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

Avi reached for their friend, but when she touched him, he fell to the side, his body limp against Virgil.

On cue, the rest of the group stopped their synchronized breathing and slumped forward in their chairs, the blue lights dimmed, leaving only black and translucent wires hanging in the now silent room.

“No.” Virgil dropped the evidence of what he’d done, leaving it to dangle from the ceiling, swinging from side to side without purpose.

“We have to leave.” She grabbed Virgil and pulled on his arm.

“No!” he roared, jerking away from her and grabbing Nelson’s body. “Nelson! Come on, come on! You have to get up. We can get you out of here.”

“Virgil…” The lights in the room dimmed slightly and the Tek consoles on the perimeter of the room pinged as they booted up. The sound of old-fashioned gears turning filled the room and soon an alarm shrieked overhead. “We have to go.”

Virgil knelt and held Nelson in his arms. Two oversized boys without family.

Avi pulled Nelson away, letting his body slump to the ground.

“What are you doing?” Virgil lashed out, hate and pain filling his eyes with tears.

“I don’t want you to join him. Get up, now.”

“I can’t leave him. This is wrong. All of this. How could they?”

“Who? The priests? The Mezna? The other Teks? You don’t even know who did this or why. You don’t know anything. But I do. I know that if you don’t haul your ass out of here, you’re going to get plugged into that monstrosity or sent to mine on the lunar surface or some other punishment that’s going to take you away from me. And I hate seeing Nelson like this, but I can’t survive it here if I lose you too.”

“I can’t.”

“I need you, Virgil. I need you to get up, because I’m not leaving without you.”

He tilted his head up so she could see the blue beneath his watery eyes.

“Come on,” she soothed. “Come with me. I’ll take care of you.”

He sniffed and nodded.

Together they ran down the halls, hiding in plain sight as chaos erupted in the temple.

At the door of his dorm, she kissed both his eyes and then his mouth. Not the passion-filled intermingling of desires from earlier in the night, but the kiss of someone who knows your darkest secret, and loves you anyway.

“I have to go back down tomorrow. My medical leave and begged delays are over,” Avi forced herself to say into the smooth skin on Virgil’s chest. She lay next to him on the floor of the med-sensor closet. Years ago, they’d pushed the shelves away from the back wall and made themselves a hiding place.

“You’ll do fine. The tunnels are safe, they’re all reinforced.”

“It’s not that.” She traced the hard line of the access bar bisecting his chest.

“What is it, then? Are you afraid of the dark?” He reached over and dug his thick fingers into her ribs, making her squeal and pull away from his warmth.

“No.”

“What, then?”

“It’s the smell. The petrichor seeps under my skin and I feel like I’m drowning in it. There’s so much dirt. I forget sometimes how big the planet is. There are only a handful of Mezna cities and even fewer human reservations left, but there’s all this wild open space—the Acid Seas, the Feral Wilds. It gives me the creeps, and being under there, it’s like you’re a part of all that.”

“You think too much,” Virgil teased before frowning and pulling her tight against his body. “Don’t fitz out again. That scared me.”

“Me too.” She nuzzled close and let herself drift off, breathing in the metallic tang of Virgil.

In the morning, Avi trudged to the tunnels. It took all her effort not to hide and pretend she wasn’t a 5ive at all, that she could get a job out in the city and come home at night to Virgil’s smile. All her life she’d fought against being categorized, against being nothing more than her series designation, but now that’s what it all came down to. There were no other options for her. She would never live anywhere but Nuuk and she would never be anything but a 5ive.

The smell hit her before she could see the stairwell that led into the 5ive Center. There she’d get her first work assignment and take the lift down into the depths of the earth. The center was white and pristine, like the rest of the city. But no matter how hard the terraformed walls and ground worked to keep the room clean, absorbing all the dust and gravel the Teks carried on their clothes and shoes, it could never get rid of the smell.

“Avendui 5ive,” she said, introducing herself to the 5ive holding a vidscreen. She waited until he acknowledged her.

“You’re in the depths, so you’ll be bunking below tonight.”

“This is my first day back.”

The Tek raised an eyebrow and snorted. “So?”

She took a deep breath, but felt faint. She took another, too fast. Too much oxygen flooded her system. She needed to breathe. The room felt full, everyone’s voice rising to a volume that drilled inside her brain. Her skin itched and tingled and every thought ended abruptly as the next one interrupted. All the while, a chant of ‘in the depths’ swirled through her mind.

“I can’t…” She gasped, the white ceiling brightened as she looked up, and for a moment she thought she was flying. The world became soft and gentle like a cloud as she drifted, and she’d never have to think about anything but Virgil again. Maybe they could live in the Greenland Human Reservation. He’d stand out because of his size, but she could hide her exo-implants if she wore long pants.

And then everything went black.

Virgil stood outside the Upper 5ive dorm for two days.

He didn’t eat.

He didn’t leave when the guards threatened him with their sparking blue staffs.

They were smaller than him anyway, so he felt no threat.

On the third day, one of the nuns brought him water and asked if he’d like a chair.

“No, thank you, Sister. I’ll wait like this.”

“She’s not here,” the nun said, confirming what everyone else had told him.

“I’ll wait until she comes back.”

When the nun left, Virgil placed the glass of water on the ground and resumed his wait.

On the fourth day, Virgil felt faint. He hadn’t left his spot except for the rare trip to the bathroom. He needed food. No matter how strong his body had been coded, every creature needed sustenance to survive.

Virgil clenched his fists. He wouldn’t leave until someone told him where Avi had been taken.

She’d never returned from her first day below. Virgil had worried but knew she might be tired. After a few days he checked 3Spek to see if she’d been admitted to the infirmary again. He should have known right away, he’d set up an alert, but maybe it had faltered. He slipped into the weave, deeper than he had since they’d lost Nelson, but couldn’t find her anywhere. It wasn’t until the next week that his panic set him on this ridiculous course of action. No one cared if one 9ine stood sentry forever outside the Upper 5ive dorms. No one cared if he starved to death. There were other 9ines lined up to replace him. Moving, exchangeable parts. That’s all they were.

Avi had tried to tell him that so many times, but he’d never understood until she was gone.

That night, he sat on the floor, his long legs stretched out before him, filling the entire hall. He nodded off as the darkness overtook him and roused to a gentle touch on his shoulder.

“Brother 9ine,” a soft voice beckoned him from his sleep. It sounded like her, his Avi, but she had never been soft. She had always been the strong one.

He opened his eyes to find a young nun sitting before him with a full blue habit covering her from head to toe. She kept her eyes down but he knew they were blue, like every other person whose DNA was laced with Mezna biology.