Hullmetal Girls

by Emily Skrutskie

  Today it feels like it would be a miracle if I could even lift a finger. I’m trapped in a five-hundred-pound, seven-foot-tall rag doll, seething through my teeth as I roll my face over the cool linoleum. Getting off the floor feels as unlikely as the Fleet finding a habitable world, and being ready to start basic by the end of the two-week observation seems mathematically impossible.

  I’d settle for just quiet and stillness, but my body won’t even let me have that. As a human, I could forget about my breathing and my heartbeat. But as a Scela, I’m constantly assaulted with the facts of my existence. I can’t tune out the exo—in some ways, the exo is me. Its thought process is woven so tightly into my own that sometimes I can’t tell us apart.

  I press my palm down on the floor, mutter a strain of scripture, and suddenly it’s starkly clear that the exo is not me and never will be. Religion, I’ve quickly discovered, is an alien concept to the machine on my back. It can see the logic of having something to believe in, but the notion of faith escapes it entirely. It wants concrete facts. Clear causality.

  It doesn’t want me. And I can’t escape that—not when it’s sewn through my biology in a way that can never be undone.

  But if I can’t get my feet under me, I’m useless as a Scela, and then my sacrifice will have been for nothing. At ten years old, Malikah will have to take up the burden I’ve been carrying since fifteen, and no ten-year-old should have to carry a family on her back. No fifteen-year-old should have to, either, but Seventh District isn’t the kind of place that has anything left to spare when your life unravels in the span of an afternoon.

  Yasmin wasn’t an option back then. Growing up, I felt like I only knew my aunt in the ways she contrasted my mother. She was severe and standoffish to my mother’s bright warmth, atheistic to her unshakable faith, cautious to her cheerful flirtatiousness. They’d always kept their distance from each other, but just a few weeks before the riots that changed everything, Yasmin had come by. I watched from a crack in the door as my mother and her sister spoke in hurried whispers that slowly became louder until my mother was shoving Yasmin away, warning her to never come near our family again. I never found out what they fought about. All I knew was that after that day, my mother made each of us swear on the temple to never talk to Yasmin again. From then on, my aunt was a stranger, a ghost, a memory.

  When we lost our parents less than a month later, I did everything in my power to keep us away from our aunt’s door. There were times when I almost caved. When the money was thin, when the orphanage Yasmin runs loomed over me on my walk to work. Every time, my vow to my mother burned in my veins. I had sworn. I had sworn on the temple.

  But on the night those purple tracks showed up on Amar’s forehead, I finally gave up. I went to her door with Malikah on my heels and Amar swaddled in a sheet, cradled in my arms. I begged and bargained, my oath crumbling to dust, and I promised God I would do everything in my power to justify breaking it. And the next morning, I was on a shuttle to the Dread, begging for absolution with a hand pressed against its hullmetal.

  My sacrifice has to be rewarded. I summon every drop of willpower in me and urge my arms to push against the floor. Instead, my muscles snap taut, straining against every new fiber and wire and support strut woven through them. I clamp my teeth together and let out a snarl that sputters into a low, frustrated groan.

  This can’t be happening. I didn’t survive the integration and conversion just to be reduced to a useless, fuming beast. I try to calm my mind with a prayer, but the exo’s thoughts spiral through my own. It’s not hullmetal you’re praying against, it’s a linoleum floor, and anyway, prayer against hullmetal is derived from the old engineers’ practice of listening at the ships’ walls to identify mechanical failures. God isn’t going to push you up off this—

  “Stop,” I hiss out loud. “Stop it, stop, stop, st—”

  The recovery room’s door swings open, and Isaac sweeps in, crouching unsteadily at my side as two of his juniors follow in his wake. “Good morning, Aisha,” he says. His voice is calm, but both of the assistants behind him maintain a wary distance.

  “Hi,” I reply flatly.

  “The call button is there for a reason.”

  I frown at the little red trigger that’s been taped to my wrist. I shouldn’t need it. I was walking yesterday. “Doesn’t…make any sense,” I grind out.

  “Recovery isn’t always a linear process,” Isaac says. He shifts to stretch out his braced leg, leaning forward to balance on his knee. “You had a really good day yesterday, and that’s great, but you have to get used to working with the exo if you want to keep improving. Remember, we talked through this. You’re giving orders to the exo, and the exo—”

  “—tells my body what to do. I know. I know. But then I try, and…” I heave again, floundering for the right way to “order” the exo. I was never the kind of person who gave orders when I was human, so it’s no wonder I’m lost on how to do it as a Scela. Something clicks just enough that I’m able to get myself propped up on my elbows, but I can’t hold on to it and end up stuck, my head drooping forward between my shoulder blades in a way that pulls uncomfortably at the support struts balancing its massive weight on my shoulders. And that just reminds me of all the other metal laced through my biology, of the exorig clamped onto my spine, of the way a wicked ridge now rises out of my split, shaved skull—

  “Aisha,” Isaac warns, and I realize I’ve started seething again. “I don’t want to hook you back into the monitor, but if you keep stressing yourself like this—”

  “Sir?” A third assistant pokes his head through the door. “Sorry, but the glitchy one’s acting out again, and—”

  Isaac scrambles to his feet, pushing up his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Spirits, this batch, I swear. Help her back into bed,” he orders the other two juniors, before limping out of the room without another word.

  The juniors move to grab my arms, but I let out a deep, savage snarl that sends them skittering back and earns me a little ping of approval from the exo. “Sorry,” I whisper. “Please, just…I want to do this on my own.”

  One hesitates. The other sets her hand on his shoulder. “One more shot,” she says, a tremulous note of encouragement in her voice.

  I let out a long, slow breath, thankful that at least that’s still as easy as…well, breathing. My eyes drop shut, and I turn my thoughts toward the exo on my back. I can feel the machine scrutinizing me, weighing and measuring, trying to decide if I add up to a worthy vessel.

  I think about what I want to do. About giving orders. When I was a janitor on the Reliant’s intership deck, I did nothing but follow the instructions I was given. Authority was never a part of the job description.

  But I wasn’t just a janitor. I was the oldest child, too.

  I think of every time Amar threw a tantrum. Every time Malikah tried to stay up reading into the darkest hours of the night. Every time I had to act as a substitute parent, wrangling my brother’s rambunctious energy and my sister’s unstoppable mind. It didn’t feel natural at first, but I worked up to it.

  The exo seems bemused by my thought process. You think controlling a Scela body is like chasing down a six-year-old? Like telling a girl to get dressed for temple?

  I don’t bother to counter it. Instead, I breathe deeply, hold those memories in the part of my head that’s still mine, and push.

  My torso lifts smoothly off the ground. I pull my knees underneath me, then push again, trying my best to ignore the awkward length of my limbs and the twinge of artificial muscles still settling into place. With a heave that feels monumental enough to knock a starship out of its tier, I rise to my feet.

  A grin breaks over my face, uncontrollably wide thanks to the augmentations. I can do this. I can command my body, be the perfect tool I was sculpted into, earn my place in the Scela ranks. I can carry the weight of the exo on my back�
�it’s nothing compared to what I’ve borne already.

  I may not be a useful Scela yet. But I will be damned if I’m not a useful sister.

  * * *

  —

  The door swings open with a rush of warm air from the corridor. At first I ignore it. It’s just Isaac, here to run more tests and tell me again that No, the Dread is kept under a communications lockdown and there’s no way to contact your family.

  Except that it isn’t. It’s my fourteenth day as Scela, the last in the recovery ward. My exo does the initial processing, scooping the audio from my ears and urging me to notice that the footfalls are far heavier than those of anyone who’s entered this room in the past few days. I roll over and find myself face to face with a towering Scela woman. For a moment, panic drenches me, a knee-jerk reaction to spotting a Scela. My human remnants go live with fear that I’m about to be evicted, that they’ve come to take my siblings away. But the exo calms me. With a soft nudge, it reminds me that I’m Scela too. This woman is my kind. We belong to the same world.

  But we’re not the same—not even close. Everything about her screams easy confidence with her hyperpowered body. She wears the metal of the full rig, each port in her skin melded to pistons and armor that turn her into a walking tank. Her platinum-blond hair is cleaved in half by the exo’s ridge protruding from the top of her skull. The rest of it is tied back in a braid that weaves around her enhancements. This woman looks like she could tear a starship in half.

  I feel like an infant next to her, and the fuzz on my skull isn’t helping.

  “Marshal Gwen Jesuit, head of basic,” she says, extending a hand for me to shake. I stand and take it, surprised at how my grip matches hers. After two weeks of Isaac’s and his assistants’ cautious distance, two weeks away from my siblings for the first time in my life, I’m starved for contact. A handshake shouldn’t be overwhelming, but it hits me somewhere deep in my chest. The exo scoffs, herding me away from the sensation.

  In her other hand is a bundle of clothes. “Brought you your training gear. Report to Gym Deck in ten minutes.” Processing her request, the exo starts a little countdown. She foists the bundle into my hands and turns for the door.

  “I don’t know where that—” I start, but before I get a chance to finish, Marshal Jesuit knocks her knuckles into the side of her exo.

  “Ship’s layout is all up here. Let it do the thinking.”

  A wary prickling runs up my spine, but the exo is quick to soothe it, reminding me that this is exactly what I signed up for when I became a living weapon. The second Marshal Jesuit closes the door, I shuck out of my loose smock and sweats.

  The jumpsuit she’s given me seems intimidatingly complicated. The garment is covered with vents that line up with my ports, and the shoulders are a mess of straps that, as far as I can tell, are supposed to go under the support struts that balance the exo’s weight. The exo itself nudges me in the right direction, suggesting just how I should move my fingers to finagle the clasps. It takes three of my countdown’s minutes to make sure I’ve got everything on right.

  Then I try the door. At last, it opens when I turn the handle, and for once the thoughts between the exo and me slip into perfect harmony as a quiet thrill overtakes me.

  I want to run. My muscle control has locked in, and with joy crackling through my nerves, there’s nothing holding me back. I bare my teeth in a grin and take off down the hall, blowing past Isaac as he limps out of what looks to be his office. “Careful!” he shouts after me. “I don’t want to waste my evening rebuilding any part of your anatomy.”

  I wave over my shoulder as I barrel around the corner.

  A quick consultation of the ship’s schematics in my exo reveals that Gym Deck is right around the corner from Medical. A few more turns and I’m there, with three minutes to spare. When I enter Gym Deck itself, the part of my brain that’s still from a Seventh District ship immediately freezes. The Reliant had a habitat dome, a vaulted ceiling painted in an approximation of sky that looms over the buildings beneath, but I’ve never been in a room this open before. There’s no attempt to hide the ceiling behind cloudy murals—it’s just a crisscrossed tangle of beams dotted with blinding industrial lamps. Even with my exo whispering in my head, the unnatural space sends something primal inside me reeling for comfort, for enclosure, for cover.

  I’m jolted out of my shock by a Scela girl brushing past me. She’s about my age, dressed in a jumpsuit like mine, her head similarly shaved and her resealing skin similarly fresh. But unlike me, she doesn’t seem to be all that impressed by the size of the room. Her dark eyes sweep over a group of Scela running in a pack at the far end of the deck. She pauses with momentary interest when she spots a group doing combat drills, then finally fixes her gaze on me.

  “Aisha Un-Haad,” I say, offering my hand, trying not to be overeager about it.

  She doesn’t take it. Straightening her back, she says, “Key Tanaka.”

  The exo works to suppress a tinge of embarrassment rising in me as I drop my hand. Key has a haughty tilt to her chin that can only come from a First District upbringing. I thought that kind of thing wouldn’t matter once we’d been wrapped in Scela metal. The exo reassures me it doesn’t, but it means very little in the face of Key’s dismissal. This girl immediately saw through me, saw my backendedness, and saw that it wasn’t worth it to shake my hand.

  I try a different approach, my voice shakier than before. “Is this…How long have you been Scela?”

  Key’s lips part like she’s about to answer the question, but a look of momentary confusion flickers across her features before any words make it out. “Probably about as long as you have,” she says at last, though my exo reads what’s written over her face. She doesn’t know, it whispers, then clamps down on the shudder threatening to work its way up my spine. My exo started keeping a careful internal clock the moment it was integrated. Is a Scela’s relationship with their exo not a uniform experience? Or is there something wrong with the way the exo’s been threaded into my mind?

  A shard of panic slices through me, but before my exo has a chance to respond, another young Scela wanders through the Gym Deck doors. He flashes a mischievous smile when he sees us, then jogs over and sticks out his hand. “Woojin Lih,” he says.

  Key ignores him, but I step forward and shake his hand before the moment has a chance to get awkward, my skin warming soothingly at the feel of his palm against mine. “Aisha Un-Haad.”

  His grin goes sly, and my exo points out how human it looks. We aren’t supposed to be human anymore, but something about this boy is dancing circles around the machine strapped to his back.

  It’s almost repulsive, I realize. Humanness in the metal-laced boy in front of me is nothing short of unsettling, and it’s not just the exo thinking that.

  My wary processing is interrupted when Marshal Jesuit calls out, “Good, you three made it on time.” We whirl to find her at the door with another young Scela at her side, a girl with rich brown skin. “This is Praava Ganes. She’ll be the fourth member of your squad.”

  Praava tips her hand, her smile broad, exaggerated by the lack of fine control her enhanced muscles have over her face. Her eyes are unaffected, focused, and calculating, just the way they’re meant to be. A perfect Scela smile, my exo thinks with approval. I grin back.

  “You four are the latest Scela to make it through integration and conversion,” the marshal continues.

  My smile snaps shut, and I swallow, thinking of how many people passed the screening, how many people sat in that waiting room outside the surgery with me. Twenty? Thirty? I barely remember their faces—I was too lost in my own fear.

  All those people. Four of us. I offer a quick whisper of prayer for their souls’ journeys.

  “Today marks the beginning of your basic training. Due to the recent uptick of Fractionist activity in the Fleet, we’ll be on
an accelerated schedule—the General Body needs good Scela in the field now more than ever. Over the course of the next month, I’ll be evaluating your performance as a squad against the current Scela ranks. At the end of those twenty-eight days, you’ll graduate as a functional Scela unit and begin your specialization training. What tier you specialize in will depend on your performance in basic.”

  My exo keeps my face neutral as a vicious tumult takes over what’s left of my organic mind. There are seven tiers of Scela pay, with duties ranging from the lowest patrol to the Scela elite, who hunt down enemies of stability in the Fleet. A middling Scela salary is enough to get Amar basic care, but if we end up with a good assignment, there’s an even better chance he’ll survive his illness. If we end up on patrol duty…well, it will take some budgeting.

  Maybe the Fractionist movement will help us out on that front. For the most part, they’ve been little more than irritants. Their demands to split up the Fleet and spread out our search for the next good world were just background noise in the form of propaganda casts that briefly overtook the channels. Easy to tune out. But occasionally their actions turn dangerous—dangerous enough to put our ships in jeopardy. Dangerous enough that the General Body wants them stopped. And just a couple weeks ago, a Scela task force arrested a Fractionist cell in one of the First District ships, proving that the movement’s roots and resources were more abundant than previously thought. It got the General Body spooked, and the announcement of a Scela recruitment drive was fast to follow.

  They certainly aren’t looking for more people on the patrol level—they need Scela who can help root out the Fractionists. But that means the pressure’s on us to fulfill that need.

  The marshal glances between us. “From here on out, you’ll be spending six days a week linked together in an exosystem. It can be disorienting at first.”