by Emma Pullar
‘Keep going.’ Kian urges.
Neither of us move. Paralysed by a chorus of male and female voices up ahead, yelling in agony, some hysterical. What’s happening behind those doors? Screams for help are all around us; No, please! Don’t! Somebody!
‘What the fuck is that?’ Cara utters.
‘We can’t stop here.’ Kian growls.
‘You’re taking us to be mutilated!’ She screams.
‘Don’t be stupid! If I were, you’d be in chains.’ Kian snaps at Cara and strides away, ‘Let’s go!’
I don’t speak, I don’t move, every bone in my body, every fibre, says do something, stop their suffering but I can’t. I can’t answer their pleas, if I do, I’ll be next. Back at the complex, we were given a tour of the birthing centre. I couldn’t take in anything the midwives were saying, the examination fresh in my mind and I thought that was bad enough. The screaming hosts fill every inch of my head space. The agony-induced screams of young women in childbirth comes back to me in waves, only instead of determination, the screams inside Rock Vault are of terror. Kian stops ten feet away and hurries back.
‘What are you doing? Come on!’ he yells in my face.
‘Don’t they at least anaesthetise them?’ I ask, tears rolling down my dirty cheeks.
Cara leans against the dusty grey wall, head down, she clamps her hands over her ears. This was her fate and might still be if we can’t escape, mine too. Kian still hasn’t answered me. He stares at his city issue black boots. The screaming dies down.
‘Well?’ I demand.
Cara cautiously lifts her hands from over her ears.
‘Sometimes, sometimes not,’ he mutters to the floor.
‘Fuck!’ Cara shrieks, hand over her mouth.
Kian rubs his forehead. I can tell he hasn’t become desensitised to the horrors that he knows go on behind those heavy doors.
‘Please! I can’t take it, I can’t, don’t, DON’T!’
The voice comes from the door opposite us.
‘Kian, give me your knife,’ I order.
‘Why? What are you gonna do?’
I hold my hand out, staring at him.
‘You can’t help them.’ He snarls.
Cara’s eyes shift around nervously, frightened, wondering which way to run.
‘Ever tried?’ I snarl.
‘Of course, I haven’t! I’m not fucking crazy!’
This is why I could never be a guard. I could never betray people like that. Listening to their screams of torture day after day, and doing nothing. I can feel it coming, the impulse to act. Do it Skyla, do something, don’t be a coward. Here’s your chance to throw yourself on your sword!
‘I guess I am.’ I say, hotly.
I throw my body weight into the nearest door, expecting to come up against resistance. Instead, it swings open and crashes into the wall, startling the people beyond it. I stagger into a trolley full of medical instruments. Crash. Clatter. I grab the legs of the trolley and almost bring it down with me. Silence. My eyes struggle to adjust to the bright operating lights. Ouch. Something sharp from the table has cut my arm. Squinty-eyed I force my vision to adjust, the fuzzy outline of a moonfaced, masked Morb in surgical scrubs comes into sharp focus. Cruel mechanical eyes rotate and shift forwards and back from within the swollen head like self-focusing telescopes, he stares down at me – a wild beast lose in his operating room.
The Morbs are upright – how is that possible? Not in a normal hover-chair, they’re held up vertically by a hovering splint. The one nearest to me reaches out his blue-gloved hands, dripping with red. I shuffle away, scooting backwards on the instrument-scattered floor. To my left, there’s another one, with robotic arms where his hands should be, blood streaking the silver; giant scissors and knives and pincers all soldered together in one metal nightmare. No one moves. None of us have ever been in a situation like this before and no one knows what to do. A Skel in scrubs stands confidently beside the Morbs, as if he’s their equal. I’m stunned. Distressed breaths come from the operating table. I gather myself and get to my feet.
‘Don’t touch him,’ the Skel says, his voice muffled by his surgical mask.
I glare. Swipe a scalpel from the dishevelled tray and brandish it at them.
‘Or what?’ I snarl.
Blood thumps in my ears. The Morb surgeons hover backwards, as I kneel beside the table and get to work loosening the straps holding the person down.
‘Please,’ A small voice comes from the table, ‘hurry.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say, ‘I’m getting you out of here.’
‘Not wise.’ The Skel says through his mask, his masters don’t speak. Are they mute?
I tug at the stubborn straps, saw at them with the scalpel, it’s useless. I throw the thin knife and it clatters to the floor. My eyes frantically search the room for something else, something larger, sharper, but what I need to cut through this thick, cloth strap is the scissor handed Morb. The walls and floor are spattered with dried-on blood. This is nothing like the hospital. My thoughts are ridiculous. Of course, it’s nothing like the hospital! This is a torture chamber. There’s no heart monitor, because they don’t care if the person dies, they’ll try again on another victim. They have an endless supply of prisoners. I spot a glass-fronted cabinet full of hanging metal instruments: dirty saws and rib crackers; strange looking pliers and screwdrivers and a drill! How does anyone survive this room?
The realisation that most do not survive shudders through me, thoughts turn to pictures in my head; memories of the Mutil I’ve encountered over the years – rotting flesh, bone, artificial parts, some with half their face eaten away by disease. The walking dead. They say the Mutil are a result of organ testing, to make sure the artificial organs and lenses work before they implant them into Morbs. From what I can see, they also mutilate people for fun. This is a playroom …
‘Skyla,’
Cara stands in the doorway. She won’t cross the threshold. Tears streak her brown cheeks, not as full of colour as they once were, skin grey like the walls. Kian does not appear next to her. Her eyes flit over the three surgeons.
‘The spook scarpered, we gotta get out of ’ere.’ she says, desperately.
‘Just a minute.’
The three blood-splattered mutilators remain still. They don’t try to approach me. They do nothing. I frantically pull on the thick material. I can’t unfasten it. It’s too tight. I wrinkle my nose. The smell coming from the body is repugnant. The surgical team don’t speak, don’t attempt to talk me down. They watch me, the Skel wide-eyed in disbelief. Then a sound I know all too well explodes in my eardrums – the ominous wail of the siren. Every guard in the prison will be on us in minutes. I yank at the strap and it snaps. I stumble backwards and an arm flops over the side of the operating table.
‘Skyla, let’s go!’ Cara screeches.
I stand up.
‘Almost … there.’
I stare at the lifeless body. I’m too late. Way too late. How did this man mange to talk to me? How was he even conscious? I don’t know the corpse; the face is badly mutilated. Tubes and wires stick out from the victim’s nose. Deep holes ooze pink where the eyeballs should be, what did they do, scoop them out with a dessert spoon? The skin around them is pulled back by small hooks, exposing the bone.
‘Are you happy now?’ The Skel shouts over the wailing siren.
He has pulled his mask down around his neck. His masters don’t utter a word. It’s as if they are subordinate to the Skel.
‘Are you happy, traitor!’ I yell at him.
‘I was until you arrived and killed this subject!’ he shouts back.
‘Oh, I killed him? I stuffed wires and tubes up his nose and gouged out his eyes?’ I shout viciously, backing towards the door.
‘He would have lived!’ spits the Skel.
‘No,’ I yell and point at the body, ‘He wouldn’t have. Call that living? Mutil suffer until they die. He would have suffered, more than he al
ready has.’
‘I’m going,’ Cara shouts over the siren. ‘I’m alive and I want to stay that way!’
I dash for the door, take one last look behind me, blood runs down the lifeless arm hanging from the operating table. That could have easily been my arm, I think. It’s not and I have to go, I was never going to save him. My guilt is misplaced. I duck out the door after Cara. We sprint down dim passages, stopping every so often to look around corners. Visions of the mutilated body flash through my head. The suffocating despair I feel for the victim I couldn’t save almost overwhelms me. I won’t let my emotions cripple my mind and shut down my legs. I have to keep going. I have to get out.
Each junction we come to is deserted, there’s no one around. The place seems abandoned and the siren has stopped. Why aren’t they coming for us? There’s no way they haven’t noticed us. What’s their game?
Rats scurry along the edge of the skirting, hurrying over little brown balls of shit. The rats keep up with me, four hurried steps to one thud of my boot. Rock Vault is a maze of corridors. I don’t know how we’re going to escape without Kian’s help. Where is he, dammit! I run past a clean metal door, different from all the other doors. I double back. There’s a seal around it and a long metal handle.
‘Cara, wait!’
Cara hurries back. I grip the cold handle and tug it down. The sound of pressure releasing escapes and the door unsticks. I pull the heavy metal forwards and slip through to the other side, Cara follows and it closes behind us, sticking shut. Behind Cara, I notice there’s no handle. Wherever we are, we’re trapped.
‘What’s this place?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, and I don’t.
There is another door up ahead and the small, clear plastic-lined room we are in smells like the Morb complex. A boulder sinks to the pit of my stomach. Please, don’t let me be back at the complex. I shake that ridiculous thought from my head. Rock Vault isn’t part of the complex and that tube I used to get out, that led me to … wait, there were two doors. I went through the side one, where did the other one lead to? Here?
I take three steps and grasp the next handle which feels even colder than the first. I push it down and the door opens inwards this time. I push the door, it’s heavy and I have to throw all my body weight behind it. Cara presses her hands against the metal, her slim body up close to me, we push back the door, she’s a lot stronger than she looks.
Beyond the door are metal steps, beams of light above spring and stutter to life as the door behind us closes. The stairs lead down in a steep incline to a factory. High ceiling and white walls, same as the meat-works, but instead of conveyor belts and grinder, this place has racks and racks of animal carcasses covered in a protective plastic. In front of the racks are several long, white benches, and unlike the torture room we ran from, the huge space is clean and sterile. The freezing air sneaks up on us, my skin goosepimples and my teeth chatter.
‘Butchery?’ I say.
Plumes of vapour escape my lips as we descend, my boots clonk against the metal steps and echo into the vast space.
‘Looks like it,’ Cara replies, her voice jittering. ‘Did you have to bone the meat when you worked at the factory?’
I sense the disgust in her voice. Skels don’t eat meat. It’s for Morb consumption only.
‘No, they must do it here before they send it to us,’ I explain. ‘Oh look, see those white containers?’ I point to stacked plastic tubs. ‘The cuts of meat arrive in those.’
I let my hand slide down the clean, silver rail as we near the bottom of the steep stairs. We stride across the deserted factory floor, footsteps echoing.
‘There must be a door back here somewhere, a ramp to the Sky Train or something?’ Cara says, rushing past me. She disappears behind the plastic sheets that separate the cold cuts.
I push through the heavy swinging carcasses in her wake.
‘Cara wait!’ I yell and my voice echoes back to me and fades away.
I push and shove my way through, sending meat swinging behind me, where is she?
I find her, on her hands and knees, holding her throat, dark curls bent over one of the plastic delivery tubs. She coughs, and a splatter of undigested food hits the back of the tub. I stand over her.
‘Are you okay? What is it, food poisoning?’
I touch my stomach, hoping that I won’t be next but she shakes her head.
Stale bread and a handful of vegetables couldn’t have given her food poisoning, could it? I look around for something she can wipe her mouth with. We have to keep going. If we stay here, they’ll find us and fuck knows where Kian has jiggered off to. Great help he was.
I push my way back between the hanging meat. There’s nothing around, no storage, nothing, just thick plastic sheet after thick plastic sheet … I peel back some plastic. I wonder where they slaughter the cows. I tilt my head. Are these cows or pigs? I know my farm animals. Learned about them from my grandfather. What is this meat? Fingers trembling, I place my palms on either side of the chilled carcasses hanging in front of me. The hand of fear is tight around my throat. Squeeze. The tendons in my neck are like iron. I force the two meat halves together and hear the gurgle and splatter of Cara retching up more prison food, I feel mine hit the back of my throat. Nipples, not udders or pig teats but breasts, a woman’s breasts. This is a woman! A person. A Skel! Bile burns my throat. My knees weaken, legs soften, and my quivering bones collide with the hard floor. The room spins round, faster and faster. I will not vomit. I won’t. I won’t! My job. The meat. The grinder. I’ve been mincing … the meat it’s … my stomach lurches … it’s people.
17
Drift Side
‘Skyla get up!’
My arm is being tugged but the voice seems far away, yet close to my ear or inside my head. Bones soft, limbs like noodles, I’m dragged to my feet then lifted off them. Bumped along, legs dangling and in seconds the brightness behind my eyes dims, and warm air flushes my cheeks. Boots clump down stone stairs, jarring my body as we descend.
‘I can’t breathe.’
I open my eyes to see a blurry mess of sandy hair and a pale hand holding his pale throat. Bunce! Who’s carrying me? Strong arms and tender hands lift me down until my boots touch the ground.
‘Can you stand?’ Kian asks, hands around my waist, steadying me.
‘I think so.’ I say, holding my dizzy forehead.
Bunce stands with one arm over his eyes, shielding his face from the orange glow. The sun is low; a giant angry eye of a cyclops, the red mountains his shoulders. It’s dusk. Inside the prison, it felt later. I’m disorientated. I’m not sure where I am. Rock Vault is a vast network of corridors inside and looming angles of black stonework outside. It’s at least a mile wide. I’ve never walked all the way around it. This part of the city seems dirtier than where I call home and dead rats litter the gutters, crows occasionally swooping down to peck at them.
‘You’re safe for the moment,’ Kian says, leaning up against a pine tree. Pleased with himself. ‘No one comes out here at sundown.’
I scowl at him, as if I’m aiming a thousand knives at his head.
‘Did you know?’
His eyes dart to Bunce and then Cara. Dizziness abated, I round on him.
‘Did you?’ I ask again.
Everyone stares at the guard who used to be my most trusted friend.
‘Yes,’ he says, bitterly.
‘Nice friend,’ Cara spits.
Bunce says nothing.
‘What do you want from me, eh?’ Kian slides down the tree and sits hangdog, arms flopped over his bent knees. ‘Should I run around the city screaming, prisoners are Morb food. What’s that going to achieve? Would you have believed me, if you hadn’t seen it for yourself? I got you out.’ Kian shoots us all a look like we’re ungrateful children. ‘I’m sorry that isn’t good enough.’
‘You walked away and left us!’ I say, anger rising in my chest. ‘Left that man to die …’
Kian rises to his feet and stalks up to me, close, in my personal space.
‘I was rescuing your pet!’ Kian yells, ‘Or should I have left him to die?’
‘How can you do such a job knowing all this?’ I ask, confused at what my friend has turned into, ‘I don’t understand how you can betray your people in this way.’
‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’ Kian says, grinding his words and spitting them out at me. ‘It’s the Sky-way or the highway, right?’
‘Wrong!’ I snap. ‘I must have mistaken you for someone that gives a shit!’
I cross my arms, forcing him to back out of my space.
‘I do give a shit!’ He fires back, ‘But I don’t want to end up in the fucking grinder!’
‘Oh right, I get it now,’ I say, my voice rising. ‘As long as you’re all right, nothing else matters.’
‘What?’ He shakes his head. ‘No!’
Cara and Bunce don’t join the debate. They’re quiet, for a moment I forget they are there.
‘It’s wrong, Kian,’ I say, close to tears. ‘Eating people … it’s wrong. Don’t you understand that?’
My stomach turns at the thought of my part in it. I didn’t know, I reassure myself. Unlike Kian, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.
