Page 42 of The Fall

Lusa switched gears. “What about your mom? Moms? I don’t know.”

Kerr inhaled sharply. “My mum was called Solder, formerly, Saoirse.” She sniffed. “I never met my father.”

“Formerly?” Lusa asked.

Kerr flapped her hands as if that could accurately communicate anything. “There’s an initiation you do when you pledge to the Chargers. You get a new name,” She could say more, but that seemed unimportant at the moment. “My mum read to me a lot. Kept me from getting into too much trouble. Even though most of them got hooked through corpo jobs, you can still get Chem from RDCs. None of us newer gens have the cyberware to handle the shite they were on.”

“RDCs?”

“Rapid Dispersal Canisters.” Kerr thought everyone knew what those were.

“Oh, yeah.” Lusa nodded a little too rapidly. “She sounds nice.” She added, “I’m sorry.”

Unsure how to respond, Kerr nodded back. The weight of death and injury and blame lay over the room like a suffocating fog.

“Why… nevermind.” Lusa lay on the bed. “I should get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

“Why what?” Kerr propped herself up on her elbows.

Lusa rolled over on her side. “Why are you trying to act like my friend after what I did?” Lusa had never apologised for causing Kerr to lose her arm and now she was feeling sorry for it?

Kerr flexed her ceramic composite fingers. She hated her, but the feeling lacked conviction. Lusa was just a person, treating her better than everyone else around here. “It’s not all bad. I got used to her, right?” Words Piston had said just before the trade deal went bad. Blinded by hate and then attraction, the light from the ads outside highlighted a melancholy she hadn’t noticed before. “Sorry for taking your sister.”

Lusa didn’t move but Kerr thought she saw something in her eyes shift.

The silence that followed felt like it needed to be filled. Kerr massaged the fingers on her good hand. “Feels like we have something in common maybe? Like we’re both rushing to defend people that don’t really deserve it, yeah?”

Lusa nodded, but changed the subject. “Thanks for putting me up.” Clearly, she didn’t want to dig that deeply into it right now.

She slipped under the thin blanket, discarding the towel as discreetly as she could. “Sorry, I didn’t bring any sleepwear. I wasn’t really expecting this.” Lusa adjusted the pillow. “Maybe we’re both fucked up.”

Kerr bit her lips in an effort not to drool. Tuning her Opti to sleep mode, Kerr dimmed her light sensitivity. Probably a good thing, or she would be staring all night.

Why was she doing this? Putting Lusa up? Acting like her friend? Common ground and attraction couldn’t be the whole reason, could it? “Why are you being so nice to me?” Kerr still couldn’t understand why Lusa had helped her with the doorstopper.

A pause. “I didn’t think I was.” Lusa’s voice sounded too intimate coming from the dark.

Kerr tried not to dwell on how depressing that was. “Are you this nice to everyone?”

More silence. “I guess not,” Lusa admitted.

“Is it because you like me?” Kerr tilted her head coyly. Not that Lusa could see.

“Good night.” Lusa turned toward the wall. Kerr was only playing the fool, but it pleased her that Lusa hadn’t responded with malice or exasperation.

“Good night,” she whispered back.

The Expense of Spirit in Waste of Shame

Lying as still as she could, sleep refused to come. Kerr breathed deeply only a metre away. Then shallower, until Lusa heard nothing but a steady rhythm, not unlike the gentle waves on a calm night. She was asleep.

And Lusa was not.

Her thoughts drifted to the hidden place she stashed things for later, as if Kerr might somehow have access to her mind when she was awake, but now, asleep, Lusa could examine them in private.

Kerr liked her.

Not in the way that the girls at the Lake liked her. To them, Lusa was only a placeholder. Someone with enough muscle and masculine energy that they could pretend while they waited for what they really wanted.