Onliest

by J Daniel Batt

  Above them, the clouds thundered again, and drops of rain began to pour down.

  “Go to your rooms. No one leaves Zondon until I say so. For any reason.” Neci turned and walked toward the exit. “And don’t be late for breakfast”

  Taji shouted after, her voice indignant, “You believe that story?

  Neci said, almost out of the room, not looking back, “I believe…that she believes that story.”

  30

  The First Murder

  “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

  —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

  The patter of rain draped over her, lulling her into sleep. She was tired. Her muscles ached. There was throbbing in her wrists where she had been held down by the Sisters. The bed was soft. The comforter warm. The room was quiet except for the rain and that only added weight upon her, pushing her into the dark of sleep.

  She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to close her eyes. Around her, beasts roamed. Wolves that looked like her. Wolves with her eyes and lips.

  But they aren’t me, she told herself.

  Their faces floated through the darkness of her room. There was a hunger to Neci. Anger in Taji. Something reluctant and broken in Kerwen. They were spin-offs of her own soul. She had felt that same desire that consumed Neci. She had lived in fear that it would all be taken away. Wasn’t that hunger the one that had led her to this Disc? The hunger for more than she had?

  If she was an Eve, she was the most Eve of all of them. Born in the Garden and tempted by the unknown that she could not possess. Everything at her fingertips in abundance, and yet, the possibility of something else on the other side of the gate had lured her. There had not been a snake though, no whispering seducer. It had just been her own need for someone else. She’d pursued her white rabbit.

  And now she was possessed in equal measures by the anger of Taji and the fear of Kerwen. She saw in their eyes what she felt, only her emotion was magnified in them as if the volume had been turned up. As if those emotions were all that was animating them.

  Taji seemed unable to feel anything but anger. The source of her survival? Had she powered through everything else with rage and clung to it now in fear that it might seep away or be stolen? Was rage comforting? Yes, it was. Syn knew deep in her heart that she had been angry at Blip and at Captain Pote and at the creators of the ship or the colonists over the years. In those moments, flouncing through Aja, anger was welcome. It was warm and compelling.

  She understood Pigeon too. Fearful and sad. That fear was a shadow that she had never escaped and even now, now as Syn drifted into the depths of sleep, that fear took a new form. She wasn’t scared of being alone. She was scared that these were the only companions she’d ever have. All she was had been contracted to that single room, to her own skin. She had never realized it before, but in her Disc, in her world, there were no borders to who she was. She felt she was the Disc. She ran and let herself be as big as it wanted. All was hers, and she was everything.

  But these new others reminded her that there were borders. Meeting the Sisters had communicated to her, you may go this far, but only this far. She was smaller than she had ever been.

  Had she shrunk even as she lay there? She dreamt of herself as a tiny figure lying on a vast ocean. She became smaller and smaller until she was about to disappear completely. As she dropped smaller, she found it hard to breathe. She took a breath and could not. The air was blocked. Her mouth was open, but she couldn’t breathe. She clawed at the air around her and found herself swimming up from the great ocean to some dark surface above her. Could she reach it? She had to. She was desperate for air. A meter away… With a rush, she swam toward the surface and broke through.

  She wasn’t swimming. She wasn’t a small figure forever shrinking. She was Syn, and she was lying in a bed in Zondon Almighty.

  And she still couldn’t breathe. She opened her eyes. In front of her, she looked into her own eyes. Her own gaunt face.

  No. Not her face. Pigeon. Pigeon was above her, straddling her and pinning her down with the girl’s hand across Syn’s mouth. Syn wasn’t suffocating. She could still breathe through her nose. She turned and worked to put a foot against Pigeon and move her off.

  The girl leaned forward and whispered with force, “Quiet. Shhh.”

  Syn wanted her off and pushed against the girl’s lithe frame, but Pigeon had the leverage and kept shifting against Syn’s struggles. Again, Pigeon said, “Please, be quiet. I’m not going to hurt you.” Her voice was not much more than just a slight breath. But in the emptiness of the room, the girl’s words sounded crisp and clear.

  There was no anger in Pigeon’s eyes and that was enough to move Syn to take a risk. She stopped struggling. Pigeon pulled up, and the weight on Syn relaxed, although the girl’s hand stayed planted on Syn’s mouth.

  “If I take my hand away, you must promise to not talk. I’m going to do all the talking for now. Do you understand? Nod if yes.”

  Syn understood. The burlys would hear. Pigeon was doing something she didn’t want the others to know about. Syn nodded. Pigeon lifted her hand up and put a finger to her lips. She glanced back over her shoulder to make sure that no one else was in the room.

  Syn moved her head and looked at the door too. It was shut tight. There was nothing disturbed at all. The girl had done it again. She could enter and leave without anyone noticing. A gift. An illusion. Or maybe a hidden path.

  Pigeon pulled the comforter back and crawled into the bed next to Syn. She grabbed the edge of the large, thick blanket and pulled it over their heads.

  Syn could no longer see the other girl. Under the comforter, she could see nothing. The sound of the rain was muffled but still a constant.

  She could feel warm breath as the girl inched closer, her lips a few inches from Syn. “They can’t hear us if we whisper.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Syn whispered.

  “You need to know about them,” Pigeon said, “They’re worse than you imagine. You must get away if you have the chance.”

  “Why don’t you leave then? If they’re so terrible, run away!” Syn pleaded, “You can get in and out of here without anyone knowing.”

  “No. Rooms are one thing. Shadows are one thing. Agayu is something else.”

  “Agayu?” Syn wasn’t sure what she talking about.

  “The Desert. I named it Agayu. Neci hates the name, but it is true. She called it Hell to fit her new world. But it does not respect that name. Agayu is angry. We never go out and in without a loss. She always demands a sacrifice. How you made it here is a mystery.”

  “It’s sand.”

  “It’s the dust of the thousand dead.”

  Syn grimaced at the image, and her memory of never being alone as they walked across the desert. Always a sense that someone was watching. “And their souls.”

  She could feel Pigeon nodding in agreement.

  Syn continued, “Are you scared?”

  Pigeon didn’t answer immediately. After a moment, she said, “Not of Neci.”

  “Then what?”

  “You should be scared of Neci.”

  “Pigeon, please—"

  “That’s not my name.”

  “I’m…” Syn started.

  Pigeon said, “My name is Avia.”

  “Avia,” Syn tried the name.

  “But you must call me Pigeon.”

  “But now? When they’re not here?”

  “No. You must not get used to that name. It is mine, but they don’t let me use it. I haven’t used it since we were thirty.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Time is of no matter here. I have stopped counting years. Instead, I count by the Sisters remaining. They gave me the name Pigeon when there were thirty of us only.”

  “How did you all die? I don’t understand. I—I survived,” Syn said.

&nbs
p; “Neci did not lie.”

  “The burlys?”

  “The lack of food. We awoke, and the world was in Madness. We left our individual crèches and discovered each other. We were all beautiful then. All of us in our white clothes, our hair beautifully combed and short. We assembled in the Collecting Room at the top of the Jacobs, in the needle. Even then, amidst the greetings and smiles and hugs, something felt wrong.”

  Syn felt a stab of jealousy. They had each entered the world and discovered each other. Friends that would walk the journey together.

  “There was no one from the ship to greet us. No Captain Pote. No officers. No celebration. We hadn’t been promised a celebration, but we expected someone to greet us. There was no one.”

  Adaora was the first out of her crèche. Neci came second. There were ten of the pods in which we were born in each white room. I was greeted by Laoule, and I imagined Neci was welcomed by Adaora the same way—a smiling face looking down at you, confused but excited that there’s someone else waking up.

  I wasn’t in the same room as Adaora and Neci—they were next door to us—so I never saw most of their interaction, but whenever all of us were together, discussing what to do, they were next to each, whispering and holding hands. Adaora was the first voice of all of ours. Perhaps, just because she had one extra moment of consciousness. For whatever reason, she often started our discussions and ended them.

  We didn’t have our Companions at the beginning. They weren’t there when we awoke. Just each other. They greeted us on the other side, near the Jacobs. They had been anxiously trying to get to us but couldn’t get in. Mine, a grumpy white ball I nicknamed Cord, insisted that they were supposed to be the first things we saw. That we shouldn’t have been woken up without them. I had always wondered what would’ve been different if they had been there—someone that understood the world we awoke into, someone that could help us discover our place in it.

  We only had a few days and nights of peace. Occasionally, we would hear loud explosions and screams, but we couldn’t get the doors into the rest of the needle to open for us.

  We didn’t need to.

  They came for us.

  I wish we would’ve hidden. But we didn’t. Metal strained against metal and labored breathing filled the gaps. Someone was breaking in.

  We rushed to greet them, anticipating rescue. Three large men, their faces scarred and bloodied, roared through the gap in the doors they worked to widen. The first faces that were not our own were filled with rage and desire.

  Some shouted to run, to hide. I was one of those voices.

  Adaora stepped forward to greet them, hoping to calm them. They pried the doors open wide enough to fit through and raced at her. In a flash, Adaora spun and kicked one of them, shattering his nose, and sent him to the ground screaming in pain. How she had done that none of us knew—but there was a power in her that spoke to the same ability in us.

  She missed the second man, however. He wrapped his hands around her neck and her screams filled the air.

  Neci was right in front of me, and she raced forward, panic on her face.

  The man snapped Adaora’s windpipe with his bare hands, flinging her to the ground. She flopped down, lifeless, her eyes open, tongue lolling out, the grease stains from the man’s fingers smeared on her neck.

  Neci leapt at him, grappling his neck and spinning around behind him. She was yelling Adaora’s name as she gripped the sides of the man’s head and broke his neck with a cracking twist, revealing her own strength, our own strength—unknown to us all at that moment.

  The first death we had ever seen was Adaora’s. The second had been judgment at Neci’s hands. She was the first of us to kill.

  She bounded to the third guy who was tearing at Taji’s clothes, pinning her to the ground. Neci snapped his neck too, pulling him off of the wailing Taji.

  By the time Neci turned to deal with the third one, the other sisters had taken her cue and rushed him. I think Kerwen was in that group. They were savage, ripping at the man and shredding his face and neck.

  When the danger passed, we all stood in silence around Adaora’s body. Those who had finished the final attacker were covered in his blood. Neci held Taji close. Taji’s eyes were shut tight as tears streamed down her face and onto her torn dress, her own dark body revealed through the rips.

  Neci’s voice was as quiet as I ever heard it. She wasn’t sad. Just…broken. She instructed us to get whatever we could to protect ourselves from the rooms and off of the dead men. We armed ourselves with crude implements and stepped out into Olorun.

  Our Companions greeted us, but we weren’t the innocent girls that they had hoped to find. We weren’t hungry for their guidance. We came armed, and we looked at them as tools more than friends. The extra presence of Adaora’s companion (I forget his name) only highlighted her death and their failure to be there to prevent it.

  Syn closed her eyes. She had been greeted by Blip in her first moments. He had been there to prepare her for the horrors outside. He had kept her in the white room, and she had endured that dull, dreary existence, yet, it had kept her alive. The boredom had forced her to train and study, to prepare herself for what lay outside—a privilege that the others had never had.

  Pigeon spoke, “She really didn’t insist on leading. At least, not at first. But we had all seen what she did. We saw her reach around that man’s head, and in a flash, he was dead. What stayed with me, stayed with most of us, was her face. There was no regret. There was nothing but action. It was a mirror, but a mirror drained of any color. That sliver of extra strength…We were all perceptive enough to see her distinctions in every action after that moment. Even if we all came out of crèches identical, she had killed first. She had made that decision. So we all followed her. We didn’t vote. It was just a subtle change. We still talked through everything, but it was her opinion that influenced the most. Like Adaora before her, Neci’s words usually ended the discussions.”

  Pigeon had moved closer as she talked. Syn could feel the movement of the girl’s mouth as she formed the words. Syn shut her eyes and floated in the subtle sensation. The intrusive freedom of another. Pigeon formed words differently. She clipped her vowels faster. Syn was awed by that very fact and her own fascination with this thin girl lying next to her. A distorted mirror image of herself, and yet, through disparate choices and chances, this one spoke unlike Syn. Perhaps, Syn wondered, she did so because she was scared of her own voice? Or she was always in a rush to finish talking quickly. Anything to reduce attention to herself.

  “Several of us died that first day. The colonists on the ship had already gone insane.”

  “The Madness,” said Syn.

  “Madness,” agreed Pigeon.

  “Where did it come from? How?” Syn asked, hoping that someone else might have answers that had eluded her. She tried to stifle the confusion in her voice. By the time Syn had awoke, they were all dead on her Disc. Had the others woken earlier than she had? So why was she different? Why was she alone? Why had she been separate?

  “I don’t know. Maybe Neci figured it out. I don’t think so.”

  “They all went crazy.”

  “All of them,” Pigeon acknowledged.

  “Even Captain Pote.”

  “Maybe. I’ve wondered what happened to his daughters.”

  Had Pigeon stared at the videos of Pote’s family with fascination the same as me? Did she dream as well what it felt like to sit at their dining table? Did she ever wonder what it felt like to have those girls as sisters? Perhaps not. Or if so, only briefly. Having forty others would eliminate that ache quickly.

  Pigeon continued, “We went down in the elevator and found ourselves in the middle of a riot. They were killing each other. I saw big knives and shovels. A few were riding the floaters and running people over. Neci and several of the others managed to push through to a nearby building. One of the recreation houses next to the swimming pools. We barricaded ourselves in. There were two
others inside, but we didn’t see them when we entered. We shut the door, and they appeared from shadows. We managed to kill them, but they killed one of us in the fight. They badly wounded another. Within a day, her wounds proved fatal. Jos and Nimm. Three down by then.”

  “Our companion bots seemed just as distraught as we were. They were frantic. Zipping around and looking through windows. Sometime that next night, the bots of the three dead shut down. They must’ve been declared useless by the others.”

  A sense of guilt panged inside Syn. Would Blip shut himself down if she died? Was he that loyal to her? She had always felt he was obligated to serve her, but that if she was gone, he’d find something else to do. Perhaps not. Or, was he shut down at that moment because he was certain she was dead? Had he concluded that there would be only one outcome once they went down to the second Disc? Had he just given up knowing that she’d die? If so, how would she turn him back on?

  From outside the room, something clicked and a muffled voice spoke. It was far away, far down the empty hall. Syn couldn’t grasp the words.

  She expected Pigeon to rush away. Instead, the girl scooted closer. She put her lips on Syn’s ear. The rush of air sent a shiver down Syn’s spine, and her fingers groped for Pigeon’s hand. Their hands met, their fingers interlaced, and Syn gripped tightly.

  Pigeon spoke, “It wasn’t the mad ones who killed most of our Sisters.”

  The shiver continued, but it was no longer because of Pigeon’s touch. Instead, she understood Pigeon’s meaning and her dread regarding Neci was substantiated.

  Pigeon’s next words were like the raindrops outside—a stream without pause, “There was nothing but the Madness. We talked about the cause, and the only thing we could think was that maybe humans—normal humans, that is—aren’t capable of traveling this far into space. Their minds couldn’t adapt. Maybe if the entire ship had been us. Maybe if they had made some Adams.