Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

There was one final thing we had to do before we could get out. I'd told myself that it had to be left to the last minute because afterwards, we weren't going to be in a state to do much running around. The truth was I'd left it till the end because it scared the shit out of me, and I wanted to put it off as long as possible.

Ingo had found the place for us, near the engine rooms and the tender boats, where the electric wires that channelled the current that fed the ship were thickest and most accessible. He'd said a lot of other things, but I hadn't really listened. Only the words ten-thousand volts had really registered, along with the words I'd mentally added: potentially fatal. But Ingo had said that that was the current we needed to guarantee burning out the chips.

"It's here," Ingo shouted, voice barely audible above the screams of the crowd.

We began to shoulder our way towards a narrow corridor that snaked off to the left. But a horde of people in a panic have a force to them like a river in full spate – and like the salmon that swim upstream to spawn, we almost didn't make it. I got an elbow in the ribs, another in the eye. Behind me I heard Haru shout as someone snagged his t-shirt and pulled him roughly out of the way. He stumbled and I grabbed his arm a second before he could fall. He gasped out a thank you, lost in the din. A fall would be fatal. This crowd wasn't stopping for anyone. Their feet echoed against the metal floor, filling the lower decks of the ship with a sound like an army on the march.

I could see the entrance we were aiming for, five feet away now but still impossibly out of reach. There were six people, ten, between us and the entrance and not one of them was going to move out of our way. Just for a second, I thought about the gun jammed into the waistband of my trousers. But no, not that.

In the end, I was a pace past the door by the time I'd managed to make it to the left-hand wall. Only Haru saved me, grabbing my arm this time and pulling me back and sideways, abruptly out of the crowd and into a dark, silent room.

"Well," I said brightly, "who wants to go first?"

"It would be better for me to go last," Ingo said, with his usual blank seriousness. "Since I will be the one administering the shock."

"Hey," Haru said, waving a hand at me in a gesture that would have looked more suave if he hadn't been visibly shaking. "Ladies first."

I wanted to say that maybe I should be last, since I was the doctor who would treat whatever injuries this insane process was going to leave us with. But the truth was we'd either live through it or we wouldn't, and no amount of medical training was going to change that.

"Fine," I said. "Do it." I held my bare arm out towards Ingo and tried not to shake too visibly. It almost made me laugh, the way the wire was spitting sparks, like something out of a Frankenstein movie. But I thought if I opened my mouth the thing most likely to come out would be a sob of fear, so I pressed my lips together and turned my eyes away.

Strange, isn't it, how anticipated pain is so much worse than pain you aren't expecting? It felt as if every cell in my body was on fire, the fire sparking into my brain, nerve endings forgetting that they were designed to do anything other than tell me how much they hurt. My muscles contracted, agonisingly, then slackened uncontrollably. I was glad I'd known to empty myself in preparation. If there'd been anything in my bladder or my bowels, it wouldn't have stayed inside.

A second later as I lay on the floor twitching, I heard a harsh, high scream and then Haru was beside me, spine arched so sharply that only the back of his head and his heels were touching the floor.

It occurred to me that maybe I should have told him not to eat or drink because there was the sudden stench of urine and shit combined, and I could see the dark puddle of liquid spreading out beneath him a second before his convulsion ended and his buttocks felt right back down into it.

But, gasping and gagging, he was still alive and so was I. His hand scrabbled along the deck beside him and I wondered what he was searching for, until his fingers fumbled then clasped the metal lump of his watch. Of course. He must have put it aside before the current went through him, because flesh can be healed but the delicate mechanism of the watch was irreplaceable. Machines were more valuable than people now.

Finally there was Ingo, his round, placid face showing no fear. He hesitated a moment, then jammed the wires into his own bare skin. The shock of it pushed him backwards like a giant hand, thumping him into the far wall with a musical clang.

Feeling even weaker than when I'd been going cold turkey and wishing I could die, I dragged myself to my knees. My head hung low as I fought a sudden, intense nausea. I took a moment more to gather myself, to convince myself that motion really was still possible, and then I pushed myself to my feet.

Soon, you'll be stronger than ever, the Voice told me, louder than a whisper now, as if it had drawn some weird mental energy from the current which had coursed through me. I laughed at the idea that I'd ever be strong again. Then I saw Haru looking at me, puzzled, and I remembered that the Voice was something only I could hear.

But I just laughed louder. His hair looked exactly like a cartoon character who'd stuck his finger into an electric socket, a wilder caricature of his normal gelled spikes.

"I'm glad that you're enjoying yourself," he said, the words rasping through a throat scoured raw by his earlier scream.

I shrugged and offered a hand to pull him to his feet, though I had to lean my full weight backwards to give him any kind of leverage. I bent down to do the same for Ingo and realised for the first time that he hadn't moved since the shock. I couldn't see his chest moving.

"Shit!" I said. I knelt hurriedly beside him and fumbled for his pulse with fingers which were still only half under my control. After a moment I felt it beating, inconsistently, faintly. The corridor was dark, but I thought I could see his eyeballs rolling beneath the closed lids. It was impossible to say what this meant: that he was about to wake up? That he'd never wake up? With that kind of current the damage could be permanent.

"He's unconscious," I told Haru.

He shrugged, hair still a wild shock, but not looking so funny now. "He's done his part – we don't need him any more."

I reached down and shook Ingo's shoulders gently.

"Come on," Haru said. "We're running out of time. Two out of three making it is better than we could have hoped for."

He was right, but looking down at Ingo's soft, boyish face – at the crooked fingers of his hand, resting outstretched against the metal floor -- I didn't feel ready to make that kind of calculation just yet.

"One more minute," I said to Haru.

I thought he wouldn't wait for me, but after a second and a sour twist of his mouth he turned back, eyes fixed impatiently on Ingo's.

Another second and Ingo's eyes flicked open. I could almost see the knowledge seeping back into them, and with it an expression of pain so profound that I found myself leaning away from it. A moment more and it was gone, and Ingo's eyes were as dark and untroubled as ever.

I offered him my hand, surprised at how big and warm his palm felt in mine. His youth had somehow tricked me into thinking he was smaller than he was, more helpless. Jesus, I realised, I'm feeling maternal towards him – just the kind of sentimental shit I didn't need right now.

Ingo nodded at me, the most thanks I'd get, and then we were running into the corridor that led to the boats and back into the crowd. Except that the crowd was gone, the flood of people had thinned to a trickle. When we emerged into the larger space of the launch deck, our footsteps echoed hollowly in the emptiness.