My eyes begin to water. I manage to twist my head to the side, ignoring the pain of the pincers cutting the sides of my neck. It’s taken the three other Fleshers to finally overpower Digory and pin him to the ground. Through the blur I can see the fresh cuts and welts on his heaving torso where his jumpsuit has been torn away, leaving only the gleaming silver of my ID tag over his heart, rising and falling with each breath. He goes out of focus for a moment. Then our eyes meet, and I see the mixture of fury and tenderness there.
Whir.
I shift my gaze to the Flesher holding me down. It’s face is expressionless as the pincers begin to contract, cutting deeper, squeezing out all my air.
Digory unleashes an agonized cry that wrenches what’s left of my soul from me.
I close my eyes, hoping it’ll be over soon, waiting for the death grip to cleave my neck in two—
It doesn’t happen.
I open my eyes. The Flesher is still staring at me with those soulless eyes. But the pressure around my neck decreases. One if its long silver probes moves toward my chest, a gruesome steel finger. I brace myself as the icy talon grazes my skin, expecting it to tear into my rib cage and pluck out my heart.
Instead, the probe traces a path to my throat. There’s a low clink as it grips the chain around my neck—Digory’s ID tag—and holds it up. Infrared beams spill from the creature’s ocular sensor, bathing the tag in hues of greenish blue.
What the hell’s going on here?
I glance in Digory’s direction and see the Flesher holding him perform the same scan on the tag around his neck.
The Flesher scanning my chain emits some kind of low rumble.
The four Fleshers’ lights blink erratically for a moment before they all sync in a steady pulse.
It’s like they’re communicating and have reached an agreement of some kind.
The pincers retract.
Digory and I exchange looks of puzzled relief.
A socket in the abdominal cavity of the Flesher above me springs open. The creature pulls something from it, something dripping with dark goo, and dangles it in front of me.
Swallowing hard, I reach up a tentative hand and touch the warm links. Four chains.
Four Recruit ID tags, just like ours.
My heart races as I wipe away the slimy matter to make out the names, already knowing what I’ll see written there.
The names of the four remaining Recruits of the Fallen Five.
The holograms of those four people with Straton when we first arrived were illusions. Just like the doctored holograms of the surviving Incentives. Nothing but decoys to distract us and throw us off the scent.
This is what really happened to the Fallen Five. This is the grisly fate that Orestes Goslin escaped almost eleven years ago, that drove him mad and turned him into a crazed cannibal.
The missing Recruits were mutated into Fleshers—by Straton and the denizens of Sanctum.
Taking a deep breath, I release the ID tags and squirm out from under my captor, as does Digory. Inch by inch, we crawl our way toward each other, my senses on alert, expecting the Fleshers to attack at any second.
But they remain still.
We help each other to our feet and begin to back away from the foursome. There must be a part of the Fallen Five, still beating within their organic husks, that remembers what they once were—before they became the very first of Sanctum’s drones.
As we reach the edge of the lab I take one last look at the Fleshers, still immobile behind us.
A thin, dark trail, starting in its optical sensor, drips a pathway down the face of the Flesher that pinned me.
Oil or blood—or something else. I can’t tell.
Then we’re running from that terrible place as fast as we can.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sirens blare as Digory and I race through the winding corridors of the hive. Overhead, emergency beacons spiral, creating a dizzying strobing effect that wreaks havoc on any sense of direction I have left. My lungs churn overtime trying to compensate for each ragged breath I manage to take, competing with the throbbing in my chest and ears. Several times we overrun a turn and have to double back to dart down a passage, only to dash in the opposite direction as sinister silhouettes appear just ahead, closing in on us.
By now the entire processing plant must know we’re here, and they’re probably trying to initiate some kind of lockdown. They can’t afford for us to escape and get back to the Parish with everything we know.
Somehow we manage to make it back up to the level we came in on. Up ahead, a sliver of light tantalizes us with the hope of escape.
No. Even if we make it out of here and manage to fight our way to one of the elevators to the surface, that still leaves the problem of transportation. With no ride back to the Parish, we’ll be recaptured before we can get a gulp of putrid surface air.
My hand locks onto Digory’s arm. “We have to find one of the ships they’re gonna use to get to the Parish and get the hell out of here.”
Dark shapes appear in the corridors on either side of us.
Without looking back, we race down the hallway ahead to where a lone Flesher stands barring the way.
Digory doesn’t even pause an instant. He just leaps and crashes into the thing, pummeling it with his fists. The Flesher’s mechanisms squeal and whir as it tries to dislodge him. In seconds, flailing, stabbing instruments whip from its exoskeleton, trying to skewer its attacker.
As valiant a fight as Digory’s putting up, he won’t be able to hold the Flesher off too much longer. I can already hear the clatter of approaching feet behind us. Pouncing, I grab one of the Flesher’s appendages—some type of snapping pincer—and jam it against one of the power cables lining the wall. I let go just as the instrument clips the cable with a loud snap. Sparks bursts, raining mini-fire on my exposed skin. The Flesher bucks and jerks as if it’s having convulsions.
There’s a part of me that squirms at the idea that this thing, having a seizure in front of my eyes, was a vital human being before Cassius, Straton, and Sanctum genetically altered it in their miserable quest to play the role of gods.
Digory shoves the pitiful thing away from us. Then he grabs me in his other arm and pulls me across a threshold.
My fist slams a panel on the wall just as our pursuers reach us. A steel door crashes closed behind us, cutting them off.
I lean against it, my body vibrating from the heavy thudding coming from the other side. “It’s not going to take them long to get through to us,” I manage to say through heavy breaths.
Digory’s not paying attention to me. His eyes are riveted on something beyond us, and I turn to follow his gaze.
My breath is torn away.
“Looks like we found a ship,” I barely whisper.
The entire room is a huge hangar bay, filled with row after row of V-shaped craft. But it’s not just the magnitude of the ships that’s shocking. It’s the ships themselves. Like the Fleshers, each craft is a combination of metal, steel, and organic matter, all fused together in an obscene marriage of biology and machine. Gleaming exhaust ports grow out of slimy, pulsating skins, engines whir even as cockpit doors tear apart with the squish of organic matter in an obscene synthesis. Fuel lines throb like giant umbilical cords, pumping who knows what into each vehicle.
And scurrying around the crafts are legions of Fleshers, thousands upon thousands, some clanking along like living forklifts, others zipping around on wheels, while even others clatter along on all fours like giant insects, their skins splitting open and sprouting vast arrays of gleaming silver instruments as they dart about, servicing their ships.