Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

The customer took both, gave Boniface an up-down, and melted back into the orange jumpsuits. A moment later, one of the Sixers came sniffing. The sweepers were distracted, and by the time the crowd reached the corridor gate to the freezers, half the prisoners had already bumped the new batch. Nyx had helped the circulation with a few more uncharacteristic giveaways.

“This is the prep-room?” Boniface asked, as they packed into a blue-gray chamber with machinery dangling from the shadowed ceiling.

“Yeah. Decontamination, blood tests, all that shit to get you cryo-ready.” Nyx paused. “I mean, ideally, you’d be getting a saline pump.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Listen up, fuckers!” One of the sweepers had followed them inside, rolling back his facemask. “You sit tight right here with me and Dirk during this little droid hunt. Anyone starts shit, they’re going in iso. Start shit in a big way, well, autoguns get buggy like anything else.”

The other sweeper hauled the door shut behind them with a pneumatic hiss and metal click.

“This’ll be done soon,” the sweeper continued. “The motherfuckers in entry / re-entry are going to learn to spot when a unit’s fucking robopregnant, and you’ll be back in the block before you know it.”

The prisoners were milling, rumbling. Nyx nodded his brother towards the back of the prep-room, where a metal-and-plexiglass door led to the freezer itself. He tried to peer through the frosted porthole.

“Been inside twice, on scrub duty,” he said. “Eerie as fuck in there.”

Boniface coughed into the crook of his arm, then straightened. “How did you meet him?”

“Capricorn?”

“Yes.”

“Saved me from being someone’s socket,” Nyx said shortly. “Told him I could cook, he got me my own cell. All the glass, all the precursor I needed. We ran this place.”

“And he stamped you.” Boniface traced his own skin, mirroring the zodiac inked into Nyx’s collarbone. “Like livestock.”

Nyx’s eyes went cryopod cold. “He made me family. I wanted the tag. He was a father for me.”

“We had a father.”

“Don’t even fucking remember him,” Nyx said. “Only pretended to for mum. All I remember is the hologame outside the hospital. But I guess he was a vegetable anyways, by then.”

Boniface started to cough again, more loudly this time, and when it ended he didn’t speak. Nyx sat down on the cold floor; a moment later Boniface did the same. A Sixer and two Neo-Mara were engaged in fierce hushed conversation. Lost-looking Woadskins camped in the corner. A few games of craps and one short-lived fight broke out.

Nyx and Boniface watched, and waited.

It started with Samir from the lunar colony trying to gnaw his own fingers off. His crew pulled his bloody hand out of his mouth before he did real damage, but a moment later half of them were flat on their backs, laughing madly at the ceiling.

“Fifty-eight minutes,” Boniface said. “You always did have a way with timed release.”

“Yeah. Be ready to haul ass through that door soon as the EMP drops the lights.” Nyx swallowed. He slapped his brother’s shoulder. “She’s seven, yeah? She’ll remember you. Should even recognize you in a decade; you’ll look the same.”

“Thanks.”

“Likewise.” Nyx gave him a push towards the door. “If it works.”

“Chemist!” Dirk’s crackly shout blared across the room. “Get the fuck over here, man!” Nyx threw his brother a salute, then turned and ambled over to where two baffled sweepers stood over Samir. The man was rubbing himself furiously against the floor.

“What the fuck did you give them?” the other sweeper snarled, snagging Nyx by the arm and hauling him forward. “What the fuck did you do?”

“Bad batch, unit,” Nyx said, wrenching his arm back. “Bad batch, is all.”

“He’s fucking panned.” Dirk shook his helmeted head. “So’s the crew. You do this on purpose?”

Nyx raised his hands. “No, fuck no. I like repeat customers.” He checked the time display on Dirk’s faceplate. “Get him to infirmary if you want. Shouldn’t your boys have dropped that EMP by now? Said we were stuck here for an hour, max.”

“They can’t pinpoint the thing,” Dirk said, with a snort of static. “Hoping it wandered into a furnace and fried itself. It’s not in the cells, not in the vents.”

Nyx’s spine tingled. He froze, then snapped his head up towards the ceiling, to the spires of dangling machinery. He searched the deep shadows for a flash of spidery legs or winking of red optics. Nothing.

“How many units bumped?” Dirk demanded.

Nyx pulled his gaze down. Pandemonium was spreading from all four corners now: he saw Sixers swatting at invisible insects and Woadskins howling into each other’s faces. Boniface had disappeared. Some sort of disturbance was building at the end of the room, inmates rippling towards and away.

“Don’t know. Plenty.”

“You fucking waste,” the other sweeper snapped. “I’m going to call in for tranqs. Fuck this.” He chinned his mic, but his mouth slackened and formed no words.

Nyx followed his eyes to where the inmates’ panic had reached crescendo. They were splitting off, backing away, as the medroid skittered through. Its carapace was crusted over with half-congealed blood, and traces of the most recent refuel dripped red in its wake.

The machine halted in front of Nyx, scanners flickering over his face. Nyx watched the laser move down his chest like a sniper’s sight and thought of all the nights of cooking, sweating into his facemask, squinting at the froth and hiss of reaction. He thought of how much additive had seeped into his pores.

“Don’t move, chemist,” Dirk muttered, but Nyx’s legs still shook as the medroid clambered slowly up his body, hanging off his shoulder like some cold metal fungus. Its wicked syringe snaked out from the underbelly, glinting razor-sharp.

Nyx probed his mummified mouth with his tongue.

“Autoguns don’t miss,” the sweeper said, taking aim. “You’ll be fine, unless there’s some crazy fucking ricochet.”

Nyx wanted badly to shake his head, and then everything happened at once. The medroid levered off his shoulder, springing for Dirk as Dirk strangled the trigger. Half the autogun slugs slammed into metal body; Nyx saw the droid crumple mid-flight, then he was shoved down and felt the spray as the other half of the bullets tore wet holes in the inmate standing behind him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Nyx choked, scrambling to his feet. Boniface helped haul him up as they turned to see the eviscerated medroid scrabbling for purchase on Dirk’s faceplate, needle scraping and sliding off at angles.

The other sweeper was screaming into his helmet, screaming for them to drop the EMP, it was in here with them, drop the fucking EMP. Inmates surged all around, erupting; Nyx saw a Sixer shiv drive through a Woadskin neck, an inmate clutching a stump instead of a finger.

Nyx and his brother fell back as the Neo-Mara dove into the crush. “That autogun software isn’t worth shit,” he gasped. “They have to drop it now, if they don’t drop it now…” On cue, he felt a whine shiver through his teeth, and in the same instant the lights blinked out. Nyx grabbed Boniface’s arm in the dark as bodies rushed around them. “Get to the door. Ten minutes till the locks resynch.”

“They’re killing everyone.” Boniface’s voice was shaky. “You need to hide.”

“Get going,” Nyx said, and when the emergency lights thrummed to life, sickly green tubes along the floor, his brother was gone.

The EMP had reset the palmprint lock that led to the freezer, leaving it a tabula rasa for Boniface’s sweating hand. With the room devolving into a full riot, nobody watched as he slid the door open, releasing a billow of cold, and slipped through. At first he was in icy darkness, then, as the lights came back on, he was forced to shut his eyes.