Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

“It was voluntary. Judging by the audios he left for us.” Cena grimaced. “He was in love with it. In love with her. He was docked in every day for six months, but you’re a technician. You know how time perception gets. For him, it could have been years. Decades. He wanted to be with her forever. Full upload, he called it. Sick fucker had a prong the whole time he was cutting himself up. Didn’t go flaccid until Anastasia ate his spinal cord.”

“And then?”

“We were scared. Made a course deviation to get into orbit here, sent out emergency frequencies. Figured we might be able to get the bioship to go dormant until some trained technicians could come in and wipe the freethinker.” Cena shook her head. “And once we were in orbit here, no food, minimal water, no way of knowing when help would arrive, the only thing we could do was go back into cryo.” Cena wiped at her emaciated cheeks and seemed disappointed to find them dry. “We thought Pierce was the crazy one,” she enunciated, staring at her fingertips. “We thought Anastasia was still obeying her programming, sapient or no. So it should have been safe. To go back into cryo. It was the only thing we could do.”

She stalled out, so Silas prodded. “The pods were empty when we came in.”

“Yeah.” Cena stared at him. “I woke up twenty-one days ago. Wasn’t supposed to. Some kind of glitch. And the other pods, yeah. Empty.” She snarled. “She was heating us up one by one like fucking sausages. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. You know how your head gets right after the thaw. Thought I was hallucinating. Especially when I found half of Ahmed.”

“Half.”

“Top half. Grafted to the corridor wall. Being… absorbed.” Cena’s shoulders slumped. “He couldn’t talk anymore, at that point. I don’t think. She already broke something in his brain. He just stared at me. Then, when I tried to pull him down, he screamed. Loud, so loud. Anastasia must have heard it, or felt it, because she started sprouting those tentacles.”

Silas remembered the feel of them coiling around his ankles and shuddered.

“I screamed, too,” Cena said. “So loud. I know I should have stayed. I should have bashed his skull in with my boot. I think I could have done it quickly. Quicker. But I ran.”

Io and Yorick, left alone with no howler to face the bioship’s army of spiked tendrils. Silas’s stomach turned again at the thought of them writhing on a wall.

“I hid here, in engineering. Anastasia doesn’t have so much body down here. I tried getting into the system for days and days, but she shut me out of everything. Couldn’t flush a fucking waste unit, much less launch the lifeboat.” Cena gestured towards the blinking control panels. “She’s been hunting me for three weeks. Can’t see me when I wear her own skin, though, and when she goes dormant I burn out sensors and nerve bundles wherever I can find them.” She pointed to the mass of flesh she’d shed and it wriggled sluggishly. “Found out that if you slice it and mold it, it grows back together. Useful. Can even eat it when you’re done.”

Silas couldn’t hide his disgust and Cena spotted it.

“I always wonder who it is,” she said. “Ahmed or Omir or Su or whoever. I’m eating the crew. Just like she did. Maybe I’ll eat you, too.”

Silas stiffened. “I’m stringy,” he said.

“I’m joking. So. I’ve been waiting. Waiting and waiting.” Cena rubbed her cheek again. “And now you’re here. I can barely work a healthy freethinker. But I know that if we wipe the personality module, Anastasia dies. Or at least reboots.”

Silas remembered the swollen module, spitting and swirling with corrupt code. Beyond repair. But there was an alternative to wiping it blank.

“If she’s distracted, will you be able to get into the system?” Cena gripped his arm with cold fingers.

“I almost got in before.” Silas gently tugged his arm away. “But that was, you know, before. She’ll be ready for intrusion now. Her main interface nearly electrocuted me on the way out.”

“She’ll be busy,” Cena said. She looked down at her hands. “With your friends.”

Silas snapped upright. “You said you didn’t know where they were.”

“I don’t.”

“I got away,” Silas said, raking both hands over his head. “They got away, too. Holed up somewhere how you did.”

“Maybe,” Cena said. She gave him a long look. “Whether Anastasia has them or not, the only way to help your friends is to shut her down. Agreed?”

Silas inhaled deep enough that his oxygen meter blinked. “Agreed,” he said. “Let’s fucking wipe this thing out.” He stuck out his hand and Cena clung to it like a vice, grinning fierce and mad.

“Good,” she said. “Good. I’ll make you a suit.”

Ahalf hour later, Silas was creeping through a maintenance corridor, swathed from head to foot in what felt like rotting mushroom. The flesh suit was slick and warm and constricted his chest and arms, but he could move. Through a ragged gap he’d never noticed on Cena’s hump, he could more or less see.

And the tendrils hanging from the ceiling couldn’t. They brushed against him every so often, first trailing along Cena’s back and then bumping his, but they made no move to coil or strike. As far as the feelers were concerned, Silas was already part of the bioship.

So, he figured using the radio was worth the risk. Making sure Cena was still trundling forward, and that his external speaker was off, Silas chinned his mic. There was a static crackle, then nothing for a long minute. He clenched his jaw. He could picture Io’s top half without the bottom. Yorick crucified to a nutrient tube, unable to speak. Not even the company man deserved that.

“Silas! You alive?”

He’d never been so glad to hear Io’s voice. “I’m alive,” he said, clenching his fists inside their fleshy mitts. Relief crashed over him in warm waves. “I’m alive,” he repeated. “And I got Haley’s ghost. Are you alright? Are both of you?”

“Yeah, we’re alright, you stupid fuck.” Io’s reply was half-laughed. “You lobotomy case. You idiot.” She exhaled static. “How did you get back aboard? Fuck, Silas, our ship’s gone. Gone.”

“I know. Where are you?” Silas demanded, still picking his way along in Cena’s wake. “Actually, wait, don’t say. Anastasia might be listening. Look, I found out what happened with the crew, and it’s fucked up. It’s seriously fucked up.”

“We found out, too,” Io said. Her voice sounded strained. “And yeah. It is. But we don’t have to end up like them. We’ve been… negotiating. With her.”

Silas felt a prickle down the nape of his neck. “Bad idea,” he said. “Bad, bad idea. She’s completely bat-shit.”

“I know that.” Io paused. “Look, she has the lifeboat prepped and ready to launch. She doesn’t want us. Says we’re not family, whatever the fuck that means. But she wants us to do something for her first. She wants us to make her whole.”

Silas stared ahead at Cena’s swaying back. “What do you mean?” he asked, feeling another stab of trepidation.

“It’s the last crew member.” Io’s voice was coarse now. “They got away. She wants the whole set. She wants us to help hunt them down and recycle them.”

Cena turned to urge him on, and Silas realized his steps had slowed. He gave an affirming wave. She turned back. The ribbed corridor was coming to an end. They were nearly to the bridge.

“This was supposed to be a rescue mission,” Silas said.

“It was supposed to be maintenance,” Io said flatly. “We weren’t advised of these risks. Yorick will spin it our way when we get back to Dronyk.”