Page 15 of Alliance
Impatience and panic stirred in his chest. He needed to get the girls out of there as fast as possible. He loved the guild. He’d fight for it with the last inch of his life. But he had different priorities now. His responsibility was to two little lives, first and foremost. If that meant he needed to bail and cut another tie from his heart, then so be it. His symphony was nearly dead anyway. One less tone wouldn’t make any difference.
“So can you tell me where to find them?”
Fásach blinked up at Roz, having forgotten she was there. He shook his head.
“I don’t suggest it. Whatever happened, they’re in it deep.”
“But they can help me get home.”
“To your nursery?”
“No, the human colony, Renata. I know I can get there if I just find a way to Yaspur. I want to get back to the other humans.”
Fásach huffed, tossing his used tweezers in the can with the bloody bits and pieces he’d pulled from her feet, then bandaged her soles in medicated pads and gauze. “Get back? You’re a doll, Roz, not a human. You’ve never been there, no matter what your coding tells you.”
He pulled a pair of Safia’s school shoes from the footlocker, comparing sizes against Roz’s foot. Venandi were digitigrades, but the soles of her shoes were soft and could be worn flat. He tossed them next to Roz’s hip where she sat on their bed and hauled out his biggest duffel.
“You can keep this place,” he said, spying sideways the despondent look his words had left on her features. “Use it as a base to find what you’re looking for. Alright? It’s not much, but you’ve got the medikit.” He stopped, a pile of clothes in his palm. Turj and the others would find her here, and that didn’t sit well. “You’ll probably get robbed if you stay though. Big yog with a shitty attitude and bad breath. There’s a hollow behind that wall that’s big enough for you to hide in. Lead-lined. No one will find you.” He showed her the false wall behind the medikit storage space that he’d installed for the girls.
“You’re leaving?” she asked, sliding on Safia’s old shoes with ginger fingers. He glanced at her five-fingered hands, watching the tendons and knuckles beneath the surface. He nodded, tossing the duffel on the little table they usually ate on and pulling it wide open.
“Yeah,” he admitted. Now that he’d said it out loud, it felt real. “If that recording is true, then my guild’s in a bad way. I can’t stay here with—” He paused, throat caught on his next words.
“Your daughters?”
Fásach snarled, baring his teeth at the doll. She pushed her mangled curls behind one rounded ear on the side of her face and ducked her head. It was just submissive enough, andFásach’s hackles smoothed where they’d climbed and prickled against his shoulders.
“How did you know?”
“Their vital decks,” Roz said, nodding to something in the air Fásach couldn’t see. “Holotabs aren’t secure, and the data seeps into the air. I can see two venandi girls live here. It’s how I followed Imani and Vin. And you. They’re why you can’t stay, right?”
Fásach crouched and stuffed his emergency rations into the duffel with more force than necessary. “You’re awfully perceptive for a doll.”
Roz nodded at the hidey hole. “That isn’t big enough for you. And the links between your holotabs are encrypted.” She leaned forward with wide, pleading eyes. “We should go to Renata together! There are human children there. And a shilpakaari girl. She’s pink and so cute. Her name is—”
“Pom Pom, I know.”
Fásach rocked back on his heels, searching for the answers in the ceiling. Its heavy insulation was suffocating, bearing down on him like the weight of the world.
Roz wouldn’t know those things if she didn’t have human memories…
Was this their chance to get off Huajile?
Laying low in a safe house or shelter was a temporary solution that kept Quiopha’s daughters out of the orphan crushing machine of HXBI, but it was flimsy. There was no long-term stability on Huajile, especially in his prey-fluid state. And things would only get worse if the guild was compromised. They were essentially on their own.
Fásach opened his holotab and checked his contacts and comms. Nothing from Novak or Mijka or Vin. When he expanded their contacts, all of them were out of reach or on do not disturb. If he scrolled through the official guild channels,Mijka and Novak hadn’t read any comms for at least three days, either.
Should he contact Siat Xata?
Fásach huffed, rolling his eyes. He didn’t trust her any more than the doll sitting on his bed.
Maybe less.
Besides, Xata was probably gone already. She was no help to him now.
The yiwren inspected Roz’s open expression, her genuine desperation and yearning. Dolls didn’t look like that, not that he’d spent any time with pleasure dolls before. Perhaps they were coded differently from service units. He wracked his brain for glimpses, vids, anything that would suggest so, but no matter what, every doll he could remember had had a slightly rubbery personality, too scripted to be real. Roz should have been the same.
Besides, she had a good point. Pom Pom was in the colony, Vin had confirmed that. So were other guildmates. Sizzle, Hunar Fareshi… Novak had made it a point to station the guild in Renata, selecting people that could slip in without notice. He’d wanted to make the human colony their next stronghold.
