As suspected, the final orphanage visit turns up no information. Only one kid named Aaron there who got sick that year, and he was several years too young to be me. I’d excuse a year in difference to the age I’m supposed to be—records can be incorrect—but three is a bit of a stretch. He didn’t really have my shade of hair color, anyway. And he looked nothing like the photos of young Zane.
And so we turn ourselves back for Zane and Lalia’s home.
My stomach starts doing flips the moment we head back, but I can’t deny I’m eager to see the siblings themselves. I realize that likely isn’t smart, and I know they’re fine and healthy since Lalia has called twice a day, but I miss their easy humor.
They treat me so normally I didn’t realize I missed it until they weren’t here.
It makes me anxious with Yvonne, I find it comforting with the other two humans.
There’s something seriously damaged in my brain. And not the cyborg-related damage.
Yvonne has been quieter with me than usual, but not in an angry way. I’ve experienced enough angry or passive aggressive humans I know what it looks like, and this isn’t it. It’s more as if she’s being patient with me. She still sits close and sometimes kisses me. Often, I just feel her hand brush my shoulder or arm or side when she’s close. I can’t decide if it’s better or worse that I could explode at her and she was nothing but understanding.
If Anya’s noticed the difference, she hasn’t said anything.
Now that I’ve been to the larger cities, I recognize the trees in the forest around their house as smaller versions of the trunk I’d climbed. Will these eventually grow so tall and spread their branches so wide? Perhaps this is a new forest. I wonder if there are fires on this sort of planet that burn whole forests to the ground. Perhaps the trees here are just smaller.
Paranoia makes me expect something awful the moment I settle the ship back in the meadow I’d been in only days before. We’ve had too many surprise cyborgs these past weeks. But the grass waves, the sun shines, and no cyborgs or waves of human authorities come running out of the trees. I squint at the quiet house. The mother is out front picking berries off a bush I hadn’t noticed by the side of her house. It’s rough to swallow.
Lalia comes bursting out of the door, sprinting across the grass and waving, such a large grin on her face I don’t know what to do. I can’t even bother to tell myself to get a grip, anymore. I’m fully defeated and they all know it. At least Lalia looks well-rested. I’m just glad to see her in clean clothes.
“Don’t look so miserable,” Bat says, nudging me with his nose.
I scratch his ears. “Don’t judge, you don’t have to talk to anyone.”
Feeling shy, I cycle out the airlock and watch Anya jump down and give her a hug. Chuckling, Bat jumps to the ground and pretends not to notice Lalia grinning at him. I know he likes her, but she and Yvonne still doesn’t get petting privileges.
Yvonne hugs Lalia as well. Without pause, the two of them start up chatting about our trip. Fantastic. Well, as long as Yvonne doesn’t mention last night’s conversation, I don’t care. I never did get much sleep after all that, and try not to yawn.
“Aaron got a kid out of a tree,” Anya says before Lalia can get a word in.
“Traitor,” I mumble, dropping to the grass. I find myself in a chokehold of a hug, which I really should’ve expected to begin with. I pat her on the back.
“We’re gonna work on the hugs,” she mumbles.
“Like hell we will.”
“Figure anything out?” There’s definite shyness in her eyes if not a little fear. If we found records of me in one of those places, it would kill their theory. Guilt nudges me for not keeping her better updated, despite how much I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Every place was a dead end except one. And the one was also a dead end because they lost all their records for a eight-year period right around the time I was supposed to be there.”
Lalia wrinkles up her nose. “There was a pretty bad power outage planet-wide when I was a kid?”
“Seems to have been that.”
“So nothing conclusive?”
I shake my head. She nods. I can’t read the expression in her eyes. Relief or disappointment? Probably the same mixture currently making my chest tight. Their mother—Kyra—is still watching us from the side of the house. I’m too much a coward to ask about the conversations they certainly had while we were gone.
“How’s Zane?”
“Nearly back to his normal self, I’d say. The folks wanted him to go to a hospital. Took us a bit longer than it should’ve to make them realize how bad an idea it was. The worry sorta…overwhelms the logic.”
They probably figured it was my fault for not taking Zane to a hospital in the first place. I’m easy to place the blame on. But if I thought we could get away with a hospital visit without danger of them being hauled back to Amerov, I’d have dragged Zane there in a heartbeat.
“He’ll be thrilled to see you all,” she says, looping her arm through mine. “We were just a little suspicious you wouldn’t come back.”
“Would’ve been smart of me,” I grumble, and she shoves into me as we walk.
Bat cuts a path through the grass, nose pointed in Kyra’s direction, trying not to be seen. She ends up staring at him anyway when he clicks up onto the front porch.
“We didn’t find out anything one way or another,” I tell her, since she’ll want to know and I’d rather get it over with now.
I’m not certain what I expect, but she only nods, expression calm, but her eyes fall on the place where Lalia’s arm is looped into mine. Slowly, I unweave my arm and ease away. She probably thinks her children are foolish. I wouldn’t blame her.
Zane is at the dining room table with Masyn, and almost chokes on a slice of pie. He looks so purely happy to see us I don’t know what to say. Like his sister, he half tackle-hugs me, but his father boring holes in my face with his eyes makes it worse. I pat his back.
“Did you eat? Grab food.”
I’ve lost my appetite, but Yvonne and Anya go for it. I let Zane drag me into a seat at the table. Seated between the siblings makes it all a bit less terrible. Just a bit.
I replay the last two days to them, picking at the wood grains on the table. Zane’s expression is likewise unreadable, eyebrows slightly furrowed. I don’t look at Masyn enough to read anything. At some point I decided I feel more pity for them than anger. But I’m not sure I’d want to belong to these two if they can’t show me any decency without being certain of my heritage. The least they could do is not blame me for the stupid things their two kids have done the past few months. But I have more compassion for them than I wish. They mourned a child and their two other kids got in a lot of trouble to drag some half-unhinged cyborg onto their doorstep. Even if they wanted to see me, it seems Zane and Lalia didn’t give them fair warning of the state of me. I wouldn’t be thrilled either.
I pet Bat’s ears where he hides under the table on my leg.
“That’s a shame,” Zane mutters. “But I’m surprised more of the places you visited didn’t have data losses, really.”
Masyn gives such an unexpected huff of dry amusement that I start, hoping it isn’t obvious.
“Oh yeah,” Zane says, wiping his mouth. “Dad has something to say to you.”
Immediately, I want to shrink up into the size of a pea and disappear into a crack in the floor. Whatever they’re on about, Zane needs to learn to mind his business. I look at Yvonne helplessly, but she gives me a tiny shrug of one shoulder. Lalia looks to be hiding laughter.
Masyn makes a grumbling sound into his beard.
Zane kicks him under the table.
Starting, Masyn clears his throat. “Um, I uh…I realize I was pretty…rude, earlier. I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t blaming you for what happened to Zane or anything. This is just…stressful.”
Oh.
The silence stretches so long I realize I need to say something. “They chewed your ear off, didn’t they?”
Masyn gives another huff and Zane smacks me in the chest, flexing his hand and muttering, “Ow.”
“Yeah, I’m made of metal, stupid.”
“If you prefer, I can punch you in the—”
“Zane,” Yvonne warns, but Anya starts giggling anyway.
Masyn clears his throat too loudly, “Aaron. I mean it, I want to apologize.”
I’m gonna murder Zane. Masyn’s words feel better than I’d like them to. I stare at the floor and pet Bat a perhaps a bit too aggressively. “Don’t worry about it, if I showed up on my front porch I’d be alarmed too.”
Zane brandishes his fork at me. Masyn snatches it.
“What will you do now?” he asks me, giving his son a light smack on the forehead.
Before I can consider responding, Zane says, “We’ll sleep on it, it’s nothing we can’t consider in the morning. Unless any other nosey neighbors are going to drop by.”
I eyeball him.
Zane shrugs. “Had one of our cousins over today. Was surprised to see us, but I don’t think he knows what’s going on. He’s harmless.”
I’m not certain how I feel about that, but their judgement is generally sound about such matters. We should consider leaving in the morning, but there’s nothing to be done right now for nosey relatives. If they’re not worried with their bounties, I don’t need to be.
Masyn doesn’t seem thrilled by the conversation being shut down, but nods.
As suspected, the final orphanage visit turns up no information. Only one kid named Aaron there who got sick that year, and he was several years too young to be me. I’d excuse a year in difference to the age I’m supposed to be—records can be incorrect—but three is a bit of a stretch. He didn’t really have my shade of hair color, anyway. And he looked nothing like the photos of young Zane.
And so we turn ourselves back for Zane and Lalia’s home.
My stomach starts doing flips the moment we head back, but I can’t deny I’m eager to see the siblings themselves. I realize that likely isn’t smart, and I know they’re fine and healthy since Lalia has called twice a day, but I miss their easy humor.
They treat me so normally I didn’t realize I missed it until they weren’t here.
It makes me anxious with Yvonne, I find it comforting with the other two humans.
There’s something seriously damaged in my brain. And not the cyborg-related damage.
Yvonne has been quieter with me than usual, but not in an angry way. I’ve experienced enough angry or passive aggressive humans I know what it looks like, and this isn’t it. It’s more as if she’s being patient with me. She still sits close and sometimes kisses me. Often, I just feel her hand brush my shoulder or arm or side when she’s close. I can’t decide if it’s better or worse that I could explode at her and she was nothing but understanding.
If Anya’s noticed the difference, she hasn’t said anything.
Now that I’ve been to the larger cities, I recognize the trees in the forest around their house as smaller versions of the trunk I’d climbed. Will these eventually grow so tall and spread their branches so wide? Perhaps this is a new forest. I wonder if there are fires on this sort of planet that burn whole forests to the ground. Perhaps the trees here are just smaller.
Paranoia makes me expect something awful the moment I settle the ship back in the meadow I’d been in only days before. We’ve had too many surprise cyborgs these past weeks. But the grass waves, the sun shines, and no cyborgs or waves of human authorities come running out of the trees. I squint at the quiet house. The mother is out front picking berries off a bush I hadn’t noticed by the side of her house. It’s rough to swallow.
Lalia comes bursting out of the door, sprinting across the grass and waving, such a large grin on her face I don’t know what to do. I can’t even bother to tell myself to get a grip, anymore. I’m fully defeated and they all know it. At least Lalia looks well-rested. I’m just glad to see her in clean clothes.
“Don’t look so miserable,” Bat says, nudging me with his nose.
I scratch his ears. “Don’t judge, you don’t have to talk to anyone.”
Feeling shy, I cycle out the airlock and watch Anya jump down and give her a hug. Chuckling, Bat jumps to the ground and pretends not to notice Lalia grinning at him. I know he likes her, but she and Yvonne still doesn’t get petting privileges.
Yvonne hugs Lalia as well. Without pause, the two of them start up chatting about our trip. Fantastic. Well, as long as Yvonne doesn’t mention last night’s conversation, I don’t care. I never did get much sleep after all that, and try not to yawn.
“Aaron got a kid out of a tree,” Anya says before Lalia can get a word in.
“Traitor,” I mumble, dropping to the grass. I find myself in a chokehold of a hug, which I really should’ve expected to begin with. I pat her on the back.
“We’re gonna work on the hugs,” she mumbles.
“Like hell we will.”
“Figure anything out?” There’s definite shyness in her eyes if not a little fear. If we found records of me in one of those places, it would kill their theory. Guilt nudges me for not keeping her better updated, despite how much I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Every place was a dead end except one. And the one was also a dead end because they lost all their records for a eight-year period right around the time I was supposed to be there.”
Lalia wrinkles up her nose. “There was a pretty bad power outage planet-wide when I was a kid?”
“Seems to have been that.”
“So nothing conclusive?”
I shake my head. She nods. I can’t read the expression in her eyes. Relief or disappointment? Probably the same mixture currently making my chest tight. Their mother—Kyra—is still watching us from the side of the house. I’m too much a coward to ask about the conversations they certainly had while we were gone.
“How’s Zane?”
“Nearly back to his normal self, I’d say. The folks wanted him to go to a hospital. Took us a bit longer than it should’ve to make them realize how bad an idea it was. The worry sorta…overwhelms the logic.”
They probably figured it was my fault for not taking Zane to a hospital in the first place. I’m easy to place the blame on. But if I thought we could get away with a hospital visit without danger of them being hauled back to Amerov, I’d have dragged Zane there in a heartbeat.
“He’ll be thrilled to see you all,” she says, looping her arm through mine. “We were just a little suspicious you wouldn’t come back.”
“Would’ve been smart of me,” I grumble, and she shoves into me as we walk.
Bat cuts a path through the grass, nose pointed in Kyra’s direction, trying not to be seen. She ends up staring at him anyway when he clicks up onto the front porch.
“We didn’t find out anything one way or another,” I tell her, since she’ll want to know and I’d rather get it over with now.
I’m not certain what I expect, but she only nods, expression calm, but her eyes fall on the place where Lalia’s arm is looped into mine. Slowly, I unweave my arm and ease away. She probably thinks her children are foolish. I wouldn’t blame her.
Zane is at the dining room table with Masyn, and almost chokes on a slice of pie. He looks so purely happy to see us I don’t know what to say. Like his sister, he half tackle-hugs me, but his father boring holes in my face with his eyes makes it worse. I pat his back.
“Did you eat? Grab food.”
I’ve lost my appetite, but Yvonne and Anya go for it. I let Zane drag me into a seat at the table. Seated between the siblings makes it all a bit less terrible. Just a bit.
I replay the last two days to them, picking at the wood grains on the table. Zane’s expression is likewise unreadable, eyebrows slightly furrowed. I don’t look at Masyn enough to read anything. At some point I decided I feel more pity for them than anger. But I’m not sure I’d want to belong to these two if they can’t show me any decency without being certain of my heritage. The least they could do is not blame me for the stupid things their two kids have done the past few months. But I have more compassion for them than I wish. They mourned a child and their two other kids got in a lot of trouble to drag some half-unhinged cyborg onto their doorstep. Even if they wanted to see me, it seems Zane and Lalia didn’t give them fair warning of the state of me. I wouldn’t be thrilled either.
I pet Bat’s ears where he hides under the table on my leg.
“That’s a shame,” Zane mutters. “But I’m surprised more of the places you visited didn’t have data losses, really.”
Masyn gives such an unexpected huff of dry amusement that I start, hoping it isn’t obvious.
“Oh yeah,” Zane says, wiping his mouth. “Dad has something to say to you.”
Immediately, I want to shrink up into the size of a pea and disappear into a crack in the floor. Whatever they’re on about, Zane needs to learn to mind his business. I look at Yvonne helplessly, but she gives me a tiny shrug of one shoulder. Lalia looks to be hiding laughter.
Masyn makes a grumbling sound into his beard.
Zane kicks him under the table.
Starting, Masyn clears his throat. “Um, I uh…I realize I was pretty…rude, earlier. I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t blaming you for what happened to Zane or anything. This is just…stressful.”
Oh.
The silence stretches so long I realize I need to say something. “They chewed your ear off, didn’t they?”
Masyn gives another huff and Zane smacks me in the chest, flexing his hand and muttering, “Ow.”
“Yeah, I’m made of metal, stupid.”
“If you prefer, I can punch you in the—”
“Zane,” Yvonne warns, but Anya starts giggling anyway.
Masyn clears his throat too loudly, “Aaron. I mean it, I want to apologize.”
I’m gonna murder Zane. Masyn’s words feel better than I’d like them to. I stare at the floor and pet Bat a perhaps a bit too aggressively. “Don’t worry about it, if I showed up on my front porch I’d be alarmed too.”
Zane brandishes his fork at me. Masyn snatches it.
“What will you do now?” he asks me, giving his son a light smack on the forehead.
Before I can consider responding, Zane says, “We’ll sleep on it, it’s nothing we can’t consider in the morning. Unless any other nosey neighbors are going to drop by.”
I eyeball him.
Zane shrugs. “Had one of our cousins over today. Was surprised to see us, but I don’t think he knows what’s going on. He’s harmless.”
I’m not certain how I feel about that, but their judgement is generally sound about such matters. We should consider leaving in the morning, but there’s nothing to be done right now for nosey relatives. If they’re not worried with their bounties, I don’t need to be.
Masyn doesn’t seem thrilled by the conversation being shut down, but nods.
