One Death
(A part of the MLA franchise)
My hand shakes when I move to knock on the door. I flex my fingers and return my hand to my side, taking a moment to think. What's that old saying? "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." It's used to dehumanize war and said by war criminals, but no one ever thinks about the first part. No one ever thinks about the tragedy. Terrorists blow up a factory, dozens dead and hundreds showered in bits and pieces of drywall and steel. Cause it's big and flashy, everyone talks about it. No one talks about the one death though, in a quiet part of the city. It's not fair...
I knock on the door three times, my hand striking gentle, so gentle that I worry whoever is inside might not have heard me. But suddenly, I hear, "You a cop?"
"No ma'am."
"Doors open."
The first thing that strikes me about the room is the smell. Thick and airless, a rank mixture of bad breath, nicotine, and mourning. At first I think the room is empty. My eyes scan the room as they do whenever I enter a room (it's a habit I picked up during the wars), and at first I don't see anyone. It's not that Ms. Bouvier is actively hiding. In fact, once I notice her sitting on the couch at the far wall, she's clear as day. But it's as if she had been melding with the shadows, not moving, and just sitting there like she was a part of the couch itself. In front of her, on the coffee table, is an overflowing ashtray, still fuming slightly.
"Ms. Bouvier?" I ask as a courtesy.
Ms. Bouvier is a cow, a tall (even sitting down I can tell), plump sort of thing, although she had a withered appearance that was unbecoming of such a bovine. Though with what she has been through in the past week, I can't much blame her. She's wearing a soiled and aged bathrobe, what she has probably been wearing this whole week.
When she doesn't respond to my inquiry, I say, "My name is-"
"I know who you are," she says passively. "You're the reporter that got an interview with a micro."
"Yes ma'am, I am."
"Looking to win another Pulitzer?"
I get asked that quite a bit actually. People sneer at me for the interview I did about a year and a half ago, after the MLA poisoned the water supply for the state. They think I'm in this business for the prizes and the fame. Ignore the fact that most people don't even know my name, just my crime, but I'm not in it for prizes. I'm interested in perspective. "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." When the micros poisoned the water, and the body count rose to 113 before the wave of terror had finally ended, there was something lost on the masses. And when the micros assassinated tyrants and tycoons, it was like they were killing giants. The masses mourned and wept for their lost titans, but there was still something lost. The micros were killing the 1%, trying to shake up our economy, but they never made it personal. But now... the micros did something... something truly horrific.
"I'm here for your story, ma'am. Despite all that has happened, there are still very vocal supporters for micro rights. People who don't understand the monsters they really are. But I... ma'am... I think your story can change a few minds."
She laughs, weak and throaty. "My inbox has been filled hourly. Some people offer their support, and kind words. Others call me a whore. They say my daughter had it coming. That she should have been taught not to abuse micros. Or... that I should have been watching her closer. They say I'm a horrid mother, who didn't deserve a sweet child. Not everyone deserves a legacy." She reached for box cigarettes on the table, and struck the bottom with her free hand. She bit the cigarette, lit it, and took a deep breath.
"They'll always be people like that," I say, trying to sound convincing. "Always dumb little shits who don't understand how the world works. The internet is great; it allows people to be the anonymous shits the gods intended them to be. And those people are going to look at this article and sneer. But this is for all the others. So that your daughter will be remembered, and everyone will know who is to blame."
She takes another long drag on her cigarette. Her powerful lungs sucked the flame down the long, white stick. Taking another cigarette from the box, she lit the tip with the first and began to smoke again. "I got knocked up in college. Probably for the best, actually. I was in college studying classical music. I wanted to a concert violinist. I would have ended up in a factory either way. That was my life really. Drop Suzie off at day care or school. Nine to five punching plastic out at the factory. Pick Suzie up from school and take her home and have dinner and help her with her homework. Put her to bed. Five hours working at a dive bar. Few hours sleep. Wake up and take Suzie to school. That was my life. But on Sundays, the factory and the bars were closed, and that's when Suzie and I got to spend the day together.
"Suzie loved the park. We went to a different one every week. Ten to four, we were in the park. Sometimes we brought lunch or we got something from one of the vendors." She lit a third cigarette with the flaming end of the one she was puffing. "Last week, we were in the Conservatory on North. In the center of the park, there was a stomp party going on. Micros going for four, five... six times their normal price, and people buy them just to step on them. I didn't care much about it though. I told Suzie to keep away from those people, and, just let her play around and run around like she loved to do. There were some kids in the park. And I thought she would be alright. So I let her run around.
"Then she comes running up to me, all happy and jubilant. And she holds up a tiny little... at first I thought it was a doll or action figure. Then I saw it was squirming in Suzie's hand. She asked me what it was. 'A micro,' I told her. 'A human micro.' I figured it had escaped from the stomp party. I didn't think much more of it. I thought maybe I should tell the owner that Suzie had found it, but... She liked holding it. And she touched it. And poked it. She licked it and cuddled it to her chest and giggled as it squirmed in her hand. It was... they had enough micros to crush under foot. I just told Suzie to be careful, since it was so easily breakable, and smiled as I watched her play. I wasn't... The fact that all those people had bought micros just to kill them... I didn't like that. I don't like that. But... Suzie was having fun. I just... it was our only day together. And I didn't want her to be mad that I took away her new toy.
"I looked away for... I swear, I heard the ice cream truck and looked to see how far away it was. I was going to buy her a Chocolate Fudge Bar, that was her favorite. I saw the ice cream truck, and then I looked in my purse to take out the day before's tips from the bar. And then I heard crying... I looked up, and saw Suzie stumbling towards me, tears in her eyes, a gurgled cry escaping her throat, her hand covering her lips. Suzie had the cutest little white hands. It looked like she was always wearing gloves. But I saw that they were red. And then she fell forward, and continued sobbing."
As a rule, you never touch someone in shock. Their so overwhelmed with emotion that even a soft squeeze of the hand or pat on the back might cause a break down, like flicking a crystal sculpture and watching it shatter. I don't touch her. I don't even talk, though I really want to. I let her go at her own pace, smoke another cigarette, and then resume.
"I quit the day I found out I was pregnant," she said, lighting a new cigarette. Perhaps at some point in her life, she was pretty. Not beautiful. Cows never are. But I bet she was pretty some days ago. She had a warmth and love of life that is so often lost in this day and age. She resumes. "I had no idea what happened. I thought there might have been a shooting or... she had been punched or kneed in the face by one of the bigger kids. I screamed for someone to call an ambulance, and she continued to sob and scream in my hands. And then she went limp suddenly. The doctors said... The doctors that the roof of her mouth had been pushed up, and extensive damage to the throat caused a massive hemorrhage. And... I asked, what could do that? They said that the micros... Micros have these toy rocket launchers that do damage like that. Micros aim for the open mouth."
I sigh, and look away. I'm almost afraid of eye contact. What has this woman gone through? What has this woman had to endure? But what really baffles me? It's that there are people who still support the micros. How there can be people who would ridicule and mock this woman. Blame this woman for letting her daughter do what daughter do. But that's just the way things are...
XXX
Nine entered Samantha's apartment through a small hole in the ceiling. The entrance had a "door" and a petite latch so that feral rats couldn't just come wandering in. Once he had slipped through the narrow passageway, he landed on something like a "catwalk" that lined the uppermost wall. To an observer, they would pass it off as some sort of decoration. In fact it was a narrow pathway for micros. Narrow though: Nine had to press his back to the wall and slide across, lest he plummet several feet to the ground beneath. The last obstacle was a long stretch of yarn that stretched from the apartment's roof down to the table beneath. Nine lowered himself carefully, before finally coming down to the desk that Samantha was seated at.
"Sami?" Nine asked.
Samantha had been starring off into nothingness, an arm propped up on the desk to support her head, her hair a bit in front of her face. When she heard Nine, she blinked, and looked to him. "Hello Nine," she said in a weak voice. She picked up a newspaper from the side of the desk, and held it up. "Nine, can you explain this?"
Nine stared at the blocky, clumsy shapes on the paper, and a picture of an elderly cow on the front. She was being helped along by a pair of uniform police, perhaps helped down a flight of stairs. Nine stared a long time, and then shrugged. "It's a newspaper Sami. But, I assume you are referring to the front page article. You seem to forget, though, that I don't know how to read."
Samantha's nose twitched slightly in frustration. "It's an article about what happened last week, when we were at the Conservatory."
"When the macros were having their stomping party?" Nine asked with a vague growl. His fur bristled, and though this was normally the time Samantha stroked his back to ease his tension, her hands remained at her sides.
"You came up to me, carrying a micro human. Where did you find him?"
"He was being tortured, Samantha. I saved him."
Samantha sighed, and looked to the picture of the crying cow on the front page. "This article says that a little girl was killed in the park. They suspect it was done by a micro terrorist."
"She was anything but little," Nine said, looking away passively.
Samantha's eyes widened. "You killed a little girl?"
"No Samantha, I saved someone who would have been torn apart by some brat's fingers."
Samantha slammed her fists onto the table, standing up suddenly and glaring down at Nine. "You killed a little girl, Nine! For Gods' sake! What the hell is the matter with you?"
"I saved someone!" Nine shouted in turn, going tense, little paws clenched into fists. "That little monster was going to tear his arms off! She was going to bite his head off just to see what his brains tasted like!"
"You should have gotten me," Samantha said, now looming over Nine, the heat of her breath making him feel flustered and ill. "Nine, you murdered a little girl... Don't you understand that? She's dead." Samantha plopped down in the chair, holding her head in her hands. "You said... After the MLA poisoned the reservoirs, you said never again. You said nothing on that scale. You said... you said targeted attacks. You said only military targets... or people who... Nine, I could understand the senator. Or the bank CEO. I could understand blowing up the factories. But this is different. How can you not see that? For gods' sake, Nine, it was a child! A little eight year old girl. And you had to look her in the eye to kill her." She slapped the paper down upon the table, a few centimeters from Nine.
"What was I supposed to do, Samantha?"
"You could have gotten me. I was in the park. I carried you and the human out of the park. I carried you in. I could have taken the micro away from the girl. Or you could have distracted the little girl. You could have shouted and screamed and gotten her attention, and then disappeared and gotten the human out of there. But no, you killed her. And don't give me some shit about how this is war, Nine. I was a soldier. There are rules in war. That was murder. You killed her."
"Yes, I killed her. And if I hadn't, if I had come to get you and you had taken the human from her, she would have found another and tortured him. And the next day, she'd have found another. And when she grew up she would have bought a dozen a week and crushed them one by one because that's what she gets off on! The world is better off without her."
Samantha was quaking with anger.
"She would have grown up and continued to torture and kill us. So I stopped her. If you expect me to feel bad about that, then you're wrong. I don't. I would do it again. You can't solve the entire world's ill with words and time outs, Samantha. You need to take action. And you need to be willing to grit your teeth to protect what you have. You need to be willing to fight, and kill, to protect what's yours. If your father understood that, maybe he would be alive today!"
Samantha lowered her hand towards Nine. Her middle finger tip pressed against her thumb, she suddenly flicked Nine on the chest. The force was enough to send Nine tumbling and twisting over the desk's top, hitting hard against the wall after several, almost comical, moments. Groaning, and struggling to stand, he finally rolled to a seated position and stared at Samantha, eyes wide and mouth agape.
"I'm leaving Nine," she said coldly. "When I come back, I don't want to see you. I don't want to see in my house ever again."
And without another word, she turned. A cold wind blew through the apartment when she opened the door. She slammed the door shut behind her, and stepped out, ignoring the tingle of coolness on her fur. She would not return to the apartment to get a coat. She would endure. And walk.
And walk, she did, for a long time. She shivered quite a bit, shaking and groaning, holding herself and trying to warm her chest by rubbing softly over her fur. More than once she thought of turning back, but had a vague dread of seeing Nine, still in her apartment. She hadn't hurt him. She knew how much a micro could take (despite their size they were surprisingly resistant to blunt force trauma) but she still felt bad for lifting a finger against him. But the main reason she dreaded seeing him again was what he had done. She had not asked where the little human micro he carried to her had come from. She did not care. She had dropped the broken body off at a safe house, and had not thought about it for the week save in worry that the little human might die.
But a little girl had been killed. She sat at a bench at the water front to gather her thoughts. A little girl had been killed, and a micro had been saved. Did that make it right? Did Nine do the right thing? A little girl had been killed. A micro had been saved. Was a micro's life worth a little girl's? Was that it...? She shifted nervously, embarrassed and feeling guilty. Was it because a micro had lived and a little girl had died, that the micro's life had come at the cost of a child's, was the child's more important?
There were other ways, ways that would not have ended with a corpse. There was always another way. Her father taught her that. Nine could have, should have, gotten her. She was just a bit away from him. Or he could have wounded the girl, with his little rocket launcher. And run like hell with the human micro on his shoulders. Or he could have done a thousand things other than make the daughter choke on her teeth and blood in front of her mother.
At some point, Samantha wandered past Winslow National Bank. It looked like it had finally finished its renovations. Gone were the vast, yawning wooden doors; replaced by clear glass and gold handles. The roof had been modified, now having a vast skyline that encompassed almost the entire building, which would offer natural light instead of the humming fluorescent overheads. The inside had probably been changed; the leather and wood replaced with metal and shining, polished gold. Samantha continued on her way.
When she could no longer tolerate the biting cold chills that ran through her fur, she went back to her apartment. A long, hot bath helped warm her up, and at around midnight she plopped onto her bed, nude, and stared up at the ceiling.
"You can come out, Nine. I know you're still here."
Samantha sat up. "Nine...?" She looked over the corners of the ceiling, then down to the windowsill where Nine enjoyed sitting and watching the cars go by. "Nine, if you're here... I'd really like to talk to you." She paused, and then sighed. "I promise not to flick you if you come out Nine."
She growled slightly, then spun on her rump and brought her feet off the bed, intending to stand until she felt a sharp pain on the underside of her right center paw pad. She yelped suddenly, leaping back onto the bed and quickly inspecting her foot, to see a small point of crimson quickly spreading over the grey leather. She growled, and leaned over the bed, glaring down at the brown wolf and the smug grin on his black muzzle, the knife he was holding with the fresh crimson on its blade.
"There, now we're even."
She huffed, and rolled back onto the bed, leaning back. She heard the sound of Nine's scraping claws as he climbed up the sheets of the bed. Then she felt a tickle at her foot. She sat up, wiggling her toes slightly, and pulled her foot back to reveal Nine, who must have been licking the blood off. She came to sit cross legged, and leaned forward.
"But I'm sorry," Nine said. "I'm sorry about mentioning your father like that."
"It's alright Nine."
"No, it's... I would have liked to know him."
"I think he would have liked you. He would have liked a little chocolate wolfy who can hold up a conversation." She leaned a claw forward, and softly stroked down Nine's back. "Tomorrow we need to talk, Nine. We need... we really need to talk."
Nine nodded solemnly. He looked up as Samantha's hand came down, and soon scooped him up carefully. She lifted him, and then scooted down the bed until she was lying down, and could place him gently on her bare, still slightly damp stomach fur. She sighed, and continued to stroke him, as Nine rested there, feeling a vague dread at the morning and their talk. And a vague sense of dread at the coming days, though why, he could not say...