Feed the Machine (14 page)

She marched on, knowing the cough was an early warning sign. She’d spent enough time in the trough between waves of illness. Another one was coming, a heavy wall threatening to smash her to pieces underneath it. She had to get out and back before she was pulled under.

The two dots crept closer. There wasn’t much battery power left but she estimated it was enough to at least find the dot. She’d have to remember the way home (which was easy).

When she was one point two kilometers from home she told Hello he could fly if he wanted. He rubbed his beak against her face before taking off, his wing whooshing against her ear. He became a black dot in the sky, flying in lazy circles.

You’re going to die.

“Oh, you’re back are you?”

Silence. Silver was fine with that—she could concentrate on walking.

She followed the winding path, occasionally checking the tablet and looking around at the walls of junk as she passed by. She hadn’t really spent much time outside Cago, not since their father vanished and their family’s slow topple began.

Your fault.

Silver stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, taking a slow breath. Then she opened them and kept walking.

It is, you know.

“Oh fuck off,” she snapped.

She sped up, welcoming the pain in her legs. She could focus on that and ignore the dark whispers.

She followed the path around a sharp bend, the gap between the walls of junk narrowing. They were close enough now one earthquake would have her buried alive. Nearly at the silver dot. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.

Another corner and she found a gaping hole in the side of the pile. Around the edges of it small gray bugs chewed junk and spat out silver liquid which hardened immediately. They’d eaten a metallic tube that sloped down into the darkness. Silver stepped closer and peered down the tube. It was large enough for her to walk into and gently sloped downwards.

She waved her hand at Hello. The tiny black speck dive-bombed, falling like a stone. When he was twenty meters above her he extended his wings and spun in a small circle, losing velocity. He landed on her shoulder and peered into the hole.

“Shiny. I like it.”

Silver stepped into the metal tube, testing it with her foot. It was solid. She held the tablet out, the glow of the screen lighting her way as she stepped down into the dark.

The temperature dropped as she descended, condensation forming on the walls. She passed this damp patch and then the temperature began to rise again, becoming humid and warm.

She ran her fingers down the inner wall as she walked. It was smooth and flawless. The bugs had done an incredible job.

Silver walked for fifteen minutes, only darkness ahead and behind her. There was no sign she was progressing towards anything. Maybe this was a trap. Someone just had to seal the end and she’d be stuck down here until she starved to death.

Eventually the glow of the screen reflected back in a dull glimmer from a wall ahead of her. It resolved itself into metal door covered over with fine mesh. The mesh was rusted, covered in pockmarks and looked ancient.

Silver opened the door and stood on the threshold, hesitant to enter. The tablet couldn’t light the room enough to see what was in it. There was a shape on the floor to the side. The smell of old things drifted out. It was the smell of rusting iron, aging paper and the dead.

“Okay, I can do this,” she said aloud. The voice offered no opinion on the matter (still sulking she suspected after being told to fuck off). She stepped into the room using the tablet for light.

She needn’t have bothered—the moment she crossed the threshold the room lit in a glare of white from the ceiling. Silver covered her eyes and Hello squawked in alarm in her ear. He jumped off her shoulder to land on the floor. The door thudded shut behind them and locked.

Silver blinked through the glare, the light hurting. Shapes resolved into objects. A table against the back wall. There was a metal box sitting on it, the front of it fine flawless mesh. On top of it was a green button.

The room was empty except for—

It was a body. The shape on the floor was the body of a girl, facedown. She had something black under her arm.

Silver took a step towards her. The box on the bench crackled to life.

“Don’t touch her! Come over here right now. There isn’t much time.”

Silver turned around to try the door and noticed a timer embedded in the wall above it counting down from one minute. Only forty seconds to go. She tried the door. It was locked.

“Come over here, please!”

The voice was an old woman with a strange accent. Her words seemed to go up at the end, like she was asking a question.

Silver approached the box. There was a small pale blue tempcube sitting next to it.

“Silver, I need you to take that tempcube and build what is on it. Then I need you to—”

“How do you know my name?”

“It’s not import—”

The voice crackled away in a burst of static. There was a hum, low and electrical. The box started clicking, a high-pitched sound. It cracked again and the voice returned.

“Do as I say please! Build the plans on the cube. Once it’s done, you need to kill Gould Riley. Don’t tell anyone until you have built the plans!”

Silver stashed the tempcube in her bag.

“You need to look at this,” Hello said from the floor. He was standing next to the dead girl.

“Who’s Gould Riley?”

“Fat Man! You call him Fat Man! When that timer reaches zero you need to run out of here—bugs will eat this entire place! Leave that body—”

The voice cut out as the timer above the door went off. The door swung open. The box on the table cracked open and silver bugs came pouring out.

“We have to go!” Silver yelled.

“No! Look!”

Silver ran to Hello, intent on grabbing him. All the strength went out of her body.

It was her.

Heedless of the bugs pouring out of the box, already eating the table down in frenzy, she reached down and turned the body over.

Dried and desiccated, her lips cracked and mouth hanging open. In her arms she held a dead crow.

“That’s me,” Hello said.

There was a tremendous crash as the table against the wall gave way, eaten down the middle by ravenous bugs. The box smashed on the floor and the bugs scattered. One landed on the dead Silver and took a bite out of her dried flesh.

Run you fool!

Silver grabbed Hello and ran for the door, the bugs close behind her.

The way back was a torturous climb. She could hear the bugs eating the metal tunnel away, their jaws thrumming vibration under her feet. What was a gentle downwards slope now seemed a hellish mountain climb. The sound of the bugs filled the tunnel.

She couldn’t stop, not even when she started coughing. She ran through the dark, tasting blood, gasping with each step.

A circle of light appeared. She approached it with agonizing slowness, convinced a vicious flood of bugs would run attack her from behind, taking chunks out of her back and neck.

She let go of Hello and he took flight towards the end of the tunnel.

“Hurry, hurry!” he called out, his voice echoing.

There was too much pain, her legs too weak, not enough air. Silver stumbled, managed to right herself and kept moving. The light was so far away and then it wasn’t. It was all around her. She slid down the junk and collapsed on the dirt path.

It had to be enough because she didn’t have any more to give.

Behind her, over the rasp of her breath she heard a crunch of metal as the tunnel collapsed. Eaten into nonexistence by crazed bugs. She pulled herself to her feet and turned around. There was no sign a tunnel ever existed.

The bugs had eaten it all.

The room.

The communication box.

The dead Silver.

The dead Hello.

“We have to get back,” Hello said, landing on the dirt beside her. “The gates are going to close.”

“Okay,” Silver gasped. She stood and spat blood before setting off on unsteady legs.

Chapter 24

She made it inside the gate with ten minutes to spare. Not long after she was back in her workshop, hands trembling as she connected the tempcube to her keyboard. The tablet had unlocked, returning to normal.

“How could there be a dead me down there? I’m
me
and I’m alive. So are you.” Hello shook his wings out and then pecked at a loose circuit sitting on the table.

“We’ll find out, I promise.”

The tempcube contained three items. The first was a plan for a cutter with a compass embedded in the handle. Silver skimmed through the plan noting it required rare materials she didn’t have. All she had to do was put the tempcube in a hasdee and it would make the cutter if she fed it the required ingredients.

The second was a plan for a mesh box connected to a power supply. It was called a blocker box. It would block electronic signals. She could make that now with materials on hand.

The third item made no sense. It was a splatter of gibberish. It looked like code but mixed and twisted around. She surfed through it looking for clues to its nature before giving up and letting it go. The moment she did it changed color and shape, becoming a small image with a large golden arrow sitting atop it. Silver tapped it with her finger.

The screen filled side to side with color and sound burst out of the tablet. People talking and laughing.

The image was Cago but not quite as she knew it. The image jerked along, bobbing up and down and Silver realized it was because whatever made the image had been carried by a person.

They zoomed down a street she recognized as hers in the poor area of Cago. But the path was cobblestone rather than dirt. The houses were painted, nothing run-down.

The image swung around and Ash’s face filled the screen. He stuck out his tongue, grinning at the screen. He looked nothing like the brother she knew. Her brother was dark from the sun, skinny, his face all sharp edges. This Ash was fat in the face with rounded cheeks. He was a pale brown.

Then Nola appeared beside him, her hair dyed in stripes wearing a fortune in jewelry. Gold rings, diamond necklace and bracelets.

“Stop it!” she said and ducked out of the image.

It swung again, Ash disappearing. Silver saw herself and her mother. They were walking down the street, her mother’s arm across her shoulders. They waved. Her mother was plump and white, soft as a cloud. The Silver on the screen had smooth skin, no sign of any illness.

The image jerked and jolted then, showing the ground and the blue sky in a blur and then a grinning black face filled the screen.

Their father.

It froze on him before vanishing. Now the tempcube held only two items—the plans.

Silver searched through the cube but the file of gibberish was gone like it never existed.

She closed her eyes and ran it through in her memory.

“They’re rich, fat and fed. Cago isn’t run-down and poor. It was day, midmorning. Nola had hair dye. I didn’t see any pets. And—”

She opened her eyes, the image shimmering before them.

“None of them are wearing collars.”

Their necks were bare. Only Scabs had bare necks. Everyone else wore a collar. Every baby had to be brought to the Machine within twenty-four hours of birth or every hasdee and bug in the city would cease working until it was presented. The Machine would spit out a small collar that slipped over the baby’s head and then tightened on its neck. It grew as you did and could never be removed.

Silver sat back on her stool, staring into nothing as she reconstructed the room at the end of the tunnel in her mind.

The voice on the box was familiar. She’d heard that accent before.

The answer appeared in the distance and bolted towards her.

“No, I can’t, I’m tired, please…”

You need to make the plan and kill Fat Man.

“Help me, I’m sick, I can’t do this right now,” Silver begged, squeezing her eyes shut. She slipped off the stool and collapsed on her bed, kneeling, burying her face in her hands.

The answer was nearly here.

“Just let me rest, let me rest, I don’t know why it has to be me.”

Yes you do.

The answer arrived.

And gone.

PART THREE

Chapter 25

Nola

Nola pressed the button and caught the pap the hasdee spat out. It was pure white—not even streaked with the slightest yellow of any vitamins.

“Fuck you to fucking hell,” Nola told the hasdee.

“It needs a rebuild,” Silver said from her table.

“It needs a fucking bullet.”