XOM-B

by Jeremy Robinson

  A black rectangle appears overhead. Its sudden appearance startles me and sends me sprawling to the floor, kicking away from it until I hit the wall.

  Just the ceiling, I think, staring up at the widening black gap. The ceiling opens revealing rows of black nozzles. Maybe this isn’t the same room? Maybe this is an incinerator? They could have performed tests and determined me infected without me ever knowing. As this fear builds, a hiss fills the air. For a moment, I assume it’s the sound of flammable gas, but the hiss is followed by a gurgle and then an explosion of liquid.

  I shout in surprise as the frigid fluid splashes against my body. I flail and cover my head with my arms, but there is no escaping the deluge. I relax some when I figure out that it’s just plain, cold water. Probably meant to cleanse the sweat from my body, which I suddenly realize is naked.

  They did perform tests.

  My body goes rigid, not from any sense of shame over my nudity, but because there is nothing I can do and nowhere I can run. I just duck my head and endure the spray. Just as the water on my back starts to feel good, waking my senses, the water cuts off.

  Somewhere high above, I hear an engine kick on. A moment later, vents in the ceiling, concealed by their blackness, snap open. The cube is filled with a cyclone of warm air. Water drains away through the sides of the floor as the wind peels the moisture from my body. When the water on the floor is gone, the fans reverse direction, sucking the air from the cell and taking the humidity with it. When every surface of the room and my body are as dry as possible, the fans shut down, the vents snap closed and the two halves of the ceiling slide back together.

  And then, again, light and nothing but.

  I sigh and resign myself to being stuck in this horrible place. I lift my arm, the bitten one that caused all this, and am surprised to find the curved arc of teeth indentations now missing. I inspect my shoulder. Not only is there no shrapnel embedded in the flesh, there is no wound. I twist my back, stretching the skin. The burn’s sting is missing. Was I here long enough for them to heal? And how long would that be? The bite was my first real injury.

  “Freeman.”

  I shout out and launch away from the voice, striking a wall and falling to the floor. When I spin around, I find Heap leaning into the room, his girth filling most of the door. I shake my head. I thought I was facing the door.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Heap sounds hesitant. A little afraid.

  “You mean for someone who was severely overclocked, sent to some weird endless abyss and then sprayed and blow-dried?” I make no effort to hide my annoyance.

  “Actually, that’s exactly what I meant.”

  “Fine,” I confess, and it’s the truth. Aside from my emotional state, which I suspect will recover, I feel as good as I did a day ago. Then I remember the tidbit of conversation I heard between Mohr and Heap.

  “Are you sure?” he asks. “It’s not an easy thing to endure.”

  “Not that you would know,” I say, “since they didn’t give you the same treatment.”

  “How did you know that?”

  I shrug. I don’t want to tell him it’s a side effect of the overclocking. “Why didn’t they overclock you?”

  “Because I wasn’t bitten.”

  “You have—” I notice his armor is now shiny and new. “—had bite marks all over you.”

  “On my armor,” he says. “You were bitten on your skin.”

  “Your face?” I ask.

  He grins and the armor on the sides of his face snap together, covering the only small bit of exposed skin on his body.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” I remark.

  The armor opens again, revealing his mouth. “I don’t often have a need for it.”

  I pause for a moment, considering this. I suppose it makes sense. “But why were you and Mohr cleared so quickly? What happened to being questioned?”

  His forehead furrows over his four glowing eyes. He wants to ask how I know, again. I can see it. But he doesn’t. “This is our home, Freeman. We are trusted, despite Sir’s … intensity. This tower was constructed in the first two years, post-Grind, as a monument to the two men responsible for … saving us all.”

  He says the word “saving” like he’s being forced to and I wonder if we’re being listened to. Of course we’re being listened to, I think.

  “Mohr has lived here since the doors opened, along with Sir. I started my service here two years later. It’s been a long time.”

  “I understand,” I say. “You are trusted. But I am not a stranger. Or an enemy. I was given life by the Council themselves.”

  “But you are … unknown,” Heap says, looking unsure of the words. “No one here really knows who you will become. Trust is earned over time.”

  “And I’ve only had sixteen days,” I say.

  He nods, but adds, “Seventeen.”

  With a gasp, I think of Luscious. “Where is Lu—Kamiko? They didn’t—”

  Heap shakes his head. “There were no outward signs of her being bitten. She was interrogated, scanned and searched, but nothing else. She’s waiting for you with Mohr.”

  Searched, I worry, thinking about the musical device. But Heap doesn’t seem worried about her condition, so I decide not to as well. “Did Mohr find what he wanted?”

  “What…”

  “Did ‘anything worthwhile come from the destruction of the Lowers’?”

  His eyes reveal nothing. No surprise. No concern. “No,” he says, his voice flat now, hiding his emotions. “He believes you were either never infected, or your body’s defenses purged it.”

  I think he’s lying, but decide not to push it because I still trust him and he might not necessarily be hiding the information from me, but from whoever is listening.

  Heap’s hand shoots forward. For a second, I think he’s going to strike me, but the thump on my chest is soft, some kind of fabric.

  “Get dressed,” Heap says. “And make it quick. Things are changing outside.”

  By “outside,” and the tone of his voice, I assume he means the undead situation. I unfold the fabric. It’s heavy and thick, but flexible. A suit of some kind, with pants and a jacket. Both items are primarily black, though a red stripe runs up the sides of the pants and along each arm and shoulder of the jacket.

  “It will act like armor,” Heap says. “Bites will not penetrate it.”

  I pull up the pants and throw on the jacket, zipping up the front. I move my arms and bend my legs, finding I have a full range of motion. “It’s like a second skin,” I say.

  “It is skin,” Heap says. “From a cow.”

  “A cow? Fascinating. I didn’t realize cows shed their skin.”

  Heap looks ready to say something, but closes his mouth.

  “You don’t have to keep so many secrets,” I tell him. “I can handle whatever you’re protecting me from.”

  “The cow is dead.”

  “Oh,” I say, a little stunned. “I’m wearing … a dead cow.”

  “You wanted to know,” he says, and now he’s grinning a little bit.

  “Well, I’m fine with that,” I say, walking toward the door. “Was its death … gentle?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he confesses. “We didn’t make them.”

  “Who did?”

  “The Masters.”

  “Oh,” I say for the second time. I still know very little about the Masters, but it seems like every new bit of information stands in stark contrast to the last. How could people who kept slaves and killed animals for clothing produce something like music? It’s impossible to comprehend such a dichotomy.

  I smooth out the jacket and feel something solid in a zipped-up pocket. I unzip it, grasp the small, hard rectangle and start to pull it out. It’s the music player! I glance up to Heap and he’s already got a finger raised in front of his mouth, requesting silence. I nod, slide the player back inside the pocket and zip it up. I’m not sure how it wasn’t found on Luscious, or how Heap retrieved
it, but I’m thankful for it.

  I head for the door, but Heap stops me. “Forgetting something?” He looks down at my bare feet and holds up a pair of black boots. “You’re going to need them.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t.”

  21.

  “Try not to talk,” Heap tells me as he leads me through a maze of featureless, glowing white hallways. Where I once saw efficient lighting, I’m now reminded of my cell. To alleviate my growing tension, I switch to infrared and find that while the glowing floor, ceiling and walls are bright, they’re not hot. The orange, yellow and white heat of Heap’s large body makes him easy to follow.

  “Right now?” I ask.

  “When we enter the Core.”

  “The Spire has a Core?” I ask, confused by the multiple uses of this term.

  “It’s the name given to what could also be referred to as a command center. It’s where important decisions are made.”

  “And my talking could distract the decision makers,” I say.

  I see the yellow and white glow of Heap’s head nod.

  “And if the decision involves me?” I ask.

  “Then it will involve me as well, and we can discuss it later.”

  “That’s fair,” I decide, and just in time. The cool wall ahead isn’t a wall. It’s a door, and it slides open without a sound, revealing so many different heat sources that I can’t make sense of it. I quickly switch back to the visual spectrum and say, “Wow.”

  The back wall of the large room is a curved white surface, like the inside of an egg, or at least what I imagine the inside of an egg to look like. Spread out in front of the wall are three levels of consoles, each manned by a single person. They’re all wearing display helmets and black uniforms, so I can’t tell if they’re men or women. This is all interesting, but only holds my attention for a brief moment.

  The far wall, which is sharp, is far more captivating. Not because of the way the two flat walls converge, but because of what they show. They’re not walls at all, but massive angled windows on the outside of the building. The entire city is spread out before us, brilliant colors mixed with flat black, and movement. Everywhere movement, like the city is alive.

  Ignoring the rest of the room and everyone in it, I approach one of the windows and place my hands on the glass. It’s cool to the touch. For a moment, I see myself in the glass, but focus beyond it, looking down. My eyes bounce around the city, admiring the architecture, the straight and perfectly curved edges. Harmonious, I decide. Like the voices in music.

  Except for … I look for the Lowers and it’s like they never existed. There’s no smoke, no ruins, no trace. We’re facing the opposite direction, I realize. The Lowers are on the other side of the building. Where the Lowers would have been is lush green forest. Endless green that has grown since the Grind ended. Beyond the green, the sun is poking up like a frightened mouse, saying hello before making a dash for the sky. Another day. Seventeen of them.

  I feel Heap’s presence next to me. “What’s the name?”

  “Of what?” he asks, his voice quiet.

  “The city,” I say. “It can’t just be called the—”

  “Liberty.”

  I smile at this. Liberty is another way of saying “freedom,” and I am Freeman, a free man. I know that Mohr named me and suspect the theme is his. “Did Councilman Mohr name the city?”

  “Yes,” Heap says, his voice quieter still.

  A startling revelation occurs to me. “You said this tower was built as a monument to the two men responsible for saving us all. Were those two men Mohr and Sir?”

  I see Heap nod in my periphery, but he grumbles, “You said you were not going to talk.”

  “It’s just the two of us,” I say.

  Heap’s large hand envelops my head and turns me around. Seventeen men are seated on stools, their bodies forming an oval. All eyes are on me. I recognize all of them immediately. The Council. Each one of them looks very different from the rest, a mix of colors and sizes and builds, each one a stereotype for their profession. Councilman Cat is in charge of construction. He’s a big boxy man who dresses in yellow. Councilman Deere, whom I’ve only ever seen in green, manages the environment. Space exploration is run by a man in off-white, Councilman Boeing. I’ve met them all individually before, but I’ve never been in their collective presence. Seeing them all together makes me realize that this group of representatives is actually incomplete.

  Of all the different kinds of people I saw in the Lowers, none are represented here. Instead, I see professions that I suspect are most valued and tied to growth, whether that be physical or knowledge based. Sir sits at the far end of the oval, his perpetual frown directed toward me, but Mohr is missing.

  “Apologies,” I say. “I didn’t realize—” I stop talking when I notice that most of the Council is staring at me with a kind of admiration. Or is it satisfaction? Are they pleased by my presence or that I survived the unnecessary viral purge? Most of these men were kind when they met me, some of them even petitioned me to join their profession, but I now find their combined interest disconcerting.

  The door through which Heap and I entered the room opens once more. Luscious—as Kamiko—enters, followed by Mohr. She’s dressed in tight black leather clothing that matches mine but fits her … differently. It’s not the clothing really, it’s her body. The lines of it are smooth and curving in a way that forces my eyes to travel along her shape. When my gaze reaches her face, she smiles and rushes to greet me. I take her hands in mine and fold them together between our bodies as we speak in quick, hushed tones.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, beating me to it.

  “Fine,” I say. “You?”

  “I’ve been through worse,” she says. I’m not sure what to think about that, but her eyes seem to blaze through mine. Such an odd thing. I’m feeling things without actually feeling anything. A physical response to a visual stimulus. The body is strange.

  “I actually haven’t,” I say. When her smile fades and a look of anger takes hold of her eyes, I’m freed from their grasp. “It’s okay. I understand why it had to be done.”

  Her eyes drift up to my hair and she frowns, but the expression carries traces of humor. She runs her fingers through my hair, pushing it to the side and down.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Your hair,” she says. “It looks awful.”

  “I didn’t realize hair could look bad,” I say, quickly realizing that I have, in fact, admired her hair, both while sleek and black and wavy orange.

  She finishes and says, “There. Good enough for now.”

  Feeling embarrassed about the attention to my physical state, I glance toward the view and say, “Have you noticed where you are?”

  She looks beyond me to the window. Her eyes widen at the view, but she doesn’t move. “Convenient direction to be facing,” she says, noting right away what it took me some time to notice. But like me, she has failed to notice the men seated beside us.

  “Kamiko,” I say, forcing the name from my mouth. “Have you met the Council?”

  She turns as I motion to the group of seated men. She gasps and takes a step back. Many of the men are smiling at her, at us, but a few are now frowning as deeply as Sir. Not very good at hiding their emotions, I think.

  “This is Kamiko,” Mohr says to the group. “She is a … friend of Freeman’s. She is present at his request.”

  A few of the frowners nod at this, but others remain displeased.

  “While Freeman and his exploits are interesting,” Sir says, “we have more pressing matters to attend to.”

  “Right,” I say, stepping back away from the group. “Don’t let us distract you. We’ll just”—I look behind me and find some plain white stools along the side wall between the curved back wall and angular windows—“just sit. Over here.”

  Sir appears to be fuming, but doesn’t respond. He
just watches us until we sit. When he continues to stare, I fidget in my seat and say, “Carry on.”

  A few Councilmen chuckle, but stop when Sir snaps his head toward them. The group quickly falls into rapid discussion, covering the latest events. When the Lowers is mentioned in very cold and calculated terms, Luscious takes my hand and squeezes. She’s angry—furious—but knows that we’re at Sir’s mercy. Any infraction in the presence of the Council would most likely end badly for both of us, though given the Council’s apparent affection for me, perhaps just her.

  We listen as the bombardment is described. Every detail is given, except, I note, the number of casualties. It’s almost as though they bombed an empty city. Talk of containment comes up. Of eradication. Quarantines. The results of similar military actions outside other cities around the world. Success, it seems, is the theme of this meeting. But I find that hard to believe. There were so many undead capable of growing their numbers via simple bites. Eradicating them with bombs seems unlikely.

  The boots, I think, looking up at Heap. His emotions are masked, but I sense tension in his joints. Does he know something the Council doesn’t, or does he simply realize, like I do, that the undead situation is far from over?

  “Now,” Sir says loudly, focusing attention back on himself. “What of these seismic irregularities?”

  “I would rather discuss the radio signal I detected,” Mohr says with surprising conviction.

  “We have already discussed this,” Sir replies, his impatience barely contained. “The radio signal, if there ever was one, is gone. We’ve analyzed the burst you recorded and found it to be benign, akin to the static created by a solar flare, of which there have been several lately.”

  “But—”

  “The subject is closed,” Sir says and then adds, in an even more serious tone, “The seismic irregularities.”