“Foreigner! Scram! Get out of my way.”

The speaker was an old curmudgeon who resented Thomas and other street children who slept in the slum. Their filthy nests blocked the walkways. The curmudgeon had concluded that Thomas must be the unwanted son of a Russian criminal, or someone equally despicable. Why else would a foreign kid scrounge for work alongside homeless orphans? He must be stupid, to have run away in a slum in Bangladesh. Or perhaps he was a trouble-maker, purposely sold into slavery by his family.

Thomas jogged down the narrow staircase before the old man could throw a bucket of urine over him.

He had to grip the rust railing and covertly work his leg braces using the remote hidden up his sleeve. After a week spent on his feet, collecting plastic bottles and selling flowers at railway stations, he was able to walk without powered assistance from his hidden braces. But he still had trouble with stairs and uneven ground.

He stumbled into a stinking alleyway. This place was familiar to him, and so was the tired orphan boy who waited for him to show up. The boy carried an extra large plastic bag for gathering trash.

They did not exchange words.

They did not need to. Thomas acted like he did not understand more than a few words of Bengali. In Dhaka, no one expected a foreigner to be eloquent, or to know the language at all. That was one reason why Thomas had chosen this place. He could be honest when no one expected him to explain himself.

Abhaga sensed that they were kindred spirits, even without words.

They were both doing penance.

They were penitents for the same reason, too. They were both paying for the crime of existing, when no one wanted them to exist.

Thomas had chosen this slum as a fitting location where he might serve his penance, whereas Abhaga had less freedom of choice. But otherwise, Thomas had learned that he and Abhaga had a lot in common. Both of them had been forsaken by biological parents who could not, or would not, care for children. Both of them struggled to eat and sleep in a universe that did not respect them. They had been judged unworthy of love before they were even born. They were both survivors, despite odds that were stacked against them. Both felt an enormous burden of shame from transgressions and aggressions which they had committed in order to survive, no matter how necessary those actions had seemed, at the time.

And they each seethed with directionless anger at the unfairness and injustice all around them.

Thomas sensed it in Abhaga, of course.

And Abhaga had taken one look into Thomas’s eyes, and he had seen the same.

That made them friends. They didn’t need to speak the same tongue or share a similar background.

Thomas followed Abhaga through trash-filled streets. They each scooped up discarded plastic bottles and dumped them into the bag, dodging colorful hand-pulled rickshaws and men wearing patterned sarongs or loose-fitting Western clothes.

It was the same every day. Street kids like Abhaga did not attend school. They had no official names, no birth certificates. They hid from authorities, because they understood that corrupt orphanages meant they were likely to become victims of abuse or slavery. Girls tended to disappear from the streets, snatched by nefarious organizations. Boys could avoid most of the snatchers, but although they remained “free” to work for street bosses, few of them pondered their own futures.

Thomas ached by the time they hauled the full bag to the trash hole where Abhaga’s boss lived. Thomas stayed hidden around a corner while Abhaga got paid his usual meager fee, plus another empty bag to fill.

Abhaga bought a hot lunch at an alley bazaar. They sat on the edge of a mud puddle and shared the meal.

It wasn’t enough food for two boys going through puberty. Thomas was grateful to receive a few morsels of bhel puri.

He had buried his hacked tablet in a faraway slum when he had first arrived in Dhaka, so he could not easily access funds. He wanted his penance to be authentic. Otherwise it would not count.

For over a week now, he had shared the deadly risks that his friend braved. Uncaring drivers. Disease. Sadistic people looking for a weak victim. Any of those common dangers, plus dozens more, might get either of them killed. Abhaga was used to this life, and he had shown Thomas the kindness of guiding him through it.

Lunch ended. They trekked along a filthy waterway, collecting more plastic trash.

Thomas did not have the stamina to keep up with Abhaga all day. He tried. But by the time sunset tinged the clouds, glimpsed between grimy alleyways packed with old wires and desiccated signage, he limped. It was a struggle to limp back to where they slept.

“You are not built for this life, foreigner,” Abhaga said, leaning back against the trash bag which he used as a cushion. He had no idea that Thomas could understand his words. He spoke mostly to show companionship. “I don’t know why I help you. Snatchers look at you like meat to sell. And because of that, they look at me, also.”

Thomas clasped the boy’s forearm. It was a sign of gratitude.

Abhaga settled down to sleep. Thomas sensed kindness in his mind.

Companionship meant a lot to this boy, who had absolutely no one he dared count on. Abhaga was taking risks, giving up precious food and vital safety, because he cared. He was desperate for someone who needed him.

And vice versa.

Thomas lay awake while his friend slept, huddled under a pile of newspapers and trash to keep the drizzle off.

He had come to Bangladesh in order to serve a penance. He’d wanted to suffer as a human orphan, as if he’d been born with decent human genetics instead of terrible Torth tendencies and powers. But he had expected to serve alone. He had come to a country where he could avoid questions, so that he could be effortlessly honest.

This bond was unexpected and frighteningly powerful.

Thomas felt as protective of Abhaga as he used to feel about Cherise. There was no distance between their suffering. There was no gulf full of misunderstandings. Thomas and Abhaga were not slave and Torth, or prince and pauper, or super-genius and illiterate child.

They were cursed souls together.

Thomas listened to the sound of rain on corrugated roofs, and the voices of a family in one of the broken-windowed tenements.

He began to reexamine his notions about penance.

Abhaga was not a bad person. Despite whatever unfortunate people he came from, despite the fact that he had stolen cash and food in order to survive, the streetwise orphan was very clearly a victim of circumstance.

Yet Abhaga would never acknowledge himself as a helpless victim.

The street kid reasoned that he must somehow deserve all the rot and indifference that surrounded him. He believed himself to be worthless. He despised himself.

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That was healthier than raging at the injustices of his existence, and screaming at every slight, like a madman, in the way of some homeless drug addicts. That much rage led straight to death. Any street kid could see it.

Am I doing the same thing as Abhaga? Thomas tossed and turned. Am I blaming myself because I am afraid to be angry? Do I deserve penance at all?

Maybe he was not tainted or evil, the way everyone thought. Maybe he was wrong about that.

He began to feel angry at people.

Garrett.

Ariock.

Evenjos.

The entire Alashani nation.

Millions of freed slaves.

Millions of penitents.

All of the Torth in the universe.

Stupid humans.

The Death Architect.

Even people like Kessa and Varktezo and Vy and Cherise and the Pink Screwdriver.

He was sick of people. He hated people.

And that really scared him.

The next day, he trudged after Abhaga, sore and brooding. He was no longer sure he belonged in a slum, picking up garbage, because of something like original sin. He had not chosen his genetics. He had not chosen his parents.

All he had ever done was try to help. And to survive.

In return, he was feared. He was treated like a nasty, unsightly, defective, disposable tool.

Thomas kept missing plastic bottles. Abhaga shot him concerned looks.

“You have made me late,” Abhaga fretted, when he finally hauled the bag to the trash-hole. He presented the collection to his boss.

It wasn’t enough. Instead of payment, the boss yelled at Abhaga.

“I will do better.” Abhaga scampered away. “I am so sorry, boss.”

He jogged away, and Thomas followed like a guilty shadow. His slowness had cost them both a much-needed meal. He needed to try and set aside his anger, at least for the remainder of today.

Four tough-looking teenagers stepped out of an alleyway.

“You sick?” one of the boys asked Abhaga in mock sympathy.

They must have overheard the boss. They sensed weakness, like sharks detecting the blood of injured prey.

“Or in love?” another cooed, staring straight at Thomas. “You think the foreigner will protect you? You think he has rich parents?”

It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Thomas was living on the streets. He wore a hat that only partially hid his grimy face. Not all foreigners had money and power. He was clearly a victim, not a ransom.

Abhaga shot Thomas a terrified, helpless look. Run! that look said.

One of the teenagers grabbed Abhaga and hustled him towards a decrepit doorway. Another seized Thomas. The proximity made their intentions obvious, to a mind reader. There was an underground market for sex slaves. These alley thugs had been used for sex when they were young, unable to defend themselves, and they curried favor with a crime boss by recruiting others like themselves. Boys like Abhaga could be coerced into just about anything. He had no one to protect him.

So they thought.

If Thomas had been in a penitent mood, he would have accepted this attack as something he and his friend deserved. He might have waited for a calm opportunity in which he might quietly escape with Abhaga.

Instead?

He was sick of injustice. Abhaga did not deserve to be attacked or disrespected or treated like garbage. Nor did Thomas.

He reached into the mind of the nearest attacker and drilled down to his core.

He hesitated. These teenaged thugs used to be victims. Perhaps sympathy was called for?

Nah.

Thomas wrenched the thug’s core with ferocious savagery.

The thug became an empty echo of Thomas’s will. His mind was broken beyond repair. He could not choose to blink, to swallow, or to do anything except receive instruction.

“Protect me and my friend,” Thomas commanded. “And survive.” He had to say it all out loud, in Bengali, since his victim was not a mind reader.

The command overrode every remnant motive and goal inside the zombie’s mind.

Screams of pain and a flurry of movement followed.

The zombie mercilessly grabbed another bully’s wrist and twisted. There was a sickening snap. The teenagers fought each other, trying to subdue their brainwashed friend, unable to guess what was wrong with him. Passersby rushed to see what the problem was.

The zombie, of course, fought like his life depended on victory and nothing else in the universe mattered.

Thomas ducked under a thrown punch. “Let me and my friend escape,” he commanded. “Do not obey any commands from your street gang. Prevent your gang from chasing me or my friend.”

It was cruel to abandon the zombie, but Thomas figured the zombie was doomed anyway. They died within weeks even with the best hospice care.

Thomas gestured for the awestruck and suspicious Abhaga to follow him.

“You speak Bengali?” Abhaga said in a hurt tone. “What did you do back there?”

Thomas pushed his legs to maximum speed. He had to focus on jogging while not slipping in mud.

He led Abhaga several alleys away. Once he judged that they were safe, he stopped in an alley clogged with parked rickshaws. He faced his bewildered friend.

“What happened back there?” Abhaga asked. “Why did you pretend not to speak my language?”

Thomas did not want to spew lies. It was time to say goodbye, time to quit this experimental penance. He was done atoning for his existence.

Yet he could not quite walk away carefree. Abhaga was the one person in his life who had shown him nonjudgmental kindness.

“Do you ever dream of a better life?” Thomas asked in his friend’s language.

Abhaga searched Thomas’s face, bewildered and hurt. He wondered if Thomas was the scion of a rich family, after all.

“A place exists like in your dreams,” Thomas said in Bengali. “There is a lush land full of welcoming people. They will care about you.”

Suspicion warred with disbelief and yearning in Abhaga. Was this an American kidnapping? It sounded like a lure, like something a kidnapper would say.

Yet he did trust his friend.

In his dreams, Abhaga floated on raft, a powerful current carrying him towards a bountiful land full of joyous, welcoming people. In his best dreams, he owned his own boat. He traveled to a land of greenery, where people missed him. They were glad that he had found his way home.

Thomas knew all about those dreams. He had glimpsed his friend’s mind, awake and asleep. Abhaga daydreamed while he picked up plastic trash.

“It is a very foreign land,” Thomas warned. “More foreign than anything you have seen, even in movies. The people are alien. But they will welcome you, and treat you with kindness and respect.”

Thomas suspected that quite a lot of Alashani maidens would do more than welcome a virile human male into their enclaves. Rumors were spreading about the power potential of human hybridization. Albino war heroes whispered about having babies with humans.

Lucky Abhaga.

“That place exists.” Thomas clasped his friend, trying to impart his sincerity. “I come from there. But I was born to the wrong people. You would be celebrated in Freedomland, but I left because I was not so welcome.”

He was the equivalent of an orphaned trash picker. So were all of the penitent Torth. They waded through muck, eyes downcast, apologizing and being ashamed of who they were.

How many of them truly needed to atone?

Many of them did, perhaps.

But not Thomas.

He was done saving ungrateful people, done with apologizing for who and what he was. He wasn’t going to tiptoe around the war council ever again. He refused to serve penance for the crime of being born.

Forget Freedomland.

Forget the war.

Oh, and the Torth? Let them stagnate. He had wanted to save the Megacosm, and that still seemed like a worthwhile goal—but how could he save knowledge if the owners of that knowledge threw it away like trash? If they refused to join his side…?

Well. They had made their choice.

He did not have to feel guilty or obligated to save them.

He was done.

“I need to decide where I will go next,” Thomas told Abhaga.

Bitter abandonment stabbed through his friend. Abhaga wondered how rich Thomas was, if he could simply breeze away from these muddy slums. Was this how rich kids amused themselves?

Tears welled in Thomas’s eyes. The feeling was sharp and unexpected, and he tried to hide the tears, to wipe them away.

Then he gave up. He was done hiding who he was.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “You’re right about me. I can breeze away. But I promise, with all my heart, you are my friend.” He wiped away his tears and clasped Abhaga by the arm. “When I first came here, many people saw me begging and struggling, but only you helped me. That matters. That is everything.”

Abhaga was too angry to trust himself with words. He yanked out of Thomas’s grip. Friends do not abandon each other, he thought, unaware that Thomas was reading his mind.

Thomas tried to explain the shameful truth. “My fate is to be alone. I am going to where there is no sound except wind.”

He would take an airplane to northern Russia, then hike into the taiga forest and uncover his camouflaged streamship. Then? A hot launch into the frigid void of space.

The galaxy was infinite from an individual’s perspective. Thomas could park himself on any number of lonely planets and become a hermit for the rest of his life. It would be easy. In quietude, without injustice and bullies all around, his own shame and rage would eventually die down.

If he was ready to let go of everything.

He should do a trial run, first.

“You’re right,” he told Abhaga. “I can’t abandon you. I will go for a while, but I will return before the monsoon season ends. Then you can tell me whether you choose your dream, or if you will stay in this land.”

Abhaga stared at him with deep mistrust.

Thomas considered offering more reassurances. He could promise wealth. He could set Abhaga up with a good life partner, or help him find a job where he was respected and safe.

But the Torth Empire might invade Earth and overrun it.

Thomas no longer had any stake in the war. He could not predict its outcome.

It was best not to make promises about freedom or the near future. If the prophecies of Ah Jun were legit, then the Strength and the other heroes were doomed without his guidance, and the Torth would win.

“You are my friend. I will not forget. I promise.” Thomas hugged Abhaga.

Then he hurried away with guilt heavy in his chest, leaving a good friend alone in the alley with only a dream for comfort.