Lian whistled as he strolled through the market, the new DeeBee warming his pocket. This morning’s cat might not have been gourmet, but his belly was purring. A rare smile crept across his face. Sometimes life handed you exactly what you needed to see.
His smile vanished abruptly as a commotion broke out ahead. Two market vendors fought over a scrap of territory, their argument escalating until one grabbed a metal pole, splitting open the other’s skull. The crowd barely paused, people were relieved when the commotion did not attract overhead attention. Folks were already stepping over the fallen body as blood continued to pool on the concrete. The victor simply dragged the corpse behind his stall so as not to affect trade.
Lian’s hands trembled. His throat constricted as bile rose. The casual brutality, the utter lack of reaction—that hit a nerve inside, a nerve that had been screaming at him for years. On top of that, he would now have DeeBee’s response. “Oh, so you killed and ATE that cat this morning without a second thought, and now this scene is different because why?”
This was strange territory. The little device—his stolen key to a better life—was suddenly holding up a mirror he didn’t want to face. Part of him wanted to burn it off his skin and throw it away. But it was also the one thing that might change his future. Complicated didn’t begin to cover it.
“Animals,” Lian closed his eyes and muttered, his voice rising. “What am I doing?” His carefully constructed delusion was cracking. All the fault of the DeeBee. His new apartment was already smothering him. He should have stayed on the street, where he belongs. A boiling emotional monster buried deep in his subconscious stirred, creating an emotional response that his conscious self immediately tried to suffocate or divert. Soon, his cool, practiced indifference would evaporate. He wanted to scream at them all, shake them until they showed a shred of humanity. But that damned small voice reminded him he was just as guiltyand now it had spread to the DeeBee. It had nothing whatsoever to do with others. Constant, casual violence eats at the soul, burning through delusions like a blowtorch on wallpaper. His bullshit needed to be boiled off. Lian knew this, yet he would not let it happen.
Lian stormed through the mortuary’s entrance, slamming the metal door of the shift changing rooms against the wall with an impact that echoed through the sterile corridors like a gunshot, causing several nearby workers to flinch. His hands trembled as he yanked his work coat from its hook, tearing the fabric at the shoulder seam. The familiar chemical smell of death and disinfectant fueled him further, making his nostrils flare.
The dead cat breakfast scratched his conscience—not because he’d done it, but because he had felt nothing. Just like when he’d watched that kid get skinned alive. Just like when he had instinctively snatched the DeeBee from a stranger in need.
His reflection caught his eye in the scratched metal of his work locker. He saw the dark circles under his hollow eyes, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. Lian could not even muster a macho punch at his own locker. He literally could not even fight his own shadow. Each day was a fight to stay alive. He could not bear his own company.
Lian pressed his forehead against the cool metal, breathing hard. This couldn’t go on. He had to face what he’d become before it destroyed him—or worse, before he destroyed someone else. What a tragedy that “big boys don’t cry.”
A shift worker arrived just behind Lian. Safe within the confines of the Daily Grind Mortuary, some folks just could not resist blabbing out loud. Better to respond, give his voice its daily workout.
The worker leaned in.
“You look like you just ran into a witnessing.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Rough ceremony?”
“Like watching paint dry. If the paint was someones skin being peeled off.”
“Yeah, these witness things get old fast. Yesterday I had to—”
“Funny thing about witnessing ceremonies, the real show is watching who’s watching you.”
“Right. Right. My bad. Sometimes I forget—”
He heard the familiar buzzing noise. Before Lian could check his pocket, his locker mate squared up to him with a knowing grin.
“Seriously? The whole brooding mortuary worker thing? That’s what you’re going with?”
“Hey, when you work in the Daily Grind—” Lian paused while he pulled on his Hazmat hood. “You either embrace the clichés or become one.”
That felt good. Both got a decent belly laugh and high-fived each other. Speaking out loud was such a luxury.
“Anyway. Time for the dead! Got to go.” Lian’s eyebrows arched, his arm reaching out to bang his locker closed, and he moved away. Approaching the operating area doors, Lian paused.
“How did I end up here?” he asked nobody in particular.
His answer was silence.
Maybe his luck was about to change. He slid a hand into his pocket and rubbed the stolen DeeBee like a lucky charm, wondering for a moment what sort of ancient magic powered the thing.
Then he remembered the buzz. He pulled out the handheld.
Query: Greatest achievements… Searching… searching… searching…
Result: Request timed out. Miaow-ow-ow. Munch-o-o.
undefined
Maybe not a lucky charm after all.
No brother, no cry
The Daily Grind Mortuary was a labyrinth—a massive, sanitized GovAid structure from the ’40s. It had the look of a building designed by a genius who had been drunk as a skunk when they put it together. There were no signs of human hands or any coordinated design, except for the occasional actual human hand emerging from a wall or roof, or a wrecked car encased in the building’s floors. Yet it worked, perfectly. Everything was kept pristine and clean by the building and the bots. Shiny, sterilized bones stood in for wall hangings.
All of this existed even though no one, anywhere, had the slightest clue what the place was for. It had been built by GEN-AI, after all, so of course there had to be a purpose..
“Morning sunshine. Enjoying our little house of horrors today?” said Corvus, not looking up from his clipboard. This was the second time Lian had gotten distracted, and it made him very uneasy. The feel-good mood from his earlier banter evaporated.
“Just living the dream, sir. One body bag at a time.”
“Do we know each other?”
“I’m Corvus. I met your DeeBee in another life, and speaking of dreams, they have a way of becoming nightmares when you least expect it.”
“That’s deep, Mister Corvus. You get that from a fortune cookie?”
“Just keeping my ear to the ground [shrugs] feeling the buzz, right? Some people think they’re playing the system, “Corvus glanced up, “right up until the system plays them.”
“If you’re trying to darken my stellar mood—”
“Oh, I don’t need to do that.” He checked his clipboard again. “Your darkness is coming all on its own. Brock’s looking for you, by the way.”
“Great. Just great.”
“You’re bleeding.” Corvus’s gaze was still focused on the clipboard.
“What?” Lian felt himself getting confused, off-center.
“Metaphorically. Your cool-guy act is hemorrhaging all over my clean floor.”
Lian snorted.
“Ah, I get it. Locker room talk. Legend, bro. I don’t have time for—”
“Funny thing about time, Lian,” Corvus finally looks up and faces Lian, “sometimes it has time for you.”
“Are we done with the fortune cookie wisdom?”
“Almost,” Corvus said, returning his gaze to the clipboard. “When you snap—and those trembling hands say you soon will—try not to do it in front of anyone who matters okay?”
Lian shook his head, moved Corvus to one side, and walked on, determined not to acknowledge for the first time that yes, indeed, his hands were shaking.
Corvus’s eyes narrowed as he assessed Lian carefully.
Lian and Brock signed up to the Daily Grind at the same time. Clarity had attracted Lian to Brock—the assured simplicity of his approach to everything. It was now the thing that festered between them. Lian was unsure whether he just blamed everyone for everything, or whether it was the likes of Brock in particular who irritated the heck out of him. He needed to get away, to hide among the shiny white walls of the mortuary, to just pick up a brush or a tool belt and calm down, away from the noise and the stink and the snatch squads. Feeling off balance was a very dangerous way to be.
Watch where you go
“Hey, buddy, watch where you’re going!” said a very loud voice from close by.
Lian looked up. It was the third time he’d been sideswiped today.
“Oh… Brock? Hi.” He managed a weak smile, blinking as he glanced around, as if waking from a daze.
“Great timing, Lian, gimme a hand with these old frauds, will ya?”
Lian snapped out of his daze to see Brock pulling three body bags behind him, holding two up—in one big hand—for Lian to see.
“Brock, they were humans once. Is it really necessary to throw the bodies around like that?”
“You think I’ll wake them up, Lian?” Brock asked as he dumped one bag aside and swaggered over to Lian, violently shaking the other two bags to drive home his point.
“No, of course not, I just...” Lian had his working voice on now, and it deflated as his simmering, self-righteous cockiness leaked away.
“You just what, Lian, huh?” Brock shook the bags again, like a shaman pushing an evil spirit away.
“You’ve been some asshole lately, you know that? Grumpy, holier than cow, just a real pain to be around, you know?”
As Lian smirked, he knew it was a mistake. Why was his body always letting him down like that? Letting folk know what he felt?
Brock noticed the smirk. “What. Is. So funny... NOW, Pro-fess-or?” Brock held the two body bags high before dropping them theatrically to the ground. One started leaking.
Staring down from Brock’s reddening face to the leaking bag, Lian suddenly felt that he was about to leak, quite badly, even as his throat went very dry indeed.
“Brock, dude, it’s just, you said holier than cow, and…”
“—and WHAT almighty, Lian; pray tell, WHAT?”
Brock kicked the leaking bag with great force as he spoke, before slowly turning back toward Lian, whose fingers were unconsciously dancing about, as if trying to smooth a tablecloth.
“I… I just…” was all that came out before a low groan interrupted him.
Both looked down in surprise at the leaky body bag, then back at each other.
“Jesus, Brock, Jesus that—”
“None of your business, Lian, okay? None. Of. Your. Business. Understand?”
“But, sure, Brock, Jesus, Brock. She, he, they… I...”
“Walk. Away. Lian. Now.”
Brock stared with ferocious intensity as he squared up to Lian, now visibly deflating into his wrinkling hazmat suit.Swooshing shoes sliding slowly south, away from towering Brock.
“I... Brock… I… The bag…”
“Last chance, Lian,” growled Brock.
“Brock,” said Lian with a voice that came from far, far away. “Brock.” He swallowed painfully.
“Brock, I can’t. I … I ... I ... just ... can’t.” Brock turned to go. He picked up the bags, then changed his mind and turned back around. Lian gulped silently.
So many things went through Lian’s mind and across his face and body, all at the same time. The scavenging. The bravado. The never-ending fear. The hovering Nevrwozd drones. The stink, dammit. The loneliness.
Lian did everything he could to drown his truth. He knew his life was meaningless, likely to be snuffed out at any time. He felt meaningless and anxious at the same time—what was that about? He panicked even though no one in the world cared whether he lived or died, or even whether he had ever lived at all. What was that about? He laughed out loud when some random, innocent person was “chosen” by the snatch squad for who knows what reason, feeling that perverted sense of relief that it was someone else, that he got to live one more day, one more time.
For what? To bear witness to being anxious and meaningless? To panic and rush and dodge and race about to a beat that is created by no one? What was going on?
Terror was rushing in through the breach in Lian’s mental defenses. It felt as if a trap door suddenly opened. Lian braced as he stood on his own two legs for the first time. He looked up at Brock towering over him, standing amid the leaking, groaning body bags.
“Brock,” Lian said, after clearing his voice. “What is going on here?”
We pulp your fiction
Brock pulled back, smiling. “I am sorry, Lian. Of course. You are right. These here folks—” Brock kicked the groaning body bag, hard. “You see these here folks, they are not human. They are GoBot supporters. They believe that the almighty AI—the cause of all our problems—the root cause of all this chaos … these GoBot supporters believe that the almighty AI is the cure, that the old ways, human ways, were to blame for the net going down. You see, these”—Brock spat the words—“GoBot folks need to be taken out. That is what the snatch squads are for. We need to purify them. We need to extract their Genie Juice and send the rest of their filthy shell back to hell.”
Brock paused and smiled, but not in a good way.
Lian was beyond caring. Lian was braced. Mentally, he was standing face on into the gale, a gale that wanted to sweep him away; to make him hide, hunker down, run, panic.
“Genie Juice? That psycho drug every strung-out dope fiend kills their friends for? That juice? I don’t underst—”
“I don’t care, Lian,” Brock roared. “I don’t care anymore, Lian. I tried so hard to bring you in, to show you, educate you, but oh no, sharey carey perfect Lian cannot be shown. Jesus Christ, Lian, can’t you see? Genie Juice is the pearl beyond price! We literally ain’t making any more. The factories all disappeared way back when the net went down. The secret was lost. Until we can find a DeeBee that remembers. These here bodies hold the most flawless cocktail of drugs that ever existed on this planet. Sure, it can be detected and filtered—those machines are still willing to work with us—but it needs to be harvested. Refined. When bodies get scared, they make more juice! So, we bag ’em, scare ’em, their bodies make more, then we blend ’em up and harvest the only bit of good there is in their filthy heathen bodies.”
Lian blinked. Several times. Lian, as master of his own destiny, had checked out.
“C’mon, Lian, seriously. ‘The Daily Grind?’
Lian responded with silent blinks.
“What did you think was going on here?”
Brock paused, theatrically examining Lian’s face as he walked around him.
“What’s wrong, Lian? Getting squeamish about our minor operation?” Brock was circling Lian now, enjoying himself.
“At least I—” Something died inside Lian as he could hear his voice break.
“At least what? Come on, finish that thought. Show me that famous Lian wit.” Brock leaned in so close to Lian’s face, he could feel the heat of Brock’s breath.
“Or maybe you’re finally realizing what you really are—just another scared little boy playing dress-up in a morgue. The Daily Grind. Great coffee in the canteen, right? That must be it, yeah?” Brock squeaked a high-pitched little piggy giggle.
A devastating comeback hid far down inside Lian’s throat, where it was safe from harm.
“See Lian? That’s what I love about this place,” he said, gesturing at the body bags. “Eventually, everyone shows their true face. Even you, with your clever lines and fancy attitude. Under all that, you’re just meat waiting to happen.”
“I’m not—”
“Not what? Not like me? Look around, sunshine. You’re exactly like me. Difference is, I know what I am. You’re still pretending.”
Lian’s trembling is almost out of control now. He flexed, trying and failing to form a fist.
“You should see your face right now. Like a man watching his own funeral.” Brock circled Lian, who tried to find stable ground but ended up backing into the body bags.
“What happened to all that swagger, sunshine? All those smart comments? Cat got your tongue? Or maybe just reality?”
Lian’s shaking hands fumbled with his hazmat visor, seeking any kind of shield from the verbal onslaught that had finally burst open. Despite himself, his face crumpled. Oh, the smell from those bags.
Brock reached down to push his face into Lian’s once again, then suddenly snapped back, fully upright.
“Wait...” Brock was sniffing, his immense body heaving theatrically, before stepping back.
“Is that? Did you actually?” Brock’s mocking grin spread like a crude oil slick.
“Oh, this is perfect! Our sophisticated mortuary man had Whiskers for breakfast!
Lian wriggled, trying to stand. Brock watched him struggle before leaning in to whisper, sniffing with brio.
“You know what they say…” He sniffed again, inhaled, and glanced at the walls before finishing in a low voice, “...you are what you eat.” Brock’s oil-slick grin spread even wider.
“And you, my friend, smell like rock-bottom – with a side of kibble.”
“What’s wrong, kitty killer? All those fancy words stuck in your throat—along with poor little puddy tat?”
Brock was on a roll, oblivious to the fact that, although his prey stood frozen, something primitive was stirring behind Lian’s glazed eyes. The spell broke as Brock clapped slow, loud and with great deliberation - again and again—. He laughed while he did this, the sound hollow behind his dead eyes.
“Let’s play a game! ‘Meow meow,’ Mister Kitty. Have you seen Mr. Whiskers? Last seen entering Mister Morty’s colon!”
Lian’s hands were no longer shaking. He felt strangely calm.
“Oh wait. I get it. You are method acting! It’s a ‘processing the dead’ thing. Starting small, are we? Working your way up?”
Even Lian was impressed with that one, his voice still on vacation. Brock just did not know when to stop.
“You know what’s beautiful about this? You want to give these folks a proper send-off. But poor little alley cat? He’s turned into morning breath by my sophisticated friend’s sophisticated stomach!”
Brock turned to pick up a wriggling body bag, tripped the compactor chute into life, and heaved it into the chute before turning back to frown at Lian.
“I hope you at least had the decency to say grace before or after you turned Felix into finger food.”
His donkey laugh echoed up and down the compactor room as he picked up the remaining two bags and kicked the compactor chute back into life after its first meal, shaking his head. Lian could imagine the laugh spreading all across the facility, whispering into each ear, increasing the hilarity. He watched as Brock threw the two body bags into the shoot and turned around.
The crazed punch that Lian aimed at Brock’s nose contained every piece of rage, helplessness, humiliation, and loss that Lian had ever felt. It had every sinew, every molecule of rage and self-pity in it.
It also completely missed Brock’s face.
Lian could not reach Brock’s Caesar-like snout. Instead, it caught Brock clean in the throat. Brock’s trachea crumpled like a cardboard milk container. The impact caused him to stagger backward toward the compactor chute.
The silent, spindly arms were there for Brock, like a mother’s arms, as he desperately tried to get a hold on the container’s smooth metallic sides. The spidery arms reached out from the chute and gingerly guided Brock’s gasping, gulping, silently screaming body down into the auto compactor. The look on his face let Lian know that Brock was not lying about what was down there. Oh, Brock clearly knew what was coming next. The doors closed without a whisper, leaving Lian to stare blankly at the warning sign someone had scrawled on the doors in big red letters.
We Pulp your Fiction…The truth is down here! Call 1-800-AbandonHope.
Lian’s hand hurt like hell. He shook it just like he had seen the punishers in the snatch squads do when their quarry was wriggling about too much before being bagged and clubbed. His heart beat faster and louder than it ever had in his entire life.
There was an all-pervasive silence beneath the hum of machinery. The smell of oil and bodies hung in the air, carried along by the efficient systems around him. Lian moved without a sound, though his paper shoes made an odd crinkling with each step. He tried to think. What now? He had survived the end of his world, yet his mind felt like mush. His hands trembled as he pushed the broom in a slow, steady arc across the sanitized floor. The soft swoosh, swoosh was the only rhythm he could cling to. He told himself not to sweat, not to tremble, not to look up. Just sweep. Keep steady. That was it.
Buzz BuzZ::
You are here: Dark Wood. Path: Signal Lost. Last location: Inferno’s waiting room. Threat level: High — Proceed with caution. Risk: Becoming a permanent resident.
Lian’s eyes bulged as he stared at the message. His throat went dry.
Hour after hour, he kept sweeping, letting the regular rhythm calm him. Each stroke became a way to hold back a crushing guilt, a quiet mantra meant to steady his nerves. No evidence. No witness. No murder. He kept sweeping as if the act alone could make it true.
Buzz BuzZ::
Mission priority: Your survival. Imperative: Do not forget that. Next step: Get out of your own way. Stop thinking — you are not good at that. Spoiler alert: Running is not an option. Next update: When you really need it.
He wished he could stop thinking. It felt as though the entire universe were holding its breath. No more thoughts. No more messages. Eventually, he had to accept that enough was enough. He walked to the recessed utility door in the corner to put away his broom.
What Lian had failed to notice was someone quietly standing by the door. As Lian’s exhausted body approached the closet door, the silent watcher reached out to hold the broom.
That was when Lian noticed her. He was a long way past shock. For the second time in one day, Lian felt something like a trap door opening under him, and his soul’s swan dive into hell continued.
A sterile scent of disinfectant hung heavy in the air, a stark contrast to the horror spilling all around him. Lian, a legend in his own mind, used to drifting through the Citadel like a ghost, stood frozen, mouth open. His breath came in random, panicked gasps, eyes darting everywhere in feral desperation. The weight of his actions, the sudden and irrevocable shift in his reality, pressed down on him like a suffocating blanket.
Across from him, the woman stood, still as a statue. Lian suddenly felt like he was approaching a black hole that appeared from nowhere, as if from outer space. Surely this could not be emanating from the watcher, the probable witness. It must be coming from the closet. Her gaze was completely unwavering, showing none of the shock one might expect. Instead, there was an unnerving detachment, a clinical observation that sent shivers down Lian’s spine. Her voice was steady, drawn out, with a mellow, steady flow, and a Creole accent.
“Now what?” her voice cut through the silence, steady and cold.
Lian choked on the words, his desert-dry mouth and rasping lips repeating, “What… what…” over and over in a desperate mantra. He couldn’t breathe.
“I said … now what?” she repeated. “Think very carefully. Your life depends on your next response.” She leaned toward Lian, her hand turned palm up, and placed the tips of her fingers ever so gently on Lian’s shaking chin. “Do you hear me?” Her eyes sought his and locked on in a penetrating stare. Lian recoiled sharply, as if with an electric shock. He let out a dry, rasping gulp. Then another. Lian developed a repetitive, dry-gulp reflex.
The whisper-soft draft from her voice maintained its temperature of absolute zero. Outside, a smiling sunrise slipped discreetly back down below the horizon, having wisely decided to wait this one out.
There was silence.
Lian foolishly tried to go on the offensive. “I have not noticed you before. What are you doing here?” Life was slowly returning to Lian, from his feet upward. It was still a long way from reaching his brain.
“Do you have clearance for this level?” Lian doubled down on his efforts, manfully placing hands on his hips, only to have them slip uselessly back down by his side.
She smiled. “Let’s ask Brock.” She tilted her head toward the chute. Her cheeks lifted, Her eyes stayed fixed on him, unblinking. Lian noticed that she hadn’t blinked once. How was that even possible? His own eyes fluttered in response, as if trying to restore the average.
He summoned every ounce of resolve to attempt some casual levity. “Brock? Hm, “Shut up. Do you work for Brock? What’s your name?”
Every mention of Brock’s name hit like a defibrillator. Lian’s tortured soul was now shuddering and jerking violently on a piss-stained spirit floor. Somewhere far, far away, Lian heard himself say, “Lian.”
“Hm. Okay. Lian. Do you wish to remain alive? By living, I mean, just as you are now—not like someone like, say, like Brock. I heard him explain all that to you earlier, so, what say you?”
“Yes, please,” Lian croaked like a newly teenaged tadpole, his voice breaking. The God of Cringe sprinted across his kingdom after that remark, high-fiving the entire population. Internally, Lian knew the pathetic croak would echo in his life forever, but right now, he was beyond exhausted and utterly surrendered to his fate.
“Very well, Lian. Come with me.” As she reached out, Lian lifted his arm awkwardly from the elbow. What was wrong with him? Every single spark of the fight had been extinguished. He felt a slight pinch as her manicured fingers momentarily bit into his bare arm, and he flinched.
“Let’s say our farewells to Brock, shall we? I know where he is.”
“You do?” Lian blinked as he recognized Dorothy’s voice from The Wizard of Oz, speaking in awed tones to the all-powerful witch.
“He is in here. Let’s say hello.” Her head gestured to the utility room.
She palmed the door, and the air that hit Lian didn’t just smell like death; it felt expensive. It was a heavy, pressurized humidity that tasted like copper and burnt sugar—the cloying scent of raw Genie Juice before the Citadels filtered out the terror.
“Listen,” Skar whispered, tilting her head toward the dark.
Beneath the industrial thrum, there was a wet, rhythmic clicking—thousands of human diaphragms hitching in a synchronized, involuntary sob. It was the sound of a living machine. The room was a Refinery, and the atmosphere was thick with the static itch of thousands of souls being slowly rendered into Yield. Every gasp from the dark was a fractional increase in the Silicon Genie’s quarterly return.
Lian’s repetitive gulping slowed, replaced by a rigid stillness. He watched the nearest pod—a unit labeled with a barcode—shudder as the shunt flared a dull orange. His gaze tracked the flow of amber fluid through the overhead conduit, following the line directly to the juicer’s intake.
He didn’t scream. He simply looked at his own hands, then back at the wriggling bag that was a clear outline of the struggling, gasping Brock, now shrink wrapped. The math clicked. He wasn’t in a morgue; he was standing in a biochemical factory, one where he had just deleted the foreman.
“You understand my concerns on costs now,” Skar said, her voice flat. “By planting Brock, you may have interrupted my supply. He was a master brewer, an expert at finessing what I like to call ‘the Yield.’ He knew exactly how to keep the biomass on the brink without triggering a total system collapse. Anaesthetics are out of the question—they pollute the purity of the Genie-Juice. My clients demand a clean, high-terror extract. See how the line slows near the end; the rasping of the grinders adds that final, necessary ‘spike’ which keeps demand for our brand so high.”
Lian noticed a fleeting smirk fly across her face.
“Here at the Daily Grind, we guarantee our product keeps the terror in our terroir, so to speak.”
After patting one of the passing bags, Skar stepped back as the contents surged against its restraints, her expression as empty as a cleared spreadsheet.
“Brock is currently undergoing his first extraction. Even now, he’s producing a surprisingly high return for a man in his position. Bless him.”
Skar deliberately trod heavily across Lian’s personal space, her presence swallowing him.
“I’m anticipating a potentially massive deficit. Ordinarily, I’d liquidate you to balance the books. But you strike me as some kind of chaos magnet. That is interesting. Your existence has managed to eliminate a master brewer and yet—yield is still increasing. This is unforeseen and needs further study. The automated safeguards have allowed this to happen. Very strange. Can you keep this going, Lian?”
Skar paused, assessing Lian even as he hyperventilated, a dark green complexion hinting at trouble ahead. His head nodded so fast in vacuous agreement it was in danger of bouncing off on its own. His intestines were on the verge of securing a truly thunderous escape.
“This line and the Yield are your entire world from now on, Lian,” Skar said. “You’re the new supply-ops manager. In this economy, we call that a sovereign debt.”
She watched the sweat bead on his lip, her head tilting with predatory curiosity. “Are you feeling the intake yet? That metallic tang at the back of your throat? The first hint of my high-grade Yield starter I injected you with? Bespoke. Top grade. Without my signature on your next dose, the withdrawal symptoms will dissolve you down from your little toe upwards.”
She leaned in, her eyes flat and unblinking. “Any drop in yield makes you an unhedged asset for the NoBots to liquidate, a ‘Toxic Asset’ waiting for the final squeeze.”
Lian’s lungs hitched, his chest locking into the same mechanical rhythm as the hanging rows.
“Welcome to the supply chain, Lian,” she whispered, glancing down at his badly stained pants. “Try to stay liquid.”
Several body bags dropped to the warehouse floor with a sodden crump, then given time to hear the blades of the juicer roar to life like the engine of an ancient aircraft. Fear needs time to truly finesse, to deliver that last-minute signature addition to the upcoming brew.
“Ah! Just in time. Today is not a total waste after all. Splendid.”
Skar took Lian by the arm, still nodding vacuously, and walked him toward a chink of light in the wall. Skar opened the door, guiding Lian with a hand on his back.
Skar grinned widely, smiling for the first time, clapping Lian hard on the back as she pushed him through the door.
“I’ll be in touch, was all Lian heard as he was pushed out of the building, and the thick metal door slammed shut.
Lian fell to his knees. A heaving, trembling, never-ending farting, gushing, gusty puking storm filled the air.