Feed the Machine (29 page)

Like it did when they owned it, it didn’t jerk around or make a sound. Silver liquid streamed from the nozzle and onto the empty platform below. It coiled and piled, taking on sharp edges and strange shapes. Once it reached about five meters high it shimmered for a moment before the silver soaked back into the hasdee, leaving a giant mound of junk behind.

The naked slaves rushed forward and started pulling the pile apart.

“Motherfucking fucker,” Nola whispered to Hello, standing in the dark. As the slaves pulled the junk apart they threw it into the buckets on the conveyor belt.

It wasn’t long before a skinny woman held up something and shouted, “I found one!”

The guards immediately rushed in and took her away with them but not before Nola saw the familiar blue-green glow.

It was a sourcecube.

“Someone is coming,” Hello said and flew into the darkness.

Nola took two steps towards the broken stairs before someone tackled her down to the ground and knelt on her.

“You’re going to suffer for this,” Gardner said, breathing heavily.

Chapter 46

Ash

For days Ash had pushed himself to put his plan into action and for days he’d failed to do so.

It was simple: discover who was smuggling and report them. Ask to be made a guard.

A day after Kin came to see him, Ash had found the smuggling ring. Hector, the kid who worked next to him in the mine talked a little too much. It didn’t take much prodding on Ash’s part for Hector to start bragging and soon he had the name of the man next up the ladder: Sebastian.

Sebastian was very good at convincing men and women to trade sex with guards for favors. They turned a blind eye to his smuggling and theft.

Ash thought exposing him would be enough to prove himself but the vision of the little boy being beaten to death and revived again would not leave him.

So he did nothing but work and sleep and eat and keep looking for gaps. He saw Emi again but she didn’t sit with him. As tired as he was he couldn’t get her out of his mind. The scent of soap and girl. The brush of her hair on his arm. Her green eyes and freckles.

Even now, everyone around him talking and pointing, she still drifted into his thoughts.

This morning before dawn something had exploded in one of Fat Man’s buildings. The roof was blown off and a fire started.

Most of the people who scavenged in the Scour had gathered nearby to watch. Sheriff Toll and his deputies formed a bucket line from the water pump. Ash and the rest of the family were marched out to the mines as usual by the guards.

“It was like BOOM and this huge flame!”

Hector was waving his arms around, babbling like crazy. Ash was giving nonreplies, just enough to make him think he was participating.

“They say it’s one of the Fat Men from another city.”

“Really?”

There weren’t
literally
other Fat Men. There was always someone though with growing power, a family of slaves and brutal guards. Ash knew in Char there was a woman named Tessa who was their “Fat Man”.

“Maybe there’s going to be more!”

“Maybe.”

It was an intriguing thought but one that ultimately went nowhere. In the chaos of explosions maybe he’d be able to steal some gold… if he wasn’t outside the fence down the bottom of a mine.

They reached the mine opening. It was gigantic, a deep hole descending down into the pile held open by welded struts. The struts formed a sort of cage to hold back the junk above. There were three conveyor belts—one in the mine to haul finds and two outside it. One was to dump junk away and the other was to carry material closer to the gate so the slaves could carry it inside to the Machine or direct to Fat Man’s warehouses. That one was colored in long stripes of alternating blue, red, yellow, green and black.

The sorters, children under ten, split off at the entrance and took their places along the conveyor belt. They’d separate the finds into the appropriate category and drop it on the correct color.

Even though he hated it, Ash admired it too. It was systematic and controlled. Every day they shifted hundreds of kilograms of finds from the Scour to inside Cago. Ash could imagine conveyor belts leading to the Machine, everyone working together to feed it, everyone sharing equally in the spoils.

One of the guards handed out cutters to the lead team. Ash took one and checked the battery had a full charge. Everyone else took small pickaxes for prying junk out of the pile. He glanced down the hole. The solar lights were glowing from the roof, strung along and descending right to the bottom. They burned all night to keep hazels out. Still, you had to be cautious.

“Going down,” called out a guard. He waved his hand towards the hole.

Ash took a step and then was smacked in the face and chest by something black and fast-moving. He fell on his back in the dirt.

“Listen!” Hello called as he flew away.

“What the hell was that?” Hector asked. He helped Ash up. The lead guard was staring at him, shockstick in hand.

“What was that Rose?”

“Not sure boss. Bird had a problem with me boss.”

The guard looked over Cago. Hello was long gone.

Something crawled over Ash’s shoulder and down his back under his uniform. A bug.

The guard raised his hand and dropped it.

“Going down!” he called out again.

Ash led the way, walking down into the warm depths of the mine. The temperature rose as he descended, becoming uncomfortably humid. Water continually dripped from the ceiling. After seeping through the pile it was black and undrinkable.

Guards walked alongside them and took positions at certain points. They were few and far between however—the slaves were left to dig and weld on their own and no guard bothered to walk the final five hundred meters to the end.

Normally there was a sort of scuffling fight as kids peeled off to work further up the mine. No one really wanted to be doing the hard work of extending it. Today there was none of that—Ash walked ahead. He could feel the bug moving on his back, holding on to his skin. If Hello delivered it then it was probably from Silver. But what use was a bug down here? For digging?

Soon they were down to the final two hundred meters. The welding team split off to continue shoring up the mine. Ash was alone down at the end—the weakest and most dangerous part of the mine. The nearest light was a good ten meters away so it was almost in complete darkness.

“Don’t yell.”

“Fuck!” Ash swore. Kin blinked his green eyes in the dark.

“What are you doing here?”

“I dragged a bomb down here but took too long. Now I’m stuck here waiting for you.”

Ash turned on the cutter and set it to low beam. It lit the tunnel in shades of red. Kin was sitting in the corner, his ear torn and bleeding and next to him was a long rectangle wrapped in what looked like paper. There was a timer stuck to it and a tangle of wires.

“What happened to your ear?”

“Gress.”

“Who’s Gress?”

“A cat with plastic claws. No one. Don’t worry about it! Did you get a message from Silver?”

“I think Hello just dropped a bug on me. Is that it?”

“Good. At least that bird is doing his job.”

The bug crawled up Ash’s back, across his neck and around to his ear. Then it spoke in Silver’s voice.

“Ash, you need to set off the bomb and escape with everyone. I’m going to save Nola and she’ll get the collars. I’ll get the gold.”

A heartbeat of a pause.

“Love you.”

The bug twitched and died, bouncing off Ash’s shoulder and landing on the floor.

“Silver wants me to set off this bomb? Where did she get it?”

Kin lunged out of the dark and bit Ash on the knee though his pants. It was hard but not enough to draw blood.

“Ouch, fuck.”

“We got it from the Collector’s house. Do as she says. Right now!”

Ash looked at the bomb, his mind spinning. Why did Silver send a bomb down here? Why did she say she loved him? She never did that.

“I can’t set it off. It needs human fingers. Get going,” Kin said from near Ash’s feet. He was looking up the tunnel at the nearest worker who was welding a metal strut into place.

Ash put the cutter down, still burning for light and looked at the timer. Hours, minutes, seconds. It was a good ten-minute walk down the mine—how long would they need? He pressed the hour button and the timer lit.

5:00

4:59

4:58

“Fuck, it’s going.”

He pressed the minute button but nothing happened.

“Run!” Kin yelled at him.

Ash leapt up and ran.

“There’s a bomb! Run, get out, get out!”

He screamed as he ran up the tunnel, Kin close behind him. Sometimes they hit pockets of gas or explosive materials in the pile. Someone would yell run and they’d all bolt, guards included.

Soon everyone was running, yelling bomb over and over, towards daylight that seemed too far away.

This wasn’t like the run through the Scour (it seemed like another life). Ash had been eating well recently, gulping down calories heedless of the cost. His lungs and legs burned but he felt strong. Felt like he could outrun fire itself.

The shouts had cleared the mine, kids and guards running ahead. Ash was at the rear but catching up.

The tunnel widening, dropped tools everywhere, people running ahead, a few more steps and the ring of daylight came into view, almost there.

There was a crack, like lightning, so sharp it hurt from deep in the tunnel.

The end of the tunnel so close, a few more meters and then the fire Ash thought he could outrun came roaring and swallowed him whole.

Chapter 47

Nola

It was black in the box, the floor and walls dotted with small spikes. No room to lie down, no way to without injury. There was a patch of spikes on the rear corner wall that were dulled on the ends. Nola spent the night leaning against them, feeling the points press into her exposed skin. There were only a few places to put her feet in gaps between sharp metal nubs.

Gardner and Candle had dragged her out of the warehouse via the stairs near the giant hasdee. The slaves didn’t even stop searching through the pile for sourcecubes as she went by. For all her threats, Gardner had only punched her in the stomach (which hurt a lot) and then had Candle drag her to another random building before shoving her in the box. They let her see the inside of it, allowed her to place her feet so she wouldn’t cut them and as soon as she was in place Gardner spat on her and slammed the door shut, locking her in darkness.

Nola had cursed at them and screamed for help but then went quiet. She had to save her strength. Someone was going to come back and she had to be ready to fight.

So she leaned against the few dulled spikes and drifted in a halfway place between awake and asleep until Candle hauled her out.

“Fuck,” Nola swore, blinking in the light. It was early morning and her eyes hurt from the brightness.

“Shut up,” Gardner said from the corner.

Nola blinked a few times and the room resolved itself from blurry shapes. It was another smallish office-type room like last night. The floor was hard concrete though, not carpet. There were dull bloodstains on it.

Candle went to loop his arm around her again but Nola pushed at him.

“No, I can walk by myself!”

“So fucking walk then,” Gardner said.

Candle took her arm instead. His grip wasn’t too tight but it felt like the collar around her neck: unbreakable.

Nola took a step towards the door on trembling legs. Every bit of her from her feet to her head was aching or wounded. She’d cut herself on the spikes in the night and her knees were throbbing from being locked in place for hours. As the circulation returned to her back, small dots of hot pain where she rested against the dull spikes flared into life.

“This way,” Candle said, pulling her along.

Thankfully it was a short trip—Nola couldn’t bear going any further. Down the corridor and around the corner to a room with a large steel door. Two guards stood on either side. When they saw Gardner they scurried to open the door. It took two of them to slide it.

Candle pulled Nola in and lifted her off her feet, wrapping both arms around her chest. He carried her into the room like this. She was in too much pain to struggle and with him constricting her chest she didn’t have enough air to scream at Garrick hanging naked, bloody and beaten from chains looped around his wrists.

Candle put Nola down in a chair and moved around behind her, never taking his hands off her. Behind them the guards slid the heavy door shut.

Nola tried to speak but her voice came out as a croak. Her throat was dry. She couldn’t look away from Garrick. His body was covered in black and purple bruises. There were others, yellow and green, showing this had been going on for days. His face was a swollen mess, his nose broken, lips split. He was streaked with blood.