The Seeds of Winter

by A. W. Cross

  Though technically the end of spring, it was only a handful of degrees above freezing, the ground rock-hard under its delicate carpet of evergreen needles. I wasn’t used to living in the mountains. Although they shared the same fir and pine trees, they were a far cry from the beaches and vineyards I’d grown up with.

  “So, it just got colder after the war?” I asked him.

  “Yes. It happened so gradually I assumed it was just the changing of the seasons. But it kept getting colder and never really warmed up again. That’s when the plants and animals started dying, and most of the remaining survivors followed them.”

  “I still don’t understand how that many people could’ve died.”

  “There was something else in those bombs. Something that made people sick. Many of those who didn’t die in the war were killed by whatever it was. There were weeks of silver rain, and… Well, it doesn’t matter. That silver rain rarely falls any more, and it’s starting to get warmer. It’s warmer now than it was this time last year.

  “Take these hares, for example. They’re a good sign. For the first year or two after it got really cold, I didn’t see any living animals, only acres of untouched carcasses just frozen in time. Even the birds had gone silent. They’ve started to appear again, like the animals, although they’re not the same ones as before. All the wildlife here now seems to have migrated from the north. I guess it’s more of their usual climate down here. The predators have begun to recover as well, but it’ll be a long time before they’re hungry enough to find us interesting.”

  He grinned and held up the hare for me to admire before adding it to the rest. Unruly black hair curled over his pale face and neck, blending with the inky lines of his tattoos. His eyes were always dark, but now they held a fierce glint that was unrelated to the brightness of his smile. I had quickly learned that such smiles were rare for Tor, his mouth naturally downcast. The strings of hares rode his shoulders like wings, forming a dark tableau against the naked trees. Dominion. The word came to me unbidden, and a whisper of fear brushed my mind, too delicate to grasp.

  I suddenly realized that he was speaking to me, and the whisper vanished.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I said, are you ready to go back now?”

  “How many do we have?” I asked. He was too polite to point out the wrongness of we, since he’d done all the actual killing.

  “Eight, all together.” His quiet voice carried over the still air as he stretched his shoulders, the strings of hares twisting in a macabre dance.

  “Eight is a respectable number,” I said, trying to sound casual. I didn’t want to seem too eager to get back. He thought I enjoyed the hunting, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Besides, I liked watching him hunt.

  He adjusted the hares and retraced our steps to the cottage. I walked beside him, admiring his grace from the corner of my eye. I’d had an appreciation for Tor’s body ever since we’d heard the scratching outside the door that first night.

  The speed and silence with which he’d moved had made my breath catch much more than my fear of what was on the other side. It had been nothing but a curious fox, but it had made me think. Despite everything I’d learned in the short time I’d been awake, I hadn’t given much consideration to how the cyberization had changed us. It wasn’t like we’d been left with an instruction manual. Yes, we were stronger and healed faster, but surely there had to be more?

  I was curious how different Tor was now to when he’d been an ordinary human, but I wasn’t quite sure how to ask. He wasn’t the same Tor who’d held me that first night. After the incident with the fox, the easy intimacy had disappeared, reminding me how little I knew about him. I was desperate to ask him more about the war, but so far, he hadn’t been particularly forthcoming.

  “So, you’re pretty good with that crossbow. Did you do a lot of hunting before the war?”

  “Not animals,” he replied.

  Okay... “And the gathering?” Earlier that morning, he’d shown me some edible plants he’d found.

  He leaned over to peer at a small thorned bush. “I’ve poisoned myself a few times figuring it out, but because of the nanites, all I got was a bit of a stomachache.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, marring the clean lines of his tattoos with hare blood.

  “What do the designs on your face mean?” I was fascinated by the intricate pattern. Two sets of three lines curved upward across his forehead, intersecting in the middle. They swept down over his temples and converged into a single stripe on either side of his face, ending at his jawline. Delicate branches twined out from each central stroke, one flowing into each corner of his eyes, the other into his hairline. A thicker line slid vertically over his lower lip and down his chin, where the branching pattern repeated on his throat. They were striking and oddly familiar, but I couldn’t begin to place them.

  “They’re a warning.” His eyes were darker, and he said nothing more.

  I had stooped to gather some pale-yellow berries Tor swore were safe to eat when it hit me; a shift in my awareness. The voice inside me whispered, “Here it comes.” There was a tugging on my spine, a stiffening, as though I were a puppet and someone had suddenly pulled hard on my strings. At first, I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me, like I was flying, but I wasn’t; I was on my knees. Time had stopped, and my voice caught in my throat.

  Whatever had happened to me also happened to Tor, but his reactions were far faster than mine, and he’d made it to within a few feet of me, his fingers grasping at the empty air. We stared at each other, and I saw my reflection in his eyes—a pale face peering out of a black well.

  We were frozen for what seemed like hours, but when we finally fell, the body of the last hare was still warm. We lay there, face-to-face.

  “Tor? Are you okay?” I asked when I was finally able to speak. “What was that?”

  He winced as he lifted his head from the ground, and there were bloody scratches along his cheek. “I have no idea. I—”

  It came again. The pull, the voice. Wanting us to leave this place, to come…home. I whispered his name.

  “We have to get home.” His voice was shaky as he jerked me to my feet. “Now.”

  “But we don’t know where home is.”

  “I mean home. Our home.”

  The word our in his mouth moved something in my chest. “Tor.”

  “No.” He walked off, staggering slightly over the rough ground.

  I had no choice but to follow.

  “I do not think you understand the gravity of what you are proposing. You are not talking about simply integrating these people with biomechatronic components. You are talking about combining every human cell in their bodies with robotic elements. Not only are you creating virtually immortal beings, you cannot accurately predict what enhancements will result, or what they will become capable of.”

  — Sarah Weiland of the Preserve Terra Society at the Pantheon Modern Cyborg Symposium, 2040

  The blood on my knuckles was already starting to dry; the cuts from his broken teeth would take longer to heal. His eyes had held the same look as all the others: confusion then comprehension then fear. He hadn’t begged or tried to bargain. Not all of them did. But he would remember my face. Even without my tattoos, he would remember. It was, after all, the last thing he would see.

  Bile burned the back of my throat. The first few times, I’d thrown up. Not now. Footsteps echoed on the tiles in the hallway, and it became difficult to breathe. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to tame it, then immediately hated myself. What did I care how she saw me? She didn’t. All she cared about was owning me.

  She opened the door gently, hoping to surprise me, to catch me off my guard. She wasn’t aware that I always smelled her long before she came into the room—her cloying perfume of violets and balsam, a sickly-sweet scent that did nothing to cover the odor of decay. The drug was eating her from the inside out, and no perfume in her arsenal could hide it from me. I only w
ished she would hurry up and die. Then I could stop loving her.

  I didn’t flinch as she laid her hand on my shoulder.

  “Did you know you have blood in your hair?” she asked, digging her fingers into my skin.

  I kept my eyes on my hands.

  “Look at me.” She said my name, the sound of it painful to my ears.

  I looked, unable to stop myself.

  She appeared to be well today, younger, almost like when we first met. Her face was pale and smooth, akin to the antique dolls my mother used to keep on a shelf in the guest room. Her hair was as black as mine, but straight and silky, and cut into a severe bob that framed her delicate face. She stroked my cheek, her acrylic nails making a dry scraping sound that made me want to put my hands on her with violence.

  It was difficult for her to be so gentle; it wasn’t her nature. In her defense, it wasn’t entirely her fault. She’d grown up in this life. I hadn’t. Her only way out was death, as was mine—at least until a few weeks ago. And it was she who’d unwittingly given me the key.

  She slid into my lap and moved against me in gentle circles. It was what she did whenever she thought I was angry at her, and when I hardened in spite of myself, she couldn’t suppress the victory in her slanted blue eyes. That was her power, the reason she existed. We were both pets, no matter how hard she pretended she wasn’t.

  Her father was our keeper, and she, his faultless creation. I was also what he’d made me, but I’d had a choice. In deciding to be with her, I’d embraced this life, as he’d known I would. As she’d known I would. My mother had tried so hard to keep me from people like them, had sacrificed so much. And yet, here I was.

  She traced her fingers over the splits in my skin. “What was it this time? Debt? Reneged on a deal? Chose the wrong wine at supper?”

  “Do you really care?” It was impossible to keep the harshness out of my voice.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  I needed to stop rebelling and just play along. She’d been spying on me, showing up unexpectedly. She’d also been poking around in my room, the haze of drugs making her less careful than she’d thought. It was as though she knew something had changed, but her mind couldn’t focus long enough to figure it out.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just tired. He was the third one this week.”

  “You’re supposed to be resting.” She studied my face.

  “I know. But an order’s an order, right?”

  She pouted up at me, a look that used to tie my stomach up in knots with anticipation. Now, it merely made it churn. I knew what she truly was, the sickness in her. I’d missed it before, those few years ago, under the layers of her makeup and my own infatuation. She was now a caricature of that woman, the softness replaced by something cold, and dazzling, and rotten.

  Two weeks. Two more weeks, and I’d be free. God knew how high up her father’s boss was on the food chain, but he was well-placed enough to have me pushed to the front of the line for the Pantheon Modern cyborg program. Such was the truth of my position. I was important enough for the syndicate to invest in me, but expendable enough to be replaced if I died during the process. It was true that a machine could do my job, but then, a machine didn’t have my flaws. A machine would be difficult to bend without breaking.

  If I did survive, I’d have to disappear. The violence I was currently capable of would be insignificant in comparison. And yet, I’d have less power than I did now.

  She wriggled in my lap, having noticed that my attention was elsewhere. I fought the urge to push her off, to strike her. She smiled at me, running her tongue across her teeth. I swallowed hard, trying not to retch. She misinterpreted my reaction and ground against me before rubbing a finger over her bottom lip and smearing her chin with red.

  Two weeks.

  I turned my head away as she dropped to her knees and licked the blood from my hands.

  “We’ve activated the homing signal. Lexa wanted to do it earlier. She’s worried they might be in trouble. I’m sure they can handle themselves, although, if I’m honest, it’s more than that. Lexa may look upon them as children, assuming they’ll love her simply because she’s their mother. I’m not so sure. She’s worried about protecting them; I’m worried about protecting us. Who knows how they’ll react? They’re waking up to an unfamiliar world, and even their own bodies and minds will be as unknown to them as they are to us. How much of them will have changed? The process is unpredictable at best, and dangerous at worst. And we rushed it, damn us. It was more important to prove that we could do it than consider what it would do to them.”

  —Mil Cothi, personal journal; June 5th, 2045

  My head was tender. The threads had blazed again during the night, more intensely. More real. Rather than lie awake staring into the darkness, curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I’d decided to go exploring. I was drawn to this latest thread by the brilliance of its connection to me.

  I still smelled the fetid sweetness of her breath, was both repulsed and aroused by her hands on me, her mouth as she took me inside it. I had again been a man, my body well-built and powerful. My arms were crisscrossed with scars of all different ages, the bloody cuts on my hands fresh. I’d been desperate to escape; it had taken everything in my power not to grab her and break her over my knee. But there’d also been a hope deep inside me that helped me bear it, tiny tendrils blooming and curling around my ribs.

  A storm raged outside, and the sturdy walls of our house creaked in disapproval. I got out of bed and glanced at myself in the mirror. It wasn’t functioning, of course; all I saw was my reflection. I didn’t mind. The last thing I needed right now was a smug voice helpfully suggesting which creams to apply so I looked less crap.

  Seeing myself was odd. My face was no longer my own. It was the same face I’d always had, but when I studied myself in the mirror, it was like I was wearing a mask. Even the touch of my own hand didn’t feel right. An otherness lived within my body, which I assumed must be the nanites. Far away, the voice inside me laughed.

  Tor stood behind me in the door frame. He was surprisingly alert. I’d heard him pacing the floor of his bedroom every time I’d woken during the night. We hadn’t spoken about what had happened. Did he still sense it? The need to leave, to find where the voice would lead us?

  “Good morning.”

  “Morning.” We were formal, stiff.

  “How’s your—”

  The scratches on his face were nearly gone; thin silvery lines were all that remained. He put his hand to his cheek and smiled. “Gotta be some perks to being a monster, right?”

  “Is that how you feel? That you’re a monster?”

  “Sometimes.” He said it as though it were a joke, but I wasn’t so sure. He must’ve felt the otherness too. We’d spent the last week avoiding discussing what we were, or where we were from. All we’d talked about was the weather, food, and how best to clean the house.

  He had a fire burning in the living room. The house seemed more like a home now, our home, as he’d said yesterday. Cleaning had done nothing to improve the pale chartreuse of the walls, but at least the surfaces were no longer covered in dust. The furnishings were sparse, whether due to the aesthetic taste of the previous owner or looting, I had no idea. None of the house functions worked without electricity, of course, but we were managing.

  I curled up on our lone couch and pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets, trying to dull the aching in my head.

  “Are you okay?” Tor asked, frowning.

  “Yeah, it’s only a headache. I had another vision. An intense one. It’s funny. Some of them seem to be from the past, like memories. Others seem to be later, after the war. Maybe even the present. This latest one felt like the past. To the person I was in, life felt normal.”

  “Want to talk about it?” He gestured to the window. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere today. And there’s nothing good on TV.”

  “Did you actually make a joke?” I asked, getting not
hing but raised eyebrows in return. “Um, okay. Where do you want me to start?”

  He lowered himself onto the cushion next to me and leaned forward. “Tell me what happened in the latest one.”

  I picked at a crack in the leather of the couch and told him about my hands, the pain of my torn skin. The sharpness of her nails, my loathing for both of us as I came. By the time I was done, he’d gone rigid.

  “Who are you?” his voice was savage, a growl between clenched teeth.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Who. Are. You?” Each word was a feral bite.

  “Tor, I—”

  He advanced on me, his chest heaving. I had only a split second for fear before he wrapped his hands around my neck.

  “…I don’t have to tell you that I don’t like this. As far as I’m concerned, the risk is too significant, not only of our exposure but of the end result. He is impulsive, reckless, and has a Machiavellian streak to rival my mother-in-law’s. We’ve basically just handed a toddler a machine gun. Do you really think he’s not going to pull the trigger?”

  — []

  It was agonizing. They’d never told me it would be so goddamn painful. Every cell in my body felt like it was splitting, and I guessed, in a way, they were. The nanites were inside me, invading me, eating me alive. They were tearing me apart with their tiny claws, consuming me, spitting me out, rebuilding me.

  Am I going to die?

  The thought didn’t scare me. It pissed me off. This was my last chance to be accepted, to assume my rightful place, even though they thought I wasn’t worthy enough.

  A ghost was in my brain. It was me. The ghost was cackling. If I could’ve gotten hold of him, I’d have torn him apart, but every time I tried, they knocked me out. They said I would need my eyes to see. No fucking kidding.