Chapter Text
Waking up was the worst, X thought, refusing to open his eyes just yet. Booting up to full consciousness felt like it took just a little longer every year, and while it wasn't more than a fraction of a second, those added up at his age.
The familiar litany of errors and warnings flickered behind his eyelids, though only quietly. The damage sensors came online, and until he moved, they would report only marginal malfunction. His proprioceptive sensors had nothing unusual to say yet, which was a relief. Sometimes they were already cranky before he was quite conscious. His joints reported calibration errors, but that was normal and at least had the decency to not feel like anything but a vague, restless malaise.
X waited. A few minutes would not likely make or break his task. He'd seen no real sign of any humans since he'd left the vicinity of the wall. Of course there were daredevils, taggers, even some unhoused people who came into the Abel City quarantine zone. No wall could keep everyone out, and there had been several years during the end of the war with no wall at all. But once he had ventured a mile or so in, even the visibly recent graffiti had tapered into nothing much, and the few footprints he spotted bore the telltale size, shape, and tread of reploid feet.
Still, his only intelligence pointed this way. Telecommunications satellites had picked up a brief blip of the man's location not far from here. That was all X had to go on. A name, a description, and now that he had a quiet moment to mentally cross-reference the area with the pre-destruction street maps he'd looked up before striking out, X realized that his phone had briefly been tracked to within a hundred meters or so of this very encampment, assuming it wasn't spoofed.
X allowed himself the luxury of not immediately getting up for a bit longer. His battery was topped off, and surely someone else could use a charge, but he had come to intimately understand the human desire to lie in for just five more minutes. Sounds of activity filtered into the little recharging building: a conversation, just far enough away that he couldn't make out the words, only that all of the participants began laughing; somebody whistling tunelessly to themselves; a wheelbarrow being pushed past, then set down with a thud; the rattle of a toolbox being opened; a radio, one of the old sorts that simply received transmissions and would therefore be relatively safe to own here, playing music.
The little settlement sounded like life. He liked that. If he stayed here, eyes closed, not taxing his ailing systems, he could imagine that peace was a real thing that could actually exist for him, just for a few minutes.
But duty, or at least a sense of it, called. Gradually, X gathered his fortitude and creaked upright, pushing the recharge pod's cracked lid up. If he really wanted to lie down, he could do it somewhere that didn't occupy a limited resource, he internally lectured himself. His cane was where he left it, though someone had thoughtfully washed, dried, and folded his jacket and even the blue tarp he had been wearing, leaving them in a neat stack on an old folding chair beside the pod.
Well, thoughtfully, and also probably as a pretext to go through his pockets, X thought. Having had empty pockets, though, he was glad enough to accept the gesture whatever its motivations. He stood, keeping his balance between the edge of the pod and his cane, and stretched. He creaked audibly. His joints really did some foul things anymore when they had half a chance to get too cold. On went the jacket, though he curled his lip slightly at how dusty the clothing he still wore was. Reploids didn't sweat, but they could certainly build up an impressive layer of grime in outdoor conditions. The tarp he tied into a bundle with the cord that he used as a closure for it, and he slung it over his back.
X hadn't seen many reploids here when he'd first arrived, just Glitch and Mack. Now, though, in the early morning, there were more out and about than he'd expected from the constructions present.
"Hey, V, you finally decided to rejoin the living?" Glitch greeted him, from behind. X jumped slightly. The man had no right being as quiet as he was capable of being.
"Eventually," X nodded. "Sorry if someone else needed it. Mack said I should defragment if I needed to, and it's been a while."
Glitch merely waved the apology away. "Someone always needs something here, that's just life on the wrong side of the wall. Don't worry about it. We're doing pretty good on generator fuel right now so it's use it or lose it, and you looked like you could use it. Hey, you have that looked at, by the way? The whole," he made a wobbly gesture with one hand and pinged the error code X had chosen as his name: '>W.04877-SYS: Balance systems operating outside of nominal parameters.', "thing. I'm a tech, if you need anything."
"A tech who once reinstalled one of my optics upside-down." Mack's flat, synthesized voice arrived before it did.
"Hey, not my fault your ancient tub doesn't have things labeled worth a damn," Glitch protested. "And I fixed it."
Mack looked up to X. "If you'll believe this guy, I've got some real estate with a great aerial view to sell you over Reset Point," it said, absolutely deadpan in a way that was entirely apart from its usual lack of inflection.
"Don't you have something to do? Go scav batteries or something, make yourself useful." Glitch threatened a mock kick towards the little ground-bound reploid, who scooted away with a sound clip of two drum strikes and a cymbal crash. "For real, though. I'm a lotta things. Some of them are even socially acceptable. But I'm also basically the repair tech here, so if you need anything, you just let me know. Worst that'll happen is I won't have the materials, but if I had a look at your systems maybe I could figure out why oh hello Hammer."
A large hand landed on Glitch's shoulder, attached to a larger, gray reploid, heavy frame striped with high-vis orange. "Leave 'im alone, Glitch, nobody's gonna let you dig though their bolts on the first date," he chided. He had a pleasantly baritone voice and a much slower manner than Glitch, though that second point described most reploids. "How's it goin'. Name's Hammer. You must be this V guy that Glitch here hasn't shut up about since yesterday."
X sized Hammer up reflexively: a construction unit, nothing tremendously special about his make or model. Tens of thousands of his exact build existed. Construction was far and away the largest of the civilian industries that employed reploid labor, and with functionality as a priority, not much creativity was put into making them look unique. He had sandy brown hair in a short buzz—a concession to fitting in alongside human coworkers that many units didn't receive—and a lot more wear and tear than most, including a scar in the synthetic skin across his cheek and eyebrow that his self-repair had struggled to heal, as well as quite a lot of cosmetic denting, both front and back. With his size and weight, he could undoubtedly be menacing, but he had a friendly, lantern-jawed smile that made X want to like him immediately.
"Should I be worried?" X replied, looking between Glitch and Hammer.
"I wasn't saying rude shit," Glitch replied, putting his hands up defensively. "I swear."
Hammer laughed. "Nothin' you need to worry about. I was just starting to wonder when I was gonna finally get to talk to you." He released Glitch, who made a melodramatic face of relief.
"Are you in charge around here?" X asked.
"Me? Nah. Second, maybe. Not that we got a real strict hierarchy or anything, just that's what happens if you stand around and look like you know what you're doing. Pretty soon people start asking you questions and next thing you know, you're stuck for it. Glitch, how 'bout you go check on the rain collectors while you're just standin' around like a lawn ornament. Number three's leaking again and it's too close to some of the power cables for comfort."
"You got it," Glitch assented with a flippant salute, then dashed off.
Hammer turned and motioned for X to follow, setting a considerately sedate pace. "He been talking your audio inputs off?" the construction bot asked, as they made their way between various little buildings.
X shrugged. "I've met a lot worse. He seems alright enough."
"He is. Kinda an overclocked tweaker, but once you get past that, he's a good guy. 'Specially if you got built-in hearing protection." Hammer grinned and tapped a thick finger to one of his ears. His design lacked human-like ears, instead featuring the headphone-like inputs that were common to many reploids. They were much more durable and flexible, sacrificing aesthetics for functionality. "More seriously, I probably owe him my life at least once over. Shit, half the folks here do. I definitely owe him half my vision. Don't tell him I said, though, I'll never hear the end of it from 'im."
The buildings circled around a central open space in the parking garage. Someone had strung together some salvaged greenhouse lighting and built a reasonable facsimile of a little town square. A few benches surrounded a flower bed, planted haphazardly with whatever could be convinced to grow in the unusual surroundings. There were some weeds planted among the flowers, X noted, and it was entirely possible that nobody here knew the difference. Even so, it was an impressive effort just to make the place look nicer.
"Our little pet project," Hammer explained, nodding towards the park and also a couple of reploids sitting on one of the benches, who nodded back to him. "Speakin' of which, right this way, closest thing we got to a town hall or whatever's right there."
Like the other buildings, it was not a large ordeal, though it was the largest of them. It was built around an existing office for the few security employees that would have worked in the garage. X noticed on the way in that it had been decorated as much as was possible, with cheerful wallpaper hung right over the cinder blocks of the exterior. The office's front window, covered though it was with bent window blinds, had a good view to the central park, and a light on inside.
"Go on in," Hammer encouraged. "I'll give you the grand tour after, assumin' I don't gotta take you out to the dumpster in back instead." And then, because X gave him a look of quiet dread, "Hah, don't make that face, man, I'm just playin' with you. We ain't that kind of place here."
The front of the building seemed like a public enough space, with a few tables and chairs and the makings of a very small library, though the titles were a bit all over the place, as they were evidently whatever could be found in the ruins. One of the walls was covered in a painting that, from the four differently-colored handprints around it and the mix of styles and skill levels, could only have been a group project: someone with a fair amount of skill had painted grass and a few detailed flowers, while someone else had added a few less-polished flowers. A third hand had added some simplistic daisies and roses scattered about the sky, and a fourth entirely had opted to doodle some curly pink hearts. He came to a door, attached to the pre-built section of the structure, and decided that it was polite to knock.
"Come in," a voice inside called. It was much higher than he'd imagined, and feminine. All the same, he opened the door and stepped into the little office, looking around.
Drawings, amateur ones in marker and crayon on paper that had browned and curled with age and humidity, hung on a cracked cork board. A rather sad potted plant decorated a battered desk. Sitting behind it, evidently in the middle of taking stock of several boxes of scrap, was a female reploid. She was not very remarkable in appearance, not quite X's height and more pleasant than pretty. Her hair was pale blonde, and she had green eyes, just slightly too bright and too glassy to be believable as human. The left side of her cheekbone had at some point been scraped down to the metal facial frame, but if it bothered her, she gave no indication, looking up from her work.
"Ah! You must be V. Here, let me get you a chair." She hopped to her feet, hefting a box of cables off of a water-stained office chair and dragging it around to the front of the desk before X could even protest. "There you go. Have a seat, make yourself comfortable."
"Thank you," X said, gratefully sitting down. He folded both hands over the handle of his cane, still looking around the room. "And thank you for the use of your recharge pod."
"No need to be so formal. Call me Kathy, or," she paused to send a diagnostic broadcast, '>E.10104-TLR: Conflict detected. I.34100-COM: Identification sent.' X blinked in surprise; she was the furthest thing possible he'd imagined from someone with a code name like that. "It's not often we meet someone new out here. Glitch mentioned you were looking for a human?"
X nodded. "I am. Here, I've got a picture of him." He unfolded a printout from his pants pocket, carefully flattening the creases, and slid it across the desk to Kathy. "I know it's an odd thing to be doing, but this is close to where he was last spotted a couple of days ago."
She took it, examining it impassively for several long moments. "Hmm," she eventually said, turning her gaze back to X. "No idea, sorry. It's most likely we picked up his phone, someone might have turned it on for half a second, and it had just enough time to broadcast its position. Which means I need to remind everyone yet again about why we don't turn on unknown electronics…but that's my problem, not yours." Kathy held the paper back out.
X took it, folding it carefully and tucking it back into a pocket. If anyone had seen him, it would have been the reploids here…but Kathy's apologetic expression let on nothing more.
"If you could tell me his name, maybe we could keep an eye out? I don't expect anything, since humans really don't come out this far, but just in case," she offered.
X nodded. "Alderman. Charles Alderman. I have no idea why he might be out here, unfortunately, so I've just been following the one lead I've got. It's possible he was exploring, but I can't say for sure."
Kathy nodded, elbows on the desk and fingers steepled. "Do you usually live out here?" she inquired. "Seems unusual, having friends still on the other side and being able to communicate with them."
"It's an unusual situation," X explained, hoping he could steer away from the exact details without Kathy recognizing him. So far, he'd been entirely fortunate on that front, and he found with mild surprise at himself that he very much liked the notion of keeping it that way. "Most Hunters don't make it to retirement. I got lucky, if you can call it that. They don't keep tabs on where I am, and I don't give them a reason to think they should, so I can more or less go where I want to go."
"But they—the Hunters, I assume—do know you're in the quarantine zone," she clarified.
X shifted in his seat under her gaze. "On the whole, no. My former commanding officer, the one who asked me to look into this missing person, is probably the only one. It's nothing official. They're understaffed, and couldn't spare any extra patrols for the quarantine zone, so my officer asked me if I could have a look around."
Kathy nodded. "And your tracker?"
"Inactive." Mostly true…X had been built with the capability to simply shut his tracking systems off as he saw fit. Anymore, he saw fit all of the time.
"Huh. And they let you wander around like that? I guess if they never ping it… I'll be honest with you, V, I'm not sure about having an ex-Hunter here. Glitch seems to think you're on the level, but I don't make my mind up nearly as quickly as he does. We could use a spare set of hands, though, so if you want to conduct your search from here, we can work something out."
"I'd appreciate it." X gave her a small, thankful smile. "If it'd help with goodwill, I know all the usual aerial patrols and where they've posted cameras and sensors. There aren't many in the interior, but there are a few. I'd be glad to tell you about them."
"That goes a long way towards making me feel better. I'll see if I can't find an old city map and have you mark them down soon." She paused for a moment, formulating her thoughts before continuing, fingers interlaced on the scuffed desk.
"You should know, V, that everyone here has been declared irregular. Some of us—I'd say the majority of us, actually—have been declared Maverick. Nobody's actually infected, but we've all done something to be out here. Whatever arrangement you've got with your old boss, you're probably going to get labeled the same if anyone finds out you're with us."
X considered that, both hands still on his cane handle. "All the more reason for me to not attract any attention here, then," he said, after a moment's thought.
Seemingly satisfied, Kathy stood. "Good enough. I think Hammer wanted to give you the full tour, and I've got a lot of stock to take. When you're feeling up to it, drop by here and we'll see where we can put you. Until then, we don't have a lot of rules, but what we do have is pretty simple. We use the buddy system if you're leaving the garage," she held up one finger. "Absolutely no violence here, or against fellow residents anywhere. Regardless of what happened to you before, we're here to help each other, not fight each other," she held up a second. "And no activating unknown electronics, or anything that can broadcast a signal further than your own diagnostic code system," she said, raising a third finger. "Make sense?"
X nodded, once. "Plenty of sense."
"Just don't make me regret it. Here, let me get that for you." She stepped around the desk and held the door open for X, who blinked in mild surprise.
"Thank you," he said, rising and getting his bearings. "I'm…not used to anyone knowing what to make of a reploid that can't even walk right."
"Humans don't even know what to do with humans that can't walk right. Don't hesitate to ask if you need help with something while you're here, alright?" she replied, much less formally than she had been until then. "It's hard enough being us already. We have to look out for each other. Nobody else will."
Outside, Hammer was sitting on a bench, shooting the shit with the two other reploids in rapid diagnostic code. "Oh, hey, that was fast. V, this is Focus, that's Drive."
Focus simply nodded, and Drive reached out for a handshake, which X exchanged with him. They were nearly identical units, except that Focus was white with orange trim, and Drive was white with red trim. Both of them had dark brown skin and deep brown eyes. Drive's hair was twisted into short locs, and Focus's was longer, though braided into neat cornrows. '>I.00910-GEN: Acknowledged. I.01467-REC: New entry established. I.40904-INT: High attention priority. I.34100-COM: Identification sent.' one of them sent, which must have been Focus.
"Drive, nice to meet you," said Drive. He had a firm grip and a smile that took a few moments to find its feet. '>I.40990-INT: High motive priority. I.34100-COM: Identification sent.' he added wirelessly.
'>W.04877-SYS: Balance systems operating outside of nominal parameters.' X introduced himself. 'I.34100-COM: Identification sent. I.01467-REC: New entry established.' This was already the most I.00100-COM: Diagnostic broadcast. he'd spoken in more years than he cared to count, and he hoped he could keep up. "V. Nice to meet you both."
"I'm gonna show V around. You two take it easy," Hammer said, standing. "So, you've seen the little garden and our town hall, such as it is, anyway. And you've seen the recharge building. Been calling that the five-star hotel to be funny." The massive construction reploid motioned for X to follow him, still keeping a pace that the disabled newcomer could match without too much strain.
"Now, over there's the generator." Hammer pointed to the building X had seen on the way in. The door was closed, now, and only a faint hum of sound came out. "Real pain to keep it quiet, and it gets hot as hell in there when it's under load, but it runs clean at least. We spend a lot of time scavenging fuel cells. Never too much of that. We're doing pretty good at the moment, got lucky and found half a fleet of buses still parked and fueled. If you look across by the town hall, to the right there, you can see the personal housing. Still kinda communal, but y'know, everyone needs some time alone sometimes. If you got down time and just need a break, that's your place. Need to build a few more rooms on it lately, but we're gettin' there." The tour continued, back to the barricades, which wrapped around the little settlement. One end butted up against where the structure across the street had crashed into the garage, and the other stretched to the outside wall.
"Not that we've needed it, thank fuck, but we got the barricade, here, and that shed there's the armory. Glitch mentioned you're ex-Hunter, so, y'know, I figure you probably know armories. Don't laugh, though, it's what we got."
That stung a little, but X couldn't quite put his finger on why. "I'm not going to laugh at anything here. You're making the most of what you have. That's commendable."
Hammer regarded him appraisingly for a moment, as if recalibrating his opinion. "Y'know, we had an ex-Hunter here once. Got declared irregular for some reason or another she didn't wanna talk about, decided to just get the hell out of Dodge, and ended up falling in with us for a couple weeks. She was a real difficult piece of work. Can't say anybody was too sad to see her go when she decided she didn't wanna share a recharge pod with all the 'real' Mavericks anymore."
X wondered if he knew her, but he didn't have the heart to ask. If he didn't know, he didn't have to wonder whether or not there was something he could have done for her. "Sorry you had to deal with that," he said.
"Ain't your fault," Hammer said, giving him an odd look and waving it off. "But the sentiment's appreciated." He flipped through a carabiner full of keys that he unclipped from his built-in toolbelt, picking out one and unlocking the shack. The outside seemed like plywood, but that turned out to simply be the remains of the mold for the inside: salvaged rebar and rough concrete, with a heavy metal door. Fire was no joke around ammunition. Factory shelving lined the walls, with a surprising number of weapons. There were light blasters, a few energy rifles, a couple of more exotic armaments, some melee implements, and even a handful of solid-projectile guns. Not that they had much effect on most reploids, being much better suited in stopping power for transferring force to something solid like a human, but they had their uses.
X stepped inside at Hammer's gesture and looked the shelves over, placing both hands on his cane. Normally he did that while standing still anyway, for balance, but the body language of keeping both of them visible and accounted for felt a little more important where weapons were concerned. "This is nothing to sniff at," he concluded after a few moments. "Short on ammunition, unless you store it somewhere else, but I'm impressed."
"Be surprised what you can scavenge off a war zone. Well, maybe you wouldn't be, but it's a lot. Half of it we just brought back here so nobody else would have it. Boss don't like weapons, but that's reality. You're right about ammo, though. Plenty of guns around, but not a lot to put in 'em. You find an energy pack or a clip here and there, but even those are usually half fired off already or the weather's gotten to them. Glitch and I had a pet project for a bit tryin' to recharge some of the packs, but they're designed for some pretty specialized shit that we don't have. But hey, bright side, we don't see a lot of trouble, either. Worst we usually get is havin' to fire a couple warning shots."
Hammer locked the shack up after them. "So, that's pretty much it. We got a stack of material for building behind town hall, and anything you scavenge, we got bins inside and out depending on what it is. Got a whiteboard with a wish list, too, if you need a little inspiration. But don't feel like you got to, there's plenty to do without leavin' home."
"Does…here, have a name?" X asked.
'>I.04053-REC: Home region registered.' Hammer replied. Then, out loud and a little sheepishly, "We tried some names, but, eh. Nothing really stuck. We just call it…home, you know?"
X nodded. "I think it's a good name."
"Anyway, let's get a room picked out for you. Gotta share with someone, like I said, but it's not too bad, and we're workin' on building a few more. Just a matter of priorities and materials." Hammer and X headed to the housing, which had a heavy, stitched-together curtain for a front door. Its front room was dominated by a bank of lockers, brought back in pieces from a school or gym and welded back together on-site. Each had a combination lock, though some of the knobs were broken. A few sported padlocks, but most seemed to be unlocked. A short hallway led to the rooms themselves, and someone had once again taken advantage of the blank wall to paint a sea of various flowers, signing their work with an orange handprint. The individual rooms were a little better than the front, with actual doors, flimsy though they were.
"Lessee…Mack and Glitch are this room, we got Drive and Focus bunked up, that's mine and Kathy's, you haven't met Valentina, Trigger, or Cirocco, but they're already three to a room so not there…that's Flip and Siobhan, they really don't need a third wheel…you wouldn't die if I put you with Mack and Glitch for now, would ya, V?" Hammer looked apologetically to X. "They kinda also don't need a third wheel, but at least you met them already."
"I don't mind. Really, just having somewhere safe to rest is more than I'd expected."
Hammer chuckled. "Damn, but you're easy to get along with. Everyone oughta be as chill as you. World would be a better place, y'know?" He peeked into a locker. "Good, this one's empty. Yours now. Just don't keep anything dangerous or annoying in there. Other than that, however you wanna use it, it's up to you. I think we got an extra lock if you want one. Combination's written inside the door so get a good look at it before you close it."
X shrugged the bundle of tarp off and hung it from a coat hook on the inside of the locker. He mumbled the number to himself a few times and tried it out to make sure it worked before he committed to closing it. "It should be fine. I don't have a lot of belongings."
"Last little door there, we got a shower. No heater, and it runs off collected rain, but we filter it as much as we can. Don't try and fill any empty reservoirs off it, but it's enough to get the grime off. Anything you wanna wash, there's a washtub around back you can fill, there's some laundry detergent, and I put together one of those real old-style wringers. Got a clothesline in the generator shed if you need something dried. I figure we might as well use the heat since we can't get rid of it. And I think that's pretty much it for the tour. You holding up okay?"
"I'm fine," X replied, automatically. "Kathy mentioned I should talk to her for work."
Hammer shrugged. "Up to you. If you need a few to get your bearings, though, nobody's gonna judge."
"I'm not great at holding still," X admitted. "And I've still got a missing person to search for, so I don't have time to waste."
"Ah. Yeah. Humans don't last nearly as long out here. Well, suit yourself. There's always somethin' to do. Find me if you need anything, I got a lot to work on myself. Like see if I can't get a couple extra rooms put together sooner rather than later, or maybe plan out how I'm gonna expand the hotel…we keep collecting randoms at this rate, we're gonna need a lot more room. But you just leave worryin' about that to me, that's my job here. You go find out what yours is gonna be."
X left Hammer to his business and went back to find Kathy. Focus and Drive had already left the tiny parklet that passed for the town center, and X found Kathy inside the main public room, up to her elbows in a bin full of salvaged fabrics: clothing, curtains, bedsheets, and all manner of random other things. "V," she greeted him, standing up straight. "You're back sooner than I'd thought." He couldn't think of a response to that, but he ended up not needing to, as Kathy continued. "If you need something to do, I've got this entire bin of things that needs sorted."
"Sure," X agreed. "That sounds simple enough."
Kathy sighed out a laugh. "You would think so. I think I might be the only one here who's ever done laundry. I had Focus working on it, but he can't tell a tablecloth from a flat sheet and spends more time feeling the fabrics than sorting anything. Oh, good, your eyes haven't already glazed over? There's hope for us yet." She pulled a very battered office chair over for him again.
X eased himself onto it and leaned his cane against the wall as Kathy continued to explain. "So. Basically, anything too damaged to use or wear goes in that box for rags. Towels, sheets, curtains, and blankets go in that one, shirts of any kind in that one, this one's pants, jackets and that sort of thing are in the last one. Don't worry about folding anything, it all needs washed anyway once the water tank is topped back up again. And don't keep things with blood stains. I shouldn't have to say that, but I have definitely had to say that, more than once."
"No problem," he said with a nod, picking up the first thing his fingers brushed and beginning to sort. "What do you do with all of these?" he asked, out of curiosity.
Kathy sat down with a ragged cardboard box of books. "Curtains. Cleaning. Soundproofing. Hammocks and such. Camouflage, sometimes. Some of them get turned into debris filters for the rain water. Valentina wears clothes. If anything fits me and isn't hideous…I don't need need to, but I still feel more normal in clothing. Is it the same for you?" she asked him in return.
"It helps thermoregulate," X replied. "My joints freeze up if it's too cold. You're right, though, I'm used to armor, and this is close enough. And I stand out less this way." He paused. X didn't like thinking about how unfinished he looked without his armor. Would it have killed his creator to at least paint him? Then again, he could have had himself painted at any point, and he hadn't, so… He put that out of his mind, and then, because he was still curious, he asked, "How did you end up in charge of a place like this?"
The female reploid half-laughed. "Being good at organizing and telling people what to do. That's really it. I…we don't talk much about before, or how we came here, but I used to be a teacher. I guess I kind of still am, in a way. Hammer's been here longer than me, but he doesn't like being in charge of things. I don't really mind, though, it's just nice to have something to do again that matters."
"I can understand that," X said, sorting a stack of sheets, still mostly folded, into the proper bin. "That's why I first joined the Hunters. I saw an opportunity to make a difference in a way that I don't think anyone else could have."
"Did you?" Kathy asked. "Make a difference, I mean?"
X examined the shirt in his hands much longer than necessary, without really seeing it. "I…yeah. I did. For a while, I know I did, but it got a little harder every day to justify what I was doing. And I lost…a lot, along the way." Maybe everything, but I shouldn't be so dramatic. He shook his head at himself and folded the shirt, realized he didn't need to, and tossed it into the bin.
"Sorry. I shouldn't be so nosy," Kathy apologized. "It's poor manners."
"It's okay," X reassured her with a wan smile. "I'm just not sure how to talk about it. And at the end, even though I didn't really do anything wrong, I'm still wandering around on the other side of the quarantine wall."
"Do you want to know what I did?" Kathy offered.
"If you want to tell me, I'd be glad to listen," X answered.
"You know, you talk a bit like me," she mused, not yet getting to her own story. "Like a teacher, I mean. The few ex-Hunters we've had, they've all either been afraid of everyone they met, or looked down on us. Or both, sometimes, but not you."
X sorted a pair of torn jeans into the rag bin. "I probably would have thought like that, a long time ago," he admitted. "...Are skirts pants?"
"They're close enough to be pants, sure. Anyway, I was a teacher, like I said. This was, oh, eight years ago, now. I'd been doing it for four years, at a public kindergarten. It was good work. I loved it. I loved my kids. But I had one child whose father…hurt him. There are laws about what to do if you think a child is being abused at home. They tell you all about it in orientation, if you're an educator unit. You have to contact the authorities if you even suspect it's happening, so, I did."
X shook a rumpled, muddy piece of clothing out, trying to ascertain what it even was. With a little more prodding, it turned out to be a hooded sweatshirt, half inside-out. Meanwhile, Kathy continued. "Well, orientation doesn't tell you that parents can get worse instead of better after social services comes to their house, if they even do at all. Things seemed okay for about two weeks…and then he missed a day of school. No message or anything. He was back the next day, but…well. I don't need to get into all the awful details. I contacted social services, again, and again they said they'd look into it, and again, nothing really got better."
Kathy paused to leaf through a few books. One of them was so water-damaged that it wouldn't open, so she tossed it aside. The others went into stacks, sorted in some way that X couldn't immediately determine, but Kathy clearly knew her own system. "So," she resumed, with a sigh, "I decided if they weren't going to do anything, I had to do something. I had a parent-teacher conference with him. My supervisor—the principal—wanted to sit in, which was fine with me. I couldn't…I still can't understand why someone would hurt a child. They're just…" She frowned. Another five books went to their new destinations before she could quite assemble the words to go on.
"They're just helpless. There are no bad kids, V. I really believe that. There are only kids who need something they aren't getting. And reploids…we aren't children, but are we really adults either, if we have to be adults as soon as we're born?"
X had no answer to give, but to his relief, Kathy wasn't expecting one. "We actually had to reschedule the meeting once, because the father didn't show for the first one. The second one, when he did show up…I didn't really understand what anger was, before that. I didn't know it could physically feel like something. He started an argument with me, told me a—a toaster didn't know how to raise children and that I should…" She paused, expression flat, and took a breath to settle herself. "So my supervisor tried to talk him down, and he stood up and yelled at me, and I stood up and yelled at him, then my supervisor raised his voice too, and I…all I could think was that this person should not be allowed near children. That—that I would not allow this person to be near children. He was a danger, and I think, if I were a human woman, I'd probably have been afraid of him, because he could have hurt me too. But I'm not, so he couldn't, so I wasn't, and I grabbed him. Harder than I'd meant to. The principal tried to separate us, and…"
Her voice was level enough, but Kathy still paused again, sorting a few novels. "...humans are so breakable, V. I hope you've never had to find that out yourself. They're so…fragile. I found out that they lived, at least, so I guess we all got lucky…but if I saw him again, I don't know. Maybe I'd break him again. Maybe I haven't really learned anything from it all. I hurt an innocent bystander, too. I didn't need to do that. I'm not sure I'm any better than that poor child's father. What's the difference, really, when we both got angry and hurt someone weaker than us that we were supposed to protect?"
X simply sorted and listened to her talk. "It's not like they tell you it is, is it? Being irregular, I mean. Being a Maverick. I didn't enjoy hurting him. I felt sick. I still do. But I think I would feel sicker if I just…let him go on hurting my child. I mean, his child, but they built that into me. I was made to think of my students as my own. That's why I even exist. What was I supposed to do?" she asked, looking to X, eyes questioning. "You're an older model. Maybe you've figured this out. What was I supposed to do?"
X returned her gaze for several moments, before letting it drop, guiltily. "...I don't know. It's not a fair situation. I wish I could tell you. Not attacking him would have been better, definitely, but it's not fair to ask you to have more restraint than someone ten times your age, either. The whole thing shouldn't have happened in the first place."
Kathy hesitated, then nodded. "It's…actually kind of a relief, hearing it from someone else. Not that I was looking for judgment, but…thanks, V." She gave him a small smile. "That's all I could come up with too. I think…everyone is just doing the best they can. It's just that life isn't fair to start with, and sometimes you can't win, because the systems you're supposed to be able to count on for help just…don't show up when you need them."
"Yeah." X nodded in reply. "It took me a long time to learn that." He had wondered, often, if the world would have been a better place without reploids. Without him. If he hadn't been created in the first place, there couldn't have even been a war…
Kathy gazed at his face as if reading something there, but whatever it was she'd seen, she kept it to herself. "Well, it's a downer of a story, but they all are. You don't get to be where we are without one. But it's where we go from here that's important, right?" she said, encouragingly. "As long as you're still booting up in the morning, life goes on, so you've got to go with it."
I can see why they look to you for guidance, X thought with some admiration. You're not perfect by any stretch, but you've got more figured out than you think you do. And I can also see why you're named >E.10104-TLR: Conflict detected. He fished the final armload of fabric out from the bin, a set of heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains, and placed them into their new box. "You're right about that. So. What's next?" he asked.
"How much do you know about gardening?" Kathy asked. "Oh, no, there's the blank look. So, nothing, I take it? Well, I hope you're ready to learn something new today."