“How did you all die? I don’t understand. I—I survived,” Syn said.
“Neci did not lie.”
“The burlys?”
“The lack of food. We awoke, and the world was in Madness. We left our individual crèches and discovered each other. We were all beautiful then. All of us in our white clothes, our hair beautifully combed and short. We assembled in the Collecting Room at the top of the Jacobs, in the needle. Even then, amidst the greetings and smiles and hugs, something felt wrong.”
Syn felt a stab of jealousy. They had each entered the world and discovered each other. Friends that would walk the journey together.
“There was no one from the ship to greet us. No Captain Pote. No officers. No celebration. We hadn’t been promised a celebration, but we expected someone to greet us. There was no one.”
Adaora was the first out of her crèche. Neci came second. There were ten of the pods in which we were born in each white room. I was greeted by Laoule, and I imagined Neci was welcomed by Adaora the same way—a smiling face looking down at you, confused but excited that there’s someone else waking up.
I wasn’t in the same room as Adaora and Neci—they were next door to us—so I never saw most of their interaction, but whenever all of us were together, discussing what to do, they were next to each, whispering and holding hands. Adaora was the first voice of all of ours. Perhaps, just because she had one extra moment of consciousness. For whatever reason, she often started our discussions and ended them.
We didn’t have our Companions at the beginning. They weren’t there when we awoke. Just each other. They greeted us on the other side, near the Jacobs. They had been anxiously trying to get to us but couldn’t get in. Mine, a grumpy white ball I nicknamed Cord, insisted that they were supposed to be the first things we saw. That we shouldn’t have been woken up without them. I had always wondered what would’ve been different if they had been there—someone that understood the world we awoke into, someone that could help us discover our place in it.
We only had a few days and nights of peace. Occasionally, we would hear loud explosions and screams, but we couldn’t get the doors into the rest of the needle to open for us.
We didn’t need to.
They came for us.
I wish we would’ve hidden. But we didn’t. Metal strained against metal and labored breathing filled the gaps. Someone was breaking in.
We rushed to greet them, anticipating rescue. Three large men, their faces scarred and bloodied, roared through the gap in the doors they worked to widen. The first faces that were not our own were filled with rage and desire.
Some shouted to run, to hide. I was one of those voices.
Adaora stepped forward to greet them, hoping to calm them. They pried the doors open wide enough to fit through and raced at her. In a flash, Adaora spun and kicked one of them, shattering his nose, and sent him to the ground screaming in pain. How she had done that none of us knew—but there was a power in her that spoke to the same ability in us.
She missed the second man, however. He wrapped his hands around her neck and her screams filled the air.
Neci was right in front of me, and she raced forward, panic on her face.
The man snapped Adaora’s windpipe with his bare hands, flinging her to the ground. She flopped down, lifeless, her eyes open, tongue lolling out, the grease stains from the man’s fingers smeared on her neck.
Neci leapt at him, grappling his neck and spinning around behind him. She was yelling Adaora’s name as she gripped the sides of the man’s head and broke his neck with a cracking twist, revealing her own strength, our own strength—unknown to us all at that moment.
The first death we had ever seen was Adaora’s. The second had been judgment at Neci’s hands. She was the first of us to kill.
She bounded to the third guy who was tearing at Taji’s clothes, pinning her to the ground. Neci snapped his neck too, pulling him off of the wailing Taji.
By the time Neci turned to deal with the third one, the other sisters had taken her cue and rushed him. I think Kerwen was in that group. They were savage, ripping at the man and shredding his face and neck.
When the danger passed, we all stood in silence around Adaora’s body. Those who had finished the final attacker were covered in his blood. Neci held Taji close. Taji’s eyes were shut tight as tears streamed down her face and onto her torn dress, her own dark body revealed through the rips.
Neci’s voice was as quiet as I ever heard it. She wasn’t sad. Just… broken. She instructed us to get whatever we could to protect ourselves from the rooms and off of the dead men. We armed ourselves with crude implements and stepped out into Olorun.
Our Companions greeted us, but we weren’t the innocent girls that they had hoped to find. We weren’t hungry for their guidance. We came armed, and we looked at them as tools more than friends. The extra presence of Adaora’s companion (I forget his name) only highlighted her death and their failure to be there to prevent it.
Syn closed her eyes. She had been greeted by Blip in her first moments. He had been there to prepare her for the horrors outside. He had kept her in the white room, and she had endured that dull, dreary existence, yet, it had kept her alive. The boredom had forced her to train and study, to prepare herself for what lay outside—a privilege that the others had never had.
Pigeon spoke, “She really didn’t insist on leading. At least, not at first. But we had all seen what she did. We saw her reach around that man’s head, and in a flash, he was dead. What stayed with me, stayed with most of us, was her face. There was no regret. There was nothing but action. It was a mirror, but a mirror drained of any color. That sliver of extra strength… We were all perceptive enough to see her distinctions in every action after that moment. Even if we all came out of crèches identical, she had killed first. She had made that decision. So we all followed her. We didn’t vote. It was just a subtle change. We still talked through everything, but it was her opinion that influenced the most. Like Adaora before her, Neci’s words usually ended the discussions.”
Pigeon had moved closer as she talked. Syn could feel the movement of the girl’s mouth as she formed the words. Syn shut her eyes and floated in the subtle sensation. The intrusive freedom of another. Pigeon formed words differently. She clipped her vowels faster. Syn was awed by that very fact and her own fascination with this thin girl lying next to her. A distorted mirror image of herself, and yet, through disparate choices and chances, this one spoke unlike Syn. Perhaps, Syn wondered, she did so because she was scared of her own voice? Or she was always in a rush to finish talking quickly. Anything to reduce attention to herself.
“Several of us died that first day. The colonists on the ship had already gone insane.”
“The Madness,” said Syn.
“Madness,” agreed Pigeon.
“Where did it come from? How?” Syn asked, hoping that someone else might have answers that had eluded her. She tried to stifle the confusion in her voice. By the time Syn had awoke, they were all dead on her Disc. Had the others woken earlier than she had? So why was she different? Why was she alone? Why had she been separate?
“I don’t know. Maybe Neci figured it out. I don’t think so.”
“They all went crazy.”
“All of them,” Pigeon acknowledged.
“Even Captain Pote.”
“Maybe. I’ve wondered what happened to his daughters.”
Had Pigeon stared at the videos of Pote’s family with fascination the same as me? Did she dream as well what it felt like to sit at their dining table? Did she ever wonder what it felt like to have those girls as sisters? Perhaps not. Or if so, only briefly. Having forty others would eliminate that ache quickly.