Lifechain

Officer Nell crosses her arms staunchly in imitation of her colleague beside her and looks out over the drifting mass.

“Look at them,” Officer DeFousa murmurs, his face shadowed. “There must be nothing out there anymore.”

Nell flicks her eyes from one hopeless ghostly face to another as the sea of Drifters shuffle slowly by; foreheads grubby, shawls tattered - shells of people, really. “Yeah, I’m surprised there’s this many of them left.”

“You’d be stunned with what they’ve come up with to survive out there,” DeFousa leans in a little. “I hear it’s a specialty of some of the Drifters to do back-alley surgery on any injury caused by the Metalbods. Wouldn’t believe what inventive ways they can realign an organ or patch together a biotech transplant. At least until they get here. And on our lives, no bloody Metalbod’s following them in. No matter how well-disguised they are.”

Nell looks in the direction the crowd is heading, to the towering row of silver doorways – the Machine. She’d noticed some of the Drifters were eyeing it warily as they were moving closer, but knew that most had heard of this precaution. Not quite precaution; more heavy line of defense; it would pick up any sign of a disguised Metalbod passing through and destroy it. They couldn’t afford to have any of them slip through disguised as human and risk their whole attempt at keeping humanity safe.

“Hey you!” DeFousa booms across the crowd, jerking all nearby into a moment of fight or flight, including Nell. She follows her colleague’s eyeline and sees it too - a young boy with matted hair and bundled in a once-vibrant poncho, and a glint of gold hanging from his neck.

“Hey you!” DeFousa repeats, and the mass of Drifters in the boy’s vicinity, as well as the boy himself, jolt their heads up in alarm. “You can’t be wearing that.” The officer taps his collarbone roughly. “Can’t wear the metal – will get lasered,” he enunciates over the crowd.

The boy stares back at him, bewildered. He is caught in the shuffled of the sea of people, closer and closer to the Machine.

“Wretched AI-carriers,” DeFousa mutters, and before Nell can grasp what is happening, he launches off their surveillance platform and bulldozes into the crowd. He pushes through the sea of Drifters towards the boy, his powerful bulky form a stark contrast to the deflated bodies around him. He shouts “No chain, no chain! Will get you lasered!” as he goes, but the boy does not seem to comprehend the danger. Wide-eyed, he slaps the pendant to his chest instead, and utters a splutter of words that Nell can not understand.

Officer DeFousa however, has now cast his patience to the winds. “Oh no you don’t, you bloody Metal- ” he utters and, lunging toward the boy’s hand, seizes the pendant beneath it, giving it a mighty yank upwards.

One side of the chain snaps from the pendant with a sharp ping, its tail whipcracking the air, but the rest of the necklace does not come loose.

Instead, it pulls at something longer and heavier. As Nell watches in horror, a chain connected to the now dangling necklace begins to unravel, uprooting like a plant buried deep into the soil unearthing ground as it goes. But rather than ground, it emerges from the boy’s very flesh.

A volley of blood ropes out into the air, raining on the broken-out chaos of people surrounding them. The screams have already started.

Bile rises in Nell’s throat. She feels the cool platform rail under her desperate grip, and forces herself to glance back at DeFousa and the boy.

There is a tattered pile on the ground, a poncho wreathed in red, and DeFousa standing by it like a battered dog, one hand on knee steadying himself; the other, clutching the chain of a hanging pendant – a metal locket shaped like a heart. A biotech organ.