gaping wound of a mouth shrieked its hideous ululation.
“Time to put this stone wannabe out to pasture,” Kane grumbled as he stroked the trigger of the Sin Eater and sent a stream of bullets at the rough-hewn abomination.
Designated Task #009: Food Harvesting
Food is grown in massive hydroponics labs located in the west and north corners of Delta Level. Vast artificial fields have been sown with seeds which grow various crops—tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc.—in uniform lines. The crop is tested thoroughly throughout its lifespan to ensure it is growing in the correct manner: size, shape, color. Any imperfect crop is removed and recycled as feed for the animals in one of the other areas of Delta Level.
Picking the crops is partially automated, but the amount of moisture coupled with the gentle touch required means that humans are considered superior and more efficient with much of the menial work. As such, I have been assigned to work here two days a week as a rest from the construction of war machines on Epsilon Level. My first assignment is to tend to the pears which grow with resilience from a line of trees in room D41977. The crop is hard-skinned and tasteless, but it holds nutrients enough to sustain life. Most of it will be turned to pulp which is then added to the daily meal ration each citizen is allocated, wherein its lack of a distinctive taste will be rendered irrelevant.
My crop picking is slow because I am still new to the task and have yet to get used to the automated ladders used by the pickers. These ladders stand at a thirty-degree angle with a wheeled base, and they follow the instructions of a computer brain. The brain analyzes the optimum speed for fruit picking based on a scan of each tree and its crop, then follows that calculation to provide a window within which the tree must be stripped of its bounty. The speed seems fast to me, and it becomes inevitable that many of the crop which I pick are bruised. The supervisors show no concern for the bruised fruit, and merely chastise me for my inadequacy in stripping every pear tree in my designated batch.
“Your deficiency will be taken out of your food allowance next week,” a supervisor informs me without looking up from her tally sheets. I stare at the gray peaked cap she wears for a long moment, wondering if she might meet my eyes and perhaps explain how I am to increase productivity, but she never looks up.
The conclusion of my shift is accompanied by a very real sense of disappointment, the knowledge that I have failed to live up to the expectations that the barons have in me as a citizen of Ioville. My back aches from stretching, my arms, too, from constantly reaching above me. I vow to try harder tomorrow.
—From the journal of Citizen 619F.
A stream of 9 mm bullets zipped across the temple at the wretched stone monster that had emerged from the fire. Kane watched as the bullets trailed from his Sin Eater, while around him two dozen of the faithful who had joined him on this pilgrimage looked horrified at the sudden turn of events. They believed they were there to give of themselves whatever their god required, even if it was their lives. But Kane didn’t believe—he knew better. He knew that this stone monstrosity was nothing more than a trick. The iron content in the blood it was being fed combined with the trigger inside those stone seeds, bringing it to nothing more than a cruel imitation of life. At least that’s what Kane guessed was happening as he squeezed the Sin Eater’s trigger.
Bullets hurtled toward the stone menace. The first bullets struck its rocky, mismatched hide and the creature let loose a surprised shriek, its distended fingers pulling free from two more sacrifices—a dark-skinned woman with a mop of braided hair and one of the robed acolytes who was ministering the proceedings. The stone monster’s fingers rattled back into the hands, the wrists pulling back and the overlong limbs retracting to a more normal length, returning to the stone figure’s shoulders. In their wake, its two victims sagged to the floor, visibly shaking, neither fully awake nor truly asleep.
Kane’s bullets sparked as they struck the creature’s rough hide, sounding like cymbals being clashed together with every rebound. But the monster only turned, fixing Kane with its dark, shadowy glare.
“You recognize me?” Kane challenged the creature as around him pilgrims ducked out of the way of the fight.
The stone creature tilted its head in the semblance of a nod.
“Yeah, I think you do,” Kane snarled. “I’m the guy who killed your daddy.”
The bastard child of a thousand deluded devotees hurtled toward Kane then, charging across the flame-lit temple floor, screaming an unearthly howl from its gaping wound of a mouth.
Kane’s Sin Eater pistol blasted again, a stream of 9 mm titanium-shelled bullets catching in the light of the flames like fireflies in the dusk.
The monster’s composite arms reached out and batted Kane’s bullets aside, like twin landslides waving impossibly through the air, lines of warm blood rippling between each loose stone.
Kane leaped back but he was too late. The creature grabbed him, shooting one of its extending arms toward him and snagging his Sin Eater out of his hand.
How do I get myself into these jams? Kane wondered as that inhuman arm flicked the Sin Eater aside.
But there was no time to think—only to act. As the stone monster hurtled closer, charging for all the world like a runaway steam train, Kane began running at it. The two figures met in a crash of breaking shale amid the firelit chamber, and suddenly Kane was running up the monster’s body, using its rocky crags as steps before driving his booted foot into the abomination’s face.
The monster wavered in place, great chunks of its still-forming body spilling to the floor like so much thrown sand.
All around the temple, the pilgrims were reacting with horror, calling for it to stop, asking who this man was who would dare violate their god. Kane ignored them as he leaped from the stone edifice that walked like a man, ducking and rolling to the slate floor even as the nightmare figure reached for him with one of its extending, pendulous arms. He recognized it—kind of. It was a pale imitation of Ullikummis, a memory only half-remembered, the details blurry, forgotten.
How do you break a thing that’s already broken? Kane wondered as a lashing arm came sailing toward his head in a flurry of stones and blood.
Kane dropped out of the way of that swinging extendable arm, slid on his buttocks across the slate floor to where his blaster had dropped, snatched it up as he rolled.
A half-dozen pilgrims surrounded Kane as he recovered, their outraged faces glaring at him. Two men took the lead and kicked Kane while he lay on the ground, booting him in the sides. Kane groaned as he felt the first foot strike him on the ribs, followed an instant later by a second kick in the gut, forcing him to double over and expel the breath he held.
Kane could not shoot them. They were victims. Stupid, yes, but victims all the same.
Another foot sailed at Kane’s face and he reacted instinctively, left arm snapping up to block it, then grabbing his attacker’s ankle and twisting. The pilgrim shrieked as a sudden stab of pain tore through his ligaments, and then he crashed to the floor beside Kane, grasping in agony at his twisted ankle.
From across the chamber, the hulking form of the stone monstrosity stalked through the flame-lit darkness, seeking out its next victim and the blood it desperately craved.
“Stop!”
