Void Black Shadow

by Corey J. White

  I shake against the hook in the roof and pain shoots up my arms as the blood returns to the muscles.

  The walls of the cell begin to glow. The light builds, grows, consumes me; I look down, away from the walls, and watch my feet dissolve, bleached by light. I close my eyes against the bright; pinks and reds flash across my eyelids. I scrunch my eyes tight, but still the light burns through.

  I yell for help, not knowing who I expect to come.

  No one does.

  The light holds me, refuses to let go.

  The Emperor’s Requiem ends and I hear sobbing. The sound falls away as I stop to take a breath. Just as I begin to yell, the song starts over.

  * * *

  It’s dark again. Too dark. For a moment I think I’m dreaming; I think I’m dead.

  I’m not, and I don’t know how I feel about that.

  My body shakes uncontrollably. The cold is so harsh my skin feels like it’s burning.

  There’s a constant ticking, and I wonder which part of my body could make that sound. I’ve grown used to every noise this meat engine makes—the squirt of swallowing saliva, the bubbling groan of my empty stomach, the steady hiss of my lungs, the too-slow beat of my heart, the splash of piss on my feet. This noise is something else.

  The floor rises beneath me, presses against the balls of my feet, then against my heels. For a second I think I’ll be crushed, but then I realize: I’m being lowered.

  I glance up but can’t see the hook; I can’t see anything. I shake my arms and hear the chain rattle. I pull and I yank and I start to cry, then I lift the chain from the hook and collapse.

  I hit the ground and feel my heart stop. I hear one beat and then I wait, and I wait, feeling an empty-headed numbness falling—then it beats again. My head sputters and I rest it against the floor.

  I curl up, trying to find solace from the cold. My arms are crossed over my chest, my knees are drawn close. I press my lips together to stop them shuddering. I bite down to stop my teeth from chattering.

  I wait for sleep, or death.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The guard pushing me into the room of mirrors looks familiar: young, with sunken cheeks and dark eyes.

  “Ah, Mariam, I’m so glad you’re back.” Doctor Rathnam stands beside the table in the center of the room. “Please, sit. You were about to tell me something important before Sergeant Stockton took you to the bathroom: what was it?”

  I sit down and stare at Rathnam’s medical envoy, trying to remember. The guard, Stockton, took me to the bathroom?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, voice a faraway whisper in my ears.

  The guard came to me in that cube. He grabbed me by the hair, yanked me off the ground, and brought me here. There was no before.

  “Come now, Mariam,” Rathnam says. He takes a seat opposite me. “You remember. You were just about to give me information on the insurgency against the empire.”

  My brow furrows. After a second I start to chuckle, but it turns into a cough, pain rasping down my throat, ruined by the constant screaming in the box. “How often does that routine work?”

  “Why don’t we start with these two?” The mirror behind the doctor flickers, becomes an image of two faces.

  I can’t stop myself from gasping. Trix and Squid, staring straight ahead, faces blank. These aren’t recent photos, they’re a few years old at least. Squid in particular looks vastly different—their skin slightly darker back then, like they spent more time planet-side, soaking up sunlight.

  “Patricia Clark,” Rathnam says, “and the other who is known only as ‘Squid.’ These two were part of your cell. We know they assisted in your failed assault on Miyuki.”

  Failed, sure.

  “There’s no cell,” I say, staring at their faces, wondering where in the void they might be. Are they nearby, like we planned, waiting for me and Mookie to escape? “They’re my friends; that’s all.”

  “Are you loyal to the emperor, Mariam?”

  “What?” I say, confused, because it’s not a question I’ve ever considered. I laugh, and either Rathnam passes a command to Stockton or the grunt takes some initiative: he crosses the room in two steps and backhands me. I tumble off the chair and hit the floor.

  “Wrong answer,” he says, standing over me.

  After a few seconds Rathnam gets up and offers me his envoy’s hand, and lifts me from the ground.

  I sit back down and Stockton stands his envoy in the corner behind the doc. He glares at me with his mouth twisted. I look away, but he’s there at the edge of my vision, reflected endlessly in the opposing mirrors—an infinite series of assholes curving off toward an unseen event horizon.

  “Are you loyal to the emperor?” Rathnam repeats.

  “I don’t care about the emperor,” I say. “I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about the galaxy.”

  “We have evidence linking you to a group of insurgents responsible for attacks across imperial space.”

  “I don’t go much for ‘groups.’”

  “Are you bisexual?” Rathnam asks.

  My eyes roll of their own volition. I don’t answer.

  “Do you find yourself attracted to people regardless of their gender?” After a few moments, Rathnam pivots on his chair with a screech of metal on metal. He reaches into a bag and turns back to face me. It’s tightly bundled, but I’d recognize that fabric anywhere. My hand reaches for the cloak before I can stop it.

  “I was hoping to return this, but you need to demonstrate your cooperation before that can happen.” He motions toward my naked body and says, “You would have something to cover yourself with.”

  I wasn’t even thinking about that. I just want to hold the cloak to my face and smell the scent I tell myself is Sera, but which is probably me, Ocho, and all her previous incarnations.

  “I’m doing my best, doc, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if you give me the cloak anyway, maybe I’ll go easy on you.”

  Rathnam laughs, three neat has that sound as mechanical as his android body. He asks, “Will the death of your two friends hinder the insurgency’s efforts?”

  “What?”

  “Squid and Patricia.” The hologram of Rathnam’s head looks down, like he’s reading something. “They were killed fleeing Miyuki.”

  “Bullshit,” I say.

  “The Legion intercepted them and ordered them to halt. When they refused, their ship was destroyed—a crusher of some sort, according to this report.”

  There’s a stabbing pain in my chest, and my throat tightens thinking of Squid, Trix, and Pale. I shudder as I think of Ocho and Seven and all her old selves lost to the void, and I blink to stop the tears from forming. It can’t be true. It fucking can’t. I didn’t come here to find Mookie just to lose Ocho and the others.

  But he didn’t mention Pale. If it were true, he’d know about Pale . . . wouldn’t he?

  “Are you sexually dominant or submissive?”

  “What do you think?” I say, with a forced glibness.

  “This isn’t working,” Stockton says.

  Rathnam’s head spins and he glares at the sergeant. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he says. They talk back and forth, muted, then Rathnam nods.

  The faces of Squid and Trix disappear as the wall turns transparent. My breath catches in my throat—not because Mookie’s there beyond the glass, naked but for his bomb collar, but because he’s strapped unconscious to an upright gurney accompanied by an autosurg. The robot works at Mookie’s scalp with a disinfectant swab, painting his skin a greenish tint.

  “Before you do anything rash, Mariam, you should know that your new collar has been modified: if it detects a spike of mental activity, it will trigger the detonation of Cadwell’s collar.”

  “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Nothing; if you cooperate.”

  I tear my eyes away from Mookie and look at the doctor. “And if I don’t, you’ll cut him t
o pieces?”

  “He’s too valuable for that. We make Legionnaires here, Mariam. Well, we begin the process. We install the necessary components to join them to the hive mind, but the body modifications are done elsewhere.”

  “I swear to Sera, if you touch him I will fucking kill you.” I glare at the lenses in the chest of Rathnam’s envoy and hope the man behind the machine is squirming, wherever he is.

  Rathnam doesn’t respond, his face holding its amicable mask. “Which member of your cell were you involved with?” he asks.

  I think of Trix standing in the doorway while Mookie invites me into their bed.

  “Is this man your lover?” When I don’t respond, Rathnam says, “If you do not answer my questions, we will begin Cadwell’s surgery.”

  “How did you find him?” I ask, stalling for time while I try to think of a plan.

  “Kirino assured us we had to find your ‘Mookie’ to keep you under control. After we put word out among the prisoners, it didn’t take long for someone to turn him in.

  “Now: is he your lover?”

  “No,” I say. “He’s not a member of any cell, and he’s not my lover; he’s a friend.”

  Rathnam stands and walks to the wall. He watches the autosurg for a moment, then says, “Restrain her.”

  Stockton’s envoy clanks over behind me, and he puts his hands on my shoulders, forcing me down into my seat.

  I shake my head. “What are you—don’t—”

  “Begin,” Rathnam says.

  “No!” I yell.

  The autosurg rolls into position behind Mookie. Unlike the autodocs, surgery units aren’t designed with bedside manner in mind, so there’s nothing humanoid about them. They’re simply compact wheeled platforms of lenses, sensors, and surgical equipment. The machine raises its finely articulated arm, and a scalpel emerges from its tip.

  My mouth keeps moving, but no words form—all of my focus is on the scalpel, effortlessly slicing into the skin at Mookie’s temple. The surgeon’s limb circles Mookie and the blade rings his scalp.

  I miss the vertical cut, but retch when the autosurg folds Mookie’s scalp back, revealing white skull streaked with red.

  “Who recruited you into the insurgency: Cadwell? Patricia? Squid?” Rathnam asks the question casually, keeping his tone conversational.

  “No one recruited me,” I say, voice frantic.

  “Continue,” Rathnam says.

  Mookie’s gurney shifts, lays him facedown at a forty-five-degree angle. I’m breathing hard now, my whole chest heaving as I struggle to stay calm, to avoid triggering my powers and Mookie’s bomb collar.

  A circular blade protrudes from the surgical hand-apparatus and I turn my head away, refusing to look as the saw squeals and whines, cutting into Mookie’s skull.

  “What do you know of the insurgency’s plans? What are their next targets?”

  “There is no insurgency,” I say, struggling to get the words out between sobs.

  Doctor Rathnam frowns. “Remember Cadwell, Mariam, and cooperate.”

  “I’m trying.” I glance up and see the pink of Mookie’s exposed brain and I screw my eyes shut tight.

  “This is your final chance, Mariam. After the next step, there will be no going back.”

  “No,” I plead. “Don’t do it.”

  “I assume you know something of the physiology of the Legionnaires after your senseless killings on Miyuki,” Rathnam says, intently watching the surgery beyond the glass. “You have experience with their reinforced skeleton and genetically toughened epidermis—but the metal skull is much more than armor plating.”

  “Shut up shut up shut up.”

  “The command and control interface is built into the skull plates. Nanowidth tendrils extend from the skull into the brain, overriding the individual will—each criminal becomes just one minuscule piece of individuality lost in a sea of the Legion.”

  I open my eyes and see the surgeon holding two pieces of metal skull. “You can’t do this.”

  “He will still be Cadwell, but he will also be the thousands of other people he’s networked with. It’s incredible, Mariam: humanity’s first distributed consciousness!”

  “And you use it as a fucking army. How imaginative.”

  If Rathnam heard me, he ignores it. “Where did the insurgency train you? Where is their base? How large is their army?”

  I’m panting now, writhing in my seat, using every piece of strength left inside me to hold my powers in check, to keep the witch in her cage.

  “I don’t—” is all I manage to say before Rathnam orders the surgeon to carry on.

  I scream and thrash. Tears run down my cheeks and my breath stops. My mouth moves and sounds form, but they aren’t real words, they spill up from my horrified trance—mindless ramblings while my thoughts are blank. My mind is an endless void: black, empty. My body is a distant thing, cold and naked, shocked and screaming.

  Disconnected, I recede on the tide of myself and leave Mookie to drown.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I sit in the rec area, looking up at the trees beyond the compound walls, feeling the scratch of the coarse, blueish grass through the fabric of my cloak. I’ve got nothing on beneath it—Rathnam just dropped the cloak on the table when he was done. I don’t remember what questions he asked, but I remember my thoughts racing as I tried and failed to stitch together lies convincing enough to stop the surgery.

  Rathnam ran out of questions long before the autosurgeon finished, but he made me sit in that room while Mookie’s entire skull was taken apart and replaced with metal. The autosurg installed glossy chrome implants into Mookie’s ocular cavities, then put his skin back in place, knitting the folds together with geneprinted epidermis in geometric patterns.

  A few women wander the yard. Most are alone, but some walk in pairs. I thought prisons were meant to be filled with gangs, formed like diamonds under the pressure of surviving, but I haven’t seen anything like that in Homan. Maybe there are gangs in the farmlands—here in Max we’re all too broken. Who has the energy to fight other prisoners when it’s a struggle to hold onto yourself?

  Kirino. My stomach quavers, and I want to be sick, but there’s nothing in my stomach: I left it all on the floor of the interrogation room. Is this what remorse feels like? Guilt? It’s different when you kill with your hands. I don’t know why, but it is.

  I didn’t have to kill her; I did it because it was easier than dealing with her any other way. She had it coming, though. Did she have it coming? Or do I kill because it’s easy?

  I see a woman approaching, her hands straight at her sides, keeping the hem of her shirt low as she walks. I put a hand up to shield my eyes and accidentally bump my nose, still tender from where the autodoc fixed it. With the sun out of my eyes I can see it’s Ali. They’ve given her a tunic, but still no pants.

  “Hey, Mars.”

  “Hey.”

  “That’s a nice cloak,” Ali says. “The color really suits you.”

  I laugh nervously, still waiting for the churning in my stomach to calm. “Thanks.” I rub a hand on my belly to feel the soft fabric against my skin. “When will they give you pants?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says as she sits beside me, “but this is better than nothing.” She leans her head on my shoulder and looks up at the trees with me. “Kirino was worse than the guards,” she says. “I’m sure there are women in here who’d thank you.”

  I’m thrown for a second, thinking Ali read my mind, but then I remember that the last time she saw me was during the fight.

  I shake my head. “It’s not a good thing I did.”

  Ali’s head moves against my shoulder as she nods. “Yes, it was.”

  Two women walk past speaking some dialect of Spanish I’m not familiar with. I only catch a few words, but it’s enough to know they’re also talking about me killing Kirino.

  “Are you doing okay?” she asks.

  “I don’t even know,” I say.

/>   “What happened?”

  “I saw my friend.”

  “That’s good,” Ali says, brightly.

  “They made him into one of them—they made me watch the surgery.”

  Ali doesn’t say anything, but from her silence I guess she’s lost friends to the Legion too.

  A cold breeze pushes through the trees and we both shiver in unison, half-naked in different ways.

  Eventually, after the leaves have fallen quiet again, Ali asks, “Could you really break everyone out of here?”

  That wasn’t what I was talking about when I said I could tear this place apart, but seeing her eyes—clear and wide with hope—I can’t say no. “I could,” I say. I break off a long blade of grass and run it between my thumb and forefinger, feeling its tiny fibers catch against my skin.

  Ali sighs—I don’t hear it, but I feel the way her body moves. Faux sunlight falls through shaking leaves overhead. It’s serene, almost beautiful if I forget where we are. “Don’t you get lonely sometimes?” she asks.

  “I’m used to being alone,” I say, though I can’t stop Ocho looming in my thoughts, followed by Mookie, Squid, and Trix.

  Ali nuzzles into me, as if to emphasize the subtext of her question. I put my arm around her, and I feel her head shift off my shoulder. In the corner of my eye I see her looking at me, but I don’t face her.

  I can sit here under a tree holding her, watching the accelerated approach of dusk, but that’s all. Whatever else she might want, I can’t give it to her. Not when I’m only here because someone else got too close, got caught up in my mess of a life.

  She lays her head back down and sighs. If it’s contentment or resignation, I can’t tell.

  * * *

  Stockton comes for me before I’ve finished eating breakfast.

  “Where is he?” I snap, but Stockton ignores me, grabs my arm, and lifts me from the seat.

  Stockton marches me back to the central hub, room 203. He opens the door and shoves me inside.

  Rathnam stands on one side of the room, accompanied by another envoy, headless, waiting for its rider. “Good morning, Mariam,” he says, not sounding quite as bright as usual. “Please take a seat.”