by J. N. Chaney
“Wounds like this one came in all the time.” Doctor Allbright held the Heal-Aid on my arm with one hand while using a towel to soak up the bloody run-off with her other. “If you’re caught up in something, I can point you to an organization that can help. Maybe set you on the better path.”
What the hell? I asked myself, looking up at the good doctor with wide eyes. She thinks I’m some kind of thug, wrapped up in a gang?
“It’s not what you think,” I said as the little machine stopped washing out my wound and prepared itself for the next phase. “I’m fine.”
Doctor Allbright raised an eyebrow.
I could see where she was coming from. The beard and long hair didn’t exactly scream “upstanding Transient.” To be honest, right now I just wanted to get the hell out of the med station and disappear. Maybe head home and crash on the couch. This Doctor Allbright was too smart for her own good. It was a reminder to stay away from this place and keep my head down. Doctors always asked too many questions and assumed too much.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, presumably letting the matter go for the time being. “This next part is going to hurt a bit. I can give you a sedative or some painkillers to take the edge off.”
“I got to get back to work,” I said. If Boss Creed found out about my little medical visit, I’d be out of a job for sure.
“It’s not going to feel good,” Doctor Allbright said, looking at me again. “This isn’t a tough-guy act, is it? The Med-Aid has to close the wound now. We don’t have the fancy tech like the Eternals doctors downtown, just the good old-fashioned cauterizing kind.”
“I’ve had it done before,” I said, motioning to my arm. “Like I said, I’m good to go. Just do it.”
“I feel like that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me,” Doctor Allbright said, tapping the display screen on the back of the healing tool. “Ready? Here we go.”
I needed to concentrate on anything else besides the searing hot pain that was about to scorch my arm. It would take only a few seconds for the machine to close a wound this size, but those few seconds would be hell.
I thought about everything I had to do today to finish my work. I thought about Stacy and the red holo card she and the thugs seemed so interested in. I even thought about Ricky and his incessant need to meddle in my life.
“Okay, that’s it,” Doctor Albright said, tearing me from my thoughts as she placed the Med-Aid on the counter. She cleaned off the blood from the rest of my arm while examining me. “Good as new, I think.”
I followed her gaze, lowering my eyes to the new pink skin that covered the place the wound had been only a moment before. It still hurt, but at least I knew it wasn’t infected and the bleeding had stopped.
“Here, tough guy,” Doctor Allbright said as she stood from her seat and motioned me from the room. She handed me two white pills. “Just old-school extra-strength Motrin to help ease the inflammation. You can still work and go about your day. If you don’t want them now, just take them later with a beer.” She gave me a wink. “Just don’t overdo it.”
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, accepting the pills and placing them in my pocket.
She opened the door and invited me into the hall. I rotated my shoulder, stretching my arm and noticing a significant drop in pain from before.
I had to admit, this lady wasn’t so bad, although I’d never openly say it.
She led me back down the narrow hall to the front of the office. “If you’re worried about me telling anyone, rest assured that I won’t,” Doctor Allbright said, opening the front door of the med station to usher me out. “I—”
Shouts and the screeching of tires masked whatever she was going to say next. Turning to my left, I could see the suits at the gate opened fire on a dumpster truck bulldozing its way toward the front entrance to the yard.
The next thing I knew, the gate snapped open and the truck came barreling inside.
Gunshots muffled the screams from the men on the catwalk, followed by the yard’s alarms. In seconds, the entire facility was so loud, I could hardly discern one noise from another. I could barely think.
The dark grey dumpster weaved like a drunk trying to find his way home, finally turning and aiming itself directly at the medical building.
4
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said out loud as my adrenaline spiked for the second time that morning.
The behemoth of a dumpster truck was bearing down on us too fast to make any calculated moves. For those few seconds, I made eye contact with the maniac behind the wheel. He looked younger than me, somewhere in his late twenties, and his wide-eyed expression looked fanatical as he fought the steering wheel.
There was no more time to think. I could only react.
I tackled Allbright to the floor, pushing her back inside her office and far from the door. A second later, the dumpster truck tore off the small catwalk outside her building, along with most of the door. Metal screeched as the dumpster truck scraped against the walls, finally breaking through them and sending a mist of dust into the compartment.
The entire med station shook with the impact from the blow.
“Th-thank you,” Doctor Allbright coughed as I removed myself from her. “What—who’s doing this? The Disciples?”
“That would be my guess,” I said, going over to the doorless exit, out of the med station. The yard was in chaos. Mechanics and workers ran all around, looking for safety as the suits continued firing at the truck. More of them piled into the yard as they arrived from the station down the road.
My stomach soured as I realized the reason why this truck had come. The Disciples were the most outspoken group against the colony missions. They hated the Eternals and refused to go along with the colonization plan. As they’d said, this planet belonged to the Transients, not the mutated and disfigured Eternals, who, in the Disciples’ eyes, were no longer human.
We had multiple key sections of the colony ship in our yard, which made us a target. I don’t think there was a doubt in anyone’s mind that the truck carried a payload of explosives. The Disciples had threatened as much, time and time again.
This wasn’t my fight, though. I was only here to do a job, but that truck had almost killed me, so I couldn’t help but take all this a little personally.
“Screw it,” I muttered, heading for the torn doorway.
“Wait!” Doctor Allbright screamed behind me. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I shouted back, unable to afford the time to give her a decent answer.
I sprinted down the yard, but the truck was going way too fast. The suits were peppering the area with red blaster fire as they tried to bring it down before it reached one of the larger construction centers. One lucky suit got a shot off, blowing out the truck’s front right tire.
The vehicle careened off course from its beeline for the ship. For a second, it seemed like all would be saved. Then the runaway truck slammed into the lunch tent, set up for the contingent of mechanics that worked around the clock on the Orion. Right now, it was smack dab in the middle of two lunch breaks.
My lungs burned as I ran toward the nightmare unfolding in front of me. Mechanics raced out of the tent as they saw what was about to happen, but they were too late.
The truck detonated in a terrible display of heat and force.
A wave of intense pressure slammed against my body, even though I was still a good sixty meters from the point of impact. It lifted my feet and hurled me through the air a short distance away.
I crashed violently into the hard ground, the wind knocked out of me. A cut opened on the left side of my face, and the familiar metallic tang of blood filled my mouth.
I rolled onto my back and lay on the ground, trying to focus on where I was and how I’d gotten here. I could barely breathe, see, or think.
For a moment, the clouded sky opened enough for the sun to beam down on me. The yellow light hit me in the face, but I couldn’t feel the warmt
h at all. I closed my eyes, trying to focus. A second later, the clouds rolled back in, killing the light.
The screams of the dying and wounded finally broke my temporary stupor. I pushed myself to a sitting position, wincing at the pain. “Holy crap,” I said, holding my head as I finally sat up.
Nothing felt broken, but then again, I could barely feel anything.
“Mr. Slade!?” Doctor Allbright rushed to my side, sticking her thumb on my eyelid and forcing it open. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said then pointed to the destruction in front of us. “I’m fine. Help them.”
Doctor Allbright gave me a quick nod and raced toward the demolished section of the yard. It really wasn’t much of anything now. Nothing of the massive white tent remained; not the steel rods that kept it in place or the anchors that ensured it withheld the winter winds when they came.
Large pieces of the truck were still smoldering in the wreckage, while countless bodies lay strewn across the gravel. Several of the mechanics and engineers moaned in pain as others remained still.
“What—what happened?” Ricky asked, out of breath. He’d arrived at my side from our workstation, a decent walk from here. “Are we—are we under attack?”
“I think the attacking part already happened,” I said, looking at him. I was grateful he wasn’t one of the ones in the tent. He helped me to my feet and I dusted my clothes off. “We should help.”
Ricky nodded furiously.
We rushed forward then abruptly skidded to a halt. A team of suits was desperately trying to lift a portion of the still smoldering truck off one of the mechanics. The man’s left leg was pinned under what looked like the rear axle of the truck, and sheer panic was etched in the young man’s face.
Ricky and I took it upon ourselves to go to his side.
“Hey—hey,” Ricky said softly, clenching the young man’s hand. “We got you—we got you. Hang in there.”
“I-I can’t feel my leg. Please, help me,” the young man said.
“It’s—it’s going to be okay. We’re going to get this off you, and then we will get you some medical help,” Ricky promised.
“Come on, we can move it together, on three,” I said to the pair of suits straining against the axle. I placed my hands on the hot steel, ignoring the pain. I straightened my back and bent my knees, finding fingerholds along the bottom. “One, two, three!”
I threw everything I had into the act, pulling from the memories that drove me forward every day. Each person had their own well of power they drew from when they were up against something physically demanding. I pulled from mine as memories of everything I’d lost threw me into action.
The hot steel under my fingertips budged then moved a few centimeters.
“Come on!” I raged at the suits struggling beside me. “Pull!”
With a groan, the axle moved up and sideways, off the young mechanic's leg.
I fell to the ground, panting. Sirens were already growing closer, promising more help to those who desperately needed it. The two suits next to me pulled out a medical case and began working on the young man’s leg.
The next few hours passed in a haze of helping wherever I could. I held bandages in place, searched for survivors in the rubble, and gave my statement to someone named Officer Serol.
By the time we finished, the sky had begun to darken. The emergency crew thanked us for our help and told us to go home. Stacy walked up to me, and we stood looking at the aftermath of the confirmed Disciple attack.
“They’re saying the colony ship wasn’t the real target,” Stacy said, her eyes never leaving the carnage in front of us. “The ship needs a crew of over two hundred able-bodied mechanics and techs to man the craft when it launches in a few weeks. They’ll be shorthanded now.”
She wasn’t asking a question exactly, but there was some uncertainty in her voice.
“The Disciples preach to their cult about keeping human DNA pure and untainted,” I said, looking at her. “They hate the Eternals for what they’ve been able to accomplish. Now the Eternals are giving the Transients a chance for a new beginning by creating these twelve colony ships. You’d think they’d welcome the chance to start over with other Transients. Other unaltered humans with pure DNA.”
“Maybe the Disciples see anyone willing to aid the Eternals as traitors to their own kind,” she said, letting out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Like you said, they’re a cult. They’re crazy.”
“Guess so,” I said.
“One thing’s for certain,” Stacy said, looking at me sideways. “The colony ships will need mechanics. I heard our ship will have two Eternals and a Cognitive manning the controls, with one hundred thousand Transients headed for a new world. That’s quite the responsibility for whoever gets the job. I’ve heard you’re good at what you do, Dean. You might want to try applying for—”
“Not interested,” I said, cutting her off. “I’m not kooky enough to travel through space in a metal ball to a distant planet I can’t come back from. I mean, come on. You’d have to be insane, right?”
The words died on my lips as I saw the look on Stacy’s face. She was one of those people, and she’d just asked me to join her. What the hell could she be thinking? As bad as this place was, why risk your life for an uncertainty?
“I signed up a few months back when they were looking for volunteers,” she said, shaking her head. “I just knew I wanted to get away from all of this, and it seemed like the best option. The Eternals are doing us a favor. They realize there’s no way for the Transient class to move up anymore. No more opportunity in the world when the people at the top can’t die and refuse to retire. If they left things as they are, someone would eventually start a war. This is our only shot. It’s the only chance humanity has to avoid killing itself.”
“Well, it ain’t for me,” I said, ignoring her words. “Besides, for as much as the Eternals are doing, maybe it’s out of guilt and not a sense of actually wanting to help. Maybe they realize what position they’ve put us in and this is just their way of getting rid of us—thinning out the Transient herd, so to speak.”
“Either way, I’m going,” Stacy said, turning to leave. “You can stay here and work in a scrapyard your entire life, maybe get enough credits to pay for a few extra years of life, but you’ll still have the same job you have now. You’ll still be here, serving someone else.”
“We’re all serving someone,” I told her.
“Maybe so,” she said, beginning to walk away. “But I’d rather serve myself.”
I watched her leave, choosing to stay silent. I had no interest in leaving this planet, especially with a couple of Eternals and a Cognitive leading the charge. I’d never interacted with a Cognitive up close before, but an artificial intelligence controlling my fate was something I wasn’t ready for.
“You headed back to the apartments?” Ricky asked, sidling up next to me. He was soot-stained from the smoke. Weariness in his eyes suggested that, like me, he’d had enough for one day.
“Yeah, I’ll walk with you,” I said as he and I began making our way from the yard.
“You two!” Boss Creed’s familiar voice took me off guard. He stood in front of us at the broken gate. “Work tomorrow, same time. We aren’t going to give these terrorists the satisfaction of changing anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Ricky said.
I just nodded, wanting to get through this exchange as quickly as possible so I could go home and sleep. I didn’t know any of the crew who’d died today—not their names or their stories. I didn’t know if they preferred chocolate or vanilla, if they had families, or if they were single. Maybe that was better, maybe it wasn’t. I couldn’t think about it right now.
We headed back up the street to where we lived, passing other Transients walking to and from their homes. There was a nervous chill in the air as everyone saw our smoke-stained faces and understood we’d been at ground zero.
They gave us a wide berth, pretending n
ot to stare when we made eye contact. Ricky and I traveled in silence, both of us lost to our own thoughts.
A few blocks from where we lived, Ricky stopped me with a trembling hand on my arm. I looked at him, then followed his eyes.
A group of men walked towards us.
“Um, just let me do the talking,” Ricky said, swallowing hard. “I got this.”
5
“Ricky!” The man leading the group opened his arms. He was average height but wide like a wrestler. A bald head and a cheap suit gave him the stereotypical cheesy salesman look. Four other men hung behind him. I recognized one of them as the gang member belonging to the Warlords that had booked it out of the alley after I knocked out his friends.
“You don’t call. You don’t write. How have you been?” the group leader continued.
“Mr. Harold, I-I’m fine,” Ricky stuttered. “Listen, I have your money. I know I was late, but I swear I have it. D-don’t shoot me or anything. I’m going to reach into my pocket for the credits.”
“Ricky, Ricky, Ricky,” Mr. Harold said as he moved forward and slung a meaty arm across Ricky’s shoulder. “You know your money’s no good with me. How far do we go back?”
“What, really?” Ricky asked, looking at me, confused.
Something was very wrong. Between Mr. Harold eyeing me like I was a prized possession and the thug who’d witnessed me putting down two men in the alley, I couldn’t help but be on edge.
“Why don’t you introduce me to your friend?” Mr. Harold asked, looking at me with a wide grin. A gold tooth shined through his greasy lips. “We can all be chums now.”
“Oh—well, this is...uh,” Ricky said, trying to warn me with his eyes and shaking his head.
“The name’s Dean,” I said, already suspecting what was about to come next.
“Dean. That’s a good, strong name,” Mr. Harold said, extending his right hand. His left arm was still draped around Ricky’s shoulder. “I don’t know too many Deans these days.”
