Inkers

by Alex Rudall

  And now, somehow, she was pregnant. She couldn’t remember much of that night. Despite how much Tom sometimes annoyed her, she trusted him completely. However much ink he took, she didn’t think he’d have sex with her. But he had been acting strangely, mutating a little, even in the night when she went to speak to him at the gate. And there were the little holes. Was it some kind of experiment? The idea made her sick. He wondered if they would ever let her leave. Ever since she had told Tom she would steal the boat he had always kept the keys on him.

  She could take Leonard’s kayak, but where would she go?

  Where would they go?

  She lifted her shirt and rested her hand on her flat, well–muscled belly. It would keep growing until it came out, alive and separate to her. She wanted to protect it. She hoped the ink wouldn’t hurt it. She tapped at the watch on her wrist, wondering if she could find some information about pregnancy on there. About how to care for it. There was the orange glow again, and then a message in the centre of the screen.

  Signal weak.

  Lily frowned and tapped at it. The screen seemed to grow in her vision until it had almost filled it. She knew it was just projecting onto her retinas, but she wasn’t used to the sensation, and she looked away, blinking. After a moment she looked back and it filled her vision again. The screen read Front Forum. There was a warning at the top – Welcome to the darknet. This forum is monitored by all kinds of security services and many dodgy fuckers, please cover your meatspace traces with care. The rest was a lot of text, like the pre–VR internet, and seemed to be constantly updating, new topics appearing at the top and pushing others down. Most of them were about a signal: the source of the signal, Chinese involvement in the signal, ITSA and the signal. She saw several references to the GSE and felt a rush of horror.

  There was a button at the top titled New Topic. She pressed it cautiously and a white box appeared. “Help,” she said, experimentally, and the word appeared in the box. “I am a prisoner in a massive ink den,” she said softly. The text obliged, filling out below Help. She continued – “I am a prisoner in a massive ink den, they make thousands of gallons of ink for experiments, and they’re experimenting on me, and I’m pregnant, and they wont let me leave!”

  Suddenly the skin on her neck prickled. She stared around.

  The island was quiet. A little bird flitted nearby, resting for half a second on a branch before fluttering away in a burst of feathers. There was nobody there.

  She looked back at the watch. Her heart jumped into her mouth —the text field was gone. Her message had saved and there were two responses underneath. Pics pls, the top one read, and the next, proof and i’ll come rescue u and the ink. Lily gasped and tore the watch off her wrist. She tapped the screen hard and it went dark, the orange forum disappearing.

  Proof. Rescue. She put her hand on her belly. There was new life inside her.

  “Take photo,” she said to the watch. The screen blinked to life, showing her own face staring back at her, miniaturised and frozen.

  Lily got to her feet and ran back down the hill.

  Lily crept between the tanks. The little windows which showed the bright contents of the tanks faced away from the door. She would have to go up there, where the desks were. There was almost always someone in the barn. Brian barely seemed to sleep these days, and Annie and Mark liked to work at night, while Leonard had spent each day in the barn for as long as she could remember.

  She rolled her sleeve down to hide the watch and walked up between the tanks. She knew them by the shape of their bodies. Brian, Mark and Leonard were all there, hanging from the ceiling in their dirty off–white VR suits. She moved as quickly as she dared. At any moment any one of them could decide to take a break from their virtual work and look out through the suit’s sensors.

  They were silent. If they were speaking in VR it was subvocalised.

  Lily crept forward until she was underneath them. She had to turn her back to get all the vats in. Her skin crawled to think of the three of them hanging behind her. “Photo,” Lily said, as softly as she could, and the screen of the watch changed to show the floor on the other side of her wrist. She tilted it to take in the big vats of ink, the tanks for the cow blood, the huge air conditioning units. Annie’s potted bush. The yellow hazmat signs on the vats.

  She tapped the screen once. Nothing happened.

  She said, "Take photo,” and the screen flashed for a moment, freezing the image on her wrist. She tiptoed out of the barn, again covering her watch with her sleeve, and stepped out into the courtyard. She closed the door and then ducked behind a barrel – Tom and Annie were in the middle of the courtyard, talking.

  “Are you insane?” Annie said.

  “It’s fine,” said Tom.

  “For god’s sake! It’ll stick out like a sore thumb if they detect it up here!”

  “But there’s no connection! It’s just something to take her mind off things. She’s getting desperate.”

  “Tom, we have to get it off her straight away, if you want to give her a present – Lily?”

  Lily gasped and crouched down lower.

  “I can see you,” Annie said. “Come out, for god’s sake.”

  Lily turned away, still crouched, and followed the row of barrels towards the bushes. She heard footsteps, heard Annie say “I definitely saw her, I’m getting Brian,” and she pushed into the bush, shoving her way through, thorns scratching at her. Once she was out the other side, her arms bleeding, she ran across the garden, climbed over the wall at the back and sprinted up into the trees.

  There was a shout from behind and she ran, climbing again, climbing, climbing. She tapped at the screen as she ran. It glowed orange —no signal. She scrambled upwards, the noise of breaking branches behind her. Who was that? Not Brian, surely, he was too fat. Tom might be able to keep up. She glanced over her shoulder, and could see nothing, so she ran on, up and up, her lungs starting to burn, birds yelping in fright and flying out of their hiding places.

  Lily turned right and ran along the level for a while, jumping over a big rock and scrambling down the other side, on over a thin brook, almost falling back but grabbing handfuls of wet grass on the other side and hauling herself up and over. Back on her feet and on through trees. She knew the forest better than any of them, she was sure of it, she just had to get high enough to get a signal and she could send the photo out.

  Climbing again. There were fewer trees now and the ground was harder, big stones spattered with moss jutting up through the ground. A strong cold breeze was blowing from the south but Lily was warm enough from the running that she hardly felt it. Suddenly, close to the left, she heard Tom shout “Lily!” and turned to see him, just twenty metres away through the trees. He had caught her, somehow —she turned right and ran on, upwards again, falling and scrambling up and tapping the watch again and again, No Signal, No Signal.

  She came out from the trees onto a hillside covered in grey stones and dark green ferns. Unable to go any further, she threw herself down behind a large rock that would hide her for a moment, and checked once more. The orange screen of the Front Forum filled her vision. There was a little bar in the top right which said Signal next to it. It was about half–full at the moment, but the bar seemed to be decreasing steadily.

  She took a deep breath and then shoved herself up and stumbled further through the bracken, following a narrow sheep path, slipping once on slick mud and catching herself painfully on one hand. She ducked behind a gorse bush and crouched down to check once more. There was still a signal but it was still decreasing at the same steady rate. She looked towards Scotland. How could it be decreasing? Then she saw it, the sailing boat with a tall mast, sailing hard up the Firth. She knew suddenly without any doubt that the boat was the source of the signal, and that soon it would be out of range. It looked peaceful, pushing into the haze to the north.

  She peered again at the screen. “Open last post,” she said, and obediently her Help message appeared. T
here had been no other responses. “Uh, add the photo,” she said.

  Text popped up in front of her —which photo?. The signal bar was still shrinking steadily. She had only seconds.

  “Last photo,” she said. “The last photo I took.”

  The photo of the ink barn appeared and shrank to fit into the text field.

  “OK, send it. Send it now!” she said, as the signal bar approached nothing.

  For a moment the colour behind the photo changed to grey, and then it moved down underneath the last message. Almost at the same moment No Signal covered the screen. She let out the breath she had been holding. She didn’t know what frightened her more —the thought that it had not worked, or the thought that it had. She looked away, blinking, to get the screen out of her eyes.

  Brian was looming over her, blocking the sunlight, his pale face a mask of rage. She flinched back into the bush, covering the watch with her hand.

  “Give it to me,” he snarled. He grabbed her arm and tore the watch from her, snapping its wristband. He glared at it.

  “That’s mine!” she said.

  He was breathing hard, frowning down at her. “Did you get a signal?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, I was just looking, there was no signal.” Brian frowned and tapped at the watch in his hand. The orange squares appeared in his eyes. After a moment, he nodded. “Good,” he said.

  He bent and placed the watch on the large flat stone beneath him, squared off and stamped on it. She heard the crunch as the screen shattered. As he stamped again Lily flinched away, pulling her knees up to protect herself. Tears ran down her face. She brushed them away roughly with the back of her hand. Thin clouds rushed past overhead. Brian continued with energy, veins straining from his neck, his face strangely blotchy, white and red, his hands clenched in fists, stamping until the watch had completely disintegrated. Finally one by one he picked up the little parts of plastic and metal and glass and pushed them into the pocket of his jacket. Then he pulled Lily violently to her feet and hauled her back towards the path. In the distance Lily could just see the tall–masted boat rising and falling slightly on the swell, its white sail full.

  They were halfway down the mountain by the time Lily realised that nowhere in the message had she mentioned her location.

  Brian searched her pockets, took the pregnancy test and locked her in an empty storeroom in the older part of the farmhouse. The only light bled through a filthy window in the roof, high up a wide chimney in the corner of the room.

  Hours passed. Eventually Mark brought in a narrow camping bed for her and a thin mattress and blankets. He went out into the corridor and brought back a bucket, leaving it in the corner. He did not speak at all. As evening came on Lily tried the light switch. It didn’t work. Lily rattled the door as hard as she could, but it was utterly solid. She tried to climb up towards the skylight, but could barely reach up to the start of the wide chimney. Finally she lay down on the bed and covered her face with her hands.

  After a long time Lily heard footsteps approaching. There was a knock on the door and the lock clicked. Annie came in holding a plate of hot food; meat from the latest cow she had slaughtered and some beans and potatoes.

  “Are you OK, sweetheart?” she said. “We’ll have you out of here in no time.”

  “What’s going on?” Lily said, the urge to cry stabbing painfully in her throat. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Brian and Tom are just… deciding what to do next,” Annie said. She came closer but didn’t touch her. “They looked at the pregnancy test.”

  Lily moaned and put her head in her hands. Annie paused. Finally she said simply, “Was it Tom?”

  “No!” Lily shouted, standing up, furious with Annie for her blindness. Annie took a step back. “It was Brian, can’t you see, he —injected me —or something, look!” and she lifted her t–shirt over her belly, but it had been over a week and the three little spots were barely visible now.

  Annie started to back out of the door, her face a mask of confusion and concern.

  All she could say was “We’ll sort this out,” and she slammed and locked the door as Lily ran to it and started hammering, shouting “No, no, no!” She kept banging until she was exhausted and fell to the floor. She sobbed into the concrete.

  Late that night, Tom came to see her. He stood by the door, keeping his distance. Lily just looked at him from the bed.

  “Do you remember that night?” he said, pain in his voice. “If it was me, if something happened, I swear to you, I never meant to – I never meant to,” he finished lamely.

  “No,” she whispered. “It was Brian,” she said.

  Tom frowned.

  “He put something in me. With a needle.” She looked up at him, pleadingly.

  Tom shook his head, looked at the ground. “I’ll take you to the mainland,” he said. “He doesn’t want me to but we have to. We’ll get rid of it. We’ll figure something out.”

  “No,” Lily said, “He did this to me. I saw the needle on his desk.”

  “Annie uses the syringes,” Tom said, shaking his head. “For the cows,” he said, his voice faltering.

  “It was him,” she said. “Please, take me to him. I have to talk to him.”

  Tom looked at her.

  “If you care about me at all,” she said.

  He nodded slowly.

  They walked across the courtyard in silence. The door was not locked. They were all hanging there in their suits, Annie, Mark, Leonard and Brian. Tom switched the lights on and shouted up to them.

  “Wake up, you lot. I’ve brought Lily down.”

  Lily pushed past him and shouted up, “I want to know what you did to me, you bastards! You’ve got no right to keep me here, none of you, you have to let me leave!”

  They started to gently sway and wriggle, and then, with a whine of the motors in the rafters, lowered to the ground. They unzipped their hoods.

  She felt Tom standing behind her. He said nothing. Brian stared at her, slowly peeling off his VR suit. The others were already clambering out of theirs. Brian shook his head.

  “You let her out?” he said, “What happened to sleeping on it?”

  “What have you done to me?” Lily shouted, storming towards him. Tom grabbed her arm to hold her back.

  “Nothing,” Brian said. “You slept with Tom. Maybe you don’t remember, but I doubt it. Now we have to deal with the consequences.”

  “No!” Lily said, “You put something inside me!”

  “She’s going to get rid of it,” Tom said, voice steady. “I’m taking her to the mainland tomorrow to see a doctor.”

  “No!” Brian said, glaring at Tom. “I absolutely forbid it.”

  “You can’t keep her here,” said Tom. “You don’t own her.”

  “There are pills,” Annie said, suddenly, too loud. “There are pills that would do it.”

  “Shut your mouth!” Brian said, snapping around. Annie jerked like she had been physically hit. Brian spun back to Tom and Lily, started to walk towards them. Mark rushed forward, put a hand on his chest.

  “For god’s sake!” he said.

  “You’ve been at it years, haven’t you!” Brian said, trying to push past the bigger man, his voice rising. “And that watch, what were you trying to do? They would kill us all!” he screamed.

  Tom and Lily both started shouting at once, Lily pulling free of Tom’s grasp. Mark pushed her back, then grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and dragged her towards the door, Lily kicking and shouting. Annie ran forwards saying, “Be careful!”

  Tom dodged past them and strode towards Brian, face violent. Lily could feel anger overwhelming her, like nothing she’d felt outside red.

  And then for a moment Lily could see it standing behind the others, a huge black creature, half–foetal, half like the demon she had seen in her dream, hunched, looming, arms spreading. There was a blast of heat and light she felt like burning over her body and Mark dropped her and flew bac
kwards through the air, blood bursting out of his arms and chest and face, his skin ripping apart in great gashes. He hit the floor with a heavy wet crunching sound and Annie fell back gasping, clutching her face.

  Tom, Brian and Leonard were frozen, staring, hands half–raised to protect themselves, splashed with blood. Lily looked at the remains of Mark and began to scream.

  Amber

  The small chair was painful beneath her backside. There was a large painting of the ITSA Space Station hanging on the wall. It was a silver circle in orbit hanging, in this rendition, over Africa. Outside the rain was beating against the glass. Kathmandu was invisible. Her head throbbed under the bandages. Her black uniform was clean and neat. Three weeks had passed since she arrived in Kathmandu. Three weeks since the incident. Now, for the second time since she had arrived in the country, she was sat facing Dryer.

  He was staring at her, sitting straight in his chair, his features expressing an ugly blend of disgust and amusement.

  “I submitted a full report,” she repeated.

  Dryer said nothing.

  “I deserve a chance. The same as everyone.”

  Dryer laughed at that. “You had your chance. You were insubordinate from the start. I order you to stay off the darknet; you immediately try to buy a watch. Then you kill two locals, including a Chinese man, triggering not only riots but also, potentially, an international incident.”