Chapter 18: Sis

Chang’e was waiting at the lab door with her arms folded. She came up to Lesley’s belt. Her white coat was cut down to her size, and her round glasses sat crooked.

“You’re late, Sis.”

“I walk my rounds at midnight.” Lesley checked the corridor behind her out of habit. “Why are you awake?”

“Come in. Sit. Sit.”

Lesley sat. Arguing took longer.

She was a soldier of the Shield of Dawnbreak, the army built to fight the Enders. She had trained for years in a far corner of the world and climbed to its upper ranks. Then the Shield posted her here, to guard the base’s two chief scientists and the child they had taken in.

The child had peeked at her from behind the scientists’ coats on the first day. Within weeks she was hanging on Lesley’s arm and calling her Sis.

She had also pushed a floating white ball with ears into Lesley’s face. “Lesley, Lesley! Meet Mr. Bunny!” The scientists had laughed. Lesley had not known where to put her face.

Chang'eVoice line

Mr. Bunny floated beside the desk now, a robot with long ears and a black screen for a face. A lens glinted on his side. It was pointed at Lesley.

“He’s filming,” said Chang’e. “Hold out your hand.”

Something small and metal lay in Lesley’s palm. It was an eye, with a teal light in the middle.

“Happy Birthday, Lesley!”

Oh, was it my birthday?

She had not marked one since her family died. The child had found the date in the base database. There were no decorations. There were two chairs, a lamp and a robot with a lens.

“I built it for your left side,” said Chang’e. “Bend down. I can’t reach.”

Lesley bent. Chang’e rose on her tiptoes, and small warm hands pressed her cheeks. Metal clicked into the empty socket.

The ache came at once, and the old house came back.

She had been small. The house had a table, a mother, a father and a little brother who followed her from room to room. He called her Sis. She had heard the name Enders once. It sounded like a monster out of a fairy tale.

Then they came. A wall went, and the sky was in the kitchen. Lesley stepped in front of her brother. Something struck the left side of her face, and that side went dark.

“Sis?” he said, behind her.

After that the roof came down. When she could stand again, nobody in the house was alive.

She told the smoke, out loud, that she would kill every last Ender. She kept saying it for years.

The eye lit.

The lab drew itself on her left side in thin teal lines: the desk, the lamp, the robot, a small face looking up.

“Sis?” said Chang’e. “Does it work?”

Lesley’s throat closed. “It works,” she said at last.

She felt warm. It had been years. She did not know what to do about it, so she stayed bent and held still.

“Mr. Bunny got all of it,” said Chang’e. “I’ll load it into the eye. It keeps what it sees.”

She yanked a cloth off the bench. “And one more! Ta-da! Now you’ll be the BEST sniper ever!”

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A rifle lay there, longer than the child was tall. Lesley worked the bolt herself. It slid like a door on good hinges. There was no cell in it and no cable. Her hand cocked it, and her finger fired it.

Months later she used it in one fight. An Ender raised an arm to strike, and its chest armor opened for an instant. She put one shot into the core, and a piece came away whole. It was a core component, a part from deep inside the machine. Nobody had thought it could be done.

The scientists and Chang’e took it apart. They found it would run on belief instead of fuel. That became the first Aspirant mecha suit. By the time the Enders reached the base, it stood half built on a steel frame in that same lab.

Terrinia, the day the base fell.

Lesley had been gone for days, on a mission she could not name. Orders had cut her off from everything. She had no radio and no letters.

She came back to a city on fire. From a rooftop she saw Shield squads falling back through the streets, with no one leading them. She took the roof and a radio.

“All squads, to me! Hold the avenues!”

They held, barely. Enders pushed at her district from three sides, and she shot until the barrel burned through her glove.

From the roof she could see the whole burning city. Every swarm leaned on her district. One thing did not. Far off, a giant, hundreds of meters tall, was walking through the middle of the city. Nothing stood in its way.

She saw it then.

“No! It’s a decoy!”

LesleyVoice line

The swarms were pinning every defender at the edge so that the giant could walk in. The research base was out that way.

She shoved the radio at the nearest soldier. “Hold here!” Then she was running over the rooftops toward the center.