Five years ago, one of my clone brothers disappeared. Our third, Rhodes.
According to staff, to rumour, his troublemaking got out of hand. So he was taken away. I'd nearly learned to forget about him, until the pain in my legs started. Then I remembered. Enough that sleep didn’t come so easily anymore.
I had to pass this final. If not, I’d never learn what lay between each city simulated for class. What a cafe served. What it felt like to have birds fly past my ears.
The walls of the inactive VR chamber were daunting and dizzyingly uniform. It was always a little too warm in here. All air in the Aetnaeus campus was recycled, but this room was stagnant, mired in sweat. Humanoid dummy drones stood in an idle line at the back, their blank faces tilted to the floor. Once our final exam scenario began, they’d be projected with human skin and overlying animations, acting as simulated clients for us bodyguard Contracts to protect.
My remaining brother and I were the only clones testing today who didn’t match. Leros was a consummate example, guaranteed to pass. By comparison, I was a bent mirror; too thin, too wobbly, too soft around the edges. Standing at rest hurt. While everyone else in our class had been gaining muscle, I'd been losing it. Each extra lap around the track added an extra day to my fatigue. Each stop to recover added seconds to my run time. Nothing helped.
For two years, I tried to rationalize the situation, deny it. But I couldn’t keep it up. None of what was happening to me was normal. My body had, for one terrifying reason or another, begun to break down.
Commander Siska, a naturally-born soldier, paced behind us, glancing at my aching ankles. I steadied my anxious breaths, hoping to settle my shakes. To my luck, whatever the Commander noticed didn’t warrant remark. She waved our classmates to the sidelines.
“Kastos, Leros. You’ll open today’s finals with a one-on-one close protection scenario.” She swiped at her Manager interface: a projection through optical contacts, controlled by a micro-terminal behind her ear. A less invasive version of the Manager devices us Contracts were implanted with. Two featureless drones stepped from their charging stations to stand by our sides. “Your own client, as ever, is your top priority. But today? You’re also here to strike down your opposition’s client. Prove you understand the mind of your enemy.
“A successful hit can only be achieved through the classic method. So no kidnappings, no incapacitations, no bribes. Provided you do it right, a successful kill counts for points. But a successful rescue counts for more. How much more? I’m not telling you. If you don’t know the calculus at this point, you have no one to blame but yourself. Prepare for blank in five ticks.”
I closed my eyes before blank kicked in. It wasn’t required, but I preferred to choose the moment when I could no longer see.
At “three,” a numb sensation filled my ears. The Commander’s voice disappeared. When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing.
Just about everyone fell over their first time in blank. Most the second. And for that reason, blank-shift had mutated into a quiet trial. Falls wouldn’t get factored into our scores, but they had a cost. We remembered who dropped.
Counting, flexing my fingers helped, kept me grounded and steady. When I reached seventy-three, the black void shifted to welcome sight. When my ears popped again I was still on my feet.
The building behind me thumped with heavy bass, the air from its open doors thick with steam and smoke. Streaks of neon flashed over the asphalt, patterns burning into my post-blank vision. The road lining the nightclub's front gate was curbed with artificially worn stone, the building a facade of a brick warehouse.
Yet just across the street, a tower ascended to incomprehensible heights, so sleek and practical that I couldn’t tell where one floor ended and the next began. If this street had an aesthetic goal, it deserved no commendations. But I did recognize the look. I’d never been anywhere on the surface world, but this for sure was London. According to my mental map, built from VR scenarios since eight years trained, this place slotted perfectly into the Shoreditch district.
As soon as I turned, my manager interface highlighted my client with a green outline. He looked like the extroverted sort, flecked with attempts to stand out. His sleeves were rolled unevenly and his hair was streaked with flourescent blue. Anyone who could afford a Contract could get their vision fixed, but this man had glasses. Bulky ones. They must have been a statement of some sort. Yet why choose to look less healthy on purpose?
I flexed my fingers again, urging my focus back. It was bad habit, getting lost in my head like I did.
Leros stood on the other side of the street, framed by business signs and a gaudy, inactive fountain. He, as always, stood a stalwart professional. Tall, hair buzzed to a flat soldier’s cut. Unlike the twice a month top-up we all got on schedule, his was bathroom refined, sliced to a ruler’s edge.
His client was a middle aged white woman, short and heavy lidded. Her jacket was a cut too large, her briefcase top of the line secure. And she was marked to die.
I breathed steadily, reading the layout of the block. Mentally mapped the area, tracked pedestrians. I ducked behind a street-sweeper charging station for cover. Winced at the pain of it.
One of us would have to take the first move, and I knew from experience that I wouldn’t win against Leros in the waiting game. He didn’t seem to feel the tension of the clock. I’d have to bait him into action.
“Sir,” I told my client, eyes still locked on my brother. “I need you to cut into the middle of the queue behind you.”
“What? Cut — ?”
“Trust me.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment. When I glanced his way, the urgency of the situation struck his AI, and he broke to the crowd.
I kept my ear to him, turned to face my brother again. He’d since stepped in front of his client. Yet otherwise he hadn’t reacted. His client glanced at him, antsy.
Right behind them, just on cue: screaming.
My client pushed through a couple. “What the hell!?”
A tall woman stepped in to block him. “You drunk already?” She asked, bracing him by the shoulders. Anger popped through the queue like firecrackers.
Just as hoped.
Well entangled in clubgoers now, my client was the centre of attention. I wouldn’t be the only one watching after him anymore. It gave me a brief opportunity to plan my next move.
Or should have. Except Leros drew his handgun.
Why now? I expected him to ignore the chaos, but he couldn’t possibly get a clean shot.
As I rushed for my gun, he broke into a running charge. At me. My wrist twinged and my shot struck wide. A car alarm wailed.
Leros barrelled into my gut.
I gasped and my vision washed white. My ankles screamed. But I caught myself on the station. I grabbed it for balance, swung my gun for his eye.
He flinched as my vision cleared. I stepped back to brace myself.
My ankle buckled.
Something cracked against my skull. The world flashed. Lightning bolted up my shins, annihilated my reflexes. The concrete, smooth in reality, raked my face with a gym floor burn. A weight pressed me down. I tried every pin escape I could fish from my training, but none of it mattered when I couldn’t even regain footing.
If any of this were real, I’d be dead. I grit my teeth, tamped the pain, and tried, with all I had left, to suppress panic.
I waited for another blow. But nothing followed. Nothing. With trepidation and shaking breath, I opened my eyes. The world had gone dark, back to blank. The grip on me loosed. The scenario was over. Either because I succeeded, or because I’d died. No way had I done the former.
I eased onto my back to catch my breath, a deep dread crawling into my stomach. I swallowed the sick and the fear that caught on my throat. My sprained muscles and the friction burn ate through what senses I still had. Failure felt so much worse than my ankles, and my ankles felt miserable.
The real world did fade back eventually. Slowly. Not long enough to figure out how to face it.
“Scenario one complete,” Siska’s voice announced in my ear. “Kastos, please exit through the door you entered from.”
In a sea of green, Leros loomed, starkly real, stable on his feet, staring down at me. His left eyelid had begun to swell, the first hints of a bruise. He lingered long after he was permitted to leave.
I struggled to get to my feet, but knew, before even trying, that nothing would come of it. The muscles in my calves were loose tangles of rope. I couldn’t get any heft. I only stumbled and fell. By the fourth attempt, all I could think of was how desperate I must have looked. How pitiable.
“Kastos.” Commander Siska sounded annoyed. Not even concerned. “Either stand up or report your condition.”
I stared at the cold floor, trapped on my knees. “I can’t.” My voice shook.
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t stand up, ma’am.”
Silence.
“I think...” I didn’t want to say it. But the silence stretched. What good would it do to wait for someone else to make the call? With my last bit of autonomy, I could at least gather shards of my pride and admit to needing help. “I... I need to go to the medical wing, ma’am."
For what felt like ages, I wondered if she’d ever answer.
“No one move until he’s off the field,” she finally said. “I’m calling the medical team.”
She left out my score. She didn’t even say if I’d failed. Not when asked. Not even when the team loaded me onto a stretcher, took me away. Everyone was watching, but no one spoke.
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While we waited for staff to clear the auditorium, the three of us finally got to sit on my favourite balcony as a team. Unfortunately, I was having trouble enjoying it.
Outside of my CMT, hardly a thing set me and Leros apart. We spent eighteen years together, in the same classes, sharing genetics. Before my own body weakened, our scores rarely deviated so much as five points from each other. Yet my brother had just been sold for an unprecedented ten million. My legs may have been dysfunctional, my wrists and nerves not up to par. But what about Kea? Healthy and well graded? She exemplified her model, yet went out for a mere 520k. Leros, hardly ahead her in grades, somehow nearly doubled that. Even with the least generous assumptions I could make about Aetnaeus’ priorities, the math didn’t add up.
It was only when I saw a speck of blood on my palm that I realized I’d scratched my nails too hard against my skin.
“Hey.” Atlas leaned forward. “How are you holding up?”
“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Nothing adds up.”
Ithaca’s eyes demanded an explanation. She scooted closer to whisper. “How the hell did your brother just make over ten mill on his deal? What are you made out of?”
“As far as I know, the same as the rest of us. This is all… I’m just as confused as you are. No one ever told me there was anything unique about me. I got the same training as everyone else.”
“Do you know the last time staff sold someone for anything close to that?”
“Ithaca,” Atlas said. “Come on. Not right now.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m curious. When?”
“Forty years ago. For the first model finished. They got eleven million for her. Aside from that, the closest match is an eight million bid for an experimental model, fifteen years ago, designed for space travel. You don’t look like you’re meant to get launched.”
“I’m not. I’m a bodyguard. I’ve always been a bodyguard.”
“Has your brother?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but stopped mid-breath. I couldn’t call it certain. We shared classes, we shared faces, but we didn’t share lives. “He should be. We’re supposed to be good all-around models. Not — I don’t know. I don’t even know what he was being advertised on. He didn’t get a description, I’ve never heard of a Lazaretto. It’s all…” I trailed off, not sure how to explain how much I didn’t understand. How was I supposed to quantify unknowns?
Ithaca looked me over, close, as if trying to get a read on my genes. “Think there might be something they’re not telling you? Like, about who you are? What you do?”
“Why, though? It doesn’t make sense. I can’t — I couldn’t do work in a field I wasn’t trained for. Leros would be no different.”
“It’s not always about what you can do.” Atlas said, voice low.
“What do you mean?”
“They just see us like objects sometimes, you know?”
“But if this was about what we are, not what work we can do, wouldn’t I still be worth almost as much? Officer Petric said — ” I spotted movement from the corner of my eye. A security drone, picking up speed. I threw up a hand to alert the others.
Ithaca grumbled and sat back. "We're getting back to this."
I wasn’t sure if I cared. It didn’t matter how much the three of us talked, it wouldn’t get us any closer to an answer. Atlas and Ithaca started another conversation. I couldn’t bring myself to even follow it.
The drone hummed as it passed, a ray of sun glinting off its lens. Somewhere, someone on staff watched me. Watched me doubt them, question their judgement. They knew more about me than I knew about myself. Honestly, wasn’t it always that way? I’d been left out of more than just my model’s specs. They claimed they kept information limited to protect us. But I didn’t feel safe anymore, and it sure wasn’t for an excess of knowledge.
I swallowed the foul taste at the back of my throat, ran my fingers against the carved marble bench. A corner had cracked over time, to the point where one large chip barely held to the edge. Trying to calm my building anger, I fussed with it. A quiet crack, it snapped off and tumbled into my hand.
I couldn’t keep waiting, hoping that some untold opportunity would wander into my life. No, I needed to do something now. The only other option would be to fall apart.
“Manager, please call Doctor Lacroux,”
Please Wait scrolled across my vision. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the rock tight.
“Kastos, what are you doing?” Ithaca snipped.
“I need to know what’s going on, and staff are the only ones who can give that to me.”
“You know they’ll never. They’ll ignore you until you shut up.”
Lacroux picked up the line. “Kastos, is everything okay?”
“I saw Leros’ donation. I… want to know what happened.”
“Kastos, this is going to have to wait for another time. It’s not really a topic we can discuss over a call.”
Or was it a topic he’d need to figure out how to lie around? “Am I going to get a chance to discuss it at all?”
Lacroux’s end of the line went silent for a while. Just long enough to make me wonder if he’d cut me off.
“It’s not something Aetnaeus thinks you should be involved in,” he finally said, as if reciting from a manual.
“We’re supposed to be the same. Leros and I, we’re genetically identical. I’m directly involved.”
“It’s an administrative matter, I’m sorry. It’s best if you let it go. I can request that you come to my office instead of working tonight, if you need time to relax. I understand that matters have been hard on you lately.”
I needed anything but leisure time and silence. Why wasn’t Lacroux getting that?
“I’m sorry to have to cut you off, but another call is on the line. Take care of yourself, okay? And understand you’re not alone.”
Lacroux ended the call before I could speak. Not that it would have made a difference. Ithaca was right. I was never going to be able to get their attention by being polite and reasonable.
I ran my thumb against the rough edge of the rock. What would they do if I simply let myself snap? What if I stopped caring about my well being? My future? Because, who was I kidding? I had so little left to lose.
I stepped to the edge of the balcony, stopped holding back my anger. With everything I had, I chucked the rock straight at the camera.
A loud crack. Red flashed across my vision, alarm blaring in my ears. I grit my teeth but didn’t flinch. The drone veered back and dipped. It managed to regain its balance, but a spider web of broken glass crawled across its eye.
A direct hit. I couldn’t feel proud. It was exactly what I wanted to happen, but I wasn’t used to wanting it.
Ithaca recoiled. “Kastos, what in the actual hell!?”
Atlas stared in disbelief.
Bootsteps marched from the corridor behind the balcony. I couldn’t fear them. I wouldn’t allow myself to. They’d just bring me where I wanted to go, straight to authority’s door. Weapons clicked from their holsters. Five guards surrounded me, forcing Atlas and Ithaca outside of their circle. Cold, metal handcuffs snapped around my wrists. At least they didn't shut me down.
I couldn’t get discouraged by the concern on Atlas' face, Ithaca’s struggle to hold herself back.
“Trust me,” I told them. And I repeated the words in my head as I was guided away.
On Graduation day, each year a class of Contracts moved closer to the stage. Now I got to build the spectacle but watch it from the last row. My teammates sat to either side of me, neither showing much interest. Atlas closed his eyes as if ready to take a nap.
Anticipation buzzed about the auditorium. Hundreds of fellow Contracts filed in, whispering eagerly between each other. Even a few toddlers, those mature enough to handle a crowd, were allowed to sit beside their Supervisors in the side rows. I doubted that they understood the event, but even the smallest of them watched the room with an awestruck wonder.
Could Rhodes be watching? He’d need to be hidden, to avoid catching the attention of his ex-classmates. I scanned the edges of the room, the shadows behind decorative partitions. The lights lowered and murmur fizzled to silence. Everyone else, even Atlas, was watching the stage. Reluctantly, I gave up.
Two overhead spotlights beamed onto the stage’s centre thrust. High above, between the coffers, machinery hummed. A single ceiling square detached from its surroundings, lowering as if by levitation — an illusion that my time in stage prep shattered. In reality it had been connected by latex, projected with a mirror image of its surroundings. Now that I knew what I was looking at, I could spot a subtle hint of distortion.
The platform dropped to the stage with a quiet bump. A few contracts leaned forward, searching for its purpose. So far it appeared to be nothing more than an empty square, if one with a particularly dramatic entrance. But then the seemingly empty space slid away like a sheet from a table.
Revealing the CEO of Aetnaeus, Doctor Eudora Nikoleta.
She wore a flowing dress, streaked with shimmering light beneath what appeared to be a layer of water. A sash designed like a river cascaded over her shoulders. Her dark hair joined that river, a stream of matching waves. She held her hands at waist level, pressed into a patient V, and smiled like the expression had been painted onto her lips. As ever, she looked young. Dr. Nikoleta’s true age had remained an enigma, even through the rumour mill. Common assessment seemed to arrive at not what you’d think, but never agreed on what we thought.
“Welcome, everyone,” she said, her voice rising through the room’s atmosphere, equal in volume across every point in space. “Today we gather for another celebration of talent. Of patience, strength, and focus. But first, I’d like to extend my appreciation to every Contract — to all of you here tonight. For your ongoing service. Your respect for those who brought you to such heights. I want to thank those who are still training. Those who have come here for the first time. And, of course, our ever-resourceful staff. Please, all of us should extend our honour to those who allow you to stand on this stage on your given hour. Before we begin our procession, I’d like for us all to bow our heads with respect to those who allowed you to stand so high, live this strong.”
Dr. Nikoleta dropped her head in an elegant bow, falling silent. I followed her lead like the rest of the crowd.
Normally I would have spent that moment listing off all my teachers, all my classmates, thanking each one of them in turn. Now they were separate from my life. For one, cold moment I feared I no longer had anyone but Lacroux to picture in Dr. Nikoleta’s respectful silence.
But I wasn’t alone, I realized. Atlas and Ithaca were here with me.
“Thank you all for spending such an important moment with me. Now, what we’ve all been waiting for!” Dr. Nikoleta flourished to the curtains. They dissolved in a shimmering haze.
Eight rows of screens were revealed behind them. They hovered above the stage in tiers, each displaying a unique name and face. Some human, or mostly so, others animal. The rare participant opted for images far more abstract. Avatars and Pseudonyms, I’d been told they were called. Our experiences in simulation made it clear that those who lived above were little different than those on staff. So those participating must have preferred to keep their true faces, their sensible ones, safe and guarded.
I kept that thought to myself. It wouldn’t be proper to suggest that our honoured sponsors might have something to hide.
The stage leading to the thrust flashed a brilliant blue. As the light faded away a pair of streaks remained behind, drawing a path from backstage.
“Let us all welcome our first Contract to the stage. A Soldier who’d made fantastic marks on her finals. Kea, a Type 6-E model.”
A powerfully built Contract marched across the stage, between the blue lines. The avatars on the screens kicked up an uproarious applause.
“The model 6-E has been built to specialize in accuracy, reaching previously unmatched sharpshooting potential and super-human field awareness.” Dr. Nikoleta summoned a list of statistics and test scores in the air. “Built with an ocular acuity score of 20/5, she has the sharpest vision of any mature Contract to date, able to spot targets like a bird of prey. When combined with her low-light mods, she makes for the ideal sniper and personal guard. And, like our other soldiers, she’s created with all the usual, tried and tested combat-plus endurance specs that you’ve come to love and expect.”
Kea removed her uniform jacket, revealing a sports bra underneath. She turned to give the line of screens thorough view of her body, raising her arms to show off her biceps, her traps.
“This model’s donation range begins at a minimum of four hundred thousand euro. In five seconds, we’ll begin the session.” A giant five faded into the air and began counting down. Four. Kea repositioned herself to face the screens. Three. She pulled her jacket back over her shoulders, leaving it open at the front. Two. One.
The 400k minimum arrived on the display above the screens.
In an instant, one of the centre avatars locked in 405k. A few seconds passed, before another threw in 5k more. The stage again fell inactive, 410k dominating the main display.
This wasn’t an exceptionally uncommon bidding round, but it was far from comforting. Ideally, there’d an early round of number fisticuffs, a run through the lower prices until the field got a solid sense of the competition. A slow early game like this either indicated disinterest or a group of cautious players, hesitant to show their hands too early.
Kea kept impressively calm for the circumstances, but I wondered what might have been running through her head. Seconds ticked by without motion.
Finally, a new donation flashed from one of the frontmost screens. 420k. Another followed in a snap. 425k. Only to be upped by their neighbour. 430k. Countered by 435k. A short rush of opposition kicked into action.
Then the opener locked in 520k. Their competition fell silent.
“Going Twice!”
No one stepped in. 520k glimmered in its final fanfare before fading away.
Not even double the value of a box of guts.
“And Kea goes to ConsultPanda on screen forty-two!” Dr. Nikoleta declared, sweeping her sash in celebration. Applause rose from the stage, and the audience joined in; this was the one time during any event we were permitted to clap like staff did.
Kea knelt to the floor, lowering herself in honour to her new contractor. There she remained until the applause died down. Nikoleta reached toward her. Kea took her hand with reverence. She only made 520k for the company. But, well. She got there. She passed body value, and that was reason to be proud. I’d be.
I held my own hand tight in my lap. I shouldn’t have been jealous. I shouldn’t be jealous. But I couldn’t find anything else to be anymore.
I glued my eyes on the processions, the flow of the ritual. I clapped, bowed my head when expected. But none of it was even relevant. It was like I wasn’t even supposed to be there, like I was invited by some kind of mistake.
“Next up, let us welcome Bodyguard model 5-F, Leros, to the stage!”
But the sound of my brother’s name yanked my interest back.
Leros marched onto stage wearing his usual focused, stony expression. The bruising around his eye had faded to two tiny specks. After spending two entire weeks away from him, not spotting him even once in the halls, he left me strangely uneasy. When he smiled, I could see how deliberate it was. My brother had tamed every individual muscle in his face.
“Bodyguard model 5-F, Leros. Lazaretto.”
Lazaretto? None of the other Contracts had received a title like that. I’d never heard the word before. Leros’ smile made way for attention. I leaned forward, listening for a description.
“Our starting price for this model is one million two hundred thousand. Starting when the sign lights, you may present your offers.”
My pulse jumped. One million for a starting point was unprecedented.
Offers topped each other too quickly to process. Strings of numbers and many, far too many zeroes. Bells clamoured, people cheered for leads they couldn’t have possibly seen. Only after about thirty numbers had flashed by did anything stay on screen for longer than a single frame.
5,000,550.
And even that was overthrown the second I parsed it.
The battle stabilized between two screens at opposite ends, but neither of them conceded. 6,110,000 from the left. 6,500,000 from the right. Back and forth, never missing a beat.
When the final offer locked in, it set the total at 10,350,000, from the avatar at the left.
Every living, breathing being in the room shuffled, whispering without care for decorum. But I couldn’t even blink.
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By the time lunch rolled around the next day, I’d exhausted what little I knew about the incident. My considerations grew repetitive, annoying, mutating into a mind-eating worm. The only way I could drive them out would be airing them. Yet there would always be that catch: I wasn’t allowed to. Which meant I had to forget. But I couldn’t. The worm would only leave when exposed to air. Which meant —
Ithaca dropped her plate of chicken and salad on the opposite side of the cafeteria table with a startling clatter. She burned holes into me with her stare. Before the silence could get too unbearable, I spotted Atlas as he left the food line. He shot me a cheery salute, approaching with too much vigour for what we’d been through.
“Looks like you made it through alive.” He said as he wound past a crowd of upper grade Companions. One of the girls gave him a curious glance before waving her classmates to their proper table.
“You too,” I said, smiling perhaps too stiffly.
Ithaca just sniffed in irritation, shifting her salad about with violent concentration.
“So, you get the news?” Atlas asked.
“No, probably not,” I said. “What about?”
“We’re prepping graduation again.”
“Is it a heavy workload?”
“It’s a weird one, if nothing else. It’s just about the only time we get hardcore administration ordering us around.”
“Huh,” I wished I could say more, but the thought only stirred that worm again.
A long while passed where no one spoke. I ate my meal, tasting little of it.
Atlas, however, wasn’t up for silence. “Hey, so, you two have plans for your break after this?”
“I’ve got some reading I want to finish,” Ithaca stated, her voice still rough. I nearly inhaled my water — not because she sounded particularly bad, but because she’d finally said anything at all.
I cleared my throat. “Not really, no. I was maybe going to take a walk.”
“Think you’ll still be hungry after this? I can get us stuff off menu, if you want."
“How? Why?”
“Because food, man. Not everything’s got to be complicated. And I’ve just got some extra access is all.”
“He butters up the kitchen staff,” Ithaca muttered.
“Befriends.” Atlas waved her off. “They’re friends. Great people. I’d talk to them even if they didn’t have chips and guac.”
“I suppose I could — “
“I can’t,” Ithaca said.
The end of dinner bell chimed and ambient chatter made way for shuffling seats and clattering dishes. I gathered my silverware while Atlas delayed to finish his water.
Ithaca stacked all her stuff together in mere seconds, standing at the same moment she scooped up her plate. “Enjoy your chips or whatever.”
She left the cafeteria ahead of everyone else, even the hyper-efficient Soldiers at the table beside the archway.
Unfortunately, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. She could be acting on the very same impulse I’d been fighting: pursuing unsanctioned investigation, consequences be damned.
“Actually, Atlas,” I mumbled, pushing my seat back. “I might have to wait for another night. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Huh?” Atlas paused in the middle of picking up his dishes. “Oh, um. Okay? Did you forget about something?”
“I can’t keep watching my team act like this.” I handed my stack over to Atlas. “Can you do me a favour and take this to cleaning? I need to catch up to Ithaca.”
“Sure? Did she say something to you earlier?”
I couldn’t explain without losing my chance to tail her. Hoping that Atlas could let it rest, I beat the crowd. Though that still left me with a large gap behind Ithaca’s lead.
As I rounded the first corner, I caught the briefest flicker of her back. She’d been headed toward the atrium. I kept up, out of view, for a turn or two. But then I heard footsteps behind me. Loud and running.
Oh. Atlas.
“Hey, hold up!”
With a twinge of frustration, I motioned for him to keep his voice down.
Atlas thankfully slowed to meet my pace. “I’m not trying to discourage you or anything,” he said more quietly. “But she can be hard to get through to. I’ve never been able to talk her out of anything when talking’s one of the only two things I’m good at.”
I examined the atrium around the corner. No sign of her. As I feared, the pause let her get too much distance on us. Frustrating, but not a lost cause. Presuming her destination was elevator maintenance, she’d need to go outside.
I rushed to the front entrance. “I was thinking we could agree to work together…” I struggled not to sound too suspicious over our manager channels. “… sorting our thoughts. Surely we can find a safe solution to... our concerns.”
“Is there a safe solution? Staff can be very all or nothing.”
“Yes.” While I couldn’t deal with my own doubts and Ithaca’s misbehaviour as separate entities, maybe talking to her would help.
I took a few steps into the sidewalk. The Hippocrates main entrance was the merger of three major roads. One broke to the skytrain station. Rails buzzed overhead, the train zipping to greet the post-lunch rush. Ithaca wouldn't be boarding it. It was on a schedule, so why would she hurry to meet it?
Instead I turned to the jut above the central courtyard. Pressing against the railing, I assessed the athletic fields below for movement.
A surveillance drone whispered by my face, pausing midair. My nerves shuddered as its camera flitted to scan me. I forced myself to ignore it. Like an irritating insect, security drones usually left us alone if we stood still long enough.
I glanced over the field. The top of Ithaca’s head slipped into view beside the wall. She strafed the perimeter before stepping through a door in the cliff face. One I recognized well from my time in Exceptions: it lead to the storage transport passageways that threaded the campus underbelly. It was the final validation my fears needed. Pursuit would be as just as dangerous as joining her.
“What’s the plan?” Atlas asked quietly. He tapped his fingers against the rail as he glanced to the track field. I turned to face the same direction, not wanting to sell her out. The drone swivelled back to its rounds.
“Do you ever preempt a job by preparing in your off hours?” I asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to waste what little free time I have, but… I guess it wouldn’t be anything worse than odd.” He gave me a quick, knowing glance.
“Preparing for graduation’s a big job. I could save myself some trouble if I gather accommodations. We’ll be using ladders, right?”
“So many ladders. A disgusting number, you’ll hate it.”
“In we go then,” I said, smiling. “We can ask around for help.”
Atlas nodded, then drifted out of the conversation, staring at his feet as we descended. I didn’t understand why he was playing along. But If he wanted to back out, he could do so at any time. For now, I was happy to have the company, something resembling support. I just wished that he was a little less…
I glanced at him, and he forced a smile.
… Artificial.
Like many of the rooms we entered nowadays, the door ahead was labelled with a Staff Only marker. This one worn down to near invisibility, having been harassed by the usual Wednesday rain.
The door cracked open easily. I’d not come to like the musty place much in my previous two visits. It was beige in more than colour.
“We’ll find tools and ladders around the maintenance area, right?"
“There’s a good bet, yeah. It’s mostly athletic and sim equipment over here.” He jabbed a thumb at an indistinct room.
After several tense, repetitious minutes through identical halls, we finally reached a distinctive space. A large, paved open area filled with crates and transport vehicles.
Most importantly though, it contained Ithaca. She waited beside a garage, accompanied by a scruffy young white man in a jumpsuit. He stood on the tynes of an active forklift, leaning against the mast. Absurdly unsafe.
I adjusted my audio intake with a brush of my upper-ear.
“Lady, you’re a damned life saver,” he said. “I knew this job was trash when I picked it up — but I can’t bail on the pay, you know?” He scratched his scruff. “I guess you wouldn’t know. Shit. I don’t know how to talk to you all down here.”
“Relax.” Ithaca crossed her arms. “It’s work for all of us. Do you have the deliveries on the truck already or what?”
“I got...” He glanced to his clipboard a second, but immediately gave up. “Okay, look, sorry. I got half on there before you came by. I didn’t expect you so quickly.”
“I can’t sort what I don’t have. Hurry it up. I can wait fifteen minutes, but I’ve got an actual job.”
“You’re real mouthy for a Contract” The man chuckled. “They allow you on dates, or is that kind of thing just as pricey as ever?”
“Fuck off.”
“Worth a shot,” he muttered, barely audible as he left through the garage. The shutter clattered behind him.
With the stranger gone, Ithaca took the chance to wander past the rubber curtains and OFF LIMITS caution holos separating the garage from the conveyor belts.
Atlas gave me a heavy look of “Well then.”
While we’d found proof that Ithaca was sneaking around, anyone watching my manager now had the same info. Protocol said I shouldn’t have felt guilty, but my conscience wouldn’t let me take that at face value these days.
“Hey, if it means he’ll find you a harness for those ladders, we may as well do the job, yeah?” Atlas elbowed me. I nearly jumped. “Come on, let’s get counting. The first couple are on the transport already, right?” He strolled in, flashing me a thumbs up. Maybe I underestimated him.
While Atlas approached the forklift, I peeked through the plastic curtains. The passage lead straight to a conveyor belt, inactive yet loaded with a plethora of boxes for the surface. When I looked up, I realized why Ithaca had gone through such lengths to come here. We were on the lower floors of the elevator’s maintenance level. The very same walkways I had travelled by and, ultimately, collapsed on, now hung overhead like a cage.
My one comfort was in how dark it was. Ithaca could see in low-light, and I suspected she was using that to her advantage. A manager couldn't accurately pick up on everything we saw outside of the baseline vision spectrum.
Ithaca stood on top of one of the many nearby shelves to my left. She examined the elevator’s casing, as if seeking an entry point.
“You’re going to need to a flashlight,” I said to Atlas.
“I can look for one, but are you going to be alright alone?”
“I’ll be cautious, don’t worry. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes if you can’t find me.”
Atlas nodded. “Good luck.”
When Atlas turned to leave, Ithaca had moved to a new shelf. I could follow her halfway, but there was no way my ankles would allow me a jump between shelves close to bounding like she had. No, I’d need to grab her attention from a distance, silently. I could throw something, but what little hadn’t been riveted to the ground was packaged to be sent into cargo. I fussed with the hem of my jacket. There had to be an alternative nearby.
Wait. I lifted my jacket.
Smiling, I stripped the outer layer and pulled my undershirt off. When I buttoned my jacket back up, its lining stuck to my skin, worsened by the sweat I’d accumulated over the trip, and but much of my chest showed. Uncomfortable though it was, I tried not to overthink it.
Ithaca had since slunk closer to the elevator, feeling around the casing. I squinted, winding up for a pitch. I had one try.
Well, no point in getting self conscious about it.
I chucked the bundle. It flew the distance, clipping her nose. She recoiled, stifling a startled shout to a barely audible mmph, then turned to face me with enough fire that I flinched.
I was probably going to die in a second.
Ithaca took a long leap to the conveyor and planted where she dropped, glaring. She didn't need to say anything: she was asking me for an explanation, and now.
"I was curious, too," I mouthed.
Ithaca took a frustrated, deep breath. I stood my ground, willing to be patient.
The lights on the tenth floor switched on. They flooded through the grates far above, touching the conveyor in columns. We backed into the cover of an overhead platform, where the light couldn’t quite reach. Movement flashed on the distant bridge, originating from the tram station. Three pairs of feet walked to the elevator’s maintenance entrance.
I glanced to Ithaca to see if she might know more, but she looked just as unsure. I hesitated to join her in watching. Now that the lights were on, anything I saw could be noticed by security.
Ithaca motioned for me to get out, quick. While I didn’t care to debate, I did hesitate. What was she doing to avoid projecting her own vision to the network?
"Please," I mouthed, hoping desperately she could read my lips. "Keep me updated."
She stared at me, long and hard. Then nodded.
The plastic curtain rustled as I left. Atlas waved from beside the forklift, holding a flashlight.
We made distance from the cargo entrance before I said anything. I wished the run would shake the lingering sense of being watched, but I couldn’t be so lucky. “I confronted her. She’s mad but… she seems willing to talk, maybe.”
“Wait, seriously? What did you do, dark magic?”
The curtains rustled again as Ithaca slipped through.
“Your — “ She noticed Atlas and grimaced. “A group effort, really? Kastos, I would kill you, but — ”
The garage door shuddered.
“Shit,” Ithaca hissed between her teeth. “Get out of here.”
I flinched. Atlas and I had been running with the cover story of joining her side job, but I didn't have the time to explain that to her. We were now operating on different stories entirely. I messed up. I messed it up for all of us.
Still, I had to keep calm. If we left now, maybe we could at least spare Ithaca. I hurried to the exit. Minimize fallout. Prioritize others, tune out the guilt.
Atlas had, thankfully, already gone for the corridor.
Someone entered the storage room behind us.
“Alright, it’s all set,” the man from earlier said.
I couldn’t wait around for whatever followed. I caught up with Atlas.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“I didn’t tell her the whole story,” I muttered. “I’m sorry.” He may have joined of his own will, but by taking the lead I called the promise of responsibility to myself. He chose to trust me.
For the briefest of moments, Atlas frowned. But then he looked me in the eyes, sympathetic despite the disappointment behind. “Look, I think this… I think it was a good thing you went this far, alright? This is going to suck, but what was the alternative?”
Sitting, waiting, letting ourselves ignore the world around us. Although I failed, Atlas had a point.
“Thanks.” It sounded so hollow, absurd. Thanks. Like he just gave me a cup of tea.
But he smiled, legitimately.
I needed that silent confidence. As much as it hurt to admit, our best bet was to confess to Lacroux. He’d hear us out, maybe keep our punishments light. With a deep breath, I started a new message.
“I was acting up,” I wrote. “I’m in a restricted zone.”
“Sorry,” I told Atlas as I hit send.
“One day at a time. Until we get there.”
I didn’t know what to say. We weren’t meant to approve. If anything, I just demonstrated why acting out independently was wrong.
Only a moment later, a messaged appeared, but not from Lacroux. I pulled my feed open. It was from Ithaca.
"Your brother was in there."
My pulse jumped. I closed the message the second it was parsed, desperately smothered the image of the bridge from my mind. Of my brother standing up there.
Leros or Rhodes?
I dismissed the whole consideration. Not now. I could deal with it, as Atlas said, one day at a time. For now, I had a punishment to pay.
Lacroux’s reply arrived. “I’m sending someone to get you. Remain where you are.”
A group of security guards cuffed, surrounded me and Atlas as if we were resisting and violent. More marched well past us, prepared with a third set of cuffs. My hopes of sparing Ithaca were for nothing.
The team marched us through campus in total silence. Dozens of Contracts, outside on break, gawked. We were lead into the building where most of the high level staff worked.
The guards shoved us through the entrance. Inside, Lacroux stood behind an imposing legal desk, hands clasped tight. Even without an audience, I couldn’t shake the sense of being on stage.
“Deputy Lacerte, you may leave one of your guards here with me.” Dr. Lacroux said.
Lacerte sneered. “Be sure to send Atlas to me when you’re finished,”
Before Dr. Lacroux could reply, the deputy left. Atlas flinched. Lacroux sucked a breath between his teeth, eyeing the door in distaste.
“Kastos, Ithaca, Atlas,” Dr. Lacroux said, the most stern I’d heard him in years. “You’ve all been brought here under suspicion and… more honourably, admission to acts of trespassing. Reported by Kastos. Recorded on two out of three of your manager feeds.” He paused long enough for his final remark to sink in.
“According to Ithaca’s feed, she had been reading in her room for the entirety of her break.” Lacroux tapped a button on the desk. A video projected onto the wall behind him, labeled with Ithaca’s ID number, time stamped at five minutes after lunch. She appeared to be lying on her stomach, reading a tablet textbook. An old recording played over her normal feed.
Ithaca bit her cheek.
“The security team has been talking to the assistant that Ithaca was seen with. According to his reports, he’d received a response to a work ticket he’d submitted to your team about a week ago. Your behaviour on stream, however, suggests that this was a spontaneous job you’d done to gather equipment.” Lacroux brought up another feed. My own, watching Ithaca as she talked to the man at the garage. “While Ithaca’s side of the conversation seemed to suggest that she’d already been aware of this man’s request long before you two came by. Do any of you have an explanation?"
“Look.” Ithaca stepped forward. “They were just chasing me, alright? I left after lunch to do an off record job for a chance at earning some rumours.”
“Earning rumours?” Lacroux asked.
“I wanted to know what that shit was in the elevator, so I pretended to accept that guy’s stupid ticket. I’d seen it dismissed from our queue a week ago.” She shrugged. “He just wanted to pawn a bunch of cargo sorting work off so he could leave early this week. Said something about a casino.”
Lacroux paled. “Did he ever get around to telling you what you asked for?”
“Are you going to believe me when I say no? Because it’s true. He didn’t tell me anything. Kastos can probably even back me up.”
“She’s right,” I said. “She wouldn’t have had the time before I got there. And my feed will make it clear she never got a second chance.”
“You all received the same order.” Lacroux set his attention on Ithaca. “Disobeying it is a serious offence.”
“And I’m sure that’s why Kastos and Atlas wanted to try to stop me. They’re goody-two-shoes, sir."
I couldn’t believe she was covering for us. She knew what I really wanted. I looked down at my boots. Should I have confessed?
No, I couldn’t disrespect Ithaca’s effort like that.
“Kastos, Atlas, is this true?” Lacroux asked, sounding hopeful.
“It’s true, sir. We just wanted to get her out of trouble. I wanted us to work as a team.” The lie tasted unpleasant in my mouth.
Lacroux ran his fingers over his hair. “Although your intentions were noble, what you did today was against the rules. Kastos, Atlas, you’ll be required to report to my office during your free periods these next two weeks. There, I will assign you work.
“Ithaca, you will also be exempted from your free periods, but for a month at minimum. Instead of reporting to me, you’ll be expected to report to mandatory psychiatric assessment. Do you understand?”
Ithaca set her jaw tight. “Yes, sir.”
Lacroux's forced intensity slipped away. “I’ll… try to drop this from security interest. But I don’t want to hear of anything like it again. Any further disruption will be handled by someone else, someone with a far more disciplinary bent than I have. So, please. I want you to truly understand how serious this is. I can’t turn your discretions into detention forever.”
It felt like all eyes in the room were on me. Life was only giving me two options: guilt or helpless ignorance. Why did I even have to make a choice like that?
Lacroux. Lacroux watched me. He wasn’t mad. The fog over my eyes, mind, were too heavy to make out what he really was, but he wasn’t mad. As I blinked focus back, I tried to remember why I was so afraid he would be.
The scent of antiseptic poked through my hopes to keep sleeping. A sheet was draped over me, too thin. My memories didn’t come back the right shape. Instead I found dread. Nausea, the empty kind, at the pit of my stomach. Guilt. And a desperate, overall need. A need to move my arms and legs, to speak — anything.
I attempted to curl my fingers, without success. I redirected my efforts into grabbing hold of reality, pulling myself out of the temptation to dream again. One careful, shaking breath. I could get myself to move, I just needed to focus. My fingers brushed against my palm. My arm felt like a heavy, boneless sack, but, to my relief, it felt like something.
“Kastos,” Lacroux shouted from nearby. Too close. Within my ear. Blood rushed through my chest, my surroundings vertiginously real. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
I blinked at the ceiling, at a video displayed in the centre of my manager. Stared, wishing my hindbrain would understand that neither was actually spinning. Lacroux was watching me from a call stream, not in the room. Somewhere he'd be safe from whatever I’d been contaminated with.
This was quarantine. They trapped me in quarantine. In the cold, in the white walls, alone with the beat of my own heart. I was surrounded by a glass case, like I was some kind of specimen on display.
I remembered. They — the biohazard team — trapped me here by shutting me down. Now panic made sense. I wasn’t scared because I didn’t know where I was. I was scared because I didn’t know how they did that to me. Why they did it to me.
“Why did —” My words hitched. I wasn’t even sure what I was trying to say. If Lacroux said it was going to be fine, then it was going to be fine.
But it wasn’t going to be fine. They never took away my mind before. It was the only thing I thought staff couldn’t touch.
Lacroux ran a hand over his temple, taking a breath almost as shaken as my own. “I’m so sorry.”
Why was he sorry? He wasn’t the one who did this to me. I never saw the face of whoever did. Their suit muffled them too much to identify.
My stomach twisted. It could have been Lacroux, couldn’t it?
“We needed to get you out of there quickly,” Lacroux spoke each word like a misstep could set off a bomb. “It was done to reduce resistance.”
At any moment, it could happen again. At any mistake, they could shut down my will. But the longer I watched the display — Lacroux, silent, his eyes off screen, his expression even further away — the more I grew sure I wouldn’t be knocked out again today.
I still prepared myself for the worst. “Please, can you tell me what’s going on?”
Lacroux didn’t look back to the screen. “All three of you are fine. You encountered a fungal biohazard. Something from the cargo lift that broke open and contaminated the maintenance halls. But the medical team got to you in time to prevent anything serious.
“Ithaca’s being treated for respiratory tract inflammation, but it’s nothing worse than an asthma attack. She’ll be back on her feet by tomorrow morning. Atlas avoided the worst of it. If everything goes as planned, he’ll be out by the evening.”
All good news, considering. “And what about me?”
Conflict shadowed Dr. Lacroux's face. “They’ll be letting you out as soon as the sedative wears off.”
Sedatives. By implication, they forced me into blank, then injected me with a fast-acting knock-out drug.
I wasn’t buying it. I’d faced sedatives in training. Even learned to fight in the golden moment before they took over. All took a few seconds to truly kick in. On the bridge, I was gone in a instant. Dread returned. Was Lacroux lying to me?
“I would have listened to a second order,” I said. “I would have dropped on my own.”
Dr. Lacroux’s forced professionalism threatened to crack, but he pulled himself together before I could pick out what he was really thinking. “I’d prefer if we talked about this later.”
“When?”
“As soon as you’re out. An hour, they estimate. It will go by quickly, I promise. I just need you to hold out for me a little longer.”
Why? I mouthed, barely keeping the word unspoken. I wasn’t supposed to ask why. Lacroux might even lie to me again if I did.
“Thank you. I promise I’ll make it up to you. You’re a good Contract, Kastos. Please remember that for me.”
The feed cut, leaving me with nothing but a view of the stark-white ceiling. I turned over in bed, burying into my singular sheet. The moments before I was shut down repeated in my head.
That wasn’t something good Contracts deserved to have happen to them.
Please dispose of all garments into the decontamination unit.
I untied the back of my hospital gown, glad to be rid of the thing. Deep inside the open, waiting slot, a heating element warmed the surrounding walls. I carefully folded my gown before sliding it inside. A lick of flame curled around the already blackening fabric. A steel slat shut. I took an unsettled step back, glancing to the shower chamber I was expected to enter.
I grabbed onto the edges of the shower’s doorframe. Deprived of my cane until my meeting with Lacroux, it took effort not to slip. The steel floor was biting cold. At least that countered my fear of being burned alive.
The amount of precaution here was strange. A widespread allergic reaction would be troublesome, but I couldn’t imagine how a few potential specks of fungus on our clothes could pose much of a risk.
I stood on the footprint marks in the centre of the stall, and craned to watch the sprinkler holes above my head.
None of the information I’d been given quite added up. A fungal hazard wouldn’t trickle from the ceiling. It could be washed out of our clothes with a good laundering, cleaned off our bodies with a standard shower. Lacroux shouldn’t have felt the need to lie to me.
On the count of ten, remain still and do not open your eyes until the alert sounds.
I just wasn't someone who needed to know. If staff didn’t think I needed answers, there wouldn’t be any. Yet I wished, above everything else, to understand why that bothered me so much.
I knocked on Lacroux’s office , then loosened my uniform’s collar off my reddened shoulders. The decontamination shower had a singular goal: to force every speck of material off my body, and it seemed the first layer of my skin was as valid a target as anything else.
“Is that Kastos?” Lacroux called from inside. “Come in.”
Lacroux sat at his desk in the back of the room, calm as he finished typing into his personal tablet. As always, the scent of tea welcomed me inside. A sweetly floral green.
Lacroux’s office was warm and woody. A much needed escape from all the gunsteel. As usual, I’d been welcomed in by Tommy and Tuppence, his beloved pair of turquoise corn plants. Left mid-cleaning spree, several classically printed textbooks built towers atop his second desk. My cane leaned against the neighbouring wall, weirdly fitting to the aesthetic. Shame I had to take it.
I took a seat and watched the hourglass beside Lacroux’s computer flip around, streaming yellow sand.
Lacroux rolled his chair over to the coffee and tea maker on the back wall, grabbing a well-worn Le Vieux Quebec mug from the crowded collection on his mini-fridge. “How are you feeling? I hope they gave you lunch on the way out.”
“I’m raw from the shower, but fine otherwise,” I tried to inject some levity into my voice. “They didn’t give me anything, but I can hold off until dinner, it’s okay.” Honestly, my stomach was rumbling like a munitions blast, but I had enough to worry about as it was. I didn’t want to seem needy.
The tea maker sputtered as it finished. Lacroux handed the mug, steaming, to me. “I’ll get you a noodle cup. If your nutrition schedule doesn’t like it, we can keep it a secret.”
“Thank you so much.” The tension that had been gripping at my back faded. I held my hand over the heat wafting off the mug, the humidity soothing my skin. “I… I’m sorry if I seem on edge. Everything that happened today was just…”
“No need to apologize. I understand perfectly. In fact…” Lacroux pulled up to his desk, placing a noodle cup onto the table. He yanked the heat strip off the lid and sat back, waiting for it to self-cook. “I think it would be reasonable for you to be upset.”
“I’m not upset with anyone, sir,” I said, not sure how much I meant it. I wanted to not be upset with anyone, that much was true.
“But are you upset with what happened?”
“I would have preferred a warning, or… an alternative.”
Lacroux’s shoulders stiffened. “Unfortunately, all I can offer is apology. There’s nothing I can do about established procedure.”
“It’s okay.”
Lacroux smiled. “Now, to be clear, I didn’t insist you come here so we could dither on the issue. I have something for you.”
“What do you mean?”
Lacroux shifted to open his upper desk drawer. He sorted a few things aside — worn pens, a corkscrew, a ball bearing carved with an incomprehensibly detailed design — before pulling out an envelope. Pinched between his fingers, it was hardly larger than his thumb. Yet he beautifully signed it with both his and my name in practised script.
I tentatively took the envelope, handling it like a flower petal. Excitement bubbled beneath my more cautious thoughts, but that caution told me to give it back. We weren’t supposed to receive objects unless our peers received the same thing. Lacroux had broken the rules before, sure. Once a year, around the same day, he’d offer me a wrapped bar of chocolate. A new flavour each time. But food disappeared when I ate it.
“Don’t worry, it’s a gift,” Lacroux said.
That was exactly the problem. Still, I nodded, projecting as much thanks as I could. Taking care not to rip the envelope, I opened it.
Inside was a second envelope, this one even smaller, printed with a glossy photo of a woman with a cello beside her chair. The very same image sometimes appeared on Lacroux’s computer when he turned on my favourite playlist. Blazoned across the image was a silver title: Rebekah Maesen and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
My anxiety fizzled to fascination. Inside was a simple sheet of plastic, centred with a swirl of equally flat metal. An external seal-chip.
“Thank you so much,” I told Lacroux, truly this time. Doing so stirred my guilt, but not for long — Lacroux grinned in well-meaning pride.
“I asked the young lady at the desk if she could catch me up to date with what’s, well, more popular among college students nowadays. Kids around your age.” Lacroux scratched his head, his smile turning sheepish. “It turns out punk is back, apparently. Didn’t sound… much up your alley? So I fell back on Maesen. I hope you don’t think I’m trying to turn you into an old man.”
“Oh, no! Not at all.” I flushed, averted my eyes to the glossy photo. “It’s fantastic, actually.” I muttered, trying to keep my inflection as appreciatively neutral as possible. It wasn’t working.
Lacroux relaxed. “That’s a relief.”
I extracted the seal-chip from the envelope, examining it in the light. The transparent plastic surrounding the circuitry reflected tiny flecks of white. I brought it to the space behind my ear, felt it onto my external media magnet. All twenty-four songs on the album dropped into a playlist. But weren’t there only twenty? I turned the envelope over. “Extended Anniversary Edition”, dated only three weeks ago. Was this something he didn’t already have?
Lacroux leaned forward, dropping his voice. “If anyone on the security team gives you trouble for the music, tell them I’m lending it to you to help with the stress of the diagnosis, okay? In reality, it’s yours to keep. Just be careful not to let anyone else know.”
He sat back in his chair. Watched the wall, for a time. “But I do have something serious I need to talk to you about.”
There it was. A catch, yet again. It wasn’t like this before. I set the envelope down, waiting in cold expectation.
“What you saw earlier, at the elevator,” Lacroux said. “And everything that came after. We need you to let it go.”
“What do you mean?”
“All three of you are being told the same thing. To not talk about the elevator or look into it. It’s all getting taken care of by a team from staff. Do you understand? That’s all we need.”
“We’re… not allowed to discuss it with anyone? Not even you?”
“Ideally, administration would like for you to pretend none of it happened at all,” Lacroux's voice hardly carried across his desk.
They wanted me to forget my immunity? The shut down incident? How was I supposed to ask if Atlas and Ithaca were okay? I dug my nails into my palm.
“I’m sorry about all this.” Lacroux wrapped his hands around his mug, gazing inside. “Do you… understand the situation? Do you have any questions?”
Of course I had questions. And Lacroux had just suggested that I should abandon every single one of them.
The top half of the hour glass emptied. I intercepted before it could flip over. The sand settled at the bottom, motionless.
“No, sir, I understand, sir.”
Lacroux tensed, as if it hurt him when I said exactly what I was expected to say.
“You’re a good kid, Kastos,” he repeated, his words meaningless.
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#every time I read this phrase the same thing happens#I read it as shittable and go wait that can't be right#oh right they were talking about public benches that makes more sense#but public bathrooms available without fees should also be a thing tho#cities should definitely be shittable#it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME
We were assigned to nothing more than odd jobs over the week, each as unfulfilling as the last. On Tuesday we filled out janitorial drone patrol routes. On Wednesday we cleaned dirt from the tramways, from sections with too much magnetic interference for our scheduled drones to reach. I could hardly remember what we did on Thursday.
On Friday I woke up in a fog. The steam of my morning shower clouded my mind, thickened the film over my eyes. Not even switching the water to cold snapped me out of it. When I towelled off, I was shivering and no less tired.
I pulled on my uniform and approached one of the bathroom's mirrors. My eyes were bloodshot around the edges. Technically, I slept well, but I’d been struggling to get comfortable in my newly assigned solo room. It was cramped and lifeless, far too small, empty of the familiar shuffles and mumbles of my peers. Sometimes I could hear a few Contracts around the corner, but never close enough to feel like company. It’d break an unwritten rule to watch them.
I sighed and flicked my morning alerts into my manager display. One new assignment.
“Open new mail, text format.”
Meet in the central elevator’s maintenance bridge at 6:00 AM sharp.
I gave the message a second read. The whole central section was normally off limits. We were expected to enter it at one, and only one moment of our lives: when we’d leave this campus forever. Except now I was being sent inside like it was nothing. Excitement leapt in my chest.
As I buttoned my jacket, old theories of what the central building looked like rushed through my head. Was the pathway inside lined with photos of successful Contracts, dressed in full ceremonial uniform? Was it nothing more than another lobby, copy-pasted like the dorms? Was it outlandish, wreathed in lights and gold?
The haze trailed away as I hurried outside.
I met with Atlas inside the janitorial entrance for Aetnaeus' centre. He leaned against the grill of a massive transport drone, beside the gate to the tram for the elevator station. The tram itself was little more than a steel platform, surrounded by an outer cage to prevent its passengers from tumbling into the darkness below. Blazoned across the front was a sign that made my heart race.
Restricted Access
“You seem pretty excited to ride that rickety thing,” Atlas said. “Got a thrill seeking streak?”
“Oh,” I snapped to stance. “No, not really. Do you know what we’re here for?”
He shrugged. “Not a clue. Sometimes they’re vague when assigning us to restricted zones like this.”
Ithaca arrived three minutes before the deadline. Early, by her standards. She didn’t exchange more than a nod in greeting, instead focused on the restricted tram.
At the press of the switch, the gates clattered open. Flecks of black paint and oxidized chips rained from the grating. When we entered, the gates shut again with a rusty tenor. A warning blared and the whole tram lurched to life. I stumbled, scrabbling for purchase with my cane.
Atlas held out a hand to rescue me.“You okay?”
I flushed, embarrassed. “Yeah, I’m fine. This tramway’s awfully ancient, isn’t it?”
“It's one of the first sections of the facility they built, actually,” Ithaca said. “This was a builder’s transport before they repurposed it as a mechanic’s entrance. We’re right on top of a load-bearing beam right now.”
“Really?” I peeked over the edge. “Where did you hear that?”
“I told you, I’m an Archivist. Come to me for more fun facts.”
I stared at the retreating, deceptively simple beam, wishing I didn’t want to know more. Eventually, the tram broke to a halt in front of a pair of humongous doors. The inner mechanics of the entryway twisted in clamour. Then the whole thing slid open in labouring effort.
The room behind was massive. Not only in circumference — though it could have earned my awe for that much alone — but in depth. Above and below. Ten stories of space hovered between the floor and our rail line. The elevator towered through the centre. No matter how often I observed it from windows and balconies, even the closest point I could get from the inner phys-ed field, I couldn’t conceptualize how imposing the thing was. What could I even compare it to? A VR skyscraper? Only this was more real, present in more than just appearance. I could feel its size loom over me.
The tram halted at a simple station platform. From that station spanned an industrial bridge, leading to the elevator's walls. Petric waited at the end of it, his eyes already locked on us in predatory watch.
I departed last, struggling to find ease on my footing when the grating exposed the drop below. The lower floors contained such a hodge-podge of mechanical and electrical structures that I struggled to place them in my mental map. Enclosed server rooms lined the outer walls. I couldn’t call the place beautiful by any stretch, yet I nearly lost myself to the view. This was Aetnaeus in its barest form. An intimate look into the heartbeat that kept it running.
“Scout, snap out of the coma and get over here,” Petric ordered.
Against my curiosity’s wishes, I hurried over to the front of the elevator.
“I’d blame all of you for showing up late, but I learned the hard way that thing runs at the speed of ketchup.” Petric shot the tram a tired glare. “Don’t get used to it, but I’ll spare this one from your tab.” He turned to the sealed elevator behind him. “Your job’s a little different today. The official maintenance team called in the ticket this morning. They were hearing some odd sounds from inside here when running a test ascent. Which isn’t our business, usually. I’d tell them to sort it out themselves — except, just our luck, it turns out they already tried. They sent one of their repair and cleaning clunkers into the guts of this thing and never got it back. Their video feeds aren’t picking up anything but an up close and personal view of a wall. So they’re blubbering to us now.
"They want you three to take a look inside, retrieve their robot. And if you can come out with a diagnosis of what’s causing their bump in the dark, maybe they’ll quit messaging me at four in the goddamned morning.”
“Yes, sir,” we all said.
Officer Petric lead us in with an irritable nod.
There weren’t any lights inside. My vision faded to dulled grays and infrareds. Faint, warm lines of active circuitry travelled the corridor's walls. Several heated structures loomed around the corner, difficult to make out from a distance. As soon as Atlas and Ithaca stepped inside, Petric slammed the door behind them. My sight dimmed, but I could still make out heat-impressions of my partners jolting from the noise.
“What the hell!? Give us a second!” Ithaca snapped her multi-tool open. A glow flicked on from its tip.
“Archivists don’t get low-light?” I asked.
A quiet clang echoed from behind Ithaca before she could answer. Atlas spat out an expletive I’d never heard before. “Light!” He demanded. Ithaca complied with a casual flick of her wrist. Atlas fumbled around for his multi-tool on the dusty floor.
“It’s for him.” Ithaca said.
I held out a hand to offer help, leaning on my cane.
“I thought Soldiers and Bodyguards had the same sight mods,” I said.
Atlas frowned and tested the beam down the narrow thruway. “I’m an older model than you.”
I watched him, surprised. “How much more, if you don’t mind?”
“Three years over you, I think. Twenty-one years.”
“And you’re still here?” I asked, before I could think better of it.
“Still here.” Atlas sighed. After a quiet moment, he shrugged, smiling as if in pity of himself. “At least I’m not a box of guts, you know? I just live each day into the next.”
“Sorry,” I said, giving him distance. “I just didn —”
“Don’t worry about it. Anyone would wonder.” He offered me a more earnest smile before he descended deeper into the corridor.
Ithaca hadn’t shown a speck of interest. She must have already known. As she followed behind Atlas, however, she slipped me a glance. “I’m nineteen, before you ask.”
I struggled for words a moment. Did I plan to? Maybe it wasn’t entirely useless information.
No, considering it again as I headed inside, I settled that it definitely was.
A pair of battery racks, active and hooked up to a larger device, flanked the upcoming opening. I couldn’t identify the bulky machine at the centre of the room. Going by the sheer amount of power hooked to it, I could only assume it was key to the machinery. The three of us gathered by the batteries, independently sweeping the room with our lights. No sign of the rogue drone.
“Figures it can’t be straightforward,” Ithaca grumbled.
“I’ll take a closer inventory on this room,” I said.
“I can check around the corner, if you like.” Atlas pointed his light around the bend of a second hallway, illuminating, by the look of it, nothing much at all. But maybe there was something further in.
I nodded. “Ithaca?”
“I’ll stay here with you." She inspected a gap between battery racks as Atlas departed.
I did a round about the centre device. “Do you know what this is?”
“I really don’t. It almost looks like a giant electromagnetic motor, but only if half of it was missing.”
The steel flooring around it had a subtle lip. And, was it just an echo, or did the ground in one spot sound hollow? I gave the floor a hearty tap with my cane. The resulting thunk resounded, sending a near-imperceptible shockwave under my feet. Odd. I took a couple steps back, putting some distance between me and the device. Then I gave the floor another tap.
It barely made any sound at all. Just a muted, solid bump.
“Ithaca, there’s more space underneath.” I knelt beside the device — but only for a moment. My left ankle creaked viscerally at the joint. Grunting, I reluctantly sat instead. The burn ebbed when I took my weight off, but didn’t disappear.
Ithaca prodded around the edge of the base and caught a grip. “Huh. Shine a flashlight over here.”
I did as told. An unusual glint flickered off the floor. “Wait.” Backtracking, I scanned the area behind her, testing a couple angles. I caught a gleam off a line etched in the floor. “It’s a trapdoor. Shift over here.”
As Ithaca relocated, Atlas returned from around the corner. “No robots up ahead. Just a door to the elevator car and a whole lot of dust.”
“We’ve got a secret entrance.” Ithaca grinned, bouncing on her heels. “Get over here. Can one of you get a knife so we can pry this open?
Atlas flipped his multitool and flicked a knife from its side. He prodded the floor with it and struck the line. With another, harder jab, the blade sunk into the gap. He put leverage on it. With a mighty groan, the floor budged open, scraping rust off its own tracks. Yellow flecks danced in the beam of Atlas’ light, hovering to the space below.
“I doubt it’s supposed to open that way.” Ithaca peeked through. “Nothing in here should be creaking like that.”
Atlas set his tool aside and gripped the open edge. “It felt like I was pushing against a mechanism or something.”
“Could it be automated?” I asked.
“It’s probably set to open on a remote signal.” Ithaca jimmied her boot into the space we made and held the edge for leverage. “Or to only open for drones. Spot me.” With a hnrgh of effort, she forced the door wide. The scratch of metal was nearly deafening — yet not enough to cover the sound of something snapping and dropping from the mechanism she just fought.
“Whoops.” Ithaca pulled back. “Well, it’s not like we’re on repair duty.”
Atlas leaned in with his flashlight to get a better look at what we uncovered and, possibly, broke.
As suspected, the rest of the motor had been built below the flooring. It filled the majority of the room, leaving just enough space between it and the walls to allow a drone to move. The inner space was covered in a thick sheet of dust. A cloud puffed near our opening, obscuring much of the righthand side. Ithaca cleared her throat, wrinkling her nose.
Atlas covered his mouth with his sleeve, stifling a cough. “If our poor bot fell down there maybe it croaked from overwork. That’s a cruel place to send a janitor.”
“Could you angle the light a little deeper in?” I asked, pulling my undershirt to my face.
Atlas adjusted, revealing the back corners. And, with them, our MiA drone. It had gone silent, still. After traveling to an open gap between support beams, it had simply broken down.
“Found the target,” I said.
Both shifted closer. Ithaca hung her legs over the edge, but before she could lean in, she coughed again. Loudly, harsh.
“I guess there’s a reason they don’t send people down — ” Atlas got cut off by Ithaca's hacking. She didn’t stop.
Something wasn’t right. Sure, the dust was bad down there, but we were far enough away that I couldn’t imagine why it would set her off so badly.
I glanced to Atlas. His eyes were edged with red.
Something deeply wasn’t right. I pressed my shirt tight against my nose. On second consideration, the dust seemed unusually bunched around where the drone broke down, even gathering into piles around its edges. In high concentration it had an unnerving, yellow tinge.
Ithaca managed to stop coughing for just long enough to wheeze out a full breath. She struggled to her feet, hacking yet again on her way up.
Atlas dropped his arm from his face to offer help. “Let’s get you to the hall, I’ll — ” His voice hitched.
“Cover your mouth,” I ordered.
Atlas fumbled to catch his bearings, raise his sleeve back to his face. By then, he’d already started to cough.
“Both of you to the hall, now. I’ll call our Officer.”
Ithaca shot me a quick glance, like she had something to add, but her condition didn’t allow for it. She disappeared around the corner instead.
“Are we leaving — “Atlas heaved a hoarse breath.” — Are we leaving that thing open?”
“We can’t risk shutting it, we need to move.” I propped my cane to stand with. But with one of my hands occupied, protecting my face, I couldn’t find my feet.
I considered Atlas a moment for help up, but he himself to worry about; he was a moment short of the same mess Ithaca was in. I motioned for him to go. He didn’t seem convinced, but after a second of doubt, he ran.
“Manager, call Officer Petric,” My manager told me to hold. In the interim, I pulled enough heft to get upright, but only by using my other hand, dropping my shirt from my face. I’d taken a deep, heavy breath from the effort.
A click issued from my manager. “What’s going on over there? Did you find that worthless machine yet?”
“We did, sir. It was in a drone-only section for motor maintenance, where it stalled. But we might need to hold our investigation. There’s something strange down there.”
“What do you mean something strange?”
“Some sort of dust. Ithaca had a coughing fit and Atlas was bloodshot.”
“Everyone gets dust allergies, Scout. Suck it up. Where are you right now?”
Dust allergies didn’t even begin to cover Ithaca’s reaction.
Yet, despite the deep breath, I still felt fine. It hit Ithaca almost instantly. What could I have possibly done differently?
“I’m still beside the drone door.” I turned to let Petric see it on my manager feed. “The dust looked a little odd to me, yellow. A lot of it had gathered around the drone even though they only sent it in a couple hours ago.”
Officer Petric’s voice stiffened. “Give me better sight on it. Take a picture.”
“Sir, I really believe we should order masks for this job. Ithaca’s in bad shape.”
“Take a picture. It will only take you a moment, and you seem pretty damned healthy for someone who’s acting like he’s been mustard gassed.”
Honestly, it being something of the sort was exactly what I was worried about. An alarming number of chemical agents were yellow-tinged in high concentrations.
“Please check on Ithaca and Atlas. I’ll take the photos, but I want to make sure they’re okay.”
An unusual silence filled Petric’s end of the line. If he wanted to make me question myself in the empty moment, he was succeeding in bulk. I wouldn’t have figured it possible to simultaneously feel paranoid and justified, yet there I was.
“Call me up as soon as those photos are ready,” Petric said. “Then regroup with the others.”
Petric went on hold. A red alert appeared in my notifications. I sunk. He was punishing me. Not a word about whether he’d check on the others.
I’d have to read my sentencing later. I shifted to the edge of the gap to the lower floor — much to my ankles’ continued complaint — and leaned as far forward as possible.
“Manager, snap pho—”
Wait. More dust was streaming from above the drone, trickling like the sand timer on Dr. Lacroux’s desk. It shouldn’t be making me proud, but look, Petric. See? I was right. All I needed was the right angle.
“Manager, snap photo.” A click, then the preview expanded in the corner of my eye. The dust was blurry. Hardly distinguishable from the background. Utterly useless.
I got a call. Not from Petric, but from a restricted number. Anxiety rushed back in double.
“Hello? This is Kastos, Exceptions.”
“This is the security team. Can you hear us clearly?”
“Yes, sir. Is there a problem, sir?”
“Are you experiencing any unusual symptoms at the moment?”
“No, not at the moment.” I took a quick inventory of myself. Even a second assessment only confirmed that I felt fine, if supremely on edge.
The other end of the line went silent, leaving me hanging. Was my lack of reaction notable? I felt intensely left out. Like I was the only one who didn’t know what was going on.
“We’re declaring a biohazard. We need you to clear the area immediately. Meet with your partners at the door to the elevator. A hazard team will regroup with you. Do you understand?”
Adrenaline flushed through my chest. I stood, not wholly noticing the pain of doing so. “Yes, sir. I’m on my way.”
Was I immune? It seemed so unlikely, even convenient. But nothing was happening to me.
I gave the pit one last glance. If I was immune to whatever was down there, I could take as many pictures as they wanted, maybe even remove the threat entirely. I’d be uniquely able to help.
But before anything else, I had to ensure my teammates were safe.
Ithaca and Atlas sat against the wall beside the door. Atlas had a hand at Ithaca’s back while she wheezed out careful breaths. Both their lips had tinged lightly blue and their eyes a shocking red.
“Oh, thank luck, after the message I was beginning to think you passed out back there.” Atlas paused to catch his breath. “So… uh, a biohazard, huh? Hell. What a thing. You seem to be taking it well.”
“I don’t know why,” I admitted. “Are we locked in?”
“They told us to wait,” Ithaca muttered, her voice like sandpaper. “They’re not giving us a damned lick of information, either.”
My manager rang in another call. I quickly accepted it.
“We’re opening the door.” Our security contact said.“Remain exactly where you are and don’t move.”
The exit hummed slowly open. I squinted at the shift to normal light.
A team of eight figures in full hazard suits stood across the bridge. Although they were surely staff, they looked like clones; all the same from the outside, only distinctive if they let you know what made them unique beneath.
Three gurneys covered in thick quarantine tents were laid between them, zipped open, waiting. The thought of stepping into one made me nauseous.
“All three of you, step outside. Hands up and kneel,” One demanded, their voice indistinct and muffled. “We’ll take care of things from here.”
Atlas dropped to his knees first, his hands already in the air. Ithaca reluctantly joined him.
Leaving me standing alone in my hesitation.
The leader of the hazard team angled their head.
“Wait, please, I can help. I think — I think I’m immune, I can help!”
The leader turned and waved another over. They conferred, and my hopes lifted. Maybe the suggestion wasn’t as far fetched as I feared. Maybe —
“Shut him down.”
My vision cut out. The world fell silent. Blank, I thought, as I collapsed.
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Officer Petric ferried us out of the atrium before Ithaca and I could exchange formal introductions. On our way to Utero, she instead shot me occasional glances. Curious, analytical ones.
Atlas, oddly, had been dropped off by the security deputy. I couldn’t recall his name, but he was a frequent enough sight that I knew his title. Whatever the reason he was there, Atlas didn’t seem to consider it outside of routine.
When we reached a pair of glass doors, Petric signalled us to stop. “Kastos will be coming in with me first. Atlas, Ithaca, you’ll wait here. Some white coat will be by in the next few minutes. They’ll send you to work.”
My two partners nodded. Atlas punctuated his with an awkward salute, but with his attention subtly focused on me.
Officer Petric flourished me ahead. “Any time now.”
The deeper into the department we travelled, the less I was convinced this was Utero. It felt more like a weapon’s wing. Entryways were cast in steel, locked with magnetic bolting. Camera lenses dotted the walls, pointedly visible. Once Petric signalled us to halt, we'd reached a single door at the end of the hall, protected under automated guard. A pair of wall mounted turrets whirred us into their sights, ready, blinking red beside their barrels.
“Guess what’s behind this door,” Officer Petric said.
He couldn’t have made the question sound any more loaded. “Unborn children, sir?”
“Boring answer. Stand back.”
I did as told. The turrets re-angled themselves with each step. They were only concerned with me, taking no note of Petric. From the doorway came the faintest of thumps as the lock demagnetized. The smell from inside scrounged up a memory.
One of early upper grade exposure lessons. I was part of a group gathered around a body, real, already dead before our arrival. He'd been stripped bare, held in t-pose with plastic cuffs. His wrists were haloed in bruises, sporadically blanched. My brother Leros had pressed a knife to the man's nape, just as he'd been ordered. He added pressure, drew specks of blood. Then, with a single slice, he unzipped the man from chest to crotch.
Our lesson wasn't about what we saw inside, our instructor had explained. It was about the scent. Copper, wet, like blood and sweat. Yet chemical, sweet. Sweetness that coated the back of my throat, remained there longer than any smell should. “It's like roasted nuts,” one classmate had said. While not inaccurate, the comparison seemed too inoffensive, simple. Like rationalization by simile.
That same smell now wafted from behind Petric's door.
Tanks of plastic and glass, suspended like IV-bags on poles, formed rows across the room's west end. Bodily organs floated within, at varying points of completion. Some were little more than silicone castings, waiting to shape flesh into hearts, livers, lungs and eyes. Fresh, fragile vascular branches climbed their way through others, wet and transparent as algae.
Artificial incubators lined the eastern wall, their opaque domes displaying statistics for whatever grew inside. Amniotic fluid cycled slowly through suspended tubing.
At the centre of the room a pair of lab technicians loomed over what Petric surely wanted me to see. Part of a man, and only part; a torso, stunted, limbless. Held in scientific architecture, clamped and steadied, wide open. It had no head. Instead, a computer chip had been wired from a smooth-skinned neck, circuitry leading inside.
One of the lab techs sutured something out of sight. The other glanced up, unamused, from her work on the neighbouring computation table. Her surgical mask inflated as she sighed.
“Please don't step past the blue line. This is a sterile equipment only zone,” she said, her voice muffled.
Petric took his authoritative place on the very edge of the floor line, facing me. “Just remain at the door and close it, Scout.”
As I obeyed, I tried to ignore the scent of sickly sweetness crawling its way to my tongue.
“Do you know why this room exists?” Officer Petric asked.
“To produce body parts for transplantation, sir?”
“Correct. Now, let's say you're a client of ours, looking to pick up a good set of guts for your ailing grandmother.” He jabbed a thumb at a sealed tub of snaked intestines. “She's only looking for a new large intestine at the moment, but her heart's bad too. And, she doesn't like to say it, but she's eventually going to need the whole kit swapped out if she wants to live to see her centenarian discounts. Luckily, you're a rich clod. Got all the cash in the world."
He leaned in closer, grinning. “How much of it you got to dish out to get one full set of parts for grandma, you think?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” I said. It wasn’t appropriate to pretend I knew the business, even if I had theories.
His grin faded. “Three hundred thousand bucks, approximately. It's a good chunk of money. Now, tell me, how much do you think one of your classmates wrangles at graduation? How much do you think one of you is worth alive?”
“More.” A living Contract had to at least be worth the extra cost of raising someone to adulthood. While I could guess at what those costs were – food, lodging, teaching equipment — I couldn’t add them up to a specific number. “More than a torso of parts.”
“Between nine hundred to one million and two hundred k, on average,” Officer Petric said. “Your classmates are worth four times as much alive as they are dead. Good on them, I say. They wouldn't be too well off, otherwise.”
Petric turned to the torso. The lab tech on dissection duty pulled a kidney into view, adjusting its position as he snipped a vein.
“You, Scout, are here because you're considered worth less than the standard minimum. Less than four hundred thousand.” He lowered his gaze. “And believe me, that number can keep falling.”
The air thickened with implication. “You can trust me to keep that from happening, sir. I'll work for my worth.”
Petric smirked. “A novel idea. Why don't you prove it?”
Officer Petric left halfway down the hall, offering little more than a grunt in place of a goodbye. I didn't much mind; I preferred to be invisible for a while.
As I headed to the storage room to regroup, I peeked through a few of the windows I hadn’t dared to before. Scientists and doctors buzzed about, passing test tubes through bulky machines, analyzing, taking notes. Simple research work, I suspected, mundane compared to the crude dissections being done in the backmost lab. But one room was different. A member of staff had placed their hand up against the rounded surface of a containment, washing its opacity away.
From a distance, through glass, I saw an unborn child.
The foetus slept, curled inside a bed of fluid. Bright pink all over. Their eyes were closed, but the slightest hint of grey showed from behind their lids. Those details should have been alien, but on that child they seemed like an unfinished, beautiful process.
That was me, once. That was all of us. To think I was so delicate. In comparison, even my shaky ankles felt strong. Was the surface of the womb warm?
“Hey, you alright?” Atlas called from ahead.
I snapped out of my awe, stepped back. Suddenly I couldn’t shake the sense I’d get in trouble for standing so close.
“Yeah, I’m good. Just have a lot to think about.”
“How’d it go?” he hefted a tank of synthetic baby formula from a shelf.
I pulled up a creaky steel chair to join them. “Well, I was… properly reminded of my own mortality.”
Ithaca fussed with an order form sent from the nursery team. “Boss loves that room. He’d fuck it if he could.”
“It doesn’t worry you?” I asked.
“Most of our past partners have been sent up at discount price long before they could drop too low,” Atlas said. “Our last one, Sofia, she got a deal after only a month on duty with us.”
“Discount?” That didn’t sound a whole lot better. “Is it for the same sort of work we were trained for?”
“Maybe. Who the hell knows?” Ithaca said. “They don’t tell us anything. We hardly knew we were getting you in until this morning.”
“Has anyone ever been sent back to standard training from here?”
“Yeah right."
“So do you just…” I trailed off, shifting the list closer. It was nothing more than a bunch of busy work. “Put up with this? You don’t aim for anything?”
Atlas paused, staring silently at the crate he held in his arms.
“You know, maybe I would, if they’d let us." Ithaca shrugged. "But guess what?”
Ithaca’s manager blinked twice and she cursed beneath her breath. “Seriously? For that?” With a roll of her eyes, she entered push-up position.
Atlas sighed, then turned to me, his expression neutral. No, on second thought, solemn. We were on our own, close to worthless, and not even expected to hold on to hope. Was this what happened to Rhodes? Was he left in this same position, elsewhere in the building, stuck in some kind of assigned helplessness for five years? I gripped at my pant leg.
“You get used to it,” Atlas said.
“I don’t want to get used to it,” I said. “I can’t just wait around and rot.”
Atlas looked ready to say something, but never acted on it. Instead he sat opposite me and stared at the room’s utilitarian shelves and identical plastic crates. A disconnected wire hung just above my head. I hated this place.
“Do you always work at this pace?” I asked, voice stiff.
Atlas glanced aside. “Basically. As long as we get it done, Officer Petric leaves us alone about it. It’s enough to get us to dinner.”
“If you’ve never tried anything differently, you can’t expect to get different results.”
“I mean, I don’t want to be a downer, but...” He shrugged. “It might make Petric yell at you less if you put in some extra effort. I can’t tell you that Ithaca will take it well, though.”
Ithaca paused at the top of a push-up, sweat falling to the industrial floor. “I won’t.”
Atlas chuckled, and somehow that assuaged my fears.
“I’d like it if we worked together, but if not, I’ll do it alone." I said, smiling a little.
Ithaca heaved out one last push-up before she dropped to the floor, rolling onto her back. “Newbie,” she muttered between breaths. “Why can’t you be like the last few partners we had?”
“You hated our last few partners.” Atlas said.
Ithaca motioned to throw her arms over her head in annoyance, but she only made it halfway. “Look, just keep your go-getter attitude out of my way, that’s all."
I examined the sheet of what we needed to do. Prepare sixty bottles of formula, pack and transport a hundred diapers, fold thirty clean blankets, and count the remaining stock on everything we removed. Simple stuff, really. I had more than enough energy for it. If we could get it all done before two, we’d beat our own deadline. If we beat our deadline, maybe, just maybe, Petric would be impressed.
I shifted my chair over to the formula tank and took a bottle from the crate. “I can handle anything other than heavy lifting. I’ll take over filling duty for Ithaca if she wants.”
Ithaca raised an eyebrow at me. “Go ahead. I’ll, uh. I don’t know. Atlas, hand me the list, I guess.”
Atlas tossed her the tablet. She caught it with surprising ease for how exhausted she appeared to be.
When Atlas glanced back to me, he looked relieved. Almost happy. “I’m on lifting duty, then. Consider me living up to my name.” He flexed.
And it seemed, after that moment, that the heavy air left the room. Atlas joked. Ithaca snarked. And I spent my time with utmost focus, glad that I wasn’t really as alone as I expected to be.
We beat our deadline. Atlas attempted a high five, but reluctantly I had to deny him.
“Oh, sorry man.” He retracted his hand. “Are your wrists… are they going to get better, or is that a permanent thing? If that’s not, you know.”
“I strained them in my firearms final.” Talking about it brought a lingering pain back. I massaged the joint under the brace, even knowing that it wouldn’t do much good. “Supposedly they'll get better.” Dr. Vaughn did warn me that my CMT would eventually affect my wrists like it did my ankles. But for the time they only occasionally slipped in some rare twinges and fumbles.
“You used to do bodyguard work?” Ithaca asked, leaning against the idle transport truck we’d packed.
I nodded. “What did you used to do?”
“Archivism,” she said. “Programming work, mostly.”
Archivists were taught to recall, reflect more than anyone else. They were built and trained to know what previously was, what they’d been told, at sacrifice of living in the moment. It made Ithaca’s careless attitude even more baffling.
A knock came at the door. One that was only for show, as the knob clicked open before anyone could say anything.
Officer Petric entered. “So, done before one forty, huh?”
“He’s an overachiever." Ithaca tilted her head to me.
“I heard the conversation. No need to pretend this came out of nowhere. The Cub Scout’s playing scout. Do you think I’m supposed to be surprised? I pegged exactly who he was from the start.”
I didn’t react. If he knew what my intent was, then I had nothing to explain.
Officer Petric took a step closer. “Stand up, Scout.”
I pushed to my feet. Officer Petric locked me in his gaze. “Do you think you’re special?”
“No, sir."
“Then why do you think you can single-handedly fix this little hell you’re in?”
I held down the irritation building within my chest. “I apologize if this is out of line, sir, but I don’t understand how improved productivity could be a bad thing. It seems better morale would lead to better results.”
“I think you’re missing an important detail.” Officer Petric placed a hand on the table beside me, boxing me in. “That you’re being a real horse’s ass. You think you can keep this up without making your partners hate you? You think you won’t burn out when this goes on for a month and you still can't make an easy trip to the restroom? Filling out request forms won’t make you any more viable as a bodyguard.”
I dug my nails into my cane grip. I wanted nothing more than to tell him off, but Petric, cornering me, asserting his authority over me, could — no, would — take my anger as validation. “You told me to prove myself to you.”
“What gave you the idea being a damned suck up would do that?”
Oh. Obviously. He wanted something more complicated. Something more specific. A specialty. “You — yes, you’re right. I understand, sir.”
Officer Petric cracked a broad grin. “Do you?”
I nodded.
Officer Petric slapped the table. He took a step back and addressed us as a group. “Bad news, you don’t get to use your extra time to fart around. Blame your new recruit. Take the next twenty minutes to make a record of your thoughts on his attitude. How he just told you to waste your energy on a whole lot of nothing. And send it, as usual, to me at the top of the hour.” He took a step back to the door, opening it without looking. “That includes you, Scout. Tell me how you really feel about your decision.”
The door slammed behind him. I felt painfully watched. Ithaca opened her mouth, on edge of saying something. Atlas, sympathetic though he was, kept me under steady pity.
“Do you think we don’t have a chance?” I asked.
He recoiled. “I just haven’t made it there yet, you know?”
Ithaca nodded in agreement, and it made sickening sense. Neither of them had ever earned anything here. Why should I be the anomaly?
