my head. “No go. If Brin could get out the window, she’d have found a way herself by now. Likely she legitimately does have a medial issue we’ll have to deal with.”

“Poor sister,” said Max, taking another bite of cookie. Neither of us could bear the thought of Brin being sick. Max snuggled into my arms and I hugged her close, kissing her temple. This wasn’t likely to be a happy reunion. This was a rescue mission.

We finished up our cookies and decided upon a plan that I guess had a decent enough chance of working.

The plan started with me. I walked through the grubby door of the health center, confident, like I owned the place, and made a beeline for the first nurse I saw. I fiddled with the collar of my t-shirt so my hand was in a position that wouldn’t draw attention to its movement in a few seconds.

“Hi,” I greeted with a smile, keeping eye contact, then planted a somewhat concerned look upon my face. “I was just looking for my niece, she’s about a year younger than me, super blonde hair,” I kept my voice just barely above a whisper, so others in the waiting room wouldn’t hear. “I was wondering if you thought she might have come by here? She has a tendency to show up places like this.” I put my hand back down by my side, carefully swiping the nurse’s ID card along the way, maintaining eye contact so she wouldn’t notice.

“I can’t say I’ve seen anyone of that description, but you could always check with reception. I believe she’s been on shift for about five hours, so she’d have seen her.”

“Okay, thanks,” I smiled again, hiding the card in my palm. I hoped that I’d been sneaky enough and no one had overheard my shoddy cover story. Once the nurse was out of sight, I scanned the badge over the card reader to unlock the door to the back and I was in. I guess Original Cindy was right when she was talking about security and checkpoints—keycards are pretty useless for keeping people out of a place.

Thanks to Max’s blue prints, I knew exactly where I was going, and headed for the lift directly to my left. This took me to the morgue. We were going with the plan where we sneak Brin out in a body bag, so step one: obtain body bag. And bonus, it was my lucky day—there were five white doctor coats hanging from hooks right outside the morgue. I snagged one and buttoned two of the buttons, trying to better cover my old t-shirt, which really didn’t look very doctory. Then I clipped my stolen ID card to the lapel. I shrugged. This was as good as it was gonna get.

The one fortunate thing about living on a station with a tiny, severely under funded health center was that the morgue was empty. Max informed me that one of the doctors also was responsible for the entire morgue, so on most days it was empty except for the corpses. More fortunately still, today was one of those days. The silence of death crept in all around me. I shivered and got to work looking for a body bag.

They were all piled up in a corner, and I was certain they hadn’t been washed, so I tried to pick one that didn’t have any smell, or look like it had anything unpleasant on it. Poor Brin would have to be zipped up in this thing after all. But I was pretty sure the one I’d picked was all right, so I folded it up and stuffed it into Max’s messenger bag.

Back in the lift I selected to go to the second floor, where Max planned to meet me. She was loitering by the restrooms, and I stopped to get a drink at the fountain, setting down the messenger bag in the process. Max picked it up.

I was starting to feel this wasn’t a very good plan. There were flaws in it everywhere. At this point Max intended to sneak into Brin’s room, while I had a confrontation with the two security guards posted outside.

“I need to check this patient’s chart,” I told them.

The bigger of the guards crossed his arms across his chest. “I don’t recognize you.”

“Sorry?” I put on my shy, socially awkward face, which wasn’t difficult since that’s basically my entire personality. “Uh, I’m new. My name’s Gwen. But I really do need to check her chart, and I’m gonna look like an idiot on my first week on the job.”

I could’ve sworn the smaller guard tried to sniff me, like he had a lie detector in his nose or something, but I kept talking, because Max was going for the door now.

Behind me I heard a nurse complaining about missing her ID badge. Shit, that was probably the same nurse I’d swiped mine from. Now they were going to be on higher alert for intruders.

I smiled, my eyes shifting back and forth between the two guards. “Please let me by. I just got to this station two weeks ago and my dad already thinks I’m a chump if I couldn’t work at a larger health center than this. It’s the last thing I need to get fired.”

The benefit of having gigantic eyes, is I guess they can look really pathetic when I try to plead with someone. The bigger guard stepped aside, and I slid into the room behind Max.

Brin was on the bed, ice packs tucked in all around her, and she looked terrible. She was asleep, but Max had gotten right to work setting up a gurney and rolling out the body bag. She looked at me, her eyes swollen with tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her Jondy. Do you think she’s going to die?”

I didn’t know. “Better with us than with Manticore,” I said.

Gillette Station 6—node 3 Restricted Access Zone: Classification 6. Non-Residential

Eleven years ago

Brin’s favorite was escape and evade. There wasn’t much space in the atrium on Gillette Station 6, but we still had room to run and there was a lot of interesting terrain. Brin knew all the best places to hide. She would always be in the nooks and crannies hidden between rocks, or the small cave in the hillside that even our instructors didn’t know about. You only found Brin when she wanted you to.

Once Brin got bored enough, and once the rest of us had been taken in for capture, she’d be jumping through treetops, laughing. Her eyes would sparkle and the other team would chase her, but the only way they stood a chance was if Jace was still in play. Jace was so tiny, and her muscles so prematurely developed, that she was by far the fastest when it came to moving through the treetops.

Brin would cackle and grin, running and swinging her fastest. If she ever did lose the game, she would still be grinning madly, sweaty and happy and covered in dirt. She always ran her hardest, and it always made her happy. The exhilaration. She’d bide her time until the opportune moment, and then she’d jump head first into the action.

That was Brin. With glowing skin, personality shining out from under all the dirt, she radiated with life and willpower. Her dark eyes somehow containing the secret to all that happiness.

Cryptodome—sector 3 Regular Access Residential and Medical

Eleven years later

Her face was all wrinkled and the color sapped from her face. She had blotches on her, like age spots, but she was only a year older than I was. She looked like she was eighty, but only in her face and skin. Her hands were wrinkled just the same as her face, but her body still seemed fit, for the most part.

“Brin,” Max whispered in her ear. I could see her hair was thinning quite dramatically. What had happened to her? “Hey big sister, time to wake up.”

I went over and put my hand on her balding head. “Time to go, Brin. No more doctors, okay?”

Brin made a muffled sighing sound, and rolled over to look Max in the eyes. “Maxie? Is that you, baby girl?”

“It’s me. And Jondy too.”

Brin smiled, her lips gone thin and cracking. “Figures. I’m happy you found each oth—“ she was cut off by her own coughing.

“Shh,” I said, petting her hair some more. “We’re here to help you, okay. We’re gonna get you out.”

“How?” she coughed again. “They have guards at the door.”

“Well,” Max and I shared a glance. “We thought we’d hide you in a body bag. Do you think you can get onto the gurney? We can help—“

“I can do it,” Brin said, and pushed herself into a sitting position. It looked like an incredible effort on her part. She wasn’t well at all. I put my hand on her back.

“I missed you, Brin,” I said, and helped her to standing position, hugging her close.

“Missed you too, sis.” She accepted the help, settling most of her weight on my shoulders, and I shuffled her over to the gurney, gently helping her lay down in the body bag. “You’ll have to pack that ice around me in here. I don’t know how much longer I’ll last without it.”

“What’s happening to you?” Max asked.

“I don’t know, but the ice seems to slow it down.”

We did as instructed. Now was the worst part of the plan. Because there was no way to get Brin out the door, and she couldn’t get out the window, I was going to have to draw the guards away.

Good thing they were already suspicious of me. I gave Max my doctor’s coat with the ID badge, so she could get out through back ways, or whatever way might be the easiest for her to go, depending where security was.

There were too many variables we couldn’t predict. This plan was fucked from the beginning, but it was the best we had.

“Okay, here goes nothing,” I said.

Max nodded and zippered the body bag all the way up. I threw myself out the door, making sure it slammed loudly behind me, startling the guards and throwing them off their game. I ran clumsily, trying to look like a guilty person they should definitely be following.

I skidded into the counter, knocking a pile of files to the floor, paper scattering everywhere, along with a tablet. I felt bad about the tablet and hoped I hadn’t broken it. This place was under funded enough as it is.

I dared to glance behind me, and success, because both the burly guards were following me, the smaller one huffing and already out of breath.

I ran to the public lift, thumb smashing the down button. “C’mon, c’mon!” I shouted.

“Gwen, is it?” the smaller guard gasped at me. “Seems you lost your coat.”

“Aren’t any of you idiots going to check on your patient?” the bigger guard yelled at the nurses, who were all watching me.

It had been at least thirty seconds with no one watching the door, which was more than enough time for Max to get out with Brin. I hoped that she actually had. They were nowhere in sight.

Of course, I still had the guards to deal with.

“Well, yeah. I guess I’m Gwen,” I said, biding my time.

DING!

The lift arrived.

I bolted inside and pressed the close button as quickly as I could, but of course it wouldn’t be fast enough.

Both guards piled into the lift with me. It was a big lift, designed to hold medical equipment and people on gurneys.

“Oh boys. I’m afraid that was a mistake,” I shook my head.

The big one moved to grab me. He wasn’t in it to knock me out; he wanted to put me in a hold and apprehend me.

I grabbed him instead. Both my hands around his beefy wrist, using his own momentum to throw him forward.

His partner did me a favor and got in the way, so the big guy’s weight crashed headfirst right into him. Both were on the floor.

Unlike the guard, who was a fine upstanding citizen doing his job correctly, I was up to no good. I had no problem with knocking either of them into next week if it meant I could get away and be back with my sisters.

Three punches to the smaller guy, and he was out for the count.

Big and beefy was back on his feet though. He was swaying a bit, but he now he was mad.

However, he was close. Real close. I was well on the inside of his reach.

I kneed him in the crotch, then put my foot back down on his. Hard.

He doubled over, and tried to grab me. He got my wrist and twisted my arm around behind me. He grasped rather desperately for my other arm, where if he got it he could have very affectively restrained me. He was well over a foot taller than I was; it would’ve been cake.

Cake, that is, if I let him get the arm. Which I didn’t.

I followed the twist of the arm he did have and WHAM! Brought my other elbow down on the top of his head.

Then kneed upward again, which with him doubled over like that, got him right on the chin.

He was down.

DING.

Just in time for the lift to arrive back on the first floor.

I stepped out calmly and walked out of the health center. I went about a block up the corridor to check for tails, and when I was satisfied I was clean, looped back around to our hiding place in the abandoned market.

* * * *

At some point in the proceedings Max had apparently transferred Brin to a wheelchair, where she was now sitting, wearing an oversized hoodie and jeans that didn’t cover her ankles. She was asleep, and Max had placed the cold packs all around her. The sleeves of the hoodie sagged from the weight of them.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Don’t ask,” Max shook her head. “We made it anyway. You?”

“I made it,” I shrugged.

Max’s texter buzzed, but she ignored it. I gave her a questioning look about it. “Just Original Cindy blowin’ up my texter. I don’t know what to tell her.”

“So we’re ignoring it?”

“Never seeing her again anyway, right?” said Max, and I could see the weight on her chest was heavy. She loved Original Cindy, just as I was growing to do. I gulped back my own feelings and pulled Max into a hug.

“We’ll find a new good. I promise.”

She kissed my lips. It was gentle and I could feel the tears on her cheeks. “We’ll be together,” she whispered.

I fiddled with the hair at the nape of her neck. “Until the end, Maxie,” I breathed. “Now come on, let’s make sure that end is far, far from now.”

Max nodded and pulled away. Her texter buzzed again; Max looked at it and sighed. “This’ll just go on until we’re out of range. Maybe I should turn it off,” she said, before looking more closely at the message. “Fuck. Cindy says that Brin’s kidnapping is all over the news and everyone’s on the look out for her.”

“Fuck. Fuck fuck, how’re we going to get off the Cryptodome?”

“Some kind of disguise,” Max said, obviously. “I just don’t know where we’re gonna come up with one good enough.”

I began pacing around, which was the stupidest fucking thing to do, because the movement would surely draw attention to the window, and any passerby could look in and see us. And it wasn’t like Brin was super well hidden either. I had to get the fuck out of there.

“Okay, can you look up transports out of here? I’m gonna go scrounge up a disguise for Brin.”

Max nodded, and continued fussing with her texter. I knew she wasn’t messaging Cindy, so I hoped she was doing as I suggested, and finding us a way off this godforsaken station.

I spent over an hour wandering the entirety of sector 3’s public corridors, before I even started looking for clothes for Brin. I felt like I could laugh, or cry, or scream… Probably scream, but if I started I was pretty sure I’d never stop.

My skin didn’t feel right. I kept rubbing my arms in a nervous fit, and I probably looked like I was strung out on some fucking super drug or something. I gulped back another impossible urge to scream, and wishing I could just sink my fingers into my own skull through my temples.

This was like when I’d had to leave Francisco, only it was far worse. That situation had sucked. I was leaving behind everything I knew and loved and I was deeply depressed. But I was going to make it. Krit was going to make it. Biggs was fairly incompetent and before he had a chance to realize we had fled, we were stowed away on food transports, safe and sound.

I wasn’t sure if there was any possible way out of this one. My stomach flipped in response.

The most likely way out was if Maxie and I took off and left Brin to die in that dusty, abandoned market. We could get away easily. No one knew what we looked like, or that we were even here… although someone from Manticore had to suspect by now. Who else would’ve kidnapped one of their sick X5s?

I felt sick. Sick that I’d even thought of leaving Brin behind. Sick that we were all going to get caught trying to save her. Sick that I didn’t know what to do. That there was no good plan. That we’d never see Original Cindy’s beautiful face and caring soul again. We’d never see Normal’s brash ridiculousness, or Asha’s spunky energy, or Sketchy or Herbal or any of the rest of them.

My stomach heaved, but there was nothing in it but anxiety, and my throat was closed for business anyway. I reminded myself to breathe again, and tried to get my eyes to focus.

Okay. One task at a time. Stop thinking about the transport. Stop thinking about wherever we might end up. Stop thinking about sector cops.

I needed to find something to hide Brin’s face, and I probably should see about getting some fresh cold packs.

Buy a hat.

That’s the task. Buy a hat. One thing, I told myself. Repeated the thing again and again until my skin started to lose that shifty feeling like it might leave me at any moment. I breathed. Buy a hat.

My feet moved to the clothing markets. One step, then another. Buy a hat. One with a big floppy brim, if possible.

It took me awhile in the shops, but eventually I emerged with a large pair of sunglasses with dark orange lenses and bulky purple frames. They were hideous, but they were the biggest pair I could find. Also the lenses weren’t entirely opaque, so I thought maybe that would look like Brin wasn’t trying to hid her face, but rather that she just really liked ugly sunglasses. I’d also found a poncho, which would cover the strange way her sweatshirt sagged from the cold packs, and an oversized baseball cap. I hoped the cap would cover her enough, or at least make her look different.

Just as I was slinking back into our dreary hiding place, I caught a glimpse of something that nearly threw me into another dizzying bout of anxiety before I could get the door open.

Original Cindy was stepping into the health center clinic. There was no way she was there for herself; that was too much of a coincidence. She had to be looking for us.

I ran inside and practically threw myself on the floor behind the old shelves.

“Jeez, Jondy, you scared the shit outta me.” She’d stopped messing with her texter at least, and appeared to have been deep in thought about something before I’d interrupted her.

“I just saw Original Cindy outside.”

“What?”

“She must be looking for us. Has she messaged you recently?”

Max shook her head. “Not for about an hour.” She paused for a minute before she threw her head back in exasperation. “Oh fuck, they’ll probably arrest her. I mean, if they suspect anything at all, by the time Lydecker gets here. She’ll be questioned, and not gently.”

“Shit,” I agreed.

“We don’t have a choice,” Max said, reaching for her texter.

“If we bring her in…”

“She’s already in danger now,” Max said, typing away. “Sending her our location. We have to bring her in. We have to tell her everything.”

Neither of us said a word after Max sent the message. Seven silent, tense minutes past, with my chest bunching up tighter and tighter. Screaming out now would be worse than if I’d done it out on the street. Max could see me starting to unravel and pet my hair, making it stand up at even more wild angles.

Finally Original Cindy slowly opened the door, and crept inside. I had to hand it to her, she could be stealthy if she wanted to be. Had I human ears, I wouldn’t have known she was there.

“Max?” she whispered. From where she was standing I knew she could see Brin, but not us.

“Over here,” said Max. “Come sit. Next transport off this place isn’t for six hours,” she said, as much for my benefit as Original Cindy’s.

“So you guys are leaving then?”

We both nodded.

“No choice,” said Maxie, then took a deep breath. “Y’know Jondy’s tattoo?” Original Cindy nodded. “Well, I’ve got one too. So does Brin.” Max turned her head and lifted her hair to prove it.

Cindy looked to me for some explanation for where this was going, but I figured I’d let Max do the talking. She was Original Cindy’s close friend, and while I was a friend too, it didn’t seem right to interrupt.

“They aren’t actually tattoos, though. They’re written into our genetic code, along with a whole lotta other stuff, and well…” Max seemed unsure if she wanted to continue.

“Well?” Original Cindy looked to me again, like she knew I knew all the answers, but I wasn’t saying. She crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

“I’m not technically human,” Max said finally. “I mean, mostly human, but the other stuff is why we’ve gotta go.”

“Like what, you’ve got some secret government agency on yo’ ass?” Original Cindy asked, and from the tone, I knew she meant it to be a joke.

“Actually yes,” I said. “They’re called Manticore, and as soon as they caught wind of Brin here, we knew they’d be all over the Cryptodome in the matter of a couple days, maybe less depending how far they’ve to travel.”

“What, seriously?”

“Listen, now that you know, you can’t tell anybody else,” said Max. “Anybody. The whole reason I even messaged you over here is because if you went looking for us, you could be a target. I need you to go home, shut your mouth, and never think about either of us again.”

She refused to look Original Cindy in the eye.

“If you think Original Cindy’s gonna accept that shit, and not help out my girls, you’re so dumb you get your news from the microwave cooker.”

“Cindy,” I said. “Everything we do from here out is fraught with danger. You should go home.”

“And know you could all die and do nothing? I don’t think so, boo.”

“You understand that at best, you’ll never see the Cryptodome again.”

“This shithole?”

“And at worst you’ll be captured and taken in for questioning. And by questioning I do mean torture.”

Cindy pondered this for a minute; clearly having assumed the worst-case scenario was death. “I’m your girl.”

* * * *

As uncomfortable as we were with Original Cindy tagging along, it did lead us to a plan to get us off the ship. We’d woken Brin and helped her dress, replacing her cold packs with fresh ones. Original Cindy braided her thinning hair into pigtails, which created a distinct detail in her appearance that plainly differed from everything the TV would say about her.

“These are the worst sunglasses I’ve ever seen,” said Brin.

“You’re fucking welcome, sis,” I scoffed.

And the four of us set off.

The next transport off the station was actually a passenger liner, headed for the brand new, and ridiculously gigantic, Bajor Station. There weren’t typically a lot of passenger transports going in and out of stations, so I was surprised. Then again, whenever there was a new station there was always a push for people to move there.

Original Cindy brought two tickets, one for herself, and one for Brin. Max donated her sector pass to pretend was Brin’s, and we all really hoped that the transport station was busy and everyone was in a rush to board, because the cover story was Brin was Cindy’s grandmother. If they decided to scan Max’s pass, her age would show up, and obviously the whole plan would be fucked.

We seemed to be in luck, however, as the port was bustling. “I guess this is where we part,” said Original Cindy. Her smile was nervous.

“You can do this,” Max reassured her.

“Of course I can,” said Cindy, bluffing her way back to confidence. “There ain’t nothing I can’t do. These mens just gonna let Original Cindy right on past, you’ll see.”

“We will,” Max agreed.

“Take good care of our big sister,” I said.

“That you can count on. No matter what happens.”

Cindy gave each of us a hug, then turned Brin’s chair around, pushing her toward the gate. We wouldn’t see either of them for at least a day, maybe two depending how long it took us to find our way around the transport.

Max and I planned to stow away in the supply compartment. Not only because Max no longer had a sector pass to buy a ticket with, but also because it had taken all our next months rent just to buy the two. There was no other choice though. There was no way we’d be able to sneak the wheelchair past the guards and into the compartment, so the only way to get Brin off the station was to buy her a ticket. A risky move, and Max and I were both on edge.

We would have no way of knowing whether Brin and Original Cindy had been captured.

The cargo container was cold, and would have little protection to the cold of space. Max and I slipped behind a crate before the workers could come back and notice us. Once we were out of dock and the ship was settled into its course, we’d have less than an hour to find our way out into the ship proper before we’d succumb to lack of life supports. And since we didn’t have tickets, we’d have to avoid security the entire trip and we wouldn’t be able to buy food with our own money cards.

If Original Cindy didn’t make it aboard, we’d have to go the entire six-day journey without eating. This was the least of our worries if Original Cindy and Brin couldn’t make it on to the ship.

I shivered and wrapped my jacket close around me, Max finding her way into my arms. We breathed together in silence and waited.

* * * *

Basically the very fucking second Max and I emerged from a grate and into a corridor on the ship, we ran smack into Original Cindy. Which would’ve been a huge coincidence, but I guess she was looking for us and figured out approximately where we’d likely emerge.

“I’m really worried about your sister,” she said without preamble. “I mean, she’s barely talkin’, and she’s in a state. I don’t know if she has six days.”

“Okay, well take us to her. Did they put you two together?”

“Yeah, we’ve got one roommate though. One roommate and an empty bunk,” she led us to her quarters. The halls were lit with rows of tiny lights, almost like some people liked to decorate for holidays with, so everything was dim and relaxing. The hum of the ship’s engines thrummed around us, but were dampened by the carpeting that covered both the floor and the walls. “I don’t know if she’s the type to report y’all though, if you try and squat without a ticket.”

“It’s cool,” I said. “We’ll just be stopping by. No reason she has to know we aren’t ticketed passengers like anyone else.”

“Okay, but what’s your plan when we get to Bajor? Because your girl is not gonna make it if you don’t figure out somethin’.”

“Better she dies out here than to go back there,” said Max. “Take us to her.”

Original Cindy was right. Brin had clearly worsened since we’d last seen her. It was hard to describe, but something in her eyes had gone out even more, her color was more sallow and grey, and she was just very plainly dying.

“I don’t want to die,” she said. Her voice trembled and she looked scared.

“We’re going to do all we can,” I said, and sat down next to her on the bed. Original Cindy had done a good job to arrange her on the cot, cold packs underneath her and at her sides, one more resting just above the top of her head on the pillow.

“We’re—“ Brin spent about a minute coughing before she was able to continue. “We’re headed to Bajor, right?”

I nodded and put my hand on her arm. I was trying to be soothing, but it was just hopeless and awkward.

“I need to go to R.C.F. when we get there. They have people there who can help me.”

“Is that a medical center?” wondered Original Cindy.

“Yes. They have doctors there. The cold storage ship I was on was bound for Bajor once it finished drop offs at the Jupiter stations. But they found me first.” Brin paused to breathe heavily for several minutes. “But I was always on my way to that base.”

“Brin, baby,” Maxie started to tear up. “Official medical centers are a bad idea.”

“It’s not official. It’s a medical center, but… I know people there. R.C.F.” She closed her eyes, whispering the name of the supposed medical center as she drifted off to sleep. I checked to make sure her cold packs were still cold, and hoped it would be enough to keep her going until we could do something more.

Bajor—sector 37 Regular Access and Incoming Freight/Passenger Bay; Customs Checkpoint

Six days later

Despite all the perceived odds, Brin survived the six day transit period. We’d all taken turns, doing our best to tend to her, but I don’t think any of us had that much hope she’d make it. To top it all off, we were afraid of this R.C.F. place, since none of us knew what to expect. If it really was a medical center, then we were just leading Brin to capture.

She was asleep in the wheelchair when we deboarded the ship, so she didn’t take in the bustle of the transport bay. It was huge; a noisy space filled with people confused about where they were trying to go, but nonetheless trying to get there in a hurry. The lighting was brighter than I was used to after our time on the ship, and even compared to the other stations I’d been to. Of course, it was a new station, so everything was pristine, fresh white plastic covering the walls and consoles.

I pushed Brin forward towards the closest sector checkpoint that would give us regular access. Max and Original Cindy carried our bags—three duffle bags and a canvas shopping bag that contained everything we now owned.

“She could get you all captured and sent back to Manticore,” Original Cindy pointed out. “I should be the one to bring her in.

“No way,” I said. “She’s a high profile kidnapping case. You’ll be arrested on the spot.”

Max nodded. “You’ve done far beyond enough for us, O.C. We’ll take the risk.”

“We got out of Manticore once. We can do it again.”

I got right to business trying to track down this R.C.F. place. As far as we knew, Brin only had hours left to live. But what I was finding was confusing and disconcerting. Maybe we should just bring her to a medical bay, drop her by the door, and hope for the best. If she preferred capture to death, who were we to argue? This other place didn’t seem like it was set up for bizarre health issues.

It turned out that R.C.F. was a company that did “Environmental Clean-Up and Disposal” which I thought was a funny thing to call it, given this was a sparkling new space station and the environment was completely artificial. There wasn’t anything that needed cleaning up, as far as I could tell. I looked into whether or not the regular fashion of having government controlled sanitation and refuse systems wasn’t procedure on this station, but it was. So what was the use of R.C.F. as a company?

Maybe the place she was leading us to was an underground network of doctors and human service specialists, bucking the government and helping the downtrodden.

That’s what I wanted to believe. R.C.F. was a cover front for do-gooders who would help you with anything… for a price. It’s not like places like that didn’t exist. Max said she knew of several of them, and as a matter of fact, that’s how she’d met Asha.

It took even more research to figure out where they were based, and it was several sectors away.

“I can get us through,” Brin insisted. “I’m in the system; they can look me up.” Her voice was so shallow by now that I could barely make out what she was saying, but she was determined not to die. Brin just loved life too much, and even if she didn’t have all her freedoms, she would still love it. It was just the simple exhilaration of existence that she wanted.

It pained me to see her existence looking so thin, as she sat slumped over in her chair while I researched at a public computer station. These consoles were everywhere on this station; it was amazing. The contrast to the Cryptodome was stunning. There was nothing drab looking or broken here. Everything was brightly lit and it all worked. There were also so many human services available I didn’t even comprehend.

Like, I’d been able to go up to one of these free-use, public computer consoles and apply for a new sector pass. My card was to be available at the nearest checkpoint to that console in two days time, but my name would be in the system before that if I needed to get through to certain sectors—government and medical centers, or if I was on a list for a job interview. It was impressive. I wondered if all new stations started out like this, and then slowly went downhill. If that was the case, then no wonder people shelled out so much money to always be moving to the newest and fanciest station.

I still couldn’t figure out what R.C.F actually did, but I did know where to find them.

“I’m gonna text you in three hours,” said Original Cindy. “I expect a response, even if just a letter, so I know you alive, got it?”

“I promise,” said Max, giving Cindy a hug.

We had three sector checkpoints to get through, and none of us had our official passes yet. I had to hope that R.C.F.’s medical facility, while apparently unofficial, would somehow still count and we’d be allowed through. Brin seemed unconcerned. She said she had a plan.

“Sector pass,” the security officer asked, in the tone of cheerful boredom reserved for people in the service industry.

“We just applied a few hours ago, but we should be in the system.”

“Where you headed?”

“Sector 41.”

The officer’s pointer finger tapped loudly against a tablet. “Sector 41… Nope. You can come back in a couple days and you’ll have access when your pass goes through.”

Brin whispered something, but her voice was weak and hard to make out.

“What was that?” asked Maxie.

“Clearance level Phoenix. I’m bringing them in,” Brin said again.

The guard tapped more buttons on his tablet, then his eyes widened. “Clearance level Phoenix, yeah go through.”

I looked at Max dubiously. I had a bad feeling about this, and I could tell she did too—anything that started with “clearance level” was bound to be bad news, but she pushed Brin’s chair forward anyway. The dream that this place was going to be good and helpful was quickly dwindling away. Were we headed right into a secret government organization? Brin hadn’t outright called it “Manticore” but I was beginning to feel she might as well have. The whole thing felt off. So far off that I didn’t even feel my usual nerves playing havoc on my body, just a deep sinking sensation.

Despite our doubts, Max and I couldn’t discuss them in front of Brin. I didn’t want to say that I didn’t trust my sister, but I’d really begun not to trust my sister. Especially after trying to research the place and reaching so many dead ends and weirdness.

Just doomed, is all I felt. Doomed and staring down a tunnel of doominess, but we’d come this far and fuck it all, we were jumping in.

My mood really didn’t fit with the bright lighting and beautiful paneled windows that lined the corridors. It was so cheerful everywhere I looked, and I felt like I had stepped into the fucking future or something, but meanwhile… doom.

Bajor—sector 41—node 5 Restricted Access Zone: Classification Phoenix; Business and Residential

Very few restricted access zones of this caliber were also residential, so that sent up red flags right away. Not to mention the mere fact that this was a restricted access zone. That instantly made me uncomfortable. Although, I guess the picture I had of a little place working out of a network of living rooms and residential basements was still a possibility, if a remote one.

I hung onto that hope like it was the last thread of a lifeline that was keeping me from being sucked out a hull breach.

“This way,” Brin pointed down a corridor to our left. I was struck again by how much this station felt like a futuristic space ship from a science fiction program. The floors in this sector were carpeted, something I’d never seen. Hell, on the Cryptodome all the flooring was uncovered concrete, even in most of the businesses and homes.

“Stop,” said Brin after several more minutes of walking in silence.

There was a door in the wall with a very non-descript label reading, “R.C.F. Environmental Clean-Up and Disposal” in black and white lettering. I’d never have noticed it were I just passing by. It looked like nothing. I tried the knob, but it was locked.

Sighing, I and looked around for some sort of panel or buzzer or something to request access. Max looked at me and shrugged. Then the door opened.

A thin blonde woman with short hair and a wide smile looked us over. “X5-734, is that you under there?” she asked. “We’ve been worried about you.”

* * * *

Two soldiers with big guns followed the woman out the door and cornered us all, so we had no choice but to follow her inside. She was very professionally dressed looking and had a clipped demeanor, so there was no argument when she took over pushing Brin. I held myself stoic, just as Max did as we walked down the sterile halls, but I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I knew I was breathing, because every breath felt artificial and fake. We were already dead.

This is the dream version of what Lydecker would have always wanted Manticore to be like. If he’d been able to get it funded for an on-planet-site on Earth it wouldn’t have even been this nice. Or huge. I could tell just by the few doors we passed that this facility was much larger than it appeared from its humble entrance point.

“After you disappeared off the Io station,” the blonde woman continued talking, “we’d assumed you’d been killed. I’m delighted to have you back with us, 734”

I didn’t know where we were going. Was it to a medical laboratory for Brin, or were we being led to our new prison cells? Either way, we had guns at our backs and our options were zilch. I knew Max was internally freaking out just as much as I was, if not more so.

“I want to thank you girls for bringing 734 back in to us,” she was speaking to us now. “I’m Elizabeth Renfro, head of our operation here at the Phoenix base. I’m sure you can tell that your sister is very sick, but I want you not to worry. This is a condition that occasionally occurs in X-series. A small deviation in genetic code that causes a syndrome similar to Progeria, only with a late onset usually between the ages of 12 and 25. Fortunately we’ve located the genes responsible and have a viral inoculation that should reverse its effects.”

She looked back at us to make sure we were listening. To be honest, I had heard every word, and with my memory I’d be able to go over what she’d said later, but in this moment it was all a jumble of syllables. I had gotten the point that this was Manticore. This R.C.F. business was just a front for another Manticore base. All this time I’d thought getting further away from the Gillette base was further from Manticore proper, and here we were, as far away as it’s possible to be, and we were in the thick of it.

Also she’d said we’d brought Brin “back” to her, so Brin had already been recaptured by Manticore. How long had she been back with them? What did they do to her when they brought her back in? There had to be some sort of procedure. They’d deem every one of us who had escaped as high risk for a repeat offense. Oh Brin, what did they do to you? She’d been in such bad shape that we hadn’t gotten the chance to catch up on the last ten years at all. Now, we probably never would.

Now, we’d probably find out exactly what it was they’d done to Brin to welcome her back, when we received our own warm welcome.

“I’m sure you’re both just as worried about 734 as I am,” Renfro continued, “ so I’ll show you to a waiting room space near our medical ward. However, I’m going to have to get her into the geneticists as soon as possible. You understand.”

Max had the wherewithal to nod. I just stared blankly ahead. Renfro’s mannerisms were crisp and confident. She spoke clearly and without any room for discussion, and while she spoke in plain English, I didn’t understand a thing. But I think that was mostly due to my own internal screaming.

* * * *

I don’t know what happened for the next day or so—was it even a whole day? Maybe just a few hours. There was a blur of rooms and doctors and soldiers, but eventually I got to the realization: Renfro never once mentioned to anyone that Max and I were X5s. The soldiers who followed us around between the waiting room, the cafeteria, and the bathroom never once tried to keep us from escaping.

Max started asking questions about the facility: how big it was, how many exits there were… The soldiers answered everything. In vague terms, as one would to a civilian, but they didn’t seem to be actively hiding anything.

I dug my hand into my pocket and felt that my small cloth doll was still in her usual spot, soft and comforting in my hand. I pulled her out and rubbed my thumb alongside her face.

“What’s that?” asked Max, and I realized how short a time it had been since we’d been reunited. I held back emotion and told myself that we could still get out of this.

“She was given to me right after we escaped,” I explained.

“Does she have a name?”

She didn’t. It struck me as odd, that I’d never wanted to name her, but for the longest time she was the only thing I really owned, so there wasn’t a need to differentiate from my other things. I shook my head.

“Well she should have a name,” Max said, the obviousness of this statement clear in her voice.

It felt like bad luck to give her a name now, I thought. “I got her after I escaped the first time. She can get a name if we get out of this one,” I whispered, keeping an eye on the guards, hoping they hadn’t overheard.

Max nodded that this was a good solution, and we sat together on the cot in the waiting room. She was leaned against the wall, while I leaned against her, our hands clasped around each other, the doll falling into my lap. There still hadn’t been any word on Brin, and we didn’t want to bring up any more “escaping” with the guards in earshot.

Finally Renfro came back.

“Ladies,” she nodded at us and gestured for us to follow her. “I want to thank you for bringing in our operative, and I’d like to meet with you in my office to discuss compensation.”

“Uh…” I started out. This was it. This was when she was going to bring us in. This is the point when we’d be strip searched and thrown in cells and shown relentless propaganda, and even though Max would be in the same facility, they’d never allow us to see each other again. Not after our obvious relationship and the fact that we’d conspired before.

I squeezed Maxie’s hand. I didn’t want to lose her. I could feel myself starting to cry and looked at the ceiling.

Max squeezed my hand back and kissed my forehead. “I love you Jondy. Whatever happens next, whatever we become… Forever and ever.”

“Forever and ever. I love you too, Maxie.”

She hugged me close to her as tight as she could, and I squeezed her arms against me.

“Ladies,” Renfro crossed her arms in impatience.

I turned around and kissed Max, probably for the last time ever. “Okay,” I said. She kissed me again twice. “Here we go.”

She nodded and I couldn’t help it, I snuck in another kiss. “Here we go,” she agreed, and we unfolded ourselves and stood up.

It was probably thirty feet down the hallway to Renfro’s office, but I swear it was a mile and I didn’t breathe the entire time. Max held my hand, our palms sweaty with nerves and slicking against each other.

Renfro’s office was as grey as her suit and pencil skirt. Her metallic desk was clear of clutter, holding only a tablet and three electronic file folders, which had been stacked neatly.

She went around to sit in a black swivel chair, before motioning for us to sit in the two chairs in front of the desk. There were no soldiers in the corner, waiting for us to make a move. There was no one in a lab coat waiting to inject us with sedatives and drag us to a lab. There was just this one woman, looking across her desk at two X5s. She had to know we could take her out at any moment and make a bid for freedom.

“The excellent news is that your sister is doing fantastically,” she smiled across at us. “However, as I’ve no doubt you’ve realized, this is a Manticore facility.”

My ears rung.

“What you need to know is that I don’t work for Manticore.”

“What like you’re a double agent?” Max asked.

“My loyalties are to the Davenport Genetics Institute, which Manticore was once a subsidiary of, before they made a bid for government funding and became a black operation thereof. Since then they’ve poached much of our research and development.”

“So you don’t want to help Manticore?”

“Not anymore than I have to. Your sister, 734, was brought in to the Gillette facility three years ago and went through a reindoctrination program. I run that program, so in effect she passed with flying colors. She works with me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Max nodded and looked to see if I was following.

“So you’re trying to take down Manticore, and you’ve got Brin as your own super soldier, personal assistant?”

“Essentially, yes. Now, for the matter of you too.”

I gulped.

“734, or Brin, was a willing recruit. Would either of you like to help me take down Manticore?”

Would either of you like to take down Manticore?

Max flinched. “Are you serious?”

Take down Manticore. The words kept echoing in my head. Could it even be done?

Take down Manticore.

I glanced at Max. She looked both nervous and thrilled. She wanted to do it, and when I thought of all the X-series that were still stuck in Manticore, I wanted to do it too. The little kids Vivadyne labs were still churning out. Baby X8s and X9s who were destined to the same training that filled our lives, and who would never know parents or stuffed teddy bears or little dolls with yarn for hair.

I wanted to take down the whole thing. I wanted to kick the entire system created around Manticore to little bits. But could it even be done, and how could we do it? We’d have to go back, like Brin, and I didn’t…

I didn’t want to go back.

Nothing would be okay if I went back. This was the most selfish thought I’d ever had, which made it all the more terrible, but I didn’t want to go.

I could see the same thoughts rushing behind Max’s eyes, and she reached over and took my hand.

“I think we’d have to think about it,” I said. “Can…. Can you tell us what our options are?”

“I can let you go,” Renfro said. “I’m reasonably certain I can trust you not to blow my cover here. My files on you two lack updated photos, so even though you appear on surveillance, no one needs to know 452 or 210 were ever here.”

“Or?” asked Max.

“I can report you. I have your files right here,” she tapped the electronic folders on her desk. “I can put you into the reindoctrination program, which remember I am in charge of, so your ‘reprogramming’ will not be legit. Then we will work together from the inside to take this place down.”

“How long?” I asked.

“How long will it take? I honestly don’t know. Decades, is a conservative estimate.”

“No, how long do we have to decide?”

Renfro thought that over for a few minutes before apparently coming to a decision. “You have an unlimited amount of time,” she said, pulling open a desk drawer. “Here is my card,” she passed one to each of us. “Consider yourselves as having chosen option A. You may contact me at any time to change your mind.”

* * * *

Bajor—sector 37 Regular Access and Incoming Freight and Passenger Bay; Customs Checkpoint

One day later

“Where have you girls been?” Original Cindy hugged us both at the same time. After about two minutes we tried to pull away, but Cindy pulled us in closer. “Uh uh. I’m never letting you girls go again.”

Max told Original Cindy everything. From the soldiers with the guns, which prompted another endless group hug, to Brin’s progeria, to the prospect of taking down Manticore. She talked and Original Cindy shared an assortment of gummy snacks and potato crisps she had collected.

I turned Renfro’s card over and over in my hand. Take down Manticore, her no nonsense voice repeated in my brain, reverberating against my skull.

I loved my freedom, and I loved Original Cindy, and I loved Max. Original Cindy told a joke, and Max lowered her head forward when she laughed, shaking it back and forth so her curls bounced all over the place. I never would’ve gotten the chance to see Max like this if we hadn’t gotten out of Manticore. Could we take it down? Cut off that monster’s head? Forever?

“Hey,” said Max. “You have to name your doll now. You promised.”

I thought for a minute before deciding. “How about Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth,” Max smiled her approval. “Any reason why?”

“After Renfro. She’s the one who rescued Brin and got us out, after all.”

Max gave me a hard look as though asking me if I were serious, and she knew then that we were going to try to do it. I took out my Elizabeth doll and brushed my thumb over her face and the place where her hair used to be, just like I always did.

I didn’t know if we could ever possibly take down something with tendrils stretching as wide as Manticore’s. If they had facilities way out here, who knew where else, but damn it if we weren’t going to try. I passed Maxie the business card. She smiled.