Flesh and Alloy: A dystopian novel

by Nathan Lunn

  “You said we had to ditch the car,” Clara whispered; “think you used the wrong ‘D’.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you must have been expecting,” Julie replied, ending her connection and turning around in her chair. She gasped. It was a scene of pandemonium. Tossed and knocked unconscious, most of the crew lay splayed over their chairs, or crumpled in their footwell, seemingly showered from above with a cascade of unused credit chips. The crash had proved too great for the already threadbare bags, splitting them at the sides and bottom and spilling the contents out with abandon. A suspiciously bloody rhodium bar lay a foot from Eddie’s head – this, combined with the red streaks running down from his crown, meant that it wasn’t hard for Julie to work out why he was out cold. “Good thing this’ll all pay for their medical bills! Clara, this has gotta be great for your mother, right? What a grab! Maybe it’ll be enough this time.”

  Clara nodded, still shell shocked, only replying with a muted murmur, “Yeah, maybe…”

  Julie decided to give her a task to get on with and keep her busy whilst she left her dazed state.

  “Check they’re breathing, would you?” She pointed backwards to where Kye was crumpled, bouncing her leg uncontrollably in the populated footwell. Clara moved two fingers to his neck, before giving a quick nod and moving to the back of the car. Here, she found Charlie, eyes closed, pale as a sheet. She checked his pulse. Thankfully, he was alive. She confirmed everyone else was at least breathing, before letting Julie know.

  “Everyone’s fine. Kye looks a little worse for wear; I’m gonna patch him up with some MediCare, I reckon. There’s one in the passenger pocket, pass it to me.”

  Julie, letting out an audible sigh of relief, found the cracked white box to her left, and pressed her thumbprint to the dusty keypad. As it confirmed her ID, a green caduceus flashed across the top – with a click the box popped open. Rooting through the contents, past a few scratched brass needles, and five coolant gel packs, she identified the MediCare packet and threw it towards Kye. Clara caught it and opened it up. Peeling the pad free, she placed it lightly on Kye’s bloody shoulder, then took the Sealant tube from the packet, spreading it between the skin and the pad as evenly as she could. A quick shine of the final item treated the gel, creating a close seal and vacuum to prevent any further damage or deterioration to the wound.

  Meanwhile, Julie was looking around the deserted factory – intent on keeping herself equally busy. The crash had clearly caused a lot of damage. Paper and fabric was strewn across the floor, glowing burnt embers floated through the air, and the smell of recently discharged ozone flooded her nostrils the minute she left the car. A crunch sounded from below as she stood up – scatterings of broken glass were spread outward from the engine and the window. The fire had not only succeeded in melting the drones, but had almost managed to melt the glass itself, fusing a mix of metal and crystal in a pattern of intertwined fibres that were still hot to the touch. The blast had softened the very edges that were so recently sharpened, darkening the windows with an excessive layer of soot and fine particulate. Save for the glaring spotlight created by the entrance, visibility was minimal. The mottled complexion cast shadows of shifting light through the window, rolling over her like the sun from beneath the waves, as Julie moved between the broken desks. Upon the floor and those few tables that remained upright, half-scorched sewing stands were still in operation, emitting a low hum as the machines waited for instruction. Spools of thread running through the needle's eyes blew idly in the light wind, and cluttered design specifications fluttered to the floor, all scrawled with half-legible notes and diagrams.

  The factory ran parallel to the equally run-down warehouse – both relics of a now failing clothing enterprise, that the company of which were well-known for participating in shady business practices. One of these practices was the outsourcing of both their manufacturing and production – more specifically, this installation dealt with the manufacturing side. Julie knew their crew was partially to blame, having used the clothing produced on many missions, and she still wasn’t particularly happy about it.

  Clara stepped out of the car to join her, along with a now-awoken Danny, and a still pale Charlie. He shivered in the cold morning chill.

  “Hey, Charlie, you alright?” Julie asked, turning to him and offering her coat. Pulling it around his shoulders, she pressed a small button on the inside of the collar – with a light glow, the coat began to vent hot air, heating Charlie up instantly and curing his shakes. He nodded a quick thank you in return.

  “Where is everyone?” Danny asked, looking around the empty factory floor. “How did that,” he inclined towards the car, “not cause some sort of alarm to trip?”

  “We chose this area exactly because there was no security. That way we were less susceptible to being caught,” Clara responded, rolling her eyes. “All part of the plan we outlined, remember? You were at the meeting.”

  Danny shook his head, saying, “It’s not like I pay attention to those shitty plans. Who has time for that?” He nudged the corpse of the drone nearest to him, mockingly asking, “Was this ‘all part of the plan’ as well?” He smirked and threw a piece of whitening gum in his mouth, presumably in some sort of ill-begotten attempt to try and reduce the yellow staining that coated his teeth – caused primarily by the packs of cigarettes that he compulsively chain-smoked.

  “Hell knows where this is from,” Clara said, as she crouched to inspect the bodywork. “No specific markings. Not even a serial number that I can see. What a mess."

  “Brilliant job, Missy. Truly.” Danny began to applaud as he spoke. “I mean, why would we blame you, when it was clearly all my fault!”

  “Pack it in, Danny! This probably happened as a result of that extra security, which you were oh-so-quick to ignore–”

  “You told me to ignore them!” Danny started to yell back. His voice rose as his cocky smile started to disappear.

  “Maybe, if you were more competent at your job then you would have managed to actually get through in time.” Clara stood and stepped towards Danny.

  “Oh yeah?” He spat out his gum. “Well, maybe if you were more competent at your job, then we would be a better prepared crew.” He stepped forward, clenching his hand tightly. “Is it really so much to ask, for the planner to do some, I don’t know, planning once in a while? Knew we shouldn’t have trusted a woman with a man’s job.”

  Clara turned red, spitting venom back at Danny. “You drugged up Drine asshole! You know, you really–”

  “Enough!” Julie, still feeling the effects of her headache, was now reeling from the continued assault of manic verbose from her crewmates. She continued, “We are leaving! Pack up your shit, we’ll deal with this later.”

  Danny grabbed a crumpled smoke from his pocket, scratching fervently at the ripped fabric. He had begun to jitter – his neck was tight and he was itching for his fix. Scowling, he ignited it off the edge of the smouldering window. Taking a long drag, he inhaled the nicotine as he felt his muscles easing up. The sun had just peaked over the crest of the housing estate, though it was hard to see just how far it had risen through the smog coming off the smokestacks. The whole neighbourhood was coming to life. Noticing a steady stream of workers walking up the hill, Danny was sharply instilled with a sense of urgency.

  “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea, sweetheart.” He turned back and picked up a discarded leg attachment, chucking it into the car.

  Making a point of ignoring his eyeline, Clara started cleaning up her side, taking care to avoid the still sleeping occupants of the vehicle.

  “Look, we’ve wasted too much time here, I’m calling Douglass for an extraction,” Julie said, already dialling through her commlink with a tap to her temple. She walked off to arrange for a lift, Charlie tailing close behind.

  A few minutes later, it was underway. Returning to the wreckage of the car, she closed her connection, and picked up an unused credit chip by her feet.

  “Li
ft’s on the way. We clear?” Without waiting for a reply she dropped into her driver's chair, and slipped the credit chip into her breast pocket. With the clean-up finished, she helped the other two to pull Kye out of the car, and grabbed the cleaner of the two handguns from the side pocket. Moving to the back seats, she picked up a small duffel bag, commenting to the others to grab any belongings they may need. With a loud thump, she dropped the duffel onto a fairly sturdy table, unzipping it and revealing the contents to the others.

  “Did we seriously drive around – being shot at I might add – with that in the back of the car? Right next to the kid?” Clara commented, as her eyes fell on the small black packages bundled in the bag – the fabric they were wrapped in didn’t do well to disguise them effectively. As shown by their distinctive shape, and more specifically by the neon timer displaying 00:00 through the thin material, they were clearly explosives. As the timer flashed and disappeared, everyone gasped and took a step back; Julie just chuckled, taking the explosive out of its fabric, now connected to it through her commlink. She stood on the top of the car, making sure to avoid the maglift vents which appeared to still be closed – the cooling vents looked to be almost entirely obsolete, blocked by a thick layer of shredded warehouse supplies, and radiating super-heated air that she could feel burning as it ran up her back. She stretched to attach the explosive charges to the ceiling, but couldn’t reach.

  “Dammit,” she muttered under her breath. “I can’t reach this. Eddie, you good to stand up here?”

  Eddie nodded, already regaining the colour in his cheeks, though a lot of that may have been leftover blood he had wiped off. It was hard for Julie to say.

  To her dismay, Julie watched as Eddie had no trouble reaching the ceiling. He was a little over 6ft, unlike his brother, who was exceptionally short and uncomfortable with that fact. Everyone on the crew knew it wasn’t wise to bring it up, and did their best to steer clear of the topic when near him – that was why she had decided to stop his heated argument with Clara before it reached a critical temperature. That direction was inevitable. As Eddie dropped down off the car, she noticed an irritated Danny out of the corner of her eye, and quickly pushed onto the next task.

  “We gotta get this car out the way of the ceiling. Anyone who’s capable, get round the front,” Julie commanded. Danny groaned and slowly shuffled behind her, next to Clara, who did her best to steer clear of him.

  “Hurry up, guys, we haven’t much time here.” As if to emphasise her point, the overhead lightstrips came on and the machines stuttered back into action, better illuminating their destruction and shocking them into action. With an angry grunt, and a lot of effort, the car was eventually pushed far enough out of the way.

  “Alright. Five paces back,” Julie said, activating the explosives, and setting it at 00:15. She saw Clara as she dragged Kye further back, again checking his pulse. A pop-up in Julie’s commlink display informed her that they had completed preparation in time. Their lift was here. Julie activated the timer.

  3

  Clocking-in

  Tom Kendt awoke in his bed, feeling tired. Nowadays, he always felt tired. All the previous night, a pack of howling dogs had kept him up, same as the night before, and same as the night before that. It was always the same – nothing was ever going to change here. Bright green light came in slits through the boarded up windows, striking him below the brow, stretching his quickly dilated pupils. It hurt Tom’s eyes. They never turned the lightposts off round this area. “Too much crime” they said, when they asked for them off. Then, when they asked for surveillance hardware, their response was “Too much money”. He chuckled at the obscenity. Why keep the spotlights on the criminals, if the camera was never rolling?

  Kissing his wife on her cheek, Tom left the room to get ready. He tread lightly as to not awaken her from her slumber; she was also a light sleeper, and last night had not been any easier on her. Climbing into the shower, he braced himself for the cold. He always tried his best to prepare, but it never got easier – the shower trickled weakly into life, brown gritty water running down his back and shocking him fully awake. He dried himself off with the coarse towel, and went to get his breakfast.

  A few days back, the Croft Administering Aid Foundation (CAAF) had flown a few heavyweight drones over the neighbourhood, dropping off care packages filled with food and MediCare packets, as part of their schemes to help those more impoverished. It was a busy neighbourhood, a greedy one, and so the drones never stayed around for too long. Just long enough to grab some pictures for their own public relation needs. As soon as they noticed signs of potential violence, they shot back to their repair stations. As the CAAF finds it fit to send only three packages per neighbourhood, things predictably turned ugly in under ten minutes. Very often, they work on a first-come first-served basis – in fact, just last month Tom had slept in and missed the drop-off entirely. He wouldn’t make that same mistake again. As soon as the low whine of the drones had passed overhead he was outside, ready, waiting. He managed to get out with a few weeks’ supply of CAAF branded wheatcakes, and had snared a jar of CAAF jam-substitute, before it was knocked out of his hands by a particularly aggressive child. Not wanting to sustain any injury, he scampered away as soon as he saw the silver flash of a blade. In all, he was lucky to get away as safely he did: the food lasted the neighbourhood around a few weeks, but the MediCare packets were long gone and used before the drop-off was completely raided. As a result of this seemingly successful scavenge, Tom was left with dry wheatcakes for the week, and a sore throat for the remainder of the month.

  He was in moderately good spirits despite these setbacks, choosing to walk double speed up the steady hill towards his job, determined to be the first to clock in, and subsequently the first to clock out. A confusing medley of metal parts could be seen dotted around the streets whilst he walked. As he neared the entrance gate, he could see other employees join in his daily pilgrimage, nodding at a few but mostly keeping his head down and his pace swift. He didn’t want to be caught in smalltalk, that would just slow him down. Plus, a few of his fellow employees were still sporting their fresh wounds from the last drop-off. It was better to walk alone.

  Finally, Tom made it to the steps, and began the long ascent up the stairway, reaching the top floor in record time. Sweat dripped down past his temple, and fell onto the floor as he doubled over, staving off his strong sense of nausea. Panting, he clocked in with his commlink, which took a few extra seconds to buffer, before the double doors in his way screeched open.

  The first thing Tom noticed was the new hole in the window. His eyes followed the line of light cast by this new hole, right to the centrepiece of the room. It took him a few seconds to take in the full image. By the end, his attention was split pretty evenly between the destroyed hovercar, the mysterious figures surrounding it, and the catastrophically cluttered factory floor. As one of the figures, a girl, pressed two fingers to her temple, his attention was drawn for him. A condensed explosion rocked the entire building, dropping him to one knee, and bringing back the nausea he had successfully gotten rid of. With a bright flash, a section of the ceiling dropped to the floor, flattening the remains of a table and chair that was previously there. As brightness streamed in through the new skylight, the low hum of another, more powerful hovercar became audible. Staying on one knee, Tom watched as four thin cables dropped down, and remained there as each of the figures connected it to a corner of the condemned vehicle. They dragged a lifeless corpse inside the car, before climbing in themselves. With increased volume, the hum rose as the cables started to lift back through the skylight, taking the hovercar and its occupants with it. Tom finally stood to watch it go, walking closer to the hole as the wind pushed away any debris from the exit. Squinting hard, he could make out that all but one of the doors were closed. Squinting even harder helped him notice the duffel bag that was dropping quickly towards his head. He jumped back, then flinched as it crashed down on the last standing desk, just ne
ar his side. An unrefined bar of rhodium slipped to the floor, as he looked to the now empty skies. Confused and still dazed, he could only utter, “That was my desk…”

  4

  Fully Armed

  Mr Douglass was a patient man. After many years of the non-stop rush, he was glad to finally have some time to himself, to just sit and contemplate. Which is exactly what he did. With a foot up on his desk, a cup of instant noodles in his hand, and his thick horn-rimmed glasses securely in his pocket, he felt a sense of tranquility. Slurping down the steaming delicacy, he made a note of the flavour, vowing to slip the workshop’s manager some extra credit to restock his newfound favourite more often. It didn't matter if the rest of his accomplices weren’t fond of the seafood flavours – it helped him remember his times as a child, growing up, darting between the bustling seaports to pinch a fresh cod or two to help the family eat. He chuckled at his own consistency, 80 years on and he still had to commit a crime to confirm his culinary preferences. Leaning back after his meal, he closed his eyes to prepare for a nap, interrupted almost instantly by an incoming commlink call. Accepting the call without hesitation (for only those he wanted to would have his contact details), he was greeted by the calm voice of Julie Adams, requesting a lift back to the workshop, and a discreet evacuation for their getaway vehicle. Douglass confirmed their (admittedly relative) success in the mission before tapping the connection closed, commanding her to clear an area for pickup and reload the hovercar with the stolen merchandise. He didn’t bother to ask for the health of the crew, only requesting their location and checking that they were worth the cost of picking up – often times with previous jobs Douglass had financed, the cost to extract had amounted to more than the pull of the mission itself. In these cases, he would order a wipe of the site cameras, instructing his beached associates to infiltrate any nearby housing and lay low for the next few days. When the heat had died down, he would send a PubliCab to collect them, and a separate car – piloted by a driver of his own private employ – to collect the pull and bring both back to the workshop.