Sade's POV
I watched him soundly sleep for some time.
Maybe I should have felt scared. Maybe I should have felt disappointed.
But all I felt was relief.
Would that mean that V wouldn't be able to have another Love Machina?
If he didn't have any new research funds... Could he finally have a chance to experience love?
Real love. Not with a liar like me. Not with a robot.
A love that would make him feel whole. Make him realize the amazing human he is. Not a clone, not an anomaly.
I felt relieved to know that it could happen. I felt happy to realize he had a chance.
When midnight came, it was time to go on that last mission to the oasis. Knowing how much alcohol he had, I knew V would be sleeping well until morning.
Firinne was already waiting behind the door, standing beside a crate even larger than the last ones.
"How do you even get all of this?" I asked as we pushed together the massive container on the rails.
"We have many contacts on the inside," she replied, her eyes fixed ahead.
"People from Tardigrad? Inside the City?"
"Not necessarily. Actually... Most of our contacts are citizens. People want to help more often than you think."
I stayed silent, turning her words over in my head. If so many citizens were willing to help Tardigrad, why did it still have to happen in the shadows? Why couldn't their government step in openly?
"Citizens like Calypso?" I wondered aloud.
"Yes, Callie's from the City. Born and raised here. But her parents were missionaries," Firinne said, and I was so eager for every piece of new information about them that I didn't even dare ask what missionaries meant. "They used to visit Tardigrad a lot... That's how she met Kira," she added with a knowing smile for me.
All of this had begun when I stumbled upon the two of them in the middle of a lovers' quarrel. It was hard to wrap my head around all the events that followed this incident.
"Do you know I'm not from the City?" Firinne turned her eyes to me.
"Yes," I nodded, "Vincent told me you come from the West."
Her eyebrow arched ever so slightly, as if the mention of Vincent caught her off guard. But she quickly recomposed herself.
"Yes. I was born in the West. I came here on a scholarship to study A.M.—sorry—Advanced Medicine," she explained, confirming my hypothesis that she was a doctor. "That was a long time ago. Maybe ten years. Diplomatic relations were different back then..."
I found myself wondering how old she was. She looked young, maybe the same age as V, and yet if she had come on scholarship a decade ago, she had to be older than she seemed.
"A year after I arrived, I joined a humanitarian project. I'd heard it would give me bonus points at the academy... I was also impatient to get field experience. Well... I got more than enough of it."
She snorted, a little mocking sound for herself it seemed, her eyes still fixed ahead as we kept on walking with the crate.
"You helped Tardigrad?" I asked, eager for her to go on about her story.
"No," she shook her head. "Tardigrad didn't need help back then. The project I joined was for displaced communities... People moving from the East into the canyons. We set up medical posts along the way, trying to help as many as we could. That's how I first met people from Tardigrad. Most of them were med students or doctors. For me, it was just a project, bonus points for school... For them, it was simply what they did."
In the dim light of the tunnel, the lamptorch cast swaying shadows along the path. Firinne spoke as if wrapped in her own memories, and I listened, captivated.
"I remember my first reaction when my classmates said we would have to work with people from the "Autonomous Territories"..." she continued, using air quotes. "We were all joking about it, like...Do they even know what antibiotics are?"
She chuckled, twisting her face into a playful, skeptical scowl.
"Turns out, they knew way more than us..." Her eyebrows lifted to show admiration now. "What we called Advanced Medicine, they called Ancestral Medicine. I learned more in just a few days with doctors from Tardigrad than from all my peers during a whole year in the City. It kind of shook everything I thought I knew about medicine... Or even about the world."
I frowned.
It was hard to imagine how Tardigrad could be more advanced than New Yuan City. Their clothing, their need for medication, the way they spoke, even their vehicles... Nothing suggested advancement to me.
I longed to hear more from Firinne and to ask her more questions, but we had reached that part of the tunnel with a rough incline, forcing us to focus all our efforts on pushing the crate.
When we reached the basement beneath the shed, Firinne went to check if the group was there, and we realized we had arrived before them this time. Too exhausted from the trip, we decided against trying to haul the crate out of the tunnel ourselves, waiting instead for the many hands that would come with the caravan.
We sat hidden inside the dimly lit anteroom, hearing only the wind and the cracking of the shed above our heads.
"Sade?"
"Mhmm?"
I was busy observing a tiny root poking through the floor, wondering how deep the oasis vegetation had to dig to reach water.
"What will you do when your contract is over?"
I looked up at Firinne, who was sitting across from me on the opposite side of the tunnel.
"Your debt will be reimbursed. You'll be free to go anywhere you want, right? Well... except in the City," she added, recalling the terms of our contract.
Indeed, Love Machina Inc. didn't want duplicates of the same person wandering around.
"I don't know," I answered sincerely.
Ever since I'd heard the news, I had shoved it to the farthest corner of my mind. It felt impossible... Too out of reach. I was afraid to let myself dream, only to have it snatched away from me at the last minute.
No, it was too dangerous to even think about it, for now. I would only allow myself to imagine my future when I knew, for certain, that the debt would actually be reimbursed.
Firinne stayed silent for a moment, her thoughtful green eyes fixed on me as she nibbled on her lower lip.
"You know... I come from a family of doctors," she began again, her voice slipping into that storyteller's tone that always drew me in. "They were all so proud of me when I earned a scholarship to the most advanced programs on the continent... But not so much when I told them I'd be continuing my career in Tardigrad," she added with a small, wry smile.
I looked at her, wondering how anyone could ever doubt Firinne when she carried such confidence.
"I can't imagine what kind of life you've had until now..." she continued, her tone careful, almost gentle. "But I want you to know... You don't have to stick to the path that's been laid out for you. You can create your own way. You can go and see where it leads."
Our eyes met for a long moment, and it felt as if Firinne was making sure I truly understood her words.
"Is that what you did?" I asked finally. "By choosing to go to Tardigrad?"
"Yes. Right after my graduation, I decided to join them."
I slowly nodded, my thoughts drifting back to a conversation I had with V a few weeks ago. He had explained to me that not just anyone could become a citizen: they had to be born from a citizen's womb, hence why he was an error in the City.
The only exceptions to this rule seemed to be professionals like Chandra, Dionne, or Firinne, whose talents were considered extraordinary.
Then, another question crept into my mind.
"Can anyone join Tardigrad?"
Firinne's eyes flickered.
"Yes and no," she answered with shifty eyes. "Yes, they welcome anyone who would like to join them. But no, it's not as simple as that... When you're a newcomer, you have to go through the Thread."
"The thread?" I repeated, intrigued.
"Yes. It's a program made to introduce Tardigrad to newcomers. That's how I met Vincent," she added, her shifty eyes coming back to meet mine. "He was the coordinator in charge of my class when I arrived."
I remembered how Vincent had been welcomed when they pulled him out of the tunnel during our first mission. The group looked relieved to see him safe, yet no one seemed surprised that he had put himself in such a predicament that the City had jailed him.
"Is Vincent your leader?" I asked.
Firinne laughed frankly.
"I guess he might be someone's leader... But definitely not mine," she laughed again, as if part of a private joke.
I had so many more questions bubbling up in my mind, but we heard steps above us, and the next moment, the trapdoor moved.
"Are you girls having fun without me?!"
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