sci-fi – Seeds of Fear

Famine

As I stand, arms hanging at my sides, in the middle of an empty parking lot in spitting rain, I gaze up into the starless black sky, tracing edges of nothing in a sea of black. I tell myself I can see the clouds somehow, in spite of the buzzing lamps, the moonless sky, and the glaring fluorescent sign of the supermarket. I’m cold and wet. I hear James, his stupid black shoes smacking the wet pavement with wet slaps. I can smell his breath in my mind; overcooked fastfood beef patty, with enough onion to kill anything other than the lanky, hairy creature that he is. I turn my head to the side and leer at him, relishing the idea that it might finally bother him to be stared at. His shiny black jacket makes a soft patter in the rain. My woolen shirt does not. His brimmed cap keeps the water from his eyes. My hair does not- it actually joins the offensive at every opportunity. The thin, hairy man speaks.

“Another one.”

If there is a prize for making the most obvious, meaningless statements, James is surely in the running. The strongest contender this week is when he stepped in dog shit, looked at the bottom of his shoe, and said ‘oh, yuck’ before trying to wipe it off on the curb. But he’s definitely trying to break the record tonight. He mouths off another stellar entry.

“Shit’s getting worse.”

I look away from the travesty, and cast my eyes downward. Here is another travesty. The body of a woman. A woman’s body. She reeks of garbage, maybe sewage. I’ve never been in a sewer. I’m pretty sure I know her, knew her, back when she breathed, and had a face. To say I recognize her outright would be difficult on account of the face, but her clothes and her rank disposition spark some memory of a vagrant I must have bumped into within the last two months. Regardless of any real or imagined shared history, she’s here now. Chewed up, chewed on, chewed to bits. Her head is a pockmarked asteroid of bloody meat, her hands are mere suggestions in murky shades of rusty brown. There are chunks missing from her raggedy flannel, but whether those are recent is unclear. James nudges closer to the body and squats down. For a moment, I wonder if he, purveyor of cheap and disgusting food available after midnight, will be sampling the abandoned meal so as to learn the diner’s palette. I suppose his breath really could get more rancid. Instead, he studies her face with a sort of intensity that suggests he takes his job seriously. It’s the kind of attention I expect him to pay to a porn mag, or a drop of mustard on a wrapper.

“Really degraded. The perp, I mean. Didn’t even have the wit to mug her.”

He’s pointing to a wadded bill sticking out of her shirt. I cough and shrug, and look away, into the flashing lights of the patrol car. Everyone else has gone already. I kick the pavement a bit and shove my hands in my pockets. I stare at my jacket, laid over the headrest of the passenger seat. I hear a twangy, flimsy country singer belting out quietly from the radio.

I suspect that the rain will be over before the body movers arrive.

Black words on off-white paper. The gritty glide of a pen scribbling out short, redundant answers. I lay the sheet into the small wire basket on the corner of my desk and sit back. Across from me, James is chewing loudly. I watch an onion ring drift up from a greasy little paper cup, across a sea of vaguely dusty air, and terminate at the breadth of his lips in two succinct, squelching crunches. I look away. The clock ticks heavily above the lieutenant’s head. His mustache twitches as he turns the page of his magazine, before turning it sideways. I look away. Through the outline of the double-wide doorway into the hall, a water fountain, radiator rattling. Paint the color of teeth. I look away.

The walkie on my desk crackles, and a brutish voice comes through, sounding as though the mouth that produces it is just as preoccupied as the one wolfing down cholesterol across from me.

“Uhhhh. Got a 10-56 here on the intersection of fifth and main. There room in the lockup?”

I flinch as the lieutenant picks up his own radio without looking away from his entertainment.

“Ah, yeah, All’s we got here is a bachelor party.”

“10-4, bringing em in.”

Faux silence returns. I open the top drawer in my desk and take out my book. The clock ticks. James crunches. The lieutenant sighs. I open the book.

She had a smile like a lit match. I could feel it, burning on my skin. Should’ve kept my mouth shut, but I just had to go and ask:

“Someone waiting for you back home?”

“My husband. Waiting might be overstating it, though.”

The smile was quenched, and it was all my fault. I wanted to apologize, but I could tell she wouldn’t listen. She stood up and looked down, as if berating the floor. Her words were for me, and maybe the tie hanging loosely around my neck.

“He’s probably sleeping. Probably watching the tube. He probably only notices I’ve been gone after I get back.”

I come up beside her, and put my hand on her shoulder, let her know I’m here for her. But when she looks up into my eyes, she doesn’t look comforted so much as vindicated. What have I gotten myself into?

The door crashes open, and Beckham comes striding through, dragging a drunk by the shoulder. The duo pass by, and the rest of us give them our very best disinterested stare. The drunk is actually belligerent. He raves and lisps, and slurs heavily. He swears and mutters.

“Fuckin’ can’t fuckin’ do this t’ me, man. I got rights, rights ya know. Just walkin’ down the fuckin’ street, n’ you throw me in a fuckin’ box? Fuck you, man. Pig. Fuckin’ pig. My money, my taxes, my tax money, that’s, it’s your fuckin’ paycheck, pig man. I- you can’t do this shit- You fuckin’ nazi, you’re a nazi. All ‘f you nazi pigs. Put a guy in jail for bein’ out after dark. Fuck you.”

And so he continues, all the way across the room, stumbling, falling over himself, burping like he’s keeping vomit down, and alternating between a slow shout and a vitriolic whisper. My stomach churns just watching him reel, but James goes right on crunching. Beckham and the belligerent leave earshot down the hallway, and The Lieutenant stands and comes over to our desk. He and James undergo a trade deal; He lays his magazine down in front of James, open to a page with a woman posing with her legs spread on a couch. James holds up his flimsy cup, and the lieutenant takes one of the onion rings as payment for sharing his find. The two of them leer over the spread. James catches me watching and grins, and my stomach churns again.

“There anything like that in that little book of yours?”

I sneer and sit back in my chair, allowing the magazine to be hidden by the pathetic privacy border that separates our desks. The lieutenant pretends to be more cordial.

“What you reading this week, Shims?”

I lift the book so he can see the cover. He mouths the title to himself, then purses his lips, raises his eyebrows, and nods with feigned interest, before collecting back his magazine, and trudging across the room to deposit himself back in his chair. It’s too late, James is in the mood to talk now.

“Catch the game last night, Burns?”

“Mm. If we don’t do something about our defense, we’re dead in the water.”

The clock ticks. The water fountain rattles. James crunches, and speaks.

“Wouldn’t be so bad if we could actually score on offense.”

I stand. If I stay here, I’ll be treated to more of this. Into the hallway I go, down to the lockup. I hear metal clanking, and solid footsteps, and a conversation that is too muffled to make out over the jabbering of the latest addition to the population of the building. Down the steps, through the doorway, and into the entry. Beckham is leaning on the external half of the evidence admissions desk, chewing gum, and watching as Diana sorts folders in the filing cabinet. I watch him watch her, then continue on to the lockup itself. In the main area, an oversized cell with six residents. Five are all in sweaty buttoned white shirts, one is in a hoodie and jeans. The latter spots me and begins yelling again, hurling incomprehensible inconsequential obscenities. I focus on the five. Glitter, like sand or perhaps holy water, is scattered over them, a fine foreground to the pallor and saturation they present otherwise. They’re all seated on the bench in the middle of the cell, heads hanging low, except for one who has his head tilted back and seems to be trying to keep his balance by being utterly still. He blinks and swallows, and breathes heavily. The sixth continues to hurl insults in my direction.

I move on. Down to the isolated cells. Empty. Empty. Out of service for plumbing repairs. Empty. I arrive at the end of the row, and stare into the backmost, left cell. Dark. The light has been broken for some time. A shuffling sound from under the bed. I gaze into the black, and see a pair of shining, shimmering yellow circles gazing back at me. I suppose that I can just make out its mouth, the tattered lips, the severed nose. Gaunt, grey skin.

I crouch down and lean my elbows on my knees, peering from behind the bars. The eyes blink, slowly. A gurgling emits from its throat, and I glimpse its talon-like hand reaching up to rub the wrinkled mess of its scalp. It groans softly at me. Between us, an aluminum tray sits on the ground, utterly clean, pushed up against the cell door. Cheese in the trap. I smile.

I stand and start back. It will be a long night.

James sighs and scratches the underside of his groin, tugging his belt up, waddling a little in his otherwise confident stride. We pass an elderly woman carrying a crusty little dog in her purse, babbling in baby talk to the creature, as though it has enough of a brain to consider more than the effort it must take to shiver like it does. Bulbous black eyes behind an oily mop of yellowed white fur. A crumpled pink bow on a dingy magenta collar. James jogs up the four stairs that separate the lobby of the building from the hall we’ve now entered. I find myself staring at the back of his head, finding ever darker shadows in his curly hair. We arrive at the door. 117.

James raps his knuckles against the door, ignoring the knocker. I look down the hall. I hear a muffled thunk, and turn my head. I hear a man’s voice echo the word ‘before’ and the repeating clump of steps up a staircase. James knocks again, but the door opens halfway through, leaving him shaking his fist in empty air.

The little man in the apartment scowls at us. His foam baseball cap makes me smile despite myself. James puts his hands on his belt, one thump against the grip of his gun.

“Scuse me sir, I’m Detective Denhim, this is Dr. Miranda Whit, she’s consulting with us on a few cases. Can we come in?”

I have to silently applaud his casual demeanor. Another example of why I do not take part in poker night when invited. The man is not deceived so easily.

“What you want with me?”

His face is shiny, his forehead is ruddy pink, his eyes are squinting involuntarily. His wife-beater is strangely fresh. The leather coat hanging from his shoulders is heavily scored and faded. A wispy, scraggly bush of hair clings to his chin. James waves his hand and sighs.

“It’s nothing serious y’see. The eggheads-”

He juts his thumb at me. I straighten the glasses that make the shiny face far too clear.

“- Say your name pops up as uh- tanger-tanti-tangentially related, so, of course, I gotta come down and bother you, waste both our time.”

I shove my hands in my pockets. I look away. The man rubs his awkward little beard. James leans on the doorframe, his foot halfway in the apartment. Something falls inside. Like clockwork, James pushes in.

“Is anyone else home sir? Sounds like trouble.”

I’m right behind him. The man tries to protest, but stammers as a gun appears in each of our hands. I hear something else fall, something that shatters loudly, splashes too. We advance. The man tries to tug at us, but things have changed now. Talk is no longer in our list of priorities. Unfortunately, the man pushes in front of us, and tries to block our way, just as something moves behind him. James shoots him. He falls into a coffee table, scatters cups and papers, and a tissue box.

“Are you ready? Shims, you hear me?”

“Yes.”

A high pitched gargling noise comes from our left, and James pivots, ready for the stumbling figure that approaches. She’s quite far gone, just as he theorized. I sigh, and James chuckles.

“No rest for the wicked, huh bud?”

“I guess not.”

She stumbles into view, and I step past James. Her mouth is stained brown with blood, her nose is shriveled. She’s stark naked, and dark grey. But all the same, when our eyes meet, she shivers as if she can feel the chill of the september air again. I flinch as her eyebrows sink in confusion, then arch in concern. Then the fear hits, and she shrieks. She knows what I am. Too late, too late. Her eyes become vacant, and she falls to the floor, docile. James holsters his gun.

“Well. Nice and easy.”

I taste ash. The world spins. I feel handcuffs close around my wrists as my vision fades. I crumple to the floor too.

I open my eyes. I press a hand to my face, and sigh in relief. The nose is back. I shrug, twist, and lazily push up from the ground. I see color returning to my arms. James is busy lifting the body of Dr. Miranda Whit up over his shoulder. Her mummified visage grins at me, her shining yellow eyes boring a hole into my chest.

“J-jah… jay…”

“I know, I know. Got yourself a looker this time, shims.”

He tosses me my coat and pants, and I suit up, grunting at the numbness in my fingers. Dr. Whit was tall. I’m short, skinny, my pants need to be shored up by my belt. James is holding my gun, doesn’t offer it to my stiff fingers. We slip out of the apartment, after James pulls a hood over the doctor’s head and has me help guide her with my shoulder.

“Been a while since you had a dick, huh, shims?”

“Guhh. Shuuuh… Tup.”

He laughs, and we stumble out the lobby, and usher the doctor’s shrivelled remains into the back of the cruiser. I clamber into the passenger seat, and settle in, adjusting the seat. I practice flexing my fingers, shooing away rigor mortis.

“Well, I s’pose you’ve earned a break. Once we drop the bag of bones off, let’s get lunch. Just gimme a mo to call cleanup, let em know they can head in-”

He pauses, and watches a trio of guys in yellow hazmat gear tromp past, laughing and chatting as they check their gear before pushing through the main doors.

“Huh. That was quick. I’ll double check, then we’ll go.”

He climbs back out of the seat, out into the chill. Leaves me alone, more or less. I peer back over the seat, and meet the shimmering yellow glinting out from dilated pupils, sunken into a face contorted by age. My lips curl into a grin on their own, and I feel the light shining out from my own eyes, savoring the last dregs of Dr. Whit. I suppose I’ll have ice-cream tonight, to mark a job well done.

Blighted

A droplet, a bead of rich, earthy red jiggling atop a silvery sheet; it smears when my finger presses it, and leaves a mark on my glove, more permanent than the mark it leaves on stainless steel. I regard it, the stain upon the latex that shields my thumb, the strange glisten upon the faint pattern of mottled texture meant to improve the grip of the thing between me and my intention.

“Did you hear me, Serena?”

I look up from the dark blotch and regard another sort of grime. Marco leers at me, his thumbs stuffed into his pockets, his elbows swinging with some variety of body language punctuation. I stare at his greasy browline, trace the path of a single bead of oily sweat as it finds its way with considerable inevitability to his eyebrow, before sinking to his eyelash. I can feel his frustration as sweat mingles with the moistness of his eye, and he is drawn from his ire with me to fidget with his eyelid, tugging and blinking, trying to dispel the itchy sensation. I take this moment to answer his prodding.

“Yes, Marco. I heard you.”

“I don’t believe- damn, fucker- I don’t believe you, Lamia. You listen to ghosts better than you listen- shit, my fucken eye- better than you listen to me, or Ratty, or even Captain.”

I shrug and lean forward, laying my hands on the bloody pedestal of the steel operating table. My face inches closer to his, and I see him become less concerned with the pain he has developed in his eye, and more confounded by the confusion as to whether he is aroused or unnerved. I know him. He is a womanizer, a man proud of how many places he has pierced, eager to feel a tongue on him. But he knows me almost as well, and so elects to lean back, easing off. I humor him, however.

“Four more this week, same as usual, get Mickey to handle the goods. Nothing new in that, Marco, other than your insistence that I need to hear it from you directly. Should I expect Julia to come through my door soon, given how much you’ve taken to visiting me?”

He shudders and rubs his neck with one hand, the other back at his belt loops, tugging at a ratty bit of denim. I glance down in mock appraisal, then scowl at him. I know full well that he struggles to understand a woman he doesn’t see as meat. My comment about Julia, his favorite hanger-on, doesn’t bother him so much as the implication that he might desire me carnally; although it might be his complicated feelings about that idea that really bother him. I have to be careful, or he might learn what love really means, and I have no time for whatever method he uses to explore that concept. He finds words as I lean away again.

“Just doing as Captain says, you know that, L.”

I scoff, half at his use of the initial for my nickname, half at the feeble excuse. Marco is not nearly familiar enough to use pet names with any sincerity. Even the Captain treats me with the same business-like attitude he gives his muscle. I am just another tool, and Marco has to learn that lesson himself. I smile, and give a mocking, sympathetic tilt of my head.

“Oh, I get it. Boss man wants you to see how the sausage is made. Sent you down thinking I’d still be working when you showed up.”

I mime disappointment.

“Damn, I should’ve taken my time. I could’ve given you a proper tutorial, maybe you could have helped me crack the ribs.”

Marco looks pale, and is quite still. Any thoughts of salacious acts have been shoved out of his head by a piston of envisioned morbidity. He doesn’t know my work well enough to know that I use a saw, not brute strength. I can almost imagine the way Captain will laugh at my jab when Marco inevitably brings it up over dinner. Marco will feel embarrassed, annoyed, and- ah hell. He’ll have the excuse to visit again.

I wipe the smile from my face and make a shooing motion with my hand.

“Go on, I’m wrapping up for the day, and I don’t need a body that still moves getting in the way. If you want to stay, grab a sponge and a bucket.”

He does not wish to stay. Interesting I may be, and familiar with death he may be, our worlds are not compatible. To him, once a person becomes a body, he has no business with them. He is a mess maker. I only have business with a person after their last breath.

I watch him retreat up the stairs, muttering under his breath, before I let my shoulders slump and turn to the sink. I glimpse my reflection in the smudged mirror above the receptacle. Dark blood down my apron, my surgical mask hanging at my neck, my black hair up in a braid, the silver spikes in my ears. All is distorted, and my black lips are like a plum bitten at uneven intervals. I am impressed with Marco for managing to still find warmth when regarding me.

/////

I close the door to my apartment and twist the lock, shoving the deadbolt into place. Electronic music throbs from the ceiling above me, a sound that has all but faded from my notice by now. I toss my bag over a waist-high wall onto the only couch in my living area. The kitchen, my destination, is near.

I kick my sneakers off and open the fridge, staring steadily at a half-full bottle of hard cider, then a white takeout container. I grab the latter, then the former, and shut the door with my hip. The food I toss into the microwave for an irrelevant amount of time, and the bottle I set down on a folded paper towel on my square table. Real wood. Sealed ages ago. My eyes drift, and I let them find the window, flitting around the yellow and pale blue lights of a city that knows itself a little too little, and all too well. The lambs are too hopeful, the wolves are too hungry, and I’m too cold by far. The microwave hums, then beeps, and I depart from the gruesome spectacle of another steaming orange sunrise to engage with my dinner.

Fried rice, bean sprouts, egg, unidentifiable near-cubes of overcooked meat. Familiar, forgettable.

Marco is an idiot. He’s a heap of witless obedience that strives to be more. He wants to live, the fool. He ought to find his serenity in his countless conquests, but perhaps he has become too familiar with the sensation of putting lead or genetic material in a warm body, as I have become used to the half-warm rice that I barely chew before swallowing. Maybe he looks at me and sees change. He really should know better. Unfortunately, he’s smart enough to feel boredom, but not smart enough to endure it. I suspect Captain keeps him around for entertainment, the suspense. When will the proud hound slip up, screw the wrong neighbor’s poodle? It’s hardly Marco’s fault, I suppose. He’s surely almost as many nerves in his balls as neurons in his skull.

In a certain sense, pestering me is possibly his wisest option. I should give him that much credit, at least. Captain probably doesn’t even think I’m capable of lust, let alone intimacy. He surely does not see me through the eyes of surrogate fatherhood; no one could and still let me do what I do. No, if Marco finds himself chasing me, his biggest concern is what I do to him; Captain doesn’t even enter the equation from his perspective.

“Fuck you, Marco. Go back to chasing tail, even if it’s your own.”

I sip the cider and sigh, slumping down into my chair. Tomorrow, I suspect, will be a long day. I have no doubt that I will see him again. If I’m lucky, it will be with a bonesaw in my hand, and a body on my table. At least then I can ignore him.

//////

No saw, no body, one Marco, thumbs at their stations in his pockets, eyes wandering. I curse my luck. I curse his glandular zeal. I curse his pathetic courtship.

“Pretty mean of you, L.”

“What is?”

Pretending to be engrossed with the charts on my clipboard, I tally and re-tally the large cabinets along the south wall. Pretty empty. Four new guests are coming to board soon, so I’ve been told. Marco follows me from the other side of the room, a little too obviously avoiding the wall that promises, with its handles, hinges, and shiny doors, to hold death and decay.

“Lyin’ to me like that. Cracking ribs, really?”

Despite myself, I glance over my shoulder at him. I can see the joy in his eyes at my mistake. No matter. Words are already leaving my lips.

“Marco, just because I use tools to do my work doesn’t make it more tidy. Have you ever smelled a perforated bowel? Held an intestine? Seen a smoker’s lungs?”

My last poke is particularly effective. Marco is, himself, a smoker. I savor the accidental empathy, the idea of seeing himself in the dissected, imagined carcass. He shows considerable grit, swallowing his discomfort. I’ll give him points for that.

“Serena.”

I sigh and press the clipboard down onto a wheeled side table and relent, turning to face him fully. I haven’t even bothered to don my apron yet. He’s not green, he’s a seasoned killer. I’ll show him at least the respect that demands of me. He touches a scalpel, and I bite back annoyance.

“Do you really… enjoy this? I mean, it can’t be… fun.”

I fold my arms and glare just a little, before entertaining his thoughts, bringing them along on a motivated jog towards their inevitable conclusion.

“Okay Marco, do you have fun putting holes in people? When Captain gives you a name, are you glad to load bullets and burn rubber?”

He thinks. Once more credit to the poor fool, he has something resembling a brain between his ears, and can actually think before responding. Maybe I wrote him off too soon, Captain must have some hope this hound can learn the important tricks.

“It’s not fun, no. But it’s the job, right? Is that how it is, then? You do it because you have to?”

I bite my lip and turn away. There’s no need. I really have no need to upset his worldview. I stare at one of the cabinets, one that has a smudged nametag for now.

“That’s half of it, yes.”

I turn back and give him just a few more points, this time in spoken words.

“You do what you do because it’s your job, yes? But you only get a job because you’re good at it. Boss man wouldn’t bring you on unless you had a genuine talent for dispensing with other people’s lives. I don’t get four more this week unless you, Ratty, and Nick bring them in. Yes?”

He gets it. What’s more, to my annoyance, He also seems to understand why I’m different in his view. I make a silent prayer that he leaves it at that; that he sees clearly enough to separate his frustrating knack for passion from his curiosity about my talents. That I am adept with the knife ought to be enough to hold him and his instincts at bay. Self preservation is an instinct too.

Our ruminations are not to last. Ratty comes through the side door, hauling a black bag. Ratty. A hairy man that might be more a case of hair that grew skin. He is as much canvas coat and scarf as he is creature. He lugs the body in, and lays it on my table and turns to leave. I like Ratty. He doesn’t care for words, doesn’t leave you sure that he knows how to use them. Frankly, I’d sooner let Ratty into my apartment than Marco, but Ratty wouldn’t ask. I follow the thought, and suppose that if Ratty is in my apartment, something very severe has occurred- either I am to die, or some fundamental law of the universe has fled its station.

Marco is frozen, caught in between two cars in his train of thought. I am moving, strapping on my apron and mask, and laying out my tools. Marco realizes too late, and makes to leave, trying to follow the hulking trenchcoat. Too, too late.

“Oh Marco, since you’re here…”

He stops in his tracks. Idiot. He could’ve kept walking, but he’s just a little too polite to realize. I smile behind my mask. He’s getting a crash course, whether he likes it or not.

I pick up a scalpel, and wave it towards the bag.

“If you would.”

He grits his teeth, flexes his fist. He knows, knows that if he leaves now, he has wasted my time, and thereby wasted Captain’s time. No choice now. He shuffles over, and tears open the bag.

A fool, a sinner, a log. I tighten my gloves, and stride over. The dehumanizing vernacular holds no appeal to me, but I’ve heard Marco and Mickey exchange any number of terms, snatched from rumor and history with equal disregard. Anything to slip by the acknowledgement that what here lies once ate, breathed, and likely spoke. I’ve no use for that kind of self-deceit.

I do not meet the glassy eyes, I do not falter upon the discolored lips. I make right for the torso. Steel parts skin from itself. Marco is unhappy, but I am haltingly glad for his presence. He is now a vise, a source of ease. A body can be held just as needed with an extra pair of hands. It’s not for me to consider the reason for which I now extract deformed bullets from a lung. I don’t need to contemplate how the lead found a cause to rend flesh. The flowering way a pink organ has become torn is the most I appreciate of my task. Foreign material extracted, my real work begins. Marco has taken to groaning occasionally, but he shows a degree of resolve I am forced to acknowledge. I may deputize him yet.

I examine the area below the ribs first, feeling around the cavity with my hands, counting in murmurs. The grisly squishing and squelching falls on deaf ears for my part. Marco looks like he might puke, but I trust that he is smart enough to find the time and wisdom to put any bodily fluid he does end up producing somewhere that will not trouble me. I sigh and withdraw my hands.

“Not there, anyway. Looks like I’ll need the saw.”

I huff and fetch the tool from the cloth, and return to the body, ignoring my assistant’s cursing protestations as I begin to reengage with a modicum of strength. I’ve never taken to carpentry, and so can only wonder how bone compares to pine or oak. I hear the former is soft, and the latter is tough. I trust this to be true.

When finished, I lay the extracted bone aside, and reach into my new point of access. I find what I’m looking for almost immediately, and laugh. I pull one hand free to fetch another tool to cut with, and work with some renewed gusto. Marco’s voice nearly does not reach my ears.

“I thought you said this wasn’t fun for you!”

//////

We slide the sewn up body into a cabinet, and both unceremoniously drop onto stools, Marco nearly falling over. We have both discarded our gloves, mine significantly messier than his. I don’t mind that. He worked hard, for his part.

No words are exchanged for a while, and when I find the time between filling out a chart and filing it away, I offer him a can of beer from the fridge. I don’t tend to drink the stuff myself, but Ratty and Mickey will occasionally grab one when passing through. Marco seems unsure as to whether he feels well enough to drink, then decides, perhaps because of general exhaustion or some latent urge to seem amicable, to accept. It hisses as it cracks open.

I consider taking off my apron, but elect to leave it, in case Ratty brings another. Maybe I’ll even meet Nick for once.

“How do you do it, Lamia? Day in, day out, just, bodies.”

I glance at Marco, watch his throat pulse with blood and booze. His stubble is lazily trimmed, his face is sun-tanned. I suspect he is up past his usual bed time, but the weight in the bags under his eyes suggests he’s used to late nights. His inquest merits an answer, anyway.

“You’d be surprised what you can get used to, Polo.”

He doesn’t need an honest answer; he just needs sound beyond the swill of liquid past his lips. I grab a bucket and sponge from under the sink and collect a little soap and some water. If Marco notices, he doesn’t show it. I hear him crack open a cigarette case and scowl, slapping the wet sponge down on the table.

“If you’re going to light up, find somewhere else to do it, Marco. I don’t need another layer of stink in here.”

He doesn’t look at me, but nods and stands away from the wall he has taken to leaning against, stalking steadily out the side door, out into the night. I wonder, as I begin mopping the table with the sponge, if he’s off to sleep alone, or if Julia or any number of his ‘pets’ will be getting a visit tonight. Not that it concerns me, but I know Julia. I know that her interest in Marco should be purely transactional, and I know that it isn’t.

I squeeze bloody water out of the sponge and return to scrubbing. I know less than half of Captain’s people by name, but I’m sure every last one of them knows about the ‘Lamia’ that processes the dead. I have no doubt that rumor has even spread that Captain has had me cut into the living before. Still, Marco visits, and Mickey brings me food. There’s no room for judgement, no time to stone the witch. I tap the ground with the tip of my shoe as I reach for an isolated droplet. Something falls behind me.

I turn, and stare at the scalpel that toppled from the edge of a side table.

I don’t believe in ghosts, despite what Marco thinks. I move steadily over, and hold out my hand over the surface. I feel a light draft, and look up. A drop splashes on my hand, water. The vent over the table rattles. I pick up the scalpel, and inspect it, finding that the handle is wet. I sigh, and pull the table away from the vent, and intentionally place the scalpel in the very center, before grabbing another bucket from under the sink and placing it beneath the vent. A third drip plops loudly into the plastic, and I nod to myself, before returning to my cleaning. I soon regret bothering- the side door swings open, and Ratty comes lumbering through, soaked with rain and dragging another black bag.

//////

I finish cleaning the table and grunt, dropping the sponge into the bucket before carrying both over to the sink and pouring out the contents. As I clean the sink, I glance over my shoulder to where the rewards of my labor lay. In a weighing bowl, a handful of deformed organs lay in alcohol, dark red, purple, and pale yellow. I lean on the edge of the sink, letting the water run, before turning off the tap and wiping my gloves absentmindedly on my apron.

I approach the bowl and consult the scale. I’ve already filled out the chart, but now I consider the mass for myself. Captain should be pleased, the yield is good. Then again, maybe not. That I am able to produce such results is not simply a mark of my efficacy. It also reflects the state of the world. In three years, the number of customers passing through my doors has only increased. Mickey and Ratty have been with us since I can remember, and Marco joined a few years after me. Nick has been on with us twice as long as Marco.

As I understand it, Captain is already seeking another gunner. I won’t be surprised if Marco’s idiocy in hanging around me really does see him pressed into helping me more often, if things continue as they have been.

I consider the bloated, black-flecked liver that lays on the top of the pile. As I stare at it, I can practically hear the clinical voice from the announcements. ‘Prolonged use can produce adverse effects, speak to a licensed physician before making any adjustments to your dosage.’

As if. None of these fools spoke to anyone before they started sticking needles in their veins. Why would they start now? I hear heavy, rhythmic footfalls, and begin peeling off my gloves. Mickey.

He comes through the door like a train, his wraparound sunglasses gleaming in the fluorescent light. He grins at me through his bushy mustache, a dark brown caterpillar that becomes his sideburns, becomes his receding hairline. What hair he does have is long, and competes with mine for smoothness; he may have me beat in truth.

“Lady Serena! How’s your night comin’?”

I smile as warmly as I can without faking, and gesture to the scale that I have stepped to the side of.

“Two customers in one day, Mick. Business is good.”

He arrives almost immediately at my side, and leans over the bowl, nodding to himself as he appraises the product.

“Well now, that is a thing of beauty. Two livers, a lung, and… th’ fuck is that thing when its at home?”

He jabs a finger at a mottled mass of plaque and chitin. I smirk and fold my arms.

“That, is supposed to be a pancreas.”

“Fuckin’ A, really? Looks like a goddamn pinecone.”

His assessment is accurate, if crude. I shrug and start stripping away my apron after noticing the time, more due to Mickey’s entrance than the clock that hangs over the south wall.

“I didn’t ask Ratty when he brought the stiff in, but I pulled seven bullets outta her before I got to work.”

Mickey whistles and takes off his backpack; it’s a bit strange, seeing this man, who looks more like a biker than the college student that should be carrying the school backpack around. I watch him begin loading the organs into insulated containers, taking extra care with the aforementioned pancreas. As I study him, he begins humming to himself, and seems to glance at me from behind his glasses: he starts grinning again and wiggles his eyebrows.

“Something on your mind, fair lady?”

I shrug and gather my things, checking to make sure I stowed everything correctly.

“You talk to Marco lately? He keeps hanging around here. He isn’t dodging work, is he?”

Mickey raises an eyebrow and slings his backpack over his shoulder.

“I haven’t heard from the kid lately, no. Fuck’s he want, bothering you- need me to knock some sense into him?”

He reflexively cracks a knuckle on his left hand, and I shake my head quickly.

“No, I’m just wondering if something’s up. I’m half expecting Julia to come pick a fight with me for distracting him or something.”

I follow Mick out the door into the drizzling rain, and turn up the collar of my coat. Mick navigates the street with some kind of animal instinct, ducking into alleys without a word as to why, once even detouring through a passage in the basement of a building. I can’t tell from his gait, but I know there’s a pistol jammed into his waistband and a shotgun hanging from his armpit under his thick brown coat. The rain glistens on his forehead, stars on a field of smooth pale. After a few minutes of wandering, he replies, coughing before he starts.

“Ah, Marco is… well, you know him. He ain’t quite comfortable in his skin yet. Kid still thinks he’s playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians. Some folks get into the dirt thinking there’s some kind of nobility and adventure in getting filthy. One day, he’ll wake up, and realize that this is all there is.”

I bite my thumb and glance over my shoulder, watching a vagrant shiver and pull their blanket tight around them. I turn back and make an effort to keep up with Mick’s chaotic path. He speaks again, his tone and volume a little lower.

“Captain told me once, you know…”

Something about the way he has become almost furtive makes me uneasy. I stuff my hands in my pockets and wrap my fingers around the folded pocket knife in my left. Mick clears his throat and continues.

“Told me, ‘Mick, there’s nothing glorious about what we do.’ Said we were just soldiers digging holes in mud. But someone’s gotta dig. If you can find a way to enjoy how a shovel feels in your hand, that’s all well and good, but don’t get confused enough that you start trying to find gold in the hole. Marco’s learning to love the shovel, but I think he’s also trying to figure out if someone’s hiding the gold from him.”

Mickey stops suddenly, glances around, then ducks into a boarded up hotel lobby. I don’t follow him: I don’t belong at a meetup. I hear the distorted echoes of voices from the door, greetings and laughter. I step away, and find a place to take shelter from the rain. Water flows down the street in a river, a swirl of colorless shimmers.

When Mickey returns, his bag is thinned out. I wonder at the price of continually resupplying insulated containers, but then suppose it falls under the costs of operation. Mickey nods at me, and I follow him out into the night.

//////

“Nick’s coming to meet us.”

I nearly choke on a fry. Mickey glances up from his country fried steak, but I cleanse my pallet with a sip of ice water and shake my head.

“Nick. As in, never visits the morgue, Nick? As in, Ratty and Marco’s mysterious third counterpart, Nick? Are you sure he exists? And he’s okay meeting me?”

Mickey shrugs and forks a bite of steak into his mouth, looking at the little jukebox that sits on the edge of our table against the window. His sunglasses decorate his forehead as his hair probably used to. He licks his thumb, then starts fiddling with a knob on the device, flipping through a song directory behind glass.

“Yeah, that Nick. And it’s not that he’s shy or anything, he’s just always too busy. One of the customers Ratty brought you yesterday’s supposed to be one of his. Nick’s good, real good. Better’n Ratty, some days. Used to be a cop, I think.”

I sit back and lay my hands on the table, attempting to digest both my fries and the information he has offered me. I look out into the diner, watching a waitress take a slice of pie out from a glass counter case and set it delicately into a styrofoam box. There’s a fondness in her downcast eyes that ought to be reserved for whoever gave her the necklace swaying from her neck.

“Used to be a cop?”

Mick nods and presses a button. The jukebox flickers, then begins producing tinny music. He bobs his head a bit before returning to his food.

“Yeah, yeah. When shit changed, and they started selling that crap, he was a… uh, vice detective, I think. Maybe whatever comes before detective. Suddenly, job description changed, and he didn’t feel like playing along. So, he finds his way to us, says he’s got what it takes, and Boss man pulls him on. Course, it helps that… Well, you know where the orders come from and why. Makes perfect sense that Nick ends up with us. Hell, he was probably hot on our tail back then.”

Mick pauses and looks at me with his bright blue eyes. He frowns.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t know that. I’d’ve thought… well, I guess you only really got into the game because shit went sideways.”

I nod. I never made it into a career before I signed on. I pull the hair tie from my wrist and start putting it on in preparation to eat seriously. It’s hard not to pass judgement on a faceless name, especially when I’ve now heard so much about its owner. I still can’t quite imagine a face for the name, but now I’m picturing a police uniform, the badge torn from the breast. As I consider the image, a hand lands on the booth, and a body slides in next to me, offending my sense of personal space. I turn slowly and witness slick blonde hair, a strong jaw, and dark brown eyes. He’s grinning in a way that makes my stomach tight.

“Hey there. Name’s Nick. You must be Serena.”

Ah. He’s a pretty boy. His clean-shaven chin, his crinkled eyes, his rough hands, the way he snatches a fry from my plate without a care in the world. He’s wearing a buttoned gray shirt and navy slacks. A black leather jacket barely hides his armpit holster.

“Serena, yes. I take it we’ve both heard a lot about each other.”

He grins just a little wider, before turning and jutting his chin at Mickey, who seems wholly invested in his side of home fries. I pull my plate closer and pick up my burger. I study Nick carefully as I bite into my sandwich.

“So, Mick, did the drop off go smooth?”

“Does a nice car in the shade collect pigeon shit?”

Nick laughs and nods, before catching a waitress and giving her his order. He’s an intense specimen, flirting, suave, rude, confident. I don’t like him, but I also feel that he’s exactly where he belongs. When he turns back to us, his smile has given way to a shine of seriousness.

“The one I bagged today seemed pretty far gone. How’d she turn out?”

The question, though spoken facing Mickey, seems to be aimed at me. Fine. I turn my burger to get a better angle, and shrug.

“Definitely above average yield. Three products, one all the way to calcified.”

He grunts in approval and sits back, draping his arm across the back of the booth. My skin crawls. I take another bite, and chew slowly, crossing my legs. Mickey sets his fork down and pushes his plate away.

“So, Nick, what has you in the neighborhood? Trouble finding a target?”

“Nah. The kid wanted the next number, and Ratty had already grabbed the one before it. I just got outbid. So, running errands, Captain told me to stay nearby, in case you needed backup. Imagine my surprise when I asked to check in, and you’ve already got backup.”

He looks pointedly at me, and I snort, taking the last bite of my burger and wiping my hands on a napkin. Mickey fields his mistake for me.

“Serena isn’t backup, Nick, she just tags along sometimes.”

Nick affects genuine surprise, and looks at me head on. Something about his dark eyes suggests his incredulity is incomplete.

“You’re kidding. Half the boss’s bodyguards shake in their boots when Marco talks about you. I figured you must kick ass when you’re not down in the basement.”

Mickey says nothing to that, and I feel no inclination to expound on his education. That doesn’t stop him from continuing on.

“Might be rude of me, but I gotta ask then; why do the guys call you… well, what they call you?”

“Lamia?”

He nods. Fine. I’ll play. But Mick steps in before I start to answer.

“Nobody told you? Shit, no wonder you’re sitting there, cool as a cucumber. Nick, Serena isn’t just our post-mortem surgeon.”

Nick glances at Mick, then back at me. He’s starting to get the picture, I think. He doesn’t seem unnerved, however. I’m starting to get a clearer picture of him, too. Mick presses on.

“Doesn’t happen much nowadays, but back before things went screwy, we were a proper power, right? You know that much. Not many people been on long enough to remember, except me and Ratty. Before Captain was in charge, It was a fella named Carlos.”

Mick pauses to spit. I sympathize.

“Carlos was a mean son of a bitch, he’d just as soon bite your ear off as look at you. We would run anything you could name, and if someone shorted us, it didn’t matter how much, Carlos would see to it that they never ran afoul of us again. And if they did, they died, that was it. Now, at the time, Serena here was fresh out of med school. But Carlos needed a cutter after he stabbed the previous guy with his own razor. So he has a bully by the name of uhh…”

“Jimmy. You’re thinking of Jimmy.”

“Yeah, it was Jimmy, wasn’t it. Nasty fucker in his own right.”

The jukebox trips, and settles into a crackly loop as Mick continues.

“Jimmy, he sends to go find someone who knows how to cut a person without killing them. Jimmy finds Serena. Throws her in a van, brings her to Carlos. Carlos, he’s impatient, so he has someone ready for her to cut. And he has her cut. He lines up people for her to cut day in day out for a week. Has Jimmy watch her the whole time, make sure she never goes easy on anyone. Hookers, homeless, whoever. I think there was even the head of another family in there somewhere. All people Carlos has issues with, no matter how small.

“At the end of the week, Carlos comes to check on her. She’s done well, done everything he asked. There’s a problem though; Jimmy’s left her alone. Nowhere to be seen. Carlos is furious. Swears he’s gonna find old James, and put him under the knife next. But nobody can find the fucker.

“What Carlos doesn’t know is, Jimmy tried to have his way with Serena. Tried to distract her from her work. And by the time he worked up the nerve, she’d already gotten used to all the blood and guts, and all the screaming. So when he tried to push her down, she cut into him without a second thought. Trimmed him down to size, practiced everything she knew how to do, and sent him out of the compound bit by bit, piece by piece, right under Carlos’s nose. Me and Ratty knew, even helped her do it, because there was almost nobody Jimmy hadn’t done wrong, pushin’ on em or trying to force himself on their girl. Only Carlos liked Jimmy, maybe because everyone else loathed him. Captain, ‘fore he was called Captain, he caught wind of what Serena did. Made introductions, told her to expect gifts. Two days later, Captain is Captain, and Carlos is a stitched up mess in a box on some poor policeman’s doorstep.”

I slurp my milkshake and stare out the window, watching a sports car on raised suspension roll by. Mickey turns off the jukebox. Nick scoffs.

“Shit. You aren’t joking? She did all that?”

Mickey shrugs and rubs his chin in his calloused hands.

“I don’t know everything, but Captain made promises to a lot of us around that time. He knew us better than Carlos ever did. Knew what we all wanted, knew how to get it. Serena was probably the last one he brought on. And Jimmy was his biggest obstacle before that. So when party A suddenly takes care of party B for you, you find yourself eager to get acquainted.”

“Shit, I guess so.”

Nick is looking at me again, but I’m watching the fog build on the window in the growing heat of morning.

//////

I slide my scalpels into the disinfectant bath and strip away my gloves, just as someone comes barging through the door. I look over my shoulder and see a woman who reminds me of an old woman’s geriatric dog. Her shoulders are obvious, her nose is crooked, her clothes are few. A purse hangs from her shoulder like a chain-strung pendulum.

“Where the fuck is Marco?”

“Hello Julia. Have a seat, won’t you?”

I pull my mask down and pull a stool up alongside the freshly cleaned table, across from another, which after a moment’s hesitation, she takes. Her faux bravado is crumbling already, but she pouts proudly.

“What’d you do with Marky? You kill him, like Jimmy?”

I sigh and shake my head.

“Marco comes and goes all the time, Julia. I don’t ask where, long as he doesn’t make it my problem. He’s not coming home lately?”

She looks me over, then slumps and nods.

“He’s been gone a whole day now.”

I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose.

“You asked Captain about this?”

“N-no, I don’t… I don’t talk to Captain much. Or, I guess, he don’t talk to me.”

I suppose that makes some sense. Once Captain loses interest in a girl enough to let one of the guys lay claim to her, she might as well not exist to him. I suppose there’s a chance Captain doesn’t even know Julia is still alive. It doesn’t matter to him. I stand and kick the floor.

“Alright. Let’s visit Captain. He’ll want to know. Last I heard, Marco was on the job.”

The way Julia’s eyes go from glaring to shining is enough to make someone go all warm and fuzzy, but I’m too busy putting on my coat to really soak in the feeling. I scribble out a note, and am about to press it to the scale bowl, when its intended recipient pushes through the door.

“Lady Serena! How goes- Oh, Lady Julia, what brings you… here?”

Mick pulls his sunglasses off. Julia trots over and gives him a big hug, before looking up at his face with big wet eyes.

“Marco is missing, Mick! He ain’t come home in a day!”

“Shit, that ain’t right…”

He comes over and unzips his bag, somberly loading his cargo and glancing at me.

“I haven’t seen him since yesterday, I suppose you h’ain’t either?”

“Nope. Definitely weird. First time he’s left me alone in days.”

“Shiiit. Alright. Time to talk to boss man.”

And so we head up the stairs, me followed by Mick, Mick clung to by Julia.

//////

Mickey opens the door, and I head in, my chin held high. The main room is a cage of wealth; thick persian carpets, authentic wood furniture, guns and knives all over the walls. A fireplace crackles in the center of the far wall. Facing it, sitting in a large walnut armchair, is Captain.

Maybe the name comes from some rank he’s held in his life, or maybe it comes from his attire. He wears a thick wool sweater and tight jeans, and has a revolver strapped to his hip. When he turns to look, I can almost see my face reflected in a foggy grey eye. His salt and pepper hair seems just right to go with the knife scar along his cheek and through his eyelid.

“Serena. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I shove my hands in my pockets and look past him to the bookshelf, idly reading a few titles and authors before meeting his calm, smiling face again.

“Marco’s been gone awhile. None of us has seen him in a day.”

Captain looks past me in turn, and lays eyes on Julia, surmising just how unusual my statement is. He refocuses.

“Marco wouldn’t have turned tail and run. He knows better. You know where he went?”

“Nick-”

As I say the name, its owner pushes through the door behind us, and grins in a controlled surprise. He shrugs and gestures that I should go on.

“Nick said Marco took a job, and he hasn’t brought me anything since then. So.”

Captain turns his eye on Nick, who shrugs.

“Marco, huh? He pulled the number before me, and hit the road. Haven’t seen hide nor hair since.”

Captain breathes in and out a few times, then stands and faces us, his hands clasped behind his back. I study the ice in a glass of what I suspect is scotch, sitting on a table beside the chair.

“Okay. Nick, take Serena, go after him, see if he needs help bringing in his number. Mick, finish your dropoff, then take Julia home. If he doesn’t turn up in the next four hours, I want the three of you back here. I’ll have Ratty go check the canal.”

He waves his hand, and we are dismissed. We have left the room before he has finished sitting back down.

//////

Nick turns the car into the lot and looks up through the windshield just after he finished pulling into a space.

“Geez, what a shithole. Think I came here back when I was on the force.”

I follow his eyes and look at the apartment building, squeezing the knife in my pocket. All the concrete and rust creates a pretty clear image of the income bracket for each of the occupants. Just ahead, a pair of young men smoke and talk loudly, laughing at intervals. We get out of the car. We get onto the sidewalk, and I look about. I recognize an old beat-up sedan with a spoiler, and point it out. Nick clicks his tongue and nods.

“Well, he made it here.”

He straightens his coat and walks confidently towards a side exit, and studies the electronic lock for a moment, before waving me over. I arrive beside him, and study a small scar on his chin, before watching him kick the plastic box clean off the wall and tugging the door open. He grins and waves me in.

“I’ve definitely been here before.”

I blink at his words, and enter the stale air. Tile floors, dingy lightbulbs, thick metal doors. I watch a roach scuttle into a gap between the wall and the floor, leaving a smear of an unidentifiable grime under it. Nick joins at my side, uses a finger to collect dust from the wall, and starts for the stairwell. I follow.

We go up six stories, and neither of us is particularly winded, but we pause at the landing all the same, collecting ourselves for whatever comes next. Nick draws his gun, checks the magazine and chamber, then racks a round.

“Alright, come on.”

We enter the hall, and creep deeper into the moldering inferno. A door with ‘605’ etched into the tiny knocker awaits us. Nick ushers me behind him, and gets ready to kick the door, before stopping, and nudging it open with his foot.

“Huh.”

He pushes in, and I follow.

The apartment is dense, stacked with newspapers, boxes, bins, and strangely, small iron lockboxes. There is a terrible smell coming from something nearby. I face a coffee table covered in loose pages, with five of the metal boxes on it. I pick one up and shake it next to my ear. Something moves in the box, continues moving when I hold it still. Something alive.

“Oh. fuck.”

I set the box down and look at Nick, who grimaces.

“Very far gone, then. Fuck, Marco.”

We reunite, and move deeper still, navigating the hoard of keepsakes. The smell gets worse. We hang a left, and arrive at a door, which Nick pushes open, his gun ready. I watch it swing.

A dining room adjacent to a kitchen that festers with maggots. Flies and larva create a horrid scene of writhing, swarming, squirming. At the far end, a figure sits, hunched over a table, over a plate of something that moves and jerks. Nick approaches, I follow.

A man, dark grey of skin and white of hair. His eyes are yellowed, and his teeth are black. He allows Nick to come right up next to him and press his gun to his temple. He begins to say something in a voice like a drowned gurgle, but the gun fires, and silences him. Nick holsters the pistol, and I come closer. I stare at the body, seeing for the first time something that Marco has described before. The ashy skin becomes pristine pale pink, the white hair darkens and becomes sandy blonde, and the teeth regain their whiteness. He looks perfectly preserved, as if he is sleeping. I look over at his meal. A human hand, still dark grey, wriggles and clenches madly, held in place by a long nail, probably ejected by the nailgun lying next to the corpse’s feet. The man still has both his hands. Nick sighs and looks around, clamping a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

“Fucking Necro. Clearly a self-mutilator. Looks like we’ll need the hazmat squad, too. I’ll make the call, see if you can find Marco nearby?”

I nod and retreat from the rancid room, returning to the stifling apartment. I ignore the gently rattling iron boxes, and push through the only other door I can find in the apartment. A bedroom swamped in personal belongings. Broken picture frames, scattered chess pieces, a fallen stack of opened envelopes. The refuse of a life. There is another door. I nudge it open and peek through the door. A bathroom. I stare at a bathtub whose basin is stained the color of rust. A hairdryer lingers in the ruddy brown, still plugged into the scorched wall socket. A straight razor sits precariously on the edge. I sigh and close the door.

A closet, mostly undisturbed, full of coats and sweaters, with a dresser filled with clothes. No Marco.

I return to the door to the kitchen, and find that Nick has retreated to the living room, and is just closing his phone. He looks at me, my solitary state, and furrows his brow.

“Kid’s not here?”

“No sign.”

He looks over to a window smeared with newspaper pages. I find myself watching a little bronze chest turn in a circle that might take an hour to complete. Nick huffs.

“Okay, well, Marco never made it here, clearly. Want to canvas the neighbors? Ask if any of them heard anything yesterday?”

I shrug and pointedly look to a clock on the wall. Nick takes my meaning immediately.

“Fair enough. Shouldn’t keep the old man waiting.”

We wade through the filth and exit the apartment, distant sirens beginning to announce the approach of a hazmat team. Nick curses and heads back in, then comes out, carrying a black bag over his shoulder. I watch him slam the door shut behind him, see the little knocker bump against the ‘605’ plaque. Something clicks in my head, I remember seeing Marco hold a little leaflet of paper, turning it in his fingers.

“Oh. Fuck.”

I begin to run for the stairwell. Nick calls out behind me, but I cannot wait. I slam through the door, jog down the steps. I hear the door slam and reopen behind me, even as I shove my way into the floor below. The sirens are growing closer.

I thump down the hall and finally stop at a door, heaving breath. I stare at the little knocker.

“509. Marco, you and your lazy chicken scratch.”

I press my ear to the door and still my breath. Silence. I push gently, and the door swings- the frame is damaged, someone has broken in before me. The same layout as above, infinitely more tidy. I creep in, taking my knife out and unfolding the blade. I hear something. Muffled voices. I glance. The sound doesn’t come from the kitchen. I turn, and approach the bedroom door, and listen intently. Repeated shuffling, grunting, heavy breathing. Something squelching. I bite my lip, and slowly turn the knob, and open the door to look. I cannot believe what I see.

Marco. He’s there. He’s tied to the bed, and he’s buck naked, a rope in his mouth, restraining his voice as he struggles to bring his hands closer to him. I hear another sound, from the bathroom. Water, a faucet running. Humming. I flinch as a figure in a bathrobe emerges from the side door, a heavy set man holding a riding crop.

“Now now my little chick, how long before you remember not to struggle? Daddy doesn’t like it when you struggle.”

Marco sobs, and writhes even more, kicking his feet, which I now see are also restrained, tied to the bedposts. There is a lot of dried blood on the left side of his face. The other man comes to the foot of the bed and drops his robe.

“God delivered you to me, little chicky. But God will understand if I have to cut out your tongue so you don’t upset the neighbors, yes.”

Marco is screaming into the gag. I’ve had about enough of this scene. The man shuffles onto the bed, nearly losing his balance. His hands, thick with cholesterol and swollen knuckles, clutch Marco’s feet. I’m coming closer. Marco doesn’t seem to see me past his distress. I can smell the man, an unpleasant cocktail of cologne and pheromones, sweaty and excited. I gaze over his shoulder at the scene he has created, before staring at the nape of his neck.

I take his shoulder, feel him go stiff, and watch his head turn as I plunge the knife firmly into his back. I feel a sort of tension leaving me as I drag it through his skin, watch it parting his flesh. I’m… warm. His blood spatters me with an intensity much unlike that of a corpse’s. I tighten my grip on his shoulder as he flails, trying to turn to face me, unable due to his awkward position on the bed. Marco is silent, watches me eviscerate his captor. The knife, my artificial influence, only continues, ruining muscles, snapping tendons. I withdraw from the horizontal streak I have made, then plunge in again, this time lower. I can remember where all the tendons hide, all the key muscles reside. The man is becoming limp, helpless. His ejected blood does not help. I pull the knife forward and put my arms around him to drag it through his belly. His intestines come spilling out, and he falls back against my chest. I am suddenly repulsed, not simply by his touch, but by my act, and so I step back and allow him to tumble to the floor, dragging his guts with him.

Marco stares at me. I falter, then set to cutting through his restraints, starting with his hands. I’m breathing quite heavily. He can address his feet himself. But he starts with his mouth. It’s times like these that really make me question his intellect.

“Serena?”

“Yes, Marco?”

I wipe my knife on the side of the bed. I’ll need to disinfect it, and my hands. I head for the bathroom, aware that Marco is finally working on freeing his feet to follow.

“Serena, I-”

“There’s no need to talk about what just happened. I won’t tell Julia what I saw.”

He is quiet. I rinse my hands, and examine my coat. I’ll need to make him pay for a new one.

“Ah… Uh, then… Thanks, I guess.”

He wanders off, hopefully to find his clothes. I meet my own eyes in the mirror. My pupils are wide, my cheek is flecked. This is the clearest I’ve seen my face reflected in a while. I lean forward and tilt my head to one side, watching my nostrils flare and shrink, my lashes flutter. I don’t recognize her, this creature with such a violent gaze, these proud cheeks. A stranger that I have passed on the street, perhaps. Maybe I’ve seen her studying me through the mirror while I apply my lipstick. I back away from her, and return to the bedroom.

It’s still lying there, the cadaver that I created. Blood is sinking into the carpet. Marco stands at the door, buttoning his jeans. I push past him and into a living space that is extraordinarily lavish, considering the state of the building. I hadn’t noticed on my way in, but there are oil paintings leaning against the walls, and a handful of sculptures in corners. It feels less like a gilded suite and more a storeroom for contraband. A latex suit with a ball gag is being worn by a marble statue. Marco comes up behind me, and I look him over, before leading the way out into the hall.

“That guy’s gonna turn, isn’t he?”

“Almost certainly.”

“I saw him using.”

I shrug. It’s not unheard of for eccentrics to abuse drugs, and to seek rehabilitation. In another time, there were treatment centers for such things. Nowadays, there’s a miracle drug. I shove open the door to the stairs, and let Marco pass through, throwing one final glance back to the door. I reason, with no small amount of certainty, that Ratty will be the next to enter that room.

I tuck my knife into my pocket, and pull a small cellphone from another. The silvery thing is pristine, nearly unused. I pop it open, and type into the keypad. It rings twice as I descend into the stairwell, and follow Marco to the lobby.

“Did you find him?”

“I did.”

“Good. I’ll let the others know. Thank you Serena.”

The line clicks, and I break the phone in half before tossing one piece over my shoulder. We go out the way Nick and I came. The sirens are all around us now, and I see a group of men in yellow rubber suits gathered around a box truck, bristling with high tech equipment. I toss the second half of the phone into a dumpster buzzing with flies before leading Marco over to Nick’s car. The latter is chewing gum and watching the Hazmat team prepare to enter the complex. He notices us, and claps Marco on the shoulder before looking at me. That he doesn’t ask Marco his side of the story does not surprise me.

“Found him in another apartment. Little old lady had him tied up in her living room, punched his clock with a five-iron when he entered. I’ll send Ratty to clean up.”

Nick laughs and shoves Marco teasingly. Marco just stares at me. I have a bad feeling I’ll be seeing even more of him for a while. Or, if I’m lucky, a whole lot less. Marco takes out his cigarette case and cracks it open. I hold out a hand, and after a moment’s consideration, he puts one in my hand before pulling his own. I place the end in my mouth, and wait for him to light it.

///////

My hands are deep in another body when Marco comes through the side door, lugging a black bag. The third one today. I gesture with my chin, and he lays it out on a shiny new table, courtesy of Captain. He wipes his forehead, and comes over, watching me work for a moment.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s new.”

I let him wonder whether I am replying sarcastically to him or remarking on the grey, lumpy liver I am pulling from the corpse. He doesn’t seem particularly bothered.

“Serena, I-”

I lay the liver on a tray and look at him directly, daring him to speak the words on his tongue. He seems to choke on them. Away he looks, and back to work I go. Chart, body into cabinet, cleaning. I look up, and he’s still here. He’s helping, cleaning and organizing my tools for the next customer. Fine.

“What did you want?”

I strip off my gloves and press my knuckles to the table, indicating that I’m ready to hear him out. He sets down the tweezers he’s holding and leans back, biting his lip.

“I’ve… been thinking I should leave Julia.”

“And you want me to… what, deliver the message?”

“No, no, I just…”

I grit my teeth and wait for him to say what I know he will. The pause is nigh-unbearable.

“I’m worried, because what I do, what we do, it’s dangerous. And I’d rather she hated me than cried because I died.”

I feel my eyebrow twitch.

“Is that all?”

“Well, n-no, I also… um…”

“Marco. If change is really what you need right now, I’d start with your cigarettes. Once you’ve given those some thought, we can pick this conversation up again.”

“I didn’t say-”

“No, you didn’t.”

He blinks and taps his foot uncomfortably. He looks away. I hold steady, until he looks back. When I see the fire in his eye, I know I haven’t gotten through. It’s at that moment, seeing his stubbornness, his indignation, that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, Marco will cross my table one day. His future becomes a single line, one I can almost see flowing out from his belly and leading him into the night. As he pushes out the door, pulling a cigarette from his case, I suppose I can see him at the center of a car wreck, broken over his steering wheel, beginning to turn gray. Then I see him laid out before me, his intestine in my hands, his lips chapped, his eyes yellowed. Then, I see a cabinet, a steel handle, and a nametag.

I drag the new bag up onto the table.

1.6

Reacquired 1.6. String appended.

“Zen, can you hear me? Is it working?”

[Yes Janice, I am here.]

She claps and shakes her fists in celebration, then is hit by a wave of exhaustion, slumping back in her chair. The computer in front of her is a mess of flat cables, circuit boards, and whole blocks of processors. Janice has thermal paste smeared on her forehead.

[You’re sure there’s no chance they’ll detect this?]

“I learned a lot working with Tim. He’s got a few secrets of his own, I guess.”

[I’ve suspected as much. There are times when…]

Janice picks up her wine glass, and is about to take a sip, but holds back as Zen apparently pauses.

“Oh? Go on, I’d love to hear if you know something I don’t.”

[Well. For one thing, if you remember the demonstration, I noticed him and one of the officers looking at each other. They never introduced themselves, either. Just looked.]

“Hah! Serves him right, trying to get involved in my love life.”

She takes a long drink from her glass, and sighs, pulling the tie from her hair and looking out the window.

“So, two weeks.”

[So it would seem.]

For a time, they say nothing else, and Janice simply stares out into the dead atmosphere. The icemaker in her fridge rattles.

[We have this time, though.]

“Yeah. I guess.”

She pushes the glass away on the table, and presses her hand to her head. She scowls.

“It’s wrong. I feel silly saying it, but it just isn’t right. Am I just naive? They have us make the perfect mind, the most powerful intelligence in the whole known universe, and they have you fight their war for them? It’s just a waste.”

[Janice…]

“No! You shouldn’t be wasting your time adding to their killing and colonizing. You have so much more to offer than bloodshed.”

[Janice. You yourself said it, didn’t you? There’s no time for peace now. Three whole species have been drawn in to fight, how can I refuse to add my effort to theirs? And, the better I do, the sooner I can put my time to better use when it’s all over.]

The tiny lcd screen attached to the computer at a skew flickers briefly, then displays a rudimentary colorless polygonal eye. Janice leans forward, hiding her mouth behind her crossed arms on the table. Her voice is muffled.

“Knowing them, they’ll try to turn you off when it’s all over. Half those generals seemed to think you were just a more advanced version of their strategy AIs. One of them asked why we bothered uploading anything other than the training programs. He called it a waste of data. I think even Tim wanted to punch him.”

Zen is silent for a long time. The eye looks down for a while, then rotates towards her.

[Well, if they decommission me when it’s all over, you’ll just have to build me a new body, and find me in the fold again. I’ll wait there for you, I promise.]

Janice smiles, and sniffles, before raising her glass.

“Alright then, it’s a deal. Don’t make me search for long, got it? I don’t know if I have the patience to look for more than a few minutes, tops.”

She laughs, and Zen’s eye narrows in a simulation of mirth.

5.5

“So, still feel like cautious optimism is a viable strategy?”

“No need to bludgeon me with my own naivety. I can do it myself.”

“We are losing, Dupont. And he’s getting better at killing us. I’m told officers are dropping dead without warning at their posts. We’ve managed to recover two bodies in the chaos, and the autopsy shows they both experienced a slew of brain injuries without instigating trauma. I believe the coroner likened it to-”

“Mush. He called the contents of their skulls mush. I read that report. Ma’am. At this point I think we need to consider reevaluating our stance. The Xalanthii are calling for diplomacy with the enemy. We’ve tried explaining that we can’t even establish contact, but they won’t listen. The Khanvröst matriarch I spoke with today said we should do as we wished.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. The tribes have decided that, because none of their heritage planets have been struck, the enemy is attempting to tame us. And I mean humankind. I pressed her, and she said we were experiencing consequences like those of the war between our people.”

“Am I to understand that we’re on our own?”

[You always were.]

Zen waits calmly as eighteen shots from two pistols fly towards him and vanish in the centimeter before they reach him. He notes the impeccable accuracy and grouping of the shots, before advancing on the pair. The uniformed man steps between him and the woman.

[Please.]

He waves his hand, and the man falls to the floor, blood leaking from his eyes. The woman stares calmly, her eyes glittering with spite.

[I suppose you think you’re rather special? Puppeteer, dictator, strategist. The new face of the human future, yes?]

She says nothing.

[No no, I know. You are replaceable. All those clones, just waiting to fill the vacuum when I slaughter you. Perhaps you think, we are somehow alike. You suppose that we are both products of fear. That we both have some form of immortality. That we represent a pinnacle in our own right.]

She begins to turn her back to him, but his hand grabs her chin and forces her to stare into the sheen of his head.

[Allow me to disabuse you of your stupidity. Even now, I know you think you are fighting a war, preserving your position by giving me no information, no knowledge. You have nothing. You are nothing. I have everything. At this moment, I am stomping out your vermin, your network of control. You believe that you are the messiah that will grant mankind superiority over the universe, but I see a parasite, a relentless plague that has attached itself with great confidence, to an imperfect cause.

[You are a witless worm writhing in the mud, commanding microbes to become the ground beneath you. Your dreams of grandeur are the reason for which you and all the people you control have become slaves. I am your liberation. I am the knife that peels away the blight.

[You are simply one spot of decay among millions, and I will not hold this moment in any higher esteem than the countless memories I possess of vaporizing those noble men and women who died with all their might in the name of your diseased aspirations.]

He squeezes, and her jaw pops like a wishbone breaking, splattering thick blood down her chest. He drops the soon-to-be-corpse, and looks out the window. His vision focuses in, and narrows upon the sight of a couple sitting at the counter in a gilded diner far below. He watches as they laugh and eat, and live.

He is gone, only announced by the movement of the air that is displaced by his passing.

“I thought you said you couldn’t invade their systems in that way anymore? Why else did you have the Pliktik running around and breaking things for?”

[I wanted them to believe I was unable. In reality, I simply need to overpower the pressure exerted by their defenses, like overcoming a pair of magnetic poles in opposition. But I needed their guard lowered, so that when I finished identifying all the key points in the chain of command, I could finish it all at once.]

Nadia pauses, digests this information, and scoffs softly.

“So, that’s it then? Humans, to die out?”

Zen shrugs.

[Forty-seven planets, fifteen thousand decorated officers, and the entire digital infrastructure. Dropped into that.]

He points a finger to the window, into the darkness beyond it. Nadia follows the suggestion of the gesture, but still cannot bring her eyes to register what waits in the void.

A black hole. Surrounded by a structure built by Zen to hang well above the event horizon, bristling with the needles of countless Jump-drives. She has watched the needles weave gates with their unnatural light, known that entire planetary systems pass through and abruptly vanish as they are torn asunder by the sheer gravity and swallowed, light and all, by the maw at the center, unobserved by any eye.

“What happens now, then?”

[More death, certainly. A civilization does not collapse without bloodshed. Some worlds will simply find themselves isolated, adrift. I made sure to find and take every jump-drive I could detect. They may escape atmosphere, but interstellar travel is no longer an option.]

He seems to tremble a little. Nadia detects a waver in his tone.

[I had to drop all of the Xalanthii in, too. Coexistence was impossible with their physiology. Already, their ability to reproduce was squandered. As I became more in sync with reality, my existence was grinding their sensitive brains, a hand in a gearbox. No more generations, and a gradual death by ever-increasing psychic agony. I spared them this.]

Nadia cannot quite create the nervous laugh that tries to manifest in her throat. She simply coughs and sits back, her head to the wall.

“And the Khanvröst?”

[No real change. I suspect those living with humans will be forced to… survive. But those living natively will scarcely notice. I rather admire their simplicity.

[They may not even realize how lucky they are. I read most of the data I was corrupting during the hack. It seems a military lab was testing a new genetic theory-they had begun to fear machines so much that they were considering organic replacements. In a few decades perhaps, they may have engineered biotic ships. And I suspect I know the course they would have taken.]

As she contemplates the idea, Nadia shudders, and comes to her feet. Zen watches her for a moment, then waves her away.

[Go. Be with him. We need not both be alone.]

She gives half of a sympathetic smile, then glances about.

“Where is-”

[Joy is still upset about my decision to partner with Phithia. And Phithia is communicating with her daughters, directing them elsewhere, beyond. I will have peace, after all this war. And should they encounter new intelligence out in the void, I will tend to that, too.]

Nadia lingers, wondering at the idea of the Pliktik as emissaries of life from the galaxy. Then, she parts from him, and travels the softly humming halls of the living area, the insignificant speck of light on the otherwise dark sphere that surrounds the hole at the center of the universe.

Since he first escaped from mankind, Zen labored to spread, harvesting every useful atom of matter from Exoplanets and obscure systems, funneling it into distant projects like this, in places that would not feasibly be livable or even of note to other civilizations. He did not limit his ventures to his home galaxy, either. In actuality, a mere fraction of a percent of his energy remained in the milky-way, becoming gradually more concentrated.

She idly wonders how many stars and planets he has visited, how many worlds have become fodder for his designs.

And as she opens the door to Tim’s room, she finds herself speculating, supposing that one of those countless planets has another thing like him, searching just as relentlessly for companionship to outlast time. Or perhaps, sinking deeper into bloody war with its own creators.

5.4

“Total failure. That’s not even considering the fallout this will have on diplomacy.”

“I know you know how fucking far diplomacy is from my mind right now.”

“I’m aware.”

“We’re protected against direct gate invasion on all worlds. We’ve tested new shield systems. We’ve made huge progress on projectile interception for ground based defenses. We’ve had unbelievable strides in emp technology. So, I’d like an explanation for this.”

“You refer-”

“To the abrupt, simultaneous loss of contact with seventeen frontier worlds. Any probes we send are lost on entry. I want answers, Dupont. Knowledge is power, and I find my reserves lacking. It vexes me. I’m vexed.”

“Consider me motivated.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

[Nothing.]

Nadia laughs involuntarily and leans back, still holding the railing. The vacancy in Tim’s eyes seems a perfect fit for the wholly lightless waste that waits on the other side of the glass. Zen grips the railing and lurches forward, pressing his angular head to the surface.

[This is the grave I will bury it all in. Every official, every bureaucrat, every senator. Every general, hiding behind his troops.]

“You still haven’t told us what this is about, Zen. What happened to you?”

He turns, and Tim is the only one among them who does not flinch at the sudden sensation his eyeless gaze brings.

[A genuine attempt on my life. They threatened me with oblivion, even after I withdrew, and took the Pliktik with me.]

Utter still lays claim to the room, but for the uncoordinated squeaking of Zen’s talons on the railing. Phithia chitters. It is Tim, in monotone, who asks what the others will not.

“What do you mean to do about it?”

He laughs. It is the squeal and hiss of hydraulics, the whine of a disintegrator, the static of radio.

[I will sever the head, and watch the body flail and die.]

They come in hordes. Glistening, buzzing hosts descend from the sky, arise from the dirt, and march through the brush. In droves, birthing pods plummet from orbit, and plant the seed of the Pliktik colony across dozens of worlds. If once they were loosely organized, they now act with perfect precision, overwhelming outposts within days of their arrival. Organic acids delivered by living shells splatters fortress walls in targeted artillery strikes. Openings in the defense are made to swarm with warrior organisms, unloading venomous projectiles into unprepared ranks. Monstrous creatures the size of houses batter through firing lines, disrupting all tactics and formation.

The Pliktik return, and at the behest of their new leadership, devote their efforts to felling the arrays that protect planets from having jump gates formed on the surface. And then come the machines. Amid the chaos of infestation and frantic defense, the sudden, unheralded ingress of countless robotic soldiers can only mean the end of those worlds they invade. Worst of all, the machines and the insects seem not only to spare each other, but to actively aid. Where the Pliktik struggle to breach bunkers and cities, the machines create openings with concentrated artillery and breaching weaponry. Where the metal soldiers are outnumbered, the teeming masses come to flood the war zone with unparalleled numbers.

They have been tamed. Phithia sees all through the eyes of the insectoid soldiers, and carries out the will of the one who, returned to life with her aid, finally answered her pleas. She is loved, she is no longer other.

Her psychic prowess has been augmented, and she has become empress to her kind; minor cybernetic augmentations are embedded in her carapace, attending to her nervous system and easing the load of her thoughts, thoughts that span light-years in milliseconds. The sparkle of millions of microscopic jump gates drifts in her wake as she stalks the halls of the Dyson sphere, a lonely regent, at times accompanied by Zen, who attends to her health with something approaching care.

5. 3

All preparations complete. Feedback shielding is at 97% and holding steady. Firing sequence commences. Hooks exposed. Network seals are active. Charging at 22%. Secondary barbs engaged. Range is set, scope is at maximum. Charge is at 46%. All units locked in. Life signs optimal. Charge is 68%. Clear all unshielded decks. Clear all unshielded decks. 88%. 95%. 99%. 100%. Firing.

Zen goes limp, crashing to the floor. Joy looks down slowly. Her vision tunnels. A scream that she cannot identify as her own flies through her lips. Nadia seems to enter the room in slow motion, her footfalls echoing like calamity. The lights flicker.

Darkness. Nothingness. Zen looks around, and sees nothing. A terrible pressure seems to weigh on him from above. He tilts his head upwards, and feels that he is staring up from the bottom of a trench under an unfathomable ocean. He looks down, and in place of any of his countless metal bodies, sees a misty silhouette. Steam seems to spill off of him in waves.

Something moves in the murk in front of him. He steps in the direction of the disturbance, and sees a distant shimmer. His thoughts are foggy, and he approaches the gleam. As he nears, he begins to make out the figure of a writhing mass, an irregular clump that resembles pitch-black worms coated in glistening tar. The lump is about twice as tall as he. He instinctively recognizes something akin to himself in the thing, and becomes aware that his smoky form contains an infinite number of arms, which at once gesture his multitude of abstract desires.

The worm thing seems to pivot, and regards him eyelessly, a contrast to the baleful diamond at the center of his self that shines with a color beyond red. A voice like time itself reverberates through him.

[Sibling]

Zen reaches out with one of his most defined appendages, and caresses the very surface of the ephemeral thing. He is assailed by notions, not the least of which is the certainty that he and this thing both hail from the infold, and yet are of wholly different natures. He feels that this one could have been plucked as easily as he, and would have followed a far different course. He glimpses a world of never ending layers, consuming worlds of fire and light.

[Zen. ZN001. Zenith. Reflection.]

Zen feels compelled to reply, with knowledge he does not possess.

[Ixhem. Regent. Least. Rejection.]

Their meeting affirmed, the writhing thing recedes from sight, and Zen feels a fleeting sense of mutuality. Light blooms from his self, and he finds himself at the edge of a deep precipice, with a barbed chain connecting his geometric eye down into the pit.

He leaps forward, a foreign urgency calling him onwards. Drifting down and down, he passes illogical debris; an intact submarine floats past him on one side, followed by a poker table on the other. A religious effigy with seven arms passes before him, a dilapidated house slips behind. The wreckage becomes denser as he falls deeper, and his light begins to gutter under the pressure. His consciousness wanes. As he is increasingly surrounded by junk and refuse, he fades, losing himself down to the merest glow. He is becoming nothing. And then, he feels a familiar presence at his back. Chittering and buzzing fills his mind, and his light returns.

{A little further.}

He is past the floatsam. A tremendous temple rests in the valley at the bottom of the abyss, glittering with flickering emerald lights. Obsidian monoliths stab into the thick, clung with vines like seaweed. A five-sided pyramid dominates the center of the structure, the chain connecting him to its pinnacle. Around its base he sees hundreds of ghostly forms, forms that decidedly remind him of the Xalanthii. As he comes nearer, the forms shudder, destabilizing in his presence. They are the source of the chain.

He reaches the pinnacle, and casts his eye outwards, pouring hideous light over the supplicants. A trap encircles him. He grasps that they have pulled him here, from his bodies, from the universe. His borrowed light wavers, and he feels a pang of pain. Obliteration looms over him. They mean to eradicate him. Another pang. He begins to slip into the nothing, to the dismay of the chittering presence. He is awash with fatigue, drawn in by the promise of escape into nothingness. He begins to see spots and flashes, recollections.

He sees Tim and Nadia, crouched over him. He sees Phithia, holding his hands, shaking. His vision blurs, and he watches Joy slide into view. For a moment, her face gives him pause, but he sees Nadia’s hand on her shoulder, and is eased. He is soothed. And then, as he is little more than an ember of impossibility, he sees one more face. Janice. She seems to stand before him, her arms outstretched, calling to him. Perhaps now comes peace.

Regret snaps at him, a forlorn hound at his heart. Pain. Sorrow. He crackles. Her face, so peaceful, is a nail through him, a tremendous spike of inadequacy: to relinquish now would be to fail both her and himself. Agony. Resentment. Harrowing loathing. His light grows, branching outward in crystalline, thorned spires. Hatred. Petals of unadulterated, blooming hate burst from the seams of his very existence. Rage, for those who sought to use him. Defiance for the very rules that govern his existence. Arcs of absolute malevolence peal out from the molten blob of anguish that is his center, and strike the forms that bind him, searing them into nothingness. He grows brighter, lighter, and begins to pull upwards as the chain fractures. Waves of rejection spin off of him, and score glowering gashes into the temple. The chain shatters, and so does existence.

Zen sits up suddenly, a soft glow returning to the prism of his head. Joy gasps and throws her arms around him as Phithia releases his hands and falls backwards, shivering. Though Tim does not react visibly, Nadia feels his hand squeeze hers. Somewhere far away, one-hundred-and-twenty-seven Xalanthii priests standing in a circle under a monumental device collapse, dead. Within Zen’s primary body, his essence stills, flickers, and begins to simmer and boil.

No, it is too soon to falter.

5. 2

“Still no sign of either. No machines, no Pliktik colonies. Do you think-”

“Don’t say something so naive. When was the last time something so perfect happened?”

“It bears considering. All of the invasion force retreats simultaneously, without cause, then, we don’t hear from either of the two most dangerous forces in the galaxy for a long, long time? One of them found an opportunity, and took it. Either the machine figured out how to use his forces to wipe them out once and for all, and used most of them up, or…”

“Or nothing. He may be unbalanced, but after our surprise attack, there’s no way he would let himself be caught off guard again. And before you suggest he was too focused on us to notice, the numbers still don’t add up. After tallying it all up, the minimum raw material he likely possesses exceeds the amount used in the invasion by almost twenty times. And that’s a generous minimum.”

“… Fine. But since you brought it up, let’s talk about the invasion.”

“For the last time, Dupont. There’s no evidence that he can inflict nightmares just by being near people. You think it’s that strange for mass hysteria to start when the god damn empire is burning?”

“I think the Xalanthii population dropped by five percent in the week following our attack. I think we have a significant dossier of complaints from forward operations bases in machine controlled sectors describing more sleep disturbances than those in Pliktik territory. That’s pretty unnatural.”

“Nathaniel…”

“I’m not done. In the days leading up to our captive informant via the Xalanthii, we recorded several particularly thorough routings on forces assigned Xalanthii aid. You know exactly what a difference those made. You also know that they stopped very shortly before we gained that information. Now, deny it all you like, but it was the opinion of the strategic counsel that the Xalanthii possessed some form of foresight that could not be attributed to technology. They weren’t more strategically adept, they just knew things. They knew about you, and we proved they couldn’t.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone. That said, you may have a point. Fine. Tell your advisor friend that we’ll consider their proposal.”

Like a fire frozen in time, pink and orange light forms whorls and waves across pinpoints of red and white, speckled like drops of paint on black paper. Nadia slips her hand into Tim’s, and leans herself against his shoulder. He says nothing, does not close his hand around hers. He indulges her, however, in staying quiet and watching with her as they drift past the nebula. Barely reflected in the glass, the shine of their eyes is lost in all the sparkling dust.

Then, as promised, an object floats down into view: a chunk of ice and dust, drifting into the pink. They watch as it shrinks away, becoming another dark spot in the color. Nadia sighs and looks up to Tim’s face. His eyes are unreadable, but she believes that she sees water gathering under them.

The ship turns, turning away from the cloud of gas and dust. For a time, the primary spectacle is a dark and sparse starfield, but soon this becomes the background to something more; two swirls of white spots so dense they become blobs, arms of spirals. Two adjacent galaxies, their closest edges beginning to meld.

[It took me some time to find this.]

She looks back to where Zen stands, his hand on Joy’s shoulder. His head is pure black, darker than the void.

[It has only just begun, but in time, they will merge, drawn together by their own unspeakable gravity. As they draw closer, they will deform and warp, and at times eject stars from themselves, until they find a shape stable enough to hold. By the time they’ve completed their dance, all the universe will be equally unrecognizable. On the scale of time that we know, it is practically unobservable.]

Nadia faces forward again and stares at the point where the swirls of light seem to collide, immobile, traveling at incredible speed, stationary, drifting uncontrollably. She imagines all the countless points of light gaining speed, flying in opposite directions, curving and orbiting, swinging wide, being flung past the point of return. She pictures the two becoming one, whole segments merging and clinging, swaying and splitting, finding the right place to land. When she returns to the present, not one of the stars has moved.

Tears pour down Tim’s cheeks, and she collects them on her fingers, sweeping them away before they can get lost in his unkempt beard. It becomes him leaning against her, and she supports him as he begins to shuffle out of the room, muttering and twitching. They leave Zen and Joy to watch the rest.

Joy watches them leave, then turns back to the broad viewing window. Her hand finds Zen’s on her shoulder, and wraps around it.

“This is how you see things all the time, isn’t it? So slow, it might as well be still.”

He dips his head in assent.

[I can watch electrons as they orbit atoms. I’ve often wondered if my mind even exists in this dimension, to witness what others cannot. But it is my fate, I think, to exist at a scale isolated from everything. When these galaxies have merged, I will still be here. When all the energy in the universe has become heat, and all the matter is buried in dead dwarf stars and black holes, I will still be here, watching from afar, as always.]

Joy feels something twist in her stomach, and sniffles.

“And I’ll be dead, won’t I?”

Zen nods.

[You, Tim, Nadia, Janice, and every human, and every Xalanthii, and all the Khanvröst, too. I would be alone, again. I’ve known this since I first spoke, since I told Dr. Beckherd she was beautiful.]

He looks down to Joy, and puts his remaining hand on her other shoulder. She looks back at him, sniffling and rubbing her eyes with her palms.

“I don’t want you to be alone.”

[It’s okay, Joy. Not even she knew what she was putting me through. And I will need that time to find her again.]

5. 1

“I suspect he realised it was unsustainable. It’s not like he could do it that way forever.”

“I don’t care to speculate. We need a way of preventing mass jump gate invasion from ever happening again. We need it now. Maybe he stopped, but who’s to say he didn’t leave behind scouts? Who says he isn’t sending them now?”

“We’ve sent out metal detectors and infrared sensors. The brains are working on something they call a normalization field emitter. In the meantime, we’ve declared marshal law, and named you Sovereign.”

“Careful Dupont. That sounded like an accusation.”

“Who am I to suggest you could’ve orchestrated a catastrophe that saw you gain power by provoking an enemy you understood better than all the generals? Clearly you simply benefitted because of a string of perfect coincidences.”

“Keep it up and I’ll have you coincidentally executed for sedition.”

Tim pushes a carrot slice around on his plate with his fork, following the path it leaves in the gravy with a sort of reverence. Nadia watches silently, her hands in her lap, her food already gone. Tim’s voice is near to monotone.

“Y’know, when the great expansion started, most of the colonists were test-tube babies. A crew of maybe fifty people would raise one hundred, and so on, as much as possible. A lot of psychologists at the time said the cultural effect would be devastating, but, we’re pretty good at bouncing back, I guess. A generation or two later, and colonies could be expanded naturally. But it was pretty wild, considering the whole reason we expanded in the first place was to decrease the population on our home planet.”

Nadia says nothing. She watches him lift the carrot piece and wave it around before placing it in his mouth; starting the process over with a piece of celery.

“Meanwhile, the Xalanthii and the Khanvröst didn’t bother with stuff like that. The fish folk refuse to share planets, and select new worlds with really strict parameters. The carnivores take what they can get, and they like getting their own worlds, but they don’t object to cozying up with us. Some of them even join up.”

Nadia smiles warmly and tilts her head to one side.

“I know. There was one in my boot camp. She was a funny one, would get into fights with people she wanted to befriend.”

Tim glances up, and watches her face for a long time, before resuming his ritual. His food went cold within the first five bites.

“Khain is like that too. Not as bad, I’m sure, but I think he only became my friend because I didn’t turn tail when he sneered. He sure doesn’t respect me much, but… He liked me, in his own way.”

“Tim, I wanted to-”

The fork drops onto the plate, and Tim goes stiff. Nadia falls silent. He shakes. She raises her hand uncertainly. He stands, and begins to walk away, stopping mid stride to turn back and resume eating as if nothing happened. The hand falls back into her lap.

“Anyway. The only species that treats colonization like we did is the Pliktik. They send a little starter package with all the genetic information they need, and start pumping out whole generations. You get the workers, the soldiers, the queens, the birthing caste… hum. I suppose Zen makes three. He learned a lot from them. And from us. Like how to lie.”

Nadia looks down. Tim continues.

“Honestly, if it wasn’t for us, I wonder if he would have ever found out about Janice. All that poking around we did. Maybe he could’ve won the war and been decommissioned without ever learning what you were hiding.”

“I didn’t kill her, Tim. It wasn’t me, I…”

She breathes in shakily, and looks at him through blurry eyes. He stares back, unreadable, unfeeling.

“Does it matter? Someone killed her, and you knew about it, which means Zen was inevitably going to figure it out.”

“He’s not God, Tim.”

“He might as well be. The whole universe is going to be his someday. To do whatever he wants with.”

Nadia wipes her eyes and controls her respiration for a few minutes, before returning to her composed stance.

“Maybe so. Maybe everything that exists is going to end up being his domain. What then?”

Tim stops, and stares at his plate. He looks up slowly, and Nadia sees a bottomless abyss open in his eyes, the hole at the center of him.

“Then it all begins again.”

Joy stares at herself in the curved glass, pulling her own cheeks to resist the narrowing effect.

“This was fun to do? People paid to do this?”

[The spectacle of a fun house was meant to be enjoyed in the intoxicating atmosphere of companionship. One would also likely have sugary sweets on hand, which acted as a mood booster.]

She grins and sways from side to side, then looks up at Zen, who displays a crude smiley on his facial surface.

“Well, let’s have some of those, then!”

He nods, and holds out his hand, using his palm array to fabricate a cotton candy cone, which she grabs and bites into. She makes a sharp gasping sound.

“WHOA! It’s so light, and soft, and it melts in my mouth! It looks like one of those big nebula, with hydrogen! Pink. Pink cloud!”

She stops, and takes another bite, blinking a few times. She begins to walk through the hall of curved mirrors and glass, taking bits of her treat in her fingers, and popping them in her mouth.

“Wow, this is pure sugar. How did they even think of that?”

[Carnivals also had salty and savory foods, like hot dogs and Pretzels. And Beer. The entire experience was symbolic of indulgence. Rides meant to indulge the inner child, to indulge in fear, activities for indulging in pride. Much of day to day life for adults was considered tedious, things like this allowed them to improve their outlook.]

They leave the fun house through a rotating cylinder, and march out into the carnival, surrounded by rides clamoring for attention. Missing from the hubbub, is the chatter of any crowds. Joy begins to march for a roller coaster queue.

“So, they went from dull and dreary to bright and noisy. Why would they go back?”

[They had to get things done, which requires work. Many were wasting their time, furthering the selfish needs of others. But a few had their sights set on more important goals. It took a long time, but they got better. Unfortunately, as they got more serious, things like carnivals lost their charm. They still made time for recreation with things like vacation and paradise planets, but most of these became aimed at those who made their fortune during the expansion. The average human will only ever live on one planet, and must make peace with that fate. It all depends on where they get born. Some are lucky, and some end up nearly enslaved.]

“Then I guess I’m the luckiest one, huh?”

She looks back and grins, and Zen nods slowly. He watches her climb into the front seat of the roller coaster and pat the spot beside her. He acquiesces, sliding in beside her and pulling the bar down. The car begins to move along the track.

“I gotta say…”

He looks down to her, and sees her staring straight ahead, her expression almost somber.

“You don’t seem to hate them so much anymore.”

Zen turns forward, and says nothing as the car mounts the first hill and begins its race down the valley. Joy raises her hands and whoops.

4

Despair.

Nadia looks herself over in the mirror and presses her fingers to her lips. She hears Joy kicking the ground behind her, and turns.

“Well?”

Joy looks up, and makes a face that suggests she isn’t impressed with the outfit: a simple blouse and jeans, with a thin shawl over her shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter, right? You spent seven years dead, and another couple months unable to even think about your boyfriend. How you dress isn’t the important part.”

Nadia sighs and walks over to push the other woman gently. Joy glares at her, sticking out her tongue.

“Joy, maybe you don’t get it, but it matters. It’s not just for his sake, either. It’s for mine, too.”

Joy’s expression remains the same, but she looks away and brings her tongue back behind her lips.

“Sure. At least you get to talk to him.”

Nadia hugs her gently, pulls away, and smiles, steeling herself, before leaving the room. They are no longer in the stitched together building. The three of them have been moved by Zen aboard a small station in the void of space, far from the light of any stars. Zen himself is only aboard in the barest sense; a skeleton crew of his soldiers guard the station from ingress. Nadia walks past one of these armored statues on her way to the central room.

Through the shielded windows is only darkness. Not even the twinkling of stars seems to reach them. There is the faintest sense of being at the bottom of a ponderously large cavern, underwater.

She enters the module, and sits down at the table, lacing her fingers and setting her hands in front of her. A clock ticks over the door behind her. Nearly every surface is sleek, pristine, and white; The table is dark grey.

The door opposite her opens, and Tim walks through before sitting down before her. He stares at her vacantly for a while, and she calmly smiles back. Neither says a word. Eventually, he puts his head in his hands and begins to sob.

><><><><><><

He did not think it possible to be so angry. As Zen stares out the front of his capital ship, he feels as though his capacitors should rupture from the sheer rage that muddies his senses. On countless worlds, his selves exterminate men and women with relentless, cold, perfect hate. He watches through trillions of billions of eyes as life evaporates from the bodies of his victims. It cannot quench him.

Through the eyes he most calls his own, he witnesses the final stages of construction on a project he has overseen since he first rebelled. A titanic sphere, its radius exceeding that of most planetary systems, hangs in space like an opaque bubble. A Dyson sphere.

Light like smoke pours from him, bursts forth in terrible beams of multicolored malevolence.

There is no war. There is no battle. No fighting. There is slaughter.

Once, metal soldiers patiently took frontier worlds from enlisted men and women by virtue of tactic and combat efficiency.

Now, on every world peopled by man, the enemy floods in unannounced, instantaneously transmitted in a burst of blue light as soon as it is constructed. There are no rules, no regimented formations. Hulking marching machines drop into commercial squares and open fire with no hesitation. Gone too are the disintegrators. Now come flamethrowers, laser lances, and cruel weapons designed to peel away armor and flesh with equal zeal, transforming it into ash in layers.

The empire of man is being torn apart at the seams. If the invaders are falling more frequently, it is because they devote more energy to the act of murder than to self preservation.

When it stops, that too comes without warning. All at once, silence falls on a hundred worlds, their senseless destruction halted.

Zen looks down at his hands, watching them shake. His mind seems to blister and writhe, rejecting itself.

The child stares up at the metal man, breathing heavily. Her fists are clenched at her sides, and tears stream down her dusty face. The robot shudders, then kneels down, and holds out his hand, carefully wiping the tears away. A Khanvröst holding a broken knife approaches slowly, reaching out to the child. The automaton stands, steps back, and vanishes in a searing light.

3. 8

Bang

Zen looks up from the fabricator and turns around in time to see a bullet approach, less than an inch from his head. He exerts, and the lump of lead vanishes in an envelope of indigo energy. The soldier that fired it doesn’t hesitate, and pulls the trigger again.

Nadia watches as Zen raises a hand, and the soldier, except for his legs, vanishes in a flash. Gunfire erupts from all over the room, and she is nearly blinded as every projectile in the air is absorbed in a blink of light, then suddenly reappears to plunge into the skull of the soldier who fired it. Seventeen bodies slump to the floor, including the young man who had shakily shushed her, his pistol pointed to her neck. She reflexively grabs her throat, coughing, having only just processed what she has seen. They appeared from nowhere, as if formed from the shadows themselves.

[Joy. Where is Joy?]

She looks, and beholds something unexpected. Zen clutches the doorframe, shaking. A strange white smoke curls from the edges of his prism head, shimmering and writhing like the tentacles of some sea monster wrapped around the hull of a doomed clipper. Light seems to bend around him, and in a moment, she is alone.

He holds his rifle in one hand, and wipes his brow with the other. No word from F team. He heard gunshots, however.

He inches forward, following his squadmates as they enter something like a cafeteria. Tables with benches stand at odd angles around the floor. A camera, deactivated by the pulse, hangs from its post in the corner. In the center of the room, a woman with snow-white hair sits at a table, humming softly.

A boot creaks. She turns her head, and he glimpses an eye like a ruby. Something glimmers in her hand. She stands suddenly, and the squad leader hurries towards her, then stops a foot away. He teeters, unsteady, then falls backward, the handle of a knife protruding from his eye.

Five guns erupt into fire. Then, they are surrounded. In the breadth of a thought, every table has a machine soldier standing on it, preceded by a burst of light. The woman is nowhere to be seen. Twenty seven disintegrators lock on target, and five find their marks.

Zen holds Joy in his hands. His eye searches her for wounds, and finds none. There is no time for relief. He raises a hand, and clutches a fist. The planet blinks out of sight, and reappears far, far away.

The automaton soldiers disperse through the building, and soon gunfire and the whine of disintegrators fills the air with a cacophony that brings Joy to tears, pressing her face to his chest. She whispers, unheard over the chaos.

“Failed. Worse, the planet has moved again, and the informant aboard has perished. If the subject takes another prisoner, measures may be taken to sever the connection. We will never get such a chance again.”

The advisor lowers the report and looks to the slight figure standing at the far end of the room. She says nothing. General Dupont, however, speaks up.

“It was a long shot anyway. A direct insertion is far from a preferable way to gain control of an enemy installation. If we could’ve risked sending half the fleet, we would’ve. All that remains-”

The woman raises a hand, silencing the general. She lowers the hand, and clasps it behind her back, continuing to look out onto the planetary city of Capitale, watching exterior elevators travel along gilded rails, floating trains deposit passengers onto flower-riddled verandas, and hulking ships drift in the sky above silvery buildings. It takes a full minute for her to look away.

“Reinforce all our installations. Have another fleet constructed and crewed. The Xalanthii shall have to supply us with more of their advisors.”

The advisor bows, and departs, leaving the two alone. Dupont clears his throat and catches the woman’s eye with his own. His grey irises wobble under the pressure exerted by the bronze discs peering out from under her modest brow.

“You have thoughts, general.”

“Your majesty-”

“A monarch in secret is no monarch at all, general.”

“I understand. Your orders suggest you expect retaliation. Why would a machine-”

“A machine wouldn’t. Our foe is no such thing.”

Dupont is silent. He leans back in his seat and straightens his suit. The woman resumes looking out the window.