Page 13 of The Fall

These Violent Delights

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” Sparx opened the transport doors and prepped the medbed while Sesi carried Pinga. Her face was stone, but her eyes burned with rage. Lusa had never seen her mother like this before.

“We can’t fix this,” Sparx hissed.

“Jenni will fix it.” Sesi’s chest rose and fell with deep, measured breaths, as though saying it would make it manifest.

“Not without a DocPod.” Sparx quickly found his words choked off, pinned against the transport wall by the throat. “You know I’m right,” he croaked.

Sesi shoved off, leaving him coughing. She paced around the transport cabin, growing angrier before releasing her frustration into the metal wall with a bang.

Sparx fussed with gauze and tubes, attempting to avoid Sesi’s wrath. Lusa could only observe impotently. Will she be okay? lingered on her lips. She knew that they would say yes. It would not be the truth.

“What can I do?” came out instead. That’s what Lusa was good at. Being useful. Being responsible. Suffocating her feelings in doing what needed to be done.

Sparx glanced at her from the side and finished strapping Pinga in place. “Get her a new arm,” he muttered. “Sorry, someone is stressing me out.” He looked over at Sesi glaring. Her mother did not appreciate the joke. “Make sure she doesn’t move.” Sparx motioned for her to approach the medbed.

Lusa brushed a matted strand of orange hair away from her sister’s face. Pinga was always a ball of frenetic energy. Seeing her face slackened, drained of colour was worse than the ugly wound at her shoulder.

Sparx jerked his head toward the cockpit. Sesi accompanied him, balling and un-balling her fists. “The socket is shattered,” Sparx whispered. “Fixing that requires a DocPod. And that’s if she had nanites – which she doesn’t.”

“Can we give her some?”

Lusa couldn’t see Sparx from where she was, but his silence spoke volumes. The entire point of moving away from Tyton, of re-building a population at the Lake was to purge humans of nanites – the submolecular robots made by artificial organelles, encoded by a retrovirus that attacked the Y chromosome and manifested in the next generation and every subsequent generation thereafter.

They were the basis of all true implants as well as biosigs and almost all city infrastructure. It had taken Sparx several hours and multiple charts to explain everything, including Model 21, formerly Dr. Morgan Black’s plan to modify the retrovirus to produce nanites in all living things. Only isolated populations had remained uninfected, and even then, they were on the cusp of disappearing altogether.

Luminescent rope was involved somewhere in the diagrams, but Sparx was much more reticent to explain that part.

But that was just the backstory. The more important factor was the girls at the Lake were rare. And though Lusa detested how that reduced her self by elevating her ability to bear children, that didn’t change the fact of it. A fact that her mother was willing to sacrifice for Pinga’s well-being. For Pinga’s self.

And in that moment, Lusa understood just how much they meant to Sesi. She was willing to throw away years of work for their sake. Lusa rose silently and slipped away.

Sparx managed to recover his voice. “It’s moot. If nanites were that easy to get into a person’s body, they would have released them into the bloody ocean. Organelles and retroviruses are complicated. Her immune system will destroy them before they can build a central processing array.”

He placed a hand on Sesi’s knee. She didn’t kill him, which was a good sign. “Tornit will make something for her until we can get a proper replacement.”

Sesi nodded, lips pressed into a thin, white line. “We need to get her back now.”

“Is she secure?” Sparx called to Lusa. When there was no response, he turned, only to find an open hatch. “Where’s Lusa?”

“Fuck.” Sesi swore. Calculations and contingencies paraded through her mind, all of them leading to one place. Pinga was more reckless, but Lusa wasn’t above calculated risks either. Unfortunately, that stranded them here and Pinga didn’t have time for that.

Sesi made her decision. “Go,” she ordered. “Get Talia on the spare transport.”

“You’re leaving her?” Sparx gripped the yoke to keep himself from flailing his arms.

“I’ve seen enough wounds to know when we need to leave. We’re getting her back now.” She reached over and pressed the button to close the hatch. “Talia will be here in half an hour and she has the tracker for her monocle. Lusa can take care of herself until then.”

Interlude

“The tracker leads to MB12, but she can’t have walked in without being recognised.” Talia diverted them to the Cars. “We need more info.”

“Taking me back to the spot of our first date? How romantic.” Callie laced her arms through Talia’s elbow. “Is it terrible of me that I miss Mike’s noodles at a time like this?”

Mike had gotten older, but the shop had somehow stayed the same. The same stolen aluminium panel. The same rickety stools. Even the same stench of fried synthetic gluten and algal binders that made up the noodles.

“Hey Mike.” Callie held up a hand.