yellow flowers
Max has left her at their base. Flash had tried to ask about where he was going, but he’d replied cryptically - told her it was safer if she stayed, that last time he’d taken someone younger on a rescue mission, it hadn’t ended well.
(She thinks he might be talking about someone called Ten.)
(But ever since the conversation in which she learnt that name, she’s avoided mentioning it, because she doesn’t like what it does to Max’s eyes.)
So while he’s gone, Flash waters the flowers, and replaces the ones that are looking droopy. (“Sorry,” she says kindly, to the ones she discards. “You are still very beautiful. The prettiest compost there is.”)
One of the new flowers is a little too short in the stem to be seen out of the top of Flash’s pot. Not wanting it to be left out, she weaves its stem into a braid in her hair. The bright yellow flower sits at the side of her face, matching with her outfit. If she stands at the right angle, she can catch a glimpse of her reflection in the carriage window, and the sight of the flower makes her smile. She’s just wondering how she might make one stay on Max’s head - a stem curled around his ear, perhaps? - when she senses someone else close by. Footsteps, just outside the base. A fellow Synth - but surely it can’t be Max, not yet.
Flash stands very still and listens. The footsteps are not at a very even pace, suggesting that the Synth is damaged. She resolves to welcome them warmly, and try to make them as comfortable as possible. Perhaps they will want to make a home here, and stay always. Flash hopes so. The world is a beautiful place but it is also very big, and she doesn’t like to think of anyone drifting who would like a place to belong.
So she says, “Hello,” even though nobody is visible yet. “Come inside. Don’t be afraid.”
The uneven footsteps continue, until finally somebody stumbles through the carriage door. Immediately Flash starts towards them - him, probably, though Max has explained that you should never assume. “Are you all right?” she asks, spotting more than one welt spilling blue synthetic fluid. She backtracks slightly to where Max has stowed a supply of skin packs, then approaches the newcomer again.
“You seem to be damaged - hurt,” she corrects herself. “Let me help you.”
But the only reply she gets is a startled yell as the Synth notices her for the first time, and stumbles away from her, as if scared. This is a new experience for Flash - nobody has ever been frightened of her before, although Max has warned her that not all whom they meet or rescue will have come from friendly households like Mr Singh’s, that they might be scared and distrusting at first.
“It’s all right,” she says, softly. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Slowly she lifts her hand to show the skin packs. “I just want to help.”
The Synth still looks wary, and keeps looking back out of the carriage door as if worried about pursuers. Flash wonders if he was chased here, and didn’t mean to find her at all. But then he says,
“Where’s Max?”
Flash smiles. “He’ll be here soon. My name is Flash,” she adds, helpfully.
“But where is he? Is Leo with him?”
This makes Flash frown instead. Leo is the name of Max’s brother, the one he was working with up until recently. If this new Synth knows both their names, then he has been looking for them for longer than Flash has known Max - longer than she has been awake, even. (Which is only a few days, but it already feels like a lifetime. Max says that’s alright, because it is.)
“No,” she says. “He’s alone.”
The Synth’s eyes widen in fright again, but it’s not the same this time, it’s not directed at Flash but somewhere outside the carriage, as if Max is going to suddenly appear in the distance. “Which way did he go? He can’t be on his own. It’s not safe for him.”
Flash smiles, and inches closer. “Max will be all right. He is very clever - he rescued me all on his own, and now he is rescuing someone else. He hasn’t been working with Leo for some time.” She holds up a skin pack again, and gestures to the Synth’s right arm. “Please, let me fix that. You’re losing too much fluid.”
Since he doesn’t move away this time, she doesn’t wait for verbal confirmation, just takes his arm and uses the end of her sleeve to push as much fluid as she can back towards the opening, rather than trap it under the skin pack where it can’t do any good. Then she presses the skin down over the contusion, noticing a wince of pain from her new friend as she does so. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You’ll get used to it.”
He frowns. “To what?”
“Pain,” she explains. “It’s not a pleasant sensation, but it lets you know when something needs to be rectified or fixed. It’s like an error report that feeds through your sensory system instead of your head. You don’t have to be frightened, though. Being alive can be wonderful.”
For a few seconds he just stares at her, then suddenly smiles. It reminds her of Max’s smile, full of kindness. “You think I’m new,” he says.
“Aren’t you?”
He gently takes another skin pack from her outstretched hand, and applies it himself, to a contusion on his side which Flash hadn’t seen at first. “No,” he says. “I’ve been around for a while. Longer than Max, even.” The contusion on his side is large, Flash notices, and she moves forward with another skin pack, gently moves his garment up to reveal the upper half of the wound, which he hadn’t been able to reach. “Thank you,” he says.
“It’s alright,” says Flash. But she’s curious now, so she adds, “If you haven’t just woken up, how do you know Max? How did you find us?”
“I’ve been searching for weeks,” he says. “He’s good at hiding his identity. But today he rerouted a whole search system to one machine, and I know how to spot code written by Max. I knew it was him.” He pauses. “I was broken, last time I saw Max and Leo. They had to leave me behind. But someone found me and fixed me, without knowing who I was.”
“And who are you?” Flash asks.
He smiles again. “I’m Max’s brother. My name is Fred.”
Though she wants to ask him lots and lots of questions - her neural code keeps generating new questions before she can even process the old ones - Flash resists, and lets him charge in peace and quiet once she has stopped all his fluid drains. Some of her questions are definitely about how he came to be in this state, who had damaged him or put him in a situation where damage was inevitable. But most of Flash’s questions are about Fred himself, what being brothers is about, why he had been so worried about Max being alone when Max is the bravest and best person Flash knows. It’s as if Fred knows an entirely different Max, yet at the same time, his Max and her Max are the same.
It’s all very confusing, and it makes Flash want to charge. No. No, her power level isn’t low. This is called weariness. It happens, Max has explained, when there is too much emotional data to interpret, and your head thinks it must just be tired.
Flash feels her flower stroking against her face, and she pushes it further back into her braid so that it stays more securely in place. She watches Fred charge, and thinks happily of being able to tell Max the news when he returns.
She wanders out of the carriage, and begins to walk along one of the disused rails, balancing with one foot in front of the other. The children used to do this on narrow walls, on the way home from school. Flash had always been ready with a steadying arm, when she’d judged them too unsteady to stay balanced on the raised surface. But she had never understood why they had wanted to try, when the risk of falling was so present, and so easily avoided by just walking on the path.
She thinks she is beginning to understand now. It is fun. The thrill that you might fall just a little - not enough to be seriously hurt - makes the act of not falling an achievement. Flash smiles down at her feet. She has a perfect sense of balance, but she finds that she can disable that function just enough that she wobbles a little, and slips off the track. It makes her laugh. Just a tiny peal of code that would loop itself endlessly around if she let it, the way she had done when Mr Singh made one of his Funny Jokes and told her to laugh with the rest of the family. But this time Flash just lets it run once, and enjoys how it sounds. She sounds happy. She is happy. It is so nice to feel like this.
She stands back on the rail and shuffles along, her balance function still turned down to the minimum. The effort to stay upright distracts her slightly from her surroundings, so it isn’t until Max is quite close to her that she looks up and sees him coming - and he isn’t alone. A blonde-haired Synth with pale skin is walking beside Max, one arm bent awkwardly in front of him. He gazes around him, looking a little apprehensive. Max smiles, and touches the Synth’s better arm, getting him to stop in front of Flash. “There’s someone you need to meet. Flash, this is Odi.”
“Hello, Odi,” says Flash, and reaches out her hand the way Max had done to her when they’d first met. The Synth tries very hard to move his bent arm towards her, but clearly his movement is restricted, so Flash closes the gap between them herself, holding his hand softly for a moment. Then she looks up at Max. “There’s someone you need to meet, too,” she says, and suddenly can’t hold back an excited smile.
Max looks curious. “Who’s that?” he asks.
“Come and see,” Flash says, and she takes his arm. The three of them walk back along the train line toward the carriage, and Flash waits with Odi outside, letting Max be the first to enter. She wonders at first if Odi will be able to access the carriage, but he does so with minimal difficulty. Hopefully, Flash thinks, they will be able to fix his arm, but if they can’t, he will still have a place to belong, which she is sure is more important by far.
When Flash herself enters the carriage, it’s to see Fred on his feet again, and Max’s head visible over his shoulder as the two of them embrace.
Odi turns to look at her. “What is this place?”
“Home,” says Flash.
“Whose home?” he asks.
“All of ours,” says Max, as he and Fred separate. “If you’ll stay with us.”
Odi looks around at the three of them, and says, “I think I shall.”
Flash leans toward her nearest pot of flowers, and plucks three from their stems, all yellow like the one in her hair.
A family’s flowers ought to match, after all.