I looked away before I allowed myself to read the words beside the image. The cigret burned between my fingers, so I pulled on it some more.
“Bright, enthusiastic, inquisitive boy,” she read. It was obvious that she was reading from the text, not making up the words. “Energetic and requires a lot of attention and compassion. He’s had a rough history, but he’s sweet and capable of loving. A family without any other children would do well.”
“Stop.”
“They write these posts like they’re advertising for pet swaps.”
“I said stop it.”
I climbed off the bed, flicked the cigret into the trash, and grabbed my clothes. “I was legitimately adopted. I don’t know what the hell you’re looking at.”
“Adopted by the Dragon Empress?”
No. And we both knew it.
I didn’t reply. Once I got my boots on, I grabbed my gun off the table and left her in the den.
All of my worlds were colliding.
Mabel found me at the bar, four drinks deep. Soochan was there, drunk and high too. “Heeey Mama,” he kept saying. Several of my other brothers from the Empress danced haphazardly to the music funneling in the centre of the floor.
“Paris,” Mabel said, glancing at Soochan.
“Heeey Mama. Heeey Parchisi, she want your comm code?” We ignored him. I wondered what either of them would do if they knew my real origin.
What should I be doing?
Everywhere I went now, I thought of my brother. Swapping drugs for cred or weapons, it was Cairo. Drinking myself into a stupor, it was Cairo. Fucking a woman, it was Cairo.
The ankh on my chest that I saw every day. What had possessed me to wear that reminder? My body was now a walking séance ritual, begging the ghosts to follow. To answer back, letter by letter, yes or no. I invited them now to shake my seating and short-circuit my tech. To stand behind me in the dark when I wandered the corners of the ship.
My brother was a ghost. The kind who made marks on the living.
“Please,” Mabel said. “We need to talk.”
How many kids were outside the system, like me? How many had been put into the system only to be torn out like a splinter? Children that couldn’t be handled so they were hijacked. Especially refugee kids, Mabel said. Good ships with good intentions found themselves over their heads and no longer wanted to deal with the kids.
It wasn’t a bad life, I heard myself telling her, the two of us in a corner booth while the music kept winding up and falling down and everyone around us moved like mannequins of broken robotics.
“Do you remember when you were taken?” she asked.
Do you remember? That question refused to pick another path. It hunted me everywhere.
“What’re you going to do,” I said. “Put me back? That ship has flown— literally.”
“I could find out if you have any family—”
“I don’t.” It came out of my mouth like every answer I’d given to anyone who asked. No family but the Dragon. No ship but the Dragon. No place but the Dragons. Deep space was our home. Mabel took it as stated and I carried on. “The captain of the Chateaumargot had checked. Or the case worker that I had—whoever. Social Services. I don’t even remember the name of the first station they’d put me at. They purged the records anyway.”
Mabel frowned. “The station?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I gave her a flat stare then let her track my gaze to Soochan, still sitting at the bar mouthing off to the air.
“We’re not pirates but we’re not saints.”
What if, I thought. What if I gave this journalist my real world name? Soochan suddenly appeared at my shoulder, leaning over the table. “Leh we go, Parchisi.”
“Be there in a second.” I pushed his hand away as it coursed through my hair. Big brother, except he wasn’t. He wandered off to hook up with our other brothers, now headed off the dance floor.
I had this information locked inside my chest. If I let it out, what other explosion would it cause? Would that birth yet another world, one that I couldn’t predict or control? Another situation I couldn’t defend myself against?
No one could know.
To Mabel: “Can you do me a favour?”
Her eyebrows arched.
“Whatever you need for your story, I’ll tell you. As a source. No names, on your word.”
She nodded. “Anonymous. I promise.”
“Because you know what I’ll do if you break our deal.”
She’d seen the gun. More importantly she’d seen the ink on my body and read the affiliation well enough.
“What’s your question?” she said.
“Find out Macedon’s next port of call.” I did, in the end, slip her my comm code. “And let me know ASAP.”
Somehow she came through. The message on my system said simply: Austro Station. And gave a date.
It wasn’t difficult to go to Austro Station, despite what we did for a living. Austro was a main hub even for us, with its rampant underdeck activity and illicit commerce. I didn’t have to mention a thing to Madame Leung, beyond the usual conversation about scoring big there. We bought and sold drugs at Austro for the rich elite in the higher modules because exploitation was the true ecosystem of the galaxy.
The Dragon Empress docked at the station a day after Macedon. To the galaxy outside, we were basic trade merchants in harmless cargo like transsteel and mechanical goods. It was a different story for the boys Madame Leung sent off in other directions on deck. I was one of that crew.
Now I had to conjure my brother’s face—in the delicate balance of stalking the dock where the carriers were moored, not going too close, but hovering outside the broad doors to catch every person that flowed back and forth. Casing the airlock directly was impossible in such a restricted area. Instead, I disappeared from my Dragon brothers in the hopes of seeing another. Hiding myself behind garish kiosks and aromatic food stalls. I felt like a pervert, but maybe that was fitting. A perverse turn
