The Hive Construct

by Alexander Maskill

  Two months earlier, the surgeon realized, there wouldn’t have even been a question. She needed a bio-aug lung and arm. Hell, he thought, if she were awake, people like her never turned down any tech that they could justify having put into them. They needed extra funding for traditional surgery, but the chaos in the Council’s budgeting meetings following the disappearance of Councillor Granier had put paid to any chance of that. All the hospital had was a store room full of gleaming new bio-augs.

  There was no reason not to give this woman a new arm and lung except that at any moment they could shut down.

  Zala awoke slowly, sluggishly, as if being lifted from immersion in a great sea, to a high staccato beeping. She had heard things like it a million times in videocasts, but upon forcing her eyes open, she saw that she was indeed attached to a heart monitor. She had no idea where she was, or why she couldn’t move anything except her head and the very tips of her fingers. Everything else was heavy, too heavy. Zala looked down. In her hand was a remote with a large physical button marked ‘CALL’. She pressed it.

  A few minutes later, a woman came through the door. She was wearing a purple and gold hijab under a long white coat, and looked to be in her fifties. She smiled when she saw Zala.

  ‘Ms Mullur, it’s good to see that you’re awake. I’m Doctor Lawahiz Chipo. You’re at the New Cairo First Hospital; you were brought in two days ago. We’ve been taking good care of you.’

  For a moment, Zala could not figure out quite why she was calling her ‘Mullur’, but then it clicked and she nodded. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You got shot. The police think it was because you saw a break-in occurring at a GeniSec subsidiary. They’re going to want to ask you about it when your condition has improved, but you’ve got a few days to recover.’

  The terrible pain in her back. Short, painful breaths. A warm liquid, what must have been blood, making its way up her throat, choking her. Unimaginable pain in her arm. Then she was back in the hospital room, with only the ghosts of her injuries.

  ‘Why can’t I move?’

  Dr Chipo looked down at her. ‘There will be some effects of sedation. I can dial them back. You should be fine to move.’

  ‘But I was shot through the chest and arm …’ she said, still not quite present.

  ‘We gave you a new arm and lung and they’ve taken fine, so you should be okay to get using them pretty soon. Good job you didn’t have any other bio-augs, or they might have been damaged. Either way, you’re going to be here for a few days still while we continue to ply you with antibiotics.’

  Zala’s brain whirred away. Dr Chipo had said something strange, something …

  ‘… new arm and lung?’

  ‘Oh, they were beyond saving, so we gave you bio-augs. It has all the latest security, so it’s as safe as you’re going to get in this climate.’

  Zala realized she was shaking her head and as she did so, the rest of her body began to shiver. She didn’t want bio-augs, she didn’t want bio-augs, she hated bio-augs, she didn’t want—

  ‘Ms Mullur, calm down,’ Dr Chipo said firmly, spotting Zala’s building horror.

  ‘No, no, no, no no no you took my arm,’ Zala screamed.

  ‘Get a hold of yourself. Your arm’s right there, at the end of your shoulder.’

  Zala looked at her right arm, horrified. They’d taken the whole arm? They’d replaced her entire arm with one of those … things? For a moment, she found herself unable to do anything but panic.

  ‘We had no choice,’ Dr Chipo said firmly. ‘You were unconscious, in no state to consent, and I’ve never in all my years seen someone from Naj-Pur turn down a bio-aug.’

  Zala was breathing quick, shallow breaths now, her heart pounding. On some level, she was convinced she could feel the artificial sac in her chest, and as her breath rate increased it was as though the foreign organ was breaking free from her control, tearing itself loose, sucking in air in such great quantity as to burst her torso and crack open her ribcage. Ribs shattering and snapping like dry twigs, skin ripping, organs slopping obscenely from the chest cavity—

  ‘If you want, I can book you in for some therapy. Difficulty in emotional readjustment is very common after what you’ve been through, but it’s something you can overcome.’

  Her arm. Her chest. There was something inside her, something alien and wrong and she wanted it out, she wanted it out of her.

  That or drugs. Drugs will do.

  ‘Ms Mullur, calm down or I’m going to have to sedate you again.’

  ‘Please … yes … do that … sounds great,’ Zala managed.

  Dr Chipo looked at her, then pulled out a small chemical patch from her pocket, unwrapped it, and pressed it against the back of Zala’s hand. Her panic melted away as chemicals coursed through her veins. For the next hour or so, she lay there, staring up at the blank white ceiling, her anxiety for the time being suppressed.

  She couldn’t look down at her body, so she tried to make sense of what had been done to her. Any way she thought of it, she could not rationally begrudge the augmentations that were keeping her alive and able, but the disgust at what had been done to her pervaded any other consideration she attempted.

  As the sedation wore off, she began flexing and unflexing her fingers. Though at first the small details of the motion seemed off to her, clashing with her muscle memory, the new hand seemed adequate so long as she did not think of what lurked under the new skin. She bent and straightened her elbow. There was nothing unfamiliar about its arc. She rotated her shoulder next; there was even a slight improvement in flexibility, but this was enough to bring up a deep sense of nausea within her. When her stomach had settled she rolled her arm around a few more times, acclimatizing herself to the feel of it. The limb had never been the sum of its components to her before, she thought. It had only ever been her arm, an abstract grouping of properties and functions, not an extension of bone and muscle. Did the difference in components, which had never mattered before, matter now?

  Zala opened her hands flat and placed the two sets of fingers together. They matched perfectly. She then set her palms on the mattress beneath her, turned herself around and pushed herself off the bed.

  Her room was rectangular, with a door on the wall opposite the foot of her bed leading off into the hospital corridor, and another near the head of her bed opening into a small bathroom. She walked slowly into the bathroom, stood in front of the large mirror over the sink and removed the mint green pyjama top she had woken up in. The first thing she noticed was that, save for small wounds around her arm and the trace of an incision in her armpit which dipped down under her breast, she was comparatively unmarked. When she turned round and looked over her shoulder, there was a scar on her back where new skin had been placed over the bullet hole and was slowly replacing the damaged cells. The new arm was odd – it felt fibrous and although there was no give to the bones as there supposedly was with cheaper bio-augs, compared even with her muscular left forearm there was an inorganic firmness to it that felt alien.

  Zala turned to the doorframe and reached up to grasp the lintel. Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself up. She then dropped down and reached up with her new right arm. The hand took hold of the frame with an unerring grip, tight and controlled. Zala pulled up. The ease was extraordinary, far greater than with her natural arm. She dropped down again and looked at her new arm with a dread fascination. This was once again replaced with a wave of disgust and she quickly found herself on her knees, retching over the toilet bowl.

  She stood up, put her pyjama top back on and returned to the bedroom. She found her portable terminal in the drawer of the bedside locker, lying on top of some clothes in clear plastic bags. She turned it on. The time was 17:14. As the screen projected out in front of her, it brought up the last message she’d received. It was the message – the warning, the threat, whatever it was – from ANANSI, which she’d received before she was shot. This person had found their way past her security – custom
protocols, which she had written herself and believed to be watertight – and managed to track her down and interfere with her work at the Five Prongs server farm and at GeniSec Development Falkur. For all Zala’s ability with computers and technology, ANANSI completely outclassed her, and that left her exposed. They’d found their way through her defences and that placed her at their mercy, vulnerable to whatever they might decide to do to her. She shuddered.

  This must be what it felt like for the various people I’ve screwed over in my time.

  She opened up a reply window. There had to be a way to placate ANANSI; indeed, they surpassed her own abilities to the extent that it was the only option left to her. With any luck, they were currently monitoring all her outgoing connections, reading any message she might send. Even if she sent a message off to the blank EIP, surely ANANSI would intercept it anyway. That could be the way to contact them, to reason with them.

  What do I want to say to ANANSI?

  Zala typed out a message. A simple, focused question, just enough to start a dialogue, but not to concede any further ground.

  >What do you want?

  There had to be a thread for her to start from. Anything else was a puzzle to be solved.

  She pressed the Send button. With ANANSI’s EIP address hidden, the message whizzed off to nowhere in particular.

  A new message came up almost immediately. Zala’s hunch was confirmed. ANANSI was watching.

  From: ANANSI (EIP: ----.-.------.-------.---.-----.----.-------)

  >Now that’s a complex question, Ms Ulora.

  Zala felt another pang of dread. They knew her name, a trump card she hadn’t realized they were aware of. They were, however, apparently open to talking.

  >Let me simplify it; what do you want, and why does that involve me?

  From: ANANSI (EIP: ----.-.------.-------.---.-----.----.-------)

  >I want you to cease your prying.

  >No can do, I’m afraid, she replied, her mechanized fingers working faster against the keyboard than her flesh-and-blood digits ever had. Unless you can give me a good reason to, that is.

  From: ANANSI (EIP: ----.-.------.-------.---.-----.----.-------)

  >The good reason is that I will destroy you in order to stop you, Ms Ulora. I will destroy everything I can until you get the message. You know I can. So I would advise again that you cease your prying. Hopefully that is a sufficient reason?

  Zala stopped for a moment. This person had her real name and potentially any amount of unknown information besides. She worded her response carefully.

  >My prying can end, if it stops you taking any more action against me.

  From: ANANSI (EIP: ----.-.------.-------.---.-----.----.-------)

  >Or it could end with you in prison, unable to pry any longer. And what would happen if New Cairo First Hospital knew that they had, in their care, the murderer Zala Ulora?

  Zala froze for a moment, staring at the screen. ANANSI had no intention of bargaining. They were simply setting her up for imprisonment, or worse, and it was coming soon. She needed to get out of here.

  She closed the messaging system, ran over to the locker and pulled the clothes out of the plastic bags. Inside was an outfit similar to the one she had been wearing on the night she had been shot: black trousers, a blue T-shirt and a grey jacket. The hospital must have replaced her tattered, bloodied garments. She threw them on, picked up what few possessions of hers she could find in the drawer. She fished out her contact lens case and carefully inserted a lens in each eye. Her portable terminal found a floor plan of the hospital and brought it up, weaving a trail through the building to the exit. Zala followed it out of the room.

  She looked around. To her left, a number of hospital staff were crowded around the nurses’ station. Hoping that they weren’t staring at an alert with her face attached, Zala slipped right. As she rounded the nearest corner, down a short corridor which led to a set of stairs, Zala heard a yell. ‘I can’t see her!’ came a rough female voice. Doubling back, Zala peeked around the corner. A group of three of the hospital’s security staff and a tall SecForce officer were entering her hospital room, the buzz of electrified stun batons following them. A nurse trailed behind, protesting vigorously at the prospect of a patient under her care being beaten and electrocuted, but they weren’t listening. Either they’d figured out that Zala had been inside GeniSec Development Falkur, or ANANSI had followed up their threat. Zala turned and followed the trail down the staircase and out onto the ground floor with a new-found briskness.

  ‘Ms Mullur?’

  She ignored the voice and kept going.

  ‘Ms Mullur?’ the voice said again, more insistently this time.

  Zala kept going. A crackling, accompanied by a low hum, sparked to life behind her.

  ‘Ms Ulora, come with us now.’

  Zala’s heart sank.

  They know.

  She looked over her shoulder to see two Security Force officers standing behind her. They were both tall, formidable-looking men, even without the heavy armour plating patrolling officers wore, and the buzzing stun batons were raised in front of them. Distinctive tattoo patterns on their brows suggested armour-plated skulls and probably more modifications besides. These were military police, highly trained and, from what she had heard, not subject to many moderating codes of conduct. She turned back to see a third officer blocking off her path, who smirked as their eyes met.

  Zala’s gaze whipped back and forward, trying to keep track of all three of her assailants at once. Not taking his eyes off her, the officer who had called out to her felt around his belt with his free hand for his handcuffs. Zala turned and stepped towards him, pushed his baton hand away. Her right arm punched upwards beneath his chin with the speed and power of a firing piston. His legs gave out beneath him and his baton fell away, clattering against the ground. As Zala moved to reach for it, the smirking man who had stood in her path rushed forward, baton raised like a hammer. Zala stepped inside the arc of his downward swing, blocked his right arm with her left, and reached up behind it with her new right arm, grasping his wrist. She pulled down. His arm twisted against her shoulder and snapped. He screamed and stepped away, but Zala grabbed the back of his neck and twisted him round, tipping him off balance and hurling him into the third officer. The whole thing had taken mere seconds. As the men fell over one another, Zala saw the group of security guards from her room barrel into the corridor behind. With a path cleared in front of her, Zala ran.

  The hospital walls were a blur, seeming to swirl around the digital line her portable terminal mapped out for her, and the racket of screaming hospital staff and yelling assailants disoriented her. Sprinting all the way, she weaved between shocked staff and visitors. She took a right turn and reached the crowded main atrium, and beyond it the big glass doors that led out of the hospital. Outside she could see a large Security Force van. Almost certainly more SecForce officers. Instead, Zala ran through a nearby set of doors labelled ‘Cafeteria’. She wheeled round and, spotting a small switchbox in the doorframe, pulled down a lever marked ‘Off’. The doors snapped shut and clicked as they locked.

  Diners rose in confusion, which turned to consternation as they heard the crashes of the SecForce officers outside charging shoulder-first into the doors. The metal foundations crunched and strained against the frame. Zala pushed her way through a crowd that slowly began to grow resistant and towards a door which her terminal told her led to the kitchens. A cafeteria worker let out a screech of ‘You can’t go back there!’ and attempted to get between Zala and the door, but Zala shoved her aside and sprinted into the kitchen.

  The heat hit her first; everywhere seemed to be billowing with steam or giving off the roar of commercial-sized ovens. The ruckus outside had drawn the attention of the kitchen staff, and they took a wary step back as Zala ran through, eyes roving for an exit. Behind her, she heard the heavy metallic scraping of the cafeteria doors giving in. They would be right on top of her soon. She whirled aroun
d, catching sight of a huge steel trolley full of trays. She pulled it behind her, blocking her path, and wedged it sideways between a wall and the counter. Satisfied, she spotted an exit door to her right, dashed over to it and slipped out into a back alley.

  Zala ran up the alleyway. The exit out into the street was blocked by a wide, tall gate, bound tight with an old, rusty lock. She was trapped. There was an almighty crash behind her, a crash very much like the noise she imagined several large SecForce officers knocking over and tripping against a very big, very heavy steel serving trolley would make. In frustration, Zala growled and shook the gate. The rusty lock warped under the mechanical force of her new arm and shattered. Startled by her own strength, Zala pushed the gate open and walked briskly through, to mingle with the early evening rush of city workers making their way home. She turned off her portable terminal and looked about her, trying to orientate herself. She’d known every street in this district once, but that had been eight years ago and the place seemed unfamiliar. Once round the nearest corner she ran again as hard as she could manage, choosing her direction at random whenever she reached an intersection. She didn’t look back or think about whether or not anyone was behind her.

  Slowly, the ache of overworked muscles began to set in, and Zala slowed her pace. She found herself in the area where Falkur began to degrade into the dingy outer districts of Surja and, upon realizing that she was no longer being chased, she stopped altogether, doubled over and sucked in gulps of air, too exhausted to feel relief setting in. She’d run further than she would have been able to before. She knew where this new-found endurance had come from, but couldn’t think about it now; the last thing she needed was another bout of nausea. Near by, among boarded-up shops and dirty-looking apartment blocks, was a franchise of a local bar chain. No one would turn Zala in to the police or the SecForce in Surja, not while the locals were so invested in the NCLC’s efforts, but that wasn’t to say they wouldn’t find reason to stab her anyway. Bars around this area were, first and foremost, for those who wanted to drink until they couldn’t feel their knuckles fracturing against another person’s skull. Hopefully the franchise was the least likely venue for that sort of behaviour. Looking around for pursuers, Zala ducked inside.