The tiger wasn’t Eku, though. Its body was lean. Gaunt. Its ribs were visible through the thin skin and patches of fur. Its ears had large chunks ripped out. Deep, poorly healed scars ran across its sides and upper hindquarters. Existence down here had not been kind to it. Laying amongst the dirt, it could’ve been dead for months rather than just fallen within the last minutes.
“Come on!” Kerwen shouted.
Syn followed after, raising her flashlight to get her bearings. She gasped as her flashlight swept across Kerwen, Taji, and three other shambling forms silhouetted ahead of her. Taji led the way. She held her light ahead of her in one hand and, in the other, the end of a rope that looped back around the neck of the large figure behind her. The rope chained backward from the large figure, securing the other two silhouettes. All three followed in a steady, consistent pace, ignorant of the vegetation and crops ahead of them. They marched with a shallow gait, never lifting their feet from the ground, just dragging themselves through anything in their way.
Kerwen lagged behind Taji and the three unknown others, although she was still some distance ahead. Syn jogged up to Kerwen. “Who is that?” she whispered, “What are they?”
Kerwen gave a sharp, “Shhh.”
“But, those look—”
“Shhh!”
Kerwen walked slower than before, and Syn matched her pace. Kerwen seemed unwilling to bridge the gap and get any closer to the three that Taji had on a leash.
As they neared the ladder, Taji stopped and pulled her three to the side.
Soon, they were close enough that Syn could see them clearly. They were humans—large men, their clothes hanging like rags. Their eyes were shut and one of them had no jaw. Upon each of their foreheads was a silver plate that Syn had seen before—Kerwen had used something like it to shut down the big tree mover that had attacked them in the desert. The strip was slapped on them and a dark liquid drained from its edges on two of them. The sight of them froze Syn’s blood. She struggled to grasp what they were and why they were following Taji. As they passed by, Syn noticed there was no twitching, no odd movement—now that they were standing, they were completely motionless.
Syn was both mesmerized and disturbed at their presence. She pointed her flashlight to the ground and held her arms close to her, stepping slowly past them toward the base of the ladder.
Taji sorted through her own pack and caught Syn staring. “Yes?”
Syn shuddered. How could Taji appear so imposing, so huge? She was the same height as the others. She had the same looks. But not that huge. It was in her demeanor. In her walk. She walked like a giant. Shaken from her reverie, Syn looked around and then back at Taji. In a quiet tone, something much closer to the sound of a sigh, Syn said, “Thank you.” She wanted to blurt out, “thank you for saving me back there. I don’t know why you did it, but I’m glad you did.” But she knew the words would never come, and she could hardly muster them if she did.
Taji stared at her then gave a simple nod before grunting, “You two go ahead. You have no idea how long it takes these to go. Just getting back up here was a pain.”
Kerwen walked over to the base of the ladder and stared up, refusing to look at the things. “You have the remote with the updated macro Pigeon wrote? Right?”
Taji nodded. “Ya. But I have to get each of them to do it on their own—one at a time. Then I have to scurry ahead of them in the pipe. Hate being below them when parts start falling off.”
Kerwen chuffed. “Ya, I remember last time.”
Taji pulled out a small keypad. “Hopefully, this will be the last time.”
Kerwen put a foot on the first rung. “She nearly has an army now.” She ascended up the ladder, stopping once to shift the bags of apples into a better spot. “Let’s go, Syn.”
Syn shut off her flashlight, threw it in her bag, shifted the other bag of apples around to one side, and lashed her spear against her pack to begin the long climb up. Her leg hurt from tripping and falling, and now, after the tiger, the anticipation of returning to Zondon was mixed—she wanted to leave this level, so Zondon had the allure of a place of familiarity. Yet, with each step, she drew closer to a horrible choice: reveal her world or not.
The trek up was quiet except for a torrent of swearing as Taji worked to maneuver the three figures with her on the ladder. Syn heard the shouts from below her: “Just move it. Dammit! No, your foot goes there.”
Syn thought she heard Kerwen chuckle. Her hearing was confirmed as Taji yelled from far below, “I heard that!”
Kerwen gave an uproarious laugh in the dark and continued to move up. Twice, they paused on the ascent, latching their arms into the rungs and resting. They could see the light above them that represented the hatch—still open—into Zondon Almighty. From there, each step seemed to be heavier than the last. This was a miserable climb, and Syn felt every limb on her body threaten to rebel and ignore her choice to climb up.
Finally, she and Kerwen came to the hatch and hoisted themselves over the edge.
Kerwen directed, “Go get cleaned up. I’ll send Pigeon to get you when it’s dinner.” She took Syn’s bag of apples from her and walked away.
Syn navigated the walk back on her own, twice getting lost—she ended up in the kangaroo exhibit and then in the alligator display, both of which were abandoned. She stopped to look back and see if Taji arose from the hall, but she never saw the girl or her three odd followers. It must be incredibly slow bringing them up with her.
The world around Syn seemed frozen in time. There was no noise. No raucous laughter or shouts. There wasn’t the common jittering bustle of bots that she found in her Disc. No—it was simply a path and walls and the quiet, emptied cages of animals. There was no life in these walls. And without life, there was no sound, no movement, nothing but a gray world without color. This is why they want to leave, Syn thought. This is the world they have to endure, and it becomes grayer every day that passes and with each of their Sisters that dies.
Back in her room, Syn relaxed. This wasn’t her tree. It wasn’t anything that she would’ve chosen, but it was familiar. It was a room that she could call her own—a space carved out for her that she didn’t have to perform in or constantly analyze others’ responses. It seemed to be so much work to be around others. She processed every word and every action over and over. She had been by herself for so long that she simply had not had any inclination of the sheer exhaustion that being around others would create. The climb had been brutal, and her skin was coated with mud from the fall in the tomato field, but it was the pressure of engaging with others that drained her.
She dropped into the hot tub, sinking below the water to her nose and closing her eyes.
With the climb and panic behind her, Syn’s mind replayed the events of the morning. In a flash, the realization came to her: those things were the burlys. Taji had gone down to the body farms. They were dead humans. That was who the burlys were—human passengers of Olorun that had died and were buried, only anticipating becoming part of the food cycle of the trip. But somehow, Taji (and probably the others) had both some reason and some way to raise the dead and direct their actions. Syn shivered despite the warmth of the bath.
She wanted to be disgusted with Taji, yet the girl had saved her life. Syn furrowed her brow. How had Taji gotten to Syn’s side so quickly? Had she been following them? She couldn’t have heard the noise from the ladder entrance. And yet, she had to have come up from there as the body farms were below them two levels, separated only by the livestock level that she assumed had to be empty. So Taji had come back up and gone to meet them. So how soon had she found them? Had she seen them in the greenhouse? Had she seen the lights turn on? Did Taji know what Syn could do?