Obsession

When we take to drinking, we take to talking. Which is why I found my half-drunk self in a corner of the bar with an inebriated Ice. We had drifted away from the others' loud boasting, for she and I are unhesitant to tell the tales that other Runners try their hardest to ignore. Stories of bitterness and defeat, of betrayal and prison and the truth behind legends.

Ice is in a constant battle to hide herself, more than anyone I've ever known. It is not simply a refusal to share, it is a denial of self. It has always seemed dangerous to pry at her origins as I would others, though I have suspected in the past that she rose fully grown from a drop of blood spilled out into the chill of space.

As we spoke, Ice's voice sputtered, tripped, and fell into an accent I could not fail to recognize. She could not hide that she had grown up, highly educated, on Mars. She watched me understand, and then I saw something I had never seen from her before: fear. Suddenly she became a warm-blooded woman, more hurt and alone than even I am, and turned fierce because of it. She spends her life hunting to hide the fact that she is hunted by the ever-constant, invisible reality she fears.

"We both know too much, Scout. We've seen too much. Not just you, though. Don't think I don't know…the secrets you tell. But I don't, I keep them safe. So you do the same, because they're not lies, only secrets. You're too truthful."

"And you're too drunk." And desperate, I thought, then poured her another sake. She left me to drink it myself, and wonder what she thought she knows. Or does know. We have progressed from suspicion to respect to grudging friendship, but always we have been kept wary by the piercing understanding that lies between us. She is not lying nor delusional, so what is it that she knows? What is it that I know?



Perhaps I was wrong when I said she is unscarred.

beneath the skin

Amidst the tumult of flying limbs and squalling laughter, I heard one thing as we collapsed to the street. Caban, somewhere beneath me in the pile of bodies, shouting, "Lydia!" as we fell. He called Em by the name of his sister, one of two he refers to as his baby sisters. I have gleaned their names: Lydia and Jules, but nothing more about them. He spoke to me a great deal about the Agrifields and his start in space, but nothing of what has become of them. Do they live with his wealthy, distant brother? Do they work the fields still? There are no pictures of them in his room, though I can see them, as cheerful and brown and steady as him. Perhaps he has no photos, or perhaps like me, he keeps them hidden.



Caban loves children. Once while waiting for a contact we watched a pickpocket work his way through a crowd, fumbling and nearly getting caught twice, rewarded with a pittance each time. Caban called him over and counted out enough for a meal and a pair of shoes, both of which the child needed, and said, "Give it up, kid. You're no good." He grinned at us as the boy skittered away.



Back in the bar, Caban lifted up his shirt to reveal the pale skin over his chest and thin stomach. It was marred by three circles: a line of automatic fire had sprayed diagonally across him. It sent a bullet into his flesh, one just above his right hip, another a few centimeters over his bellybutton, and a third near the bottom of his ribcage.



I've known this open, happy man for over a year now, and it seems I hardly know him at all.

night on the town

Humans are built so that alcohol loosens the tongue, relaxes the careful guards of socialization, and forces a bit of silliness out into the open. If you can keep your head about you, the things you learn could fill a book, if anyone wrote books these days.

As we sat around the table at the dingy bar drinking sake and pisco and Cristal, our talk turned over many subjects: best job, worst job, worst crew, best pay. It all led eventually to a comparison of scars. Kon showed us the mass of bullet wounds on one shoulder and the Fed Unit tattoo on the other. Bulletvests don't typically cover arms and legs, and even those that do don't protect from everything: pulse blasts, acid, piercers. Em was a testimony to the messiness of spaceling life, but as I looked at her I realized that, with the new clothes Caban got for her in Target City hiding her scraped knees and bony elbows, and with a few months of solid protein, vitamins, clean oxygen and medical treatment, she looks far less like The Sneak and far closer to what she actually is. A young woman, actually, perhaps only a decade my junior. Closer to Ice's age, actually, though her age is as impossible to guess as the jump coordinates to the edge of the universe. She has no scars to show.

When it came my turn, and I hesitated, the Doctor smiled mischievously and said, "Oh, don't worry, I've seen yours!" Everyone laughed except me and Caban, but then Kon turned to him and grabbed his arm. "You don't be making remarks about Scout here. She'll try and break your fingers but I'll beat her to it." This from a man who, until a little while ago, took every opportunity to suggest that we engage in relieving whatever bizarre appetites he seems to have. Is it the alcohol that so improved his demeanor, or could it be some sort of personal growth?



After Ice stormed off as coldly as her drunkenness would permit, the situation devolved rapidly. After Caban and the Doctor entertained the advances of every local barcrawler who spotted them, we had to leave when Em bit a man attempting to ingratiate himself to her in a similar manner. We left laughing and stumbling, our hard times forgotten. The bartender and dockmanager looked disapprovingly at our bruises, but we paid them no mind. Soon we were racing back to the ship, Em clinging to Caban's back while I jostled and slipped on Kon's. Mezaro cheered sloppily and tried to keep up.

It is hard to say who won—we were evenly matched, but when Caban sprinted ahead Kon launched forward to tackle him. We went down and landed tangled, all of us shouting and breathless and glad.