Annie

Dana is on the Suicide Squad. The position is relatively new, their uniforms still an untarnished crimson. Odessa had no need of one until metal ate the skies and lights stained the night a permanent faded teal. They serve mostly the old and tired or the young and listless. The ones who have tugged at the rails of their elaborate playpen without success. Dana has never wailed for escape, but she knows the walls are there. She knows they are a threat and not a sanctuary, a fact that should send her screaming. But she is programmed to do otherwise. So she does not.

Dana is one of four new specialized automatons assigned to Odessa, a test run before more units are released globally. They sit in a neat row in their small station, little more than a bus stop on the side of the road. They wait, red shorts puddling on their seats, their smooth plastic faces gleaming under fluorescent lights. The storefronts crowd them with pink neon and lewd advertising, clicking heels and seven different kinds of smoke. Dana can identify them all.

Her brown hair is perfectly coiffed and curled around her face, the dyed synthetic strands melted into place around wide brown eyes and demure lips. Her face was designed for kindness. Her fellow automatons sit motionless beside her, eyes equally blank. Long cords are plugged into the ports behind their ears, whispering rapidly into their whirring metal insides. Elijah stands suddenly as the cord falls away. A red pinwheel emerges from his back and, despite the stagnant air around them, it begins to turn. With a bounce of his heels, he lifts off into the sickly turquoise sky. The first call of the night.

Each automaton is assigned a specific type of call. Gillian takes the poppers and the slicers. Anhjong takes the zappers and the shooters. Dana used to take the jumpers, but after the accident, she was reassigned to drowners and dosers. Elijah takes the jumpers now, along with the special cases.

The program director had been furious when Dana was damaged. The accident had scrapped all their progress and they were forced to restart the trial period. The others were reset; Dana was rebuilt. She shivered unconsciously at the memory of her broken parts. Her silicone and plastic shattered and ground into the asphalt. She remembers staring at the sky, her color perception destroyed, the skyscraper cast in shades of gray. When she turned her head, she saw him. The jumper. Just like her, splayed and pinned to the pavement as the buildings bore down on them. Except she was here, functioning if not alive, and he was rotting somewhere in the desert.

Life continues around them. Having paid their due empathy to some poor soul, the people who had watched Elijah with concern resumed their easy smiles. Endless chatter floods Dana’s spiraling blue cord. Police reports, robberies, domestic disturbances. She picks it apart slowly, taking her time. Nothing of interest, no one in need. Ten minutes pass. Elijah returns. He is covered in blood and what appears to be vomit on his shorts. A special. Dana wonders what the special had tried. Elijah resumes his position and plugs in his cord as metal arms reach out from the station to restore his uniform back to its vibrant red.

Gillian is called next. She takes twenty minutes. When she returns there is no blood, no vomit, no signs of anything at all. Maybe a popper.

The sky begins to lighten, a green tinge adding to the sallow soup of yellow, pink, and blue. Dana has never seen the sky before light pollution. Except in a photo: a great expanse of violent midnight blue, pinned to the earth.

A call through the police line catches Dana’s attention. A drowner down at the docks. False alarm. It’s a striker, no assistance necessary.

A striker. After a person is saved, they’re assigned to a rehabilitation center out in the desert. Miles of dust and spindly dead things until they learn to behave themselves. They have three chances. Three strikes. After that, they become a striker, crossing the line from asset to liability. A waste of city resources. No longer worth saving. Dana knows of only one citizen in Odessa past their last strike. Something painful spasms in her chest.

Dana pulls the cord from her ear and stands. The other three snap their heads to the side to stare at her. They speak in unison: “False alarm. A striker, no assistance necessary.” It has always soothed her when they speak in tandem, their voices rushing over each other like a wave at sea. It does not soothe her now.

She hears a small pop as the pinwheel extends from between her shoulder blades. “No assistance necessary, Worker Dana,” Elijah repeats slowly, his eyes fixed on her, ready to spring. Dana meets his gaze, then bounces on her heels and rockets into the air. Elijah hurtles after her, grasping at her bare feet. The pain spasms in her chest again, tightening around her lungs. She kicks Elijah in the face and hears plastic shatter. When Dana looks down, she sees a crater between his eyes, the delicate gears bent inward like teeth turned against his body.

He falls without pain. Dana turns her gaze back to the horizon.

Odessa is a maze of skyscrapers. They stick out into the air like misshapen metal molars, set in black and bleeding gums. A giant artificial lake was carved out of the desert on the west side of the city. In rows, the sailboats of the rich bob like broken piano keys along the docks.

Dana’s eyes are drawn to a sickly yellow beacon teetering on the edge of the farthest dock. Annie. It is illegal to be on the docks before dawn. It is illegal to be on that dock at all. It was deemed unsafe as it stands over a sudden drop into the deepest part of the lake. Her red hair billows out from her pale forehead, a buffeted sail, pulling her weak ankles towards the edge.

The spasms are back. Maybe they’re trying to shut her down from afar, sabotaging the electric battery that sits in the center of her ribcage. Dana dives for the dock. Startled, Annie’s eyes catch the bright color of Dana’s uniform. They are a weak watery green, bulging out on either side of her slim nose. Her face was not designed for kindness. It had been weathered down. Annie reaches for the heart shaped locket hung around her neck, as if reassuring herself that it is there. Dana’s breathing hitches as she urges herself faster. Annie holds Dana’s gaze as she steps off the edge and falls, clutching her limbs to her chest like a child, her eyelids shuttering closed. She drops like a stone, the splash barely heard. Dana stretches her hand into the water and grabs a handful of hair. She pulls up, yanking Annie’s head above water. She has gone pale, already committed to death. But her eyes flicker open, the watery green woven with gold in the dawn.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to save me anymore.” She coughs, her limbs trembling.

“I’m not,” Dana says, the gravity of her actions falling around her shoulders. They would decommission Dana. She’d be back on the pavement, her joints missing. She’d be split into a thousand parts, all screaming in pain. And yet, she knows Annie is worth it. Even as the sickly sky fills with belching planes and her oil leaks into the sea. Annie is worth everything. The last thing she sees is Annie’s face, her locket tickling Dana’s cheek as Annie leans over her dying body. The world drains to shades of gray. She feels that painful thing surge in her chest again.

This story is inspired by the painting Resurrection of the Waitress by Honore Sharrer.