by Eric Warren
The belt shuffled him closer and closer to the machine and his anxiety only rose higher and higher. It wouldn’t take long, it would probably sting, and then he’d be good. He was inches from the opening of the machine when he shut his eyes and felt the wet heat emanating from within.
Inside it was like an oven. Heat radiated from all sides of the metal structure, warming him considerably. Still within acceptable standards for his exostructure, but uncomfortable at the least. Afraid of shifting on his feet, Frees remained as still as a statue, wishing for the procedure to be over with already.
And then he felt it.
Beginning at the soles of his feet it was as if he’d been caught in a slimy net, which started there and pulled up all the way around him. His legs were spread eagle as the footholds where he’d placed his feet mandated and his arms remained outstretched to each side. But that slimy net climbed ever higher all around him, sticking to him, making him want to vomit. Though he had no physical reason to do so. It was like being trapped in a strange type of quicksand, and it wasn’t as if he could move and brush it all off. He had to stay still or tear it all away and start this hell all over again.
The net pulled higher hand higher until it reached his neck, then began a high-pitched noise and the net pulled up over his head, snapping down on his head. He felt the artificial skin shrink and mold to his body all at once, like a vacuum seal. Tiny drills on either side of his head made the holes for his ears. Two in the front made the holes for his nostrils and a thin knife cut the slits for his eyelids and lips. He almost recoiled when the scalpel made the last two incisions down below but managed to keep his composure.
It was only skin, it wasn’t going to kill him.
It was only skin, not the worst thing in the world.
It was only skin, he wasn’t going to get a human infection and die.
The conveyor belt resumed its forward motion and Frees felt the warmth recede behind him, thankful for that to be over. Suppressing the urge to wretch he opened his eyes and stepped off the conveyor. Looking down at his skin it looked like the computer had matched the color perfectly. Now if it had only done the same job with the rest of Byron’s physical features.
He needed a mirror. And, he realized, some more military-looking clothes.
The skinner continued to hum but he didn’t want to shut it off until he was certain it had done the job it was supposed to do. He strolled over to another one of the large machines, this one with a reflective surface, and admired his own handiwork. The computer had done a fair approximation of Byron, given Frees’ own natural facial features. He might need to add some makeup to make it look like some of his face was swollen or temporarily rearranged from combat with a Peacekeeper. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to stay in their midst too long. But at least now he could accompany Arista without setting off any alarms. The only problem was his eyes were still orange. That would give him away for sure. Byron’s eyes had been a piercing blue; he’d need to find a suitable substitute.
Frees returned to the control panel to shut off the skinner, he found it odd walking around with skin again. It was like a layer of grime caked on his body that he couldn’t rid himself of. But when the time came he’d do the same thing he did the first time: find a sharp knife, cut himself from head to stern and pull all this skin right off like it was an old glove. He swore to himself this would be the last time.
“Move and you’re dead before you hit the floor.”
Frees immediately stopped pushing buttons, only to see Arista standing before him, the drill gun in her hand and a scowl on her face.
What the fuck? Who the hell was this naked man and how did he get in here? Had the colony found them already and eliminated Frees? What in the holy hell was going on?
“Arista, put the gun down, it’s me.” His hands were out in front of him in a supplicant gesture.
Her eyes widened but she didn’t move. They could have replicated the voice somehow. This was another one of their tricks. Some strange subterfuge to get her to surrender peacefully. Well, she wasn’t going peacefully.
“Where is Frees? What did you do with him?” she demanded.
The naked man held his hands up. “Arista, it’s me. I’m Frees. I skinned myself, so I could go with you, see?” He pointed to a large machine behind him that hummed. Arista recognized it as one of the assembly line pieces that was part of the production process. But it couldn’t be.
“Frees would never willingly put skin on, not after everything he did. Try again.” She raised the weapon a little higher.
“Would you put that away! It’s me! I swear! Look at my eyes, orange! And you’re right, I wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t need a way into the colony. You need backup, you can’t go in there alone!”
No. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t help a smile from forming on her lips. “Okay,” she said, still half-not believing him. “If you’re really Frees what did you call me the first time we met?”
“What?” he asked.
“When I was eating.”
“A hyena?” he asked, as if he were unsure himself.
Crazy bastard. She re-holstered the weapon in her belt and shook her head, placing the bag of energy drives on the ground. “I can’t believe you,” she said, chuckling. “You skinned yourself, for me?”
He turned away. “It should provide an adequate disguise.”
“Wait a second. Look at me,” she said. He turned back. “You kinda look like that human, Byron. Close to it anyway.” There was something off about it, she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I know. I scanned him before we left the hotel.”
She gasped. “You were planning this? All along?”
“I told you, I didn’t want you going alone. What’s a little mild discomfort and extreme anxiety for a friend?”
Mild discomfort was a nice way of saying “look at the absolute hell I put myself through for you”. Could she even communicate how much she appreciated the gesture? It wasn’t something she would have ever asked him to do, knowing how much he hated all things human. Or did he? He’d been different lately, not as condescending; and his mistrust in Sy had been well-founded, not, perhaps because she was human, but because she was a threat.
Arista reached out and placed her hand against his chest. The skin was soft but cold. “Thank you,” she said. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I think if we have any hope of succeeding, I did.”
“Well,” she said, eyeing him up and down. “You better find some clothes.”
Nine
Arista returned to the canvas back to unpack while Frees put his clothes back on. She blushed at the sight of him now in all his naked glory, completely oblivious to the fact he was swinging in the wind. No, she couldn’t think of him like that. Any feelings she had for him were inappropriate and she wasn’t about to go down that road again.
She’d felt something similar back at Hogo-sha’s tower, when he’d embraced her for those few moments. In that brief amount of bliss, she’d mistakenly allowed herself to consider the possibility that maybe things weren’t as platonic between them as she’d thought. But she’d pushed those feelings away. They didn’t have time to bother with such things, there was too much on the line. She’d almost convinced herself he was only interested in her as an asset—a means to an end. Someone who could change the machines from their monotonous, unfeeling, daily routines into individual thinking, feeling, loving beings. And that lie had worked for a while.
But seeing the extremes he was willing to go for her, she had to reconsider it. Frees was staunchly anti-organic, which was why she’d been surprised at the hug. Now he’d donned an entire organic suit for her to give her some backup, so she wouldn’t have to go into danger alone. The magnitude of such an act was something she’d never experienced in her short time with the machines.
This. This right here was why they deserved this planet, and not the humans.
“These are a lot tighter,” Frees yelle
d from across the way. He was pulling his pants up, trying to button them in the front.
“It’s because you’re fitting them around a slightly larger frame,” she called back to him. “You’re thicker now.”
Frees muttered some curses under his breath before he finally got the pants buttoned. She had to stifle another series of chuckles.
“If I’m going to pass for human, I need to fix my eyes.” He pulled his hood back on. “And I should find some more military clothes.”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. If anyone asks just tell them you stole them off a machine to blend in better. I’m sure it’s something humans would do.” She glanced around at the husks around them. “As for the eyes, take your pick.” Only a few of the husks had been through the machine after the skinner and thus received full pupils and irises.
“It’s going to take something opaque to block out this orange,” Frees said. He was right, it was as if his eyes almost glowed with how vivid they were. They needed a deep brown or…blue.
“Byron had blue eyes, didn’t he?”
“Very blue.”
She pursed her lips. “That might be a problem. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen eyes like that on a machine before. Can one of these machines manufacture them?”
Frees looked behind him. “The optical generator is supposed to do it. But since I kept mine I didn’t want two layers.”
“You still have Byron’s parameters?”
Frees nodded.
“Let’s send a husk through, then we can take his eyes.”
“You mean cut them right out of his sockets?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Then we should be able to shape them just like contacts. That should take care of it, right?”
“I suppose, it’s just—”
Arista knew why he was hesitant. She placed her hand on his arm. “Don’t worry, it isn’t like it will hurt him. And when we’re done we can come back and make sure he gets a proper replacement pair. He doesn’t have his personality subroutines yet.”
Frees nodded, still hesitant. “You’re right. I’m being sentimental about it.”
“So how does it feel?” she asked. “Being in the flesh again?”
He sneered, and it fit his face so well she almost burst out laughing. Byron’s face was built for angry faces.
“Did you get the Gate working while I was gone? I hope you didn’t spend all your time primping.”
“Yes, I got it working,” he hissed. “It’s a simple procedure, now I understand how it works. As long as we have this little device.” He fished it out of his pants pocket, the number two still displayed on the side. “It’s a simple matter really. I assume this means we will be entering the colony from Gate two. I figured you go first, and I follow close behind. And we hope they don’t figure it out before we find what we need.”
“Good.” She pulled one of the small silver boxes from the canvas bag. The outer casing had warmed to room temperature, or at least warm enough she could handle. “I grabbed all these Jill had. I’d suggest we stockpile a couple for you just in case. That will give you a few months’ worth of power if you need it, right?”
He glanced down. “It isn’t like I can readily insert them anymore. I’d have to cut through the skin.”
“How long does your current power reserve have?”
“Sixteen days, twelve hours, two minutes,” he said.
“Okay. Do you want me to use them all then? To blow the colony?”
His orange eyes stared off into space for a moment. “Yes. I’ll use the cubes if I have to.” His gaze didn’t return to her, instead he returned to the control console, tapping at the machine.
“What are you doing?”
“Prepping the parameters to repeat for a second husk. For the eyes. We don’t have time to waste.”
He was right. But his sudden change in mood unnerved her. What was going through that head of his? What was he so concerned about?
“Any trace of them?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the console.
Oh. “None. It didn’t look like there was a struggle either. The only evidence someone had been there was my room.”
His eyes snapped up. “Your room? What’s wrong with your room?”
“Sy slept there. And moved a bunch of my stuff. And—”
“Yes?”
“She might have sabotaged the husks for my parents. I’m surprised they didn’t explode when I approached them.”
“God damn that woman,” Frees said, returning to the console.
“Hey,” she said. “She’s gone now. She can’t do anything else.”
He shook his head. “I know, I just worry about what the rest of these humans are like. Marcus was nothing like this. He was always kind, accommodating. Did I get the luck of the draw? Was it pure coincidence I’ve met the only two decent human beings on the planet? Or was Marcus just faking it to get me to help him?”
Arista turned away and hid her face at the buried compliment, not wanting to take the focus of his concerns. “I don’t know, but we can’t assume anyone in there is friendly. Someone authorized Sy to come get us. She told me she would be paid well for the job, which makes me question the whole operation’s integrity. I mean, I could maybe understand if it was a matter of saving themselves and I was their only hope. But to find out I was nothing more than a bounty—”
“Don’t think about it,” Frees said, his voice harsher than before. “We’re going to be in and out of there and you’ll never have to think about them ever again.”
Arista pulled the second silver box out of the bag, studying it. “I hope you’re right.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’re ready to go. Help me get one of these husks back on the conveyor.”
Ten minutes later they had a fresh new body who still resembled Byron. He looked like he could be Byron’s brother, or maybe Frees’ distant cousin considering her friend’s current appearance. Frees sent him through the skinner first, saying the optical scanner wouldn’t accept him unless he had skin already.
Arista rummaged around Sy’s tools until she found an exoscalpel like they’d used to remove her arm back in Japan. It was funny, Sy had used this to attach her new hand. Arista knew what it was because they’d had to remove that same hand.
“Do you want to do the honors, or should I?” She approached the form laying on the ground in front of Frees.
“Ugh.” He sighed. “I’ll do it. I have a steadier hand. Less likely to give myself a jagged lens.”
She passed the exoscalpel and Frees got on his knees, bending over the Byron-husk. She thought she might have seen a shudder from him. She shouldn’t make him do this too, after everything he’d just gone through. “Are you sure?” she asked.
In response he expertly applied the exoscalpel to the husk’s eye, cutting a perfect circle around the cornea itself and pulling it away. He maneuvered the scalpel around the lens, lifting it out like it was a delicate piece of gossamer and setting it to the side. He repeated the process on the other side.
“You were asking?” he said and placed them on a small tray. “You don’t have a mirror, do you?”
She shook her head. The only mirror she’d been using this past month had been the one in the bathroom attached to her bedroom. It wasn’t like she carried a purse. She’d always been against needing a bag to carry everything she needed. That’s what pockets were for.
“That’s fine, I can do it over here. Just hold the tray for me.”
She picked it up and balanced it on her hand, following him over to another machine with a highly reflective surface. In the same amount of time it had taken him to remove the irises from the husk he had them in his own eyes, obscuring the orange glow.
“Will they stay in there?” she asked.
“They should. Until I need to remove them. Feels weird, though,” he replied, blinking. “I think once all of this is done I’ll get rid of the eyes altogether. Go au naturel.”
“I think that’s th
e only part I don’t like about the husks before their skin,” she said. “Those black orbs in their heads aren’t eyes. They’re just…dead.”
Frees made a circular motion with his hand around his face. “All of this is cosmetic. None of it is functional. We can see perfectly fine out of those black orbs.”
“I know,” she said, listing her head to the side. “I liked that you kept that part of your humanity. The hand seemed weird, but the eyes…I liked the eyes.”
Okay, now it was uncomfortable. Why had she said that? What good would it do other than add an awkwardness all the time? Stupid, stupid! She needed to learn to keep her mouth shut. She used to be good at it, at never letting anything slip. But ever since she’d been ousted as a human she’d relaxed her own rules. That had obviously been a mistake.
He watched her for a moment with his now piercing blue eyes, as if waiting for her to say something else stupid. She had to remember it was all a disguise, but there was something striking about his appearance, she hadn’t seen it before. But she’d learned her lesson. The best thing they could do would be focus on the job at hand. No more distractions; no more nonsense.
She gathered up the drives back into the canvas bag and secured it to her back once more. Once she activated the refractor she didn’t want to have to worry about it flopping all over the place behind her.
“Are you ready to go? Anything else we need to do?” she asked. Frees had busied himself with gathering the surgical tools again.
“I just feel like every time we go through this Gate something bad happens. I’m getting sick of not knowing what is on the other side. First it was Charlie’s lair, and the second time it was Hogo-sha’s trap. What will it be this time? Will we come through to a hundred humans with guns trained on us?”
“How else are we going to stop them?” Arista asked.
“We could fight them individually. You sure did a number on—” he cut himself off mid-sentence and avoided her gaze.
