“I told you what would happen if you used your powers.”
I grab Rathnam’s envoy and crush it, those useless plates of armor buckling as its internal machinery sparks and dies. The shock is less brutal this time, but still I scream as electricity lights up my insides. I fall to the ground panting, brought down to the level of Rathnam’s envoy and his victim.
The larger woman drops to her knees beside the corpse, face twisted in anguish.
“You should not continue to test me,” Rathnam bellows from a different android. This one points its weapon at the kneeling woman, but Ramirez steps forward.
“You don’t need to kill Kirino too, sir; I think Xi has learned her lesson.”
I look up and struggle to focus on the guard. Her holo-projection has close-cropped hair, which reminds me of Trix, which makes me think of Mookie. Remember: you came here to save him, not to kill these women.
I breathe in deep, trying to force my anger down, to imagine it seeping out through the soles of my feet.
“I expected better from a sergeant, Ramirez,” Rathnam says, holstering his weapon.
“But sir, I didn’t—”
“Stockton,” Rathnam says, ignoring the woman, “you are now promoted to sergeant. Corporal Ramirez, you will be reassigned.”
Rathnam’s face disappears, and the newly promoted sergeant walks along the row of inmates, his face stony, eyes glinting with excitement. “Your new cellmate, Mariam Xi, is a mass murderer and a terrorist; Cortez here is only her latest victim,” he says, motioning to the dead woman on the ground, her wound cauterized black around the edges but steadily leaking gore. “Either Xi behaves, or she will kill you all. You should encourage her to behave.” He lets that hang in the air a moment. “Dismissed.”
The guards about-face and leave, and after a few moments the women move away from the wall, giving Kirino and the corpse of Cortez a wide berth as they filter slowly through the cell opening.
A hand touches my arm; the woman in her underwear, crouching beside me with one arm across her chest.
“We’re late for breakfast,” she says, helping me up from the ground.
“Sorry,” I say; “that’s my fault too.”
Even this close, I can’t guess at her age. The skin of her face is discolored and slack, but there’s something in her eyes—something like hope or kindness. I feel the sudden urge to give her my shirt, or my pants, but something tells me that would only make her more of a target.
We start down the hall, and she asks in a quiet voice, “Where did you go?”
“To the men’s wing, to look for a friend of mine.”
“I’m Ali,” she says, like the mention of a friend reminded her she should introduce herself.
“Mars,” I say.
“Is it true that you killed a lot of people?”
“I killed a lot of MEPHISTO, not sure that counts.” I grin and turn to look at Ali, and she smiles. I lean in closer. “What are you in for?”
She’s silent for a second. “I come from Easa. I was arrested when MEPHISTO was sent in to quell the situation there.”
“You were part of the revolt?” I ask.
She shakes her head minutely. “Protests, petitions, that sort of thing.”
“That’s all?”
“It was enough for them to bring me here.”
I’ve seen footage from Easa: the protests labelled as riots, the crackdown, the trials. I can imagine Ali, back before this place turned her hair white, projecting holo-banners on skyscrapers, hacking city loudspeakers to blast protest messages, thinking her citizenship meant she could safely criticize the empire.
“I was expecting anarchists and terrorists here, not protesters.”
“They called me a ‘dangerous agitator,’” she says in her mouse-small voice, and we both laugh.
“Easa was years ago; have you been here all this time?”
Ali nods.
“If you know some people here, maybe you could help me find my friend? Get the word out that I’m looking for him?”
Ali looks at me, eyes tight, like she’s trying to decide if she should get involved or not. After a moment she says, “Okay.”
When we reach the cafeteria, every head turns to face me. Word must have already spread about the way I crushed Rathnam’s envoy, about how I “killed” Cortez.
I’ve spent my whole life as a pariah, but never so publicly. It’s almost funny.
Take a good look, ladies, because I won’t be here for long.
CHAPTER TEN
It doesn’t take long for a routine to form.
I’m woken each morning by an absence of sound when the interior powershields go down. Though the steady drone stops, the cell’s ceiling glows endlessly. There’s always a rush for the toilet, and I try not to listen as my bladder sits hot in my abdomen with a dull ache.
I can’t sleep without the buzzing hum, but I barely sleep with it. I lie on one side until that hip begins to hurt, then move to the other. All through the night collars clank against the floor as women shift in their sleep. Some of them strip and bundle their clothes up like a pillow. I try it once, but the floor is too cold.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I think I feel Ocho curled up against my belly. My fingers reach to touch her but find only void. I miss that tiny jerk.
* * *
I wake earlier than usual, blink, then close my eyes and watch the black-pink churn of flesh inside my eyelids. The shields hum, overlapping sounds building a wall of white noise. I’m seconds away from falling back asleep, then silence drops like a stone into water.
I keep my eyes shut and listen to the women stir, then I hear a voice hissing in a coarse whisper. “You killed my girl.”
I raise my head and see Kirino kneeling, staring at me as she works her jaw.
I sit up. “They killed her.”
“Because of you.”
I shake my head, but don’t bother to argue. “I’m sorry,” I say, and shrug because I know the apology isn’t enough.
Kirino grunts as she stands. “How about I kill your girl?” she says, walking over to Ali. She rests her hand on the top of Ali’s head, fingers slipping between the folds of her hair.
“She’s not ‘my’ anything.”
Kirino grabs a handful of hair and I push up off the floor fast, then sway for a second as the blood rushes to my head.
“Why don’t you just fuck off, Kirino?”
Every pair of eyes in the cell is on me except Ali’s, which are stuck fast to the ground.
“What did you say?” Kirino takes a step forward, making a show of shoving Ali’s head away as she releases it. Her eyes are the darkest brown, almost black even under the bright lights of the cell. Her head is shaved, but if it was only done in prison, it suits her.
“I said ‘fuck off.’ This place is bad enough without you acting like an alpha bitch.”
Kirino stares at me, face twisted in a snarl. “Are you trying to get someone else killed?”
“I don’t need my powers to kick your ass,” I say, though I can’t remember the last time I fought without them.
A few long seconds pass, and the women sitting between us scurry out of the way. Just when I think she might back down, Kirino charges across the gap. She slams into me and I start elbowing the back of her head as we fall. We hit the polycrete hard. Kirino pushes herself up and punches me in the mouth. She pulls back to hit me again, but I slide my head out of the way just in time to hear the flat smack of her knuckles hitting the ground. She makes a wounded sound and freezes long enough for me to strike her in the jaw. Her teeth clack as they snap shut, and there’s a burst of pain in my wrist. She replies with another punch that smacks my head into the floor.
She hits me again and again. I cover my head with my arms and wait for the next hit, but instead a voice yells, “Stand down, prisoner.”
A segment of the powershield dissipates as two screws enter the cell. Kirino holds her hands up as one of them yanks her of
f me.
“You wanted to see the alpha, bitch,” she says, then she winks.
One of the envoys pushes her aside while the other lifts me to my feet. “Mariam Xi, you are required to attend an interview.”
I don’t say anything, I just glare at Kirino as they lead me away.
* * *
We reach the glass-walled corridor linking the women’s wing to the central hub. As we approach, the door at the far end opens. That familiar smell of antiseptic wafts in, washing the scent of tightly packed women from my nose.
The guard leads me past the clinic where I met Doctor Rathnam, past empty surgical theatres, each stocked with a chrome-plated autosurgeon glistening under ceiling lights. We come to a large, reinforced door with an access panel on one side. The guard leans across me to reach the panel, blocking my view while she keys in a code.
She stands back and I study the woman’s face glowing in the holo-unit. She has a large hooked nose, and hair in a black ponytail long enough that it ends abruptly at the edge of the holo-field. The envoy’s stance is too rigid, even for military personnel, but I don’t know if that’s her posture coming through, or just the robot’s.
The doors beep and open. A mix of organic scents greets me: earthy tones of shit and sweat, the sharp metallic hints of blood. Behind this there’s a chemical smell—sweet but dirty, like the sweat-stink of your bedsheets after you sleep off a metamethamphetamine binge.
The guard takes me by the arm. “Come along, prisoner.”
At first I walk right along with her, not wanting to give her an excuse to yank hard on my arm like every other bastard guard, but when I see the other prisoners I begin to slow.
We’re in a large expanse, wide open except for the powershields that define three group cells. The men are on the side of the room closest to their wing, with the women opposite. A third cell in the center houses the people that don’t fit either of those narrow gender modes.
The male cell is filthy—floor and wall smeared with feces—and more densely populated than the other two. Most of the men look starved or beaten, or both. A few are missing limbs, and as I remember the surgical rooms I feel a chill drift along my spine.
We move past the group cells to smaller, solitary ones. They have solid doors with inset windows, and as we pass I get a glimpse of a dozen wretched prisoners. Each one is naked; some are barely visible in silent, pitch-black rooms, others are lit up bright, their cell doors vibrating with relentless sound. All are kept standing, strapped to hooks emerging from ceiling or wall.
There’s a guard inside one of the cells, blood coating the android’s metal fists. The prisoner’s face is bruised and bleeding, his mouth a hollow maw devoid of teeth. Before I realize, I’ve stopped walking. The guard isn’t even questioning him, he just rains blow after blow onto the man’s torso as the prisoner hangs silent. Blood pools at his feet, vivid red against the white cell floor.
“Xi,” the guard escorting me says, firmly, yanking me forward.
I keep walking. The only thing that stops me from interfering is the knowledge that they’d kill the poor bastard if I did.
Maybe I should have killed him. Would that have been murder or mercy?
* * *
Beyond the torture cells there’s a small corridor lined with doors. When we reach the door marked 203, the guard lets go of my arm to unlock it. I step inside before she has reason to grab me again and come face-to-face with myself: hair limp and dirty, face slack.
The room is brightly lit, all four walls paneled in either mirror or one-way glass. In the center is a small metal table and two chairs. Doctor Rathnam’s envoy sits in one of the chairs, his face pointed down like he’s reading off a shard, though his envoy’s hands are empty.
He motions to the other chair. “Please, take a seat.”
I do as he says, and the guard closes the door behind her then moves to the corner behind the doc. The surface of the table is scratched and scuffed; it resounds when I tap a beat with my fingernails.
After a minute, Rathnam coughs. His envoy hand moves to cover his mouth—a response to his movements inside the holo-rig. He clears his throat. “Let’s begin, shall we?”
He seems to be waiting for a response, but I just keep tapping, listening to the dull ting.
“I want you to tell me what brought you here,” he says, tone friendly.
“A ship,” I say, deadpan. “I couldn’t tell you what type it was.”
He offers a polite smile. “How many people have you killed since you arrived, Mariam?”
“I haven’t killed anyone.”
“You knew the consequences of using your powers,” he says, his pitch rising slightly, like he’s rebuking a small child. “But perhaps you don’t really care about these strangers . . .”
The wall behind the doctor turns transparent and for a split second my heart sinks as I think they found out about Mookie. It’s not him though; on the other side of the glass a guard aims a waver pistol at a prisoner with four prosthetic limbs. His eyes drift over me before snapping back, and that’s when I remember him too: the bodychopper from Aylett Station with the deliberately disproportioned limbs.
The bodychopper nods. I look back to Rathnam.
“Do you know this man?” he asks.
“No,” I say. It’s not really a lie, because I don’t know the guy’s name. As far as I know, his name is Chopper.
Half the wall changes into a large viewscreen showing two packs of people facing off down a wide corridor.
“We have security footage that proves otherwise.” As Rathnam speaks, the recording rolls, volume muted. It shows me using my abilities to wreak a little havoc before Miguel drags me out of the fray, and it shows Chopper, all his friends, and all the bizarrely altered genehackers, fighting MEPHISTO troops.
Watching the reverse of the footage, Chopper smiles; on video he dismembers one soldier and punches another so hard they’re lifted off the ground.
“After that fight,” Rathnam says, “you continued your rampage elsewhere on Aylett Station.”
The video cuts to the gaudily colored carpet of a casino, though I’ve never been to any of the ones on Aylett. Which is why I’m confused when I see myself walking down an aisle of poker consoles. I tear the machines from the floor and throw them aside, crushing innocents and Station Security alike.
Chopper squints, first in confusion, then disgust.
“This is bullshit,” I say. “I never went to a casino, I never killed any honeymooners. I went to the—” I cut myself off. I went to the docks, where there aren’t any cameras, and I rescued Mookie, Squid, and Trix. But I can’t tell Rathnam that. I can’t give him the ammunition. “It’s not true, Chopper,” I say, holding the man’s gaze until he looks away.
“You seem to believe you’re fighting a righteous war against MEPHISTO, but look at this.” Rathnam lifts a hand, motions to the screen. “You’re a remorseless killer; no more, no less.”
Killer? You don’t know the half of it.
“I ask again,” Rathnam says as the footage flickers out of view, “why are you here?”
I shift my weight and it feels like my ass bones are grinding into the hard seat. “I haven’t heard the actual charges, but I assume it’s for something like ‘Crimes against MEPHISTO.’”
“Then you admit to killing twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve MEPHISTO personnel?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
I tap my fingers until Rathnam continues.
“I’m not trying to trick a confession out of you, Mariam; I’m merely trying to ascertain your mental state, to find out if you’re aware of all the harm you’ve caused.”
“That’s the official tally, then: twenty-three thousand and something?” I ask, staring down at my twitching fingers.
“Twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve.”
I nod. “I couldn’t have told you the figure, but it sounds about right.”
“Do you regret murdering all those people?”
>
With my head lowered I can see the symbol for Xi tattooed on the back of my hand, the ink patchy and the lines blown out after all these years. A doctor just like Rathnam gave it to me when I was a child, except that doctor was with me in the flesh, because they weren’t afraid of us when we were little. I remember it all—the black latex gloves pinning my wrist and fingers so I couldn’t squirm while the tattoo machine moved across my skin, mechanism humming, needle a blur. I remember the ink and plasma leaking from the wound, I remember screaming that I was sorry, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, why they were punishing me. But most of all I remember the awful fucking pain that no child should have to go through.
“No,” I tell Doctor Rathnam, “I don’t regret it at all.”
“That is a shame, Mariam. Those people you killed had families, they had dreams and desires.”
“When I was a little girl, I dreamed of walking on grass. I wished to go one day without getting stuck with a fucking needle.”
“You mean to say the treatment you experienced as a child justifies mass murder?”
“What I mean to say is, Briggs didn’t have to chase me.
“Imagine you build a fire, but you realize it’s burning way hotter than you planned; do you run into it, or do you step back and give it space?”
One side of the doctor’s mouth curls up. “Your analogy doesn’t quite serve your purpose, Mariam. You would do whatever you must to bring the raging fire under control, before it burns down your whole house.”
“Doc, some houses are meant to burn.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve. Twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve.
The mantra of guilt runs through my head as the guard takes me back to the cell. The interrogation took hours to get precisely nowhere, but at least they left Chopper alone.
As I pass through the mess hall, none of the gathered women look up from their plates. Seeing that inedible mush, I don’t feel hungry, even if I did skip breakfast for Rathnam’s “interview.” The smell of overcooked vegetables hangs thick in the air: dank and lifeless.
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