I look away.
“What are you doing to me?” I ask again, focusing on the glistening goo covering my foot.
“We have applied a highly-concentrated bio-organic compound which should expedite the healing process. You will be back on your feet extremely quickly, with no adverse side effects.”
I turn my attention to the Flesher, who takes it as a cue to apply more of the salve with some sort of sponge-tipped metal prong jutting out from its abdominal cavity, making soft, swishing sounds.
I’ll never feel completely comfortable around these things. But I remind myself they were once like me, and I feel shame and pity.
After the initial burn, it actually doesn’t feel too bad. “Thanks, I guess.” I’m still avoiding Digory’s eyes.
“We have no choice,” he says with that eerie, matter-of-fact calm that I’m getting used to. “We need you to be in top form for what lies ahead.”
His words override the awkward feeling. I turn in his direction. “And just what exactly does that mean? Aren’t you taking me back to Sanctum so that Straton can cut my head open and find something he can use to destroy all opposition and win this war? I don’t think standing on my feet will be of any help there.”
Digory approaches. I glance at the floor and examine the grooves in between the tile, pulsing with liquid, like throbbing veins.
“We are not headed for Sanctum. Our destination is the place you know as Haven.”
“Haven? You mean that sham community where the Recruit’s surviving Incentives were supposedly sent to live out the rest of their lives in luxury? The paradise that turned out to be a death trap instead?”
“That is the very place.”
“Digory, when we were in Sanctum, we discovered the evidence of the simulations they used to fake the Incentives still being alive. We both saw the holograms of Cole and Mrs. Bledsoe. Don’t you remember?”
Digory doesn’t answer.
“Haven turned out to be an internment camp for experimentation and…,” I swallow hard, “human food processing. Why are we headed there?”
“Since the war broke out, Straton and his forces have taken control of Haven’s resources. Some of those resources are critical to the next stage of our plans.”
I smirk. “Secret schemes? You and your Hive have more in common with the rest of humanity then you realize.”
“You do not understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. The resistance has been searching for Haven’s location for a very long time. But every lead always turns out to be a dead end.”
Digory nods. “That is not surprising, given the uniqueness of its location.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You will know soon enough.”
Before I can stop him, he kneels and cups my foot, examining every inch, gently probing and peeling away the layers of congealed regenerative balm. “Very good. Your body seems to be adapting quite well to the healing agents.”
For a few seconds it’s quiet, as his large fingers massage my foot. It’s painful, but it also feels so soothing.
My breathing becomes heavy. A pang of self-consciousness hits me. Here I am, in basically nothing but a pair of tight underwear, with a naked Digory kneading away my pain—
I pull away and spin to face the side of the bed, clutching a layer of pulsing fabric to my midsection. I hope it’s the Flesher equivalent of a blanket, and not one of the Hive’s vital organs or something.
“Is something wrong?” Digory sounds genuinely confused.
“Yes! I mean no. Maybe you should get dressed.” I conjure up as many unpleasant images as I can, which isn’t too difficult. Anything to relieve my current condition.
I can sense him rising to his feet. “This unclothed form is disturbing to you?”
“It’s a little uncomfortable under the circumstances.”
He strides to a cavity in the wall and pulls out a pair of pants. I catch a glimpse of him sliding them up over his thick thighs. He turns to face me. “Is this better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
His eyes squint as if he’s in deep thought, trying to solve some intricate mathematical riddle. “It is puzzling that your kind thinks nothing of tearing each other limb from limb, blowing each other up until your streets are nothing but rivers of blood, yet you find nakedness so offensive. Your social constructs are truly baffling.”
“It’s not like that Digory. At least not with me. It’s just that—”
“Besides, we seem to have a vague recollection of—,” he cocks his head at me. “Have we not seen each other naked before?”
I lower my feet to the warm surface and apply tentative weight, testing my balance, anything to avoid the topic. “As a matter of fact, yes. We have.”
Pain knifes through my foot. I wince, and Digory’s at my side in an instant, wrapping his hands around my waist and holding me up to face him. “For some reason, you found it pleasurable then, but no longer, correct?”
Despite what he’s become, there’s an innocence in his eyes that penetrates deep.
“Yes. Yes I did. We both did.” I pull away, standing firmly on my own two feet. “But that was another time. And the past doesn’t matter much right now.”
He nods. “Agreed. It will be much less confusing when all traces of the past are purged from the Hive memory.”
The words infect me. But I grit my teeth. As much as it hurts, I agree with him and wish I could do the same. There was never a chance for us and there never will be now.
“One other question,” he says.
“I’m the one that should be asking you questions, but let’s hear it.”
“The child, Cole. Your brother. He is your family. And the family unit is supposed to function and support each other, just like our Hive, correct?”
I shrug. “It’s supposed to work kind of like that. Why?”
“Those dreams we have been experiencing. Sometimes we wake, certain that we have abandoned the Hive. Then this hallucinatory data is gone, retreating into the recesses of the cerebral cortex, and we cannot quite grasp its meaning. But irrational impulses remain. It is like we have been hollowed out.” He shakes his head. “Strange.”
“Those graves. Back in the crypt. What happened to the Tychos?”
He breaks eye contact with me. “As you said. The past does not matter very much right now. We had both better finish dressing. We would not want you to feel more uncomfortable than you have to when you hear what must happen next.”
SIXTEEN
Digory and I slip on a matching pair of gray body suits, made of some sort of biological material that shapes itself to adapt to individual bodies. He leads the way through a maze of corridors dissecting the bowels of the ship. It seems much larger on the inside than it does on the outside. Entering another corridor, I can see why.
The living walls and floors shift, blocking off chambers, creating new ones. It’s like watching sinewy muscles and skin meld into each other, creating new tissue that silently knits itself into a different pattern.
Digory notices my amazement. “It maximizes efficiency by creating more direct paths to our destination, depending on our present location.”
“Gotcha.”
Yeah, and it also makes it impossible for any outsiders like Cole and me to reach any critical or restricted areas, much less find our way off the ship.
“But what if more than one of you decides to take circumventing routes at the same time?” I ask. “Won’t that mess up your little flexible transit operation?”
He pauses for a moment, and eyes me with curiosity. “That would never happen. All of our thought patterns are synched. Unlike your kind, which seems to war and turn on each other irrationally, we operate as a cohesive unit.”
“So as a result of that nanotech Cassius subjected you to, you can read each other’s minds?”
“That is a very simplistic way of looking at it.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, don’t mind stu
pid little me.”
“I did not mean to insult, Lucian. It is just that it is more like an instinct. I cannot quite explain it.”
“And even if you did, I wouldn’t be able to grasp it. I get it.”
I hold up my palm before he can interrupt. “All this talk of Flesher Pride and Unity, yet I seem to remember something about you being Cass’s bitch. How exactly does that work?”
“Thorn and Straton designed this vessel to be an obedient servant, carrying out all of their orders without question.”
Is that the barest hint of a smile on his face?
He continues. “What they did not consider was that, despite the innovativeness of the UltraImposer process, the nanotech utilized in this body began to communicate with its predecessor models, eventually overriding Thorn’s commands.”
My eyebrows steeple. “So you’re basically a mole in league with a rogue group of Fleshers. Busy little bees. Interesting. I have a pretty good idea what Cassius and Straton are after. Power. What exactly is on your agenda? Let me guess. Erradication of the human race? Not that I’m judging. We kind of have it coming.”
He gray eyes bore into mine. “No. Freedom. Independence. Just what you claim to want.”
I swallow, following him the rest of the way in silence.
As another wall ahead molds itself into a shadowy corridor, I tap Digory on the shoulder. “This tech seems pretty advanced, even by Flesher standards. Why do I get the feeling that Straton is not exactly in the loop on this?”
“We have been evolving at a much more rapid rate than the doctor envisioned. We prefer not to burden him with the cumbersome specifics of our daily development until such time that that it becomes necessary.”
“In other words, you’re keeping it a secret until you can use it to your advantage.” I chuckle. “Like I said before. You may have a Flesher exterior, but you’re still human at the core.”
The wall before us oozes open, and I instantly eat my words.
Four Fleshers are suspended from the ceiling in oblong capsules. They’re arranged in a semi-circle around a silver, opaque obelisk resting on a raised, round platform. There appears to be a body inside, but I can’t quite make out who or what it is. The Fleshers’ pods are connected with tendrils of pulsating, organic glop, forming a kind of web that seeps through the capsules and burrows into the back of their skulls.
My eyes open wide. “Wait a minute. Aren’t those…?”
I don’t need Digory’s confirmation. I recognized these four Fleshers from Sanctum. The original prototypes that were once part of the Fallen Five recruits. The same ones that helped me escape.
The gasses swirling in the raised capsule thin. I approach it, rubbing the cold surface to peer inside.
This time, I’m truly shocked by this vision from the past. It’s Orestes Goslin. Cypress’s unfortunate brother. His skin is even paler than Digory’s, his scraggly, dark hair is gone, exposing a shiny, smooth skull—except for the living tentacles burrowing into it from the undulating web above him. Everything below his chin is encased in layers of gelatinous fluid, covering the hideous wound Ophelia inflicted to his throat when she murdered him right before my eyes.
I turn to Digory. “I saw him die back at Infiernos. There’s no way he could have survived.”
“He did not. Not really. The Hive got to him as soon as the recruits fled. He had basically bled out. But they managed to preserve a portion of his oxygen deprived brain. That part of him has been integrated into our collective.” His head bows and his fingers trace the glass. “We are all one, once again.”
Staring at Orestes, I can’t help but think of Cypress and her children, as well as Gideon. And even Ophelia. Such a terrible waste. A huge gash in my heart that’ll never be filled.
I pry my eyes from Orestes and look up to find all of the Fleshers optical visors trained on me. Beside me, Digory seems to be in a trance, his eyes like frozen seas, riveted to something I can’t see or hear, much less comprehend. The organic tendrils connecting all the Fleshers including Orestes, are glowing now, and Digory’s eyes begin to as well. As the minutes pass, Digory occasionally nods.
Soon, the glow subsides, until it finally flickers out. Digory nods one final time, and then his eyes return to their new, normal gray. He turns to me, his face unreadable.
The tension is palpable. “So what did your friends have to say?” I finally ask.
“We need your help.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that he looks dead serious, I’d burst out laughing. As it is, I suppress a chuckle. “You need my help? Last time I checked, you and your Fleshy friends are engaged in all-out war with the Thorn regime, with the Torch Brigade caught right in the middle, and I’m a virtual prisoner aboard your creepy little living ship on my way to get my brain cut open. What could I possibly do for you, and, more importantly, why?”
“You have it all wrong, Lucian. You are not a prisoner. We are protecting you. And as far as delivering you to Straton and subjecting you to his invasive hippocampus procedure, there is an alternative we would like you to consider.”
Despite my skepticism, my curiosity is definitely piqued. “Go on.”
Digory places his palm on a scanner growing out of what looks like a control panel lodged in the nearby wall. There’s a low hum, and a holo appears before us, flashing schematics of the human brain.
Digory points to a region of the brain I recognize as the hippocampus. “Straton believes he can vivisect your brain and isolate your memories, retrieving the genetically inherited memories of your original clone template, Queran Embers, who possessed valuable information that could help Straton defeat Cassius and win the war.”
I nod. “I know. The locations of all the survivors of the Ash Wars who were placed in stasis, and probably their tech, too. The same thing Cassius is after. But what I don’t understand is why Cassius left me in Straton’s custody, when he was planning on double-crossing him. His plotting is usually very methodical. Why take the risk?” I pause to consider. “Unless…”
“Unless Thorn had deduced the unrest of those you know as the Fallen Five and tipped them off to your importance—”
“So they would break me out. Cassius knew Straton would never trust him to take me away from Sanctum. So he played him. That does sound like a Cassius move. But it still doesn’t explain why your Hive would be interested in me one way or another. Don’t you all want the same thing as Straton does?”
“No. We do not want war. We are not interested in violence, cruelty, or bloodshed. We want what all of you claim to want. What every living being desires and is entitled to. Our autonomy. Freedom to control the Hive’s destiny ourselves.”
For a second, he reminds me of the Digory I knew. The Digory I lost. “Haven’t you already attained free will? I mean, no offence, but you are plotting behind Straton’s back and you, yourself, infiltrated Cass’s regime right under his nose.”
“The original prototypes for our race, your Fallen Five Recruits, retained a certain amount of their original personalities and have managed to filter those attributes through to subsequent specimens. But it is not absolute. Straton has still embedded our collective with restrictions that prevent us from outright defying him without risking our complete annihilation. We need to terminate those fail-safes. Then, and only then, will we be free.”
“I still don’t understand how I can help you. Even if I wanted to.”
He presses more buttons on the control panel and a diagram labeled Bio-Mech Organisms flashes into view. “During our analysis of the remnants of Sanctum’s archives, we discovered that your progenitor, Queran Embers, held the knowledge to create fully-autonomous soldiers that could think on their own, and be spontaneous under stress, without relying on specific commands to carry out their missions. If we could access that knowledge, we would be free of Straton’s influence.”
“Suppose I agree. What’s in it for the Resistance?”
“We would join your Torch Brigade to end this w
ar as quickly as possible, minimizing the amount of casualties. However, without this technology, we will be forced to wage war and annihilate your kind.”
I’m too stunned to speak. If what Digory’s saying is true, the information locked in my brain is indeed critical in more than one aspect. It would be worth the sacrifice to my sanity. But what if it’s just another ploy? A hidden Flesher agenda that I’m being manipulated into following? Betrayal has become as natural to me as breathing.
I force myself to speak. “What’s to say that if I allow you to go digging in my skull and you find the keys to your handcuffs, you won’t just decide to destroy the human race, including the Torch Brigade, to eliminate any potential threats to the Hive?”
“Because there is something else that you do not know. Something neither Cassius nor Straton ever revealed to you, which the Hive would not share if we were intent on decimating your race.”
He pushes some more buttons. A map of a huge landmass appears. I recognize some of the areas. The region of Infiernos. The Parish. Fort Diablos. Asclepius Valley. The Fringelands. The western regions that once housed the Pleasure Emporiums. Sanctum. The map is labeled Former United States of America.
Wasn’t that the place Straton referred to as where we all originated from? The one that was destroyed by the Clathrate Apocalypse and the Ash Wars?
Digory turns to me. “Do you remember the Nexus that Straton referred to during our first visit to Sanctum?”
“Yes. He said the Nexus was a hub of shelters built all over this country to protect the populace from the devastation of the Ash Wars, and that Sanctum was the only remaining installation.”
“Straton lied to you. Our analysis of the encrypted files reveals that years ago, Sanctum cut off all communication with the Nexus when the first pioneers left Sanctum and returned to the surface, settling what became known as the Establishment. Straton’s predecessors wanted to remain in absolute power and feared the other hubs would challenge their authority. They infected the rest of the Nexus with a computer virus and sabotaged all the other hubs’ systems. The other survivors remain stored in underground facilities throughout the country, preserved in stasis, waiting to be awakened. Waiting for a signal that will never come. Waiting to die.”