The boy turned his head and lit two cigarettes, handing one to me. “Zeya is the place of our birth. Research is here, Ubitza. There are rumors. We can take off your feet, and replace them with new ones—”
“Of a sort,” someone interrupted, and again the laughter.
My bunkmate went on. “Even a kind of new body. Hardwired to your armor. Think of it. A new Ubitza, flechette proof, able to fire missiles with a thought, not a button. Vials of drugs continuously streaming in, no need for tablets anymore. All the drugs you want or need.”
Need
. Already I felt the terror return, nibbling at the edges of my brain along with the memory of Megan—twin rats that fed and fed. They needed to be put down, put to sleep. I needed drugs. Now.
“It’s just a rumor,” someone said. Already the truck had filled with smoke, but I pulled on my cigarette, the only drug I had, and listened. “I heard another one. That the experiments have gone nowhere, the subjects having to be put down or killing themselves with impulses that trigger a servo, send a powered limb too far too fast, ripping the brave volunteer to pieces without meaning to.”
“Death is death,” said my bunkmate. “And testing is part of war. It is a glorious way to die, being ripped apart, I think. Quiet now, Ubitza, we reach the center in half an hour. Under the mountains outside Zeya where we’ll be safe and warm, underground again.”
The Russians had brought me underground; you sensed the moisture, detected the kind of echo that only came
from having solid rock on all sides, the protection of earth and mineral. Two men carried me through a narrow tunnel, and then past a doorway and into an open area where I could see again.
The chamber was so large that I had trouble finding the roof, which arched overhead at least a hundred meters away, a honeycombed network of concrete and steel set to reinforce it. Tiny pinpoints of light made me blink. Thousands of them stared down at me as if little stars had been set in the concrete to wink and fill the area with a warm yellow glow. And there
was
warmth. Loads of it. Space heaters along the edges groaned and creaked with their thermal load, blasting the area with waves of air that smelled of ozone. Finally the men dumped my stretcher on a table, and I realized that the underground chamber was packed with operating gurneys, and between them medical bots, which swayed on their pedestals like mobile willow trees, half sentient. Their arms darted down and then flicked up again, a suture here and there, sewing up some boy or man who had been strapped in place, immobilized and anesthetized. Another one swayed over its subject, two arms peeling away skin that had been charred black and red, while a doctor stood by, dressed from head to toe in light green plastic. Someone screamed.
A doctor leaned over me then, his face so close I smelled vodka on his breath, and he shone a light in my eyes at the same time he activated the bot. It sprang to life and injected me before I could react.
“A dose of tranquilizers. Same ones you use,” he said. His English was stilted, rough. “I’m surprised you aren’t going through withdrawal.”
“I’m cold. I feel sick.”
He nodded. “Maybe you are in withdrawal. We’ve added some microbots to the solution so in a few seconds”—he checked his tablet and nodded again—“we’ll know just how much flesh is gone, how much can be saved. It looks like parts of your feet will have to go. Also, I think we can save all the fingers and the nose, but you may lose feeling in them. Permanently.”
“How much of my feet?” I asked. The drugs finally started working, warming my insides and calming the receptors, millions of them screaming for their dose so that my nerves would loosen and relax.
The doctor shook his head. “All of them. Above the… what’s the word? Here.” He tapped my ankle and said something in Russian. “Then we’ll give you the radiation treatment, and find out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Within reason. You are now the property of Moskva.”
He tapped on his tablet with a finger and once more the bot swayed in, stabbing me with a second injection, this one burning so that my back arched with pain. The doctor’s voice faded as the room started to go dark.
“Good night, Germline. We fix you, don’t worry. If what I hear is true, and Americans wanted you dead more than any other we’ve seen, it has to be for a reason. Makes one curious.”
At that moment I missed him, wondered where they had taken my bunkmate from the train because at least he was someone I knew. Even if he had no name.
There was no way to tell time. What might have been days floated by in dusty exhaust, through which I caught glimpses of myself on the gurney with millions of tubes
and wires inserted into my skin and a wave of microbots so thick that I actually saw them, lying in pools of metallic gray that glittered on my arms and stomach. Faces came and went. First the doctor’s, then others, until Alderson’s face superimposed itself on them all and I giggled at the surge of hatred that accompanied each visit by a man, hatred that had almost been forgotten and that bubbled within my throat. Their Russian became something familiar. At times it felt so close to my own speech that I began picking out individual words in a way that made understanding almost possible, like standing at the edge of a river and looking across at the next objective, an easy one, but with no way to reach it. Those realizations made it difficult; made me want to sink back into haze. The familiar had vanished to leave me in an alternate universe, in which everyone looked like me but wasn’t, were all slightly different in language in mannerism, creating a world in which I was no longer just an oddity; I was a
foreign
oddity, worth even more attention. Then, every once in a while, Megan’s face appeared. But with time and drugs, the feeling of loss eroded, until one day it vanished altogether, although I suspected my memory of her wasn’t gone—that she lurked in a corner of my mind, waiting to jump out and surprise me with an anguish that could be covered up but never fully exercised.
And then there was motion. The gurney’s wheel servos hummed and they moved me from the main operating chamber into what felt like a maze of tunnels, and some slanted downward where the air thickened with moisture to become a humid film, forcing my skin to burst with sweat—water that would never evaporate, only collect in pools. A door rattled as it opened to allow a pulse of cold
air to wash over the gurney, and then I entered another room. Still I didn’t open my eyes. The air felt cool but electric, and a low vibration made my skin tingle so that even before looking I suspected I didn’t want to. In the distance, hydraulic pressure released with a loud
hiss
.
“Wake up, Ubitza,”
someone whispered. I opened my eyes and saw him, my bunkmate from the train.
My voice didn’t want to work at first, the words coming out in half-croak, half-whisper. “What’s your name? How long have I been sedated?”
“My name is Misha, and you’ve been gone a long time because they found so much damage—tissue that didn’t want to come back to life. Months, I think. But now it’s time to wake up and look; they sent me because this is never an easy time and I know you better than the others do. It’s time to choose.”
“I don’t want to wake up, Misha. I want to sleep.”
“Come on,” he said, moving to my side. The stump of his arm slid under my shoulders and lifted until I sat upright, three needles in my arm stinging with the movement, which made a cluster of IV bags sway. “You can’t stay broken forever.”
“What,” I asked, “did they do to me?”
The absence of feet didn’t surprise me. I expected those gone, had seen the black skin and knew what it meant, but as I ran one hand over my gown the skin underneath felt pocked, as if a thousand spoonfuls of tissue had been dug out to leave craters. The backs of my hands showed it more clearly—tiny bowl-shaped divits that had turned pink with scar tissue—and before moving my hands to my face Misha nodded.
“It’s the same on your face, Ubitza.”
“But why? Why did they take out so much flesh?”
He shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like you’ve lost your insides, although the doctors said those were starting to deteriorate as well. You’re still Ubitza. They said that the decay had advanced in a way they’d never seen, seeded throughout your body in pockets that they had to remove with microbots. The radiation worked though. You won’t die, Ubitza, unless you choose to. So
choose
.” He gestured to the rest of the room.
The area was mostly dark except for a single overhead light, beneath which stood a hulking set of armor, half-supported by chains that disappeared into the ceiling. It was twice the size of a man. Misha moved next to it and ran his hands over the shiny surface, its ceramic opalescent with what must have been the Russian version of chameleon skin, and then it did something I didn’t expect: it moved. The arms raised with a whining sound and grabbed Misha by the waist, lifting him off the ground so that both his legs flopped in empty air.
“Powered armor, Ubitza, but not like the prototypes we just shipped out to my brothers at the front. Inside this one is Shlotka, a permanent resident now, fused with the systems, a true warrior. Fed on a glucose and nutrient solution, his body provides power to the support systems, which reduces the drain on fuel cells. More power for servos, more power for heavier plating. This is the
future
. You and me? Obsolete.”
I stared, shocked, unable to speak.
“Say something nice to Ubitza, Shlotka,” he said.
“
Strasvwi
.” The voice was mechanical, synthesized from the outset and not the sound of a genetic’s voice piped through speakers. It sent a chill through my legs.
“That’s Russian for ‘hi’,” Misha explained.
“He can never leave the suit,” I said.
Shlotka lowered Misha, who approached the gurney, helping me to lie flat again.
“He doesn’t
want
to leave. It’s an honorable sacrifice, and you should think about it. If you return to battle, does it matter what humans you kill, whether they’re American or not? We are bred for this, Ubitza, a singular purpose.”
I looked away, the thought suddenly occurring to me. “I would also have to kill my sisters.”
“I know. But you might never make it into battle.” Misha must have seen my confusion, and went on. “Let me explain. Shlotka isn’t ready for the field, he’s a prototype. The process they used to link his nervous system to the suit’s computer has not been perfected, so it made him… stupid. Subnormal. Synthetic genes were supposed to grow nerve tissues off the suit’s wiring, and target the right parts of his brain and nervous system for linkage. The scientists call it Exogenetic Enhancement. But in Shlotka’s case his linkage nerves didn’t stop growing, began going places they shouldn’t so that within a week he’ll be paralyzed, dead in a month. Your sacrifice would be like his, and if it works with you, God! What an honor.”
“And if it doesn’t work I live a short life, subnormal, but trapped in armor.”
Misha stood and frowned. “I have volunteered. My name is now on the list, and when it’s called, I go into the Exogene Workshop. We fear the Chinese have reawakened and last week began receiving reports about things like Shlotka—to the west and south, armored nightmares that take Russian outposts and then vanish before we can respond or coordinate.”
The room felt suddenly cold, enough that I missed the wet heat of the hallway, and it was the kind of chill that made me remember how I had once worshipped death as much as Misha had—that for him this must have been a clear decision. And I grew jealous. It had been a long time since feeling that level of faith, a long time since God had spoken to me, since I had felt as though there were a plan.
“You are fearless, Misha. The honor is mine, for having met you. What is my other choice?”
“Prosthetic feet, titanium skeletons. Full functionality, and they use a basic form of exogene technology to enhance control, to regrow muscle and nerve tissue.”
“Why don’t you just replace your hand then?” I asked.
Misha looked at me as though I were crazy. “Why would I do that? Feet are one thing, you need to walk. But to receive a wound like this, it’s a badge—better than a medal. It shows that I fulfilled my end of the bargain and performed like a warrior should. I have one good hand left.” He broke out his cigarettes and lit one, offering another to me, but I waved it away.
“You need to decide,” he said.
I thought in silence. My drugs made the process easier, because I searched for the fear, the terror that should have been there like a waiting monster but it now felt more like a whimper, Megan a shadow of a shadow. Still, the memories were crisp; we had run for a reason, to escape and live something other than what we had been bred for and despite a lingering hatred for men, war seemed like the wrong option—as if choosing it would be to deny the reason for which Megan had died. She screamed at me even now: to choose the more difficult path.
“Prosthetics.”
Misha nodded and switched off the servos to my gurney, then turned it around, pushing back toward the door through which I had entered. The heat returned and I breathed out in relief.
“There’s one other thing, Ubitza,” he said.
“What?”
“When we fled with you, the Americans sent a full battalion, maybe more, of Special Forces to chase us; I only found out now. Do you have any idea why the Americans would send so many to retrieve one girl?”
This time the heat didn’t help, and I shivered with the news, recalling the general who had winked at me through the window.