by Cam Baity
Greencoats found me at the Citadel. Brought me here, to their lab at the Depot. So close to the tunnel home. Yet they keep me in Mehk. Keep me on this slab. My prison.
They used to come in, with starched collars and flaking dry skin. Stank of antiseptic, masking my spoiled blood on their hands. I tried to fight. Tried to scream. Could only gurgle and splatter.
So they don’t come in anymore.
Blinding lights. The white was too much, erupting in my eyes. I closed them. Didn’t help. Lids too thin, transparent as insect wings.
So they took the light away.
Screeeeeeeee.
And the sound. A wall of noise that made my brain curdle. Crashing machines, hurricane fans on Computators, voices shrieking at me.
So they took the sound away. Quiet as death.
Except that squeak.
What is that? Why are they making that noise? They’re doing it on purpose, trying to torture me. Bet they can read my thoughts with their machines. Know what I will do to them.
That’s why they’re afraid of me.
Their needles plug my arteries, long glass ones like icicles. Are they taking poison out or pumping it in? Straps on the gurney sink in deep. I feel my skin trying to grab them, to hold on.
Not skin. No skin anymore.
Nothing contains me. No boundary between in and out. I’m a heap of nerves and jellied bones plugged into their machines.
Screeeeee. Screee.
Thundering footsteps. I dare to open my eyes. Try to focus in the dark. I hear the rattling scratch of a paper suit and respirator. Gear to protect them from me. It crashes in my ears.
A figure approaches.
It’s him! I knew he’d come. Feel a new acid burning my eyes.
Mr. Goodwin.
He can change this. Will fix me. Put me back together.
Something in his hands. A clipboard with a light. Scorches. Can’t look. But he’s walking slowly. Carefully. He knows the sound hurts. The only one who doesn’t want to give me pain.
He will make me better again.
Mr. Goodwin sits in a chair next to me. I try to turn, but the tendons in my neck are pulled too tight, ready to pop. He angles his little light to see me. Mucus breath rattles my deflated lungs. I squirm on the gurney, and his paper suit rustles.
He’s afraid too. Fear of this raw and dripping thing. He thought he could manage the sight of me, but how could he?
How could anyone?
Screeeeeeeee.
Still that sound. Mr. Goodwin can make it stop. I hear his pen hacking at the clipboard. Loud. But he knows that his voice would be unbearably loud. Holds the words so I can see.
“I CAME AS SOON AS I HEARD.”
I try to speak. Only a coarse, liquid grunt. Not words. I try again, a dying thing. He motions for me to relax.
“THE DIRECTORS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE DYAD PROJECT.”
My wheezing breath comes faster, toxic clouds raking my insides. The shreds of my fingers clench. He writes more.
“THEY ARE DOING THIS TO YOU.”
Rage shakes me like an electrical current. I fought the metal inside me. Consumed it. All for them. But it was never enough.
Now they hold me prisoner. Murder me, again and again.
I heave against my restraints, feel them carve into my muddy flesh. Foulness oozes from my pores, cauterizes my fists. Feel the metal in my knuckles bubble as I grasp at the straps.
Mr. Goodwin writes.
“I CAN HELP.”
The fight bleeds out of me.
Screeeeee. Screee.
“BUT I NEED SOMETHING FIRST.”
What? What could I possibly do?
“YOU WENT AFTER PLUMM.”
The name sends a twist of agony coursing through me.
It’s true. I ignored my orders. Even worse, I failed.
Mr. Goodwin is angry. That’s why he came—to punish me for disobeying. And I deserve it. Deserve…this. I try to apologize, but I can’t untangle the words in the ruined sore of my mouth.
“IS HE DEAD?”
Instantly, I feel it. My body remembers the sensation with razor clarity. Perfection. Plumm’s sternum bowing under my blow. My fist collapsing the ladder of his rib cage. Sweet death in his eyes. I had victory. But they escaped.
I thrash. Howl. Feel my tongue split in my mouth, writhe like worms. I reach my bound hand out to Mr. Goodwin and point. Veins of scorched metal peel out from under my flesh and extend toward him. Then soften and melt back into my body, searing me.
He backs away in horror. But he understands what I want.
Screeeeeeeee.
He puts his pen in my hand. Try to grip it, but my bones bend. The object is so hard and unbelievably cold, sticking to my sickly corpse skin. But I don’t dare let go.
Mr. Goodwin holds the clipboard for me. I struggle to work the pen. Every movement floods me with nausea. Vision is cutting out and blurred. It takes everything to write.
Letter. By agonizing letter.
Screeeeee. Screee.
The metal pen softens in my hand, fingers sink in like it’s made of putty. Ink spills and puddles on the slab. The pen turns to slop. Finish writing with my fingers, smearing ink and flesh.
Mr. Goodwin’s face changes. His eyes widen. I feel a shift in his breathing. He sees. Knows.
I collapse, withdraw to my waking nightmare of pain. But he is pleased. His smiling eyes are my salvation.
Screeeeeeeee.
If he’d only do something about that…
Then I realize. He cannot hear it.
I focus on the sound. Everything else drops out. A rattling electronic hum. Feel the hot tungsten coil from a light. Smell of unwashed hair and weeks of old coffee stains. Dirt on a cheap shoe. A man, a Greencoat, watching a machine that’s watching me. He’s rocking back in his chair.
Screeeeee. Screee.
That’s what I hear.
But why? Why can I hear what’s happening…
Screeeeeeeee.
…in another room?
“Kaspar, my boy,” Mr. Goodwin whispers every so lightly. The sound shreds me, but I don’t care. I crave his voice. “Well done.”
And I see my one word, a mess of bloody black ink.
My word that made Mr. Goodwin happy.
TUNNELED.
Micah breathed deep. He mashed the trigger, and bullets thudded into the iron undergrowth.
Not even close to the target.
Growling, he lowered the Dervish rifle and swept back his hair with a shaky hand. Even though the weapon was quiet as a cat sneeze, its recoil was wicked, and the rounds came out way too fast. Maybe it was broken.
Nah, that wasn’t it. The truth was Micah was too weak.
The ore beneath his feet rumbled, and a chorus of clangs sounded from the nearby training field. After the funeral, he had seen the Covenant warriors practicing combat maneuvers. For a second, Micah had considered training with them, but when he saw the mehkans slamming into one another like crazed Autos in a demolition derby, he set up a training area of his own.
It was a stretch of ground behind some big dome tents and up against those tangled black growths the mehkies called tahniks. He had set up some empty lantern bags for target practice and managed to pop off a few lucky shots. But mostly his aim had gone wild, spackling the surrounding vegetation with white bonding rounds. Empty boxes of ammo lay scattered.
He tensed his trembling arms and hefted the rifle, bracing the stock against his shoulder. Micah fired again. A shuddering burst showered the tahniks and tossed him back. Not even close. Still, he kept on mashing the trigger—click, click. That sound, just like when he emptied this gun into Kaspar. Killed the man.
No, not a man. He was a monster. Micah had shot him dead.
But it still wasn’t enough to save the Doc.
Micah hurled the rifle down as hard as he could. No good. He kicked an empty box of ammo. Idiot. He wailed on a lantern bag, pounding it with his fists, spraying sweat and spit. Midg
et.
He was spent, sick in the stomach. Seeing red. But he couldn’t rest. He threw himself down on the ground and started in on another set of push-ups.
Because he and Phoebe had a job to do. It was a mission from the Ona, so important, so secret they couldn’t say a word to anyone. And that was only part of his duty.
Ignoring the aches, Micah scrabbled to his feet and grabbed on to the tahnik branch he had been using as a pull-up bar.
He grunted and gritted his teeth. Four. Five. Six.
Protect her.
Hot, bloody breath in his ear. The Doc’s last words.
No matter what.
Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
Promise me.
The Doc had looked so scared at that moment. At first, Micah had thought it was fear of dying, but that wasn’t it. The Doc had been scared for Phoebe, stuck in Mehk, her life in the hands of some stupid servant kid.
Micah’s grip slipped from the tahnik, and he collapsed on the ground, heaving for breath.
Footsteps pattered toward him.
“Oh—oh no! Are you ok-k-kay?” Dollop squeaked as he shook Micah. “Sh-should I get help?”
“I’m fine,” Micah growled, pulling from Dollop’s grasp. He eased himself to a sitting position, wincing.
Dollop nudged a sealed metal case toward him. “I—I got you another one. Ju-just like you asked.”
Micah opened the box. It was full of bonding rounds.
“An-and there’s more where that, um, came from. Lo-lots of stolen Foundry supplies.”
Micah looked at Dollop, noticing him for the first time. His proportions were all screwy, like a reflection in a carnival mirror.
“What’s up with you?” he asked the mehkan.
Dollop glanced down at his rearranged parts. He had traded a few mismatched bits here and there to get extra bulk up top, broadening his torso at the expense of creating stubbier legs.
“Oh—oh, you know. So they don’t…I-It’s just so that I—”
“So you don’t look like a wimp.”
Dollop flinched. “Wh-where’s Phoebe?”
“Still prayin’,” Micah said as he emptied the cartridges out of the case to take stock.
“Is sh-she okay?”
“Would you be?” Micah shot back, more harshly than he had intended. His muscles were on fire. He wanted to be left alone.
“Sh-shouldn’t you be praying wi-with her?”
Micah scoffed and focused on sorting his ammo.
Dollop twiddled his fingers giddily, shifting from foot to foot.
“So…Isn’t it ama-mazing here? Ev-everyone is so primed with fu-function. Th-they say they’re all my clan, my br-brethren, that they would all ru-rust for me. I’m one of th-them!”
Micah ignored him.
“There are so—so many mehkans in the Covenant. Ev-every race, all Makina’s children p-p-putting aside differences. No more Gr-Great Decay! All to-together, all getting ready for—”
Dollop strode up to Micah excitedly, stumbling over his neat stack of ammo cartridges and knocking them over.
“Dollop!” Micah hollered. “Just stay outta my way.”
The little mehkan cringed as if he had been struck.
Micah immediately regretted it. His freckled face softened, and he crawled to his feet, muscles aching.
“I didn’t mean it,” Micah said. “I’m a jerk, I know, I’m just—”
“You’re sc-scared,” Dollop said quietly.
Micah felt his face flush. “Naw, it ain’t that,” he said, dismissing it with a smirk.
“I-It is. And it’s ok-kay.”
Micah’s self-assured grin crumbled. He felt naked. He couldn’t tell if he was about to scream more insults at Dollop or start blubbering like a baby.
“I—I am too,” Dollop said. “But we do-don’t need to be. Ma-Makina guides us now, don’t you see?”
“Not really,” Micah said with a shrug.
“You have be-been chosen to serve Her,” the mehkan chirped, barely able to contain his excitement. “The ge-gears have engaged! The Covenant has been pr-preparing for many phases. The moment of reck-ckoning is near.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“So-soon we will march. Soon we will ta-take back Mehk!”
A chill rippled up Micah’s spine. He snatched up his rifle.
“If that’s true,” he grunted, “then I got a lotta work to do.”
Dollop watched as Micah slapped a magazine into his Dervish rifle, cocked the bolt, and spun the barrels with a whiz. The mehkan held a fist over his dynamo, then slipped away.
Micah stretched his arms and shook his hands vigorously before raising the gun. He got a target in his sights.
The Covenant was going to take back Mehk?
The thought burned away his fatigue. This was his chance to fight back against the Foundry, his chance to prove himself. He thought back to his big sister, Margie, how she had adjusted his grip and showed him how to relax his aim. Micah took a deep breath and let it out.
Then, just like Margie had shown him, he waited for that quiet moment before he needed to inhale again. Stillness came.
He fired. Not a single shot hit the target.
Micah gritted his teeth, ready to try again.
He would protect Phoebe. No matter what.
Muddled sunshine oozed in through the tent ceiling, which was made of a translucent membrane that must have been mehkan hide. A tray of water and rations lay untouched.
Phoebe knelt in the back room of the domed temple where her father’s body had lain just that morning. The chamber was intended for solitude, and aside from the walls and the black ore underfoot, it was featureless. She was wrapped in the strange rust-colored shawl that blocked out all sound. The tar-thick silence left her floating. How long had she been back here, pretending to pray? Three hours? Four?
A day? A lifetime?
It didn’t matter. Nothing did. She was alone.
No mother, no father. An orphan.
Her breath stopped. That word. How could a concept so foreign, so other, suddenly have become the one thing she knew for sure? It smothered her every pore like smoke.
Orphan.
Phoebe looked down at his spectacles in her hands. She traced the spiderweb crack on one of the lenses with a ragged nail, crusted red from the ceremonial rust. How far she had come to save him, how much she had risked. And lost.
All for what? To be caught by the Foundry and used to force her father’s confession. Then when the Covenant had come to rescue him, they were held back because Phoebe demanded they save Micah. If it wasn’t for her, Orei would have gotten her dad out of the Citadel alive, along with Entakhai and Korluth and all those brave mehkan warriors. Right now, her father would be feeding vital information to the Covenant, guiding them in their next attack on the Foundry.
If she had never left home, her father would still be alive.
Why? Why did it have to be like this?
No answer. Just the oppressive rhythm of her breath within the silence of her shawl, magnifying the anguish that threatened to swallow her whole.
Phoebe’s shawl was ripped back, and the rush of sound was disorienting. Orei loomed over her, glimmering rings and scythes in orbit, snaring the meager light. The thick cords within the Overguard’s throat vibrated with her fluttery, disembodied voice.
“You are done,” Orei commanded.
“What?” Phoebe blinked her tender, bleary eyes.
“You grieve too long. Four point eight clicks. Must prepare for your mission.”
“No…I—” Phoebe felt like she was trying to rouse from a deep sleep. “I—I just…”
I just buried my father, she wanted to say, but her mouth wouldn’t form the words.
“Rusting rites finished. Urgent matters press. The Aegis comes. Must be ready to depart.”
“What are you talking about?” Phoebe gasped, her anger rising. “I can’t turn it off. Just like that.”
Pe
ndulums and sliders ticked in Orei’s ever-shifting body, measuring the air around Phoebe. “Unacceptable,” Orei stated. “Loaii must be strong.”
“I don’t care!” cried Phoebe. “Leave me alone!”
“Core temperature rises two percent. Wasteful. You must—”
“Get out of here!” Phoebe screamed. Her heart thrashed in her rib cage like a wild thing trying to escape. She reached for the tray of rations and hurled it at Orei, who easily sidestepped it. “I hate you! Leave! NOW!”
Orei took a step forward and tilted her head. A strange change came over her as the myriad pieces of her shifting anatomy slowed. It looked as if she were moving underwater, as if some invisible force was trying to grind her body to a halt. She took an unbalanced step back, then abruptly spun through the tent flap and shoved past Axial Phy, who was just entering.
The elderly mehkan seemed undisturbed by Orei’s behavior. The delicate chains dangling from her vestments whispered like spring rain as she ambled in. Phoebe looked warily at Axial Phy, expecting another callous rebuke. However, the priestess just shuffled over to the scattered provisions and carefully arranged them back on the discarded tray.
“Sorry,” Phoebe whispered, gesturing to the mess.
“Loaii.” The axial’s words came in a scrape. “Forgive her.”
“Why?” she said, curling her lip resentfully.
“Because she must not feel.”
“She’s evil.”
“No, she is kailiak,” Axial Phy said. “They have no bonds. They do not feel the way we feel. Cannot.” Sadness darkened her voice. “Kailiak are mehkans of precision and measurement. It is their most vital function. Emotion is poison to them, interrupts their systems so that they cannot act, think, or even breathe.”
Phoebe considered this.
“Your pain touches us all, Loaii, but none more than Overguard Orei. She is moved by your sacrifice—an unusual tenderness that, for a kailiak, can be deadly.”
The diminutive axial set the tray aside and approached. Beneath her crumpled golden robes, Phoebe saw the hint of stubby legs rotating around her body, as if her pelvis were a wheel. Axial Phy reached out her skeletal arms and with broad clamp-like digits, adjusted Phoebe’s shawl.
“It’s my fault,” Phoebe said, lip quivering. “It’s my fault he’s dead. I—” She burst into full-throated sobs, shaking violently.