Page 6 of Never Lost

“She said she was scared,” I said stubbornly.

“I didn't mean for that to happen. There was obviously a breakdown. Resi's foreign language skills are shit, and she didn't interpret things well enough for her. But it’s also my fault for not insisting she try.”

“Maeve stayed because she had nowhere else to go,” I said. “And the police wouldn’t help. They’d just auction them all off and be done with it.”

“I know.Weknow.” Langer’s voice was steady. “Let me try to explain something. Resi’s like me,” he said carefully. “And like you. She starts feeling restless and bored if she doesn’t have anything to occupy her mind. And then she starts getting in trouble.”

“Sounds about right.”

“So I gave her something to occupy her mind. Something we’d talked about doing since we were kids.”

“White Cedar.”

He nodded. “And I know—I’m convinced—that after we do this, after Igiveher the chance to do this, she’ll settle down. Be the person I know she is and would have been before life fucked her a thousand times over. The person I’veseenin her, with my own eyes, and I know is still in there. So I can see that smile again. The one I came home to every day. The one that made life worth living.”

“But what if she… isn’t being honest about what she’s doing?” I asked diplomatically. “I mean, she’s obviously feeling the pressure to deliver. Anyone would. And how long have you been working on this?” A while, from what I’d overheard.

“It’s science. You know it takes time,” he said quickly. “Anyway, like I said, I’m under no illusions about her. Iknowshe’s capable of dishonesty. You’ve seen that. But not about this.”

To my shock, there was actual, genuine determination on his face. Determination for atonement and for winning back some of what they’d lost before slavery fucked them over as it fucked over absolutely everyone and everything associated with it.

And that was a powerful thing. Powerful enough to be worth deluding yourself for, certainly.

“It’s the microchips, isn’t it?” I asked. “That’s what you’re doing.”

He nodded. “She didn’t think we should tell you. I told her you’d probably already figured it out. I was overruled.”

“Look, you know as well as I do that removing someone’s chip doesn’t make them not a slave. It just makes them a slave who’s breaking the law.”

“If it means they can’t be tracked down by their owners or the government—at least long enough for them to disappear and forge a new identity—then for all intents and purposes, itdoesmake them not a slave. And that’s the point.”

“So you’re figuring out how to remove the chips, using the girls as guinea pigs. That’s the research.”

“Essentially, yes,” he said. “You know the trick is locating them, so the goal is to find a chemical formula that can be injected, react with the chip, and bring it quickly and painlessly to the surface from wherever it is in the body.”

Nowhe was speaking my language. My mind started turning immediately. “Are they performed humanely? The experiments, I mean?”

Langer paused. “Resi sees to that. I trust her. And in exchange, they’re not only going to get freedom, but a new life,” he went on. “And a better life than most free people, at that. Help with housing, transportation, tuition, capital to start a business, whatever they need. I have the resources to do it. I can’t free every slave, not yet. But this is a start.”

“Wait,” I said in wonder. “You really are anti-slavery, aren’t you?”

He turned. He looked incredulous. “Wait. Did you think I was lying about that?”

“I thought you were lying abouteverything. I still do, mostly.”

“So it’s only ‘mostly’ now? Wow. All right, I’ll take it.”

Under the terracotta bowl of this desert sky, the world had toppled. Max Langer—a good person? Okay, a not-evil person?And what it meant for my sister, or Lemaya, or myself, or the whole enterprise, I still wasn’t sure.

“So… what if a miracle happens and this works? Do you actually think you can make money off this?”

“Maybe, but believe it or not, it’s about more than justmymaking money. To me, disrupting slavery is about making it economically unfeasible to enslave people and forcing the development of other business models. And that, in time, will transform how weallmake money. That’s the idea, anyway.”

Economics. Along with finance, another field of study I was somewhat deficient in. But it made sense to me.

“How many girls have you worked with?”

“I’d have to ask Resi, but five, maybe? Six?”