Shadow of the Factorum: The Interview

by K. A. Trent

  “That ain’t right thinking,” The Sand shook his head as he took my arm in his wrinkled hand and exampled the burn from the correction rod. “You ain’t run for you. Why ain’t you figured that out yet?”

  “Then who do I run for?”

  “You see that bag you’re carryin’? I don’t got the first as to whats in it, but I bet someone gave you somethin’ questionable to carry. Bet someone’s expectin’ it. Bet if the guards catch you with it, they find out who gave it to you. If you take on a responsibility of that nature kid, you’re more than you. You’re everyone. You think about the people you’re runnin’ from. You think about the people you’re runnin’ to. You ain’t you. You’re all of them. You go down, they go down. Run for the people whose lives depend on you. Mayhap be that you wanna die, but mayhap be that they don’t. Take their faces into your mind. Etch em’ on your brain. Say their names if they got any. You’re them. They’re you. Fight for em’.”

  Donna.

  Kerra.

  Ashey.

  Carrie.

  Brea.

  Layla.

  Charlotte.

  …...Callie. Her friend Therese.

  They were the people I would fight for. They were the people whose faces I had to remember. I had to get back to them. The people I had to get back to. I hurtled to my feet, I felt the rocks cut into my hand, ligaments torn. Flesh shredded. I stumbled, blood dripped from my midsection and onto the ground. I was leaking. I was dying. My head was light but my feet were fast. I blasted through the field of tanks and onto the street in front of the textile factory. I was here, I could see the open door. I bolted. I was unsteady. The shouting behind was louder, the hail of gunfire was audible. If they had come this far then the inevitable truth had to be reached: Layla and Brea were dead. They’d died in the streets. Maybe they’d died fighting. Maybe they’d been put down to their knees and had their brains spilled on the hardcrete. No matter what, they’d died for me. They’d died for a mistake. I would remedy that mistake. I would bring down the hammer. I would avenge.

  I don’t know how I did it, I couldn’t remember reaching the room, but I was there, standing in front of the couch. By the table. The bracelet was still in sight. There was no time, I wrapped my fingers around it and scooped it off the table. Staring at the floor for a moment I spotted the screwdriver that Greta had driven into my leg, I saw it there, beside her body laying next to her open palm. She was dead. Layla had been surprised, terrified even. I had seen my share of dead; I understood that it was something to be reviled here on the surface but in the Factorum I had grown callous. Dead eyes and limp bodies were not a rarity there. I reached nimbly past the pool of blood and took it into my hand. I bolted from the room into the still empty factory floor, dashing through the row of machinery.

  “Astra.” the familiar voice called out to me. I stopped dead in my tracks, my feet skidded, my hands caught the edge of a conveyor strip and I felt the sting. I turned slowly laying my eyes on the familiar form. I wanted to gasp, I wanted to ask why, but I was frozen in place. The bracelet slipped from my hands and thudded against the floor. I faintly heard it spinning as it wobbled from one side to the other and finally came to rest. It was on the ground, the one thing I’d come for. The thing that would save us all, but what did it even matter?

  “You…” it was all I could utter as I looked at her face. Her dark features shed a light on a situation that I was just barely coming to understand.

  “You gave us a good run, Astra,” Therese smiled faintly. “Now it’s time to give it up.”

  “But...but why? You’re Callie’s- you’re her-”

  “Her best friend,” Therese finished the sentence for me. “Yes, Astra, and as her friend I need to protect her, even if it’s from herself. You were one of the worst decisions she made and today we’re going to correct that. She’s always been an idealist, Astra. She read Ereen’s history closely, she was fascinated by the idea of transgender women, she believed she could make them a reality again. I don’t know why, maybe she just wanted a plaything. Who knows? Whatever your purpose, it comes to an end today.”

  “You’re one of them,” I stated the obvious. I didn’t know why. It didn’t need to be said.

  “Come on Astra,” she leveled her weapon at me, the barrel gleamed under the natural light that leaked through the ceiling. “Come outside and die with some dignity.”

  The screwdriver dropped from my hand, it fell near the bracelet. My eyes were vacant, my expression dead as I let her lead me outside of the building and into the old parking lot. They were all out there, at least thirty of them, weapons drawn and standing beside the huge militaristic vehicles. They were armed to the teeth, but most of them dressed more casually. They were organized, but they were a militia, there was no mistaking it. Who cared anyway?

  She marched me out in front of them, placed the muzzle of her weapon to the back of my head.

  “How do you want it?” she asked me as if she were providing a courtesy. “Front or back? You want to see it coming?”

  I suddenly cringed. This entire time I’d been imagining that if this moment came, I would be brave. I wanted to turn and tell her to do it to my face. I wanted to be defiant, proud, but instead I felt my eyes tear, my lip quivered, my body shook.

  “Please,” I begged. My eyes were wet, I dropped to my knees, I shook my head, squeezed my eyes shut. “Please, please don’t do it. Please.”

  I could think of nothing but the pain that would come; the idea of the bullet penetrating my skull, slamming into my brain, bursting through the front of my face. Would I feel it? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to find out. I didn’t want to die. Not like that.

  “I expected more out of you,” I could hear the disdain in her voice. “So this is how Astra dies. On her knees begging. You really are a male.”

  “Please,” I curled up on the pavement, hugging my knees to my chest as she laughed. I heard the others laughing. I heard the hammer click, I hugged my knees tighter, I tensed.

  Please don’t let this happen. Please.

  Then it happened, but it wasn’t me that died. I heard a hail of gunfire much louder than a pistol could have produced. I heard the screams, the sound of bodies thudding to the pavement. I opened my eyes and saw Therese standing over me a look of sheer horror painted on her face. I looked to the sky and saw three dropships all armed with projectile cannons, all firing. What was left of the Black Swan insurgents were scattered, running for cover. Therese pointed her pistol to the sky, firing off rounds in a vain attempt to take down one of the dropships. Her pistol emptied, the slide finally remaining in the open position. She dropped it and ran, I watched her take off in the direction of the textile factory, maybe hoping to take cover. I stayed on the ground; my legs still close to my chest as the ships took up positions in a semicircle around me. More boots on the ground, more people rushing toward me. I closed my eyes again, waiting for the worst. I didn’t know who they were, but they were here to kill me. It was happening. It was really happening.

  “Astra,” I heard Kerra’s voice above me. I opened my eyes slowly, I saw her standing there, a rifle clutched in her hands. Around her, several other women, some checking the area, others looking at me with expressions of amusement. “Get your thumb out of your mouth, idiot.”

  Chapter 26

  “I want pressure on that wound!” the voice sounded far away but I could see the woman right next to me, dressed in white and standing over the stretcher.

  “Any idea what happened to her stomach?” a second woman asked.

  “It’s just a straight laceration,” the first woman said as the stretcher raced through a white tunnel. “It’s not clean, we need to disinfect before it gets worse.”

  “Puncture wound on the right leg, looks like it was done with something dull. This is a shoddy patch job; we need to fix this now.”

  “Hey!” another woman tapped me on the cheek, my eyes looked to her slowly, drowsily. “Tell me your name.”


  “I...Astra,” I blurted out quietly. I was getting tired; the world wasn’t making sense anymore. I tilted my head from left to right, allowing it to roll across the pillow as I took in my surroundings. The hallway was moving by fast, the lights overhead were zooming past my eyes, the conversation around me was unfolding at a breakneck pace. I couldn’t keep up with it. I reached out slowly and pressed my hand against the repulsor field that was used in lieu of railing to keep me from sliding off either side of the stretcher. I could feel my fingers tingling as they rubbed the field; one of the nurses took my hand and gently placed it at my side.

  “Can you tell me when you were born?” she asked me. “What’s your birthdate?”

  “I…”

  “I don’t think she knows that,” another woman pointed out.

  “Elevator up ahead, go.”

  “If you break her, I’ll break you!” I heard Kerra shout from behind us. Kerra was here.

  “Ms. Erth, I know you have strong feelings about this, but we’re going to take care of her,” The first nurse shouted back. My eyes rolled back into my head, I felt my jaw slack, my body was losing feeling. I tried to lift my arm again; it weighed a million pounds, I could barely move it a millimeter off of the mattress. I was a lead weight, I was a lump of flesh. I was disappearing.

  “Sedative is working,” one of the nurses reported. “Into the elevator, let’s get her into surgery.”

  I don’t remember what happened next, I just remember waking up in a dark room surrounded by equipment. A line attached to my arm, machinery emitting a dull tone; lights flashing, a door, a window. The door was mostly glass; I could see doctors and nurses scurrying up and down a long hallway, some occasionally stopped at a table outside; I could see them talking but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Testing the edges of the bed with my fingers, I could feel that there was no repulsor field, I was free to leave the bed, at least I thought I was. It took some effort, but I managed to throw a leg over the edge. I could feel it brush the wooden floor, a blistered heel scraping against a nearly frictionless surface. With great effort I managed to pull my other leg over but could barely move it past the threshold. I was stuck, half in, half out as I tried to lift the rest of my body, still an inanimate weight housing a strained consciousness. It was all starting to weigh on me now, the hopelessness, the anger, the deepening pit of despair that was swallowing my entire being. None of it mattered, none of it. None of it. None of it. I slid from the bed, lurching forward, my knees slamming into the wood and sprawling onto my elbows. I felt the tube tear from my arm, somewhere behind me the pole fell over, the machinery hit the ground. I could see my arm stretched out in front of me, fingers reaching out into nothing. My brain was heavy, my vision swapping between clarity and a black shroud pulsing in and out as quickly as a light flipped between the on and off positions. The door opened, I saw the rush of feet, the sea of hands trying to pull me back onto the bed.

  “Woah, Astra!” a voice shouted. “Come on hon, you have to stay in bed.”

  “No,” I tried to speak; my mouth felt swollen, the sounds barely passed my lips. I shook my head as violently as I could.

  “Astra, come on, stop,” another voice said. The hands were all over me. “Has anyone contacted Donna Smythe?”

  “We did,” the first woman said as they managed to wrap their hands around my arms. I was being pulled back toward the bed, my body too weak to resist. “She wasn’t exactly close, it’s going to be a few more hours.”

  “We need to get a care companion in here then, something, anything.”

  “What about Constable Erth?”

  “Can’t reach her.”

  “Okay,” Get the sedative.” I was laid back into the bed, my body sunk into the mattress like a rock careening toward the bottom of a lake. I was lost. I was hopeless. Maybe they would make a mistake with the sedative; maybe they would give me too much. Maybe I would float off into that dreamless sleep and never return. I could hope.

  “Hold the sedative,” Kerra’s voice boomed from the door. She was here. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Constable she’s in a very delicate state right now, she suffered a massive infection and several lacerations to-”

  “Can she talk, or not?” Kerra demanded. I could see her from the corner of my eye, moving toward the bed. She was in uniform his time, the black and gray of Luna’s military forces. I’d seen it a few times before. It was tight on her, the collar was high, round, it encircled her neck. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a tight bun, her piercing eyes trained on me. There was something different about her, something terrifying.

  “We can wake her up a little more if we administer a-”

  “Do it,” Kerra snapped. “Then get out, all of you.”

  “Ms. Erth, with all due respect, this is our pat-”

  “Do you really want to go down this road?” Kerra turned to the nurse who had spoken. “I’ll have the entire Procutorum Elicate breathing down your neck. You know I can do it.”

  “Wake her up,” The nurse sighed as she directed the other nurse standing nearest to me. For the first time it became clear to me how many people were standing in this room; there were maybe fifteen, all dressed in blue or green jumpsuit. They were form fitting, like Kerra’s uniform, feminine even in their utilitarian style.

  I felt myself coming around, the weight was lifting, I had a little more command over my arms and legs. Then it hit me: the exhaustion. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, to curl up into the blankets and drift off, out of this reality but as the nurses exited the room and Kerra took up a position beside the bed, I got the feeling that wasn’t going to happen. The door finally closed behind them, leaving Kerra alone with me. She kept her eyes trained on me, pressed the bedside controls, causing the back to tilt, forcing me into an upright position. I winced and she watched me wordlessly as I squirmed to get into a more comfortable position. I squeezed my eyes shut briefly and coughed, fighting back tears of pain. There was no empathy on her face. Finally, she spoke.

  “Are you stupid?” there was a crisp, clean quality to her voice. She didn’t seem distressed, or angry. She was asking me matter of factly as if she simply wanted an answer. I gave her none. “Or are you just starved for attention? I’ve been sitting out in the waiting room trying to come up with some kind of explanation for this, something that doesn’t involve you either being a Black Swan operative or a bumbling idiot. I can’t see you being an operative, that would be a little weird, so I’m going to go with ‘idiot’. I’ve done my best to keep you safe, I know it doesn’t seem like it but everything I’ve done, everything I’ve ever done has been to make sure you don’t come to harm and over the last few days you’ve proven that you just don’t give a-”

  “Would you just shut up?!” I gagged the words out, my diaphragm contracted, I felt the cough creeping up my esophagus and finally my body convulsed as I expelled air from my lungs. She turned and paced toward the end of the bed, finally stopping at my feet and leaning into the rail. Her gaze was nearly predatory; the sound of the intravenous pumps seared the air behind my head. “What does it matter? What does any of it matter, Kerra? I went to Callie’s house. I hung out with Therese, we ate...vegetable straws, we watched movies. And then she tried to kill me. She tried to kill me. Whose next, Kerra? You? Donna? Callie? Which of you assholes is going to try to kill me? Why should I even want to be here if one of you could just...just...turn on me? Don’t send me back to the Factorum. Just kill me Kerra. Just kill me!”

  Her face was expressionless, stony. Her silence deafened even the sound of the machines behind me. She leaned in closer, studying my face. In the past I might have looked away, I might have closed my eyes in shame. I might have cried, but I didn’t care anymore. Whatever happened to me next was inconsequential. Finally she stood and moved away from the bed, turning rubbing her eyes with her thumb and index finger.

  “It took me two tours of duty to figure out what you just figur
ed it. You’ve only got half the picture though. Let me fill you in. There are people who care about you, Astra. Maybe I’m not one of them, but if you want to be a woman instead of a damn animal then you need to come to terms with the fact that you’re not just living for you. You need to stop being a selfish brat. Not everyone wants you dead. Look around you. Donna, her kids, that girl from Aeristas, all of them. All of them, Astra. You came up here, you became one of us, and now you’re going to cry because it’s hard? I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth. You don’t get to check out just because you’re upset. You don’t get to wander off and die just because you’re unsure. When you come into someone’s life and make an impression you don’t get to just leave. You have responsibility. You have duty.”

  “What if I don’t want duty?” I screamed the words as best I could. I coughed again, it felt like my throat was being stripped. “What if I don’t want-”

  “I don’t care!” Kerra returned to the bed and slammed her hands against the railing. The bed shook, I stared at her wide-eyed. “Even if you’re completely lost, even if you have no hope left, even if you feel like you belong in darkness, you stay in the light for the people who aren’t ready to follow you yet. That is your responsibility as a human being, as a woman. I’m going to be back to talk to you when you’re more reasonable. We have a lot to go over.”

  “Kerra,” I shook my head. “Don’t...don’t go.”

  She was already walking toward the door. Outside the glass partition I could see the entire medical team staring back, uneasy. I wondered if they had heard any of that conversation. Kerra paused and then, finally, pressed her palm to the door, sliding it open and stepping into the threshold.

  “Suicide watch,” she said abruptly. “Put a Desh in here, restrain her if you have to. I want reports every fifteen minutes.”

  “Ms. Erth,” one of the nurses interjected.