Nothing Ever Really Belongs to You.

The sun was a fading blood-hole above the city of the dead and half-living. The hunch-shouldered did not grunt as they slaved, though spittle gathered at the corners of forever-thirsty mouths. The furnaces they fed shot flames high into the grey sky. Nothing howled or moaned but pain dominated. Exhausted bones moved with emaciated muscle.

Skyla held the bare nub of her hand-less forearm against the baby’s mouth, trying gently to keep him quiet. Dressed in tattered rags, she held him while crouched behind the rust-fence. A black and broken petrol barrel served as just enough space to hide. The baby was silent with dark eyes, and somehow sensed the urgent warmth of its mother in the midst of escape and chaos. Skyla stayed very still. And waited.

Bright spotlights spun and split the massive ruins left by war. Everything was rusted debris and dust. Shadow and light interplayed. It was midnight and the glow of work-lights cast everything in angles and distortion.

Massive machine gears grinded dull and lowly with scrape of aged metal upon metal- a drone that permeated the city quarters. The mining continued ravenously, as it had for years: a half- mile wide hole punched in the ground amidst the refuse of destroyed buildings. It was a rumble that no longer registered; a low roar of time dominated. The machine was always producing. Human forms lost meaning and became tools of operation for the ore extraction -fueling the progress of a planet light-years away.

She lost her hand three years ago at the age of 12. Attempting to break marching rank, she made for a hole in the fence, but was caught in moments. Robot prods forced down upon her neck. Her own screaming rang out, and then all was blackness within her skull.

Memory gaps follow: dark rooms of interrogation, endless screen-delivered monologues of reformation, mandatory amputation. The sentence was clear and obeyed as if it had been carved into stone with a titanium scrawl: the loss of her dominant hand.

Though punitive, it was done in civil manner: she awoke alone in a room with a beeping metal box at her side. She was bandaged but the blood leaked through in spots. Her mind remained resolute- escape at any cost.

Like heated-thunder, explosions spread out a mile above the mining city. The gases released from the massive hole bled upward and formed electro- reactions with the alien-exhaust of spacecraft blotting the sky. Silent eruptions of light strobed the worker's eyes; movement became fragmented. With stunned half-consciousness slaves moved, chains pulled, and metal ground endlessly.

Two years later, she was impregnated by the state. Mandatory Artificial Insemination ensured obedient and controlled generations. Kidnapped as she was emerging from her work hovel, she awoke 48 hours later with large black stitches across her belly, a small bottle of sedative, and a pamphlet outlining child-bearing statutes. The child would not belong to her.

Nine months later- extraction and separation under coma-like anesthesia. The infant she had grown to love as it moved inside her was taken from her immediately. Placed in a room with a thousand others, he was hooked to a life-electrode network of endless coils. The dull drone of machines shook the walls. Even these soft -skulled newborns accepted the noise as god.

Command intelligence had information about a clan of outliers: slave-resistors who had managed to escape the mining grounds. These rebels had apparently found refuge beyond the razor wire and laser-mines surrounding the perimeter. Searches by armed drones produced nothing. The captain assured the robotic generals: anyone caught would be stomped out- ground into a dust that denied history.

Five days after giving birth, she breached the incubation room and stole her baby back; a thin, metal band clamped around one of its small ankles bore the duplicate of her number. She gently removed the tube that extended down the small infant's throat. She peeled back electro-tape. She wrapped him in a tattered blanked and ran without thought toward a hole in the night.

A heart-shaped locket hung about her neck. Inside, scribbled on a t piece of paper - a pass-code to give to the liaison- if she managed to cross the barbed- trenches at the edge of the city. Her breath was heavy but almost silent. She waited and rested. The baby suckled upon her beneath the dirty blanket; the faint red light of another miserable dawn emerged.

Lights spun from dark towers while robotic animorphs patrolled the perimeter of the work space. Some were large metal rodents, others bore the fanged-form of snakes capable of strangling with intense speed. Anything that moved contrary to order was attacked.

Another sun rose, half dead. In the dirt of expansive work fields, nameless humans collapsed and died of exhaustion. They were quickly incinerated and replaced. The machine kept running while lights from monitor ships hovered miles above; they shone through the smoke-filled wasteland like eyes forever-watching.

There was a security sweep at 3am. She had covered 500 meters in the seconds found between spotlights spinning. Her baby dangled from the strong hold of her handless arm as she punched and tore with her other. That hand bore the cuts of rusted metal and glass and they were caked instantly with grey dust. Her vision became a tunnel pulling her along. She had lacerations everywhere but only felt the press of the baby's body. Her bare feet no longer screamed. Adrenaline bursts masked pain and gave way to animal focus: escape. She pulled the baby tight under the stub of her appendage and made a run for a generator that hummed immensely in the strangled dawn.

An alarm sounded everywhere at once. Amplified shrieking tore the sky into fragments. The machine ground on, and lights were doubled brightly now and a large perimeter was in full illumination. Animorphic eyes scanned perimeters of light.

She was six meters beyond the light, in the shadow of a destroyed, burnt machine; she held her baby’s cheek against her own. They were quiet together and still. She held her breath and the baby instinctively did the same. Thoughtlessly, she skittered like a cockroach through the decaying dust while holding the baby tightly.

Robotic rats and snakes growled with metallic teeth as lights hovered. Robots hummed, ready to devour anything that moved contrary to order.

She emerged from the barbed trenches as her left eye began to burn and swell; a rusty cut just above her temple slowly dripped blood on the baby blanket. She collapsed in shadow beyond the city perimeter. There was a suspended silence within her: quiet that blocked out the world. She felt the baby's heart against her own. Time stood still. Her vision began to fade at the edges and a black exhaustion claimed her.

Within moments she heard whispers. She clenched the locket in her hand, and the baby made a small sound as he moved gently against her within the blanket. Assuring, quiet arms reached through the early darkness and she was too tired to even cry. She let her grip on the baby go soft ; she gave herself over to the gentle hands that lifted. Soft-secret voices assured her, “You're safe now…you two are gonna make it.”