“I have another healing Sachi,” Ai said.

“Snorting that won’t do me any good unless I want to heal them. It won’t have the same effect on my gems.”

“Even with earth Sachi?” Shun asked.

“It will only manifest in a healing way. It might encourage plants to grow. Fire would only warm them in a pleasant way. Ice would only soothe their burns. We have to go,” I said, pulling their arms.

“Do not pull me, Ningyo,” Ai said, pulling out her swirling black Sachi gem. I reacted instantly, though my Sachi high had worn off, and exhaustion was eating at my nerves. I took the gem and ran as fast as I could down the path. Shun followed close behind—I could tell by her footfalls, and I could hear Ai yelling at me, likely just behind Shun. After I’d put some distance between us and the Chudo, hoping that my distraction had slowed them a bit, I started to climb the trash. I couldn’t allow Ai to use Caelziax again. She wouldn’t survive it, and I didn’t have any more Sachi powder to bring her back.

“Ningyo!” Ai yelled at me. Shun was still just behind me. We were halfway up the slope of trash.

“Come on, Ai. I’ll give it to you when I know you won’t be tempted to kill yourself.”

She glared up at me, her ruby eyes flashing.

“Standing there looking at me won’t get your Sachi back, Ai,” I said, smiling.

She conceded, her mouth tugging up at the corners, maintaining eye contact with me as she scaled the trash. Though her dress was impractical, she still moved up the scrap hill with a deftness that neither Shun nor I could possibly attempt.

At the top, I saw that, thankfully, my diversion had bought us some time, and the force deployed to take me, or Ai, or both were going in the wrong direction.

I looked down at my left hand. The summon Sachi was gone. I frantically looked around at the trash, hoping that it didn’t fall into one of the many holes in between pieces of garbage.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and first saw Ai’s exposed naked hands, now an ashen grey as the makeup had washed away in streams of sweat. She was standing so close to me. My stomach lurched. I looked up to Ai’s smile. She tossed up the swirling black Sachi.

“How did you—”

“I can do more than just tap Sachi gems, Ningyo,” Ai said.

Shun crested the hill, smiling until she saw us, her eyes going vacant as she looked away.

“We should go,” Shun said. “You know the way?”

Ai nodded, then started running through the trash, me and Shun struggling to keep up.

As we approached Meek Alfrendil, I saw many red-uniformed Andalaf infantrymen lining the edges of the trash. A voice spoke over loudspeakers, delayed slightly by the distance and by the many speakers scattered throughout the Meek:

“Stay inside your houses. An abundance of Sachi gases are moving through the Meeks. This is for your own safety. Stay inside your houses. An abundance of Sachi gases …”

“They intend to keep the people inside so that they can portray them as martyrs on the endorphinscreens and frame the Sun-Seekers. I know you didn’t want to be involved, Nin. I’m sorry,” Shun said, staring blankly at the rim of soldiers.

“I chose to do this for a job. They’re calling me the Sun-Seeker, so … looks like I’m involved,” I said, looking at her. She nodded her head. “I have to clear my name.” But I didn’t. And as she said this, and even with all of this happening in Meek Alfrendil, all the people about to die, all I could think of was how perfect it was. Morfran would come, and I would never have to use Ai to bait him.

Andalaf thought I had played into their game. And maybe I had. But they had played into mine as well.

“You can leave now. No one’s stopping you,” Shun said, taking me out of my reverie. I hesitated a moment, letting that settle, and realized she might be saying more with this comment. But I pretended she only meant it for leaving the Sun-Seekers.

I invented a reason. And a response.

“And be chased the rest of my life? They need a face to blame, and they’ve already used mine. They can’t just take it back. I’m the terrorist now,” I said. “You understand that, right?”

She nodded and looked at Ai.

“Why are you here? Why help us?”

Ai smiled.

“Because it’s right. Because when I get quiet, it’s almost all I can hear,” Ai said, closing her eyes.

I understood, at least somewhat, what Ai was talking about, but Shun looked a bit confused. I felt a bit lost as well, but I was getting used to feeling that way around Ai.

“Don’t try to tell her to leave. She won’t go,” I said.

“You make it sound as if you don’t want me around, Ningyo,” Ai said.

“I—no, it’s not—”

Ai laughed and turned to Shun. “It’s too easy with him,” she said.

Shun just stared at the woman. It seemed their camaraderie had faded since Keith Smith’s mansion. I blew hair out of my face and tucked a strand behind my ear.

“How do we get in?” Shun asked, looking at both of us.

I had no idea. I was out of Sachi, and the whole Meek was guaranteed to be surrounded. No understaffed operation here. I knew now those had been staged. I looked to Ai.

“Oh, are you two wanting to call on our three-cocked friend?”

“No,” I said. “But I think we’re both out of ideas. You’re the queen of the trash, so to speak—”

“So to speak?” Ai said. “As if that absolves you of agency over your offensive comments, Ningyo? I think not. I prefer Trash Queen if you’re going to be so crude, but for now, we have more important matters at hand.”

“Mm. Yeah. We do,” Shun said, looking a bit irritated.

“Is there an area in the Meek that has a sort of cove of trash? We could climb through the trash—”

“Through? Ai, I’ve barely got enough energy to stand up. I’ve been running on Sachi powder, and now I’m out. I haven’t slept since your house,” I said.

Shun’s hair nearly whipped me as she spun on me.

“Her house, Nin?” Shun said. The scent of strawberry filled my nostrils.

“Not like that, Shun! Her dad’s house,” I said.

“Not like what?” Ai said. “And it’s my house too.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, “I just mean … look, can we do this later? I can’t climb through the trash, Ai. I wouldn’t make it.”

“Hmmm …” Ai said, tapping her lips with a finger. “Could you climb through some of the trash?”

“Like how much?”

“Just under the surface. That’s the same outfit they’re wearing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have the hat anymore. The guards must have taken it at the mansion before I went to the dungeon.”

“If you could get the attention of one of the infantry somehow,” Ai said, “you could grab a hat. Maybe you could get two others, preferably of smaller stature than yours, and we could all dress in the uniforms, then go into the Meek.”

“Well, I am not suffering from a Sachi comedown,” Shun said, looking at me with judgment in her eyes. “I could climb through the trash while you two get uniforms. They aren’t looking for me. Once you two are in uniform, you can arrest me, saying you’re escorting me home.”

“And then we’re free. Well, free of being detected,” I said. “And then we’ll have Andalaf uniforms, which will give us some leeway within the Meek. You’ll have to take my blade, Ai.”

“I’ll try,” Ai said.

I handed the large Sachiblade to her, and she struggled to hold it up. Then, she settled on allowing the tip of the blade to lean against a scrapped scaffold.

Ai stayed behind while Shun and I started in through the trash. It was difficult, and many pieces had to be moved, but we managed, our bodies both hardened by years of training. We touched for a moment under the trash, just our elbows, but it excited me nonetheless. I tried to look at her, believing she was feeling the same charge within, but she did not return the look, her face determined. She climbed downward through a lattice of bent metal, crumbled brick pieces of wall, mattress springs, and lawn ornaments, heading at an angle that would get her to the street level of Meek Alfrendil while I stayed just below the surface.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I moved old bent up street signs, scrap pieces of metal, dolls. The smell of the trash consumed me and I felt like vomiting. Usually the smell of the Sachi was far too potent to smell the trash, but while I was in it, I realized the layers of filth and disease that I’d been surrounded by most of my life.

The smell and my fatigued, overworked muscles made it difficult for me to keep going. My suit did most of the work.

I made it underneath a large piece of flimsy sheet metal, clearing out the area around it to give me a hole to hide in, and I had a nice vantage of the guards—a group of three. I looked around me. A small rod of metal sat wedged between two bricks. With some difficulty and a grunt from the strain, I managed to pull it free. Then I hurled the rod straight up into the air. When the rod clanged against the sheet metal above me, the three guards turned toward my hiding spot. I took out my Sachiknives in preparation, glad that I bought them back in Onfidlack.

One infantryman came to check out the noise, while the other two stayed put and pointed endorphinguns in my direction. He inched close, keeping his gun held up in a two-handed grip, pointing at the rod I threw. He stopped just before my sheet metal trap. Come on, come on.

The infantryman walked back to his friends, having done his job. At least we were dealing with lazy guards, but I sighed, knowing I’d have to find something else to throw up to get their attention.

I started looking around me for something I could pull free like the rod, but it was all too big: long pieces of old cars and engines all too pressed in together to move. This made me think of Shun, deep down there, climbing through all of this junk. If one piece moved, like the rod, the space filled and compressed even further. Was she down there now? Crushed between two brick walls?

As I considered throwing some of the abandoned dolls, a loud metallic thunk sounded just above me on the sheet metal. I was startled, worried that I had been compromised. Maybe the guard got on top of my metal hood while I was looking for something else to throw? I looked through the hole and saw the three guards back at their post on the edge of the trash hill, looking my way. This time, they sent a different infantryman; I think it was a woman or a very curvy man. She approached cautiously like her predecessor but stepped directly onto the sheet of metal.

My suit responded to my nerves, anticipating my next move and adapting, adding its strength to mine. I thanked god it hadn’t run out of Sachi yet, or I’d really be fucked; I was relying on it—and the element of surprise—to get this to work.

I pushed both hands up to the sheet metal, and in one fluid movement, I lifted slightly, then slid it to the side. She fell straight into my arms, firing her gun in a wide arc skyward. She flailed, and I immediately twisted her neck, hearing a loud crack that I could feel in my hands. She lay limp. I dropped her and climbed on top of her body so the space wasn’t completely cramped.

I saw the other two infantrymen running over. I just needed a hat. Blood was fine. When they were five feet from my hole, fast approaching, I leaped into the air, trusting in the yellow Sachi pulsing through the legs of my suit to get me there.

Bullets flew. I stretched both Sachiknives out to the sides and slit the throat of the man on my left, but the man on my right ducked and then jumped away, firing. I rolled back into my hole for cover. I attempted to get the sheet metal back above me when I heard the man groan. I peeked my head out. I saw the red uniform of the man I managed to take down, then scanned the landscape of trash and found another suit lying unconscious. Slowly, I climbed out of the hole, Sachiknives at the ready, keeping eyes out on our little hill of trash to be sure no other infantrymen guarding the Meek could see us. I ran over to the man I knew was dead and grabbed his gun, hooking its receptor cable into my spinal. Then, crouching, I approached the limp figure of the other infantryman.

I nearly pulled the trigger, firing the automatic endorphingun, when I heard Ai speaking quietly.

“Help,” she said. I didn’t see her anywhere, so, keeping the gun trained on the red suit, I closed in and saw an ashen-grey hand sticking out underneath him and my Sachiblade a few paces away down a small slope. The man had no head. She must have lost her grip on the blade with the weight of it. His head lay bleeding halfway between the blade and the body. I pushed the headless corpse off of Ai and fell on top of her with the effort. Both of her breasts were exposed now, and she breathed heavily, her ruby eyes flashing. I stared into them for a moment before remembering she was just under the weight of the infantryman, a big man, and it probably didn’t feel great to have a woman in Sachiarmor pressing down on her now. I turned my head away as I rolled off and offered her a hand.

“Thank you, Ningyo.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “You keep saving me. Might have to keep you around.”

She blushed. It was a purple color rather than red, but it was unmistakably a blush. “It was nothing. I barely got to him in time. That blade is heavy.”

She adjusted her dress, covering one breast with a piece of it while she covered the other with her red hair.

“I got an outfit for you. A woman. Over here,” I said, turning to go over to her. I grabbed the hat off of the other infantryman on our way and put it on my head. “She’s down there.” I pointed down into the hole in the trash at the scrunched-up body. Ai looked at it sadly, then climbed down. I walked away to give her some privacy.

After maybe twenty seconds, I heard her say, “How do I look?”

I turned around. The hat was like a red plateau that covered everything on her head but the nose and mouth. The button-down suit jacket was long-sleeved, and she had leather gloves to go with. The red pants were tight and fit her well.

“You look like Andalaf! How are the boots?”

“Too big, but fine.”

I nodded. “You ready?”

“Yes,” she said. I turned around and started toward the Meek when I heard: “Ningyo.” It was a small voice. I turned my head over my shoulder to look at her through the vignette lens of my hat. My heart beat hard, expecting … I’m not sure what, but something I wanted but was in no way ready for. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Making me take the Sachi and … telling me you needed me to take it.”

She said it without saying it then.

“Yeah. You too,” I said.

“Me too?” she said.

“You know what I mean,” I breathed out, submitting. I could thrash for a longer period of time, I could keep pretending, but it was a waste of my goddamn time. “Let’s go. Don’t die.”

I left my Sachiblade inside of the trash and marked the location with a bit of scrap metal. Infantrymen don’t get Sachiblades, so I’d have to come back for it and stick to the gun in the meantime. I went to each of the infantrymen and hid their bodies in the trash as well, then went to the edge of the hill with Ai by my side.

We waited, and I encouraged Ai to patrol because remaining still would attract attention from the other infantry surrounding the Meek. We were on our own little hill of trash, but we weren’t completely obscured from view, especially there on the edge. After maybe thirty minutes, I heard a rummaging of metal below.

“Shun,” I said.

Making our way down the trash hill, a disheveled Shun popped out of the bottom, coughing and pulling pieces of metal from her torn black and white dress.

“Hey!” I yelled. “It isn’t safe! Get inside!”

“How soon before the sky falls!” Shun shrieked at me, running away, though slower than I knew she was capable of.

Ai ran and jumped on Shun, and they staged a tackle that looked believable enough to me.

“We will escort this derelict to her living quarters!” I yelled up to the nearest group of infantrymen patrolling the top of the trash. “We’ll need our post covered while we’re gone.”

I got a few nods, and one of the men in black suits nodded to two of the other soldiers in red, then to our previous post. The red suits headed over to take our place. I was relieved no one else decided to grab Shun before us.

“Thanks,” I said to Shun as I ran forward to grab the arm that Ai was not holding.

“No problem, Ningyo,” Shun said. She never called me that.

We made our way through the Meek, nodding to the infantrymen on the walls of trash. The whole Meek was surrounded.

We came to a business district, and the streets were filled with red and black suits and a few Under-City natives trying to talk with them.

“What is the meaning of this?” an old leathery man in rags said to a black suit.

“It isn’t safe. Sachi gases, please go—”

“I’ve been in the Meeks for my whole life. Seventy-five years! Nothing like this! This is a violation of my rights, of—”

The black suit shoved the man down on the dirt road in front of an old, one-story medicine building covered in soot, built of scrap wood and metal.

I felt Shun tense in my grip and wondered if I’d have to actually restrain her, but she didn’t try to help the man. We turned left onto another strip of businesses, and I could see the pale yellow light coming off the Clafendlin Cafe sign.

“Let’s go there, not my apartment,” Shun said. “That’s where Hinote will be.”

“You’re sure they won’t have ushered him home?” I said.

“That is his home. He lives there with Toshiko on the second floor.”

“But you own it?”

“We own it together. All of us. It’s a co-op of sorts. Hinote volunteered to stay there in case the heat came down on us. That way, he could take the blame. None of us were actually comfortable with that, but he sort of bullied us into it.”

We walked to the entrance of the Clafendlin, and there was Hinote with his glowing left eye darting this way and that, waving around his arms at the three red suits who were barring him from leaving the café’s front yard.

“Y’all motherfuckers are finished, you hear me? You can’t tell me to stay in my fuckin’ house. I have goddamn rights, and I won’t just stand down—”

“Sir, you need to calm down, or we will be forced to—”

“I’ll be forced to run this joint up yo ass if y’all don’t—”

“We’re here to relieve you. Captain at north entrance sent us, said you’d been on this guy a while,” I said. “And we brought his girl. Maybe that’ll calm him down a bit.”

“Thank fucking god,” said one of the three. Another dusted off his gloves and immediately walked away, raising his hands over his head in a gesture that said this was all below him and these people were crazy. I didn’t blame him one bit.

The last guard in red looked at me. “Which captain?”

“Shinjitzu,” I said without missing a beat. Pretty damn good chance the asshole was on this mission.

She shrugged a shoulder. “Doesn’t sound like Shinjitzu. I didn’t think the captain believed in relief. But I’ve had stranger orders. Have fun with this one.”

She walked away. I pushed Shun at Hinote.

“What the fuck did you do to her? Huh, asshole?”

“Hinote,” Shun said through clenched teeth, “it’s Nin. The other one is a friend as well. They need to escort us inside, so you need to become more aggressive to make that seem a necessary thing for Andalaf infantrymen to do.”

Hinote looked at Shun, then at me, squinting his eyes.

“Shit. It is you, Chudo—I mean, Nin. How the hell did you survive that—ah, never mind. Aight. Ready?”

I nodded my head. Hinote came at me in full force. After a painful punch to my lower jaw, I restrained him with some help from Ai.

“You motherfuckers won’t keep me inside, not for long,” Hinote yelled so the other infantrymen could hear.

From the window of a neighboring building, a man yelled, “Hey, Hinote! How many hits to the center of the sun?! Fuck this!”

“We are escorting you inside, sir, for your own safety, and you have proven to us that we may need to restrain you for your own safety,” I said. We stepped into the café.

“Fuckers think they can just say ‘How many hits’ and that’s doin’ somethin’,” Hinote said. “Stand up and fight or you part of the problem!” He rubbed his goatee on his shoulder. “Anyway,” he went on, “How in the fuck did you survive that fall?” He locked the door behind us.

I saw Suzume’s mop of blue spin toward me. I gave her a polite smile. “Hi, Suzume. Kaito,” I said, nodding to the man with the red headband. He looked at Shun, then back to me. “Sorry about Daiki. I actually kinda liked him.” I took off my hat. Suzume gasped.

“Nin!” she said, running to me and giving me a hug.

“Who the fuck is this?” Kaito said, pointing at Ai.