THE GIRL WHO LOVED

Fenfang Song had always felt a certain degree of nothing for as long as she could remember. She felt nothing as Weimin took her away from China, and smuggled her into America to work for the Agency, nothing as it finally collapsed (but if she were being honest, which she isn't, she would admit she felt a slight tinge of fear) and she'd feel nothing once she and Linnie started running from the forces of the Light that were chasing them.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Linnie asked once they'd left the immediate zone of danger. Once they were out of the city, Fen would relax, and figure it out. She didn't really know where she was headed, mostly because she'd never thought it would escalate to this. Sure, she'd gotten identities, but she'd always figured that when the time came, Weimin would be there for her once again. He wasn't, obviously, and now she was stuck trying to figure out how to provide for Linnie.

"We're going," she hesitated, focusing her gaze on the road, before making a split-second decision, and turning into a side road, "to Yue. She's helping us."

"Yue's a hacker, though," Linnie reasoned, and he was right, Yue Chen was a hacker, but she was the only thing Fen could think of, "shouldn't we be staying away from the people who caused this?"

"Yue didn't cause this, Linnie," Fen shook her head, following the road to the place Yue called "home base", "she probably knows who did, though."

"What good will knowing who did it do us?" Linnie asked, and he was correct. Knowing what kind of stupid hacker thought it would be a bright idea to collapse the Agency wouldn't help them in their quest and it wasn't as if Fen wanted to know in the first place, but Yue Chen was their only hope. She could help them disappear. At least, until the smoke settled.

"I know you're worried," Fen tried to reassure him, but Linnie was freaking out on the inside, plus he was grouchy, "but I'll figure this out."

"I know you will." He breathed out, and turned his gaze to the window.

Yue Chen wasn't normal. Fen had known that ever since she'd met Yue after the Agency took her in. Yue had an obsession with her hair, not her vanity, nor her face, simply just her hair. Every three months or so, she would change her hair, and her way of dress with it. The last time, her hair was pastel pink, and she dressed in frilly, baby pink clothes for the duration of the colour. Now, Yue's hair was the colour of the moon, and she wore a baby blue dress with some strange shoes. Fen hadn't seen her in a while, and she didn't know how many colour changes Yue had gone through since the pastel pink escapade, but it looked recent, since the dye hadn't started fading into the awkward yellow Yue's hair had become.

"Fenfang Song, what brings you to my underground lair?" Yue joked, as she saw Fen's face on the camera that was stuck to her front door. In reality, Yue's "lair" was just a basement, and Fen needed her approval to enter.

"I need your help with something. The Agency was hacked." Fen tried to be brief, but once she'd said the words, she knew she was going to have to tell Yue the whole story.

"Don't tell me you're here on official business?" Yue asked, "you know I don't work for the Agency anymore."

"I do, and I'm here because there is no Agency anymore. It collapsed." Fen explained. The door opened without Yue saying anything, and Fen followed the path down to the basement, where Yue's dark wonderland lay ahead. The walls were decorated with neon graffiti, courtesy of an artsy ex-boyfriend, and all of Yue's tech was blinking with expensive parts that made it look high tech. Yue herself had cut her hair short, and the baby blue dress she was wearing went well with her ivory coloured skin. She had taken a pair of circular glasses and stuck them on her face to complete the look.

"Did the Agency serious collapse?" Yue asked as soon as Fen and Linnie had entered the room.

"Some hacker got in and everything just... crashed." Linnie spoke for her, without even thinking about it. At this, Yue sighed, and booted up one of the computers, the soft whirring of its mechanics occupied the space while Fen chewed on one of her cuticles as she waited for Yue to clarify why she was sighing. There used to be a bunch of hackers down in Yue's basement, back when the Agency was starting up, as they did cyber-spying for extra money, but most of them had been terminated, and now Yue was the only one left, not even working for the Agency anymore, just existing because she was allowed to. She opened a window on her computer, and started typing maniacally, her fingers flying over the keyboard at alarming speeds. What she was looking for, Fen didn't know, she hadn't picked up on the hacking as easy as Yue and Linnie did. Before Fen could register it, Yue was calling her over.

"Look," she pointed to the screen, but Fen couldn't make out anything, and Yue shook her head disapprovingly, "I got back into their systems, not that there was much to salvage, but I found some leftover code, and I recognize the person who coded this."

"You know who collapsed the Agency?" Fen asked, squinting her dark eyes at the screen, her brain struggling to make sense of the seemingly foreign language that presented itself on Yue's computer.

"I have a hunch, I'm not sure, but I think I know," she explained, "we used to work together, he was a hacker from France who thought that hacking was his raisin something."

"Raison d'être," Linnie replied, and watched Yue's face contort in confusion, he looked to her and shrugged, "what? You said he was from France, so I figured it was his 'raison d'être'. It means reason for existing, or being, my French isn't exactly the best."

"Do we know who he is?" Fen dared to ask, hanging on every one of Yue's words. She had to know who had ruined her and Linnie's safe haven, every part of her body was aching to know who the idiot was who thought it would be a good idea to expose her and Linnie. She needed to know more than he did, because while Linnie was panicking, he didn't feel the need to know who had caused it. All he needed was the solution, how were they going to escape the inescapable fate.

"Claude Laurent," Yue spoke without hesitation, "he's the only one who could code like this, I mean, besides me, and I don't really feel like exposing my father for who he is, if you know what I mean." Yue was referring to Weimin Chen, her father, and of course Fen and Linnie's saviour. Anger built up inside of Fen, like she was a volcano waiting to erupt, and she stood, sturdy as ever, the lava threatening to explode out of her, as she listened to Yue say the name of the man who had ruined her life. Claude Laurent. She would remember that name.

"But enough about Claude," Yue shook her short, moonlight coloured hair as she spoke, "do you even know where you're going, Fen?"

"I haven't exactly thought about what's going to happen next." She admitted shamefully, avoiding both Linnie and Yue's gazes.

"I've got a spare room, don't worry," Yue assured, "you can stay here while you figure things out." Fen was grateful for Yue's kindness, and hoped she would be able to figure something out while they were in Yue's care. She had to figure something out, for Linnie's sake, because she had to take care of him, like she had been doing her entire life, and like she would continue to do until she finally died.

That night, Fenfang Song dreamt for the first time in a long time. She dreamt of faceless people with no names, but she felt emotions, emotions she'd never felt before. The first person unfurled in front of her like a rose, soft pink skin covering her body, Fen's ivory hands splayed out all over her pink breasts, while below them, her stomach swelled to the size of a huge beach ball. Fen could hear her soft breaths, her colourless eyes filled with something Fen could only call love. And Fen felt it too, to this faceless, nameless woman lying in front of her, skin like porcelain, eyes filled with nothing but love. She felt it too. Love. Something she'd only felt for Linnie. The scenery changed, and suddenly everything was white, but the woman was there, in a bed. This time she wasn't writhing in pleasure, but writhing in pain, her legs spread wide open as sweat fell in rivulets down her soft face. She was pushing, screaming, waiting for something to happen, but Fen didn't know what, her vision was obscured by something... or rather an emotion. Pure panic coursed through Fen's veins, she couldn't move, she could only chew on her cuticles as she always did whenever she felt something stirring in her stomach. The faceless woman was screaming like she was dying, as if the doctor was stabbing her, or pulling her intestines out through her genital opening. The next thing Fen saw was a small child, a child with her eyes as it lay screaming in her arms, covered by only a pink blanket and a little pink hat on her head. As soon as Fen locked eyes with the baby, she stopped crying, and Fen tried to make out any distinctive features, but just like the woman, the baby had no face, and Fen couldn't remember a name. Her surroundings shifted again, this time a man's face, coming closer to hers, enveloping her lips in a kiss which she melted into like their lips were made for one another's. Her stomach exploded with butterflies, and before she could open her eyes to look at his face, he disappeared like a mirage. When her eyes refocused, families were standing in front of her, a mother, with a small daughter, a father, with only one boy, another man, his eyes dark empty holes, holding the arm of a teddy bear, while another held onto a small women's blouse. None of them looked complete, all of them were missing something, someone, and when she looked closer she could see the translucent outline of a woman, standing next to each of the adults. Her hair varied in length, and her clothes were different, but something was undeniable about her eyes, they were Fen's. Every variation of her had a different bullet hole on some part of her body, the blood gushing out of it like the tears flowing down the first woman's eyes. The first one, standing next to the woman with the little girl had a bullet hole in between her dark eyes, a gaping hole signifying her death staring the woman and the girl right in the face. The second one had a hole in the middle of her abdomen, one hand clutching it as if it would stop the bleeding. The last two looked the same as the first one, a shot in between her dark, lifeless eyes. All of the families stared up at Fen, and simultaneously, in a monotone voice they all said: "We miss you..."

"May." The first woman said.

"Grace." The man with the little boy said.

"Vivian." The man holding the teddy bear said, his voice cracking at the end.

"Angela." The last man said, as he clutched the floral shirt closer to his chest, and tried to keep the tears that were threatening to spill from his colourless eyes at bay.

"Please come back." All of them said collectively, and looked to the iterations of Fen standing next to them with forlorn looks in their colourless eyes. Fen awoke with a jolt, and a feeling of sadness in her chest. Linnie was still sleeping next to her, while she tried to keep her breathing soft and steady. She had no idea who those people were, but she was going to find out, because somehow, some way, she loved them. Each and every one of them.