My Ticket
A lost man with an old ticket stub tries to find his way home.
“Excuse me,” he said, ancient face sad and
lost. “I have my ticket.”
Below Paradise
Abandoned by what
remained of society, a small girl struggles to survive in an unforgiving world
reigned by the same machines that condemned her to stay below.
She crumbled when she hit
the roof, scraping her knee against the concrete. The skin of an already fresh
scab razed away. A whimper left her lips but the buzzing was too loud for even
a moment’s pause, so she snatched up the ragged toy she’d let drop, and kept
running.
A mechanical screech
punctured the air, and the roof grumbled and trembled as the Seeker followed. She
should have hidden better. They were too big and quick to run from.
She hurried, scampering,
whimpering, to the other corner. She kept out of sight, weaving around the big,
fenced off mechanisms and the large, clunky pipes that made obstacle courses
out of all the rooftops. The only choice she had, the only choice she ever had,
was to find a crawlspace narrow enough that they couldn’t follow her, and deep
enough that they couldn’t pry her out.
She came to another ledge
and climbed on top. Her knee burned with the thought of another jump, but the
Seeker whined like a swarm of angry bees behind her, so she hurdled forward with
her eyes clamped shut. She hit the roof again and stumbled. Her fingertips
brushed the ground for a moment, but she stayed on her feet, and kept moving.
There was a narrow air
vent up ahead, if only she could reach it in time.
The squeak and buzz of it
rang in her head. The Seeker gained on her quickly, with long legs three times
the size of hers. Her breath grew shorter, her legs and feet more battered.
The vent appeared around
the bend of an electrical box. It wasn’t very deep, because she couldn’t get in
too far without falling down the chute, but the Seeker was too close for a
second option.
When it came within
reach, she threw herself forward and up. She banged every limb against the
walls as she scrambled inside. There was no end she could see, just a
never-ending hole. The sides pressed in around her, and her breath seemed
shorter for the roaring noise it made in the confined space.
A piercing metallic shriek
filled the vent, matched by her own scream, as the Seeker peeled back the roof as
easily as she would have pulled back a blanket. Sunlight poured in and cold
metal fingers curled around her ankle.
It dragged her out and she swung upside down
like a one string puppet. What she could see of it was the knobby, silver
shield that made up its knee. The Seekers were all joints and limbs, wires and
lights.
It hoisted her higher, so
she could see its face. It was more of a mask, with burning blue lights instead
of eyes. She didn’t know if she could call what it had a mouth. It looked like
the hole at the bottom of a sink.
It flashed its harsh eyes
over her, scanning. She screamed and cried and kicked, but the Seeker’s hold
was solid.
“Identified
Annabeth Wren,” it said in a crackling voice, like a broken computer
chiming away in the junk yard, forgotten. “Authorise
termination.”
“No!” she screamed.
She twisted in its grip and
kicked at its hand with her loose foot. Her rabbit slipped from her grip, falling
in a heap on the concrete beneath. Of all things, she felt foolish with her
dress hanging over her head.
“Termination authorised.”
“No!” she cried into the
world. She kicked and writhed as it started to move. “No! Stop! Leave me
alone!”
With her heart thundering
in her throat, she eyed the weapon locked on the Seeker’s back. It didn’t shoot
bullets, but she knew from having seen it, that the beam of light was worse.
“Commencing Termination.”
Annabeth screamed.
And the Seeker stopped.
It took her a moment to
realise, and she paused her howling, breathless.
“Cease termination,” came another static voice. A new static voice.
They all sounded the same, but it wasn’t close enough to be the one that held
her.
Annabeth tried to turn
and see.
“Command,” said one.
“Cease termination,” said the other.
She heard the clinking of
a hand unfolding, and she fell. It was a short distance, but a harsh one. She
landed hard and awkwardly on her shoulder, and the pain escaped through her
mouth. She righted herself, and scurried back, out from under its shadow.
Two of them stood face to
face. They were too tall to be mistaken for humans, but they had all the right
limbs in all the right places.
The newcomer flashed its
blue eyes over her, scanning.
“Identified Annabeth Wren.”
She swallowed.
The first scanned the
second and something rippled inside it. Its lights faded to red, and its limbs
whirred and clanked as it folded into a crouched stance. One that told Annabeth
it was getting ready to run or fight.
“Defective.”
The newcomer rippled in
clinks, mirroring the position, and before Annabeth could think it was a good
time to run, they clashed. She screamed. Metal collided and sparks flew.
“Defective. Defective,” one chanted.
She lost track of which
was which, but it didn’t seem to matter. They carved dents in each other’s armour
and sawed cuts into wires.
One crashed against the
floor, got back up, and hit the other so hard, it came hurtling toward Annabeth.
She let out a yelp and dove out of the way. Her heart pounded within its bone
cage. She was certain it was the newcomer that wrapped its massive hands over
the head of the other, and cracked it open like an egg. It reached in and tore
out a piece of the machine’s brain. A black and silver chip.
The first Seeker went
limp, as limp as she could imagine a machine becoming, and the newcomer directed
its attention to her. She was scrunched on the ground, knowing she should have
run when she could have, knowing it was too late.
The Seeker tilted its
head in an almost human manner. “Wren,”
it said. It scanned her again and she squeaked, waiting for an order to
terminate. “Wren bird.” There came a
series of rippling beeps and Annabeth took a moment to realise it was trying to
mimic a bird’s call. “Little Wren. Little
bird.”
She swallowed and
contemplated the word defective.
“Command.”
The tone didn’t change
but it sounded like a question. She felt the air around her still, like it was
awaiting an answer. For a moment, its eyes reminded her of fireflies. They were
softer than the others, which cut through her like laser beams.
“Command.”
It kept staring, like it
was deciding, but she reminded herself Seekers didn’t make decisions and brushed
away the thought.
It moved so suddenly, droning
and squealing, that she jerked an inch away, but the Seeker only walked further
back. She watched with fascination as it went to the ledge and sat down. It
rested its monstrous hands gently on its knees, as if it were waiting. It
didn’t watch her directly, but she felt watched nonetheless.
Annabeth stayed on the
ground for what felt like a lifetime. The empty Seeker lay unmoving on the
roof, its wires and chips extracted. The other stayed sitting.
The sun was at its peak,
and the day was warm. She was sweaty and dusty, as she always seemed to be. Her
feet were used to the dirtiness and roughness of the terrain, because dirty and
rough they were themselves, but it was becoming harder and harder to ignore the
aching.
She wanted to go home.
Bravely, she got to her
feet. The Seeker’s head whirred to her. She stilled, but it didn’t move another
inch.
She wondered if it would
let her leave.
Slowly, cautiously, she
moved to pick up her fallen bunny. She pulled it out from under the motionless
arm of the dead Seeker and clutched it to her side like a secret. She inched
carefully passed the fallen one and made a wide path around the moving one. She
started to walk away.
“Command, Little Wren,” it said, and she heard it click and whir as
it stood.
Annabeth thought of
running, but as she stood there on the roof, the wind pushing her brown fringe out
of her eyes, she wondered what a Seeker was doing interrupting a termination,
and she was nothing if not curious.
She turned around.
It waited for something,
but she didn’t know what.
“Home?” she asked it.
It tilted its head. “Home.”
She tightened her hand
around her bunny and turned the way. Something almost like relief flooded
through her when she heard it follow.
-
It trailed Annabeth all
the way to what she called home. Home, for her, was a short shed on the roof of
a red brick building.
The Seeker watched her go
inside. She had a mat and a blanket on the floor for sleeping, and cardboard
boxes filled with things she’d found. She knew it was all junk but collecting
was the only thing she had to fill the time.
She realised how sad home was, but it had been sadder many
times before. She sat on her mat and watched the Seeker beyond the doorway. It
waited, watching. It was almost funny, watching a Seeker appear so very patient.
Thinking herself a little
mad, she beckoned it. The Seeker stepped almost hesitantly closer. The door was too small for it, so when it approached and
ducked down half its size to poke its head through, Annabeth let out the tiniest
giggle. It had been so long since she laughed, it surprised her almost as much
as it seemed to surprise the Seeker, who jerked back out of the shed and took a
couple steps away.
“No, no!” she said,
scampering up. “It’s okay,” she told it. “You can come in.”
She waited, hands at her
side. The Seeker dawdled, then took a careful step forward. When it tried again
to get in, Annabeth stifled her laughter, and watched as it crouched down and
pushed itself through. Its back scraped against the metal wall and it shook the
whole strutcture. The Seeker stumbled and caught itself. It forgot the height
of the shed and abruptly stood. The roof was so thin, it broke through, and
Annabeth let out a yelp.
It ducked back down
again, and whirled, its big foot crushing boxes. She heard a crunch and
cringed, imagining one of her many precious treasures being broken.
“Stop! No!” Annabeth
cried, but her voice only seemed to startle it more, and it was a whirlwind for
a moment in her little shed and, in that moment, she realised as sad as her
little home was, it was a little home nonetheless, and she was hurt to imagine
it trampled.
She put up her hands.
“Stop!” she yelled. The Seeker paused, it’s blue lights focusing on her. “It’s
okay!” she said. Its light faded in and out, reminding Annabeth of a rapid
heartbeat. “Sit!” she told it. To her surprise, it sat, folding in on itself
like a lawn chair. Again, she wanted to laugh.
Annabeth sat across from
it.
The roof of the shed had
been torn, so the next rain would mean a cold one. She looked about in dismay,
wondering if she’d need to find a new place.
“Home,” said the Seeker, startling her out of her mind.
She looked at it, tilted
head and wondering, firefly eyes.
“Home,” she said back. The
Seeker looked about. It looked curious.
Carefully, it reached out and plucked one of her treasures from a box.
“Be careful!” she called,
and its giant shoulders jolted. It dropped the object back in the box, the
opposite of careful. Annabeth sighed.
The Seeker looked around
again, and then its lights landed on her. She frowned. Whatever this Seeker
was, it didn’t seem intent to terminate her.
For a moment, they both
just stared, facing each other, cross legged, equally confused, she imagined.
Annabeth put her chin on
her fist. She thought of defective.
“Is your scanner broken?”
she asked.
It tilted its head again.
“I’m only eighty-four
percent healthy,” she continued. It was a silly thing to say. If its scanner
was broken, she should shut up.
The Seeker glanced down
at its own hands. It slowly flexed its fingers in and out. “Seventy three percent functionality.” It
said.
Functionality,
she thought. Defective. It wasn’t
right.
“But your scanner works?
You identified me.”
It scanned her again, and
the suddenness sent her hackles rising. “Annabeth
Wren. Nineteen percent contaminated.”
Her chest gave a small
jolt. She supposed she had no reason in the world to be disappointed, but it
hurt just the same to hear she was even more contaminated than before. She
thought she was safe on the rooftops, but she guessed it wasn’t far away enough
away from the ground to be clean.
But still the Seeker did
not register a termination.
She frowned at the thing.
Its lights were unmoving in its face.
Outside, the sun was
heading toward an afternoon light and she hadn’t yet found some food for the
evening. She licked her lips. One meal a day was all she could manage, and she
couldn’t manage it very well.
“Do you know where food
is?” she asked the Seeker.
It tilted its head.
“Food,” it repeated.
“Food, yes.” She didn’t
know if it understood, so she gestured what eating looked like, making the
sounds a munching child would make. The Seeker whirred in response, its lights
growing fiercer for a second before fading, a little action she caught it
doing, as naturally as blinking, she thought.
Her body sagged. She stood,
bunny in her fist, and stepped around the Seeker to go back outside. Usually,
she didn’t venture out after encountering one, especially one that had gotten
so close to commencing termination, but it had been a few days since she’d eaten
anything. Her belly no longer felt empty. She just felt ill all the time, and
she was tired, but she knew it wouldn’t feel quite so bad once she had some
food.
She stepped outside her
little hut, and a moment later, the Seeker stepped out too. She sighed a
little. If it were to follow her, she decided, it would either mean more
Seekers finding them, or protection.
Whatever it was, it
didn’t really seem like she had a choice. So Annabeth stepped to the nearest ledge,
and jumped.
-
Food was a packet of
crackers with mould along the sides, and a couple canned things she was pretty
sure she could eat. She could also spread it over a few days, so returning to
her hut made her stomach sing.
The Seeker followed her
home. It had been helpful getting to places she’d never been able to get to
before. So she found things she’d never been able to find before. It may not
know food, but it knew jump and climb and break.
Annabeth could have worse
for companionship. She’d had worse.
She’d had nothing.
Back near her shed, she
ate the crackers while sitting on a ledge. The stars were just beginning to
show but the sky was still a pale blue.
A part of her knew eating
rotten food was not good, and she shouldn’t do it. She knew, in her little
heart, it could most probably get worse, her situation, but most days she was
too hungry to think on what would happen later.
“What’s broken?” she
asked the Seeker, who sat upon the ledge next to her, and stared at the
opposite edge instead of up at the sky. It looked at her, blinked – flashed its
lights. “Seventy-three percent
functionality,” she said, in her best mimic of it. “What inside you doesn’t
function?”
The Seeker did its blinking
thing, then stared back ahead.
“Misinterpreted commands,” it said. “Data corruption.”
She didn’t understand
half the words it used, but she nodded like she did.
The Seeker reached out a
hand, palm up. She frowned, then looked up at its face. It flashed its eyes and
curled its fingers, leaving one directed at the bunny she had in her fist.
Its fingers uncurled
again, and she knew what it wanted. She didn’t want to give it over but, after
a moment’s hesitation, she unfurled the floppy rabbit and gave it to the Seeker.
It caged the bunny in its metal fingers, almost gently, and turned it over in
its hands, examining the roughened fabric, and the staples keeping the back
seam together. She’d lost half the stuffing when it had split.
The Seeker scanned it.
“Baby buddies,” it said, and Annabeth couldn’t help the giggle that escaped
her. The Seeker glanced at her for a startled moment, then returned to the toy.
“Model ninety-six.”
Annabeth said nothing.
She waited for more.
The Seeker began it prod
at the toy with its sharp, spindly fingers. She wanted to snatch it back, but
resisted, too curious for her own good.
“Commence reparations,” it said.
Annabeth raised her
eyebrows. “You’ll fix it?”
It whirred, directed its
lights at her. “Command.”
She frowned but decided
the Seeker could keep it if it wanted to.
When the stars were too
bright, and the sky too dark, she took herself down from the ledge and made to
go inside. Before going in to sleep, she turned.
“Will you stay?” she
asked it.
It looked at her. “Command.”
She shook her head at the
thing and went inside. She lay down on her mat but didn’t sleep. Instead, she
listened to see if it would move.
It didn’t.
-
Morning light poured into
the shed and woke her. Annabeth stayed in bed for a moment, staring at the
roof. She wondered on a few things, as she did every morning, and then the
sight of the tear in the metal reminded her.
She jumped up and went
outside. The Seeker was still there, and she felt a small rush of relief for it.
It was no longer staring
ahead, but at the sky. Paradise had made its orbit and was in plain view; a
roundish smudge ghosting the planet.
Annabeth sat next to the
Seeker, the morning cold biting at her toes.
“You think,” she said to
it. “You’re thinking, in your head. The other Seekers don’t think.”
The Seeker said nothing
to her observation, but she had a feeling it had heard her, had understood her.
“What are you thinking
about?”
It whirred, and although
it wasn’t facing her, she knew it had done that glowing thing, its firefly eyes
pulsing.
“Family,” it said finally.
Annabeth felt her brow
scrunch slightly. “Family,” she repeated.
“Wren family.”
“My family?” she asked it, but knew she wouldn’t get much of a
clarification, so she decided to answer it as if it were a question, even if it
wasn’t. “My family’s on Paradise,” she told it. It hadn’t been much of a family
to begin with, but she’d only ever needed her mother.
Her mother was wonderful.
She was smart and funny, and she had a way of knowing when Annabeth felt
lonely. Although there was always work to be done, her mother made sure to take
the time – a day, an afternoon, an hour – to be with Annabeth. They would play
chess or bake something, go for a walk, or to the planetarium. Annabeth had always
liked the planetarium, which seemed silly to her now. She used to stare up at
the sky with wonder at how big the universe was, and how much was in it. Now,
she stared up at the sky, and felt no wonder. She felt, only, alone.
Her mother was up there,
in Paradise, and Annabeth felt just as sad for her as she did for herself.
When Earth had been
deemed too contaminated, and they’d started loading the ship, everyone marched
forward with scared but hopeful gleams in their eyes, most of all her mother. Humanity is taking the next step forward,
she’d said to Annabeth while they waited in a line that had seemed more like a
crowd, this is a good thing. She’d
looked like she’d meant it too.
Then they reached the
gate, and the Seekers scanned them. Her mother went first, a respectable twelve
percent contaminated. Safe. Then they
scanned Annabeth. Sixteen percent contaminated. Unsafe.
She remembered hearing
them, in their static voices she was already afraid of. Sixteen percent
contaminated. It was a nothing sentence, but it had meant everything. Changed everything. All because of one
lousy percent difference, the difference between safe and unsafe.
After that, it was hard
to remember. She’d heard her mother’s panic before she felt her own, and then
the unforgiving metal guard had picked her up, and her hand had slipped out of
her mother’s. The sea of people waiting for their turn parted like she was,
well, contaminated.
She remembered her
mother’s face, so recently calm and smiling, turn to horror, pain. Her mother
had fought the guards to get back and Annabeth, in a moment of selfishness, had
just wanted them to let her go. She didn’t care that staying was dangerous, and
Paradise was safe. All she could think was let
mother stay with me. But they didn’t, hadn’t.
They’d forced her mother
back, carted her away, and the Seeker took Annabeth as far back as it could,
and dropped her behind an impenetrable line of its metallic brothers. She’d
screamed, as her mother had told her to do when she was in trouble, but
everyone was screaming, crying, calling out for hope, mercy, and it drowned out
her voice. Not that it would have done her much good anyway.
She remembered the crowd
of other unsafe people shoving her
about. Some of them had eyes full of blood, and hands too pale to be normal,
but most of them looked like her, most of them were just scared, sad.
Annabeth had wanted to
push and shove her way through, and sneak back to her mother, but grown men
were barging against the Seekers and it only seemed to make it worse.
The crowd moved like the
sea, pulling and dragging this way and that. It was just one harsh motion away
from knocking her under. A woman with an unmoving baby clutched to her chest
offered an urgent hand to Annabeth when she recognised her as alone, but the
woman’s eyes were bleeding, and Annabeth didn’t know it then but she’d had some
dormant hope inside her that she wasn’t all that contaminated, and that maybe
she could lose that one percent, so she’d moved away from the woman, and disappeared
between the narrow gaps of other contaminates.
When she finally broke
through from the crowd, she just ran. She couldn’t get back to her mother, so
she ran as hard and as fast as she could in the other direction, her backpack
and her bunny her only company.
A couple months later,
the Seekers started terminating the contaminates, and the large crowd she’d
once stood in seemed to dwindle to a few shadows and a couple of unseen mice
scurrying through the city.
That was Annabeth now, an
unseen mouse, and all she did was scurry.
She blinked. Her eyes had
grown moist in the quiet moment she’d spent in her head.
“What about you?” she
asked the Seeker. She knew it quite a useless question, but it seemed right in
the moment. “Do you have family?”
It whirred. “No.”
She wondered if she’d
been alone too long, or maybe she was sicker than she thought, because the
single, crackled word sounded almost as sad as she felt. Perhaps there was a
lot less bad in the world, if her loneliness, and its, were matched. She felt,
somehow, that it would mean the end of them both.
“I’ll be your family,”
she said to it.
The Seeker didn’t move
for a long time, but then, for the first time that morning, it turned its
firefly eyes toward her.
“Little Wren Bird,” it said.
It felt so natural to
respond to the name that she said, “Yes?” right away.
“Wren go to Paradise.”
She frowned, and then her
face smoothed with a little bit of gravity. She was still trying to distinguish
the meaning in its words, whether they be statements or questions.
“No,” she told it,
sighing. “I can’t go to Paradise.”
It made a funny little
noise, like the series of beeps it made when it was trying to mimic a bird’s
call.
“Wren go to Paradise.”
“I said no.”
It made the noise again,
and Annabeth looked at it, trying to work out if something about it was broken.
Of course, there was something
broken.
“Wren go to Paradise.”
She realised then, it
hadn’t been a question, but a statement.
“Wh-no, I can’t,” she
said.
It looked at her, lights
flashing. “Paradise, Little Wren Bird.”
She frowned up at it.
“You… you can get me to Paradise?” She didn’t dare hope, but it fluttered in
her belly regardless.
“Affirmative.”
The fluttering took
flight.
“But… I’m… I’m nineteen
percent contaminated, I-,”
“Four percent difference,” it said, and if she were ever to admit
she’d gone mad, she’d confess it sounded angry. “Little Wren Bird go to Paradise.”
Her chest felt full, as
if it could burst. “You can really do that?”
“Affirmative.”
She could only describe
it as being speechless, which felt tremendously silly, considering she finally
had someone to talk to after months and months of silence. Well, something.
“But I…” she tried. “How?
Seekers block the only gateway. We can’t-,”
“Surpass Seekers,” it said. “Little
Wren Bird… home.”
She wanted to cry. A
small part of her said not to hope, that none of it was real, but most of her,
the biggest part, was already picturing seeing her mother on Paradise, and
getting to hug her and be hugged. She
would tell her how horrible it was, and about her Seeker friend.
Annabeth’s sudden happiness
deflated. She looked at the Seeker. She hadn’t even bothered to name it or
anything, and she felt sad about it.
“What about you?” she
asked it.
The Seeker – who her
little mind could not find a name for – flashed its lights at her.
“Family,” it said.
She felt like she
understood, although her head didn’t really get it. She was satisfied with the
answer, but she didn’t understand why. So, instead of questioning it again, or
lingering on the sadness in the pit of her stomach that had no right to be
there, she asked, “When?”
“Tonight,” it said.
It pulled a small lump
from behind it and held it out. Annabeth opened her hand, and it dropped her
bunny into her palm. She turned it over, finding a neatly mended seam at the
back.
Annabeth swallowed. She
was more afraid than she would ever dare admit.
-
Her heart was a
jackhammer. She had her hand wrapped around the Seeker’s wrist as they hid
within the shadow of a building.
Ahead, at the entrance, stood
almost a dozen Seekers, all blue lights and laser weapons. Every one of them was
still. Inhumanly still. Like stone statues. She wished they would move, just to
remind her they were real.
She trembled. It had been
months since she’d been on the ground. It wasn’t safe, but then again, nowhere
was safe.
Annabeth looked up at the
sky. Paradise was moving into position. There was only one way up, and it was
in a single, glass tube, like an elevator, and it clung to the tallest building
in the city.
She tightened her hand
around the Seeker. It was waiting for the right time to move, she knew it, and
it made her all the more nervous to stand so close to the others, hidden but
not invisible, ready to risk termination for the chance to find her mother.
She didn’t know what she
was thinking. Her Seeker couldn’t face a dozen. It would be torn to scraps and
she would be terminated in a second. She swallowed, and stared up at the sky
once more, at the ship moving steadily toward the docking point, descending
slightly.
Then she looked at the
Seeker again. The strange, defective Seeker that kept her safe and mended her
bunny. She tightened her hand on its wrist, her breathing rapid.
“I’m scared,” she
whispered.
It turned its arm in her
grip until it was holding her hand. “Don’t be afraid, Little Wren Bird,” it
said, its volume turned down. “Paradise
soon.”
She swallowed and held on
tighter. “I’ll miss you,” she admitted, as quiet as she could. She thought she
could cry but she didn’t want to. “Firefly.”
If it could become more
still, it seemed to.
Slowly, carefully, to
keep its whirring muted, it looked down at her, firefly eyes twinkling. Then it
looked away. She felt its grip tighten and, from the corner of her eye, saw
Paradise reach the docking point.
Annabeth squeezed her
bunny in her fist. She had no time to think on her fear. Firefly pulled her out
into the open.
A dozen pairs of blue
lights glowed brighter than she’d ever seen. With only the option to run, they
did.
Firefly pushed itself in
front of her. The moment the other Seekers scanned it, their eyes sparked red,
and Annabeth whimpered at the chorus of ‘defective’.
She was not brave enough in the moment to keep her eyes open. One hand in
Firefly’s, the other around her bunny, she tried not to trip.
The whirring and squeaking
drew nearer, and before she summoned the sense to look, Firefly dragged – threw – her forward, and she hit the
ground and rolled. A cry clawed out of her throat.
She glanced up, and could
only tell Firefly apart from the others, because it was getting hurt. Guns
fired off, flashing too loud. Firefly jerked back, and shoved half of them with
a great wave of its arm.
It turned to see her and
said, “Run.”
She whimpered but didn’t
move. Three more crashed into it, weighing it down like anchors. Annabeth’s
bunny had slipped from her grip and she looked around to find it at the edge of
the scuffle.
“Run,” she heard again, the only word that wasn’t defective.
She eyed her bunny, and
Firefly, hidden behind sparks and wires and metal. She was crying again. She
needed to get off the ground and she needed to run. Firefly was getting hurt for her. Maybe it could get away if
she was quick.
Then a boom sounded in
the street. Firefly broke free, and ran for her, scooping up her bunny in one
hand, and picking her up in the other. It was sparking, many things in it
broken.
“You’re hurt,” she cried,
but it seemed like a useless thing to say.
“Min-er-orrrr dddaaammmage,” its voice warped, and she sobbed
against its shoulder.
The other Seekers shrieked
behind them, and the sound grew too loud too quickly, most of them
significantly less damaged than Firefly. She wished she wasn’t so afraid. If
she was brave enough to keep her eyes open, maybe she’d think of something
clever. But she couldn’t keep them open. She wouldn’t.
“Little Wren Bird.” She heard a click and a whoosh, and then Firefly
put her on her feet. It bundled her bunny into her hands and gently but firmly
pushed her back. She stumbled a few steps. “Go
home.”
She was in the elevator,
already, Paradise waiting above, and Firefly stood on the other side. The other
Seekers came up behind it.
“No,” she mouthed,
trembling, the reality finally snapping into her. “No, wait!”
She rushed forward, but
Firefly hit the lock button and the door slid shut. She hit the glass, fists first.
“No! Wait!” Firefly was
oddly still. It didn’t move, didn’t dare run. She watched its firefly lights.
“Don’t! Please!”
The other Seekers fired.
Annabeth called out as Firefly fell to its knees with a squeak and a whir.
“No!” she screamed.
Annabeth pounded against the glass. Around her, she felt the elevator vibrate,
hum to life, but she wasn’t ready. Another Seeker came up behind Firefly and
hit it in the back of its head. “No! Please, stop! Wait! I don’t want to go!”
She was on her knees without thinking to kneel. Firefly only jerked, and she
was reminded it was just a thing of wires and metal, and yet she couldn’t
banish the sorrow in her heart that the thing of wires and metal was dying.
“Please,” she sobbed.
Firefly reached up a hand
and turned its head to face her. Its eyes were dim, barely there, and the left
one flickered. She realised the glass was keeping the sound out, because she
was certain it was trying to speak to her. She wanted to hear it, wished she
could.
The other Seekers put
every ounce of strength into Firefly, breaking it apart, putting it into
pieces.
Annabeth finally
understood what command meant. It had
been waiting for her to tell it what to do.
“Come with me!” she tried
to scream. “Please! Come with me!” Its fingers twitched. “Please!” The elevator’s
vibrations were so loud and fierce, it pressed against her ears. Then it began
to rise from the ground. “Wait!”
Faster than she could
dream, Firefly drifted away from her. She didn’t see it move again.
Annabeth stayed on her
knees for longer than she realised, but even as the ground grew smaller below,
and the city disappeared behind the clouds, she didn’t have it in her to stand.
When she thought it was
enough and she couldn’t possibly cry anymore, she let a little more out.
It was only when the
elevator slowed, that Annabeth remembered where she was going, what she was
doing, who she was going to see.
Her stomach clenched
itself into a knot as panic took hold of her. What if her mother wasn’t there?
She swallowed, and
decided she had to be brave. When she thought of who she owed her bravery to,
she wanted to start crying again, but she bit it back.
On shaking legs, with her
bunny in her hand, she stood, and waited for the elevator to reach Paradise.
A small beep came through
the elevator’s speakers. Her stomach made her want to be sick, and she gripped
her toy like it was her air supply.
“Identification?” came a
very human voice. It was curious and a little frightened. Annabeth sighed
inside herself. There were no Seekers on Paradise. They were designed to
monitor the world below. It had been a while since she’d heard a human speak.
“Identification?” it
asked again, slower, startling her. She remembered she had to answer the question
and looked about the small glass box to the camera in the top corner, as if it
made it easier to talk to a bodyless voice.
“Anna-Annbeth Wren,” she
said.
There was a pause in
which the air around her was silent, and Annabeth felt like she was about to be
turned away.
“Contamination
percentage?”
She swallowed. Her mother
had always said it was better to receive punishment for the truth right away,
than to receive punishment for lying later. But Annabeth knew if her mother
were next to her, she’d tell her to lie.
“Fifteen percent,” she
said.
The voice didn’t come
back, but soon enough, the doors opened, and for the first time in almost a
year, she saw other human faces, and every one of them stared with wide eyes
and open mouths. There was a whole crowd of them, healthy, clean, dressed in
crisp, pale clothing that only made her bright but dirty yellow dress stick
out.
Then she heard it.
“Annabeth?”
That
voice. It soothed her inside out, her heart sighing. Singing.
And she was crying again, for a reason entirely different than before.
“Mum?” she dared to hope.
“Annabeth!”
She broke through the
crowd, and Annabeth took in her bright face, and dazzling eyes, and everything
that had happened to her suddenly seemed okay. Then she was in her mother’s
arms, pressed against her chest, safe, warm, happy.
Her mother. Home.
-
It was a strange
sensation, to be clean, to wear different clothes. She picked at the hem of her
white shirt and was almost dissatisfied that she couldn’t open a rip in the
fabric and hear the pleasing sound it would make.
Her hair was wet, and
clean. She’d wanted nothing more than a shower for the first few weeks of being
in the city alone, but after that, she’d forgotten the feeling of water on her
skin, and the freshness of it afterward.
She felt quite whole.
Her mother’s room on
Paradise was simple and white, with technical equipment they only gave to
scientists, and simple furniture they gave to everyone.
She sat on the bed,
toying with her bunny’s ears, wondering what to do. There was no treasure to
find here, and she couldn’t remember what she did before she was alone.
Her mother had gone to
get them more food. ‘I’ll find us a
treat, to celebrate,’ she’d said, so Annabeth waited alone and while being alone,
she thought of Firefly.
She wanted to cry.
Fiddling with her bunny
made her equal parts sad and content. It was whole again, because of Firefly.
She thumbed the mended seam. Beneath it, she felt an unusual lump take shape.
She traced it until she was certain there was something in there that hadn’t
been there before.
She swallowed and,
convincing herself her mother could fix it, found a pair of scissors and, after
placing a kiss to her bunny’s head in a pre-emptive apology, cut it open. From
out of the stuffing, the shaped thing became real. It was rectangular, made of
dark metal and silver lines.
She let out a breath. It
looked like the part of a machine, so she found one of her mother’s machines
with a slot it would fit into.
She knew she shouldn’t
touch things she didn’t understand, but it felt more important than not, the
small metal thing, so she forced it into the slot and waited.
For a long while, nothing
happened, and in her frustration, Annabeth prodded at the keyboard. Still,
nothing happened. She realised she’d been letting herself hope, because the
hope then crashed around her.
She reminded herself she
was with her mother, and the disappointment faded a little, so she moved to
wait on the bed again.
Behind her, the computer
hummed to life. She turned, to a blue screen and a blinking light. She waited,
breath held.
Then the start up noise
faded, and the world paused.
“Greetings, Little Wren Bird.”
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