Chapter 134: Registering IDs

The transport Vexa sent for them the next morning was long, white and so sleek that Harper walked around it twice before she agreed to get in.

"It’s got no visible thrusters," she complained, crouching down to peer at the underside. "Where are the thrusters? How does it even move? Cap, I don’t trust a ship that hides its engines..."

"It uses a gravity skid," Vexa said cheerfully, already climbing aboard. "It floats! Come on, wrench-girl, it won’t bite!"

"Everything bites eventually," Harper muttered, but she got in.

The inside was all soft cream seats, polished wood and wide windows, and once they’d lifted off from Tarn Point and turned inland, the whole crew ended up pressed against the glass like children on a school trip.

WHOOOSH!

The coast fell away behind them, and they flew low over rolling green hills, wide silver rivers and fields of crops in strange purple and gold colors, and then, about twenty minutes later, the capital rose up over the horizon.

Camila gasped.

"Dios mío..."

It was enormous.

Towers of glass and white stone rose up out of the land like a forest of needles, the tallest of them so high that their tops disappeared into the low clouds, and between them, hundreds of sky-lanes were packed with traffic... shuttles, transports, little private flyers and huge slow cargo barges, all moving in neat glowing lines like streams of fireflies.

Down below, the streets were full of color and motion, with markets spilling out of every square and crowds moving through them in waves.

"Population of the capital alone is just over sixty million," Jin-Ah said quietly, reading off her slate with wide eyes. "That’s... that’s more people than entire countries back home."

"It’s so loud..." Chloe said, wrinkling her nose, even though they were still inside the transport.

"You can’t hear it from in here, kid," Harper said.

"I can feel it, you wouldn’t understand." Chloe said, and pressed closer to Leo.

Elena didn’t say anything at all.

She sat very straight by the window with her hands folded in her lap, looking down at the shining city with an expression Leo couldn’t quite read, a little sad and a little hungry at the same time.

’She grew up somewhere like this,’ Leo realized. ’Big city, big house... This must feel strange for her.’

The transport set them down on a landing platform in front of a huge building of white stone, wider than a whole city block with tall pillars along its front and a broad flight of steps leading up to doors three stories tall.

The Central Surface Registry.

"Here we are!" Vexa announced, bouncing out onto the platform. "Come on, come on! They cleared the morning for us!"

They followed her up the steps and through the enormous doors into a hall so big that Leo’s footsteps echoed off the ceiling far above.

The floor was polished white stone, and long rows of desks ran down both sides of the hall, with lines of people from a hundred different species waiting at every one of them... tall feathered beings, short furry ones, something that looked like a walking jellyfish in a glass suit and a family of small green creatures all holding hands.

Every single line stopped and stared as Vexa marched straight past them toward the front.

"Is that the Neon Phantom?" someone whispered.

"It’s her! It’s really her!"

The staff behind the front desk all stood up at once and bowed, and a tall official in blue robes hurried out from behind it to meet them.

"Champion Tarn! Welcome, welcome... We’ve prepared a private processing room for you and your guests, exactly as requested."

"Thank you!" Vexa said sweetly, and then she turned and winked at Leo. "Told you..."

The private room was smaller and quieter, with a long table, soft chairs, and a row of glowing biometric scanners along one wall that looked like tall silver arches.

A short round official with thick grey skin and three small eyes sat down at the table with a stack of forms and a very tired expression.

"Biometric registration," he said in a flat, bored voice. "One at a time. Step through the arch, hands on the panel, look into the light, and provide a blood sample... Next, please."

They went one by one.

Harper went first and she grinned at the light while sticking her tongue out at it.

Aoi went next, calm and precise, and Camila went after her, nervous and fidgety, apologizing to the scanner when it beeped at her.

Elena stepped through the arch like she was walking onto a stage, and Jin-Ah read every single line of every single form before she signed anything, which took eleven minutes.

...Then it was Chloe’s turn.

She stepped up to the arch, looked at the little needle on the blood-sample panel and stopped.

"No..." she said.

"Miss, it’s just a small sample," the official said tiredly. "It doesn’t hurt."

Chloe stared at the needle with her eyes narrowing.

"I take blood," she said. "Nobody takes mine..."

There was a very long awkward pause.

"Chloe," Leo said gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. "It’s just one tiny drop. I promise."

Chloe looked at him, and then at the needle, and then back at him.

"...You owe me a feeding," she muttered, and stuck her finger on the needle with a look of deep betrayal.

PRICK!

Leo went last.

He stepped through the silver arch, laid his hands flat on the cool panel and looked into the soft blue light while it swept over his face, and then he pressed his finger to the needle.

PRICK!

For a second, nothing happened then a sharp chime rang out through the room.

BWOOP-BWOOP!

A red light blinked on above the arch as every head in the room turned.

The tired official frowned and leaned toward his screen, and his three little eyes narrowed one after another.

"Hm," he said. "That’s... irregular."

"What’s irregular?" Leo asked carefully.

"All seven of you." The official tapped the screen, and seven red flags popped up in a row beside seven photos. "Your biological markers are flagged as ’Seeded – unaligned.’ That classification requires a mandatory review before any identification can be issued..."

He reached for a comm button on the desk. "I’ll need to call my supervisor and have you held in the waiting area until the review board can assess..."

The room went cold.

Harper’s hands curled into fists, and Elena’s chin went up, and Jin-Ah’s grip on her slate tightened until her knuckles went white.

’Held,’ Leo thought, and his stomach turned over. ’Held for a review... That’s how it starts. Then they lock the doors, and then we don’t leave.’

He glanced at the door and saw Aoi doing the same thing, and he knew she was already mapping the fastest way out of the building.

Then Vexa stepped forward.

She kept her voice light and her hands calm, and she simply reached into her jacket, pulled out a thin card of polished black crystal with a silver crest glowing on its surface and laid it down on the desk directly in front of the official.

CLICK!

"This is my household charter," she said pleasantly. "These seven people are my sponsored residents. I’m vouching for every single one of them, personally, under my name... Is that going to be a problem?"

The official looked down at the charter then he looked up at Vexa.

Then he looked back down at the charter, and all three of his eyes blinked rapidly, one after another.

"...No, Champion," he said quickly, and took his hand away from the comm button. "No problem at all. I’ll clear the flags immediately."

He tapped the screen, and one by one, the seven red flags turned green.

PING! PING! PING! PING! PING! PING! PING!

Harper let out a breath so loud it sounded like a tire going flat.

"Thank you..." Leo said quietly to Vexa.

"Thank you for winning..." she whispered back, and squeezed his arm.

A few minutes later, a small machine at the end of the table hummed and clicked, and seven thin silver cards slid out of it one at a time, still warm.

WHRRR-CLICK! WHRRR-CLICK! WHRRR-CLICK!

The official handed them out.

Camila took hers in both hands and looked at it for a long time, at her face and her name printed neatly across the front, and her eyes slowly filled with tears.

"It’s real," she whispered. "I’m... I’m a real person again..."

Harper burst out laughing at hers.

"Look at my photo! I look like I just got electrocuted! Cap, look at it, I look like a startled possum!"

Elena held her card very carefully by its edges and stared at the name printed across it.

...Elena Sterling.

Her thumb moved slowly over the letters, and for a moment, her proud face looked very young.

’Sterling,’ she thought. ’On official paper again... after everything though I’m the only one.’

Leo noticed her staring, and he stepped a little closer.

"It suits you," he said quietly. "Seeing it printed like that..."

Elena’s head snapped up, and for a second, her eyes were very wide and very unguarded then her expression closed like a door.

"Don’t," she said crisply, and tucked the card into her jacket. "It’s a name on a card, Captain... Don’t make it sentimental."

But her ears were faintly pink as she turned away, and she kept one hand resting over the pocket where she’d put it.

Jin-Ah checked every single detail on her card twice... her name, her date of birth, her species, her registration number, and then the security hologram, which she tilted back and forth in the light with intense concentration.

"Correct," she said finally, and then, very softly. "...Everything’s correct."

Aoi touched her card gently with her fingertips, tracing the edges of it the same way she’d touched the paper star chart on Driftmark, and she didn’t say anything at all, but her eyes were shining.

Chloe held hers up right next to Leo’s, comparing the two photos side by side very seriously.

"We match..." she decided.

"We do?"

"Yep, we have the same expression, See." Chloe said, satisfied.

Leo looked down at his own card.

Leo Kaine... Resident, Nexus-Prime... Sponsored under the household charter of Vexa Tarn...

His face looked back at him from the silver surface, tired and windburned and a little bewildered.

’We’re people again,’ he thought, and something tight in his chest let go all at once. ’Real people, with names and faces on a card... and nobody gets to sell us now.’

He slipped the card into his jacket pocket and kept his hand over it for a moment.

On the way out of the building, Jin-Ah stopped in front of a small shop on the corner of the plaza with a sign showing a little white cross and a pill.

"I’ll be one moment," she announced. "Logistics..."

Aoi’s face went bright red, and she suddenly found the sky very interesting.

Harper looked from Jin-Ah to Aoi and back again, and then grinned so wide it looked painful.

"Logistics," she repeated. "Riiiight~"

"Bell," Elena said, without even looking up from her ID card. "Not here."

They waited in the crowded plaza while Jin-Ah went inside, and the city roared around them with merchants shouting, music drifting from somewhere and the smell of roasting food in the air.

Jin-Ah came back out a few minutes later with a small, plain paper bag clutched tightly against her chest and her face perfectly composed.

"Acquired..." she reported.

"What’d you get...?" Vexa asked curiously, leaning over to peek.

Jin-Ah pulled the bag away.

"They’re called supplies."

"What kind of supplies?"

"Medical," Jin-Ah said firmly, and Aoi made a small strangled sound and walked a few steps away to look at a fruit stall very intently.

Leo stood at the edge of the group with his hand still resting over the card in his pocket, feeling the sun on his face, and for a moment, he let himself just breathe then the guide in his back twinged.

This time it came sharp and cold, like a sliver of ice sliding down his spine, nothing like the warm pull he was used to.

Leo turned his head.

Across the plaza, between the stalls and the moving crowds, a hooded figure was standing perfectly still, and it was looking straight at them.

He couldn’t see its face, but he could see its shoulder, where a small patch was sewn into the dark fabric... a three-pointed emblem, pale and bloodless white.

Leo’s whole body went cold then a crowd of travelers passed between them, laughing and chattering and dragging their luggage, and when they’d gone by, the figure was gone too.

’W-why...?’

Leo stared at the empty spot between the stalls with his heart pounding.

"Cap?" Harper’s voice came from right beside him, and he flinched. "You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost."

Leo opened his mouth.

He thought about the seven new ID cards sitting in seven pockets, and Camila’s tears, and Elena’s thumb moving over her name, and the first good morning any of them had had in months.

"Yeah," he said, and made himself smile. "Just the crowd... It’s a lot."

Harper looked at him a moment longer, then shrugged and bumped his shoulder but when she turned away, Leo looked back at the empty space between the stalls one more time, and the cold in his spine didn’t go away.