Free Of Shadows and Obsession by Sarah Fine

Chapter One
    THE POINT OF THE COMPASS punches through the paper and lets out a tinny squeal as it scrapes against the steel work surface. Unacceptable. My perfect metal fingers lift it straight up, smooth and strong and steady. I slide another sheet of thin rice paper onto my desk and turn the knob at my elbow a fraction to loosen the tension. Sometimes I forget to adjust it when I switch between tasks, when I go from heavy work to intricate calculations. Sometimes I forget how strong I am. Sometimes I destroy things accidentally. Other times, I destroy things on purpose.
    Last night was more the former than the latter, but that doesn’t make the situation any better for the family who waits out in the Ring, wondering when their boy will arrive home for the First Holiday feasting. I am the only one who knows the answer to their question.
    Never.
    He is the reason I need to finish my calculations. Well, not him really, because as I sit here, his bones are slowly turning to ash in the factory’s furnace. This is for others like him. This is to protect them, all of them.
    From me.
    With my grip adjusted, I dive into angles of reflection, curvature, intensity of ambient light. . . . I live for a while within the grid on my paper, between the axes, contained by lines and degrees. There is nothing as soothing as this, nothing that quiets my thoughts so well. I pull the factory blueprints onto my work surface and make sure I have the scale right. I select each mirror from my collection, choosing only the flawless ones that will give me an undistorted view.
    By this time tomorrow, I will be able to peer through one of my pipes and see the entire area around my altar. I can already see all of the cafeteria, including the kitchens. The killing floor from four different angles. Boss Jipu’s office, and Underboss Mugo’s office too. All the entrances to the factory and the compound gates. The furnace room. The roof. The corridors. But there is a blind spot just outside the cafeteria apparently, and that is where the young man was hiding.
    I didn’t see him until it was too late. Strongly built and nearing twenty, maybe. I’d seen him wolfing down steamed buns in the cafeteria, and laughing with his friends after shifts. One who came back with candied dates from his mother and a bottle of rice wine from his father after weekends off. His name was Atanyo, and I knew his habits like I know those of everyone else at Gochan One. He didn’t like hard brown bread but loved barley soup. He visited the whores in the Ring sometimes but never stayed long. He lusted after Mugo’s pretty, young secretary, Lovey, like every other man in the factory, including and especially Mugo himself.
    Atanyo’s sloppily scrawled wishes were all about Lovey, day after day. He left me a few candied dates each time to convince me to turn her head, as if I had that power.
    Perhaps his often-repeated and as-yet-ungranted wish was the reason he was waiting for me. Or maybe he was simply wondering who collects the offerings that crowd that low wooden table every single day, dripping and rolling off its edges, sometimes getting singed by the candles set up in a row over the top. Thirteen candles, for the thirteen years I was alive and whole. Thirteen candles, for the years I was a child, when I believed I would go on and on. Four years have passed since then. I’m not a child anymore. Nor am I alive. Or whole.
    Now I am the Ghost.
    But sometimes I think I’m something . . . more.
    I don’t know what Atanyo thought, though. Perhaps he was only curious. Or greedy. Whatever it was, it made him stealthy. I emerged from the stairwell and walked to the altar to gather the wishes and the gifts, the things that connect me to the people of Gochan One, the things they hope will connect them to the Ghost. I always check outside the cafeteria before I come up here. If there’s anyone there, I wait until they leave. But Atanyo, he must have been snugged up against