> [!info] Metadata > - length:: 622 words > - time:: before [[2022-05-27 Recycled (FF)]] & [[2022-04-22 Can Androids Cope With Tiny Goats (FF)]] > - market:: submitted to [[Daily Science Fiction]] and a few other places, ultimately published to [[The Iceberg]] > - protagonist:: Eisha > - mentions:: > - location:: [[GeneE]] > - pitch:: A special ops handler tries to talk an asset into continuing work after a catastrophe harms a child she feels responsible for. > - afterword:: the ethics of quitting teaching > - wordcount:: 622 words > I found my wayward empath at a playground just outside the funeral home, a faint smile on her pale lips. She'd always been small, but now she looked wasted, hollow. I worried the breeze would blow her away. The wooden picnic table was too small for my frame, but I sat down anyway, contorting the genetically engineered height of a Peacekeeper into something less threatening. "Eisha." She didn't so much as twitch at my presence, which didn't surprise me. Her sepia eyes clung to a tearstained teenaged girl kicking her feet into the dirt as she listlessly sat on the swing. She'd always been able to fugue deeper than any other empaths in the program. "Eisha!" Nothing. Reluctantly, I slapped her cheek. The sharp impact cut her link with the teenager and drew the attention of a nearby man in funeral black. He leapt up, brows heavy with outrage, but stumbled back when I shifted to expose the golden lion curled across my uniform. It wouldn't hold him back for long. Not after last week. Not with this many mourners overflowing into the streets. I had to get Eisha out of here before the riots started. Eisha refocused, eyes locking onto mine with dead intensity before betrayal sparked into fury. She banked it with a single, even breath. No other empath had enough control over their own apathy to induce it. I wished I'd never taught her the trick. "You can't hide every time something goes wrong. That's not what I trained you for." My voice turned pleading. "Damn it, we have work to do." A bitter cackle slashed out from between the placid cracks of ennui. "Jealous, Jack?" The hell of it was, I was, a little. When she linked with me, the force of her regard shined like the sun. I craved it almost as much as I missed her. Her sparking humor, the clever way she bartered in the markets, the brave smile she got before a jump into one of the Preserves. But I ignored the petty accusation because this wasn't about me. I'd still be sitting here if I hated her, because the technocracy needed her. This was about the program and what would happen if she didn't return. The wars we wouldn't avert. "Eisha." The talisman of her name was a futile habit, but I used it anyway. "When was the last time you ate? You're wasting away." "It'll be my funeral," she said with a twisted, saccharine smile. "Isn't that what you said when I tried to help Taki?" As a handler, I had plenty of practice suppressing guilt, but memories bubbled up anyway. Algorithms reporting a small town in the Andean Preserve as a potential revolt-point. The satisfaction of establishing Eisha as a caretaker for local orphans. For the first time, she'd loved using her gifts. Identifying emotionally damaged children, not rebels, had distracted her from her purpose. She blamed herself, though the analysts' reports had underestimated the violence bubbling under the local strand of rebel sentiment. The guns erupted earlier than expected. Hostages, a media standoff. Taki caught in the middle of a conflict no empath should have been present to feel. "I can't give you much longer," I told her. "Projections say the burial will turn riot." "I'm not going back, Jack. You can't force me." "I won't let you throw your life away to mourn one barbarian boy." I picked her up and carried her to the helicopter. She didn't resist. She never did anything again, no matter what we put in her IV. It was all such a waste.