Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Emily Skrutskie

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Larry Rostant

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Skrutskie, Emily, author.

  Title: Hullmetal girls / Emily Skrutskie.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2018] | Summary: Aisha Un-Haad, seventeen, and Key Tanaka, eighteen, have risked everything for new lives as mechanically enhanced soldiers, and when an insurrection forces dark secrets to surface, the fate of humanity is in their hands.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017038325 | ISBN 978-1-5247-7019-8 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5247-7021-1 (el)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Soldiers—Fiction. | Cyborgs—Fiction. | Insurrection—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S584 Hul 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524770211

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To the Kung Fu Panda 2 soundtrack

  In the quiet of the early morning, before the Reliant’s lights begin to glow, I plan two funerals.

  The first is for my little brother. Amar lies in the far corner of the room, a mask over his face to keep him from breathing his affliction into the rest of us. He’s mercifully asleep, and part of me hopes he’ll stay that way until I leave. With the wasting fever’s claws in his tiny body, he needs every moment of rest he can get. His funeral—if it happens, if the worst happens, if I fail—will be a proper Ledic ceremony. A temple service, a reading from the scripture, a procession to the airlock. Prayers for his soul’s journey following him into the vacuum of space.

  The second funeral is my own. All it takes is the scratch of my initials at the bottom of a datapad. There will be no service, no scripture, no procession for me. If I don’t survive the procedure, my body will be incinerated before anyone has a chance to pray over it. There’s an option to return a portion of the ashes to the Reliant, but there are no half measures with a true Ledic burial. I’ve accepted that I’ll never get one.

  “Aisha?” I turn to the door, where my aunt Yasmin stands silhouetted by the light in the hall. Her hair is loose from its usual plait, and it makes her even more of a stranger than she already is. “Did you sleep?”

  I shake my head, holding up the datapad. Yasmin slips into the dark of the room and pulls it out of my hands. The glow of the screen deepens the wrinkles at the edge of her eyes and swells the dark bags beneath them.

  When she reaches the end of the page, she gives me a sharp look. “You’re sure?”

  I flinch. Of course I’m not sure. Of course I’m scared to pieces. Ever since I showed up on her doorstep mere hours ago, she’s been asking variants on the same question. Aren’t there other options? Is this really what Amar needs? You know there’s no coming back from this, right?

  My empty stomach keens, and I swallow back the sour taste in my throat. Fasting to conserve money for Amar bled easily enough into fasting for the surgery. Between that and the recent recruiting drive, it almost feels like fate. Providence. A sign I’m meant to walk down this path. None of that is enough to pull the fear out of my heart.

  So I’ll just have to do it scared. “This is everything you’ll need to get the first payments,” I say, nodding to the datapad. “And instructions for if…”

  A glance at the corner of the room finishes the sentence I can’t bring myself to end. Silence settles over us, broken only by the slight noises of Amar breathing against the mask and the deeper, ever-present hum of starship machinery.

  “Aisha,” Yasmin starts.

  I sink my face in my hands, my fingers pushing back the edge of my headscarf. “Don’t,” I breathe. There are no better options, and even if there were, there wouldn’t be time to take them. At the rate Amar’s illness is progressing, he’ll be sent into quarantine aboard the starship Panacea before any treatment I can afford will take hold. And if he goes into quarantine, he won’t survive it. I can’t let Yasmin sway me.

  But instead of wheedling, her voice drops low and urgent. “There’s something I need your help with. After you’re…”

  This morning is filled with sentences we can’t seem to finish. I pull my hands down over my mouth, breathing out my nose into the space between my fingers. Wariness tugs at me, nudging through the quiet terror that’s kept me up all night. “What is it?”

  In the half-light from the hall, I can’t quite read her expression. My aunt purses her lips, her brows lowering. “I need you to—”

  A sudden burst of coughing from the corner of the room interrupts us. I push past Yasmin, dropping to my knees at my brother’s side as he shudders back into consciousness. “Easy, easy,” I whisper, pulling the bottom of my headscarf up over my nose. Love and revulsion wage war inside me, but in the end I know I can’t touch him.

  Amar blinks slowly. His eyes are slightly gummed at the edges. Furious purple tracks run down his face, the undeniable marks of the disease etched into his skin. “Hurts,” he croaks.

  Yasmin’s hand lands on my shoulder. “The shuttle leaves soon. I’ll go get Malikah up to say good-bye.”

  I nod, trying to keep my breathing shallow as my heart balloons inside my chest. With no sleep and no food in my stomach, I’m struggling to grasp the reality of this moment. This is happening, I tell myself. I’ve made my choice. I can’t back down.

  Yasmin slips out the door, leaving it open so the light floods in. Amar’s eyes roll as he takes in the room—sparse décor, threadbare red drapery, the ceiling cracked in unfamiliar places. “Where are we?” he whimpers.

  I clamp my free hand under my arm to keep from reaching
out and brushing away the hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. “We went to Yasmin’s,” I tell him softly. “She’s going to look after you now. She’ll make sure you get better.”

  His face screws up with alarm. “You’re leaving?”

  I make soft shushing noises into the fabric of my headscarf. “I have to go. I…” I hesitate, stuck on how I can explain the economics of my choice to a six-year-old without sounding like I’m blaming him for what’s about to happen. He’s too sick for me to leave him alone anymore, but my janitor’s salary isn’t enough to pay for his care. “I’m taking care of the money, so you don’t have to worry and Malikah doesn’t have to work.”

  I don’t specify how I’m taking care of things. In his feverish state, it’ll only be fuel for nightmares that his weakened body might not be able to handle. It’s best for him to rest now, which means it’s best I get out of here fast. I bow my head, breathing out a soft prayer as Amar’s eyelids droop.

  “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” I promise him. “I’ll just…I’ll just be a little taller.”

  * * *

  —

  They take Pascao into the surgery before me, and fifteen minutes later, they’re wheeling out his broken, twisted body.

  He’s the fourth person to die today, but the first I remembered to pray for. Guilt hums through me, and I duck my head as the gurney trundles past and veers down the hall to the incinerator. Pascao gave up his seat for me when I arrived in the overcrowded waiting room. He helped me read the orientation docs, filling in the places where my vocabulary failed and puzzling with me over what things like purity of integration and biostasis meant. He smiled a lot, and he was volunteering for similar reasons—a family in need, a sense of duty. I tell myself that’s why I prayed for him.

  I’m lying, though. If those were my reasons, I’d be muttering strains for everyone in this line. With unrest growing in the Fleet and a slew of Fractionist rebels arrested just last week, the General Body has launched a recruitment drive. The waiting room is crowded with desperate people answering the call, and every single person here runs the same risk as Pascao.

  But I prayed for the old man because I needed the distraction. It isn’t even fair of me to call him “old man.” He certainly isn’t anywhere near the ideal recruitment age, but he’s only in his late forties. Was only in his late forties when they tried to strap an exorig on him and it snapped him in half. I prayed for him because I’m next in line.

  But prayer can’t do anything for the Godless grip of Scela machinery.

  The techs beckon me toward the surgery doors, and bile rises in my throat. I stand, swaying slightly, and for a moment I’m terrified my legs will give out before I can even make it out of the waiting room. It’s for Amar. It’s for Malikah. The salary will pay for medicine and food and shelter with Yasmin, and my siblings will never know how cruel the Reliant can be to kids with nothing left.

  The thought steadies me. My purpose is unshakable.

  Hollow gazes follow me as I set off toward the point of no return. Only the desperate volunteer to become Scela, signing away their bodies and their autonomy to the General Body’s command. I used to wonder how desperate someone would have to be to make that pact, knowing that in all likelihood they’d end up twisted and broken like Pascao. That willingness is rare enough that there’s barely a prescreening beforehand. A few quick tests when I checked into the ward confirmed that my body was healthy and my muscles could weather the procedure. It could have been even faster—with one look at my hands, roughened from years of working deck janitorial, they’d find everything they needed to know about my mettle.

  But the real test is on the other side of the surgery doors. So I leave my desperate fellows behind and let those doors whisper shut at my back as I enter the last place I’ll ever be fully human.

  The surgery is sparse and stark, pared down to only the essentials and scrubbed unnaturally clean. My gaze fixes on the saddle sitting in the middle of the room, riddled with restraints for every part of my body they could possibly tie down. A red-tinged drain is embedded in the floor beneath it. Even though the room smells horribly of antiseptic, I can still catch a bit of the raw iron scent of blood in the air. I cringe, thinking of Pascao’s smiling eyes, of his soul’s unmooring in this very seat.

  My gaze turns up to find the thing that did it. The exorig gleams in the bright lights, its surface wet with the chemicals used to wipe away any trace of its last victim. The length of its spine curls over on itself like a massive metallic insect. It’s suspended over the saddle, and there’s something taunting about the low hum of the room’s machinery. Are you the one? it seems to ask. Are you the one who’ll survive me?

  A technician takes my arm, startling me back into the moment. He flips my hand palm-up so he can strap on a diagnostic bracelet. The device is lined with microspikes that prick into my skin, sampling my blood, assessing my condition one final time. “You’ll have to take that off,” he says, nodding to my headscarf.

  I reach up for the pins that hold it in place, but my fingers fumble when I try to pull them out. Devoted Ledics cover their hair as the scripture suggests, but I was never really devoted until my parents passed into God’s care. I thought that if I was faithful to the letter of the old texts, it would ease their souls’ journeys after being ripped so violently from their bodies. Taking it off now feels like an insult to their memory, but I know I don’t have a choice. I finally tug the pins free with shaking hands and slowly unravel the fabric until my hair spills out.

  I feel lighter. A new shard of guilt plunges into my stomach, joining the tepid mix already brewing there. I’m doing this for the right reasons, I remind myself. Nothing happens without sacrifice.

  “Aisha Un-Haad, seventeen years old, from starship Reliant, Seventh District?” The tech’s voice is nasal and monotone, as if he’s numb to the horror of this room.

  I nod. I haven’t fully processed that I’m not in Seventh District anymore, that I’ve shipped all the way from the rear of the Fleet to its head. The smooth hum of this First District ship’s machinery is a constant reminder that I’m miles away from the Reliant and everything I’ve ever known. Even the air on this ship is different—crisper, colder, cut with chemicals that sterilize it.

  The technician plucks my scarf from my hands and tosses it into a cart pushed up against the wall that I overlooked while I was fixated on the exorig. Beneath it, I catch the glint of a watch, a fine silver chain, a hairband. Scela aren’t allowed to keep their personal effects, and the people who leave this room without an exorig won’t be needing them either.

  A second tech comes up behind me and starts working the back of my smock open. I flinch away from her, and she rolls her eyes. “Girlie, it won’t be anything I haven’t seen before,” she scolds me, then goes back to tugging the ribbon that holds the garment shut. I flush when she succeeds, folding my arms over my chest as soon as she peels the smock off my shoulders and ties it off around my waist. “Honestly, you Ledics,” she mutters.

  I grit my teeth, swallowing the snappy reply that burns in my throat. She probably thinks I’m some sort of fundamentalist nutjob, even though no fundie would ever corrupt their body the way I’m about to. People outside our faith just like finding excuses to sneer at us.

  The male technician steers me over to the saddle, and I uncross my arms reluctantly as I settle into it and lean forward against the bracing board. From the staging area outside the surgery, I heard Pascao’s screams. And I heard that perfect, dreaded silence when they stopped. As the technicians wind the restraints around my arms, I press my head into the cradle and squeeze my eyes shut. Ledic faith has no prayers for body modification, so I murmur a section of the Morning Strain instead, pleading with God for peace and success on this day as the bindings winch tighter.

  “We can’t sedate you for this part,” the female technician reminds me. Something in he
r voice tells me she wishes it were otherwise. I wonder how many times she’s watched this process. “Neural integration relies on full consciousness,” she continues. “The exo has to get to know you so it can calibrate. Kinda like a handshake. Once that’s done, we’ll numb you down for the rest.”

  A clamp settles over my head, and the saddle tilts until I’m staring at that drain in the floor. I wonder how much of me is going to end up flowing through it.

  The techs wipe my back down with cloths drenched in some sort of cleaning solution. A chill sinks into my bones, and I shudder. One of the techs pulls my hair forward, twisting it together in a knot and binding it. The low buzz of a razor sculpts a bare path to my brainstem.

  I have to keep telling myself that I chose this. That this is a sacrifice, but it will be rewarded. That the survival rate of wasting fever in six-year-old boys is next to nothing without treatment. With a janitor’s salary, I could never afford it. With Scela money, I might. I must.

  “We’re ready to start,” the male technician calls, and somewhere above me, machinery whirls to life. The woman crouches by my head and offers up a plastic cylinder. I’m lost for a moment, until I realize I’m supposed to bite down on it. I open my mouth, and she slips it between my teeth.

  When my jaw clenches, the tears start.

  The exorig above me is dripping. Warm liquid spatters across my back, but it’s nothing compared to the hot tears that roll down my nose and disappear into the drain on the floor. My first libations to the rusty hole, and they’re nothing but a few drops of salt water. That’ll change soon.