Variant

by T. C. Edge

  I had to suppress my grin. "You...you'd do that?"

  "So long as you don't go telling anyone, Paige." He drew back up to his full - though still rather short - height. "And only if you make no more mistakes this week, young lady. If you do, I might just retract the offer and dock those two credits after all."

  His chest inflated, as though he thought it to be terribly good man-management. I suppose it would be quite motivating for others, but really, the credits meant little to me. It was more about making sure I didn't get fired. Credits were easy to come by on the black market.

  This job was nothing but a cloak to conceal me.

  I returned to my workstation at that, joining the other drones in their sludge-grey overalls, white hair nets and gloves. Becca, thankfully, worked right opposite me across the conveyor belt, giving me some respite from the drudgery of the working day. Though we weren't meant to chat too much, it wasn't a rule that Mr Beecham enforced with any great intent.

  "More screw ups?" Becca asked me as I took position, and began filling boxes. They came randomly down the conveyor belt. A basic might be followed by a deluxe, then a premium, then another five basics in a row. Any combination, really, to keep us busy and focussed. It was another subtle means of making our jobs seem more important and challenging than they really were.

  I nodded, glancing over to Mr Beecham as he continued on his rounds. "I put two chocolate squares in a basic box," I said, holding my hand to my mouth. "Oh, the horror!"

  Becca giggled, her freckled nose crinkling. She was cute, rather than beautiful, with curly, stringy hair, mousy brown in colour, and mild heterochromia, with one bluish eye and the other muddy brown. She wore glasses to try to hide the slight deformity, even though I thought it was quite fetching. Around here, physical quirks and abnormalities weren't looked upon fondly.

  Different coloured eyes? She must be a distant Variant...

  "Imagine the look on the face of the person who'd have bought that box!" she chuckled. "I mean, not just one square of choc, Paige. We're talking two here. Two! That's big."

  "Huge."

  We laughed together, getting a few huffs and glares from some of the surrounding ladies. Those in our section generally weren't the most talkative, a group of stone-faced women who'd worked here long enough to grow bitter. I was sure we'd both join them in time. The chattiest here were usually the youngest, those who hadn't yet lost hope.

  "So, two credits docked, then?" Becca asked, lowering her voice a little so it blended into the general din.

  I nodded, and didn't reveal the little deal I'd just struck with Mr Beecham. I probably would in private, but not here.

  "Sucks."

  "Er, not so much," I said, offering a nonchalant bob of the shoulders. "What can two credits get you, anyway?"

  "A basic ration box, with bonus chocolate inside?"

  "If you've got a moron packing them," I said, deadpan.

  "You're about as far as anyone could ever get from being a moron, Paige," she said. "But you are a bit too lax. You never seem to worry about money. You were all over the place last week and you don't even care. You must have lost ten credits at least."

  I shrugged again, and continued packing boxes. She didn't know about my after hours activities, and she certainly didn't know what I really was. That would only put her in danger too. I didn't want to drag her into that part of my world.

  "I mean," she continued, "I know you're clumsy sometimes, but you've been setting new records recently." She leaned in a little across the conveyor line. "You going to tell me what's going on with you? Or are you going to keep me guessing?" She turned her eyes away, and said, "as usual," through the corner of her mouth.

  I smiled, though I knew it was more than a tease. She was insightful enough to see that I had other things going on. And a little insulted that I hadn't yet told her.

  No answer was forthcoming on my lips. She sighed and shook her head. "Fine. Another day of guessing, then. I'll tell you what I come up with later."

  "Nothing lewd, Becs. I know how your devious little mind works."

  She grinned at me and turned her eyes back to her work. Nearby, Mr Beecham was circling back around towards us, beady eyes ever watchful, motivational platitudes falling from his lips.

  'Good work, ladies.'

  'Keep it up now.'

  'Those boxes won't fill themselves.'

  And my personal favourite - 'And remember, excellence is not an act, but a habit. Be excellent today.'

  I think he adapted that last one from Aristotle.

  I quickened my pace, refocussing on my work, intent on cutting out any further mistakes. The true reason for my preoccupation, of course, wasn't something I could really explain or talk about. It was a private concern I had to deal with alone. I'd even managed to keep my mother at bay so far, despite her attempts to extract the truth.

  It had been a week now since my encounter with the snitch. A week since I'd slipped home from his filthy apartment unit, evading the custodians as they scanned the streets. I'd done so easily enough in the end, their enforcement of curfew that night more half-hearted than it might have been. And while the night, in essence, was a success - the only good snitch, after all, was a dead one - I'd spent the last few days being prodded and poked at by a nagging concern and mystery.

  Just who was the guy who killed him? And more importantly, why?

  I'd conjured several theories, of course, over the preceding days. A man like that, selling information for money, might have made several enemies over the years. It might have been his employers who decided to take him out, preferring to silence him if they considered him unreliable. But then, would the Reapers let him die slowly like that? If it was them he'd been working for, they'd have surely just executed him if they wanted him dead, not let him bleed out in his own apartment.

  A robbery, perhaps?

  That seemed possible.

  The apartment was a dump, yes, but perhaps that was just a front. Might someone have worked out that he'd been selling info, and had a secret stockpile of credits somewhere? If I'd had a chance to search the place, maybe I'd have found more clues, but I didn't. It certainly seemed possible that he'd merely been robbed, and had been shot or stabbed by the assailant during the attempt.

  Yet, that theory had holes too, and didn't quite knit together quite right.

  No, this seemed like more of a personal killing to me. Whoever did it wanted him to suffer, wanted him to dwell on his impending death.

  And that led me to my final theory, one that held more water than the rest. That he'd been killed by someone like me.

  He'd been killed by another Variant.

  "Um...Paige."

  Becca's voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I lifted my eyes to find hers darting intently down at the box before me. It was coloured brown but with a gold sticker on the front, and that meant 'deluxe'. The others had silver and bronze stickers to denote their value. I looked at the contents I'd loaded and saw another impending screw up in process. I was packing it as if it was a basic.

  "Crap."

  I quickly pulled out the items and shoved them into the next box coming down the line - that one was a basic - and repacked the deluxe before the conveyor belt started moving again. I did it just in time, as Mr Beecham wandered back past us.

  "Better, Paige, good job."

  I looked up at Becca and mouthed a silent 'thank you'. I made a mental note to repay her somehow later.

  I forced my mind to steer clear of any further mental wanderings as we headed towards lunch, where we were given a short thirty minute break before setting into the afternoon's shift. While we were required to purchase our own ration boxes outside of work, we were provided a meagre lunch as part of our salary. It wasn't particularly appetising - usually a form of porridge, synthesised to deliver the appropriate macronutrient balance of carbs, proteins, and fats - but it did the job.

  We took our bowl of what can best be described as 'gruel' and filled our st
andard issue water bottles - everyone around here had one of those - with water from the station, and stepped outside.

  We liked to eat outside of the factory when we could, in the hope that we'd be able to see the sun. That wasn't common. The weather here had never been particularly good, historically, and the skies were commonly thick with fume and smog. We were on the edge of the industrial sector, so it wasn't quite so bad here as among the larger factories, but still, it wasn't ideal.

  We ambled through the doors and moved along to the left of the warehouse, where a space opened up between the tall, slate-grey buildings. There was some seating there, a few benches and rusting metal tables for the local factory workers to use.

  A few of the ladies wandered out nearby and took their seats, in little groups or alone. I always felt sad seeing one of the older packers sitting lonely at lunchtime. It told me that they'd never found their own Becca here, that they'd spent years, decades even, working without friendship in this miserable place.

  I tried to speak with them sometimes, if only to give them hope. Some took my friendliness gratefully, thankful that I'd made the effort. A few made me realise why they were loners in the first place, too tough to break down, too bitter to bother with conversation.

  There were many people like that, living down here in Southbank. People who'd already given up. Who saw existence as a chore, nothing but a burden to be endured.

  We sat alone, finding a rusted bench to ourselves in the far corner of the square. It was, if there could be such a thing, the best seat in the house. The only place where the sun might shine if it managed to break through the smog.

  It didn't that day, and rarely did on any other. Life here was spent predominantly in the shade. I think the Controller liked it like that. I'm sure it wasn't so bad in Northbank, running the city from its glowing, beating heart.

  Sitting alone, with a few other packers out of earshot, Becca drew my attention. "OK," she said. "Here's my latest guess..."

  It took me a second to realise what she was talking about. "Oh, right." I'd fallen to distraction again. "Go ahead, let's hear it."

  She lifted her usual grin, as she tended to do when discussing her latest theory about my secretive nature. It had become a game between us; she'd come up with something - usually outlandish - and I'd laugh it off in an attempt to hide the truth.

  "OK, here goes. Drum roll, please."

  I began tapping my fingers gently on the bench. It was a pretty feeble and unrhythmic attempt.

  "You're a..."

  She waited, leaving her mouth open for effect, and glanced over towards the workers nearby. They were speaking with dour faces, prodding unhappily at their porridge.

  Her eyes came back to me. She lowered her voice and leaned in.

  And then she said the words that, I suppose, I'd expected her to say for some time. A theory that I think she'd been holding back, perhaps because she really believed it. Perhaps because she thought it might be true, and was too uncomfortable to discuss.

  But that day, she did.

  She squared me up and said it.

  "You're a Variant," she whispered.

  3

  I was spared by the sound of an alarm, coming from inside the warehouse.

  The ladies at the benches and tables looked up, turning their eyes to the back entrance. Mr Beecham appeared, waving us inside. I kept my eyes away from Becca's gaze as we rushed in to join the rest, abandoning our lunches.

  I knew what was happening before we arrived. It was a semi-regular occurrence, and always came at random. As with the way the custodians would only enforce curfew occasionally, and the way the ration boxes would come down the conveyor line at random, the same was true of this.

  It was randomised testing, and there were two different sorts.

  One was designed to root out ill-techs, those who used and augmented their bodies with illegal technology, mostly on the black market. The other was to search for Variants hidden within the working population.

  I'd learned just how to avoid both of them. I was a Variant, after all. And in order to help conceal that fact, I had to use illegal technology, making me an ill-tech as well...

  Mr Beecham was ushering us inside as we arrived. I darted my eyes at Becca, and found her gaze on me, a curious frown on her face. One of the ladies was asking Mr Beecham a question.

  "Which is it, Mr Beecham?" she asked. "Ill-tech or Variant?"

  "I'm not sure, Dorothy. Nothing for anyone here to worry about, of course. You all know the drill. Off you go. It won't take long and you can get right back to your lunches."

  I fell into my usual routine, purposely holding back until the line began to form at the front entrance of the warehouse. The workers were rushing there, trying to get in first. The sooner you were checked, the sooner you could get back to your lunch. It was precious time between the morning and afternoon shift that no one wanted to waste.

  Except me.

  "You coming?" Becca asked, preparing to move off with the others. There was a fair bit of jostling going on. Minutes were valuable here.

  "You know me, Becs," I said lightly. "No rush. I'm not too eager to get back to my gruel." I smiled awkwardly. She kept her enquiring gaze on me.

  "Sure." She turned to look towards the front. The custodians were there with their paddle-shaped scanners, already working through the first arrivals as they ran them up and down their bodies. "Looks like an ill-tech search," she went on. Her eyes were back on me, her mouth shaped into a partial-grin. "Lucky for you."

  I had no idea how to react, so merely stared at her blankly for a moment. Her half-smile broadened into something fuller, an attempt to show she was only joking perhaps. I'd heard that some Variants had the power to read minds.

  I wished I was one of those right now.

  She darted off a moment later to join the others, as I wandered on after them. I kept my eyes on the front for a moment to make sure she was right. I'd learned, through necessity, to know exactly what those scanners did and how they worked. These ones were definitely designed to scan for illegal tech, not Variants.

  It meant following 'protocol B'.

  I moved towards my workstation, glancing furtively around the warehouse as I went. Walking casually, I drew my hand up to my scalp, as if to scratch the back of my head. Beneath my layers of thick black hair, there was a little bald patch at the base of my skull.

  And there, affixed to it, a tiny electronic chip.

  I took it between my fingers and pulled. It was attached by an odourless adhesive, and took a bit of effort to dislodge. I knew how much force to exert, having done this a thousand times before. Maintaining the illusion of scratching my head, I pulled the microchip away, collecting it in my palm as I drew my hand back down to my side.

  I timed it perfectly, arriving at my workstation. With another practiced motion, I reached under the edge of the conveyor line where I worked, and quickly attached the chip to its underside, concealing it there out of sight.

  It was the very sort of illegal technology that the scanners would pick up. It's function was simple and specific - to conceal my Variant signature. If ever the custodians came searching for Variants, I'd keep the chip on my head to make sure I wasn't found out. Today, though, it needed to be removed, seeing as they were searching for ill-techs instead.

  I moved over to join the back of the line, awaiting my turn as the workers shifted forward one by one. Ahead, Becca was being scanned. She looked nervous, as she always seemed to when the custodians came calling. They were intentionally intimidating, a militarised police force, faceless in their black armour and helmets. Only the Reapers outdid them for sheer menace, with their bionic upgrades and tech augmentations.

  Some of them were hardly human anymore.

  And they called us freaks?

  Her scan successfully completed, Becca moved off away and back to the other side of the warehouse. We shared a glance as she stepped to the rear, likely heading back outside to finish her lunch.
>
  As I watched her go, I saw one of the younger new workers anxiously moving to the back of the line behind me, ushered there by Mr Beecham. It looked as though she'd been caught trying to hide.

  I turned, curious, to look at her. Her name was Layla, I knew, though I'd barely spoken with her before. Her forehead was beading with sweat, wetting her blonde hair. The furious blinking of her eyes suggested she was attempting to hold back tears.

  "Come on now, Layla," Mr Beecham was saying. "You can't fool me, and certainly won't fool them."

  "But I told you, Mr Beecham. I've been scanned already. I have, I promise."

  "And where's your mark?"

  He raised his eyes. There was no black stamp on the back of her hand, something you got only after you'd been scanned. It lasted a matter of hours before fading away. There was no real way to fake it.

  "I...they forgot to give it to me." Her voice was becoming desperate, a harsh whisper so as not to draw attention from the front. "Please, Mr Beecham. Believe me..."

  A moment passed.

  Mr Beecham would give allowances where he could, overlook the odd thing here and there, but here his hands were tied.

  He set his face and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Layla. If you've done something wrong, it's no good trying to hide it. You'll feel better getting it off your chest."

  His eyes lifted. A custodian had taken notice of the conversation.

  He marched forwards with intent, his black armour shining under the lights of the warehouse. Layla's eyes flew to him, terrified.

  She searched quickly for an opening, and suddenly set off at a run.

  I watched on as she moved for the rear door, trying to figure out what she'd done.

  Ill-tech searches didn't only scan for black market technology, but things like drug usage as well. A variety of them flooded the back alleys and underground clubs, opening people's minds up to whole new worlds, and were a tantalising prospect for those who felt trapped in the drudgery of the system.

  Maybe Layla had a boyfriend who was into that sort of stuff. Maybe she wanted to 'experiment', like many others did, to escape the monotony of her life. Whatever the reason, those drugs always left a trace for a day or two, and they were just as illegal as black market technologies.