SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

His words rattled her resolve. He was right. She had resisted everything they did to her, every experiment, every test. She had longed to be home again, yet now she was so willing to give that very home up. For what? For some medical impossibility? Adaltan was all she’d ever wanted. She loved him, and she’d longed for their life together to start since the first moment he swam past her almost ten years ago.

Almost as if in reply, the being within her rolled, pressing itself against her stomach, causing her flesh to undulate. She grinned, so proud that this life grew strong despite everything it had to overcome. But when she returned her attention to Adaltan, his face had paled to a shade of green.

“Nilafay, it’s disgusting.”

She knew, watching his horrified expression as the child squirmed and rolled and pushed against her body, that she would have to choose. She could have the life she’d always dreamed of, freedom and love, or she could have the child she’d never expected.

The decision came surprisingly easily.

“Adal, do you love me?”

“With depths unknown.”

“Then come with me. I know a place where we’ll be safe.”

He backed away, the water pushing her back as he drifted farther. “I would go with you. If it was just us. But I can’t with that .” He pointed at her belly. “Don’t ask me to love another man’s…another species’s… child.”

“But I do. I love it.”

“More than you love me?”

With tears in her eyes, she nodded.

Adaltan’s image wavered in her vision, and then as quickly as he appeared, he drifted down into the sea, leaving Nilafay alone and more determined than ever to protect the life she’d been given.

The noonday sun filtered through the clear water of the cove Nilafay now called home. Beneath the surface, she held her hatchling—no her child , as this strange, pink-skinned babe had never hatched. She sang songs from the distant Domed City and ran her fingers through her daughter’s swiftly growing shock of dark hair. The tresses drifted out in the water like tentacles reaching for the light.

When the hottest part of the day passed, Nilafay carried her baby out of the water.“ What shall I call you, tiny creature?”

The little girl cooed and kicked out with tiny toes.

“It won’t do to call you ‘It’ or ‘Thing,’ will it? We’ll have to settle on a proper name, one that will carry you through life with your head held high.” Nilafay sat in the sand and held the squirming baby to her breast. Her daughter calmed quickly and gripped at her mother’s skin while settling into nursing.

The air dried the water from Nilafay’s flesh, leaving her cool in the afternoon air, but the warmth of her child kept her comfortable. The last month had been anything but comfortable. Carrying the weight of the rapidly growing child had thrown off her gait and made swimming difficult. But still she had continued on, foraging for supplies she and her child would need once it was born.

Now that she held the baby in her arms, the love she felt burst from her heart. Every trial she’d endured, every abandonment she suffered had been worth it. While others might only see abomination, Nilafay saw a bright future when she stared into the silver eyes of the child she’d borne. She hadn’t considered herself strong before, but now she knew what it meant to carry life, and that gave her the strength to overcome anything.

A lifetime ago, she’d dreamed of freedom and adventure, of living far away from the rules of the Domed City. She’d wanted nothing more than to sleep in the open beneath the ruby moon. She had everything she’d thought she wanted and more.

Despite what the Erdlanders had been done to her, she could never hate them, not really. They were the reason she had this gift. Vaughn had been a means to an end, her body a sacrifice in exchange for her freedom, but looking at the drowsy eyes of their daughter, she felt no regret. As time passed, she even harbored a kind of nostalgia for the time she’d spent with Vaughn. Given time, could they have actually come to care for one another? In another world, where the differences between their races held less importance, she might have even allowed herself to really love him.

Her daughter drifted to sleep in her arms. “Sera,” she whispered, thinking fondly of her housefille who would never be allowed to have children of her own. “I think I’ll call you Serafay.”

Nilafay looked up to the sky, no longer so enamored with the moons as she once was. Instead the glittering stars that spread across the open expanse caught her attention. Their light rained down on her, sparkling in her daughter’s silver eyes like moon dust.

originally published by Windrift Books in The Cyborg Chronicles

Fifteen minutes into her first dig, Avendui 5ive fell to her knees, and her newly installed shin-plates shifted, threatening to reopen the healing wound holding them in place.

Rina 5ive rolled her eyes. “Move it. You’re holding up the whole class.”

Nineteen years old and barely out of Ecumenical School, Avi was going to die lying in the dirt. The dim light of the tunnel flickered in her vision as she grasped at her throat. “I can’t breathe.”

Each breath she pulled in came faster and the dusty air filled her mouth, drying out her tongue before she could get the next lungful. She was drying out from the inside, her lungs filling with dirt and grime with each inhale, making it impossible to catch her breath.

“Just calm down. It takes a moment to get used to it, but you’re fine.” Rina stood next to her, arms crossed but offering her no aid as she lay on the ground. Just like a Tek.

The underground tunnel tilted on its side in her vision. The rest of the class stood around her, annoyed. Part of Avi was surprised they didn’t just leave her there and keep going on their trek below Mezna City. It’s not like she had any friends. Being an opinionated Tek didn’t win positive attention, and questions were discouraged. Teks did the work their series had been designed for, nothing more. No friends, no parents, no lovers. They may have been born people, as organic as any other, but the implants and coding they received had turned them into Teks. All function and form, no soul.

But Avi was broken. Not just because she couldn’t breathe, she’d been broken long before that. No matter how she tried to hide it, she couldn’t help feeling lucky. Because what the other Teks denied themselves, she’d found. Love.

And now, deep below the remains of Old Nuuk, Greenland, she was drowning in the dirt. As a 5ive, her series was tasked with tending the alien terraforming biotechnology that built the city. The streets, even the buildings, were a living, growing organism. Keeping it healthy meant keeping their home alive. The parasitic organism sent tendrils down through the layers of the Earth, seeking nutrients and minerals.

Her only function in life was to untangle tendrils that became knotted together and drill for nutrient veins. Her enhancements were supposed to help her function in high CO2 concentrations.

But the DNA and physical form alterations didn’t help Avi.

Pain clenched down around her chest. Her carbon lung must be malfunctioning. The pain of it radiated down her arm and the tighter the vice became, the harder she struggled to catch her breath. “I can’t…”

Black spots in Avi’s vision alternated with bright white flashes, and her entire body became heavy, as if engulfed in cryogel.

The lights went out.

“What do you mean I can’t see her?” Virgil 9ine roared at the massive Med-tek standing at the door of the 5ive Infirmary.