“I don’t understand.”
“Shift,” Katia whispered, bringing her eyes back up to meet mine, “I need Shift, but they say the price is going up with everything that’s going on and I don’t have anything else to give them. But I need it. Oh please, oh God, I need it so bad!”
“You traded your children for Shift?”
Sheepishness twisted into anger in her face. “Don’t you dare judge me!”
“I thought you traded for food…”
“My mother traded my little brother for the food,” she said, her fingers beginning to dig into my shoulder again, the stench of her breath almost unbearable, “you have to get me some Shift. You have to trade yourself to the border guard for Shift, or I’m going to them right now to tell them who you are.”
“If you keep using it, it’s just going to-”
I was cut off when Katia slapped me across the face, fury in her eyes. “Don’t fuck with me,” she hissed, “I’m going to die if you don’t get it for me. And I’ll take you with me.”
She’s not lying. There wasn’t much else I could do.
“Fine, fine,” I said, “I’ll see if I can trade us for Shift.”
Her grip immediately relaxed, fury abating. Just the thought of being able to satisfy her addiction again brought relief, yet desperation never left her eyes.
When I got back to our shanty, I told Laura and Akira the plan. Akira became visibly nervous about the whole thing, while Laura maintained her guise of drowsiness.
“It might not be wise to trust an addict,” Laura said.
“The fact that she’s an addict looking for a fix gives us leverage on her,” I said, then in Japanese for Akira, “I don’t think she’ll do anything to jeopardize us, as long as she thinks we’ll get Shift for her.”
“How addicted do you think she is?” Akira asked.
“I have no idea.”
“The longer she’s off it, the more erratic she’ll become,” Akira said, “her brain chemistry has been altered. There is a dose dependent response to the gene editing complex that alters the receptors. Reversing this process means that different regions of the brain will undergo decreased responses while others undergo increased responses, leading to an imbalance that will result in errant behavior.”
Being able to talk science made Akira look visibly more like her usual self. Laura and I both listened as Akira went through the types of biochemical changes that occur in people’s brain when they take Shift. Neither of us understood much of it – me for being scientifically illiterate and Laura for not knowing Japanese – but hearing Akira talk with even a shred of her old confidence lifted our spirits a bit. I even thought I noticed a hint of a smile on Masaru’s face as he lay on the dirt floor.
I couldn’t help but feel bad about getting all of them into this. It was my decision to cut contact with Sachi. Even if Sachi was a monster, at least Akira’s family would be safe and out of harm’s way if we had maintained contact and had them rescue us.
But you’d rather run from her than help everyone else, wouldn’t you? Evita said. You don’t think Sachi would even bother looking for your reincarnation if she thinks you’re dead. She didn’t seem to the last time you died.
I gripped the small piece of wood in my pocket. Every time I thought of Sachi, anger welled up inside of me. At first, I tried to dismiss the feeling, thinking it might just be something the ‘bad me’ part of my brain thought that was leaking over into my unified mind. After only a few split-brain experiences though I began discerning that if anything, that part of my mind still liked Sachi.
Or at least likes her in the way those thoughts are capable of liking anyone.
It was the ‘good me’ part of my brain that knew Sachi was a monster.
But that’s not it, either, Evita said, you feel betrayed, not horrified. You want it to be horror. Horror at seeing the aftermath of Sachi’s chaos theory – the carnage wrought by Sachi’s insurrection and the cartel’s retaliation to it – because that would be the human thing to feel. It’s how Akira feels about Sachi and why it was so easy for you to get Akira to go along with you.
The look of ecstasy on Sachi’s face as she made love to Markus crept back into my mind.
It was a feeling of betrayal I hadn’t felt in a long time. In lives long ago, I’d feel that same way toward those I loved who died and never came back. I learned not to love anyone anymore. Until I’d found Mike. He was someone that would always be able to come back. I went through hell to find his reincarnation, and when I succeeded, it only confirmed that I did, in fact, have someone that would always come back.
But Sachi doesn’t love you, Evita said. You were merely a partner in this to her. And she traded you for a mortal.
I glanced at Laura. She often entered my thoughts after feeling anger toward Sachi. But it was different with Laura because-
“I guess the question is whether you are okay with this,” Akira said, looking right at me.
“With what?”
“Supporting the habit of an addict,” Akira said, “if she hasn’t been on long, she’ll be very miserable for a while, but she won’t die.”
“I realize just how shitty of a plan this really is,” I said, “but at this point, I don’t see any other options.”
“I agree,” Akira said, sitting next to Yukiko, the toddler lying swaddled on the floor.
Nobody said anything for quite some time. We all listened to Masaru’s heavy breathing, sitting with our backs up against the walls of the shanty. Low voices carried by a light breeze meandered through the refugee camp.
“You’re pretty nervous about this, aren’t you?” I asked Akira.
“I wasn’t this nervous when the Hasanatos had both of us captured,” Akira said, “There’s so much more at stake now.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, “keeping people at arm’s length has always been a good way to keep the stakes low enough.”
“I’ve been doing it all my life,” Akira said, “back before I started transitioning,” she kept her gaze down at Yukiko as she talked, “after the way my father reacted when I tried telling him.”
“He didn’t understand, did he?”
Akira made a wan smile, still not looking up, “that’s an understatement. You know, he was involved in the Shinti family, too. That’s about the best way to get in – have a father who’s a respected member.” She paused a moment, “one of my earliest memories of my father was walking into his office to find a man – a Yakuza underling – presenting his own severed pinky to my father. I didn’t really understand what was going on. Not until I was older. That’s what a man has to do if he wants to leave the Yakuza.” Akira paused again, her gaze looking out the opening the shanty at the early afternoon sky. Nobody spoke, waiting for her to continue.
“But nothing hurt like when I told him…” Akira sighed. “When I was only about five, he punished me…after finding me trying on my mother’s clothes. I hadn’t really understood what I was punished for. I thought it was because I might rip one of the dresses or something. I decided I’d tell my parents why I was wearing the dress. I had to wait until one of the evenings my father was actually home for dinner…I still remember the sashimi dish the maid served us.”
Akira paused for a bit, wiping a tear from her cheek. This was the first time I had heard Akira talk much about her past or her family. Even Masaru seemed to have slowed his breathing to hear her talk like this.
Confessions of someone who thinks they’re going to die soon.
“I was happy,” Akira said, “I told him that I was actually a girl. That if he bought me my own dresses, I could change into a girl and I wouldn’t ruin my mother’s dresses. I…I thought he’d smile at me, open his arms for a hug and say he was glad to know…that he was glad to know there had been some kind of…some kind of mistake. A mistake that made me look like a boy. That we could fix it.”
“Instead, he just finished the meal in silence.” Akira shook her head slowly, eyes unfocuse
d as she recalled the memory. “Once the maids had all gone back to their business and I’d gone to my room, he came storming in and…and hit me. He just said in a calm voice that his seed would never conceive a faggot. That I needed to stop talking about…”
Akira took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before continuing. “I tried to plead with him. I thought…maybe I could…but he wouldn’t have it. I was supposed to be the heir to our family name. I was supposed to follow in his footsteps and become Yakuza. After that, he took a much bigger interest in what I was doing. I would still secretly put on girls’ clothes. That felt so much more…natural, I guess. I was only ever caught again when I was eleven, and this time he yelled at my mother. He said she was making me too girly.”
“At that point, I knew I had to just do what he said. I got groomed in the Shinti family, already pulling hack jobs for them. I was only fifteen, almost sixteen, when my father died. In his honor, I was accepted into the Shinti family, even at that young of an age.” She sighed, pausing for a moment before continuing. “I always felt like a fraud. I didn’t feel like myself – who I should be. I tried to pretend I was as manly as they all thought the son of my father was supposed to be. But…I’m pretty sure everyone knew. They just didn’t say anything. They didn’t want to admit it to themselves. And I hated them almost as much as I hated myself. I pretend it was all the horrible shit I did for them that caused me to leave. I tried to pretend it was because I couldn’t deal with their brutal way of life anymore. But deep down, I knew I always had to leave, because I needed to become who I thought I was.”
Akira stopped talking, the shanty seeming to sit still. When she looked back up at me, I could see how difficult it was to tell that story.
“At least you were able to become who you really are,” I said finally, “you got to-”
“Who I really am,” she scoffed, “he was right. My father. No amount of surgery can turn someone into a woman. I still have that Y chromosome. A chromosome that kills babies before their born.”
“Plenty of women give birth to children with birth-”
“She’ll be better off with you,” Akira said, seemingly unable to look at Yukiko.
“We’ll worry about that when-”
“I should have stayed,” Akira said, tears dampening her cheeks, “I should have stayed in Japan and never done any of this to myself. The surgery. The brain implants. The gene doping. None of it. I’m a fucking freak. Masaru deserves better. Yukiko deserves better. All of you deserve better.”
Akira begain sobbing as despair overtook her. I tried comforting her, but she waved me away, burying her face into her hands, allowing anguish to grip her completely.
Yukiko watched her mother, staring perplexed. I exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Laura, who didn’t understand anything Akira had just said, but could clearly see her anguish. When I looked to Masaru, his eyes were wet with tears, looking to Akira hopelessly.
“We’re going to get out of here,” I assured him.
Masaru turned his head slowly to look at me and said in a weak, rasping voice, “You’re…going to protect Yuki, right? When you…when you can’t get us out of the prison.”
I hesitated and said, “Of-of course…of course. I’ll do what I can.”
Chapter 5
Awakening, darkness met my eyes, mind swimming in confusion. The strange feeling of thoughts coming back together faded. I’d had a split-brain experience while sleeping. When my train of thought came back to coherence, I could see Katia standing over me, a look of desperation on her face, somehow stronger than before. As she came into focus, it was more apparent than ever how bad she looked. Eyes bloodshot, arms shaking, teeth clenched. Greasy, tangled hair fell around her pale face, skin slick with sweat.
Laura sat a few feet away, watching. Her gaunt face, peeking out from the jacket wrapped about her, was a ghost in the light shining from the border wall, a detached apparition observing from another realm.
“It’s time to get going,” Katia said, still shaking me as I sat up.
“What time is…?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“It’s time,” she repeated, “come on. We have to go. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
I climbed to my feet and shuffled over to Akira, seeing her curled up on the hard ground with Yukiko nested between her arms. There was something peaceful about the way she looked, finally sleeping after having allowed despair to take its course. But that peace would be short lived. Akira woke with a start, instinctively pulling Yukiko closer.
“It’s time,” I said, signaling to Katia, who remained close to me as if she was worried I’d leave without her.
Akira didn’t say anything as she slowly climbed to her feet. Tear streaks still stained her face. Hints of humiliation as she wiped the dampness away told me she had at least crawled out of her despair far enough to reach a self-awareness about it. I told Laura we were taking off.
Having to translate to people through three different languages is already a pain in the ass. I can only imagine it won’t be much better when we throw English into the mix.
Laura and I woke Masaru up.
“Now?” he managed to whisper in a hoarse voice.
“Think you can do it?” I asked.
He gave me a weak smile and held his trembling arms up. Laura and I squatted down and lifted him, putting his arms around the back of our necks. He felt lighter than he had when we first arrived, but he wasn’t much better at walking.
Katia eagerly led us out of the shanty and through the pathways winding about the refugee camp. Nighttime cold dominated, chilling me through my thin jacket. Lopsided rows of shanties stood dark and silent on each side like old gravestones. The smell of smoke, stale feces, and human perspiration infected the icy air like a malignancy. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a crying child was the only thing that accompanied our footsteps.
My malnourished legs burned under Masaru’s weight, his breaths in my ear shallow and labored. Laura looked worse off than me, her inability to sleep making Masaru’s weight heavier on her scrawny body. I could just about feel the worry coming off Akira as she cradled Yukiko, walking behind us. She knew this might be the last time she ever got to hold her daughter. I exchanged a quick glance with Akira, and in just that moment in the dim, pale light she gave me a weak smile. Despair swam in the murky pool of her thoughts, but she would keep it at bay as best as she could.
Katia stayed several paces ahead, occasionally stopping to impatiently let us catch up. Once we neared the edge of the shanty town, walking toward no-man’s land, I could see something happening. A couple flashlight beams fluttered about the ground near two vehicles with their headlights off, but it was difficult to make out any people.
“That’s them I take it?” Akira whispered.
“I assume.”
“What do you think they’ll do when they see who we are?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. But it’s probably not going to be pleasant.
“Hurry,” Katia said, watching as Laura and I slowly caught up.
Overhead the sky was cloudless, the stars’ ethereal glow choked out by the cold, hard light coming from the border wall. Stifling silence smothered the murmuring voices and scraping shoes in their sleep. Above us I thought I heard a whooshing sound, although likely just paranoia drifting in the cold breeze, knowing UAVs were up there. After what had happened the first time, seeing how eagerly the UAVs kill unwanted border crossers, it was difficult not to worry about it. But they were almost silent, so we wouldn’t know they were coming, anyway.
As we neared, voices spoke in English, but I wasn’t able to make out what they were saying.
“Here!” Katia hissed to them as she trotted ahead of us, “I have them here!”
“Who’s there?” someone demanded in English.
“These are the ones!” Katia was saying, shouting even louder now.
“Shut the fuck up,” one of the men yelled in Spanish with a thick
American accent.
“I got them for you, now give me what I wanted!” she said as she reached them, “he said you would.”
One of the men backhanded Katia in the face, sending her reeling to the ground. He pointed his pistol at her, “keep quiet, ya dozy Shithead.”
Katia was laughing as she lay on the ground. I was near enough now to see the faces of other children peering out the back of one of the covered trucks. Most of them looked younger than Laura and me. The coyotes were too preoccupied with Katia’s strange behavior to notice the rest of us.
“The fuck she laughin’ about?” someone asked, stepping from the other side of the van as he lit a cigarette.
“She’s the Shithead that said she gotta special haul fer us,” the man with the pistol said.
“Give it to me,” Katia said, crawling toward him on her hands and knees, “He said you would. I need the medicine,” she reached up and started groping at his crotch, “I’ll do anything.”
The man swung his pistol down, hitting her on the top of the head. She fell to her face on the hard dirt and then continued laughing again, turning onto her back.
“Jesus Christ, just git it for her,” the man with the cigarette said, “if it’ll get ‘er ta shut the fuck up.”
A third man went to the passenger seat of the van, did some rummaging, then came back to join the others with a shrug, “ain’t in there.”
The man with the pistol sighed, pointing the pistol at her again and looking back at the cigarette smoking man, who shook his head. The gunman holstered the pistol.
“W-where’s it?” Katia said, her words slurred, “You promised! You promise me! I-I need it! Give it me now or I’m gonna-”
The gunman kicked her in the head with his booted foot, making the last word come out as a sickening grunt. He raised his foot again, landing a kick right in her face with a wet packing sound. Then he raised his boot and brought the heel down on her throat several times, gurgling rasps escaping her mouth until silence.
“Got-dammit,” the third man said, “the fuckin’ kids mighta seen that.”
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