Alone Together

When Zaharah stepped out of the bathroom, she met Jade sitting on the trunk, with a lolly in one hand and her phone in the other. She'd got most of her tears out in the shower, and it had left her eyes red and puffy, and a hollow chasm in her chest. Two years of her life had been stolen from her, she'd been treated like a lab rat and lost her family twice.

Life sucks, and then you die, Quelle would say.

Her sister sat by the bed, scrolling through her phone. She'd plugged Skorpi's charging pad into the TV console and he slept atop it. Music drifted in from the open door. If this day hadn't been a living nightmare, this place would almost feel like home.

Jade beckoned her over. You need to see this. As Zaharah sat beside her on the bench, Jade passed the phone. I was researching that Cameron guy and this video came up.

The Instagram video was from three years ago, had amassed quite a sum of views. The thumbnail showed what looked like pieces of paper on a rug. Zaharah hit play, and a chorus of shouting came through the speakers. Quelle face appeared on the screen, back-dropped by an open window.

"Ladies and gentlefriends, it's chaos in the Cyan household this eve. A moth found its way into the house and has earned itself three hunters. The camera spun around to Cameron, who stood near the door to the kitchen with a box in his hands. "Uncle Cam wants to catch it and put it outside." The camera moved to the other side of the room where Jade stood near the TV with a butterfly net. "Jade wants to catch it to nail it to a board. And our final contestant." She panned the camera to the coffee table where Skorpi stood with his claws poised in the air, ready to strike. "Skorpi wants to catch it for... reasons I guess."

Quelle moved from the window to the dark brown leather couch where Zaharah sat with a drawing tablet in her lap. "Z, who's your money on?"

The Zaharah in the video frowned. "Skorpi I—"

A chorus of screams nearly blew out the speakers, and Quelle aimed the camera to where Jade and Cam were standing. Then up at a vent where a piece of moth wing fluttered. "Oh..." She pointed the camera at the rug below the vent where more pieces of moth sat. "Oof." And the video ended.

For a while she stared at the screen. She thought she'd left all her tears in the shower, but more fought their way to the surface. And she fought back.

Jade took her phone back, but set it on her lap instead of scrolling some more. Quelle called him uncle, could he be the uncle you talked about this morning?

"No." She looked down at her chipped up nails with cracking blue polish. "Dr Will said Dr Cyan was married to our dad's brother. Cam is dad's best friend, apparently."

So we have an uncle out there somewhere. Do you think he'd know where Dr Cyan is?

Zaharah shrugged a shoulder. "We can ask about it tomorrow."

I found some other stuff too. She opened the browser on her phone and tilted her screen for Zaharah to see the article. Cameron Sanders Steps Down as CEO of Cylean Cybernetics Amid Controversy. Cameron who headed the company for twenty years is also owner of the Hurakan.

Zaharah skimmed the article, scrolling past pictures of Cam with their dad at various events. He'd been forced into an early retirement due to the suspicion levied against him after the accident. It's bad for the company's image, the board of Directors said, especially during such critical negotiations.

She moved to the article beneath it. Freak Accident: No Foul Play Suspected in Accident That Took the Lives of Cyan Family.

I want answers, Jade signed. I want to know what happened that night. Someone had to have set us up and I think Director Sanders knows who.

Zaharah rubbed her face. "Me too. But for right now. I just want a little bit of peace." She dug into her backpack for her drawing tablet and her hand brushed against something smooth and metallic. Markus' knife. She unsheathed it and turned it so the light glanced along the polished black metal, revealing slivers of gunmetal grey.

A Makana knife, issued to Makana Special Forces agents. Markus had told them he couldn't say who worked for. It all added up. Her sisters were secretive about work too, sometimes even disappearing for days while they were at the outpost. Denden is full of secrets.

Zaharah sheathed the blade and offered it to Jade. "Do you want to keep it?"

You don't want it?

"You two were closer, and I think he'd want you to have it." She flipped the blade over and offered it hilt first.

Jade tentatively took it from her hands, eyes welling with tears. Her shoulders shook and bottom lip trembled, and Zaharah pulled her into a hug as soon as the first sniffled escaped. This sucked far worse for Jade that it did for Zaharah. She was just a kid. Their parents had done their best to protect them from the ugly things in this world, and the ugly things found them anyway.

Eventually, Jade's sniffles subsided, and she stopped shaking. She pulled away and sucked in a deep breath, her shoulders slumping. I should go wash off now.

"Alright." Zaharah gave her sister the best smile she could muster and went back to rifling through her bag. She pulled her tablet from a pouch in the back and settled into the mountain of pillows on the bed. A drawing was already up on the screen when she powered it up, but she didn't remember or care what it was supposed to be.

She pulled up a new canvas, unhooked her pen from the side and mindlessly trailed it over the screen. With no clear image in her head, there was no telling where the drawing would end up. But at some point she'd look at the mindless scribbles and everything would fall into place.

After half an hour, Jade emerged from the bathroom and fiddled with the TV. And when she jumped on the bed, she had a controller in hand and a headset over her ears.

Zaharah tapped the pen against her cheek and looked down at the drawing. Some vague building shapes here, weird greenery shapes there; she could work with it.

A knock sounded on the room door, and both she and Jade popped their heads up. Pharah poked her head in, eyes roaming the room before landing on Zaharah. She wore one of the Denden T-shirts that caught her mid-thigh and had taken off Jade's faux loc wig. "Hey, uh..." Her words trailed off and her gaze dropped to the floor.

"What's up?" Zaharah asked.

"Roddi looked like he was busy and I uh... I just didn't want to be by myself. Not right now."

"You can hang with us," the robotic voice of Jade's text to speech sounded. "I'm just looking for something to play and Zaharah's scribbling or whatever."

Pharah nodded and padded over to the bed before hopping in beside Zaharah. "What are you working on?"

"Nothing really." Zaharah shrugged a shoulder. "Just scribbling, trying to clear my head." She tapped her pen against the side of the tablet. "We never got to work on your logo."

"Doesn't matter now." She worried the edges of one of the pillows. "I doubt I have a career anymore. If the Director is as spiteful as her brother says she is then she's probably burned all of my equipment. Years of hard work, gone in a day."

A cold lump of guilt settled in Zaharah's gut. Pharah wouldn't have got into this mess if she hadn't asked for help. "We'll figure it out."

"You keep saying that, but what does it even mean?"

Zaharah turned her attention back to the tablet ad started scribbling again. "It's something my dad used to tell us. I'm not sure myself what it means, but whenever he said it, by some miracle, things would work out. I like to think it's a good omen."

"I hope it is..." She shifted a little closer, close enough for Zaharah to smell lavender wafting from her skin. "Do you think anything will happen to the Director for what she did to us? To you?"

Zaharah made a new layer, gripping the pen a little tighter than usual. "Markus told us Denden was a place for powerful to hide their secrets. And I'm guessing the Director is a... "vault keeper" of sorts. I wouldn't be surprised if she knew things that could make the 700 implode."

"So nothing will happen to her..." Bitterness leaked from Pharah's voice and Zaharah empathised with it. Markus and Devin may never get justice, unless they somehow took it upon themselves. God, she wished Quelle was here. Her sister would've already torn Denden to shreds.

"I'm saying nothing may happen to her. You heard what Cameron said. She's spiteful." She dragged the cursor around the colour palette. "She'll drag everyone down with her, and everyone will fight not to get dragged down."

"And what do you think of Cameron?"

Zaharah nudged Jade with her foot. "You still got that video you showed me?"

Jade tossed the phone on the pillows with the browser up and the video open.

"Give it watch, just Pharah." She continued her scribbling, the drawing finally taking shape. The buildings in the back got less care and attention than the foliage in the foreground. Meanwhile, Quelle's lame announcer voice filled the silence. She'd always been addicted to Instagram and inherited their mother's love for documenting everything. There were probably photos and videos out there of her and Jade eating their first vegetable.

"She called him uncle." Pharah asked when the video ended. "I'm guessing you don't remember him."

"I don't but I'm hoping it will come to me, eventually." Soon, she added in her head.

"I hope so."

They lapsed into silence and the clicked of Jade working the controller moved in to occupy the air. Zaharah focused on her line art, the words of her digital art lecturer ringing through her head. Vary your line weight, make your foreground pieces heavier, start with the mid-tones when you colour.

She should get back on top of her school stuff as soon as she could. And contact the ministry about letting Jade finish out the semester remotely. Even though things were rough, they still had to finish school. Especially since Jade was a senior and had national exams next year. Still, her finances were non existent, and she had no prospects of securing a job with half an art degree.

Zaharah sighed and looked away from her finished drawing. Jade had fallen asleep, the controller and headset beside her. Pharah had sunken into the cloud of pillows, her hair covering half her face. And the house was quiet. Zaharah would bet Roddi was asleep too.

The clock read 11 pm, and the grounds beyond the curtains were dark. Not even an insect or owl disturbed the silence. Zaharah switch off her tablet and set in on the bedside table, before closing her eyes and praying rest would find her.