Page 32 of Coldwire
“A pen,” I repeat. “The device that’s filled with ink and is used to write.”
“I know what a pen is,” she mutters, reaching into her pocket. “I’ve been stabbed by a pen before. I’m warning you in advance: I can see it coming from a mile away.”
Despite her words, she’s still handing me a thin pen from her pocket. It’s one of those plastic disposables that come with lottery scratch cards at the grocery store, the other end a slab of blunt metal to scrape the card.
Wordlessly, I take the pen and stick it in my hair to keep it up. Miz remains suspicious, but she slides across the seat, calling for someone named Blare.
The third member of their team trudges across the grass with two more bags and halts with one leg propped inside the taxi for balance. I blink. I knew there must have been someone else navigating the helicopter. I didn’t expect achild, still baby-faced with the sort of softness that ninth graders at the academy possess before morning drills harden them into stony cadets.
“What’s this about?” I say aloud.
The kid looks at me in a panic.
“I’m agender!” they blurt out.
“I—” My disturbance gives way to confusion. “What?”
Nik comes up behind them. “Blare is having some revelations about gender lately. Please don’t bother them about it. Blare, get in, come on.”
My mouth opens and closes. Blare hauls the bags through with effort, then scrambles into the car, settling next to Miz.
“I’m adding child labor to your list of crimes,” I say to Nik.
He slams the sliding door closed. “That’s discriminatory against equal-opportunity labor.”
“Are you joking? Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Yes, I’m joking. And it’s not child labor if it’s voluntary.”
That’s blatantly untrue. “How old are you?” I ask, pivoting the question to Blare. “Thirteen?”
Blare shrinks into their shoulders. “Maybe!”
I swivel to Miz. “You had a thirteen-year-old flying the helicopter?”
“It was on autopilot the entire time. No one uses manual flying for a cross-continental journey,” Miz returns, fussing with the glasses in her lap. She’s taken them out of her pocket to clean them. “And besides, I’m the one usually overseeing the transportation. But I figured it was better to put Blare on flying duty than risk them getting inyourway.”
I resist a huff. I suppose I did try to start a fight in the helicopter. Who knows—maybe I would have behaved myself if I had known there was achildpresent. Blare should be going to school and spending time on the feed exploring the limitless bounds of gender expression. Not running around with anarchists.
“Leave them be,” Nik prompts again. “You’re the only one being brought on for involuntary labor.”
I grit my teeth. Nik casts a quick, verifying glance over me, as though he expected me to debate his flippant remark, but I say nothing more. My own school years were hazy. I didn’t have friends at the academy. There were cadets like Teryn who I knew in my periphery, but I sat alone at lunch and didn’t ask to borrow anyone’s notes in class. It wasn’t uncommon at military academy—plenty of us were realists, well aware that we were only going through these years to be sent out and sacrificed in a line of fire. I kept myself company. Sat in my dorm searching stupid things on the feed likewhat does it mean to be girl? can u be nonbinary and keep using she/her? problematic to use she/they just to signal to people that ur gender identity is a little funky but you don’t particularly need to be they/them’d?
The taxi’s engine whirls to a start. No one joins me at the back, where the three seats blend into one. Besides the empty driver’s and front passenger seats, there are four in the middle—two seats in reverse and two seats facing forward, a center aisle separating the rows. Nik settles on the left side. Miz has put on her glasses opposite him: she’s connecting to the taxi to give it directions. On the right side, Blare’s attention stays firmly on their hands, like I’m going to tell them off if we make eye contact once more.
Nik and Miz come across as exactly the type of people to be societyinsurgents: the likely rebels whowouldbe going against NileCorp, against our accepted way of life. Blare is not. Blare could turn into me five years down the line.
Not that me right now is an admirable position to hold.
I fold my arms tightly, tilting my body to face the window. We landed somewhere to the north, by Upsie’s outer edges. The helicopter remains parked in the hills while the taxi pulls away. Either someone is coming soon to fetch the aircraft, or it was stolen to begin with and its use has run out.
The pervasive smoke remains while the taxi shudders onto a gravel road, picking up speed. No particular source contributes to the air quality tonight. In the outskirts, the factories always clog the skies until they’re treacly. There are few streetlamps ahead, but the self-driving taxi doesn’t need anything save its own lidar, zooming forward.
“Okay.” Without any warning, Nik gets up from where he was settled, and drops onto the long seat beside me. I stiffen, subtly shifting away by an inch. “Atahua has launched a manhunt for you at the federal level, so it serves your best interest to keep your head down with us. You get caught, you get hauled in without evidence. Don’t go blaming me if that happens.” He pulls something out of his pocket and tosses it at me. It looks like a pimple patch. “Put that on your forehead. It’ll scramble surveillance from identifying you.”
I do it without protest. The worst that can happen is a breakout on my forehead.
“Tell me what you want from me,” I say dully. “Let’s get this done as fast as possible.”
