Running Toward Home

by M B Panichi

  Abraham said, “The situation with Friday has gone on long enough, Ms. Wendt. She must be returned home. If you cannot bring her to us, we will come to retrieve her.”

  Shaine nodded thoughtfully and slowly took a sip of her coffee. “I didn’t know you had transport there. I didn’t see it in the docking bay.”

  “Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean that we don’t have it, Ms. Wendt,” Abraham replied. “When do you plan on bringing Friday back to us?”

  “Frankly, I will only return her when, and if, I am convinced it is a safe place for her to be. That has not yet happened.”

  Flower glared. “I demand you return Friday to us! She belongs here!”

  Abraham leaned forward and said more evenly, “You have no right to keep the girl. She is a minor and belongs with her family. It is not your choice to make.”

  Shaine managed to keep her face blank despite her boiling rage. “Unfortunately, Friday has refused to return to your colony. She doesn’t want to be there.”

  There was a knock on Shaine’s door. It slid open, and Friday poked her head in. “Shaine, have you seen Morgan? I thought she was—” She stopped short with a gasp as she recognized the faces on the screen.

  “Friday! My God, are you all right?” Flower exclaimed.

  The tall girl stepped guardedly into the room, folding her arms over her chest. She licked her lips and her blue eyes hardened with dislike and disgust. “Of course I’m all right,” she said. “Better than I’ve been in a long time.”

  Shaine watched Friday with concern. The girl’s focus was solely on the screen.

  Flower said, “You must come back to us, sister.”

  Abraham added, “Yes. Your family is here, young Friday. You belong with your family.”

  Friday choked on a laugh. “You are not my family. Family doesn’t beat and rape their children. I’ll die before I go back to that hellhole.”

  Shaine stifled her reaction to Friday’s very flat statement.

  “You lie!” Abraham hissed.

  “Fuck you, Brother Abraham. I don’t lie. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

  “Shameful, ungrateful heretic! I am sure you got the scars from them!”

  Shaine stood, leaning into the camera, and said firmly, “Friday will stay with us. This discussion is over.” She killed the connection with a vicious stab at the console and turned toward the young woman in the doorway.

  Friday shuddered, practically falling into Shaine’s tight embrace, all her bravado dissolving into gasping sobs. Shaine held her and stroked her hair, and whispered into her ear. “It’s gonna be okay, Fri. We’re your family, if you want us. Me and Morgan.” She knew as she said the words that she meant it more than she’d ever meant anything in her life.

  Shaine took Friday back to their quarters. After their stay in the radiation shelter, Friday had moved in with Shaine and Morgan in their regular quarters. Shaine considered Friday too vulnerable to be on her own, and since she was now her and Morgan’s responsibility, Shaine wanted the teen where she could keep an eye on her. Not because she was afraid Friday would do anything wrong, but because she was afraid someone else would make Friday a victim. Shaine wondered if she were becoming her mother.

  She got Friday settled with the entertainment pad.

  “If you need anything, call me, okay? Or call Del. She’s in ops all day. Morgan is in the warehouse, so as long as she’s not out in a vac suit, you can call her too. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay. Thanks, Shaine. I just need some time to chill.”

  “All right. I’ll come get you for dinner later, then.”

  Friday managed a weak grin. “I’ll be here.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Morgan put on water for tea and went down to the cafeteria to get cookies. Everything was better when it involved cookies and tea. And she wanted Friday to feel comfortable and loved and cared for. They all settled on Shaine and Morgan’s bed. Friday sat cross-legged at the foot with a blanket pulled around her shoulders. Shaine stretched out, propped on a pile of pillows. Morgan sat beside her, leaning against the headboard, a quilt pulled up over her lap. They all held their tea in spill-proof mugs and the cookies were on a plate in the middle of the bed.

  Slowly, Friday told them about her parents’ death in an air-car accident. As her only remaining family, Flower became her guardian. It had been okay for a while, until Flower married and joined the Unified Martian Temple of God with her husband. Flower quit her job and they moved into a small commune in Phoenix run by the Temple. Her peacenik sister changed from being “normal” to spouting all the narrow, strict dogma that her husband believed.

  Flower tried to get Friday to believe it too. Friday fought back, but what could a fourteen-year-old kid do? She just quietly played along and secretly clung to her personal beliefs, her books, her drawing and her computers. But even that fell apart when Flower and her husband moved them to the colony on Mars two years ago. Because the commune had been small and in the city, she’d at least had some freedom and she was still enrolled in public school. At the colony, education was replaced with religious dogma. Her computer and books were taken away.

  Friday had been on a fast track in computer science and engineering, creating virtual holo-worlds for gaming and media production. At the colony, she was not allowed to pursue what was seen as “unsuitable” work. She tried to work secretly on a computer that she put together with scavenged and stolen parts, but when that was discovered she was severely beaten and punished.

  After that, she stole a comp pad from a distracted maintenance worker and started working with that. When her sister’s husband found the pad hidden in her room, she was beaten again, this time so severely she ended up in the infirmary. When her drawings were discovered, her sister was outraged at the subject matter. A great deal of it was fantastical, with dragons and fairies, and erotic depictions of women with women. This time, rather than beatings, the punishment was rape, to teach her the correct role of a woman in a relationship.

  Morgan was sickened and angry. Sometime during the telling, Friday crawled up between Morgan and Shaine, and they held her tightly while she told her story. Morgan struggled not to transfer her fury to Friday by verbally lashing out at the Temple Elders or her sister. This was Friday’s time to be angry or sad or hateful or shamed. She and Shaine repeatedly assured Friday that no matter what happened she would always have a place with them.

  “You guys are the best, really.” Friday hugged them both as tears slid down her cheeks. “You don’t know how much this means, having you.”

  Morgan smiled. “We’re just glad to be here for you.”

  After a few more sniffles, Friday wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and got up off the bed. She went to the small trunk at the end of her cot and opened it. When she returned to take her place again between Morgan and Shaine, she had two things in her hands. One was an older model comp pad. The other was a data chip. She handed the data chip to Shaine.

  Shaine looked at her questioningly.

  Friday licked her lips. “There’s a couple other reasons they might want me back there,” she said. “Some of it’s on that chip.”

  “What’s on here?” Shaine asked.

  Friday frowned. “I got really angry after the rape,” she said. “I figured, with all that was going on, there had to be something they were hiding. So I went fishing. I ran some ’bots and hacked into their systems. They’re really clueless about security. Abraham has been siphoning off funds for years, mostly to support all his wives and children. There’s also record of all the payoffs to authority justices to look the other way anytime anything was reported. And records of the punishments dealt out. A lot of women have been raped and beaten. And minors, too. Like me. Not just girls. There’ve been boys too. It’s all on there. If you want to remote connect to their systems, I have that set up too. I tried it last night, and the connection is still available.”

  Shaine leane
d her head back against the pillows, considering.

  Morgan asked, “Do they know you have this information?”

  Friday shrugged. “They probably suspect. I’m pretty sure they were afraid I could hack their systems. I think that’s the real reason they didn’t want me to have access to a computer. They didn’t trust me.”

  Shaine gestured to the comp pad. “And that?”

  Friday handed it over. “It’s Abraham’s top man’s personal comp pad. Brother Daniel John. He kept a journal. I’m in it. He included descriptions of all the women and girls he’s raped. The beatings he’s given. It’s pretty sick. He gets off on it. He left it unattended on a park bench. It went missing.”

  Morgan whistled.

  Shaine sighed. “You do realize that stealing is illegal? And because the diary is stolen, it can’t be admissible in court?”

  Friday nodded. “I know. But if the information could be leaked to the press, unofficially…” She shrugged. “Maybe it would get them off my back, or start a real criminal investigation.”

  Shaine rubbed her face with her hands.

  Morgan tried very hard not to laugh. It wasn’t funny, but, honestly, the kid was just too much. With Shaine’s contacts—with Kyle Ellerand—it would be so easy to do just what Friday suggested.

  Shaine sighed. “Okay. I need to talk to Maruchek about this stuff. I don’t think we can do anything with it from a legal standpoint.”

  Friday muttered, “Maybe it’ll accidentally go missing from here, too.”

  “Maybe Kyle would have some ideas,” Morgan added quietly to Shaine.

  Shaine gave her a glare, then said to Friday, “The first thing you need to do is disconnect that remote access.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s suspicious, it looks bad for you, and it’s probably illegal. I’d like to get through this without going to jail.”

  Friday scowled. “I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Thank you.”

  Morgan added, “I’ll stand over her shoulder and make sure she does it.”

  Friday glared at her, and Morgan grinned. “Hey, I was your age once,” she said. “I know all the tricks.”

  * * *

  Shaine called Maruchek the next morning, not really looking forward to the conversation. Maruchek answered the vid-call from his own desk.

  “Good morning, Shaine.”

  “And good evening to you,” she replied.

  “Should I assume you were able to talk to Friday?” he asked.

  Shaine stopped smiling. “We did, yes.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I don’t want to hear any of this?”

  “Because you probably don’t.” Shaine sighed. “The short version first, then we can talk details and what you want to do about it. Friday told us about the rapes and beatings. I think she’ll agree to give a statement to the authorities. Second, she came into possession of a comp pad belonging to one of Abraham’s right-hand boys, as well as a data chip full of hacked data that she intended to use against Abraham. She said there’s a lot of damning evidence in it. I haven’t looked at it yet.”

  Maruchek pinched the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. “Okay. I’ll contact my lawyers when we get off this call. Make sure that Friday is okay to give a statement and answer questions about what happened. They will want names and dates if she can give them. The interview will be with the system authorities, our lawyers and Friday. Either you and/or Morgan are also allowed since she’s a minor. Friday can press charges if we feel we have enough information, and that should squash this whole thing.”

  Shaine nodded. “I’m sure she’ll be okay with that. I get the feeling she wants to deal with this instead of ignoring it. She’s a tough kid.”

  “A lot like you and Morgan,” he commented with a smile. “Now, the comp pad. That’s not permissible evidence. But you know that.”

  Shaine nodded. “I know that. Friday does too, but seems to think that it can be ‘leaked’ to the media, to fuel the fire against Abraham and his people.”

  Maruchek blew out another heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair. Shaine thought he was getting tired of dealing with high maintenance women. Not that Morgan was high maintenance—she just brought a whole new serving of issues to his already full plate. And now they’d brought Friday into their collective lives. Shaine didn’t figure Maruchek was ready to have a seventeen-year-old added to his list of responsibilities. He had the same look her stepfather used to have when she was Friday’s age and had just gotten on his last nerve.

  Shaine said, “I was going to talk to Kyle Ellerand.”

  Maruchek actually closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead for a moment before nodding slowly. “Whatever you talk about, I don’t want to know,” he said flatly.

  “I’ll talk to Friday again about making a formal statement to the authorities. Let me know when you have a meeting time set up.”

  “I will. Thank you, Shaine.”

  “Sure. Have a good evening, Mr. Maruchek.”

  He shook his head and smiled at her. “I think you can probably just call me Tarm,” he offered. “After all these years, and now that you and Morgan are together.”

  Shaine felt her face flush, but she nodded. “Tarm, then.”

  “Good night, Shaine.” He logged off, still smiling.

  Shaine blew out a breath. She double-checked her encrypted line and speed-dialed Kyle Ellerand’s com code.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  While Friday was showering, Morgan took the time to spend a few minutes with her journal. She jotted a date on her pad with her favorite lime-green stylus. She thought about the past couple of days, which had been busy. After cloning its internal data cache, Shaine sent the stolen comp pad in a sealed package to Kyle Ellerand via supply shuttle. Friday met in a vid conference with Maruchek’s lawyers and the system authorities to press charges against Elder Brother Isaiah Abraham and Brother Daniel John.

  About the time the media got wind of the charges against Abraham and John, they also received copies of a diary that made Abraham and his people look very bad, and underlined the charges Friday filed against them. The names of the other victims were removed from the accounts, but it was clear who the perpetrators were alleged to be.

  Abraham insisted the diary was a fake, and described Friday as a delusional teenager, angry with her elders and egged on by Mann-Maru employees at the mining site where she was being held. They focused on Morgan and Shaine as dangerous influences on the girl, citing Morgan’s penchant for fighting in grav ball games, the inappropriate violence Shaine learned in the EG and their “unnatural” relationship. Snippets of Abraham’s impassioned speeches played in regular rotation in the entertainment gossip media.

  Morgan was glad that, so far, neither she, Friday nor Shaine had been harassed by the workers on-site. Of course, many of them knew the story of how Mojo and Morgan had rescued Friday from the radiation storm. Enough of them had worked with Morgan and Friday to know the accusations didn’t ring true. Friday seemed happy and relaxed with both Shaine and Morgan, and was settling in well at the base. Morgan and Shaine were valued and trusted members of the staff. Shaine had a reputation for being fair and even-handed, Morgan for being an easy-going and hard-working crew member. Morgan hoped attitudes wouldn’t change.

  Friday finally emerged from the sonic shower. Morgan finished her journal entry and shut down her pad as Friday dressed, then they headed to breakfast.

  The cafeteria was busier than usual. Morgan left their jackets at one of the bench tables to save them a couple seats while they went to the dispensers to get their breakfast. Morgan watched people come and go as they ate. She noticed a lot of new faces—mostly men, but also a few women. There always seemed to be more men out system. On Moon Base, it was fairly even between the sexes. Guys just seemed to be more comfortable with the temporary nature of out system construction work.

  Friday asked, “We gonna finish up those two skimmers today?”

  Morga
n nodded. “Yeah. We’ll start there, then we’ll see what else Joe has for us. Shaine said Garren started running a midnight shift in the new dome for building construction, so we may end up over there if they need extra hands or gofers.”

  “I haven’t been in there, so that’d be cool.”

  “I was, day before yesterday, but they were having issues with the life support system, so everyone was in suits, just in case.”

  Friday said, “I got that game code to run last night.”

  “Yeah? How late were you hiding under your blankets doing that?”

  Friday grinned. “I don’t know. I didn’t check the chron. You guys were out cold though.”

  “Well, if you’re falling asleep on me later, I’m sending you back to quarters, right? I can’t have you out of it if we go outside. That’s rules.”

  “I know. I’m good. I’m not an old lady like you.”

  “Smart-ass kid.” Morgan pointed a fork at her younger charge. “You better mind your manners.”

  Friday made a face and giggled. Morgan gave her a mock angry glare and they both laughed.

  Morgan swallowed the last of her pancakes and licked her lips. Suddenly, Friday set her fork down very carefully, her eyes focused across the room. Her smile was gone and her brow furrowed.

  “What’s up?” Morgan asked quietly.

  “That guy over there looks really familiar.”

  “Which one?” There had to have been twenty guys in the general direction Friday was looking.

  “Next table, facing us, third guy in, shoveling food into his mouth.”

  Morgan tried to look surreptitiously. He was an average guy with dark hair cut short and neat, clean shaven, nothing stand-out about him. Morgan asked, “Familiar from where?”

  Friday hesitated. “From the colony, I think. I’m not sure what his name was. They kind of all looked and acted alike. I think he did maintenance in the colony dome.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  Morgan took a good look at him. She’d tell Shaine about him if they ran into her at lunch, or if she got a chance to com her. Later on, they could show Friday photos of the new personnel who’d come in during the last couple weeks and Friday could point him out. If he was really from the colony, they needed to take a closer look at how in the hell he got hired in the first place.