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We snuck down the dimly lit hall bathed in red, my sister Tevi acting as look out. SecUnits still patrolled these halls at night, and we’d planned for days to make this work. Dim red lights were our only guide, until at last we found the glow of the food machine. Then Tevi took up her spot at the machine while Meset and I took up positions on either side, keeping watch. It wasn’t easy to break into one of the food machines without setting off an alarm, but if anyone could do it, it was Tevi.
My heart hammered in my chest as Tevi’s dexterous fingers carefully worked the mechanism, this was it. Either she would break in and get the food, or set off the alarm and send Sec Units running after us. Having one of those things after you was a good way to end up dead.
“Hurry it up,” Meset whispered. “We don’t have much time.”
“Are you trying to get caught?” Tevi said, eyes not leaving her work.
“We’ve got twenty on the clock before the next SecUnit comes around,” I said.
Just then I heard a click, and couldn’t help the smile, even though we were far from safe. She’d deactivated the alarm and unlocked the case. Then we each grabbed as much as we could carry and ran off, hiding them in a special spot we’d prepared just for this. I noticed Tevi pocket one but said nothing. Ria was 10, which meant the supervisors took her off rations until she went to work. She had barely eaten all day, taking from me, Meset and Tevi to make up for the food BreharWalHan wouldn’t let her have. Ria was exhausted constantly and would never be able to work enough to pay off a debt, so us and some other good folks pitched in to help her live without working.
Tevi snuck the food under her sleeping daughters pillow and stared lovingly at her before going to bed, while I closed my eyes in the next bunk over.
The next morning the door slammed open.
“Occupants of this shelter, to the central plaza. Noncompliance will be met with force.”
My guts dropped and I shot to my feet. I knew this was coming. The search. But it was impossible not to be scared when a SecUnit barged into your room.
“Mommy?” Ria said, her voice small and scared.
“It’s okay sweetie,” Tevi said. “It’s nothing.”
Tevi took her hand and Ria clung to her mother as we joined several hundred others in the main plaza. The place with crowded and filled with hushed whispers. In front stood a supervisor with half a dozen Sec Units behind her.
“There was a robbery last night,” she said, loud and clear. “Someone broke into the rations storage and stole several dozen credits worth of food. More than one person could carry off on their own. Would anyone like to confess?”
Predictably no one stepped forward. This was the routine. The initial fake niceness was justification for whatever cruelty they already had planned. The supervisor paced back and forth.
“Hmm, are you sure no one wants to step forward? It’s only going to be worse for you if you don’t. It’s going to be some time before we get it back online. Maybe all day, maybe two.”
I heard some new arrivals whispering amongst themselves.
“Perhaps you have something to say?” She asked.
All of them immediately hushed. It wasn’t uncommon for newbies fall into the trap, but everyone learned quick not to draw a supervisors attention.
“Alright then. We’ll start with her.”
She pointed right at us and my heart plummeted as the SecUnit marched toward us. Running was useless, and while the crowd backed away I froze, glued to the spot. But it wasn’t me or Tevi or even Meset the SecUnit went for. Instead it grabbed Ria, who screamed.
“Ria!” Tevi and I shouted at the same time. Tevi made the mistake of grabbing for the SecUnit’s arm. It swung at her.
“CRACK!”
The sound of her neck snapping and head slamming into the ground pierced through the plaza like a gunshot. The crowed echoed with gasps and screams.
“Mommy!” Ria screamed.
“Tevi!” Oh shit. Oh shit. “Tevi no!”
I bent and checked her pulse, but she was gone, head bent at an unnatural angle and blood pooling around her skull. In one hit the SecUnit had broken my sister’s neck and left Ria without her mother. All over some food. Rage and grief coiled and twisted inside me as I stood and stepped forward.
“Let Ria go. She’s innocent.”
“Oh?” The supervisor said with false curiosity. “How would you know?”
“Because it was me. Me and Tevi stole it. Because people are starving.”
She shook her head. Ria screamed and struggled in the SecUnit’s grip.
“If you just worked hard like the rest of us, you wouldn’t have to. And yet, you didn’t do it alone, did you? There were three of you.” She threw the food pack at me. I caught it. “That was found under the girls pillow.” The Supervisor said.”
Shit. “No ma’am, just us.”
She looked incredulous. “The two of you took all of that in one go? No, there was one other. We saw your shadows on the camera.”
She’s lying. She’s trying to goad you. “Just the two of us. Working the rocks makes you strong.”
Her eyes narrowed and the SecUnit’s grip on Ria’s arm tightened, she screamed. I didn’t flinch, just kept my jaw locked tight.
“If you keep doing that you’ll break her arm,” Meset said. “She won’t be able to work.”
Idiot!
“But she doesn’t, does she? She stays in your room asleep, lazing around while the rest of you work to let her leech off the rest of us.”
He was silent at that. So was I. The supervisor walked up to him.
“And how do I know you didn’t help them? You live with them. You had to have seen them come and go. Seen the stolen goods. You let this happen.”
He was quiet. There was nothing to say to that. Anything would be an admission of guilt.
“SecUnit?” She said.
That moment, a SecUnit behind her raised an arm and fired, putting a hole in Meset’s head. Ria sobbed and I ached to go to her, but I just stood, unable to move and numb with pain and rage. Then the supervisor waved a hand and the SecUnit let go of Ria, who buried her face in my leg. I held onto her. They hadn’t killed me yet, which meant they’d saved some other punishment for me.
“And you.” The supervisor turned to me. “We can’t just go killing employees. So you we’ll send to the backrocks and you’ll pay off your debt there.”
I nodded sharply. “Very well.”
The backrocks, of course, were a death sentence. There were few supervisors and almost no Sec Units, but that meant there was little property for them to protect. Here you got gutted and cheated for every infraction and every injury, but out there you just died. Eventually. Of a shortage, or of some preventable reason that was less likely to happen here.
I stepped forward, and Ria tried to follow.
“Just you, not the girl.”
I kept my face as cool as I could. I knew that would happen but didn’t want to face it. I bent down to her.
“Ria, go find Eshe, okay? Remember where he is?”
She nodded, shocked and bewildered. Everything was happening so fast and she was about to lose three caretakers, including her own mother and auntie.
“I love you, Ria. And so did Tevi and Meset. We all loved you. I will always remember you.”
“Auntie?”
I wrapped her in a hug and she embraced me. Then, with cold calculation my arms almost couldn’t accept, I pushed her off. I could see the SecUnit walking toward us.
“Go,” I whispered, then stood.
She ran off as the SecUnit grabbed my arm and pulled. I followed while they walked me to a shuttle and threw me in. And with only my pad and the clothes on my back, they shipped me off to the backrocks. On the way there I got a new alert.
“New contract.” it said. “+1.”
My hands gripped it tightly. It was Meset’s. Which told me two things. There was no one else to inherit Meset’s debt. And Tevi’s had gone to Ria. Despite our best efforts, she was stuck and more alone than ever. And there was nothing I could do.
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In the backrocks of course people still lived, still had kids. In time I had a new family, found Mish and the others, heard about Lutran and got away. In that time I saw a supervisor maybe three times, and never saw a SecUnit. Our contracts kept us in line. But in the back of my mind I still thought about Tevi. About Meset. About Ria. The awful memory of that day haunted me. I should have done something different. Could have done something different. We were desperate, and that made us stupid. Maybe if I’d volunteered first Meset and Tevi would still be alive. And as I escaped with my new family, I wondered, hoped desperately, that Ria was still out there. Still okay. Knowing deep in my bones I would never know the answer to that question.
And when the bounty hunters had us in a crate and the others thought they had a SecUnit, I knew better. He didn’t stand like one, didn’t move like one. And the moment the SecUnit came in pretending to be human security from Preservation, promising to help us, I knew something was up. But the youngs trusted it and they had a sense for these things. Some of the adults did too.
But after the first group was on their way to the station and the bounty hunters started trying to kill us, I knew. On the surface it didn’t look like any SecUnit I had ever seen, but it moved and fought like no human ever could. So when it dropped its gun I picked it up, and the moment it dropped back into the crate it wasn’t security anymore, but the SecUnit that had killed Tevi and Meset. The SecUnit that had dragged me from Ria. Cold and emotionless and cruel. And I fired.
Later, long after it took the gun from me and, to my shock, just walked away instead of killing me, I realized that this was probably not the same SecUnit. But in that moment, when it moved like that, there was no difference.