The Aftermath

"Take a chance, take a chance, take a chance on me..."

Reeve couldn't help the small smile behind the filtration mask she wore. The mask and the headphones—combined into one amalgam of pure tech and tomfoolery—brought her some sense of relief as she traveled on foot through the scavenging site. Really, it was just the dumping ground for all the materials that were deemed hazardous or useless after clean-up of Site Zero.

Before the bombing, this area had been rife with full apartment buildings, pricey luxury cars, and dog walkers whose charges cost thousands of dollars—before the market crashed, the dollar died, and cryptocurrency was the only thing you could trade in. Now, the pockmarked buildings were empty places for the vagrants and scavengers to seek refuge for the night before moving on to the Stargazer's Trail that led to all the communes—the last hopes for what was left of human society.

Reeve had been left behind by her mother and her little sister Anissa. Her mother couldn't even look at her anymore, ever since the bombing had torn apart their family—and drained what little resource were left. Jobs, income, commutes, work-related stress—all of that was in a begone world that now dealt in the bartering ways of survival.

Reeve's left eye was machine-tech to replace the human tissue she had lost from shrapnel flying during the bombing. She was lucky it hadn't been her whole body scattered to pieces: one boy had been left screaming for hours, his legs trapped under rubble, until what was left of the patrol was able to free him—in fragments.

But the communes—they were wary of machine-tech. Machine-tech was the path by which the world had fallen in the first place. That bombing hadn't been accomplished by human hands—but a glitch in the A.I. program that had been the last security defense to such high-grade weapons.

The one thing Reeve had regretted was the embrace she gave Anissa before mother and sister departed. Reeve's mechanical eye even burned from the tears that once might have flooded. It was just phantom pain, she told herself. But she did lament that Anissa would grow up in a world without her big sister.

That was the past, though, gone like once-rumored dandelion fluff. Eleven months, and Reeve had found herself a place among the city scavengers. A good trade had even helped her retool her old music pod to play with the headphones she had found and the mask Dess had given her.

"You shouldn't breathe in these fumes," Dess had said in a way that reminded her of how a father might have advised. "You're still young. Keep those lungs in good shape while you can."

And then, after, she had tried to ignore the phlegm-filled sound of Dess's own cough. He had been a scavenger lord at Site Zero since the first rebuilding efforts fell through. What he had seen—well, he didn't talk much about before, if ever at all.

When Reeve made it to what they called the Great Mound—it seemed never-ending in its scope—she squatted down and began pawing through the dregs and scraps. Napkins, plastic, something gray and furry, rust-eaten appliances...

Reeve frowned behind her mask as she lifted up what looked like...a book. A slim one, floppy, the cover emblazoned with a woman surrounded by flowers of all colors. Intrigued, Reeve wiped away what grime had stuck to the paper and squinted her eyes at the letters—something she could barely read, as she hadn't practiced reading since the schools had shut down. That had been many years ago already.

The girl on the cover—her hair fell in glossy auburn waves as she lay back, looking utterly at peace with her eyes closed. The colors looked too real to be believed. Reeve could remember only brown, gray, rust, and the occasional red—from blood, of course, since there were still chances of micro-explosions no matter where you traveled. Such was the way of secret weapons that had been hidden right under the populace's nose.

After setting aside the booklet, Reeve parsed through more odds and ends that would do little in the bartering market. Sighing, she sank back on her heels. She looked up and saw the smog-filled sky that hid the sun from view. If she didn't get back to Dess's hideout, then she'd be locked out on the streets for the night. And that was something she wished on no one.

One split decision, and she decided not to go empty-handed: she took the booklet with her rather than discarding it.

She dashed through the darkening streets, pumping her legs for every bit of strength they had, and arrived back at the hovel—what was once a pawn shop, she believed—where Dess and his crew lived.

Reeve took the underground route through a manhole cover and then used the hidden entry to get into the shop's basement. She waved hello to Spike, Mercer, and Russ—the guardsmen trusted to make sure the shop was never infiltrated by one of the larger gangs in the area. Then she walked into the office Dess called his own.

Unsurprisingly, a bottle of tonic—or that was what Dess called it, anyway—sat on the desk. It looked half-empty, and Reeve took off her filtration mask and headphones to hear the last angry respite slurring out of Dess.

"—you just don't realize what kinda danger you're in."

Reeve sighed. It was going to be one of those nights, was it? She slumped down into one of the lumpy chairs they had found at Site Zero a few months ago.

"We've talked about this, Dess," she said. "None of the gangs want me. All this tech, you know? They're afraid of it."

"But you can't keep going out on scavenging runs. How could I ever sleep at night if something happened to you?"

She nearly rolled her good eye. Like you can sleep anyway as it is. Right. "Look, I get your concern, but I'm happy where I am. The boys respect me this way. And they let me do my own thing. Win-win, right?"

Dess looked ready to argue—until a series of coughs sputtered out of his mouth. It was so bad this time that Reeve even had to go over and hit his back a few times.

When they both finally settled back in their places, Dess raised a finger to her. "You need a life beyond this little shop."

She almost laughed. "Dess, really? There's no life out there anymore. Not unless you go to the communes—which I won't. They'd probably take both my mech eye and my good eye just to make sure they could trust me to be a good little girl."

"Blindness is a small price to pay for freedom," Dess said.

And then Reeve snorted. "Freedom is nothing without sight."

Dess made a rumbling sound before he opened a drawer of his desk and slammed something down—metal?—on the wood. "Funny thing, today," he said. "Had a customer for the first time in ages."

Reeve felt the hairs rise on her neck. She had a feeling this wasn't one of Dess's tonic-infused stories. "So? What happened?"

"Maybe you can tell me," he said, right before he moved his hand and Reeve saw what had lain beneath his palm.

And her heart seemed to still inside her chest.

What sat on the desk was a tarnished heart-shaped locket that probably couldn't even be pried open, but Reeve knew it.

Her eyes burned again as if they still held the memory of tears. "I don't know what—"

"Don't lie, Reeve," Dess said, and his eyes were more clear and bright than she had ever seen after a few glasses of tonic.

She fidgeted in her seat before saying, quietly, "That's my sister's locket. Anissa was here, wasn't she?"

A sigh escaped Dess's mouth. "It's your last chance, Reeve. She's here to try to get you to come back with her to the nearest commune."

A sharp laugh spouted out of Reeve. "They didn't want me back then. Why would I go now?"

"Your mother's been asking for you," Dess said. "From what I heard, she's not faring too well."

Dying. She's dying.

The truth of what wasn't said made Reeve's heart begin to race.

"I can't," she said, curling her fingers on her thighs. "I can't go there. I won't."

Dess let loose another sigh. "I know you're afraid—"

"I have a life here! I have friends! And I'm not surrounded by people who want to take the machine tech out of me!"

"You are going to die here, Reeve," Dess said. "You'll be burned and your ashes will go to the wind. That eye of yours is the only thing that will survive, and then it'll be recycled to help someone else who lost an eye during another bombing."

The words left a stillness to the air, and any other day Reeve would have stormed out. But the words, so clear from Dess, made her feel...powerless.

She and Dess stared at each other over the expanse of the desk. Then Reeve reached for the necklace and palmed the heart in her hand.

"Is she still here?"

Dess shook his head. "She said she'd be waiting down at the Site."

Anger flared up within me. "You let her go there alone? At this time of day? She's just a kid!"

Dess shrugged, and Reeve was frustrated enough that she lifted the bottle of tonic and smashed it against the ground. The tepid mixture leaked outward, unable to be contained any longer.

A yell of outrage was Dess's last parting gift.

Reeve was already sprinting, the locket in her hand, and she didn't even put on her mask.

The race to the Site was faster than it had been when she had been departing earlier. In the mixture of smog and shadow, she could see luminaries' glow from the nighttime scavengers. Panicked, she turned her head this way and that.

"Anissa! Anissa, where are you?"

"Reeve!"

Before she could prepare herself, a girl almost a head taller than her came rushing forward. The arms of the embrace were strong and steady, far more than Reeve remembered.

"Anissa?" Reeve pulled away to see the familiar lines and curves of her sister's face. But it was a face that had aged nearly a year. An what had those eyes seen in the interim?

Anissa grinned, her teeth still straight and pearly. "I knew you'd come," she said.

"Anissa—Anissa, I can't go with you."

Anissa cocked her head. "What are you saying? Your home is with us."

"The communes won't accept me."

"Then we'll form our own commune!"

Reeve just stared at this quiet girl who had suddenly become an outspoken young woman. "We don't have the means—"

"Your boss—that Dess guy? He said he'd give me cryptofunds in exchange for the locket. That should be able to help us get started, somehow."

Now Reeve found herself astounded twice—and suddenly sorry she'd destroyed some of the scavenger leader's tonic supply. "That's—that's—"

"Can you just stop and think about it? Rather than just saying, 'no,' all the time?"

For the first time that day, Reeve gave a real laugh that wasn't charged with irony or bitterness.

"Fine. I'll think about it. But let's get somewhere safe."

"I'm safe whenever I'm with my big sister," Anissa said.

And, in the aftermath, somehow that was what really mattered, didn't it?

Reeve felt her eyes burn again, and she nodded. "Yeah. You're safe with me, and I'm safe with you. Always."

Their world wasn't fixed, or sane, or hopeful—but they still had each other to try and make a life for themselves.

That had to be enough.