In the hours leading up to her death, the woman I murdered had ingested enough alcohol to sanitize a city block, injected enough stimulants to kill a mountain lion, and spat enough lies that you could build a religion off of them. In a way she already had. 

This woman was recruited by what was now the world's ruling cooperation to create their aces in the hole, to foster weapons so ruthlessly destructive they would create new classifications of war crimes. This woman had to hide her identity through lies, deception, deceit, blackmail, forged records, reconstructive surgery, brainwashing, and murder, because if someone knew who she was, they would surely kill her. 

I know because I found out who she was. 

Her body is limp, neck bent at a grotesque angle. I swear I can see the dead eyed stare of her skull, the black holes in her soul boring holes into my consciousness. The bloody monkey wrench in my hand cries to bash her skull in until all the demons inside are released.

I am my sister's keeper, but in a way, so was she. My sister's handler was vital for her survival after dismissal, and as I looked at her blood on my hands, I knew that my sister's would join it soon. 

*********

Jessica: November 30th, 2022

“The Lord be with you.”
The congregation replied in unison, “And with your spirit.”

“This mass has ended. Let us go in peace, and give thanks in the name of the Lord, our God.”

The sounds of the church organ filled the sanctuary. Followers around me grab their songbooks to sing along to the closing hymns. I sit silently, praying as I have the whole mass, for one thing. 

Wednesday evening mass is populated with different groups of people. The elderly, who have little better to do than go to church twice or thrice a week, the pious, who think going to mass multiple times a week will bring them closer to to their admission to heaven, and people like me, who work Sunday mornings.

I’m not sure if I believe in god, much less capital-C capital-G Catholic God, but I’ve come here every Wednesday evening since mid-2017, when my sister Maki left to fight in what I knew as the Corporate Wars. (You, assumably reading this in my future, likely know them as the First Corporate Wars.) This is the same church we attended as kids with my late parents; a small chapel in the Idaho Panhandle, 20 minutes from our home. I come to pray to a god I may not believe in, for someone who may not even be alive to return. 

Many of the parish-goers are the same from my childhood, but none of them recognize me. Idaho is not the place where many women are openly transgender. Besides, I never make conversation before or after mass, as much as it pains me to skip the donuts they have in the dining hall afterwards.

It’s tradition to wait for the priest to ceremonially exit the sanctuary before you grab your own things and leave the pews, so I wait for Father Thomas and his decorated robes to depart the room before I stand and head to the exit. An usher standing in the gathering area hands me a pamphlet for some program or group the church is putting on. I take it with a quiet “Thanks,” knowing it will live in the back seat of my car until I work up the energy to take it and the dozens like it out and throw them in the recycling. I walk out the glass double-doors and immediately take out my phone, trying to decide what to listen to on the drive back home. I'm so eager to distract myself I don't notice the woman standing in the way on the sidewalk, facing the church, in a United Corporate Army flight suit until I run directly into her.

She doesn't budge an inch, but I take a full tumble, falling backwards, ass first on the ground. My phone falls to the concrete, shattering the already broken screen as I stare up at a woman who’s my height, apologies immediately emerging from my throat.

“Shit, I'm so fucking sorr–” my voice cuts out without my consent as I see her face, smirking down at me mischievously. Her face.

I’ve seen videos of soldiers surprising their loved ones as they returned home from duty, their families bursting into tears. They hug, they yell, they kiss, they cry, and around them a circle of onlookers gather and clap, proud to have witnessed a moment of reunion. No matter the political leaning, people find joy watching as families that have been split apart are put back together how they should be. 

No one ever told me it was like seeing a ghost.

Smiling, looking, just standing there in the flesh, is Maki. Tears that weren’t there 2 seconds ago run down my face as I forget to breathe, and I scream a feral scream as I launch myself up towards her.

I embrace my big sister hard enough to recklessly tackle her to the ground, but she’s strong. I feel her thick muscles built like stone steady her as she lifts me off the ground effortlessly, spinning me around twice like a pirouette before putting me back on the ground. My knees are too weak to stand, and she holds me there as I cry and babble gibberish loudly into the twilight, my words getting caught in my throat and turning into whines, whimpers, and cries of emotion. They should be cries of happiness, of joy, of rebirth, but they are none of those. They are noises of the strongest emotions I have ever felt in my life, and to place a feeling other than intensity onto them would be inaccurate.

As I start to sob uncontrollably into my sister’s uniform, her hand holds the back of my head, whispering words of affirmation into my ear. She is so composed, so steady, so unlike me in this moment. I don’t notice it at the time, but she does not shed a single tear.

Behind her a mysterious woman stood, smoking a cigarette in sweatpants and a captain's peacoat, observing the scene and studying our reactions.

***

“I thought I would never see you again,” I start, tears still threatening to stream from my eyes. My fingers continue to destroy the maple bar on the dining hall table. I keep tearing off smaller and smaller pieces of it, intending to have a bite to calm my nerves, but instead I find myself taking the bits and rolling them between my fingers until I have half a dozen little balls of dough and frosting that stick to my fingers, the napkin, and everything they touch. “Every time I went to check the mail, I was afraid I would find a letter, wishing me condolences on my loss. Friends from high school, friends from college, they would show me these soulless envelopes they received, telling them their loved ones had ‘passed away in the righteous fight against counter-capitalism.’ Every single one I saw said their loved one’s remains ‘could not be recovered,’ and I waited for the day one came with my name on it.” Cautiously, I pop one of the maple bar balls in my mouth, and nearly choke on it. I can taste the distinct salt of my own tears on them. I cough but manage to swallow.

Maki presses my styrofoam cup of water closer towards me, wordlessly urging me to drink. She stares silently at me, but I get the unsettling feeling she’s looking right through me. I think back to her loose fitting pants sleeves and the hollow, metal sound they made when my shins banged into them.

Mass has long since ended. The parishioners have long left the building, only 4 people remain in the building. The priest, Father Thomas, who told us we could stay and talk as long as we needed, and the three women around this table; myself, Maki, and the mysterious military woman who has yet to introduce herself, yet stays by Maki’s side through every move we’ve made thus far. I’m pretty sure the two of them are holding hands under the table, but I haven’t worked up the courage to ask why she’s here. Maki clearly cares for her though, constantly stealing glances and looking for affirmation from her before speaking. I half expect her to tell me this is her work wife, or maybe just her wife, but for now I just keep talking. It’s all I feel like I can do right now.

“I once stopped checking the mail for 4 months. I just let it pile up until the mailman put an entire trash bag of bills, ads, and sales magazines on our front porch, with a note saying if I wanted any further mail, they would hold it at the post office.” I chuckle, not knowing what else to do. “I learned to stop sending mail to the Army pretty soon after you left. Every time I would ask what you were doing, or why you never wrote back, I got responses telling me they ‘could neither confirm nor deny’ that you were working top secret undercover or whatever the fuck, but they could confirm I wouldn’t be receiving letters, calls, or any kind of message back from you.”

Maki speaks. “It was the hardest thing I have ever done, not being able to talk to you for 5 years.” Her speech is so unnatural, so stilted, so… military. It’s not anything like how she used to talk. I haven't heard her use a contraction yet.
“There is not a lot I can say about what I did. I can tell you I was a pilot, that I flew hundreds of missions for the UC Army, and that nearly everything else is classified,” She puts her other hand on the table, the hand that’s not next to the mystery woman. I see it shake and tremble, but almost in rhythm, like she’s thinking about drumming a beat on the table. I can hear the drumroll in my head. Ra-ta-ta ra-ta-ta ra-ta-ta tah-tah, Ra-ta-ta ra-ta-ta ra-ta-ta tah-tah. An image flashes through my head of the sounds matching with a fighter jet’s machine guns, an image I try to put out of my head immediately by focusing on Maki’s expression instead. It’s tense, but steady. Like a wire under a heavy but unchanging level of stress. 

“And to be honest, I do not want to talk about it. I got fucked up, Jess. I went to some really, really dark places. If you saw me even three months ago…” She takes a trembling breath. Somehow, it feels rehearsed. “I spent the entire time since the war ended preparing to readjust to civilian life, to readjust to normal, human life. I feel like I became something else, through the wars.

“I feel like I died, or some piece of me did, in the horrors I went through, and I’ve spent the last however long trying to bring that part of me back to life so I could be a whole person again, instead of the h… the cog in the machine I had become.”

“...”

“...”

“I’m glad you’re home.” I don’t have anything intelligent to say. What could I say? 

“Glad to be home,” Maki nods. She looks towards the blonde woman, who gives her the tiniest of nods, then back to me. “I have to introduce you to someone.”

“This is Hannah.” Maki presents the lady to her left, “She was my post-combat counselor, assigned to get me through dismissal. She is going to be staying around here, helping me reacclimate to human… to civilian life.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the woman, Hannah, spits. She doesn’t reach for a handshake, she doesn’t offer a smile, she just sits there looking very unpleased to meet me. “Retired Lieutenant Captain Hannah Hill. I worked with your sister since she joined the UC Army. We were dismissed at the same time with the intention that I would continue working with her on her readjustment to civilian life, and re-entry into the workforce, however long that may take.”

I bite my tongue at her verbiage. My sister ‘joined’ the Army… That’s one way of putting it.

In an instant I see Maki’s expression go from tense and measured, to shy and maybe somewhat juvenile, like just hearing the military woman’s voice has some effect on her. “I requested Captain Hill’s assistance as well. I don’t want to be a burden on you, Jessica, and I fear I have a lot of things to relearn. Life as a pilot is so much different, it is so alien to what came before and after. They take everything they can to make fi… flying feel as natural as possible. It’s not about making it second nature, it’s about making it first nature. Captain helped me through the transition into that state, and now she is helping me with the transition back out of it.”

It does not escape my notice that was the third time Maki felt the need to change her words, seemingly to protect me?

“I need the help and I cannot put it all on you to help me get better. I still need your help, so much of your help, but I do not want you to have to drop everything to take care of me.”

I look back and forth between the two of them. “Okay, so, you mean like you’re seeing her for therapy? Or she’s going to be coming around the house to assist? We haven’t talked about it yet, but are you going to be moving back into the house with me?”

Maki looks down at the table. I swear I see the faintest hint of a blush on her cheeks. “Yes, I’m going to be moving back in. And Hannah is going to be moving in with us.”

*********

Maki: 24 January 2021

You wake up, 6 am sharp. It would be more accurate to say you were never asleep, just counting the seconds since the lights went out in your kennel. You brush back your hair, it's grown 2.4 inches since your last cut. In 18 days, it will reach 3 inches of growth and you will be required to cut it back to regulation length. Maki was never that good at math as a kid. 

Another second. 

Another second. 

In 304 seconds the lights will come on. You need to be kneeling in front of the kennel door before that happens. 

The servos and motors in your cybernetic legs whurr and whine as you work your way into position. You run your tongue over the cyanide pill implanted on tooth 31. Your teeth are good for show and for killing yourself, not for eating. You haven't eaten anything in 4 years and 29 days. Nourishment is better achieved through IV, hydration better achieved through submerging your body in the Liquid Life you must remain inside in order to control the 32 ton death machine you are now designed for. 

The lights come on, making sudden daylight of the previously pitch black kennel. You look across the bars, across the isle to your sister hound, kneeling in the same position as you. She could be mistaken as your mirror image were it not for the more recent surgery scar that stretches from her right eyeball to the base of her neck, where a direct access port sits. She is less trained than you are, instead more cybernetic, and more efficient. She is digital, where you are analog. You have been around since before the technology that made her a hound. You are old news. You were made in the days when brainwashing was the best way to make a hound. Those days are no longer. The only reason you're still alive is because you're better at surviving suicide missions. A flaw of your programming the army has made sure to stamp out when they need a hound to disappear.

The sound of metal locks unbinding fills the kennels. She's on her way. Handler, Handler, Handler. The pit of Obsession grows in your stomach. You don't recall your name, in its place is Handler. You don't remember your family, in its place is Handler. You don't remember your missions, in their place is the need to Obey Handler. 

Steel doors open, a guard salutes, and she enters the kennels. She stops at your pen, the first in the row. The ceiling above you is less than 3 feet from the floor, and all you see is combat boots and ripped sweatpants. You wouldn't look up at her if you could, your eyes remain locked on the murder machine kneeling across from you. It snarls at you as it knows you've been chosen. 

Handler presses buttons on the keypad above your cage door until it swings open. She walks back towards the exit without looking at you. You begin to crawl after her. "Come, puppy." She commands, "It's time to play with you some more."