by Rae Nantes
"Don't tell me its Duke Crocand, again."
"It is." There was a pause between them. "He requested a specific prisoner." Papers shuffled. "Prisoner 299105, Jenna."
"Age?" the husky man demanded.
"Fifteen."
"Disgusting."
"Well?" asked the professional. His voice had raised in pitch, almost nervously.
"It's a shame to lose such important research, but it can't be helped. Ship her out tomorrow as the Duke requires."
"Understood, sir."
"Oh, and go ahead with project Draconus. Use three. One younger, two older."
"Yes, sir."
Footsteps echoed away.
This was bad. I was in the one facility that I didn't need to be in. I assumed this was the place where they stuck the minds of prisoners into recyclers such as myself, but by their conversation, they were likely up to all sorts of weird dystopic shit.
It would explain why the scientists and engineers here were so elated to have seen me without an identifier. I was an unknown variable to them, another mystery that was just waiting to be unraveled.
Regardless, I needed to escape. When I arrived here, they had fed me a stack of papers that detailed their objectives - a mission statement bundled with a recycler instruction manual. Now that I knew recyclers could speak if the level were high enough, I still needed to gain strength.
Yet something tugged at me. That overbearing sense of curiosity for that young girl. I flicked out my mechanical hand and gripped it into a fist. It yearned for her, to give her headpats and draw her pictures and tell her stories of times and places far from here.
It was ridiculous.
At the very least, she seemed to be getting married off to some noble so her life might be cozy after all, or–
Silence.
It was silent now. No more thumping of footsteps down mysterious sections of the building, no more muffled talking, no more anything. Just pure silence.
Now was my time.
The workday was over, and I was sure that I was alone again. I formed my fist into a knife and cut through the thin plastic panel.
It clapped onto the floor.
A man with glasses and a lab coat stared back.
22: Resolve
"Oh, you're a juicy one, aren't you?"
The guy was wearing a lab coat with glasses, neatly cut hair and a clean-shaven face. He seemed like any ordinary scientist, but he had the voice of a turbo-creeper. "Unh, yeah, you're a naughty one, trying to sneak out like that."
I shuddered internally. This dude was clearly fucked up in all the wrong ways, and as he stared down at me with wild, lustful eyes, I knew this would be trouble.
Hummmm.
"Oh? Are you going to make me something? A peace offering perhaps, or a gift?" He was practically drooling over himself as he knelt down in front of me. His raised his hands as if he were about to grope some big ol' tiddies, but instead, he groped... me. "Phhhh, so sleek. So pure, yeah."
Though I had no blood, I could feel the heat rise in my face. I'm not into dudes, goddamnit! And even if I were (which I'm totally not), I wouldn't be into a creeper like you!
His hands were ice cold. He was biting his lower lip. His caresses were getting riskier, more aggressive, more thrusting.
Oh god. He was fingering a trash can - and enjoying it! This lunatic's hands were exploring my most sensitive places! He was tracing the edges of my coin slot! That’s my butthole! He was poking at my butthole!
I had to act fast to save my sexual trash can purity. Click.
As if the molester scientist had Pavlov'd himself to getting aroused at clicking sounds, he suddenly stood up straight and reached for his groin. He was unzipping his pants! Oh no no no no no. I flung out my arm in a hurry to grip my newly crafted anti-creeper spray (a low-level sleep potion in a spray bottle) and hit him with a refreshing mist.
"Dirty boy," he groaned. Then, his eyes rolled back, eased shut, and he slumped hard onto the tiled floor.
After a moment of calm, I gathered myself again and looked around for any witnesses. There were none. This guy wasn't just your ordinary crazy. He was on the final frontier of batshit insanity, and that was coming from a guy who liked getting coins slipped into his ass.
I tried to move his body. It wouldn't budge. I tried rolling, lifting, shoving, but the guy was simply too heavy for me to hide, so I left it there. With a few more sprays of the sleep spell for good measure, I clanked and rolled away to explore where I was.
This was a prison, no doubt, some type of dystopic experimental fairy tale land where they did horrible things - like turning people into trash cans. The entire place was dressed in sterile white grids that glowed with clean light. As much as I tried to be subtle, my rattling can body still tapped and clinked across the floor as I moved from room to room.
Office spaces with cubicles. A pristine medical room with creepy instruments that held an array of needles and prods and little dildo-shaped things. Wide screens that projected images of the real world in real time - holoscreens they were called. An empty cafeteria with wet floor signs and chairs turned upside down on the tables.
I heard the sounds of machinery muffled through the walls, and I headed toward it to find the factory floor.
It was an assembly line behind a wall of wire mesh. On the other side, massive machine arms pounded and shaped and built can-shaped objects, which were taken by conveyor belt to the next arm that then dropped bits of electronics and boxes and cubes inside. The next arm injected a glowing blue liquid, then the next inserted the "core". When one arm finished with its job on the current trash can, it waited for the next to fall into range, then it worked again and again.
They were creating a fleet of these things, an army.
I wasn't sure if they contained human souls or AI souls, and I was a little unsettled at the thought, and even though I had done technically worse things to other people, I certainly considered this to be a kinda fucked up way to punish somebody.
The freshly minted trash cans were carried to the end of the belt, around the bend, then slipped through an entrance concealed by heavy strips of plastic to disappear from sight. One after another.
Jack shit I could do about it. So I soldiered on, wandering around the facility like a newcomer, a tourist, and inspector general, and I soon found the actual prison.
I only needed to follow the sobs.
They were bunched together in rooms locked behind bars, people shoved together like animals - and that they seemed to be. It was as though some giant just scooped up a handful of people, dusted them with dirt and muck, then tossed them in. And the people themselves had submitted to those postures - spread out on the floor, leaning over each other, some with legs up the wall or curled up in the fetal position.
These were entirely underage kids. Those who were awake or conscious enough to realize my presence flinched at every tap and clank of me as I marched along the hall. I could only stare back at awe, continuing my quest for the weak crying that beckoned to me, calling for me, summoning my presence, my salvation, my rescue.
It was her.
Jenna sat facing me with her knees pulled to her chest. Her arms were bruised and scarred, bandages wrapped across her in spotty places, scarcely holding in all the wounds. She had a black eye, dried tears down her freckled little face. She seemed tired and pale and defeated and hopeless.
My blood boiled, and I didn't know why.
The far door clacked open. Voices and footsteps cut in.
I could not pull my gaze from her. This young daughter I never had, this child I somehow felt the need to protect, this innocent soul in a world of trash.
"Ey, ain't dat ta can from earlier?" one man said. They stomped closer.
"No markings, but it looks different now, yeah?"
"Got's ta be da same, innit? I oughta know, I took a shit in dat wee one."
"Aye. Ya did." They stood beside me.
Hummmmm.
Finding a new b
ody would have to wait. I now had a different quest to complete.
Click.
23: Private Reno
"I'm telling you," Private Rino said with his mouth full, "you gotta try it. At least once." He tried to dust the crumbs off his guard uniform.
"No way," said Private Jack. "I will never. Never, stick a glass rod into my urethra. That sounds horrible." He set his lukewarm cup of coffee on the plastic folding table.
Rino eased back with his arms crossed and shot Jack a smug smile. "It'll change your life, bro."
"Yeah, because when it breaks, I'm gonna get glass shards stuck in my dick. No thank you."
"Well, if it broke," Captain Vil interrupted. He was half leaning over the kitchen island and half sipping on his coffee. "It's not like you would know... the deferens." His face was expressionless as it always was. “You really gotta stick your head out to explore things, even if it means you get shafted every once in a while.”
The two guards stared blankly. The clock on the wall ticked at them. "What?" Jack asked.
"An 8 out of 10," Captain Vil said without looking up. “Or four-fifths, if you don’t have much time.”
There was silence. The clocked ticked. The two guards stared in confused disbelief.
The door to the break room burst open. Another guard covered in blood fell in and rested on his knee. He was out of breath and wounded - both physically and psychologically. His eyes were lowered in shock. "Red... rim," he grunted out.
"What the hell is this?" the captain barked.
"Red...rim!" His face snapped forward and bore into the captain. "Red-rim! Redrim!"
"Shit," the captain spat out as he tossed his mug into the sink. It shattered behind him as he marched past the dying guard. His voice echoed from the hall. "Sound the alarm! To stations!"
Jack and Rino struggled to gather themselves after the commotion. "What's Redrim?" Jack asked as he checked his rifle.
Rino shook his head. Fear was gripping at the whites of his eyes. "I... have no idea."
Jack shrugged to himself, but that did nothing to stave off the unease. He followed Rino passed the wounded guard - who was now dead in a pool of scarlet - and hurried down the hall.
Gunshots echoed further in, but the door was locked. On the other side, terrible howls of pain muffled through, cut short by the whine of machinery. The captain kicked it once, twice, then shattered it open.
They were greeted by the aftermath of a slaughter.
Blood sprayed across the walls and ceiling, dripping and pooling into the floor. The prison cell was empty, the prisoners long gone. The bars that were meant to contain them had been bent and twisted in a way that neither man nor beast could manage. Jack felt a cold shiver at the carnage.
Three guards lay dead, and at the end of the hall, a grey blur slipped through the far door and slammed it shut. The captain and Rino charged after, swords and guns drawn.
The pale white lights clicked off, darkness came, the alarm burst into life - shrieking, pounding, demanding. The lights turned red and pulsed. Heavy shutter doors slammed shut over the prison bars but jammed. It's not as if there were anything left to contain.
Gunsmoke mixed with the smell of death and metal. Jack shook off his memories of the war and followed.
When they broke down the next door, they froze.
Some of the prisoners looked back with wide, wild eyes as they slipped through a far door, but that wasn't what stopped the guards. It was the lone trash can that stood in their way. A pristine metal shape, resting ominously against the pulsing red lights and the beat of the alarm. The top of its rim was painted red, scarlet, a fresh coat of blood.
"Red. Rim," Jack said. "This is Redrim? It's just a fuckin' garbage can."
A panel of the recycler slipped open, and a gun barrel poked out. The captain lunged forward, his cape catching the air, and he thrust out his hand. An opaque blue shield formed in front of them.
A flash, a rumble, a cloud of black smoke. Sparks erupted against the manashield. The captain swung his saber at the distant target - a fire spell! It crashed like a wave and scorched the walls black. Rino charged in to follow through, firing once-twice as he ran, then tossing his rifle aside to clack against the floor. "I'll put an end to this," he shouted as he ripped out his saber.
The smoke swirled against them as they ran in.
The trash can was gone.
In its place, a hissing grenade.
"Im-impossible!"
A blinding flash, an earthquake, ten thousand bits of shrapnel sent to rip them to shreds. In the aftermath, Jack struggled to stand, his head ringing, his senses dulled. Blood trickled down across his eye. "R-rino. Rino? Rino!"
"H-he got me," Rino coughed out. The captain was nowhere to be seen.
Jack dug through the smoke to find his partner. He touched something warm and wet. His sight was a blur, but something like a fresco painting of a wounded man stared back at him. Rino was dying.
"Don't worry, buddy," Jack said. "Just stay here, we'll get 'em!"
"Be careful," Rino coughed. "It's no... ordinary trash can."
Jack had already left, sprinting through the opening in the wall. It was the factory floor. More guards lay bleeding, torn to shreds by bombs or something else. Burn marks and slashes in the wall, machinery ripped from their mounts. Metal clashed against one another – swords - and Jack chased after to the next room.
He found the battle but froze at what he saw.
The recycler was standing on two thin metal legs, more like a spider, and two arms gripped a longsword to clash against an attacking guard. They were locked in a duel of strength, one that the other guard was losing. The guard found his resolve and pushed back, knocking the recycler off balance, but the trash can no longer appeared anything resembling human. Its legs and arms flailed about like an octopus, a demonic sea creature, a horrific abomination of the deep. The metal tentacles snapped around the guard’s head and thrust it into the recycler's garbage can mouth. With a hum and a flash, it landed gracefully on the floor. The headless body of the guard toppled over.
Jack and another guard raised their rifles. At this range, they couldn't miss.
He pulled the trigger.
Redrim vanished.
After the roar of the gunshot, the flash, the smoke, Jack had lost sight of his target. He glanced at his comrade. His comrade glanced back, pale, eyes wide not of fear, but of regret. The man's neck was trickling, bleeding, erupting with blood. "H-how can he be so fast?" he gurgled out.
Jack's military training kicked in. He chambered another round, took aim, and traced his gun professionally as he searched for his mortal enemy.
Behind a machine terminal? No.
Between two large crates? No.
Hiding behind a mountain of scrap metal? No.
Behind him? Yes.
Jack swung his rifle to aim, but the shock of being vulnerable to this ungodly horror unnerved him. He fired, but the trash can darted away in a blink of an eye. He was aiming at its after-image! The ceiling above him erupted. Through the debris, a recycler with its flailing tentacles shot down, sword in its arms.
Jack could only raise his rifle to catch the blade. Sparks showered him. Fear gripped him. Fighting against another soldier was comfortable, welcome, normal, because there was always an understanding between them. But this, this, was the abyss of the unknown, and as Jack stared into trash can's maw, the trash can stared back. Cold metal tentacles slipped around his neck.
His sight turned blurry. His breath raspy against the grip. His legs weak, his blood, his heart racing, his mouth dry. Jack knew that he was dying. He gripped his rifle with all his remaining strength and used the butt-end to strike the can away. A hollow, metallic clank told him that it worked, but the recycler took the momentum to vanish again.
Jack stumbled, caught himself, but the adrenaline and his fighting instincts demanded that he follow his target, his enemy, his would-be killer. Clack-clack-clack. Something bumped against his bo
ot. Though blurry, Jack knew he had seen it before.
It was a flashbang.
A deafening pop. White light flooded his vision. A deafening ring pounded his ears. Jack was utterly helpless, utterly vulnerable. His senses were so overwhelmed, he couldn't even think. He swung out his arms around him in desperation to fend off the inevitable. He searched for his rifle - it was gone - then unsheathed his sword. He slashed the space around him, through the air, at the wall, at the ground and above him. By the time his vision and senses returned, he found himself on his back. His rifle beside him, soaked in blood and ash.
Jack's mind was still a haze, but his resolve pounded through his veins. He was a man of duty, and though every instinct in his body told him to run and hide, he soldiered on. He limped through the broken glass and debris, over his dead comrades, and to the muffled sound of fighting. He stumbled through an emergency exit, the building whined at him in protest as the doors sluggishly gave way.
Fresh air, the smell of rain, dull light glowed from the overcast skies. As if he were pulling his head out from water, the familiar sounds of war faded in. He was in an alleyway. The city itself seemed to be at war. Far-off explosions, swords clashing, scores of people yelling and shouting and roaring at each other so much that the entire noise of them mixed and merged like a hurricane.
He raised his head and squinted down the alley. Through the billowing smoke, figures emerged. People were racing, sprinted toward him. Young people. Prisoners! This was a prison break, after all, and as he had been ordered to, as his training and doctrine and commanding officers all demanded, he gripped his rifle, chambered another round, and aimed it at the first person.
It was a girl. Young, red-headed, freckled, pale. She shouted and pointed at him, they braced against his assault, they didn't slow down, they didn't submit, they didn't have the fear or lack of resolve to surrender.
This was his duty, and if it required, he would die fulfilling it.
He pulled the trigger.
24: The Rogue Trash Can
The gunshot's echo faded.