by Jadah McCoy
A hiss escapes my gritted teeth and then—
“Serge!” The sound bursts from my chest. The name echoes through the trees, rising above the city.
Someone lifts me from the muddy earth, and I claw at the soft ground. My useless body refuses to fight.
“Serge!”
Nearby Cull repeat in their high, trilling tone, “Serge. Serge.”
Then darkness takes me into her bosom again.
Syl
he smell of sterility burns my nose. I open my eyes. Sickly gray walls, with gray tables and chairs to match, surround me. Surgical instruments glint on a table to my right. They look sharp, ready for an operation.
The bzzzt of whirring gears echoes behind me, but restraints prevent me from discovering where the noise is coming from. I tug at the thick pieces of metal locking my wrists and ankles in place. They don’t budge, and I only succeed in making my skin raw with all the scraping.
“Let me go!” I slur, rattling the chair as loud as I can.
“Calm yourself, human.”
Chills run down my spine. The inflection isn’t male or female, isn’t even human. The voice doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard. I crane my neck from left to right, frantically searching for the creature behind me. I pull as hard as I can on the metal restraints, but bolts hold them in place.
The whirring sound comes closer, and the owner of the voice glides into view.
Wires and a fleshless spine attach him to the ceiling—a man-machine-monster. Muscle and skin grow on the bone a few inches down. His backbone curves at an angle that’s unnatural for any living creature, and his back and neck are bulging with muscles from supporting his dangling weight. One of his eyes is torn open, no eyelid to protect it. The glowing orb flickers back and forth in his gaunt skull.
A nametag buried in his red, irritated chest reads “Surgeon General.”
The Surgeon General holds up an arm. His limb ends with a metal dock that holds a syringe. The needle is as long as my hand.
I can’t breathe.
“Don’t do this.” Sickness burns my stomach and wells up in my throat.
“Administering twelve CCs of midazolam,” Surgeon General says in his artificial voice.
“No.” I rattle the chair. “No. No. No!”
He whirs closer to me as I push deeper into my chair. His sunken face has no expression, but I swear I see the corner of his lip pull up with restrained delight.
The syringe punctures the soft hollow above my collarbone, and the liquid drains into my body. My chest burns.
A rim of darkness surrounds my vision, and my head fills with a cottony buzzing noise. My heart ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thumps heavily in my chest.
Surgeon General’s pupils retract and expand, studying me—as though relishing in my pain, recording it to relive at a later time. A twilight haze hides him from my vision, and reality melts away.
In Elite City, there is a library, untouched by war or Cull. It is magnificent, though a bit dusty, with rows upon rows of yellowed, fragile books. I have read many there, but my favorite ones are those that outline parts of the human body. I am fascinated by bones, muscles, and organs—how they come together perfectly to create a functioning person.
Seeing my insides cut and cleaved open on a table is different than reading about them. I’ve seen medical pictures, but nothing prepared me for the violation of my body.
Consciousness comes and goes—a flighty, fluid thing, like a bird on a branch, landing, then flying off again.
The thin layer of skin, fat, and flesh opening up under the glinting scalpel reminds me of a Cull’s gaping maw.
The table is red with blood.
Dripping, always dripping.
His pupils grow big, small, big, small—always watching, recording everything.
He sews my body up like a child’s doll. Thick stitches weave a winding path down my front.
Red light hits my eyelids over and over again. When I open my heavy eyes, a lightbulb blinks red and white, red and white. Something is happening.
Icy wetness covers my ankles, thighs, chest, and then mouth. It burns my nose and throat when I breathe it in. I can’t escape the cold.
I can’t escape.
Thud.
A distant sound wakes me.
THUD.
I can’t open my eyes.
“Sylvia!”
The darkness battles for my attention.
Crack.
The cold water surrounding me filters away, accompanied by a dull roaring sound. My body convulses against the freezing air. Wetness rushes out of my mouth and nose.
Warm fingers press against my throat.
“Is she alive?”
Serge. I wish I had the strength to open my eyes. I want to see him again.
“Is she alive?” he yells.
Lucca’s quiet voice answers, “I can hardly feel her heartbeat.”
I wish I could tell them I’m still in here.
“We have to get her back to the Sanctuary,” Serge says, his voice thick.
“Serge… we don’t know what was done to her,” Lucca says as though speaking to a child.
“I don’t care!” His voice breaks.
“Listen. She’s been experimented on. What happens if we bring her back and she changes? Do you want to see that—see her change into one of those things and try to eat you?”
A thud reverberates through the room. “I love her!” Serge’s yell is closer this time.
“You can’t save her, Serge,” says Lucca. “She’s a Cull.”
What? No, I’m not! I’m me! I’m still here.
“How did this happen?” Serge whispers. “At least cover her up, goddamnit!”
There’s a loud slamming noise. I hear rustling, and then something rough and warm covers my unclothed body, tucked behind my shoulders.
“She should be put out of her misery,” Lucca says, too nonchalantly.
A clicking noise that sounds an awful lot like Lucca’s phaser cannon warming up fills the room, and then silence.
“Don’t.” Serge’s voice is cool and hard as ice.
A loud explosion and footsteps echo from far away, but not far enough.
“We have to go. They’re coming,” Lucca says. “That was the last chemical bomb.”
“No.” Serge’s warm fingers grasp my stiff, cold ones.
“Serge!”
Please don’t leave me here alone.
Their shoes pound against the floor, taking them far away from me, and then there’s nothing.
I lie still for just a while longer, maybe minutes or hours or days. Still nothing. I survived, but part of me wishes I had died.
Pain wakes me, gasping and trembling, naked in a tube lit with blue light. Memories and horrors filter back into my mind. The pane of glass encasing me is shattered. Wires connect to my arms and neck, merging flawlessly into my flesh, just as Surgeon General’s wires had blended with his skin.
Serge’s coat covers the important parts of my body, as well as my wounds. With stiff hands shaking from cold and shock, I lift the thin layer of material from my chest.
An irritated, red pattern zigzags down my torso and stops at my navel. There are no stitches holding the half-healed wound together. Yellow and purple bruises blossom along the center of my body.
They are ugly. I hate them. I hate that my body feels like it doesn’t belong to me, this sensation of dirtiness that accompanies every cell of my being.
Lucca said I am a Cull. My fingers are still fingers, not pincers. I touch my neck. No strange, swollen growths signify the development of acid glands.
I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong with me. I can just return to the Sanctuary, and everything will go back to the way it was before.
A spasm hits my stomach, and I thrust my head out of the tube, vomiting onto the broken glass below. Nothing remains inside me to throw up, but the liquid that comes out is red and coppery.
I curl my pruned toes. They are icy and
stiff from the liquid solution collected in the bottom of the tube. It takes everything in me to step over the jagged shards of glass and onto the concrete floor. A sharp tug pulls me backward—wires still attach me to the tube.
I dig through my wet hair, grabbing the thick cables, and tug. They release with a sharp click and fall against the steel tube. In my wrist is a small metal dock. I touch the back of my neck; there is a larger dock implanted just above my spine. I stick my finger in the socket, and there’s no sharp pain, only the chill of hard metal.
I wrap Serge’s jacket around myself, sticking my arms into the sleeves. It just barely covers me, resting midthigh.
The gray room is massacred. Chairs are upside down and cables slashed open, tiny copper tendrils dangling from the split rubber.
More iridescent blue tubes line up next to my empty one. They continue down the hall as far as I can see. Inside each tube is a person, both men and women, each in various stages of a gruesome transformation.
I trace the irritated red scar down my middle, which matches the scar on the body encased beside me. The shine of black claws catches my stare, and I stagger forward. There are women with sharp nubs growing from their sides—the beginning of pincers. I can’t bear to witness another mutilated person. I want to stop, turn away, but my legs carry me past men with bulky brown carapaces emerging from their distorted chests.
I walk all the way to the end, where the humans are unrecognizable. Thick hair covers their bodies. Dense, gray film glazes their eyes. Acid glands swell in their throats. Mandibles protrude from their mouths, which split into four flaps from nose to Adam’s apple and across the cheeks lengthwise.
I sit on the floor and lean against the wall, staring at the Cull in all their luminescent horror.
How could this happen?
At what point will I stop being Syl and start being one of those things?
And all these people—my people. The last few survivors turned into the creatures they fear most. I thought we could exterminate the Cull… that Elite would be ours again one day.
What a joke.
I jump up and hit the glass tube in front of me over and over. The contact stings my fingers and knuckles, but that doesn’t stop me.
“What did I ever do to deserve this?” I scream at the Cull.
It doesn’t move inside its tube but remains stoic and peaceful.
The concrete is hard against my knees as I fall to the floor and sob.
I check the tubes three times, but David is not here. Where could they have taken him? Where are Lucca and Serge? Are they still alive?
David’s image is burned into my mind, his thin body facedown in the water. I refuse to believe he is dead, and I will do whatever it takes to find him.
Two doors are in the room: one blocked by fallen cables and another at the end of the hall beyond all the glass cylinders. Only one way out. The door automatically opens as I approach, slipping into the wall with a soft hum.
I creep into the room on weak legs. It appears to be empty—no movement lurks in the shadows, nothing jumps out to attack.
A click startles me—the door behind me has shut on its own.
Blinking machines line the walls, reflecting blue and red in the darkness. Cables crisscross along the floor, each one the width of my arm.
To my right are two more metal doors that have no handles with which to open them. Instead, a button glows on the wall. I lean down to get a better look at the small tile. An arrow marks it, pointing up.
I have seen doors like this in the buildings of Elite. They are a mode of transportation between floors, for those who are too lazy to walk up a few dozen stairs. But the doors don’t work in Elite. I have pressed their buttons, and they do nothing. They are rusted shut and must be pried open, the vines torn away to reveal the passageway within.
There is no way out besides this one. So I press the button.
It lights up.
A grinding noise fills the room. With a ding, the two doors slide open to reveal a tiny square cabin. The walls are gray metal. I edge into it and press a button on the wall. It buzzes at me, yet the cabin doesn’t move. I press another button, and another, only to be met with the same agitated noise. I shrug and step off. Maybe it’s broken. I’ll have to find another way out.
Unhappy voices echo in the next room, and they move steadily closer. My heart thumps harder at the thought of recapture. I can’t go back to that room, to that cold tube. I look to the left and right, searching for a place to hide. I’ll be too vulnerable in the shadows of a corner, and the cascade of thick, dark wires isn’t enough to hide me, either. Panic burns my chest; there’s no time. I can’t let them catch me again.
Glancing behind me, back into the cabin, I see that a ceiling panel in the corner is damaged, a jagged hole bored into it. Something exists beyond it, above the small room. I step into the cabin and jump, batting at the panel above me. It slides to the side with ease, revealing a tunnel above the room, and I scramble up the wall, pulling my tall body through the cramped opening, scraping my skin in the process.
I push the panel back into place just as the door to the room whirs open. Footsteps tap along the floor, uneven as they maneuver the downed wires.
A sigh echoes. Through a hole in the panel, I see a mop of white hair enter the cabin below followed by two masked guards—the same kind who dragged me from Elite, with their unnervingly happy masks. The white-haired man scans a card against the wall, then presses one of the buttons. It doesn’t buzz at him, but instead a happy ding fills the cabin.
“Do I have to do everything around here?” the man grumbles under his breath. The guards at his side say nothing. “Chasing Organics like a run-of-the-mill slum android. Curse that piñata—poor excuse for a surgeon general.”
My heart leaps into my throat at the mention of the word. Android?
The cabin lurches. A wire attached to it tightens and drags the bulky metal room upward. As we ascend, I slide a bit, and my heel bangs against the metal below me. The sound echoes in the empty tunnel, and I freeze above them.
Maybe they didn’t hear it.
“Did you hear that?” The white-haired man looks up, piercing me with eyes the darkest shade of black.
Shit. I jerk away from the hole I’m peering through. There’s a torturous moment of silence; I think he’s seen me.
A panel to my right raises, pushed by the muzzle of a gun. Too close. Slowly, carefully, I move my leg away from it. Then another one closer to me lifts up, and I scoot away with as little noise as possible. I cover my mouth with one hand to stifle the sound of my panicked breaths. My body shakes with fear, and I can do little to stave off the trembling.
Thankfully, thankfully, the cabin grinds to a jittery halt, the cable beside me whining with the force of it. My lungs burn with spent air, but I’m afraid to breathe.
There’s another long moment of silence. “Even this bloody awful building is falling apart.”
The double doors slide open, and the three figures file out, the man’s voice fading as they walk away. “I’ll probably have to remodel it with my bare hands at this rate,” he says.
Used air bursts from my lungs. I can no longer hear their voices, so I slide the panel to the side again and climb down, slipping through the doors before they close.
A gasp wells in my throat as I step over the threshold.
There’s a city beyond the doors, shining in the night like embers among ashes. A city with lights and living people.
Bastion
sign hangs over the body, its mangled wires spilling out of the faux flesh, limbs at an unnatural angle. There’s a crater bashed in the lightweight steel skull that droops against its dented chest. The metal that creates our bodies is hardy stuff—it took some force to put those marks there, some real disgust behind those blows.
The sign above the mecha corpse reads “Death to Glitches.”
I keep my face carefully neutral as I pass the scene, dodging hovercrafts as they zip by
. A few fellow androids gather around, as they always do when a new cadaver joins the others in the gutter.
Bitterness hardens my eyes, tenses my brow and jaw. No, no. That won’t do at all.
To show remorse, to show any emotion at all—that is a death sentence. But the smart ones, well… the smart ones are the ones such as me—the ones who keep walking, keep their eyes ahead, keep to themselves.
That’s how you survive here, in the underbelly of this rotting city.
I don’t have time to waste on the poor strung-up bastard gutted of his inner circuitry. My client is waiting. She’s a wealthy woman who doesn’t like to be kept watching the clock. Come to think of it, I could take some notes from the poor chap. She likes to be strung up, too, though she enjoys her ropes and knots to be a tad less fatal and a bit more coital.
A jungle of cold steel and bright glass surrounds me, the thrum of the always open slum clubs vibrating through the streets. Lights of the metropolis illuminate the night sky almost as well as the sun. I maneuver through the back alleys, ignoring seedy transactions and watchful stares.
The widget embedded into the inner side of my lower arm tells me I have only ten minutes to reach the Metro from the slums. Better get a move on.
A figure slumps against the wall ahead. This isn’t an abnormal occurrence for the area I’m in. Her hair is wet and in disarray, and she trips over her own feet only to fall to her knees behind a dumpster. She doesn’t look to be the type who frequents slums—I would know. She doesn’t seem nanobot-addled, wire-fried, or like she has any other malady typical for the slum-frequenting androids.
As I watch, her body convulses and frothy red liquid dribbles from her mouth.
Definitely atypical. She doesn’t seem crazed or under any influence; she seems damaged.
She’s so thin; her steel frame must be incredibly lightweight, its durability questionable. Her legs are long, her shoulders and chest strong. Efficient. She’s a runner.
I edge closer to her.
“Madam, you appear to be leaking some sort of lubricating fluid. Is everything all right? Do you have need of a mechanic?”