Cuddling Through The Years

cuddling through the years

tu me cherchais?

““Hello, Michelle.” His voice was a wearier version of the one she had adored all those years ago, but it still filled her with memories and loneliness and warmth.”

Tell him hello

When Logan first brought Selene to Michelle, he stayed in the house. No one visited her anyway and he couldn’t go into town—not with the risk of being discovered. While Selene was still in such critical condition, he would need to watch over her. Once she was stable, he would leave.

Logan slept on the couch in the living room next to Selene’s chamber. In her current state, she was at risk of a heart attack or capture from enemies. Michelle had offered them the spare bedroom, but the suspension tank couldn’t be brought up the stairs. Once, when she passed by the staircase, she remembered the portraits on her wall. Four-year-old Scarlet playing in a sandbox. Herself and her son, a rare occasion where they were both smiling. Michelle made no effort to conceal them. Logan was far too distracted to pay attention, but she wondered—if for a moment he did—would he look at the photo of her and a three-month-old Luc and notice that she looked around the same age as when they had first met?

She hoped he wouldn’t. A bizarre fear persisted, that he would be disappointed in her if he learnt of her failings as a mother to his son.

During the daytime, while Logan was down in the bunker preparing it to house the body, Michelle was tasked with monitoring the child. The form was so grotesque, so mangled and inhuman that she couldn’t bear more than a cursory glance. In the evenings she would prepare them a meal. Again, Logan would eat by the child, and though Michelle initially joined him, sitting on the lounge chair by the lamp, it became too awkward. The silence. The utensils scraping on ceramic plates. The hum of the alien pod.

The meals became simpler as she began to run out of ingredients. She had put off her usual grocery run since his arrival, worried that if she left the property and one of her neighbours flew by and noticed a man leaving her podship hanger, it would arouse suspicion. Then she realised that if the locals didn’t see her at her typical weekly outing, they might come to the house to check up on her. That would be worse.

She never bought fresh produce from the grocer, usually just the essentials—flour and sugar and meat. On this occasion, as she attempted to escape a conversation with chatty Madame Manon Bouchard, she spied a stand of fresh dragon fruit right by the milk aisle.

“You don’t even have zucchini?” she had once asked Logan, as they stood together in his kitchen, his hands around her waist.

He had laughed into her hair. “Now you’re just making up words.”

Her attempt to make a good ragout with the limited ingredients in Artemisia had left her stumped. Seeing the luxuriant meals in the cafés and restaurants, she had assumed the sparkly city was teeming with cultivation. Logan informed her that that was only the case for the rich; the less fortunate—even a well-paid doctor as himself—had fewer options.

She peeled the carrots, chopped them and tossed them into the pot. Then came the wine. Or what was left of it; the rest in their bellies.

She looked over her shoulder, flicking his nose. “Don’t worry. If you come to Earth, I will make you all kinds of things. With zucchini and lychee and rhubarb and dragon fruit.”

“Sure,” he agreed with a fond shake of his head. “I’ll try your imaginary dragon fruit.”

Michelle was struck by such an unexpected pang of emotion that she didn’t notice Manon’s offended scoff as she wandered over to the stand mid-conversation.

That evening, she made dragon fruit tartlets for dessert. She thought, briefly, to pair it with a ragout. But she thought that might be making it a little too easy for him.

After dinner, Logan brought the plates into the kitchen and washed them in the sink. She never asked him to do this. He always did.

“Here,” she said, placing a plate by the dishrack. Atop it sat a perfect tartlet, drizzled with cream from her cow and strawberries from her field. “This is for you.”

He glanced at it. “Thank you.”

Once he was done at the sink, he sat at the kitchen table and ate. His brow was furrowed, his mind always a thousand light-years away.

“It’s dragon fruit,” she ventured, tracing her eyes over that brow, waiting for recognition.

Logan nodded, took his final bite and brought this plate over to the sink. “Thank you, Michelle.”

A jolt of pain rippled through her. She turned away from him, heading to the living room. “I’ll, uh, check on the princess.”

His grunt was all to indicate that he’d heard her. But the fruit, the memories, she knew he hadn’t remembered at all.

———

“She couldn’t imagine how this child could sleep for her entire life and then be expected to become a queen upon her return to society. But that would be Logan’s job, whenever he returned. There were years still before anyone would know who this child was going to become.”

———

Eight years later, Logan stayed in the bunker while they were waking Selene up, as did Linh Garan. Scarlet could never learn of their presence, yet Michelle was beginning to suspect that even if her granddaughter was removed from the equation, Logan wouldn’t risk leaving the princess’s side. He was cautious, yes, but most of all, he was manically paranoid.

She hadn’t believed he was losing his mind, but after weeks of observing him, in surgery and in conversation and at meals, she began to believe him.

The risk of Scarlet discovering them put her on edge, too. Thankfully school had started up again that week, so they had at least a few hours in the daytime where they didn’t need to be as surreptitious. Even then, Michelle would tense; Scarlet—the little hothead she was—tended to get into arguments at school and stomp home without any warning to her grandmother. Today was a Sunday, and Michelle had sent her off to the neighbour’s house. Old Madame Boudreaux had needed someone to help her set up a new netscreen, and fortunately for Michelle, she had a propensity for forcing all house guests to learn the history of every knick-knack and porcelain doll in her museum of a home. Scarlet wouldn’t be able to leave for several hours yet.

This was the only time Logan was willing to be parted from Selene, no, Cinder, five days before she was to be taken away to the Eastern Commonwealth. She was caked in gel, an insect freshly emerged from its egg, slimy and tinged green. She needed to be bathed.

Michelle had been more than hesitant to bring the child into her home, but there was no running water in the bunker. It was too difficult to carry the girl up the ladder with old bones, so the task had fallen to Garan. Although the man was set to be her adoptive father, he was rather unnatural in holding her. She hoped it was simply a product of unfamiliarity and not a sign of what kind of father he would be to the princess.

They took her inside the house while she was still asleep. It wasn’t much different from her waking state, except for the groaning and squirming. Then Logan and Garan left Michelle with her in the bathroom. She woke as Michelle began running a warm soapy cloth over her arms, dissolving the crusted gel. A proper bath would be too aggressive for her fragile skin, the joints between flesh and prostheses still red and inflamed.

Michelle wished the girl had stayed asleep. Odd as it may seem, Michelle wasn’t quite adept at interacting with children. Her rather disastrous upbringing of her son proved that. She only bonded with Scarlet so easily because the little hothead was just as stubborn as herself. But with this blank slate of a child, Michelle felt almost awkward.

She grasped the shower head and gently cupped Cinder’s scalp under her palm. “All right, Cinder. Let’s wash your hair.”

Though the water was a safe tepid she flinched, eyes tearing open and hands scrambling to grasp the corners of the bathtub. Michelle murmured soothing shhs and it’s okay’s. For the first time since waking, she looked at Michelle, awareness filling her gaze, but with it, harshness.

Logan had assured her that the child would not wake with the mental faculties of a toddler, that the brain stimulations had successfully advanced her to the comprehension level befitting her age. Michelle was secretly unconvinced. The girl moved in a haze, more like a newborn than even a three-year-old, as though she had regressed during stasis.

But then she would cast a look at Michelle, long and loaded, and she would feel that she had been complicit in some crime.

Nevertheless, the hair had to be washed, so Michelle used her free hand to still the girl as she soaked the hair from roots to ends. Cinder eventually gave up in squirming, limbs still too weak to offer any form of escape.

She made quick work of the shampoo and conditioner. With her body carefully untouched by the stream, Cinder began to shiver.

“All done, Cinder,” Michelle assured. She sat her up and wrapped a towel around her. “Do you want to try your walking?”

Cinder remained motionless but allowed Michelle to lift her. She groaned as she heaved the child out of the bath and set her on the ground. “Ready?”

Cinder took the smallest step forward on the tile and immediately lurched forward. Hands at the ready, Michelle was quick to stop her from falling. Righting her, she guided gently, “That’s okay. Let’s try again.”

Garan had been teaching her to walk and had partial success thus far. A look of concentration encased the girl’s face now as she lifted her stiff foot and forced it in front of her.

Cinder wobbled but stayed upright. She gripped Michelle’s hand tighter.

Through several arduous steps and a few stumbles, they reached the bedroom. Michelle considered but decided not to repeat Garan’s encouragements. “You’re doing well,” “almost there,” “good job.” They were perfunctory. No number of pleasantries could coax a ship to fly or teach a horse to run. Cinder alone would decide if she walked.

Michelle lowered her to the bed, reaching for the outfit she had laid out. “These are your new clothes, Cinder. I have another set for you to take as well.”

Well, they weren’t new. They came from a box of Scarlet’s old clothes from last year. Michelle had planned to donate them to the local boutique de charité and that’s where Scarlet believed they currently were. Michelle had since found an equally charitable cause for them. She would wash the ones Cinder had lived in for the past week before sending them off in a duffel bag with the girl in tow.

The goosebumps on her skin calmed as the fleecy cotton covered her arms. Cinder weakly tugged at the sleeves, trying to pull them down with little success until Michelle intervened.

“You’ll have a new mother soon. She’ll help you get dressed if you’re still not ready yet.”

Michelle shimmied the pants up her legs. Her fingernail accidentally grazed the link between flesh and metal on her thigh and Cinder whimpered. Michelle flinched.

“Désolé, chérie.” She patted her leg soothingly, moving onto the socks. Then she stepped back to evaluate.

She would be warm, at least. Not much could be done yet about the unnatural pallor of her skin. The hair, clean but still tangled, with split ends running up to the roots, now she could do something about that.

Michelle found her salon scissors and brush, heaving onto her knees on the bed behind Cinder. Her muscles groaned as they rested on the unsteady surface and she swayed, but the scissors stayed firmly gripped in her fist. Cinder couldn’t be trusted around them yet.

Her fingers picked up some chunks of hair and raked through them. The girl whined even at the slightest tug. “I know it doesn’t feel nice, Cinder” she said as she worked the brush through the ends. “But we have to push through the pain to make it better.”

Her words had run ahead of her. As the bristles danced through the brown strands, she continued, “I’ve had to do that many times in my lifetime. As will you.”

Cinder’s shoulders drooped. With the worst knots untangled, she was a statue.

Satisfied, Michelle lay a towel on the quilt to catch the hair and began cutting. It was long—eight years’ worth of growth—and yet it was still uneven. Michelle had a vision of this girl as a 3-year-old with oozing pus in patches over her burnt scalp. They had since healed, but the hair was brittle in some parts more than others. A good ten centimetres off should even it out.

Michelle feathered the ends, brushing the loose hair from her shirt. “All done. Would you like to see?”

To Michelle’s astonishment, Cinder seemed to nod. It wasn’t exactly obvious—perhaps just a meaningless reflex—but perhaps it had been intentional.

Michelle set the scissors on the towel. It took another test of patience to help Cinder stagger back into the bathroom and Michelle’s arms were aching with exertion from carrying her by the shoulders.

Cinder took the last few steps on her own and gripped the bench, staring at herself in the mirror. Michelle watched her.

No expression. No recognition. There was no mirror in the bunker. Did Cinder realise this was the first time she’d seen herself since she was a toddler? Did she even comprehend that it was her? Despite how much Logan swore that she had been educated, caught up to speed on normal childhood development, had it failed?

Was this girl not a girl, but a dead soul’s consciousness forced into a machine, functioning only through robotics and wires and machinery?

Michelle had to grip the towel rail to steady herself.

How could this child become queen? How could she save them all?

“Selene,” she said suddenly, then immediately shook her head, “no, Cinder. You must listen to me.” She released the rail and took the girl’s shoulders into her hands. Cinder turned to face her.

“Cinder. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if they will come for you. But whatever happens, you can’t let them take everything from you.” Michelle pressed her forehead against Cinder’s, awkwardness dispelled by the divine need to impart this instruction. She conjured every ounce of motherly wisdom that she had lacked with her son, and thought about what she would tell Scarlet, had Scarlet been the girl before her.

“They have already taken so much from you. They will want to make you a leader. They will forget that you are just a girl.” She pulled away, her eyes imploring. “When they ask you to fight, you must learn to say yes. But when they ask everything of you, you must learn to say no.” Exhaling every breath she’d taken in over the past eight years, she asked, “Okay?”

Cinder blinked slowly through full lashes. A minuscule light darted back and forth in her left eye. A bionic eye. Fake. Her heart. Brain. Lungs. All of it.

Maybe synthetic eyes couldn’t light up with joy or with recognition. Maybe they couldn’t convey sadness or understanding. So maybe Cinder had been understanding Michelle this entire time. Michelle was the one who had been blind.

Cinder’s mouth opened. She began to nod. Again, it could be a meaningless tick, but then, in the quietest voice Michelle had ever heard, she spoke.

“...O–kay.”

———

“Grand-mère, who is Logan Tanner?” Her grandma brushed a light kiss against Scarlet’s forehead. “He’s a good man, Scarlet. He would have loved you.”

———

Cinder began speaking sparsely, mostly nos and yeses and whys. She voiced her first full sentence on the day she left.

“Where are we going?” she asked Garan as he buckled her into her seat in the hover.

“We’re going home, Cinder,” he explained with a light tone. Once she was strapped in, he stepped away and the door slid shut.

Garan turned to Michelle and Logan. “Well…” he trailed off.

“Thank you again, Garan.” Logan said sincerely, taking his hand and shaking it. “This could not have been accomplished without your skills and discretion.” His tone became grave. “And for the danger you have inflicted upon yourself, I am truly sorry.”

Garan shook his head. “Don’t be, Logan. I am honoured to play this role in shaping history.”

Thus far, he had seemed to Michelle a curious savant, enticed more by the prospect of having a Lunar subject for his inventions than by the theophanic-like encounter with a resurrected myth. Yet he demonstrated now a trace of comprehension in his tight brow. He understood the risk of accepting this burden.

He offered Michelle a nod and rounded to the other side of the hover. “Good-bye then.” Garan opened the door and slid inside.

Michelle’s attention was entrapped by Cinder. She was staring right at her, blinking slowly, and Michelle suddenly felt cruel to not have parted with a hug, a kiss, a promise that everything would eventually work out. But Michelle could not feed such lies to this child. Cinder was somehow entirely different to the girl that had haunted the ground beneath Michelle’s feet for the past eight years. That had been Selene. Cinder was the one who had woken up.

Mostly, Michelle was sad to send her off, sure in the deepest fissures of her heart that her new life in the Eastern Commonwealth would not be as ‘fine’ as Garan promised it to be.

The hover lifted from the ground and picked up speed, yet Cinder’s searching brown eyes lingered down the full length of the driveway.

Once the rattle of whirring motors faded and the disturbed dust had drifted back to the ground, only Michelle and Logan were left.

They looked out to the road, three arm lengths apart.

Michelle exhaled shakily. “Well, there she goes.”

A grim nod. “She has to.”

Michelle shifted slightly, halfway facing him. “You don’t trust him?”

“I do…” he sighed. “I trust he won’t betray her to the authorities or treat her badly, I just don’t…” He pursed his lips.

“Don’t what?”

Logan clasped his hands together, not meeting her eyes. “Michelle, there is no one on Earth or Luna I trust more than you. If it hadn’t been so threatening to both her and your safety, I would want her under your protection for as long as possible. I don’t know that Garan will manage this burden in the way you have.”

The honesty rocked her. So confessionally sweet, and yet so obvious in its failings. Because he shouldn’t trust her so, not when they had such a brief connection to begin with. Not when he probably had a life on Luna after her, maybe a wife and children; children that perhaps looked vaguely alike their own son. There was no room for such unbosoming, not for co-conspirators in treasonous affairs that would surely catch up to them both.

But perhaps, wouldn’t have been nice if there was no Selene at all? If he had simply escaped Luna to find her, and if he could sleep in the house rather than the bunker? Sit across from her at the dining table and tell stories to Scarlet, whom he would surely adore? “We are older than Garan,” she said soberly. “But he will learn—as we did.”

He nodded distractedly, perhaps disappointed. Was he disheartened that she did not acknowledge his praise towards her? If he was, he didn’t dwell on it. “I leave tomorrow. It would be too suspicious for me to follow the hover. Granted I’m still sane by the time I reach the Commonwealth, I’ll check on her, just for safety.”

Right. He was losing his mind, or so he said. He seemed always to be present with her, but she did notice him losing his train of thought when conversing with Garan and becoming fidgety when Cinder would refuse their gentle prompts to practise walking. “...And if you’re not sane?”

His eyes bored into hers, distant as though foreseeing the forthcoming years. “I’ve already done my work.”

Her port chimed, an alarm reminding her that Scarlet would be due home soon. Michelle had essentially forced Scarlet to go spend the afternoon at a friend’s house, but she wouldn’t be deterred for too long. Logan needed to hide. “You’ll have to retire to the bunker for the night.”

He stepped away. “Of course. Then this is goodbye.”

She startled. “I won’t see you off tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is Saturday. On Luna, school children have the weekend off. I’m assuming it’s the same on Earth.”

She’d forgotten, so terrified of Scarlet uncovering the confidential mission happening right under her nose that the days had blurred into insignificance. Logan never spoke of Scarlet, but they had all been aware of the oblivious bystander preventing them from acting in the open. “Right. I hadn’t realised.”

Logan appeared to contemplate what he said next. “I am truly grateful to have known you, Michelle.”

She pressed her lips, feeling twenty-nine again in everything but body. “Take care of yourself, Logan.”

And then he was walking away. No embrace, no handshake or nod as Garan had exchanged.

The wind whipped through her hair and the sunset before him cast a silhouette—an old man tramping through the crops.

She hadn’t said it. That she trusted him impossibly more than anyone else, too. That this trust had long blurred the lines of devotion. Their fling was remembered as having lasted an entire lifetime. She wondered if she would soon regret her silence.

Michelle turned and strolled back to the house. Two—diametrically opposed in direction, no longer having Selene to tether them together. But, with a hand on her chest, Michelle resolved that if Cinder reclaimed her throne, freed Luna and opened the way for Lunars and Earthens to have peace, she knew who she would fly to.

———

“On Luna, I knew the man who brought you to Earth and performed your surgery. I tracked him down in an attempt to find you, but by then he’d already started to lose his mind. All I could get out of him was that you were somewhere here, in the Commonwealth.”

Tell him good-bye

“Where is she?”

Logan was shoved backwards, head lolling as the whiplash caught him. He dumbly flailed his hands but was too blindsided to direct a blow.

Sage Darnel was much shorter than Logan, but he towered over him as Logan’s knees gave out. He crumpled to the ground.

“Is she alive?” Sage demanded again, lugging him up by the collar. His sky-blue eyes were stormy and fierce and Logan couldn’t hold them.

His breaths were shallow and irregular, mind vague and unfocused. He couldn’t remember where he was, why he was here…

“Logan!” Sage barked.

“Alive,” he gasped, wincing as nails dug into his flesh. “Alive. Barely.”

When Sage had ambushed him outside the android dealer, Logan had taken off with the tenacity of a sprinter. But his internal compass failed him and Sage chased him down, cornering him in this alleyway.

Sage snarled, his canines gleaming in the moonlight. “What do you mean?”

“Broken,” bubbled from his lips. “Too broken. Bone and skin and ashes.”

“What are you saying, Logan?” he spat.

Princess Selene’s burnt corpse flashed past his vision. Blood and pus oozing from welts. Bones and skin mangled. Her charred eyes in his hands. Pieces of her brain sitting on his operating table. “I had to fix her.”

“Fix what? Her body? From the fire?”

Chopping and stitching and sawing and praying. “Metal and grafts.”

His anger wilted with realisation. “She’s a cyborg, isn't she?”

Stupidly, Logan thought that this shift might give him an advantage. He wrestled against the iron grip, sneering, “Levana sent you to take her!”

Sage shoved him further up the wall, invading his space so closely that Logan could feel his breath on his chin. “I want to rip Levana apart with my own two hands and return Selene to her throne.”

“Why?” he choked.

“Because she killed my daughter. What’s your reason?”

He had none, no personal stake, except for the sake of his country. “To fight her,” he settled on, not really knowing what it meant.

“Good. So where is she?”

Stars, how did they ever take this man’s daughter away from him? Logan was certain he was only a millisecond away from smashing his skull against the brick wall.

“Logan!”

“Commonwealth! The Eastern Commonwealth!” he cried, awaiting the blow.

“Where? Where in the Eastern Commonwealth?”

He couldn’t feel the blow, but it must have come. Why else was his brain screaming? His body burning hotter than a playhouse in a toddler’s nursery? Incoherent spluttering vomited from his mouth, breaths coming out but none able to come in. He was asphyxiating. He was bleeding. He was brainless.

Sage’s frantic blue eyes were not enough to keep Logan’s attention. It was fixed at the end of the alleyway—a figure drenched in moon light approached.

“Where?!”

“Yes Logan, where? Where did you put her?” mocked Dr Eliot, her silhouette growing clearer.

“I saved her, I swear!” Logan protested.

Dr Eliot shook her head, expression vacant. Blood began to trickle down her scalp in rivulets, dripping down her eyelids and lips. Then the trickle turned into a stream, swimming down her white doctor’s coat and staining it, the blood black in the moonlight.

“I did, I-I promise,” he stammered, “I did, I did, I did.”

Thud. He was dropped to the floor. He barely noticed.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Sage snarled and stomped down the alleyway, walking straight through the bloodied ghost.

It began to rain.

Logan lay on the damp, cold cement, heart palpitating and eyes unseeing.

Yes, lost my mind, his mind thought, as Dr Eliot’s blood drifted from the sky and blanketed him.

Yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes yes.

———

Before he had lost his mind, it had been kind to him. He needed enough mental clarity to perform Selene’s surgeries. With that accomplished, his sanity promptly handed him a letter of resignation.

Three months. Logan had elected to wait three months after leaving Michelle before following Garan into New Beijing. Three months before he surreptitiously checked on the child. Time was needed to put distance between Logan and Garan, to stamp out any suspicions of a connection.

As the reins of timekeeping flung out of his hands—another consequence of the Lunar sickness—three months turned into two and half years. It was then that Sage Darnel found Logan and pinned him to the wall of the alleyway. How long Sage had been on Earth, Logan didn’t know. He no longer remembered how long he himself had been on Earth.

His encounter with Sage only worsened his fear. It became even more imperative that he avoid the princess. He could only hope that Sage either never found her or that he was true to his word; that he too wished to see her enthroned.

But any others lurking around, searching for the princess, may not share those motives.

Logan lived as a nomad, moving from place to place, province to province and never staying long enough to become a local. When he had escaped Luna for Earth, he had left the pilot helping him all his assets, his home and his investments. In exchange, the pilot converted all of Logan’s savings into Earthen currency registered under his new false identity. He had enough to sustain him over the years, knowing there was no possibility of him working again. Not as a doctor, with a mind so demented. Not with the chance of another Lunar finding him.

He was pitied by some, ignored by most. More than once was he asked if he had wandered away from his nursing home. Once he was robbed, his portscreen stolen from him. It had all his connections to Linh Garan, but Logan had programmed it to delete all incriminating evidence if ever it was opened by someone other than himself. Now he really had to trust in Garan, because he wouldn’t soon be able to reach him.

Between harrowing visions that reduced him to a trembling ball on the floor and sleeping and eating and shuffling about, he had memories. His younger brother tossing him a ball. His elderly patient sobbing as he delivered a terminal diagnosis. In the library, reading about the atmosphere of Earth. The pictures did no justice to the true colour of the sky, someone had once told him….who?

One day as he wandered aimlessly around a grocery store, bumping into androids and accidentally knocking over shelf displays, a kindly-looking young woman stopped him and asked if he had a wife she could call to come collect him.

I don’t think so, he had said, and she smiled pityingly.

Logan had almost married twenty years ago. Bright and cheery Evelyn Eliot, with the mousy blonde hair and always concerned grey eyes. She was the aunt of one of Logan’s students and an engineer in Artemisia’s maglev system. Logan grew to care for her. He never revealed to her how truly malcontent he was against the regime—he didn’t think she shared such sympathies. But she was kind, and he would not be unhappy with her.

One afternoon, two months before their wedding date, she burst into the medical centre, face flushed with sweat beading her forehead. In a low whisper, she hastily told him that two guards had visited her at her work and reassigned her to outer sectors to strengthen the security of the maglev system. The people were becoming defiant, the risk they might try to cross borders growing greater. Evelyn didn’t want to leave. She promised him that she wouldn’t go.

Perhaps Logan should have confessed his hatred of the monarchy to her, because perhaps then she would have been resigned to the knowledge that refusal was not an option.

That night, Evelyn disappeared. Bioelectrically manipulated onto a maglev shuttle and shipped over to her new assignment in the outer sectors. With the laws prohibiting travel between sectors, she was never to return. With the two of them unmarried, Logan could not follow her.

He resolutely gave up on all inklings of companionship and love after that.

A week later, he’d stumbled upon his former student, now Dr Eliot, tearing up her office in a fury. She threw vitals scanners to the floor, smashed vials under her feet.

“They took her!” she screamed, wrestling with a lab cart. It crashed to the ground with a furious smash! “They stole her just because they can! We’ll never see her again! I hate them, I hate all of them!”

She raised a stethoscope, ready to hurl it but startled when she realised she was aiming it at him.

A hand whipped over her mouth. “I don’t, I didn’t…I don’t despise the monarchy—I swear—”

Logan hushed her with a held finger. “Be careful who you say those things around, Doctor.” And then in an impossibly low murmur, “Not everyone around here shares the same sentiments as we do.”

Her eyes widened.

They never spoke again of their shared resistance. But their bond was always stronger after that, even stronger than that of a mentor and a student. More than that of once-to-be uncle and niece.

That must have been the reason why, when the nursery went up in flames, she sent for him rather than one of the younger, fitter doctors who could have raced over much sooner. Why when she was taken in to be questioned by Levana and her obsequious snake Sybil Mira, she entrusted Selene into his care.

All he could remember now about Dr Eliot was the blood stretching the lengths of that alleyway.

———

“I’ll try to keep an eye on her for as long as I can, but I’m not sure I will still be lucid enough to tell her the truth once she’s ready. It’s possible that responsibility will fall to Garan.”

———

Linh Garan. ID #0082700743. Deceased 121 T.E. Cause of Death: Letumosis.

It took a week for the understanding to pass through his haze of incomprehension. 121 T.E. That was four years ago. The girl must be now…oh…fifteen?

It had all been prompted by a ring of blue bruises covering a dead man’s arms. Logan’s roommate—a young man kicked out of home by his ex-wife, almost as vague and aimless as Logan—had stumbled into the share house one day panting and dead-eyed. Logan’s medical training resurged, winning over his incognizance. He triaged the man, asking his symptoms, observing his breathing. When Logan took his wrist to check his pulse, he saw the bruises.

The blue fever. He commed for an emergency hover from the man’s port and hid when the med droids came to collect him.

Surely he had contracted it himself. It could take days for the symptoms of the plague to manifest, and they slept on opposite sides of the same room in twin beds. But if the med droids found him and took him, they would discover that he was Lunar.

No, if he was going to die, he would do it here, hidden away.

After three days of mania, fasting and acceptance, no symptoms arose.

He couldn’t fathom a reason why he hadn’t caught it. No Earthen had ever recovered from the disease. Immunity. It had to be connected to his Lunar genealogy. Logan began to posit that Lunar defectors like himself had brought it to Earth in the first place.

The second realisation came as he was absentmindedly watching a newsfeed about the cyborg draft in the Eastern Commonwealth. If Selene was called in for the draft, exposed to the disease and found to be immune, she would become a subject of curiosity. Garan must be warned.

He had never once contacted Garan since he took the princess, dreading that someone could hack his portscreen and connect the dots. But as he now searched his profile on the portscreen he claimed from his deceased roommate, he discovered the truth.

Garan was dead. Gone only weeks after he’d taken the princess away. Now who could tell her of her own identity? Garan and himself were the only ones who knew. Sage still evidently had not found her.

And…

And Michelle.

He hadn’t consciously thought of her in a while. He was occasionally reminded of her; a French voice in a newsfeed, a smell of earth and dirt reminiscent of her farm, some dish filling his belly with the warmth of one of her stews.

Even now, just at thought of her, a taste of something fruity and tangy coated his tongue.

He expelled the aching from his chest. Michelle was so much wiser than him. She could help the girl become queen. If he could find Selene and bring her back to Michelle…no, that would endanger Michelle. He couldn’t.

Logan would find Linh Cinder and tell her the truth himself.

———

It took three months to reach New Beijing from where he had been decaying in Uzbekistan. Travel was near impossible with no mental legs to stand on, and Logan kept going in circles, catching the wrong maglevs, seeing visions along the way that caused him to flee in the opposite direction. This he could try to push past, but gradually he became more and more certain that he was being followed. Something was chasing him, observing him, but every time he turned around, the pursuer disappeared.

Finally, a backpacker took pity on him and took him under his wing, guiding him through maglevs and hostels until they reached a suburb just outside the grimy, charming capital of the Eastern Commonwealth. They parted ways amicably at the doorstep of the Linh residence, a squat home among rows of identically small abodes, all with worn awnings, chipped paint and litter strewn across the footpath.

The house immediately to the left had a broken window, glass shards spilled on a patch of weeds. Logan was well accustomed to less than pleasant lodging, but even this street curdled his stomach.

“I hope you can find your grandson, my brother,” said the kind traveller. He flashed a two fingered salute. “Peace and love, man.”

“Thank you,” said Logan, sort of wishing he remembered the free spirit’s name. Once the rickety shuttle hover trundled away, Logan pressed the bell.

Silence. He pressed the button again two more times. This was the address listed under Garan’s name; Logan had confirmed it at least fifty times a day. Finally after the fourth ring an anxious looking woman appeared, cracking the door open by a sliver and peeking out.

“H-hello,” he stammered. “Are–are you...Linh Adri?”

She shook her head quickly.

Breathing heavily, he frowned. “You’re not?”

“No.”

Logan blinked rapidly. As the woman began to close the door, he shouted, “Wait!”

Her hand halted.

“Do you know where Linh Adri is? Or…Linh…Linh Cinder?”

Her guarded eyes softened, the most infinitesimal change, but noticeable in her tone when she spoke, “The mechanic?”

“...Pardon?”

“That girl. Linh Cinder. I don’t know where she lives now. But the neighbours here remember her. She used to fix their water heaters and portscreens. They say she’s a mechanic now.”

“Where? Do you know?” he blurted loudly, stepping closer.

She backed away, hands braced defensively. “New Beijing Market. That’s all I know!”

Then she slammed the door.

Linh Cinder. He never dared to netsearch her name. He struggled even to say it aloud. Every corner he turned, some vision was there to taunt him, singing the name again and again in a dissonant melody, mocking him. They would find her. They would take her.

A flash caught his eye. Something, someone appeared—just for a moment. He scanned the street, trying to identify the figure, but there was nothing. Goosebumps erupted on his arms, but he shook off the panic. Still, some premonition deep in his gut insisted the apparition was real. Was familiar.

Logan stumbled away from the porch, took out his portscreen, and punched in New Beijing Market.

———

“Scarlet couldn’t bring herself to tell her grandmother that Logan Tanner was dead. Had gone crazy. Had killed himself.”

———

The hover spat him out at New Beijing Market. It was exactly the sort of place Logan hated to be now; crowded, loud, confusing and hot. His internal compass misfired amongst the cramped booths and overwhelming din. In places like this, he would only escape once the sun was setting and shopkeepers were pulling down the rollers.

He stumbled forward, moved by a greater purpose.

His eyes scanned every booth around him, searching for anything resembling a mechanic’s haven. He remembered Garan’s tools and contraptions, the gleam in his eye when Cinder’s metal toes twitched for the first time as he tweaked wires and screwed joints shut. Perhaps he had trained her as a mechanic...

No. It had only been weeks after he collected the princess that the plague had claimed him. Had Garan blamed her for catching the disease? Did he blame Logan?

He turned a corner, and there Garan stood.

His stomach climbed up to his throat. It was him. He was the one who had been stalking him across the Commonwealth. Garan stared at him, eyes unblinking and bloodshot. His arms were ringed with bruises, fingers blue and shrivelled. Green foam spluttered from his lips.

“Logan,” he growled, clear all the way across the lane. “Come here.”

Logan turned and bolted.

Startled pedestrians jumped out of his way as he charged past, clutching their bags to their chests. Mothers tore their children off the path.

Soon, visions were everywhere. Sage Darnel slithering out of a booth and grabbing him by the throat. His roommate’s corpse writhing on the ground, crying out, cursing him. He was already expecting Dr Eliot’s bloody appearance. Though she taunted him, he was familiar with this vision.

Visions. That’s all they were. Unreal. Psychotic.

The ground swallowed him up. The traffic of the passersby threaded around him—all at once, he knew every single one of them. Thaumaturges. Doctors. Aristocrats. The entire city of Artemisia was here on Earth, at this market, trampling him. His eyes squeezed shut. A hand lifted his chin towards the sky.

He squinted painfully up into the sunlight.

Queen Levana crouched over him, blood trickling down the tines of her crown and dripping off her lashes.

Pebbles dug into his palms as he scampered away, but she made haste to follow.

“Sir!” came from her mouth, unnaturally earnest from those smirking lips and ravenous eyes. “Sir, are you okay?”

“Go–go away!” he shrieked.

“Sir, what’s wrong? Do you need a doctor?” Do you have someone I can comm to get you? Children? A wife?”

Logan scrambled to his feet and barrelled away from the queen.

A wife. Yes, he had once almost had a wife. Steady hands calloused from digging into dirt. Teasing brown eyes.

No…the woman he had almost married—what was her name?—she’d had blonde hair and grey eyes. Who was he thinking of? Who was he looking for?

He was looking for…looking for…

“Logan.”

She stood amidst the crowd, ten paces away. Every shouting vendor and sizzling frypan silenced in the void.

“Michelle,” he uttered.

She was as young as she’d been when they met. Melting brown eyes. Lips beckoning him.

Her smile was warm. “Come on, Logan. Let’s go home.”

People swarmed around him. A woman blocked his view momentarily and once she passed on, Michelle had disappeared.

His head whipped around frantically, searching for her in every direction. Her voice was ringing in his ears. “Michelle!” he shouted, blindly crashing into a fruit stand and hobbling away, completely unaware of the surprised gasps and curses chasing him.

The visions transformed. Michelle’s redheaded granddaughter peering at him from a booth table. A boy tossing a ball at him, he recognised as the boy in the pictures on Michelle’s wall. The boy who looked so much like his own brother.

Twisting and turning through lanes, only spotting glimpses of her hair and smile before they’d disappear again, his calves finally seized up. He folded over his knees, intaking needy breaths as his eyes scanned around desperately.

They landed on a girl.

Despite her decent height, she was obviously young. She stood behind a table in a shaded booth, tools splayed out before her. Grease was spotted over her exposed arms and gloves. She was staring in concentration at the body of a woman who lay on her table, limp and dull-eyed. Logan cringed as she reached a hand into the woman’s open stomach.

Had he wandered into some illicit part of the market where someone would dissect a person so openly?

It wasn’t until the girl tilted the body slightly that Logan saw her innards of cogs and wires. The body was an android. One of those escort droids, perhaps.

The girl huffed, blowing miscreant hair from her brow, and looked up.

At first, she darted her gaze away upon noticing being observed, tugging her left glove higher up her wrist. But then a flash of curiosity caught her face, and she returned to him.

Confusion. Something else. Recognition?

Logan wondered if she would be able to help him with his search. She looked kind. Trustworthy. He needed help to find…

“Logan.”

Michelle smiled down at him. She appeared this time, not as her younger self, but as he’d last seen her. Greying hair, smile lines and jowling more beautiful than ever. The same spirit and open hands, a magnetism drawing him to her.

“It’s time to come home, Logan,” she said, eyes twinkling.

“Not yet,” he spluttered, “I have to find someone. I have to tell…”

She shook her head in amusement, turning and gesturing to him to follow. “You already found me.”

“I—”

She was gone. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment she was there and the moment she wasn’t, but he knew she had been there. That was she out there somewhere, waiting for him.

Sweet, Michelle-flavoured adrenaline pumped through his veins. He always wanted to find her. After nearly forty years, she was still the only one to have truly owned his heart. He needed to find her and tell her…

He staggered to his feet. He wasn’t supposed to be here. There was nothing for him here. His gaze again caught on the young girl in the booth. Shoulders set in a hesitant confidence. Brown eyes—cautiously curious.

His feet willed him away on their own towards the bright sunlight.

“Logan,” the voice called again, sweet as a dragon fruit tartlet. One he could almost taste as his dry lips formed around her name.

No, he wasn’t looking for that girl. He was looking for Michelle.

———

“I hope you’ll meet him someday. Tell him hello for me. Tell him good-bye.”

———

Notes

Tu me cherchais? = Were you looking for me?

I am aware that I am delusional and no one else is as invested in them as I am.

Fun bit of impossiblesuitcase trivia--the hair cutting scene is actually a deleted scene from my Cut, Comb, Detangle, Repeat series! I think probably only one person remembers that series 😂

Eagle-eyed readers may be able to notice which escort droid Cinder is working on 👀

@cindersassasin @hayleblackburn @spherical-empirical @salt-warrior @just2bubbly @gingerale2017 @slmkaider @luna-maximoff-22 @kaixiety @snozkat @mirrorballsss @skinwitch18 @bakergirl13 @cyborgcourt @linh-cindy @therealkaidertrash21

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d0orstepp

7 months ago

URGENT HELP 🚨🚨

Today we transferred my little daughter to the hospital because he is suffering from an infection that is affecting his breathing and causing him pain. I hope that every living conscience will help us save my little daughter’s life and donate any amount we can.

My compaign link https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-ibrahim-family

Please save our baby and Donate if you can

!!!!