Despite her exhaustion, Kat spent Friday night with one eye open and a hand gripped firmly over her wristwrap. There were now three hundred and twenty-five credits logged on the wrap’s chip. She had been paid ten credits per hour for fifty-five hours of work over the week, less transportation expenses, lunches and gear rental fees. Her net earnings had been promptly disbursed as she waved her wrist over one of the pay terminals brought out at the mine after Friday’s shift.
She was wearing a veritable fortune around her wrist. Fortunately, nobody in Shantytown knew it. Still, even with her homemade bracelet covering the wristwrap, she was paranoid that someone might catch a glimpse, understand its value and try to steal it. She resolved to let Porter’s med techs insert a chip into her wrist after she was officially hired. That’s if my identity checks out, she amended. The pending results of her second background check loomed over her like a coming storm. She ardently hoped that after a second “bad” return, Porter would just assume she wasn’t in the database.
Kat rubbed the wristwrap reassuringly. It was still there. No wonder people can afford to rent actual rooms closer to the gates. She smiled as she considered the possibility that, one day, she might join those lucky few who slept safely behind locked doors, even in Shantytown. Things were looking up. Rat’s snores stuttered briefly before settling back into their normal pattern. Even the intervals between the slum’s gunshots seemed to be longer this night.
She rolled onto her stomach and stuffed her wrist between the side of her face and the cold ground. Tomorrow promised to be magic. She would spend the day shopping in the Beggar’s Market for something to wear on her date and stop off to see Doctor Reynolds. She hoped she was still welcome at the clinic. Kat had avoided her since the doctor’s fearful confession. I miss her, Kat admitted to herself. She drifted between dozing off and bouts of lucidity through the small hours of the morning. When streaks of burgundy grew in the eastern sky, Kat decided to begin her day.
After washing up and stashing her knives and water bottle next to her pressboard carton in the trash against the wall, she made her way to Eastpoint. The morning sun rose over the squalid skyline of Shantytown by the time Kat queued in a line for a money exchange shop near the gate.
A half hour later, she walked down the Strip with ten large. Having no idea how much a nice outfit would cost her, she had exchanged nearly a third of her credits for coins. As she shopped today, she would price an alarm clock along with other essentials and buy them on Sunday while saving enough money for the bare necessities plus rent for the coming week.
A bout of tension dampened her enthusiasm for the day as she turned off the Strip. She still feared running into the preacher’s guards even though the incident seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. Fifteen minutes later, Kat edged forward in a line to enter the market. She passed the vendors near the front, hoping for better deals deeper inside. She would skip the clothing cart today; the poor man had nothing close to what she was hoping to find.
I’ll need shoes, she reminded herself. Maybe blush or shadow if I can find it. Kat had dreamed several times of Tabitha’s tasteful yet effective makeup. Oh! Perfume too! She grinned despite herself.
Four hours later, Kat had covered nearly the entire Beggar’s Market. She had looked at dozens of dresses countless times before deciding on a simple, sleeveless scooped neck version dyed in red. The acrylic dress had been much larger in its former incarnation and the seamstress who sold it to Kat had boasted of her prowess in converting the undamaged portions of the original dress into a saleable item. The reborn dress fit almost as if tailored specifically for Kat. The tapered waist hugged her taut stomach and feminine hips before the skirt flared out comfortably to land just above her knees. The cut of the dress highlighted her best features, emphasizing her chest, shoulders and arms while hiding the hideous scar that had developed above her right hip. The fabric magnified a body that had always held the vigor of youth but, over the last two weeks, had been further sculpted into the lean look of a predator. The effect had cost Kat over six large. She would have paid twenty.
Kat complimented the dress with simple, black shoes. There were hardly any heels to them and the street vendor had called them “Jellies.” Kat questioned whether they could withstand everyday use but her canvas shoes were more comfortable anyway and she would wear the Jellies only on special occasions.
She spent an hour searching for a bag that could hold her other clothes for the night. Thinking ahead, she knew that walking home in Shantytown after her date in the red dress would be an open invitation for muggers or worse. She settled on a medium-sized black satchel that could double as a bag to carry items to and from work. In the event she lost her job at the mine, it would still be useful for herb runs into the desert. Her last stops secured a segment of an eyeliner pencil that had been divided in three-centimeter increments and a single-use paper strip of perfume. Even with her frugal haggling, she finished the day’s shopping spree with only three smalls. It’s worth it, she told herself. I’m going to blow Sadler away tonight.
Feeling conspicuous carrying such luxuries, she walked straight to Reynolds’ clinic while keeping a watchful eye for anyone that kept turning up with suspicious frequency. By the time she arrived in the cul-de-sac, she had become paranoid about losing her dress. She turned a final, full circle before walking the last meters to the open service window of the shack. Reynolds was finishing up with a customer when she caught sight of Kat.
The woman’s wide smile immediately set Kat at ease. “Come in, Kat! I haven’t seen you since the hospital.” Reynolds quickly moved from the window to the side door and held it open invitingly.
Kat walked around the clinic with her shopping treasures in front of her.
“What’s all that you have?” the doctor asked enthusiastically. “Oh, that’s a beautiful dress!”
Kat entered the shack and replied, “Plus shoes and some other small items. I was hoping I could stow them in the back here rather than having to carry them all the way home.”
“Of course, dear!” Reynolds said. “You can hang the dress on my laundry line. How long do you want to keep it here?”
Kat used her foot to slide the curtain to the back room aside. “Just until tonight.” She smiled sheepishly. “I, uh, have a date.”
Reynolds grinned knowingly. “That handsome, young foreman?”
Kat blushed despite herself. “Yeah. He asked me out yesterday.” She carefully hung the dress over a cord suspended between the back and side walls of the shack.
Reynolds rushed into her back room. “I want to hear all the details!” The doctor looked at Kat and sighed slightly. “I’m very glad you came to see me, Kat. I’ve felt terrible ever since our conversation at the hospital.”
“It’s okay, Doctor—”
“Please,” Reynolds interrupted, “call me Maggie.”
“It’s okay, Maggie,” Kat started again. “I understand how you felt. I’m living it and it scares me too.”
Reynolds crinkled her nose as the line of her mouth drew tight. “That’s exactly why I feel so bad. You needed someone and all I could think about was myself.” She looked over her shoulder to check the service window. “After I lost my practice and my citizenship, I worked hard to cobble together the life I have now. What’s happened to you isn’t normal, Kat. My gut says it’s bigger than either of us and that terrified me.” She sighed again as she confessed, “I was so scared of losing what I have that I turned my back on the Hippocratic Oath. I placed myself ahead of my patient… and my friend.” She searched Kat’s eyes and asked solemnly, “Can you forgive me?”
Kat moved to the elder woman and wrapped her into a warm embrace. “There’s nothing to forgive, Maggie. I’m so happy I haven’t lost you.”
Reynolds patted her back reassuringly. “I’m with you, Kat, whenever you need me.”
Kat stepped back and looked pensively at her friend. After a moment’s consideration, she blurted, “I think I’ve discovered my name.”
A dark eyebrow arched upward on Reynolds’ face.
“I had to give Porter Mining a DNA sample for a background check and it returned the name Kallista Pendleton,” Kat explained.
Reynolds’ mouth dropped open. “Your first name isn’t Kat? You seem more like a Kat than a Kallista to me.”
“I have really vague memories of adults calling me Kallista when I was little.” Kat frowned. “Nothing substantial, nothing solid but I know that was my name.”
Reynolds harrumphed. “Well, I guess I can get used to calling you Kallista.”
Kat shook her head. “No. I’m Kat. This is who I am now,” she stated adamantly.
The pair returned to the front room. Reynolds took her customary position in her chair while Kat leaned against the examination table.
“Maggie, do you know what Pelletier’s Syndrome is?” Kat asked after a few moments of silence.
“Uh, a little bit,” Reynolds answered, surprised at the change of topic. “Just what every licensed doctor knows. Pelletier’s Syndrome is an extremely rare genetic disease. It’s undetectable while dormant but after birth it quickly turns fatal. The worst part, as if taking the life of a newborn wasn’t bad enough, is that Pelletier’s Syndrome mutates rapidly once active and strives to become highly communicable.” She cocked her head to Kat and grimaced. “Fortunately, the disease kills the infant before it can reach the later stages of mutation.”
“How do you know this?” Kat asked.
“Because of the stakes,” Reynolds replied. “Every doctor is taught that each newborn must be tested for Pelletier’s. If a baby somehow survived long enough to have its Pelletier’s become transmittable, we’d have a population wipe that’d make The Collapse look like a hiccup. That’s why every citizen’s newborn gets tested just hours after birth. It’s a big deal, Kat. During all my time in corporate hospitals, we never had a single instance of Pelletier’s but every month we reviewed procedures for such an event.”
“But,” Kat countered, “babies in places like Shantytown aren’t tested.”
Reynolds nodded and inhaled deeply. “To the nightmares of doctors everywhere. But like I said, Pelletier’s Syndrome is very rare, like one in ten or maybe twenty million rare, and it’s so lethal that even if a Trodden had a Pelletier’s baby, the disease is so aggressive that it’s probably impossible to survive long enough to reach the communicable stage.”
“How quickly does it kill?”
“Fast. Days, I think.” Reynolds shrugged. “If a newborn tested positive, we were to isolate the baby immediately and then run, not walk, run to the comms to upchannel the discovery. A specialized emergency response team would then come to the hospital and it would be out of our hands after that.” She smoothed her greying hair with a hand. “But, Pelletier’s almost never happens, thank God. We never had one in Waytown. In fact, I never even heard of one happening in Northport or Coldbarrow. Why are you asking?”
“Kallista Pendleton died of Pelletier’s Syndrome twenty-five years ago.”
Reynolds gawked at Kat for a moment before recovering. “Well, I’d say that’s proof you aren’t Kallista Pendleton.”
“I know people called me Kallista when I was young, Maggie,” Kat insisted.
“Maybe your first name is Kallista,” Reynolds suggested. “Hell, maybe your full name is the same as that poor child’s but, and I am speaking professionally here, I can assure you with a high degree of confidence that you aren’t dead.”
Kat chuckled at the quip but she knew who she used to be.
“Now,” Reynolds said, smiling as she leaned forward in her chair, “tell me all about your date.”