by Huskyteer
Matt’s frown softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…We’ll have water soon. We’ll-”
Whatever he was saying was interrupted by loud retching behind us. Tegi wasn’t well, again.
“Crap.” I ran over to where she’d leaned over the railing—over the miles-high oblivion above the invisible and distant Downworld. I held her shoulders while she shook, then turned towards me. She was smiling, a faint deceit of a smile. I helped her wipe her muzzle, then gingerly led her into the lush sunlight of district Eleven.
“It’s okay, Tegi. You just climbed too hard. We’ll have water soon, and you’ll get better.” She leaned heavily on my shoulder. When I staggered a bit, Matt ducked to take some of the weight, helping her wobble to a sunny patch of grass.
“Did you take your pills this morning?” Matt hovered over the vixen and felt for her pulse. He was frowning.
She shook her head as she lay back on the grass. “Nah. Ran out three days ’go. When I was sick. ’Fore we left.” Her words were slurring. “Can’t make more. You gotta have water to make ’em. I saw.”
“Pills? I thought it was just some stomach thing.” Now I was frowning. I knelt down next to Tegi and held her hand. She squeezed. I could barely feel it.
Matt shook his head distractedly. “You’ll be fine, Tegi. We’re here up top now. There’ll be water here, and we can make you more.”
“No use.” Her fake smile faltered. “It started an hour ago. Sluggish-like, not fast. That’s me. Gotta do everything lazy.” She smiled again, a big smile that beat out the sun for brilliance.
She let go of my hand and held her stomach. Pain crossed her features. “Jay.” She looked up at me. She was panting. “Jay. Thanks. For being.” She smiled again, though it didn’t last long.
“Matt, what’s going on?” He wouldn’t look at me. He only had eyes for Tegi now. He didn’t even respond to me when I grabbed his shoulder.
From where she lay, Tegi reached up and grabbed Matt’s head. There was moisture on her face. I thought she was crying, but then I felt a fat raindrop hit my ear. Then another. It started to rain—an icy rain that cut straight through my pelt and left me shivering. Matt bent down to her, and they kissed. It was a desperate, feral kiss—passionate and loving. It didn’t even stop when Tegi’s pelt wrinkled and started to collapse inwards, and her nostrils and lips turned grey.
That was when I turned around and walked away. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t watch another friend dissolve. I wouldn’t let another person I loved leave me alone and cold to face the empty world.
Everything was quiet except for the patter of raindrops. Up here on eleven, the sound was different. It was as if the whole district was being played like a kettle drum. The metal walkways, they played a low rhythm, while the railings played a high accompaniment. The rain, the water, it felt so good. It washed everything away, all the pain of the climb, the aching of my muscles, the dry burning in my lips. It washed all the pain away, except for the image of Tegi and Matt locked in their embrace while Tegi dissolved.
* * * *
It hadn’t been everyone, not all at once. Within the first day, eighty percent of our district was recycled, but the rest took considerably longer. Who knew what was different in the people that took a whole day to get ill, or a week, or a month. Or what was different about someone like me, Matt and Tegi, who never did.
Well, almost never.
We’d tried to make it as easy for them as possible. There were still tabs of Moan and Slice and Topper around. It wasn’t exactly medicinal, but if someone was high on Moan, they barely felt it when they started to melt away. Then, they weren’t screaming. Somehow, that was worse. Someone who was dying a horrid, grisly death should at least be able to yell, to scream at the world for doing this to them. It wasn’t fair.
But I never begrudged them that, the chance to slip away peacefully, no matter how it shook me when they’d smile—so high on Moan they could barely move—then just melt away. The first week had been the worst, wondering at every moment when I’d go next. Every little ache and pain life could give me compounded into constant surety that my recycling was just moments away. I’d worried myself sick.
Matt had whipped me into shape. He couldn’t deal with some hypochondriac while there were people really dying all around us. I was safe, he’d said. It happened once in a while, he’d told me. Something would go wrong, and the recycling couldn’t happen. As a doctor, he’d had to deal with it before—a real body left over after death, rather than dust. My ‘glands had malfunctioned,’ he said, just like his own. And Tegi’s. He’d said. He’d lied. Then we, the three of us, had cared for the rest until there was no one left to care for.
* * * *
He found me out by a hab complex, a twin to the one in our own district, except this one was dark with mold from the rain. There were piles of clothes here too, discarded and left wherever someone had been struck down.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
I turned to face him. I was angry, but I knew that my anger didn’t trump Matt’s pain. Tegi and I, we’d had our fun flings, back when we still could. Even then, though, we weren’t what I’d call lovers. She and Matt, that had been something different. I could feel the pain of loss radiating off of him. He wasn’t even frowning anymore. He had a dull look, glazed over and reheated and doused in rainfall, until the malnourished tiger looked like a drowned kitten.
“Why?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She was… She started to feel it a long time ago. A week or so after it’d all started. I had an idea, something I could give her to make her glands malfunction like ours. She and I… If I could have saved one person from all of this, it was her. I tried, Jay. I tried, but it wasn’t enough. She was never safe, not like we were. It was only those pills that were keeping her from… From…”
He turned away. He wasn’t going to let me see him on the day that his luck was finally up. I went to him. I reached out to touch him, but I couldn’t. It was too soon. Too raw. Instead, I stood lamely behind him as he shook with grief.
“I can’t take it, Jay. Not without her.”
Now I did touch him. I grabbed his arm and yanked. If we hadn’t both been in this malnourished state—if he hadn’t lost most of that tiger bulk—it would never have worked. As it was, though, I was able to spin him to face me. His eyes were bloodshot and red. His nostrils were puffy, and his whiskers were sagging and damp.
“We’re still alive, Matt.” I grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look at me. “Don’t you dare give up on me now. Not when we’re finally out in the rain.”
“So what’s it worth, now?” He shook himself free. “Huh? Take a look around you. It’s all dead! There’s nothing left here but ghosts. You want to live with them? Fine. I don’t. I won’t live alone. I can’t—”
“Alone? So what am I, then?” He looked down. He couldn’t meet my gaze. “What, I’m just the after-thought, right? You know, I’ve lived my whole life that way. Every time I’m in a group, my name comes at the very fucking end. ‘Friends and Jay’. ‘Those guys, and Jay’. ‘Make sure you invite everyone, and Jay’. You know what I am Matt? I’m the ‘and’. Well I’m done too. There’s two fucking people left on this world, and I’m done being second in line.”
“Second in line? To who? Me?” He wrestled his arms away from me, but didn’t go far. “It doesn’t require a coup, Jay. I don’t rule you. There’s no ‘ahead’ of me to get to.”
“No, there isn’t.” I caught his arms again, and this time he was able to meet me eye-to-eye. “But is it too much ask to be right beside you, Matt? You’re not alone. I’m here.”
He started to drop his head, but I caught his chin. “No, look. I loved her too, Matt. Tegi and I… I know we never had what you had, but is it too hard to believe that you’re not the only one who misses her here? All three of us, we made the decision to survive. When everyone else took their short ride to the recycling chute, we decided to stick it out.
Are you giving up on me now? Because I need you, Matt. I’m not going to do this alone, either, which means I need you.”
He looked stunned. He reached up and cupped my face with one overlarge hand. My fur was wet from the rain, and he left short little spikes where his fingers stroked.
And then the moment was over. He pulled himself from my grip and turned around. “I owe you an apology. You’re right. Just… There’s something I need to do. For Tegi. For everyone we left behind.”
He looked up. We were in district eleven, open to the sky, top of the pile. There wasn’t much above us, except district three.
“Oh no. Not a chance. I thought you said I was right. Matt, that’s suicide.” District three—everyone knew it wasn’t a real district, not like the rest of them. All of the ones at the top, the single digits, they were overseer districts. They were stunted and shriveled little districts, barely large enough for a hab complex. They didn’t even have a manufactory. Nothing ever came out of the single digits. They produced nothing except for bad orders and bad news carried by puffed up overseers with the minds of children and the powers of a god.
“It’s not. Look, no one likes them, but we still had to treat them at the clinic. The overseers get injured just like everyone else. I’ve seen them. They’re just like us—tools made by the System to do a job. Fur, flesh, and all, they’re just like us, except they live up there.”
“But it’s going to have protections. We’re not going to make it up there.”
“We are.” He turned back to me and tapped his temple meaningfully with one finger. “I heard it straight from an overseer I had to treat in the med center a while ago. Anyone who climbs up there that doesn’t belong, something triggers and they turn to dust. Well, we already know that doesn’t work on us.”
I paused. “You’re serious? Matt, are you willing to bet everything on this? All it takes is one little turret with a zap-gun and all the months we’ve spent surviving, that’s all wasted.”
“Think, Jay. How many people were in all of these districts? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? And of those, only us three-” He stumbled, closed his eyes, and recovered. “Two of us survived, and only then because of a glitch. The System doesn’t waste resources on a fraction of a percent. It’ll bet its safety on a ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-eight percent.”
He was quiet for a few moments while I thought it over.
“Jay, I need to do this. I need to know why they did this. I need to look them in the face and tell them, this is wrong. I need them to see what it is they’ve thrown away. For Tegi—for everyone. Hell, even for all the people here in eleven, and down in one twenty seven. Did they deserve this, any more than all the people we knew and loved back home?”
“Matt this doesn’t sound right.” I shook my head. This was insane. You don’t just walk up to the overseers and tell them it’s all wrong. As much as Matt called them flesh and blood—like us—they were like living gods. They flew around on floating platforms, and the System responded to their touch. They could call whole buildings into being with just a whispered command, and they could manipulate the dust—I’d seen it myself.
“You want to do it all together? Fine. I won’t leave you alone. You’re right, it’s worth surviving, but you have to trust me back. This is my cost. I’m telling you, we can do this. I need to do this.”
I closed my eyes and took a leap. “Okay. So what do we do?”
* * * *
Even though he acted sure of himself, I had a nagging doubt that even he thought it’d be hard—harder than he’d said. We waited in deserted eleven for almost a week. Every day, we had three good meals, and drank as much as our bodies would allow. It felt wonderful to be healthy again, and Matt looked as wonderful as I felt. He still wasn’t back to the way he’d been before supplies had started to run low back home, but his fur regained that beautiful orange luster that it’d lost, and his sagging features pulled right back to where they’d been.
With the water in easy supply, all the little aches and niggles that’d become real pain had started to fade. There were so many things we’d stopped doing, simply because it took too much energy, or it wasted fluids. Now we made up for lost time. It felt good to call someone a ‘lover’ again, even if we weren’t in love like Tegi and Matt had been. It was just a friendly fling, us two animals enjoying life again after neglecting it for so long. What we shared, it reminded me of what we’d had before it’d all been taken away from us. You never know when you’re living the good life—not until you aren’t anymore.
While we regained our health, Matt and I scoured the district for anything we could use. We found tools that we could repurpose to our little expedition. There was a cutting lance that’d been dropped where a maintenance worker had been recycled while on Duty. One of the fuel cells had a dent where it’d hit the ground, but testing showed it was still fully functional. It cut through steel railing as if it was just air. We found a club, where exotic drinks from Downworld had been bought by anyone with enough hour-credits saved up. Even more valuable than the drinks were the bottles. We didn’t need fizzy stuff that would screw with our head and leave us all fucked up. What we needed was a way to store the rainwater. Then, after we broke into the entertainment grid in the hab complex (it’d gone into lockup sometime after the recycling had all started), we found the jackpot.
Sitting in reinforced containers were all the ‘recreational’ gear we needed. New grip-graps and mag boots, along with ultra-strong cords with magnetic anchors—a safety we hadn’t had on our way up. There were reflective body armors, made for use in laser arenas. Just our luck—the gear was just as functional against cutting and weapon lasers as it was against the recreation lasers in the entertainment grid. The laser guns, too, they were meant just for fun. Back home though, we’d found that all it took was a couple of quick modifications for the ‘fun’ to become ‘fully functional’. When we stormed the overseer’s district, we were going to do it fully armed.
By the end of the week, I was feeling much more confident than I’d started. We could do this. We could break in there and make them see what they’d caused. We could be the rude awakening. It wasn’t justice, but Tegi would at least have vengeance.
So at dawn on day eight, with water on our belts, armor protecting our hide, and laser rifles strapped over our back, we climbed.
* * * *
“Are you sure, Matt?”
“Would you stop asking me that?”
There wasn’t an easy access to the overseer’s district. There were no railings to hop over, no access vents below to climb in through. The place wasn’t a district, it was a fortress. However they got in with those clever hover-boards they rode, they had no need of an easy ground-level entrance.
As soon as we climbed up to the maintenance catwalks that skirted the place, soft yellow lights had sprouted from the fortress’ hide. A soothing voice had spoken, too. It was still speaking, repeating its message over and over. “Warning. This is a restricted area. Remaining in this area will trigger live recycling. Please vacate the premises now. Warning…” We ignored it. I had unholstered my rifle while Matt started to carve into the steel hide of the beast.
“Look, you know I’m not absolutely sure, but look at it this way. We’re not dead already. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
It was. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe it’d be this easy, just carve our way in, and—
And two little dots skimmed over the fortress’ bulk, zig-zagging through the air erratically. There was a hiss in front of us, and scorch marks appeared on the catwalk. At first, I thought the little dots zooming towards us just had bad aim, but then I caught a glimmer of brilliance and realized that they hadn’t missed. The lasers, mostly invisible to the eye, had just bounced off of our mirrored body armor.
“Keep cutting. I’ll take care of it.”
There was no time to boast, but I was no bad shot myself. Between duties, I’d been a drifter back home, spending time with whatever group
had the extra room for an ‘and’ like me. I got in a lot of games of tag, I knew how these rifles aimed. Is it too much to say that some of the guys I’d played with even actively sought me out, after I’d given their team the edge it needed for a win, or had been the tipping point that handed them a loss, when I’d been opposing them? Suffice to say it only took a few seconds squeezing on the trigger before both of the zig-zagging dots sprouted trails of smoke and dropped from the sky. They hit the top of the fortress and skidded and rolled, and as they dropped past us down into the oblivion of the districts far below us, I caught sight of two little spheroid robots, with sleek-looking barrels protruding unevenly from their front.
“Matt, now is a good time to hurry that up.”
Two more little dots detached themselves from the fortress, then six, then more than I could count. This was not going to end well if we didn’t get inside soon.
“There! Come on!” Holding a flap of steel aside for me, Matt waited for me to dash inside before he followed, quickly pulling the impromptu hatch closed behind us. I expected at any moment for the drones to cut or bash their way inside, but instead we got silence. I counted my breaths. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three… When nothing pushed inside to zap us I peeked my head back through the cut Matt had made.
Nothing moved outside.
It made sense, if you weren’t a rational, thinking person. If you were a system—little more than a vast collection of simple machines—then all you had to govern your action was a collection of scripts and programs. There wasn’t a script for the laser drones to protect the interior of the overseer’s fortress, so they didn’t.
Inside, the district was so familiar that it was uncanny. It was small, but everything was familiar, except that it was suited to a much smaller population. There were chairs and tables, and bottles and cups. There were taps where I could go get pre-made food, Blue and Red and Orange and Green, all the favorite flavors. It was lit beautifully, with green things climbing towards the sun lamps in a little garden at the center. Around the edge, there were comfortable miniature hab complexes where the overseers lived. There were beds and clothes and…
