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  He clutched her wrist, above the nick. She felt the pressure at her pulse point. “So you remain a selfish bitch, fuelling your need to feel alive with each new fuck?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I could fuck you now. Work up a bit of that glow for myself.”

  “I’d break your ribs first. Your freedom doesn’t lie between my thighs.”

  “Where does it lie, hmm, Lieutenant?” His glistening eyes bored into her. “Can you tell me that much? Is there nothing you can offer to wear down this daily sense of pointlessness?”

  She shook her head and stayed silent. She couldn’t begin to conceive of a way to soothe him.

  “What do you want from me?” she said at last.

  “Solidarity.”

  Kali caught her breath. The word carried weight. “Solidarity in death?” It was hardly a new idea. She had expected to offer as much within minutes of walking into Abbandon. It was only Mohab’s father who kept her alive.

  “In life.” Mohab stood very still, the sounds from outside the gunner coming to them as through a blanket of stone-wool.

  “Tell me a story,” Groff would say to his grandmother night after night, as was the way of the Vary. It was the stories which connected them through the centuries, whenever walls fell and children were grabbed from their beds. When all else was taken, it was the stories which drifted above the heads of their enemies, always out of reach. And they were potent, these stories, infused with the agonies of his people. Even after the last of the Vary had been slaughtered, some whisper of them would survive.

  Laid out on the stretcher, her head wrapped in black lint, Shola Ricks was not going back to the children’s ward. Groff cursed the temperamental pneumatics of the stretcher. He gave the riser a thump and the mechanism woke up. The stretcher undocked from the bolt plate and Groff eased it out of the operating room.

  “Luna La lee,” sang the girl through her bandages. “Luna la lee!”

  Groff chuckled. “Funny little song you’ve got going on, Shola Ricks.” He steered the stretcher out into the corridor. Fire lamps crackled either side.

  “You keep singing, Shola Ricks,” he told the girl, glad of her lungful of dream gas.

  At the far end of the corridor, past closed doors and pharmaceutical cabinets, was the lock up. There was no need for guards in the medical suite where the aim was to dissect rather than restore. Nonetheless, Harris and his team liked to keep their more dramatic surgeries safely stowed away. Groff guided the stretcher inside.

  Entering the lock up, Groff thought about the dark fairy stories his grandmother had told him and decided they were true. Harris’ experiments were housed inside several glass-sheet cubicles. Five had been boys. Three had been girls; Shola Ricks made four. The cubicles were fed with an invisible cell accelerant; Groff had seen bones restructure, skin adapt, teeth migrate, and all manner of biological change take place behind those glass walls. Shola would be no different.

  Lifting the girl off the stretcher, Groff carried her inside an open cubicle. He lay her down on the low coat and stroked her bandaged head.

  “Sleep, Shola Ricks. Who knows? Maybe the doctors will have given you a gift. Second sight, perhaps. Or the ability to fly.” He shook his head, walked back out of the cubicle and locked the glass-sheet door.

  “Actually, we have spliced her germ-line with that of a fennec fox,” said a voice behind him.

  Groff turned to find Doctor Harris standing in the doorway – and felt his stomach clench. He didn’t like it when the doctor spoke to him. It didn’t pay to attract the man’s attention.

  “The skull has been bioengineered to suit the gene grid, the ears in particular. I am interested in the dissipation of heat and auditory improvement. We may be blessed with evolutions of bone structure and other shifts at a molecular level.” Doctor Harris approached Shola’s cell and examined a handheld data frame by the door. The feed from the cell’s environment pleased him; he peered in at the sleeping girl and hummed softly.

  “I have high hopes for this specimen,” he said, maybe to Groff, maybe to himself.

  Such joy in the face of so much suffering! Groff wanted to break the doctor’s skull and tear out the dark matter that pioneered such cruelty. Instead, he stood very still, hardly daring to breathe.

  Harris slid the handheld back onto the wall-mount. The scrubs he had worn to the operating room were soiled down the bib.

  “Do you have a name?” He stared at Groff, his eyes illuminated with the excitement of his latest operation.

  “Groff de Rubon.”

  “You trained as a doctor?”

  “Nurse.”

  “General or specialist?”

  “Paediatric and Minor Maxillofacial.”

  “Ah. The assigning officer has made good use of you then.” Fixating on Groff’s arms, Harris swung his own absentmindedly. “The afflictions of your race are manifold. Such cumbersome physiology. Arms that dangle as if stretched by some mechanical means. Teeth made for chewing the cud.” He indicated that Groff should follow and moved on to the next cell along.

  “Here. The subject has been aligned with razingstock genes.” He tapped on the glass-sheet and a boy of sorts stirred inside. Groff was familiar with the child; the first time he had seen the creature, bent over on all fours, vast shoulder blades protruding like wings, he had fled the room and vomited in the corridor.

  “The splayed hooves allow for a better distribution of the bulk, allowing the mule to carry heavier loads over greater distances. I am heartened to see the breeding programme is enjoying success. This is science in the making and you and I are the first to witness it.”

  It was a singular moment in Groff’s time within Abbandon, this suggestion that he had eyes with which to witness a thing and a mind with which to process what he witnessed.

  “You would make cattle of us,” he said quietly.

  Harris clucked his tongue. “I am trying to save your species. In a virgin state, the Vary is mentally malnourished and physically substandard in every way. These paranimal procedures will pave the way for a worldwide breeding programme.”

  Groff watched the creature lumber up to the bars of the cubicle as it had been taught. Harris picked up the cell’s handheld and ran a finger across the screen. Inside the cubicle, a feed slot opened; the hybrid lowered its muzzle and came up again, churning its jaw as bits of wingnut pellets scattered the floor. Naked, the one-time boy arched his tailbone and sprayed the back wall of his cubicle with diarrhoea.

  “As for making cattle of you…” The doctor cocked his head towards the cell. “I would make your lives of value,” he went on, examining the boy with cold intensity and recording his latest stats on the handheld. “Rather than execution through mass genocide, the Vary will be re-engineered as livestock. I am also very optimistic that these current experiments will result in viable bio weaponry. The evolution of your species may even help Bleekland win the war!”

  Groff’s emotions seesawed between fear and rage, and he considered the desolation of death. Better to go while he was still whole than some genetic pariah! And yet, even faced with these horrors of the future, he still couldn’t break free of his desire to keep on living. Things still mattered to him – the wild blue of the sky, the togetherness of his people, all the great and terrible stories, and the voices which kept them alive.

  This is just another story, he told himself as Harris moved on to the next cubicle and an eight-year-old girl carved into a spine lizard. The monster behind the glass was just a morality tale, designed to stop children straying from their beds and to keep men in bondage.

  “You see the fringe scales down both sides of the throat? It is the first signs of self-sustaining body armour. And the eyes. Have you noticed them? The pupils are smaller; they dilate less to aid in the perception of UV light.” Harris added his observations to the relevant handheld then replaced the set. Leaning in, he rapped the glass with his knuckles.

  The girl spun around on her heels. Mouth ga
ping, she produced a deep hiss and expanded her throat to show a bright green collar of flesh.

  “Glorious. Just glorious.” Harris looked to Groff, like a child awaiting applause.

  “Every gunner has a keycode – the master command to activate the engines. The keycode is reconfigured every twenty-four hours via a wire feed from the datastacks. The only way to gain access is via the gel frame which is located in the Commandant Superintendent’s office.”

  Kali understood what was being asked of her – to steal the keycode during one of her and the Commandant Superintendent’s trysts and thereby aid an escape plan. Mohab didn’t say ‘Do this and make amends’, or ‘Finally, you can wash your sins away.’ But the suggestion hung in the air between them.

  “This gunner is a new type of ship,” she said. “Where are you getting your information?”

  “A reliable source.”

  “A resistance spy.” Kali grimaced. “Who is it? That bastard guard stationed at the furnaces? He likes to have a grope before he burns a body.”

  The words had barely left her lips when Mohab struck out, the sting of his open hand resonating against her cheek. On instinct, Kali drove the small blade towards him, pulling up short of his left eye. “You are an academic. I am a trained soldier with ten years’ field experience. Odds are you will lose if you take me on.”

  Mohab wasn’t listening. “So, any fucker stupid enough to help the Vary has to be a pervert or a gun for hire. Why do you always degrade us? It takes nerve to infiltrate a camp like this, more for a person to risk their life seeking out the cracks.” His voice caught. Leaning in to her blade, he said between gritted teeth, “Why do you insist on making animals of us?”

  She saw herself reflected in the cold circles of his eyes. “I have been raised wicked,” she said numbly. Mohab flinched as she stroked his face with rough fingertips. “I was taught to see differences, where maybe there were none.”

  “We are the same and your kind has slaughtered us.”

  “Yes.” She dropped the blade from her hand. She couldn’t stop stroking his face. “And you want the chuck key to be my token of ‘sorry’.”

  “You cannot be sorry for the war you have helped wage. Sorry has no more substance than if I were to rub the air between my fingers.” He mimed the fact.

  “But I can help. That is tangible. I can fly the craft too, I think.” She let her hand fall back to her side. Despite her intentions as a recruit, she’d never had the chance to pilot a craft the size of a gunner. But she did have experience in mesospheric flight. “How hard can it be?” she said quietly.

  “It will be the closest you come to forgiveness.” Mohab retrieved the small blade from the floor and handed it back.

  Twenty

  Love is complicated. Like an egg held in the palm of the hand, it can feel smooth and pleasing. But hold it too tightly and the shell will break, and love becomes a mess of mucous leaking through your fingers.

  Kali was twelve years old when she and her fellow Youth Guard made the decision to break open the zoo. Grizmare had long suspected Kali would one day be lost to her entirely. Already the girl had demonstrated her father’s propensity for cruelty – so many sparrows had lost their fragile little lives to Kali’s gun. When High Judge Titian, in a rage over a soiled rug, took the family dog outside and shot it between the eyes, Kali had insisted on running to the garden to watch. She got there too late, apparently, the execution having already been carried out. But when she returned inside the house, Grizmare had endured lurid descriptions of the blood and brain matter. Her granddaughter’s eyes had gleamed with enthusiastic innocence, as if the girl balanced so precariously on the edge between good and wickedness.

  She is so young, Grizmare would remind herself while reading fairy tales or combing the knots from her granddaughter’s hair. She doesn’t know any better. All children are nasty little fuckers. All children worship death.

  Except, then Kali was twelve years old. Taller than most girls her age. Muscular too from all the years of climbing whatever she could and taking gymnastics classes and sprinting the full length of the grounds. Teeth bared. Panting with a wild, breathless glee. “I like to run until it hurts,” she had explained once.

  The girl was studious, too. Not in the same way Grizmare might describe herself or Kali’s father. Classical art, the ballet, the theatre – these were wasted on Kali. Instead, by twelve years old, the engineer in her was starting to stir. She took apart the house’s security system – and got ten lashes of her father’s belt across her hand for the trouble. She rewired the fire lamps inside the house to interact with the intelligent glass-sheet walls. And as a final triumphant farewell to childhood, she threaded a kill-switch down through the roof into the main data gate and unlocked the zoo – all thirty-three cages.

  Grizmare could still recall Kali and her friends, dressed in their immaculate Youth Guard uniforms, hooting and howling with laughter as the beasts came nosing out into the garden. Standing below, wielding a glass of sour gin and a scowl, Grizmare had watched in horror as her precious herd devoured one another in order of size or savagery. Mew cats hunted desert otters. Razingstock thudded through the cacti beds, tiger dogs snapping at their heels or felling a beast with a leap. Tiny timid sand bears came blinking blindly into the light – and had their throats torn out by a mating pair of screech hawks. Even the lumbering Frillbream emerged to investigate the garden. Leaving great orange dung pats steaming in the sun as it walked, the frillbream gave a shake of its huge neck collar, sending a wave of fluting sound through the environment.

  “Away! Away with you!” Grizmare had done her best, running into the fray without a plan or a weapon. All she knew was these desert otters, these maw cats, these sand bears – this frillbream! – were her life’s passion. Waving her hands manically, she danced around while the carnage played out before her.

  It was the unmistakable putt-putting growl of a tiger dog which made her turn around. Hunkered low a few feet away, the bony spines proud along its spine, the tiger dog had her in its sights.

  Grizmare would never forget how she felt in that moment. The sickly wrench of dread. How did she intend to fight off the tiger dog? It was a mass of muscle and long, needle-fine teeth. Grizmare’s bowels gave way and a tiny mew of fear escaped her lips.

  The rock shot slammed into the tiger dog’s flank, spraying blood like a sneeze. A second shot punched through the skull and stayed embedded.

  Grizmare gasped and doubled over, choking and wheezing. At her feet, the tiger dog lay dead, its dark eyes cooling.

  Laughter reached her ears. While the shit was still warm as it ran down her leg, she looked up to see Kali standing in the middle of her gang on the roof of the zoo, the butt of a rifle resting against her shoulder.

  Love. A strange, breakable emotion. One moment it is whole and smooth, the next, it is a mess of shell and gore slipping through the fingers. Grizmare never forgot the cruel streak which marbled Kali’s personality. But love. Breakable, messy love. That kept Grizmare adoring Kali across the years and despite the horrors her granddaughter had inflicted. It was love which motivated her now to follow in Kali’s footsteps and open the gates to a different zoo.

  “There were once twenty-five razingstock tied up inside a rickety old barn. The razingstock were owned by Mother Goose who kept them tethered and fed them measly portions of pignuts. She housed the beasts so because she was jealous of their usefulness and scared of their strength. Night and day, the razingstock would appeal to her, saying, ‘There is no sense in this, Mother Goose. We are good and willing members of the farm. The plough does not till the soil unless we pull it. The produce cannot be got to market unless we are hitched to the goods’ wagon. Your family will die over winter without our milk and the cheese you make from it.’

  “But Mother Goose was a sour woman. She did not want the razingstock to feel they had more use than she. And so it was that she persuaded the chuckle hens to act distressed, thereby attracting the razingst
ock to enter the barn – whereupon she locked the creatures in. And after, how she had danced, arms raised to the skies as if she had made herself a god!”

  Perched on his father’s old cot, Mohab eased back his shoulders. He went to lie down, but the men around him reacted with discontent.

  “What?” He sat back up. “What else is there to tell you?” Bringing his face into a shaft of moonlight, he stared out at the sea of men. “Do you want to hear about those razingstock? Twenty-five of the finest specimens in the herd. Are you praying they escape, having broken free of their bonds and having killed Mother Goose while she was still dancing? Do you think that ending is likely?”

  “Isn’t that the point of the story, Speaker’s son?” hissed one of the crowd. And another, “Tell the story the right way. How’s a man to have hope otherwise?”

  “How indeed?” Mohab spread out his hands. “Where is our hope if not in the twenty-five strong razingstock and the chance they might overwhelm Mother Goose? These twenty-five who are the redeemers, the thinkers, and the brave. Good strong beasts who have resisted Mother Goose’s best efforts to break them. In accordance with the rules of the story, do we not all will these beasts of burden to revolt against their master, these same beasts who have been beaten, chained, and made to work themselves to death? What hope do the rest of the herd have if those twenty-five do not rise up and take the reins from Mother Goose?” He could hear his voice cracking. What use were words unless he could knit them into something worthwhile?