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

Standing so close to him, Avi could practically taste the metal infused in his sweat. She leaned in, letting her shoulder rest against his chest.

The sound of boots climbed to a crescendo and then passed by.

Avi let out a breath and slumped against Virgil. He wrapped an arm around her and held her tight, dropping his chin to the top of her head.

“Thank the Mother,” he whispered into her hair.

Avi pulled away and placed a hand on his chest. He looked the same as always. Bright blue eyes, close-cropped brown hair, and strong features. She’d grown up since they met, filling in and growing strong from training to work underground in the mines, but he never changed. Always kind, always steady.

Avi reached up and stood on her tiptoes and placed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth.

Virgil backed away, slamming into the rows of data storage units.

“We’re hiding, remember?” she whispered through a smile. “Be quiet.”

“Why did you do that?” he asked, touching his mouth with the tips of the fingers on his right hand.

“I was curious.”

He stared at her, eyes wide, breath short. She’d never seen him rattled before.

“Did I do something wrong?” The idea that she’d humiliated herself in front of her only real friend terrified her. What if he stopped talking to her? What if he stopped meeting her eyes after work shifts or during events? Could she survive here without him?

She opened her mouth to apologize. She’d just turned sixteen and had never been kissed. It didn’t mean anything. But before the words came, Virgil stepped close and dipped his head down. His face hovered barely an inch from hers and her breath caught when his eyes darkened and dipped down to her lips.

He ran his hand through her hair and kissed her.

He tasted like the air before a toxstorm, metallic and dark.

When he pulled away he took her hand again and opened the door back to the main hall.

Her mind whirled. Virgil had kissed her. Well, she’d kissed him first, technically, but hers had been a peck, a trial run. His had felt so much more real.

Virgil led her through the halls, quickly navigating through the maze of the Tek dorms. All the while, he held her hand and she followed, mind spinning. Soon they arrived at the maintenance hub, where spare Tek parts and repairs were handled.

“Why are we here?” The large room echoed her whisper.

“I was here last week for a neurocheck and saw a 3hree get led in. Her eyes were white, like she’d tacked into 3Spek, but she didn’t respond to anything. The Med-teks hurried her into a back room and when I asked what happened, they ignored my question.”

“She was walking around tacked in?”

“Yeah, but not really, more like they were leading her in the right direction. Like she wasn’t even there. When I asked the Upper 9ine who does our training, she grabbed my arm so hard I bruised and told me not to bring it up again. Avi, I’ve never had a bruise before.”

The darkness in the room took on an ominous tone and Avi swore she could hear whispers from the corners. It was probably the air vents and her imagination, but she grabbed Virgil’s hand tighter and stepped closer to him, his large body providing comforting warmth.

“Definitely weird, but why are we here?”

“Nelson.”

Virgil dropped her hand and walked further into the room. He passed the series-specific bays and continued on to a door Avi had never paid much attention to. She’d written it off as a supply closet or some other useless storage area because no one ever used it.

He gripped the handle but it wouldn’t budge. Mournful eyes looked back at her before he jerked it, his arm bulging with strength.

The 9ines were strong. They were built to carry, construct, and destroy. Their very DNA was coded by the priests for that purpose, but Avi had never seen Virgil display it before. Sometimes in the distance, she’d seen other 9ines loading transport ships or felling trees that had encroached into the terraformed city, but up close, the sheer power of him shocked her.

“It’s solid,” he said.

“Then break it. Don’t hold back because of me.”

His eyes darkened and she knew he didn’t want to.

“I’m not afraid of you, Virgil.”

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and gripped the handle with both hands.

She stepped back, unsure of what would happen if he managed to get the door to move.

Virgil closed his eyes, repositioned his hands, and in a smooth, almost liquid movement, hunched down and wrenched the door off its hinges. His body swung around, the door propelling through the air, but Virgil hung on, controlling its trajectory and using his momentum to bring it silently to the ground.

“Wow.”

Virgil shrugged and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Avi stepped closer again and placed a hand on his arm. The muscles beneath her touch rolled as if trying to escape her. “You’re amazing.”

He stepped away and gestured to the gaping door. “Let’s go.”

Beyond the door, a dim hallway led further into the temple than she’d been before. While Virgil didn’t frighten her, the priests did. Their absolute control and rule over the city left no room for disobedience. “Nelson’s in trouble?”

“Yes.”

She may not know what to believe about why the Mezna had created the Series Teks—if they were truly a realization of the gifts the Holy Mother had bestowed on humanity like the nuns taught, or if they were nothing more than bioTek freaks like the people of the city whispered when they walked by—but she did know that for Virgil to risk being found together at night and to rip open a door, he must be scared. And nothing scared him. Not the prospect of being sent to the satellite cities circling in space above Earth, not mining the Moon, not even being strapped down and flooded with radiation while Mezna DNA was pumped into his bloodstream. In the years she’d known him, this was the only time she’d ever seen him afraid.

That alone convinced her body to follow him into the darkness.

“Nelson’s been exploring the deep grid, trying to hack into the Tek assignments. He doesn’t get along with the other 9ines. They all treat him like he’s weak because he’s quiet. My assignment is coming up next year and he’s been constantly worried I’d be shipped out of Greenland.”

She reached for his hand and entwined her small fingers with his. It hadn’t occurred to her that Virgil might leave. The thought knocked her sideways, like a tsunami crashing to the shore, and she felt like she had to hold on to him to keep from being swept out to sea.

“I told him it didn’t matter. Even if he found out, they would still do what they wanted. They never listen to us. But he kept digging, slipping deeper and deeper. Every night he’d tack in after curfew and spend most of the night in 3Spek trying to trace the lines of the weave. But yesterday morning he didn’t get up. He’d been tacked in all night and I couldn’t wake him. He didn’t respond at all. No reactions, and the worst part was he didn’t even have reflexes at all. One of the others tried to pull him up and he fell to the floor. We called the Med-teks and they hauled him away, exactly like the 3hree, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“And you think he’s here?”

“I don’t know, but no one will tell me anything, and when I checked the infirmary he wasn’t there. I tried tacking in, but there’s no record of him at all now. It’s like he’d never been here, and I’m afraid to slip down into the grid to search…”

“You think this could happen to you?”

“I don’t know.” He stopped walking and turned to her, his body close and imposing. “But what if there are more of them? The way the Med-teks acted, it was like this wasn’t a surprise. In one week I’ve seen a 3hree and a 9ine slip into some kind of catatonia. What if that could happen to any of us?”