“Hey, Dad, whatcha doing?” I pushed through the door into his workshop. The bored-looking teenagers manning the counter told me he was busy back here.

“Ellery!” came his surprised call from behind a refrigerator. The big, dented appliance rocked back and forth. “Good to see you! Just trying to get the compressor out of this kingsdamn creature, the thing’s seized, but I can’t get this-ngh!- bastard of a freon fitting to come loose. Maybe if I-“ There was a great hissing whoosh, and a cloud of white, chilly gas shot out of the appliance’s rear.

I ran into the chemical-reeking cloud to meet him. “You good, Dad? Kings, that stuff stinks.” I didn’t see Northmarch’s gaunt, pale figure anywhere, for which I was glad. I wanted to talk to my dad alone.

He was back on his ass, a very long wrench in one hand. Still in its jaws was a frosty length of twisted-off refrigerant tube. “Yeah, yeah. It didn’t get me in the face. Had my safety squints on anyway. See?” He demonstrated and I pretended to kick him.

“You’re only born with two, Dad. Take it from someone who knows.” I flinched immediately after that left my mouth. Didn’t want to remind him what his kid did for a living, though just the sight of me probably took care of that anyway.

He took it in stride. “Never thought I’d raise the poster girl for protective eyewear. I’m proud of you, El.” He swiped back a strand of gray hair that had escaped his ponytail and gave me the sappiest dear-old-dad smile I’d ever seen.

I reached down and pulled him to his feet with my good hand. Was it just me, or did he keep getting shorter? “Maybe you’re jealous you don’t have one like mine, old man.” I tapped the SKH-Thayer’s purple iris with a click. It had taken a while to stop freaking myself out doing that. “These things aren’t that far backwards compatible.”

“Mark One organics are all I ever needed, you whippersnapper!” He crossed his arms over his dirty coverall in a mock-huff. “You know how the saying goes: If it’s only a little broke, keep putting off fixing it.”

“Raised on wisdom like that, Dad, it’s no wonder I turned out so great.” While he spluttered I took a look at the fitting he’d accidentally ripped off. “Just rusted shut?”

“Yeah. I should have hit it with some Slickonaut, let it soak overnight, but I was in a hurry. Work rushed is work done twice.”

I wrinkled my nose. Slickonaut penetrating oil worked, but I couldn’t stand the weird half-sweet smell of the stuff- like rotting fruit, I thought. Dad would have worn it as cologne if he could. Hell, maybe he had. “That actually sounded like good advice at the end there. You feeling okay?”

He nudged me with an elbow. “Aw, quit it. The youth of today, I swear.”

“Crotchety as you’re being, let me give you a hand. We still keep the spares in the same spot?” It had been a while since I just sat down and tinkered on something with him. It also let me put off the potentially awkward conversation we were about to have.

“Y-yeah, same spot.” He blinked in surprise but nodded. “It’s a low-side valve, remember.”

“Got it.” I went over to the mess of shelves along the workshop wall and found a bin full of new valves attached to short lengths of steel tube. Sawada had carefully cut them off of other appliances that weren’t worth repairing. He wasted nothing he could possibly reuse. The torch and solder were in their familiar spot too.

“Get that compressor out of there and I’ll solder this while you take it apart,” I told him.

“Sure thing, El.” Now that the freon was emptied, the offending part came out of the fridge so fast you would think it had laid an egg. This wasn’t the first of these Dad had taken apart, and not the tenth or hundredth or maybe thousandth either.

“Don’t be surprised if it takes a little more heat than usual,” he advised. “That new solder sucks.”

“Aye, aye.” I bent down beside the fridge and got to work. My bad hand was weak, but not so weak it couldn’t hold the new valve steady in a pair of pliers while I heated it and fed solder into the joint. It was only for a few minutes, but having something so familiar and mundane to focus on was oddly comforting. When I finished I went over to the workbench, where the compressor was already torn apart.

“Just seized from sitting, looks like,” Dad said happily. “Pistons are hardly worn. Buff it, oil it, new seals and she’ll be almost good as new. So to what to I owe the pleasure of your company, Ellery?”

I still thought it was kind of funny he used that name, the one he’d given me. Nobody else did anymore. I was sure he’d stop if I asked, but I didn’t want him to. That only he called me Ellery made it special. Something just for family. “Do I need a reason to come visit my dad? Isn’t, I dunno, filial piety enough?”

His eyes bugged out and he started peering around with a hand shading his face. “What? You’ve seen some? Did my other kid break in?” I barely, barely managed to keep the frown on my face until he dropped the routine. “Of course you don’t need a reason,” he said. “But something’s probably on your mind. I can tell. I-Rem’s bones, El, what did you do to your hand?”

Now the frown was real, embarrassed. At least he hadn’t seen how far the PIN-stitched cuts went past the cuff of my army jacket. “Not a big deal, Dad. I’m almost healed up already.”

He very nearly started to ask more questions, but stopped himself with a visible effort. “…you’re sure? I’ve never seen…Is that some kind of new nano or something on there?”

“Yeah, something like that.” He waited for me to continue, but I remained shamefacedly silent.

“Alright, El. That’s alright.” Though he still looked worried, he dropped it. “Really though, what can I do for you?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “How are you and Northmarch doing with that codex?”

“Heh.” He leaned against the workbench and flapped a hand at the corner without looking. “There it sits, gathering dust.” Indeed, there was the laser rig they’d been trying to crack the codex with. “We haven’t had a bit of luck. Maybe if we had a real lab, and a real laser, and a real supercomputer, we could make something happen. With what we got? Jack shit. Northy’s been in a bad mood over it. Said he’s going to talk to some people, check some places he knows, but I think he just needed a break. Me too, which is why it’s hiding in the corner like a spider from a cat.”

“I might be able to help.” I marshaled my thoughts, thinking of how to put this. Walker probably wouldn’t like me talking about the reader head to anyone else, but my dad’s trust came first.

“Really? How?” His eyes lit up behind his glasses.

“First of all, don’t tell anyone about this for now. Not even Northmarch- or at least be as vague as you can. Promise me.”

Looking suddenly serious, he thought about it then slowly nodded. “Okay. I can do that. Promise.”

“Thanks. So. At work, we recently…came into possession of an artifact. Something really old.” He knew I was in the Holy Bones. He had a good idea of what I did for them, even, but that didn’t make it less awkward to talk about with my kingsdamn dad. “We have good reason to believe it’s a ‘universal storage-media reader head.’ From the Sun Age.”

He waited for me to tell him I was joking, his eyes slowly widening when I didn’t. “You’re fucking with me.”

I shook my head. “Nope. It even came with a letter from some fancy appraiser in R-block. That’s how we found out what it is at all, in fact.”

“Where the hell did you- Never mind. It’s intact?”

“Mostly.”

I told him what the weird lump of crystal and circuitry looked like and he shook his head again, then bowed his head. “King Irem, Crowned in Silicon, you give me more than I deserve.” I was shocked- I’d never heard him come so close to prayer. He usually only brought up the Martyred Kings to swear- or, once after getting the news that an old acquaintance had died, he’d gotten drunk after I was meant to be in bed and cursed them in the foulest terms imaginable.

Getting over it, I asked for confirmation “So it is what the R-blocker thinks it is?”

“A-almost has to be. I’ve seen a few pictures in reference books-Oh! Here, I’ll show you.” He opened a locked trunk and found a big old book with a threadbare binding. Wood-paper pages, too- thing must have cost a fortune. He flipped through it until he found a grainy black-and white photo and showed me. “It looked like that?”

Squinting, I nodded. “Mostly. The one in the picture’s a little smaller. Less wiring too. Does that mean ours is better?”

“Could be more functionality- or it’s older and less streamlined than this one. Doesn’t matter. They’re called universal for a reason. As long as our codex isn’t encrypted, your head’ll read it. Even if it is we’ll still get the ciphertext, useless as it is. I- not to tell your business, El, but do you and your employers have any idea what that thing’s worth?”

Nigh-incalculable. What the appraiser meant when he wrote that was ‘a lot.’ A lot of money, a lot of time, potentially a lot of lives. “We do. That’s why we- I- are being so tightlipped about it. But the upshot of this whole thing- are you willing to work with my ‘employers’ when it comes to using it? I hate to say it, but they’re not just gonna hand it to you out of respect for D-block’s finest historian.”

He waved that off. “Ah, shut it. My counter-question would be, why would they let me use it at all? Even renting it by the minute I doubt I could make it worth their while.”

“They might be interested in what’s on the codex, Dad. And it doesn’t cost them anything to let you borrow it.”

“Mm.” Arms crossed, he frowned into space and thought. “I’m not going to ask why the Holy Bones of all people care about what’s in the book.” True, that was pretty strange. The Bones weren’t exactly known as connoisseurs of literature. Usually they were thought of as more the liquor and steel guitar kind of crowd. “And I don’t want to be any more involved with them than I have to. I’m not a consultant, I’m not a contractor or an employee or anything. I’m not taking any of their money. And if somebody threatens me, tries get strong with me in my own home? You can bet I’ll blow his Kingsdamn head off.”

I winced. He almost never got heated enough to talk like that. “Nobody’s going to fuck with a friend of mine, Dad. You can bet on that too.”

He gave me a strange look before sighing. His hand went for his pocket as if looking for a cigarette, though he’d quit almost ten years ago. “If you say so, El. Sorry about that. I just figured I was done with the life, but I guess it’s never gonna be done with me.” He suddenly froze and fixed me with an even weirder expression. “If I ever say anything that clichè again, Ellery, please just put me down. It’s over at that point.”

“No deal, old man,” I managed to get out through my laughter. “I’ll keep you around just to laugh at.”

“What a cruel daughter I’ve raised! Where did you ever learn to be such a damn smart-aleck? So when does this deal go down?”

“I have to talk to my boss about it first. It might not happen depending on what he says.”

“Wait, you asked me first?”

“Well, yeah. He’s my boss, but you’re my dad. Unless you’ve gone too senile to remember.”

“Right, right. Thanks for the reminder.” I gave him a playful shove. “Man. That stupid piece of glass’s been kicking my ass for so long I almost forgot there’s a book on the bastard thing. Huh.”

“You’ll be the first person to read it in- hell, hundreds of years, probably. Wonder who the one before you was.” I sighed as I sat down on an old shop stool, the casters creaking. The ancient past just kept rearing its ugly, obfuscated head. Horrible as it sounded, life was easier when I was just killing people for money.

Sawada didn’t say say anything. He could tell I was working my way up to something and let me do it at my own pace.

Finally I couldn’t wait any longer. “Dad, what happened when you found me? Was it really just like you said?” I’d heard the story a couple times, but always when I was younger.

He nodded seriously. “Yeah. Happened just like I told you. How come?”

“I-“ I’d never told him about me being some kind of experiment, and I believed that he didn’t know anything about it. Still, though…maybe there was some detail of the story that would matter now when it hadn’t before. “I’ll tell you why after, promise. For now, can you just go through it again?”

“Sure, sure. So, this would’ve been ten or eleven years ago. Ten and a half, just about. Beer?”

“Kings, please.”

He got a couple cans of Kitsune Lite out of the shop fridge- one that actually worked- and tossed me one. I killed about half of it in one pull as he pulled over a taped-up office chair and got off his feet. “Mm. Right. Ten and a half years ago. Rainy day, pouring but not too caustic. Wouldn’t burn you unless you really hung out for a while.” He sipped his drink while I patiently waited. My dad wasn’t your typical old man, but he sure told stories like one. I was used to it. “My scrap-metal bin was full- this was when I was still cuttin’ up cars- so I went and dragged it out to the pile. Real dark day with the clouds, but I had the lights on in the yard so I could mostly see. Dumped the bin, went to take it back- and here I see something hiding in a crate with one of the sides busted off.”

“An air compressor crate.” I didn’t really remember any of the specifics myself. Just wet and cold and a weird not-fear. Not being scared, really, but being adrift, with no knowledge or context for anything I experienced.

“Yep, an AirShark compressor. It still sits in the machine room, in fact. Good piece of equipment. But anyway, first thing I think is its some kid or junkie after my scrap, my tools. So I left the bin and got out my gun and went over there. I didn’t want to shoot anyone-“

“Course not.”

“-but you never know what a desperate person’s gonna do, right? So I got maybe twenty feet away and yelled, ‘Get outta here! Just leave and I won’t hurt you.’ But nothing happened. I could just see this shape in the shadow of the box, kind of shivering. Froze up when I yelled, but didn’t move or come out of the box or nothing. So I got closer.” Another sip. His eyes were far away, back in the rainy shop yard. “I said, ‘Really, I don’t want to shoot you but you bet I will if I got to.’ Still nothing. Now I got close enough to see inside, only a yard or two away. At first I thought it was a woman crammed in there. Maybe five-five, short dark hair in a mess, real pale and wearing kind of a wax-paper jumpsuit. Couldn’t see her face. At first I figured it was an addict who got out of a clinic, or one of those church rehabs, right? So I got down and said quieter, ‘Hey, I won’t hurt you. Just come on out of there and I’ll get you inside.’ I even mostly meant it. But she didn’t move, right? Just kept shivering. So I tried a couple more times, and finally she turned around. And it was a kid! A big kid, but a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen.”

“Me.” I did kind of remember this part. A figure crouched down, a rain-streaked face looking at me. I’d known from comparing our shapes it was probably the same kind of creature as I was, but I was still too wary to leave the crate. I didn’t really like thinking back to those early memories. They were disconcerting and disorienting, as if my mind wouldn’t believe they belonged to me. They made me feel like there was a rope holding me to everything I knew and it was fraying.

My dad continued. “Yeah, you. You stared at me like you were trying to put a hole through me but you wouldn’t talk.”

“Couldn’t.” I’d had to learn Standard like an infant, though I hoped I’d picked it up a little faster.

“Yeah, but you didn’t even make noise. So I sat there talking to you like you were a cat in a storm drain, trying to get you to come out. Pointing at you, pointing at me, pointing at the shop…I probably looked like I was trying to train a monkey.” He gave me a fishy stare and I flipped him the bird. “Finally I decided I wasn’t gonna get any wetter and just waited. Backed off a little bit and watched. I must have convinced you I wasn’t going anywhere cause eventually you came out. And once you were in the rain it was easy to get you to follow me into the shop.” I remembered that, the mercury arc-lamps burning yellow against a black sky, the cold raindrops tingling slightly on my skin. The coverall thing I’d had on crinkled when I moved. “Got you sat down at the table- I had to show you how to use the damn chair-“ Another middle finger. “-and I gave you a mug of hot water.”

“Hot water?” I just remembered the drink being nice and warm. I’d helf the mug up to my face and let the steam hit it between sips. “You didn’t have anything better for a poor, frozen child?”

“I was a bachelor, okay! Still am! I had coffee and water and beer, and I wasn’t gonna give the other two to a kid.” He slumped back, drank more beer. His other hand darted for his pocket again, only to come up disappointed. “I started asking you what was your name, where are your parents, where do you live, all that stuff. But you just sipped your water and looked around. Stared at me, my tools, all the crap on the shelves, everything. Stared at it like you’d never seen any of it before.”

“Yeah, cause as far as I know I hadn’t.”

“But I didn’t know that! At the time I thought you were lost or something, that you were mute or had a mental condition or something. When I couldn’t get anything out of you I fried you up some paste for dinner and made some calls. None of my acquaintances knew anything.”

I smiled a little. I recalled the taste of that dinner too. It was just arpaste in pork stock with some spices, but at the time it had tasted like heaven. I think it was the first time I felt happy. “How come you gave me food? Why take me inside at all?”

Dad was incredulous. “Who the hell’s gonna leave some kid to freeze on their doorstep? Who wouldn’t give them something to eat?” He had to know the answer was “loads of people,” but he refused to even countenance that. “So, nobody I know’s lost a kid, it’s still pouring cats, and it’s getting late. So I figure, ‘Fuck it, she can stay the night and I’ll work out where she belongs in the morning.’ I set you up in the cot- seriously, I would have given you my bed but I hadn’t washed my sheets in way too long. Bachelor, remember? Gave you the cot and made sure you got to sleep alright. Luckily you figured out the bathroom mostly on your own.”

“Heh.” I didn’t remember that part. It must have been kind of awkward for him to have a teenage daughter dropped on his head out of nowhere.

“You slept most of the next day, if I remember right. Dragged you around the neighborhood asking if anybody knew who you were once you got up. No dice. So you stayed another night. Day after that I took you around again. We even put up posters, like a kid with a lost pet!” He laughed and I tried not to. “No dice. Only people who responded were shady fuckers who obviously didn’t know you. So you stayed longer, and I kept putting off figuring out what to do with you. I got sick of saying ‘Hey, kid!’ all the time, so I called you Ellery after my granddad. Then you kept watching me work- you were already picking up a few words, too- and I started showing you what I was doing, let you help out if you wanted. Even then you were strong, you know?”

“‘El, you can let go of the light, now!’” I said, laughing a little. My dad almost cracked up. My memories of that time were a little clearer- everything had been new, unknown, scary but exciting. The machines and stuff my dad worked on had been complex enough to be interesting, but far less overwhelming than the world outside. It was comforting in a way just like Tanje talked about earlier. When I started helping him he’d had me just hold the flashlight for him, and I’d made sure to hold it still. Once he had to go help someone up front in the middle of a job. He told me- but he’d forgot I couldn’t understand. So I stayed holding the light for maybe half an hour before he’d come back and rushed to explain I could put it down.

“Shit, I felt terrible about that! But you learned fast. And then one day, I just realized I’d stopped expecting you were gonna leave. Thinking about it made me feel sick, even. You weren’t anyone else’s, so I guess you were staying with me. And there you go.” He clapped his hands and finished his beer. “One family legend, neat and wrapped up. I’ll even give you a good deal on the holo rights.”

“Shut up, old man.” Damn it, I was trying not to cry. He’d had no reason to do any of that, none at all. Best luck of my life was turning up in his backyard. “T-thanks for all that. You know.”

Sawada waved a hand like he was telling me he’d take care of the check at a restaurant. “Did that help at all?” he asked.

“Mm…do you remember anything odd about right when you found me? Anything that stuck out at you, didn’t seem right? Besides a kid hiding in your backyard, I mean.”

He shut his eyes, stroked his mustache for several seconds. “Ah. Two things. First of all, I had a good view of that crate on the way out, not just in- but I swear I didn’t see anything in there until I turned around.”

“Okay…” That was weird, really weird, but it didn’t ring any bells.

“And the second thing…so it was chilly out, but not even close to freezing. I only saw snow once, and that was when I was a kid. But, I could have sworn there was frost on your jumpsuit when I first saw you. I remember the lights sparkling off it. Melted before I even got you out of the crate, though.”

“Motherfucker…” I murmured. Frost meant cold- and I’d been feeling weird spikes of cold ever since fighting my so-called sister. Same against the Winnower, too.

“Oh? Does that mean something to you?” he asked.

“I…I think so. So, Dad? What I’m gonna tell you will sound crazy, but I promise it’s true. Will you believe me?”

“Of course, El.”

“Thanks. So, a little while ago I got cut on my forehead…” I explained about the impossible tungsten-ceramic-element 115-whatever alloy that made up my bones, how I healed fast, my encounter with Arcadia even the cold feelings I got sometimes when being hit- though I kept those last two vague, given I didn’t understand much about them myself.

I’d been apprehensive about telling him, but rather than look disgusted or scared he got angry. “That- that there’s people out there who’d do that without permission, who’d experiment on kids…fuck, I hate this city. And this sister who attacked you…I don’t know.”

“I maybe, maybe have a lead on who did it, but it’s a pretty vague one." I wasn't going to bother explaining about the Sculptor until I'd talked to Dezi some more. Right now I barely understood it myself. "Thanks for the help.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more useful.”

“You’ve done more than enough.” I rose and bent down to give him a hug. “Love you, Dad.”

He embraced me back, and for a moment it was like I was smalled than him again. “Love you too, El. I’ll help anytime, seriously. Sawadas have to stick together.”

“Always. I’ll talk to my boss about the reader head deal, then. I’ll keep it vague until I know he’ll keep it all on the down low. He’s a cagey one already, though.”

“He’d have to be. I’ll wait to hear from you, and maybe drop a hint or two to Northmarch.”

“Sure.” I trusted him not to reveal too much until the time was right. “I have to get back, Dad. It was good to see you.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “Same, my girl. Thanks for the help with that fridge.”

“I can still be useful when I feel like it. Have a good one, Dad, and put some damn safety glasses on.”

“For you, El…maybe.” He cackled as I gave him a disgusted wave and left. On the way out the door my slab rang.

It was Walker. “What’s up, boss?”

“Where you at, Sharkie?” He sounded calm but serious.

“Livery, why?”

“I’ll send a car, but get movin’ for the office anyhow. Somethin’ urgent came up.” The line went dead before I could ask what.