Haha, wow. I actually didn't expect people to take so much offense at Tak's…err…"bitchiness." Maybe it's because I like Tak better than I like Vix. I mean, Tak's always been my baby, both in the series and in my work, and at this point I'm just so over Vix being a whiny, self-absorbed teenager that I'm not taking her side on anything…how many times have we all heard some overdramatic high-school girl crying about how she's in TWU WUV and NOTHING IS GOING TO KEEP US APART? Or maybe it's because I'm the one writing the story, so I see the shame and insecurity behind the bitchiness instead of just the bitchiness itself.
In any case, things are going to get worse before they get better, so I hope I don't turn anyone against Tak completely. Come next arc, she'll need all the sympathy she can get.
54. J4 Advises, Vix Acts
"Vix?" A few seconds after I knocked, the doors to J4's bedroom slid open, and she stood there looking at me with a mixture of pleasure and reproof. "Vix! Heard you coming back! Why not come see me first?"
Sucking up a sniffle, I pressed my lips together in a thin, bitter smile. "I had some business with my mum to take care of." She stepped aside and I trudged into the room, flopping despondently onto her bed. "You don't mind, do you? You weren't busy or anything?"
"Not busy. Is okay." She smoothed the bedclothes and sat beside me. PI, until then perched near the head of the bed, came over and plopped herself down between us, glancing silently from J4 to me. "Long time not seen you," J4 said, her hair spilling over her shoulders like a curtain as she leaned over me and blinked into my eyes. "Missed you, Vix. Staying now for good?"
I snorted weakly. "If Mum has her way."
"Oh." Understandably unsure how to respond to that, J4 tilted her head as she thought, then added, "How is Earth? You like your job?"
"Yeah. It was great, until now." I rolled over onto my stomach and propped my face in my hands. "It's just—I met this girl, J4," I sighed. "A human girl. Her name is Tren. She's perfect, absolutely perfect, beautiful and wonderful and when she speaks, I feel weak in the knees—I know you don't like humans, but you'd understand if you met her.
"I love her, and I want to take her away from Earth and be with her forever—but my mum is being horrible. I'll never see Tren again, if it's up to her. She says I'm wasting my opportunities, that I'm a selfish brat and how I feel isn't real. She thinks I'm having an identity crisis – that I'm only interested in Tren because she's human, and I want to—I don't know—explore my urges or something.
"But it's weird, you know? I don't know what to think. Mum says I'm being disloyal to my people, but I'm not even sure who my people are. So many humans suffered—still suffer—so much, and I don't know if I should care.
"Tren says we're not so different, she and I. She says the humans hate me and Mom twice as much as they hate Mum and everybody else, because they think of us as traitors—because we should know better. Because we're living in an empire built on the backs of our own people. But if Tren says humans are my people, and Mum says Irkens are my people, then…well, then my people have destroyed my people, and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel."
I flicked my eyes up from the bedspread, feeling a spate of sudden gratitude – first, that J4 existed at all, and second, that she'd moved past prowling around in the vivarium, to a point where we could actually talk about things like this. "You're the only other person in the universe who could possibly understand."
She shook her head. "Sorry, Vix," she answered, sounding genuinely regretful. "Can't understand." She pushed her hair over one shoulder and scowled at her lap. "Humans not my people."
I let out a short breath through my nose. "But they are. You are half-human, even if you don't acknowledge it. Even if you wish you weren't."
"No," she said – not sharply, not angrily, just matter-of-factly. For someone who had outright murdered fourteen people, J4 was surprisingly level-headed most of the time. "Is a line," she went on, sliding her finger in a straight stripe through the air. "Very clear. One side you are he, she, other side you are it; one side you are rocked when you cry, other side muzzled. Humans know what is their kind and what is not. I know, too."
Folding my arms in front of me, I rested my cheek on my forearm, and chewed on my lip as I considered how to respond. Being as she was so level-headed, I never had to worry much about offending J4 – but then again, the facts being what they were, it was hard not to second-guess my sensitivity.
"You know," I said softly, when a few moments of silence had passed, "not all humans are monsters. They don't all do the things those people did to you."
"Humans are humans. All the same."
"Come on. You can't really believe that." I raised my eyebrows. "You like my mom, don't you? She's human."
"Not human," J4 countered. "Not really. She makes life here, family here. Thinks more Irken than you. Looks human. Not."
Well. That was one point I had to concede. "You would like Tren if you met her," I said, unable to keep a note of wistfulness from creeping into my tone. It had been less than a day since I'd seen her last, and already I was aching for just a moment's glimpse of her eyes. "I'm sure you would."
"Happy that you like Tren. Happy that you are happy. But…" J4 lifted her shoulders in an apologetic shrug. "Can't understand."
"Okay, well—at least you have a good reason." I blew out my breath with a pfft sound, fluttering my bangs. "I mean, I'd probably hate humans too, if I were you. But Mum's just being a bitch for no reason. Mom yammers about 'her greatest failure', but that wasn't the humans' fault – they never did anything to her, and still she can't stand my being with one. She's such a hypocrite. I don't even think she cares about what kind of job I'm doing as Director, or what my allegiance is; I think she just wants me to be miserable."
When I was little and things were different, hanging out with J4 had been like playing with a puppy. Now, it really was as if she were my big sister, because she was nearly always the voice of reason in our conversations.
Unless we were talking about certain things (like humans in general, or Dib, specifically), she was always the one encouraging me to be patient, to think rationally, advising against being rash and saying things I didn't mean. I guessed that after what she'd been through, the little things I got steamed over seemed like easy problems to solve.
"Not true," she said. "Is a line for her, too. Humans not her people, so not people at all; scares her to think you turning into something she doesn't know. Tren different from Commandergaz, doesn't think Irken. Like animal to Tallesttak."
Having picked up the habit of calling people by their full titles from PI, J4 tended to mash the names and the titles that preceded them together, and PI had given up trying to teach her otherwise. She'd told me she was happy enough that J4 no longer thought Mum's name was Yesmytallest. "Is like me. Can't understand."
"Well, what am I supposed to do about that? Abandon Tren to those awful people in the barracks, just because Mum can't understand that she's not a rat?" I heaved a groan. "'I am the Almighty Tallest'," I sneered at no one in particular, halfheartedly imitating Mum. "'I make the decisions, and you deal with them.' I wish I were somebody else's kid – somebody who could only control me for so long."
"No, Vix. Shouldn't wish to be anything but what you are." Her hand came down and she sort of stroked my hair, smoothing her hand over the crown of my head. "Tallesttak loves you, I know. Just hard to show it."
"I don't know, J4." I bristled at the mere memory of the things Mum had said to me on the bridge – the terrible, cruel things, leaving her mouth with such pleasure. I wasn't sure I could even believe she'd ever liked me, much less felt anything close to love.
"She called me a mistake," I mumbled into the pillow of my arms. "She said she never should have made me. Right there on the bridge, in front of Mom and everyone, and she wasn't even a little bit sorry. Does that sound like love to you?"
"Mad at you. Didn't mean it."
I frowned. "How do you know?"
"Know about mistake. Heard it before. Mistake is accident, bad thing, throw-away thing, don't think of again. Mistake is not hard work. Mistake is not thing with name, thing with home, thing with family; mistake does not have a birthday party, or a job. Mistake has no people for be disloyal to, no opportunities for waste. Nobody yells at or fights with mistake, because mistake is not worth it." She gave me a small smile. "You are not mistake, Vix. Tallesttak will go around."
I managed to crack a smile back. "I think you mean come around."
She nodded. "Come around."
For awhile longer, I lay there on my stomach, staring at J4's red bedspread while she and PI got back to the puzzle they'd been putting together before I knocked. What were my options? The way I saw it, I only had three.
I could be Mum's prisoner forever. I could be like a gracefully-wasting damsel in a storybook, needlepointing verses of love and loneliness, turning away visitors with a flick of my hand. I could do what I knew J4 would have me do, if it were up to her: swallow my pride, make up with Mum, and take a new job on a planet far away from Tren and all the rest of the humans.
Or I could do what I'd promised myself I'd do only minutes before, as I fled the bridge choking back sobs. I could take Tren and we could run away – so far away that even Mum's boots, however long her stride, couldn't crush me beneath their heels.
"I think I'm going to run away."
As I hoisted myself up off the bed and onto my feet, J4 blinked up from her puzzle, eyes wide. "What?"
"I have to stand up for myself, J4. I can't just let Mum kick me around like I'm one of her subjects. Tren is the most important thing in the universe to me, and if becoming a fugitive is the only way to be with her, then so be it. I'll do what I have to do." I glanced between her and PI. "You guys aren't going to tell on me, are you?"
J4 and PI looked at each other, and for the first time since I'd come in, PI spoke up. "We won't tell," she said, "but surely you know it doesn't much matter. Tallest Tak will find out you're gone whether we tell her or not, and when she does—well, she has the entire Empire at her disposal. Where do you expect to go that she can't reach you?"
"Somewhere. Anywhere. I don't know, I don't care—I just have to get out of here, as soon as I can. Every minute I spend on this ship makes me itch."
J4 sighed and set down the puzzle piece in her hand, gazing down at a half-finished image of a Nrayan pasture dotted with grazing figpli. "Wish you wouldn't run away."
"Why?" I asked, exasperated. "Because Mum loves me? Because she didn't mean what she said? Because I shouldn't wish to be anything but what I am—a pathetic little dog at the end of Mum's chain, barking and pawing and never getting anywhere?"
"No. Because worry about you."
She got up and came over to me, touched my shoulder and squeezed. Up close like this, I sometimes thought I could see the ghosts of the old scars on her face, before they'd been smoothed away under the laser. Sometimes remembered what it had been like always looking her in just her right eye, before Mom had inlaid a new left one like a big round ruby in an enamel cuff.
A lot of the time, I let myself forget that the broken, caged thing who had parroted my songs in the vivarium and the person – the walking, talking, clothes-wearing, nearly-normal person – who often gave me better advice than I gave myself were the same. But there were moments, like this one, when the two seemed almost to merge before my eyes, and it always left me a little shaken.
"Run away isn't easy," she said. "Run away is tired, hungry, scared. Is live by yourself, do what you can. Is bare teeth at every shadow. Don't want that for you."
"You ran away, didn't you?"
"Had to."
"And I have to, too. I'm a prisoner here, J4. Escape is my only option." I took her gently by the shoulders, trying to think how to explain. "Being without Tren is like—it's like being cut open. It's the worst pain you could ever know. Being here is painful for me, and if I don't go, I'm going to waste away here, hurting more than I ever have in all my life."
J4 looked at me for a moment with eyes like one-way mirrors: taking in everything, revealing nothing. She had a knack for doing that, looking at you so you couldn't tell what she was thinking. After a minute she smiled, sort of sadly, and leaned in to hug me.
"You are my friend and only cousin, Vix," she murmured into my hair. "Want you to be happy."
I left J4's room and spent the rest of the night hiding out in mine, waiting for my parents to go to bed. Once they were out of the way, I could get down to the docking bay without a hitch. After all, the only people who knew I was on Mum's blacklist were the bridge crew, and none of them would be milling around the deck.
If I took my ship and went back down to Earth tonight, I could get there before anyone knew I wasn't allowed to be there, grab Tren from my complex and take off with several hours' head start. Maybe run away isn't easy, but this part would be.
When night had fallen, I slunk out of my room and down the hall, taking nothing with me but what I was already wearing. I took the less-traveled corridors to the docking bay, to make sure I accumulated as few witnesses as possible, but those crew members I did pass only nodded and marched on. When I took the hoverdisc down to the last level above the docking bay, it seemed I was in the clear.
Until. Until I rounded a corner and nearly dropped dead from shock, when I saw a small figure patrolling the hall ahead of me. The back of a figure, thankfully, so that I had time to catch my breath and scramble unseen back around the bend, but a person where no person should have had reason to be.
Or maybe not a person. Peeking around the corner, squinting to make out the shadow in the low light, I realized it was the silhouette of a SIR unit, its eyes casting a red glow over the floor before it. There were only two SIRs on the massive, as far as I knew, and this one definitely wasn't PI.
Mimi, I said breathlessly to myself, praying she wouldn't turn and come my way. What on Irk is she doing down here? Could Mum have sent her down here before she went to bed, to make sure I didn't try to slip out? Did it matter whether or not she had? Mimi would know I wasn't supposed to be leaving, no doubt, and she would wake Mum; she'd do it even if I begged her not to, because it was in her programming. She had to act in Mum's best interests, which tonight would mean ratting on me.
She couldn't be convinced and I doubted I could take her out, even with the arsenal in my pak. Even a standard-issue SIR came fortified against all but the highest-grade pak-based weapons; Mimi being Mimi, she'd be impervious to all of them. I could probably shut her down for awhile if I had something heavy to hit her with, but the corridors leading to the docking bay weren't exactly furnished with marble statues. Shit. Shit! What am I supposed to do?
Then – all of a sudden – I remembered. Relief eased the tightness in my chest. Retreating into a crouch under cover of the bend, I opened the storage panel on my pak as quietly as I could, and rooted around with one silver limb until its tip curled around a certain small bundle: the wavebreaker Mum had given me a few birthdays ago, when she'd finally decided I was old and practiced enough.
I hadn't really needed it then (what use is a device that makes other people do what you want them to, when you get everything you want anyway?), but I had squirreled it away in my pak, and forgotten about it until now.
I believe a wavebreaker is most useful as a means of interfacing with technology, Mum had said, that first time she tried to teach me to use it. As I passed it from the pak's limb to my hand, and applied it just like she'd taught me – rear anchor point, frontal anchor point, no slack in between – I felt a jolt of perverse invigoration, imagining the look on her face when she learned how her lessons had backfired.
I peered around the corner and zeroed in on the back of Mimi's head. Mum had called this part of wavebreaking advanced, but really, it was easier to access a machine than a living being. Harder to know what to do once you got in, maybe, but easier to harness electrical impulses than to bend brain waves.
A SIR had no real will to break. Just a lot of ones and zeroes swirling through its headspace, waiting to be snatched and plunked down in the order that would make them sing.
It happened in the space of seconds. I saw Mimi stiffen as the connection was made. But she didn't have time to turn, to identify the intruding signal, before all of those ones and zeroes were plinking neatly into place; I could actually feel the strength leave her, even before I saw her arms fall limp at her sides. I straightened up, knees quivering, palms slick, dizzy with a rush like piloting a ship for the first time. Afraid to speak aloud, afraid not to speak at all, I mouthed the words all systems shut down.
A white-blue light snapped through the air in front of me, and Mimi toppled. The clang rang out through the hall. My pulse racing, I hurried down the corridor to she if she was really out, and sure enough, her eyes had gone dark; she was just a crumpled heap of metal now.
I knew it wasn't as if I'd hurt her – she would be fine, once someone came along and restarted her, in the morning when I'd be screwed anyway – but still I felt the tug of guilt, looking down at her. It wasn't her fault Mum was a jerk.
"I'm sorry, Mimi," I whispered as I peeled off the wavebreaker. "But I said no matter what."
