Marjorie M. Liu by Six

Author:Six
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-31T12:40:43+00:00

At thirteen years of age, faith had become something of a cornerstone in Six’s life, though she rarely thought of it as such. Simply, her existence ran on routine, the steady ticking of a clock that parsed out chores and exercises and studies like some endless heartbeat running concurrent to the one inside her chest, and which could not be stopped or slowed, not at risk of ending her existence.

And then, one day, her faith changed. The clock began ticking to a different beat.

It began early. She rose for breakfast with the other girls, and Aunt was there, waiting. She picked three. Six, Xiu, and Shu. Led them beyond the school walls to a white windowless van. They got in. Aunt sat up front beside the driver, another of their instructors. The van drove for thirty minutes, and when it stopped Six emerged, blinking in the sun, staring at a tall brick structure the size of a warehouse. No windows. Only one door. Aunt made them go in. She said, “I will return later to let you out,” and then the darkness closed around the three girls and they heard the lock turn.

They realized, soon after, that they were not alone. They realized, too, that they had been brought there to die.

Six remembered. She remembered men three times her size, moving in the darkness, hunting her. She remembered fighting them. She remembered killing them. She remembered the taste of that first death, how happy she was for it, how proud, because she was still alive, unharmed. Fierce; the need to survive was stronger than anything she could name.

She remembered, too, the screams. Shu. Broken leg. Cornered. Six had found her, saved her. She found Xiu, too, but later. Very close. Xiu could have gotten there first. Saved Shu some pain. But she had not. She had left the girl, used her as a distraction so she could run and hide.

There were nine men, total. Nine bodies at the end of the day, when Aunt came to unlock the door. She looked at each one, examining the way they died, the killing blows. She said not a single word. No praise, no apology.

She took the girls home. Shu healed, returning to the old routine. Xiu and Six did not. Aunt moved them on.

And here we are, Six thought, staring across the small cell at the other woman, who watched her with a stranger’s eyes—eyes that Six knew almost as well as her own—eyes that had betrayed her down in the debriefing room, when Xiu had implied to the station commander that Six might be capable of inappropriate behavior. That she might give up her duty for a man.

Words to kill a career. Words enough to ostracize, blacken, send away—or worse, to put her in prison. A woman with her skills, after all, could not be allowed to run free if there was not the utmost faith in her honor and integrity. A woman like her, after all, would make a dangerous enemy.

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