Secret Sisters (working title)
**************
Inspired partly by Boadicea and Kelly's Voyager fic, 'Baby Demon.'
[And it won't take long to burn, (all eyes on me) through the nothing that you've learned.]
PART 1
I remember nothing before this place.
We share a room. A square box with cardboard where the windows should be and a carpet of dirt over splintered floorboards. There are people above us and below us and we are boxed in on both sides. We share a bathroom with twelve other people, and a water pump with over a hundred when that fails, which is often.
We share a bed, that could generously be called a double, but is closer to a single in reality. Not that I mind. We curl up together, a tangled mass of limbs and hair and minds. I hold her when she cannot sleep and she strokes my hair, her breath cold against my ear and whispers, 'mine, mine, mine.'
In the room there is a sink, a chair and a desk, above which a viewscreen is placed. It's old, and through the scan lines and interference, the picture is grainy and flickers on and off. A shaft of light cuts through the cardboard we taped to the empty window frames, and lands across my arm when I lie in bed. I do not think I have owned a piece of sunlight before.
I remember nothing before this place.
But.
She tells me my name is Susan. That we are hated. I see them watching us from their guard towers, how they stare at us brutally as they check our ID's before we can leave. They hate us. And fear us. And want to be us.
I don't believe the rest of her stories. I look at the Normals, and I know that they would never let us in any place of power, let alone in charge of an entire space station. Besides, I've never liked the idea of living in space, with nothing but a sheet of metal between you and explosive decompression. She laughs when I tell her that. "You were a pilot Susan. A good one. Dedicated." She smirks.
"I don't believe you."
"You always were stubborn. I guess memories do not maketh the woman." She lies back on the bed and laughs. I turn and face the desk again, where I am watching ISN. There is a news feed about the Interstellar Alliance, something about trade routes, or shipping lines or something. The picture breaks up regularly and I can barely hear the reporter for the static.
I give up finally and join her on the bed.
"Talia, how did we meet?"
She stares at the ceiling at the growing stain that is either the result of a broken water pipe or the building rotting away or both. I watch her carefully. She remains silent and after a while I decided that tonight she will not be telling me her stories. I turn over onto my other side and feel relief flood through me.
Every so often I ask her how we met. Usually, she will not answer, just sit quietly, and stare at nothing. Sometimes she tells me we met here. That we were born here, created from the dust, and the dirt, and the hatred. I can believe that, I think. When I look in the mirror, I can believe that.
Other days she tells me stories of our lives before, where we lived on a space station I commanded, where she worked as a commercial telepath and I was a normal and a pilot and a solider. These are usually bad days. She gets bitter and angry, and tells me how she isn't the woman I love, that she destroyed that woman and took her place and made us into a shadow of what we were, and all the pronouns get confused, and I tell her it's okay, it's okay, it doesn't matter who we where or who we loved, just what we do, here and now, and who we love and -
She doesn't cry. She clutches my wrists until I know there will be bruises in a few hours, and stares at me with clear blue eyes. She tells me how they programmed her, how she can be nothing more than the sum of her synapses. I always shiver. I don't like it when she talks of these things.
Tonight she spoons behind me, her arms around my waist. I tangle my fingers in hers, and feel her mind winding into mine. I am happy and peaceful and safe. I can remember nothing before this place and I cannot imagine any life but this.
I have a work permit that allows me to bartend at a specific location outside the compound. I work six nights out of seven, between 8pm and 2 in the morning.
I leave at six, even though the walk should only take an hour. There are a dozen checkpoints between here and there, and you never know how long you will need to wait at each one. If I could drive it would take even less time to get there, but we are not allowed to own cars and the buses we can travel on only run until five.
Talia worries, though she would never say so. She works within the compound helping to distribute the supplies we are given. Her job is just as dangerous as mine, if not more so. Earth isn't so careful about ensuring there's enough food and goods to go around. Even when most of our neighbours have earned enough money to pay for what they want, there isn't always enough to go around. And those that don't have money still feel entitled. Things can get violent, there can be riots. Several times troops have been sent into to subdue the chaos, and last time Talia was knocked unconscious even as she tried to help calm people down.
She tells me, plainly, to be careful. Between here and there any number of Normals could try to attack me, kill me, or worse. She describes the 'worse' in explicit detail. I shrug. Once she made a crack about ancestral memories. I didn't understand and she told me when she knew me, I was Jewish.
"It doesn't matter what I was, Talia. I'm a telepath now."
Usually I get home around seven in the morning. She thinks my employer keeps me till five or six in the morning despite my work permit, and I do nothing to discourage her from believing that. I cannot tell her the truth yet. I'm not sure how she would react.
It is six days before Talia gives in and snaps at me that I can do whatever the hell I like. I smile and break into the next room over. For six days I have told her that we should do this, but she refused. For eight days there has been no movement, no sound, no sign of life from next door. Talia admits that the young woman has not been to collect food, even though she lives with her two young children. Children who have not so much as whimpered for the past week. The youngest is six months old.
Inside, there is a familiar scene. Slowly rotting corpses. I find several empty stim packets nearby. The youngest boy is still in his cradle, the oldest wrapped in his mothers arms. No one moves, not even me. Their minds are empty. I think I might be sick.
I am, later, in my own room. I contact the authorities, and within hours the bodies are gone and we have new neighbours: an older man and woman who may or may not be a couple.
Talia is out while I cling onto the plastic bowl. It is midday and the sunlight is sickeningly bright. I want to know where they have taken the bodies, what happens to them. Are they buried, cremated, or left in a pile somewhere? Perhaps they burn them to provide us with heat. Perhaps they grind them up and give us them as meat. I retch again, my stomach empty, bile burning my throat.
After a minute I stand, shaking, leaving the bowl on the floor. My appointment is in an hour and I cannot afford to miss the antidote injection. None of us can. On my way out I place the bowl and it's contents in the incinerator. My new neighbour stops me and says hello. Carolyn. She asks me what happened to the people who lived there before them.
I tell her.
***
TBC... probably.
**************
Inspired partly by Boadicea and Kelly's Voyager fic, 'Baby Demon.'
[And it won't take long to burn, (all eyes on me) through the nothing that you've learned.]
PART 1
I remember nothing before this place.
We share a room. A square box with cardboard where the windows should be and a carpet of dirt over splintered floorboards. There are people above us and below us and we are boxed in on both sides. We share a bathroom with twelve other people, and a water pump with over a hundred when that fails, which is often.
We share a bed, that could generously be called a double, but is closer to a single in reality. Not that I mind. We curl up together, a tangled mass of limbs and hair and minds. I hold her when she cannot sleep and she strokes my hair, her breath cold against my ear and whispers, 'mine, mine, mine.'
In the room there is a sink, a chair and a desk, above which a viewscreen is placed. It's old, and through the scan lines and interference, the picture is grainy and flickers on and off. A shaft of light cuts through the cardboard we taped to the empty window frames, and lands across my arm when I lie in bed. I do not think I have owned a piece of sunlight before.
I remember nothing before this place.
But.
She tells me my name is Susan. That we are hated. I see them watching us from their guard towers, how they stare at us brutally as they check our ID's before we can leave. They hate us. And fear us. And want to be us.
I don't believe the rest of her stories. I look at the Normals, and I know that they would never let us in any place of power, let alone in charge of an entire space station. Besides, I've never liked the idea of living in space, with nothing but a sheet of metal between you and explosive decompression. She laughs when I tell her that. "You were a pilot Susan. A good one. Dedicated." She smirks.
"I don't believe you."
"You always were stubborn. I guess memories do not maketh the woman." She lies back on the bed and laughs. I turn and face the desk again, where I am watching ISN. There is a news feed about the Interstellar Alliance, something about trade routes, or shipping lines or something. The picture breaks up regularly and I can barely hear the reporter for the static.
I give up finally and join her on the bed.
"Talia, how did we meet?"
She stares at the ceiling at the growing stain that is either the result of a broken water pipe or the building rotting away or both. I watch her carefully. She remains silent and after a while I decided that tonight she will not be telling me her stories. I turn over onto my other side and feel relief flood through me.
Every so often I ask her how we met. Usually, she will not answer, just sit quietly, and stare at nothing. Sometimes she tells me we met here. That we were born here, created from the dust, and the dirt, and the hatred. I can believe that, I think. When I look in the mirror, I can believe that.
Other days she tells me stories of our lives before, where we lived on a space station I commanded, where she worked as a commercial telepath and I was a normal and a pilot and a solider. These are usually bad days. She gets bitter and angry, and tells me how she isn't the woman I love, that she destroyed that woman and took her place and made us into a shadow of what we were, and all the pronouns get confused, and I tell her it's okay, it's okay, it doesn't matter who we where or who we loved, just what we do, here and now, and who we love and -
She doesn't cry. She clutches my wrists until I know there will be bruises in a few hours, and stares at me with clear blue eyes. She tells me how they programmed her, how she can be nothing more than the sum of her synapses. I always shiver. I don't like it when she talks of these things.
Tonight she spoons behind me, her arms around my waist. I tangle my fingers in hers, and feel her mind winding into mine. I am happy and peaceful and safe. I can remember nothing before this place and I cannot imagine any life but this.
I have a work permit that allows me to bartend at a specific location outside the compound. I work six nights out of seven, between 8pm and 2 in the morning.
I leave at six, even though the walk should only take an hour. There are a dozen checkpoints between here and there, and you never know how long you will need to wait at each one. If I could drive it would take even less time to get there, but we are not allowed to own cars and the buses we can travel on only run until five.
Talia worries, though she would never say so. She works within the compound helping to distribute the supplies we are given. Her job is just as dangerous as mine, if not more so. Earth isn't so careful about ensuring there's enough food and goods to go around. Even when most of our neighbours have earned enough money to pay for what they want, there isn't always enough to go around. And those that don't have money still feel entitled. Things can get violent, there can be riots. Several times troops have been sent into to subdue the chaos, and last time Talia was knocked unconscious even as she tried to help calm people down.
She tells me, plainly, to be careful. Between here and there any number of Normals could try to attack me, kill me, or worse. She describes the 'worse' in explicit detail. I shrug. Once she made a crack about ancestral memories. I didn't understand and she told me when she knew me, I was Jewish.
"It doesn't matter what I was, Talia. I'm a telepath now."
Usually I get home around seven in the morning. She thinks my employer keeps me till five or six in the morning despite my work permit, and I do nothing to discourage her from believing that. I cannot tell her the truth yet. I'm not sure how she would react.
It is six days before Talia gives in and snaps at me that I can do whatever the hell I like. I smile and break into the next room over. For six days I have told her that we should do this, but she refused. For eight days there has been no movement, no sound, no sign of life from next door. Talia admits that the young woman has not been to collect food, even though she lives with her two young children. Children who have not so much as whimpered for the past week. The youngest is six months old.
Inside, there is a familiar scene. Slowly rotting corpses. I find several empty stim packets nearby. The youngest boy is still in his cradle, the oldest wrapped in his mothers arms. No one moves, not even me. Their minds are empty. I think I might be sick.
I am, later, in my own room. I contact the authorities, and within hours the bodies are gone and we have new neighbours: an older man and woman who may or may not be a couple.
Talia is out while I cling onto the plastic bowl. It is midday and the sunlight is sickeningly bright. I want to know where they have taken the bodies, what happens to them. Are they buried, cremated, or left in a pile somewhere? Perhaps they burn them to provide us with heat. Perhaps they grind them up and give us them as meat. I retch again, my stomach empty, bile burning my throat.
After a minute I stand, shaking, leaving the bowl on the floor. My appointment is in an hour and I cannot afford to miss the antidote injection. None of us can. On my way out I place the bowl and it's contents in the incinerator. My new neighbour stops me and says hello. Carolyn. She asks me what happened to the people who lived there before them.
I tell her.
***
TBC... probably.