Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  A central device made from the same material as the inside of the orb is embedded in the bottom of the orb. It is the size of my thumb. A green light glows inside it and I sense frequencies flowing between it and the parasite in my head the same way I found Victra in the woods.

  Cortical implant diagnostic complete.

  A long list of green characters appears in the air in front of me. I reach out to touch them. But they aren’t there. I swipe at them with my hand and they scroll downward. The list goes on and on, none of it making any sense to me.

  Figment functionality impaired. Seek repairs at the Womb upon soonest convenience.

  Seek repairs? To a parasitic implant in my brain? Where the hell would I do that?

  Geolocation function unavailable. Mobile uplink unavailable.

  The parasite is reading my mind. What is the implant?

  A gift from Astarte.

  Who the hell is Astarte?

  She was you.

  What does that mean? No response. What is Figment? How do I get repairs? No response except a reminder to seek repairs. Bloodyhell. Was the Brown woman Figment, or is Figment the parasite? Was she being controlled by it? Am I? Could I be if I got repairs? If I can get repairs, someone out there must know. Does that someone control the parasite? Would they control me?

  Volga seemed to think Figment was just a woman, but Victra knew better. It doesn’t make any sense, and right now I don’t really give a shit. Apparently I expected the orb to contain a rocket launcher or something.

  I prod through the supplies. Nothing is labeled in a language I understand. And each device is as inert and bizarre as the next. There are small blue disks set in gel. A black nasal inhaler with assorted cartridges. A silver device that looks like it goes around an eye, with a tiny needle injector. A credit ring with Republic markings. A credit ring with Society markings. A credit implant with peculiar winged symbols. A case of a hundred pebble-sized balls in different colors. A selection of iris implants, in all fourteen colors. A titanium sphere. Vials of clear liquid. An armory of colored needles. A miniature pharmacy—of life takers or life givers, take your gamble. Passport implants, which sprout eerie holos of my face when I touch them. And a hundred other items I can’t begin to suss out the function for. But no bloodydamn gun. No magical broomstick. No teleportation device, unless it’s in one of the pills. No body armor. No universal com. No grenades. No damn manual. Not one thing I could use to somehow become a hero.

  “What does this shit do!” I beg. “Help me. Please.” The parasite does not reply. I hit my head, trying to jar its loose circuits. “Come on!”

  Implant functionality impaired. Seek repairs at soonest convenience.

  Fucker.

  Name-calling is a waste of neurons.

  Stupid parasite. Useless treasure. That’s what Figment meant when she said Volga could use it. That I didn’t deserve it. Tough shit. I’m all that’s here.

  I rifle through the rest of the contents, determined to find something that will help me. I frown when I open a long compartment around the bottom ring of storage. I pull out a small flexible magazine that looks like it would hold bullets or pills. But neither bullets nor pills fill the gel magazine.

  It is full of teeth.

  I start to laugh.

  I storm back into Maeve’s home. She’s lying in her daughter’s bed, crying. She doesn’t even bother to turn till I slam the door behind me. My eyes are bloodshot from smoke. My hair’s a rat’s nest. My pants are torn. I’m covered in soot and blood and carrying Figment’s orb in a half-burned blanket, and I’m in no mood for the drunk bastard in front of his little HC, or for the mother who hovered by the window chewing her nails like a frightened dumb goat as her daughter was raped across the street day after day.

  “How long those bastards gonna be before they take the girls back to the mine?” I ask.

  “Told you to get,” the husband says.

  I point my gun at his head. “Shut your copper gob. I got business with your wife.”

  He moves his mouth like a dumb mule and turns back to his HC, pretending to find the news program showing Republic ships gathering to fight the Obsidians for some reason or another to be more interesting than the muzzle of my gun. His wife stares at the wall as if trying to become it. “Maeve.” She doesn’t reply. She smells like she hasn’t washed in years when I crouch by her. “Maeve.” She won’t turn till I pull her ear. “You wanna see your Mora again?” I ask. “Do you want to see your baby girl?”

  She looks up and nods.

  “When do those bastards take the girls back to the mine?”

  “In the morning,” she says. “Inspection don’t last that long. And they don’t fly when the satellites are overhead. They’ll keep…” Her lips quiver like salted slugs. “They keep the wives in the base until they pass. Be on ten usually.”

  “Then you got till daybreak to make me look pretty enough to drop a drillboy’s jaw,” I say. “Can you do that? Gimme a little blush, curl this nest?”

  She smiles. Finally this is something she knows.

  “Little oil and an iron. I got one just behind the cupboard.”

  “Good, Maeve. Good. And I’m gonna need a pair of pliers. Small as you got.”

  BY MORNING, I’M SCHLEPPING over the frosted snow toward the base, trying not to limp for the pliers in my shoe. It’s bright and blue out and pretty enough for me to be pissed at the world for putting such a lovely face on such a shit-infested day.

  The sea lolls against the coast like a dancing gray lover. It spits little bursts of salt that coast up in the air and then drizzle down on my shiny curled hair. Maeve might be all closed up to a world that’s beaten the hell out of whatever pretty dream she had for herself when she was freed from the mines. But she knows how to make an escapee from a genocide look like a dumb mine lass with rosy cheeks and flailing skirts and nothin’ to her knowin’ except how to coax fatass spiders into puking silk and how to get rustblood drillboys spitting seed enough to populate a township.

  I stride down what counts as the main road for this whipped town, tucking my head like I’ve got something to hide. I got a bundle under my arm. It ain’t the orb. I left that buried in the cinders, and Ulysses with Maeve. All I got is a bucket of salted fish from Maeve’s pitiable larder and enough ankle showing for the Red Hand butcherboys smoking burners in front of the old base to forget about their morning snort of grayline. They make like bees to me. No manners. They’re conquerors. What they see is theirs. And they’re wondering how the Picker didn’t already take his wife tax of me.

  They pester about, asking questions. I act all domestic and frazzled, careening about like I’m a drunk sparrow trying to find gaps in the trees. They pull my hands, to see if I’ve a ring on. They hem me in and coax me into a smoke. I take a burner between my lips as one rests his hand on my ass, cupping inside the cheek, nearly where the magazine of teeth are secured by epoxy to my deeper parts. I act timid, like I can’t resist the absolute magnetism of his hand halfway up my ass. The other boys get jealous, and the biggest shoulders the other aside.

  “Never had a burner,” I say dozily to Biggest.

  “We got ’em by the carton back at the fortress,” he brags. I try not to tongue my aching gums. A good part of my gray matter wants to melt his face right there, or maybe aim a little lower. Another part feels bad for the stupid bastard. He’s pimply, not even in his twenties. He thinks he’s something because he’s got a gun and big hands and big shoulders. But the dumb fuck’s never seen a Telemanus in wargear or the Sovereign sitting there with a cup of tea and the weight of ten billion on her. He’s never seen Victra standing there like a god giving life to a baby that’d change the world if he ever got the chance to grow. If the dumb bastard did have a notion of his true size, he’d crumple up and die for understanding how petrifyingly small he actually is.

&nb
sp; I know how small I am. But I also know how small they are.

  The last part of my gray matter, the most important part, is occupied with the idea of melting the guts out of Harmony, sawing her head off, and feeding the rest of her to a fire. I’d have done it for Tiran alone, and maybe felt guilty. But then her stimmed-up rapists had to ruin my sister too. Had to butcher her children. Cut them with slingBlades like they were onions. Then they had to kill my pa when he couldn’t even walk. Then they had to nail a baby to a tree. I don’t give a piss if they’re human. If they got problems. If they got drugs in ’em. If they had hard lives. If they got reasons. All I know is one has his hand digging into my backside, and I’m smiling, bearing it because I know I’m gonna die. But I’m gonna take as many of them with me as I can, and maybe, just maybe, find out if my friends are still alive.

  The big one leads me toward the old base. Takes me around the shoulders, whispering so close I can smell the morning eggs and tobacco on his breath. His fingers graze my right tit. His boys saunter behind, half ripe jealous, half puffed up by his conquest. He steers me past the louses at the door, and tries to pull me sidelong into some room where he’ll rape me first, and then share me like a half-done burner.

  “Never been inside here!” I coo loudly in my best approximation of Maeve’s accent. “This is what it looks like! Sure there were Grays about once. Maybe Golds! Bellonas, weren’t they? I’ve always wanted to go to Olympia.”

  “Never mind about Olympia,” he says. “It’s a crow shithole now. In here’s where the fun is.”

  But the noise has perked the ears of bigger dogs, and before he can pull me into the room, one of the Picker’s boys comes around the corner. He’s a got a metal arm, kind eyes, and a beautiful head of rusty hair. “What you got there, Torrow?”

  “Oh, just a friend,” big Torrow says, all meek-like. “None yours, Duncan.”

  “You know the fish are under Harmony’s hand,” the handsome man says. He sips his coffee and those bright eyes of his look me over. He seems in his mid-twenties. Cocky, but a kindness to him.

  “Picker already got the tax,” my idiot says, tilting me away protectively. “This one’s an old maid. Prolly already got a canyon from three, four?”

  “You had little ones, miss?” Duncan asks me polite-like.

  “Not a one,” I say.

  “Husband?”

  “Gone and died,” I say.

  “Clan you?”

  “Beta.”

  “Omicron here.” He squints at me and smiles awkwardly. “How many years?”

  “Not but twenty,” I say.

  He snorts. “More like twenty-four.” He tosses the dregs of his coffee on the floor and takes one step toward Torrow, flicks his robot fingers, and the arm around my shoulders disappears. Torrow gives me a good push. “Take the slut,” he mutters. “Prolly got a dead cave anyhow.”

  Duncan politely tells me he’s gonna frisk me. He ain’t nearly thorough enough. When he’s done he wipes the snow off my face like he’s bringing me to shelter. He leads me on into a bigger room that’s got live computers and a few boys hunched over them. The Picker’s having breakfast of eggs and fish and pudding. “What’s what?” he asks when Duncan brings me in. Picker is lean and fox-like. Clever behind the eyes, and sinister as all hell.

  “Fresh catch,” Duncan says.

  “Fresh? She’s a relic.”

  “Might be, but seedless, so seems. And it’s better than babies.”

  “Already got the tax. Toss her back.”

  “Them’s kids,” Duncan says. “You know it ain’t right.”

  Picker eats his eggs and stares at him. “You said you didn’t need a wife.”

  “She ain’t for me. Some them girls ain’t even bled yet.”

  “So?”

  “So it ain’t right,” Duncan says, setting his hands on his belt. Whoever he is, he’s got some pull. Picker doesn’t take it as a challenge, but the other boys are watching.

  Picker pushes his eggs away and lights a burner. Through the smoke, he appraises me. “Spin her.” I get spun. Do my best to show as much ankle as my sister did when she danced. I laugh lightly, as if I’m dizzy from it.

  “You wanna husband?” Picker asks me. He’s got the bad eyes of a cave fish. He has to squint to see me right. I look down, all shy.

  “Long as he’s a good one,” I say. “I get to pick?”

  The men laugh.

  “No, lass,” Picker says. “You don’t get to bloody pick. HeadTalk does that. Best blood gets top mare. And you ain’t top mare. So you get what you get. Still want a husband?”

  I nod. “Better than smellin’ like fish day in day out.”

  * * *

  —

  A great show is made of giving me a little plate of dry eggs as they discuss what to do with me. The eggs are tasteless like everything else I’ve eaten since my spit boiled off my tongue. When I’ve scraped the last bit from my plate, Duncan leads me away to a room guarded by a couple lads. The smell of clustered bodies washes out as the door swings open. Near on twenty girls are nestled on old mattresses with dirty sheets, huddled together for fear.

  “Which of you’s the youngest?” Duncan asks.

  A girl who couldn’t be more than eleven points to a girl even smaller than her. “Lea is.”

  A look of pain goes across Duncan’s face as he kneels and motions her over. “You want to go home to your family, little one?” She nods, terrified. He extends a hand. She doesn’t take it until the other girls prod her forward. Duncan guides me into the room and takes Lea out.

  The door slams shut behind me.

  * * *

  —

  Half the girls dead silent, staring at the stained sheets like they’re reading palms. Others huddle together. With the boys gone, I look around in case there are plants, but if there are, they’re good enough actors to be in the Hyperion Opera. The room stinks of fear. Not one of them older than me, and to scared girls that means something.

  I cross my arms and say in a low whisper: “They’re going to rape all of us until we have brood.” They stare at me. “Then they’ll do it again, and again and again till your belly’s like an empty waterskin. Some o’ you will quit and take it. Rest of you they’ll hook on grayline and you’ll beg for prick just to get a high. They’ll prolly share those ones.” I look around at the wide eyes. Some of the girls have started to bawl. “How many of you have husbands?” I ask. A freckle-faced girl in her early twenties raises her hand. She nudges another girl, a little younger with long pigtails, until the girl raises her hand too. “How many of you are aged north of sixteen?” About half raise their hands. “How many of you had brothers or pas killed?” They all raise their hands. “How many had brothers or pas cry like babies as you were dragged away, but didn’t lift a bloodydamn finger?” They stare at me, all too ashamed to raise their hands. The dead are honored. The cowards are hidden. It’s all the answer I needed. This is right. “Any of you rats?” I glare around at them. “Good. ’Cause where I’m from, rats get their eyes stabbed out.”

  Some of the girls flinch. Freckles crosses her arms as if she’d like to see me try. The smallest of the girls, one with skin almost as dark as mine and a shaggy mane of hair, glares around at the other girls, daring them to be rats. Tails, the one with a husband, looks down.

  I reach back down my skirts and find the head of the strip of teeth. I jerk, wincing as the epoxy pulls off half my skin with it. Holding the strip in my hands, I pull the pliers from my shoe.

  With all of them watching, I stick the pliers in my mouth, secure the iron bits to my second back molar, and jerk hard. The tooth doesn’t come out straight, but I saw Victra plop out a baby standing up without a single yelp. I rock twice and jerk again, using both my arms. The blood pours down the back of my throat as the tooth and root burst out. I hold up the pliers, o
pen my mouth so they all see, and then I swallow the blood. I take another one of Fig’s teeth from my strip and shove it against the wound. There’s a sizzle, a pain that shoots through the root, through my nostril, into my eyes and brain. It’s the second I’ve put in. I wipe the blood from my lips and smile.

  Tails gives a little gasp. The rest of the girls look terrified except Freckles, who tilts her head, and the little one with the mane. We’ll call her Lion. She claps her hands together until Freckles shushes her.

  “I ain’t from here. Where I’m from, these fucks killed me whole clan,” I say. “I ain’t here to be no brood sow. I ain’t here to be no grayline whore. I ain’t here to be saved. I’m here to kill those bastards. Any of you sisters got similar intentions, you better speak up, or you’re gonna be a slag toy till you see the Vale.” I hold up the pliers. “So, who wants to save themselves?”

  Little Lion bounds forward.

  We swallow our pulled teeth so they don’t find them hidden under the mattresses. After I explained what Fig’s teeth do, Freckles got all but two of the girls to get in line. She held them down when I pulled the teeth, and made sure they were quiet. One wailed so hard the guards outside beat the door with their rifles. After their teeth were stripped, I secured each of Fig’s devices myself and Freckles helped Lion clean up their blood. I find out from the others that Lion is Mora—Brea’s sister. Only Tails and another smaller girl refused my offer.

  I sit down next to Tails as Freckles cleans up the last girl. She’s murmuring under her breath how we shouldn’t do this. How they’ll hurt us. I put an arm around her. “Listen, you don’t have to join in. All I need is you to be quiet, right? We’ll get you home.”

  “Y-you’re gonna get us all killed,” she says. “You’re crazy.”

  “Yeah,” I say, realizing nice isn’t gonna work. “Yeah, but you remember what I do to rats?”

  “She stabs their eyes out,” Lion says from behind me. Her hands are balled into tiny fists as she glares at Tails.