Human Sister

looked at me, his face expressing astonishment. Then he reached out to me and his mouth opened, as though he wanted to tell me something, but no words came out.
    I lunged toward him, crying, “No!”
    He slumped against me, and his head fell onto my shoulder.
    “Elio!” I screamed, but the only answer I received was what sounded like a sigh.
    His head began sliding down from my shoulder. I struggled to keep my balance and hold his weight.
    “Say something, Elio. Please!”
    I felt the cruiser stop, and in the terrible stillness, I thought I could feel the AUAS beep calling Michael up into the hold.
    It took all my strength to keep Elio from slipping off my shoulder.
    “We’re here, Elio. We’re at the rendezvous. We have to go now.”
    But he didn’t move, didn’t speak.
    “Michael!” I shouted. “Michael, hurry! Elio needs help!”
    I again heard a plane approaching. I held Elio tightly, anticipating another volley of shots. But our cruiser had stopped, and the plane merely thundered overhead—the air, the boat, the shards of broken window on the floor, all trembling in the wake of its roar.
    Michael bounded up the stairs from the hold. “What happened?”
    I just shook my head. Michael pressed his fingers on one of Elio’s wrists, then on Elio’s neck and head. He took one of Elio’s blood-soaked hands and stroked it over one of his sensitive hands, and as he did, tears streamed down his face. I’d never seen Michael look so desperately sad.
    Then, as though startled by something he’d heard, Michael looked up and out over the ocean. “We have to go now,” he said. “A ship flying the U.S. flag is pulling up beside us.” He kissed Elio’s hand and laid it in Elio’s lap.
    “No. You go. I’m staying with Elio,” I cried, desiring to bring all of Elio, so quiet, inside me; wanting to care for him inside me; wanting to hold him forever.
    “You can’t. Elio’s not here. He doesn’t exist any longer. We loved him, but now he’s ceased to be.” Michael placed one of his hands on my shoulder and pulled a little. “Let the body go. We’re in immediate grave danger.”
    But nothing, not the loss of Uncle Marcus, Mom, Dad, Aunt Lynh or Grandpa, not all the books I’d read or all the thoughts I’d thought—nothing had prepared me to let go of Elio and walk away.
    I hugged Elio more tightly, with all my strength. Then I felt the braincord moving up my nostrils, and thought that Michael wanted to feel what I was feeling; but immediately I felt strangely stunned. My arms slackened, and Michael quickly moved Elio, sitting him upright against the computer desk. As if in a dream, I saw Elio’s sightless gaze and his blood, blood everywhere, blood soaking his shirt, blood covering his hands, blood dripping from the tip of his nose.
    Michael picked me up. I couldn’t resist, couldn’t speak. Even my eyes were fixed straight ahead, seeing the shattered ceiling bob as we ran; then, as we turned to go down the stairs, the broken window, the railing on the ship nearby, three men, one pointing excitedly at us, and at the fore, the Stars and Stripes—tricolored tongue—drooling in the heavy air.

First Brother

    “F irst Brother?” she says.
    She remains unmoving in the prone position, head raised, left arm around the middle marker, right hand in the shadow of my head.
    Nine seconds pass.
    “Grandma’s in the house. Dead. She was your Grandma, too.”
    She moves her right hand to the middle marker and slowly traces out with her fingers the letters of the name “Elio.”
    She turns over and attains a sitting position. She looks up at me, squints, and shades her eyes with her right hand. “Didn’t you know we loved you?”

Sara

    I regained consciousness in the midst of the final movement of Górecki’s “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.” Michael was kneeling beside me under a strange domed ceiling. Our braincord was retracting into the back of his head.
    I sat up with a start. “Where’s Elio?”
    Michael quickly put a finger to his lips, gesturing for me to be quiet, but I didn’t hear the expected “Shhh.” I realized then that there were earphones in my ears, and I pulled them out.
    Michael gently put his hand on my arm and whispered, “It wasn’t a dream.”
    While muffling my crying with a pillow, he whispered that we had to keep quiet, that we’d been fortunate the pursuing boat hadn’t carried a submersible capable of following us, and that though he’d kept both of our