Before the Engineers sent us to Mars, they shut off our memories. Then they pumped us full of adrenaline and painkillers and dropped us in the middle of the battlefield. If we died, the drones dragged our bodies back to base where the doctors did everything they could to bring us back to life. They replaced our organs and limbs with prosthetics. Refilled our veins with synthetic blood. If we survived six years of that, we went home. Not dead, not alive, but something else.
“Manu, you need to wake up,” Mom says.
She’s shaking my shoulder. I sit up in my bed. My alarm’s ringing. I don’t know how long it’s been ringing for.
“Are you okay?” Mom asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, you better start getting ready. You’re going to be late for work.”
I push the nightmare out of my mind. Every night, it’s always the same dream. I’m slamming a young Martian soldier’s head against a rock, over and over, while we both scream. He’s screaming because he doesn’t want to die. I’m screaming because I don’t want to kill him.
“Breakfast is on the table,” Mom says. “I made some coffee, too.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
I go to the bathroom to piss. In the dark, my night vision switches, reminding me my head is filled with wires and circuits now. I feel sick, thinking about it. I puke in the toilet, and then I sit on the floor, waiting for the nausea to pass.
I brush my teeth, put on my uniform, and then join Mom at the kitchen table. She’s made bean cakes. They were my brother Dmitri’s favorite, not mine, but she’s always mixing us up. I hate bean cakes, but I don’t tell her. I eat them. I make her happy.
Dmitri had been sent into the war a year after I went. It was just last month that the army told me he’d died, vaporized by a bomb.
“Don’t forget you have a date with my friend, Janice’s, daughter tonight,” Mom says.
“Why are you forcing her to do this?”
“I’m not forcing her to do anything. This was her idea. She said she had a great time talking to you at the card game last Sunday.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Amina.”
Since I’ve been home, Mom’s been trying to find me a girlfriend. She wants me to find a wife. She wants grandkids. She’s in denial about how bad I look.
Horribly disfigured.
As I sip my coffee, I read over the new case file the Bureau of Lost Children has sent me. A woman named Dani Marsden reported her son, Zeke, missing the night before. My partner, Cody, and I need to drive out to The Cradle and talk to her. Find out everything she knows.
“I better get going,” Mom says. “My shift starts at nine.”
“I should get going, too.”
We walk to the subway station together. I’d grown up in Baltimore, but I don’t recognize the city. I’d grown up in The Cradle, surrounded by other kids and their moms. The world was full of color and fun. The real Baltimore is different, though. It’s grey and cold and mean. Concrete buildings everywhere. Drones, armed guards, and surveillance cameras. I keep smiling at people, but they never smile back at me. They always look away.
Mom says bye and gets on the train to the hotel where she works cleaning rooms. I get on my train a few minutes later and find an empty seat. During the ride, I watch the recruitment ads playing on the monitor across from me. Another reminder of why half my organs are missing and my head is filled with wires.
Aethon doesn’t just want to control our thoughts, it wants to control our bodies, too. It wants to turn us all into human robots. Visit SaveEarth.com and join the fight to save the human race.
When I get to the Bureau, Cody’s waiting outside for me. He’s six foot four with a shaved head and deformed jaw. He’d served in heavy artillery during the war. His prosthetic limbs are mostly metal. A rifle’s been welded to his right arm.
“Did you read the case file?” he asks.
“On the way here.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go.”
We get in our car and then drive toward The Cradle. Cody doesn’t like to talk, but I do, so I talk to him.
“Did you have a lot of nightmares when you first got back from the war?” I ask.
“Everybody does.”
“How long does it take for them to stop?”
“They never stop, really. You just get used to them. Stop caring about them so much. Stop waking up screaming in the middle of the night.”
“You ever wonder if the dreams are real? Pieces of memories that managed to stick to our brains?”
“Don’t start thinking like that, Manu. That’s how you get yourself in trouble.”
During re-adjustment, the doctors warned me about war flashes. Veterans who think about the war too much sometimes get triggered into reverting back to what they were before, usually by something extremely violent like a car crash or an assault. The flashes can cause all kinds of problems with our brains.
Cody and I identify ourselves at The Cradle’s security gate and then Cody parks in front of Dani Marsden’s apartment building. We go up to her apartment and knock on the door.
“You’re here about Zeke?” she asks.
Cody nods. “We need to have a look around the apartment. We need to ask you a few questions, too.”
She lets us inside. Sensors inside my head start switching on. I see her heartrate floating next to her head, her blood pressure, the sweat dripping off her skin.
“When you talked to the police, you said you last saw your son around 6:30 pm last night?” Cody asks.
“He’d been studying all day. He said he had a headache. After we ate dinner, he asked me if he could go out and get some fresh air. He thought it would help clear his head.”
“Why’d you wait until midnight before you reported him missing?”
“I kept telling myself he’d be back any minute. I didn’t want to create any problems for him. He’s under enough stress as it is.”
Cody and I search the apartment. We look through the dressers and cupboards, underneath the furniture, underneath the beds.
In Zeke’s room, I pick up his prep book and flip through its pages. It reminds me of the old days. Of me and Dmitri nervously studying for the exam. Zeke’s scrawled a few notes in the book’s margins. There is no Aethon AI. The war is a lie. The war exists so real men die. Mutineer propaganda.
I show it to Cody.
“When’s your son scheduled to write the exam?” Cody asks.
“Next Friday,” Dani says.
“How’d he do on his prep exams?”
“82 on his last one. 77 on the one before that.”
“He had a good chance of passing.”
“You think they’ll still let him write the exam?”
“I can’t really say. But first, we need to find him. When’s the last time you talked to your brother, Reggie?”
“A few weeks ago, I think. Why?”
“He hasn’t been at work the past few days.”
“Maybe he’s sick?”
“He’s not at home, either.”
“You think he had something to do with this?”
“Do you?”
“There’s no way in hell Reggie would run off with Zeke without telling me.”
Cody and I leave the apartment and go back to our car.
“You think she’s lying?” I ask.
“They always are.”
“What now?”
“We go back to the Bureau and upload our new info. Then we wait for the bosses to decide what we do next.”
We drive back to the Bureau. I sit at my desk, connect the transfer cable to my head, and upload all the data I’ve collected. Three hundred terabytes.
I wonder how it all fits in my brain.
When I get home, Mom shows me the suit she bought for my high school graduation party.
“You looked so good in this,” she says.
“I’m not going to a job interview. We’re just getting drinks.”
“But you need to make a good impression on her.”
“I don’t even think that suit fits me anymore.”
“Probably not.”
She hangs it back up in my closet.
I put on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt to cover the scars on my arms. Mom doesn’t like what I’m wearing, but I don’t care. It’s good enough.
I take a cab to the bar. It’s filled with women. There’s only one other man, and he’s an Engineer. I know by his uniform. A dark green jacket and a dark green cap. His table is full of women. Every time he says something, they all laugh.
I see Amina. She stands and waves. She’s braided her hair. She’s wearing a purple dress. She gives me a hug, and then we sit at the table.
“How’s the new job going?” she asks.
“It’s been busy.”
“With the intellectual assessment exam coming up, there must be a lot of runaways.”
“Hundreds every week.”
She shakes her head. “People are so selfish. I wish we didn’t have to fight this war, but we have no other choice. If we want to exist, this is what we need to do.”
We order our drinks. She orders a rum and coke, I order a beer. I drink my beer slowly. Because of all the painkillers and other drugs I’m on, the doctors warned me to be careful with alcohol. If I drink too much, my organs might start acting up.
“I’m so sorry about your brother,” Amina says. “How long ago did you find out what happened to him?”
“Just last month.”
“Why’d they wait so long to tell you?”
“They were worried it might set back my recovery. They wanted to make sure I was ok first. It’s strange, though. I barely remembered I had a brother, but as soon as they told me Dmitri was dead, all my memories of him flooded back into my head.”
She puts her hand on mine. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
“I’m alive. That’s what matters. That I’m here for my mom. I wish I’d been here when the Army told her about Dmitri. How’d she take it?”
“She was a mess. I’m glad you made it back. I can’t imagine what she would’ve done if she lost both her sons.”
I couldn’t imagine, either. I didn’t want to imagine what she might have done.
“It must be so strange not remembering the last six years of your life,” Amina says.
“It feels like I died and woke up as somebody else.”
“A different person?”
“The war’s made me into someone else. Even if I don’t remember how, I can still feel it. Does that make sense?”
“I think so.”
We order another round of drinks. We talk a while longer and then say goodnight to each other. We both work early the next morning.
“We should do this again sometime,” I say.
“I’d like that.” She gives me her number.
She takes a cab home, but I feel like walking.
I’m happy, but I’m no idiot, either. I’ve only been back in the world a few months, but I see how people treat us. They pity us, or they’re disgusted by us, but they sure as hell don’t want kids with us. Why would a woman have a kid with a veteran when any government insemination clinic will happily pay her to be impregnated with Engineer sperm. If she has a son, at least her son has a shot of escaping the war and being turned into what I’ve turned into.
Ahead, an Engineer and two women walk down the sidewalk. The Engineer’s drunk. The women hold him upright.
“Out of the way, Meat!” he shouts.
They push past me. I’m in the way.
I’m always in the way.
At home, Mom’s waiting up for me. “How’d it go?”
“Good.”
“Do you have another date?”
“Not yet, but she gave me her number.”
“You need to call her then.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Mom’s satisfied with that. She goes to bed. I turn off the TV and go to bed, too. I have work tomorrow.
One am, I’m woken up by a message from the Bureau. They’ve found surveillance footage of Zeke, his uncle Reggie, and another man climbing into the basement of The Cradle’s North Point Hospital.
An hour later, I’m dressed and downstairs. Cody picks me up from my apartment building, and we drive back to The Cradle.
“The Bureau thinks The Mutineers have a tunnel in the hospital,” Cody tells me. “You’re probably going to have to use some of those sensors in your head to help me find it.”
“I still don’t really know how all this shit in my head works.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
He parks at the hospital and then we walk up to the security guard guarding the entrance. His nose is missing. Most of his face is patched with synthetic skin.
Cody shows him his badge. “We need to search the basement,” he says.
“For what?”
“We’re tracking down a runaway.”
“You think he came through here?”
“We know he did.”
“When?”
Numbers flash next to the guard’s head. I’m not sure what they all mean, but something feels off.
“I don’t have time to answer questions,” Cody says. “We need to get inside.”
He takes us downstairs to the basement hallway. A dim lightbulb hangs from the hallway ceiling.
“The laundry room’s on your left,” he says. “Then the furnace room’s at the end of the hall. Where do you want to start?”
“We’ll be fine on our own,” I say.
“You’re sure? The layout down here’s a little confusing.”
“We’re fine.”
Cody and I walk into the laundry room first.
“You don’t trust him?” Cody asks me.
“No.”
As I walk along the laundry room’s walls, searching for the tunnel, sensors in my head start switching on. My vision turns green. All the dust in the room lights up. I can see every crack, every fingerprint, every speck of moisture. At first, the detail is overwhelming, but my brain adjusts.
“Do you see anything?” Cody asks.
“Nothing.”
We go to the furnace room next. Walking along the walls, I notice an inch-wide gap behind one of the metal, floor-to-ceiling shelves.
“Help me move this,” I say.
Cody and I drag the shelf away from the wall. Behind it, we find the tunnel. It’s narrow, dark, and musty. Further inside it, a few LED lights glow, lighting up the path.
“Good job,” Cody says.
He ducks into the tunnel and crawls forward. I’m about to duck into the tunnel, too, when I hear someone running towards us. I turn just in time to see the security guard trying to cut my throat. I move to the left and the knife slices into my shoulder.
“Traitors!” the guard screams.
I throw him onto the ground. I grab onto this arm, and we fight for control of the knife. I nearly have it when, suddenly, Cody’s foot suddenly slams down on his head, splattering his skull and brains across the floor.
“Are you all right?” Cody asks.
I’m in shock, but I manage to say I am.
“Where’d he cut you?”
“The shoulder.”
“Let me see.”
I unbutton my shirt and show him the wound. He takes a white patch out of his jacket and presses it onto the cut. The patch retracts, pulling my skin tighter, slowing the bleeding.
“We need to keep moving,” Cody says. “We need to find out where this tunnel goes.”
We crawl through the tunnel. It smells horrible, like graveyard dirt. Eventually, we reach the end of it, and we climb a ladder out into the woods. Fifty feet behind us, I see the Baltimore border wall.
Cody pings the Bureau with our coordinates.
"Take off your shirt,” he tells me.
It’s soaked with blood now. I take it off and throw it on the ground.
Cody puts another one of his white patches over the wound on my shoulder. The patch retracts, pulling the skin tighter. That time, the bleeding stops.
A swarm of drones pass over our heads.
“That’s because of us?” I ask.
“They're searching for the camp.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait for them to find it.”
He sits on a tree stump, crosses his arms, and patiently stares at the ground. I wring as much of the blood out of my shirt as I can. Then I put it back on and sit next to him.
“Why’d he call us traitors?” I ask.
“That’s how the Mutineers think. The Engineers are our enemies. By working with them, we’re selling out other veterans. Don’t let it get to you.”
He pats me on the shoulder. Then he takes out his bottle of pills and swallows a few of them. I do the same. I’m on a schedule now. Pills for the pain, pills for my brain, pills to keep my body from going insane. That’s the little rhyme they taught us at re-adjustment.
Soon, the Bureau sends us an update. The drones have found the camp two miles north of our location. Cody and I start walking towards it. Before long, I see their campfire, burning in the early morning sun.
“I don’t see the drones,” I say.
“Don’t worry, they’re still up there,” Cody tells me. “If things get fucked up and they start shooting, just remember to look up so they can see your face.”
Cody extends the rifle from his arm, and then we approach the camp. Three veterans stand around the fire, roasting a rabbit. None of them look like Reggie. I don’t see Zeke, either.
“We’re looking for Zeke Marsden,” Cody says. “Where is he?”
One of the veteran’s turns towards us. Both his eyes are missing. He sees out of a single, solid-black prosthetic eye.
“There’s no Zeke here,” he says. “Just the three of us. We’re out on a hunting trip, having a bit of boys’ time. You guys hungry? You’re welcome to join us.”
“Don’t bullshit us. We know Zeke came through this way.”
“If he did, we didn’t see him.”
I hear movement in the woods. I look toward the sound.
“Go,” Cody says.
I run into the woods. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but it feels familiar. My vision narrows. The sound becomes a target. I run faster and faster, branches breaking under my feet.
I see Zeke up ahead of me, terrified, desperately trying to get away. But I’m so much faster than him. I quickly close in on him. I tackle him to the ground.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he cries.
He covers his face, afraid to look at me, afraid of what he says.
“Where’s your uncle?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re coming back to Baltimore with me.”
I grab onto his shirt and pull him to his feet. Then I hear the metallic click of a bolt action rifle chambering a round. I turn and see Reggie behind me, aiming the rifle at my head.
“Zeke’s not going anywhere.” Reggie says. “Let go of him.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You’re fresh, aren’t you? When’d you get home?”
I don’t answer.
“I know you think you’re doing the right thing but, trust me, the Engineers don’t give a shit about us. For all they care, we could all die on Mars. They want to keep people hopeful, though. All our moms and sisters hopeful that we might come back alive.” He laughs. “It’s a joke. There is no Aethon. There is no war. This is all just about power and control.”
Zeke tries to walk away from me, but I grab onto his shirt again, keeping my eyes on Reggie’s rifle.
“Let go,” Reggie says. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
I see his finger flinch on the trigger. My nerves react, turning my body to the side. The bullet tears my chest, puncturing my right lung but just missing my heart.
“Run!” Reggie yells.
Zeke runs into the trees. Reggie goes to reload his rifle but before he can fire another shot, one of the drones puts a round through his head. He drops to the ground, dead.
I look up at the sky, hoping the drones see my face. Then I run after Zeke.
My eyes begin to fill with static.
Every time my foot hits the ground, I feel angrier. I’ve never felt so angry before. It’s not rational anger. It’s violent, emotional rage.
Blood pours from my chest. My ribs and my organs burn. My nerves and my muscles twitch.
I pounce on Zeke’s back. The static fills my eyes. When the static clears, I’m holding Zeke by the neck, slamming his head against a rock. He’s screaming, begging for his life. Blood is everywhere.
I want to stop, but I can’t stop. I’m not myself anymore.
I’m what they turned me into.
Static fills my vision again. When it clears, I’m in an ambulance, soaked with blood, screaming, delirious.
Cody puts his hand on my shoulder and tries to comfort me.
“Keep it together, Manu,” he says. “We’re going to be at the hospital soon and the doctors are going to fix your brain up. You’re having war flashes.”
My eyes fill with visions of death. Visions of all the people I’ve killed, screaming in agony. Visions of blood and gore and sadistic torture.
My hands clench. My veins tighten. My heart pounds against my ribcage. My eyes fill with blood.
I enjoy it. I enjoy hurting them.
When the blood in my eyes fades, I’m in a hospital bed. Mom sits beside me. The doctor is talking to her.
“He relapsed. Fell back into his war persona.”
“What does that mean?”
“We need to reset his brain. He’ll have to start over again.”
“From the beginning?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.
Amina touches my cheek.
“Do you really feel ok?” she asks.
“My brain still feels a little strange, but it’s getting better.”
“But you don’t remember anything that happened the past six months?”
“No, whatever went wrong at work, they had to wipe my memories. Reset my brain to how it was when I first got back from the war. They said they probably shouldn’t have sent me out into the field so fast. I wasn’t ready for it.”
“But you’re ready now?”
“A few more weeks, and they think I will be.”
“What about your brother? You had to learn he died all over again?”
“Dmitri’s dead?”
“Jesus. They haven’t told you yet?”
I feel sick to my stomach. I start to cry, too, but I stop myself, seeing how Amina is looking at me.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should go.”
She apologizes again, her face turning red. Then she stands and leaves.
I understand, though. I don’t blame her. I’m fucked up. It’s hard for someone normal like her to know how to talk to someone fucked up like me.
Mom and I both have Sunday off. It’s a nice day. Sunny, not too cold. We go downtown for breakfast and then walk along the water in Federal Hill Park.
“Are you happy?” Mom asks me.
“Of course. Are you?”
“I am. I just worry about you, though, now that I’m getting older. I keep thinking about what you’re going to do when I’m gone.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll miss you, but I’ll manage.”
She puts her arm around mine and presses her head against my shoulder.
“Hey! Manu! How are you?”
Amina walks towards Mom and I, pushing a stroller. She’s with a man. An Engineer. He wears a dark green overcoat and a dark green cap.
“Your Mom told me you were pregnant,” my mom says. “I didn’t know you’d already given birth. Is it a boy or a girl?”
“A boy,” Amina says, and she smiles.
Mom looks inside the stroller. “You must be so happy. He’s beautiful.”
“Thank you for your service,” the Engineer tells me.
“Thank you.”
“This is Manu,” Amina explains. “He’s the friend I was telling you about. The tracker.”
“Oh, yes, I heard you had an incident at work last year.”
“Yes,” I say. “But I’m doing much better now.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’ve been able to re-adjust successfully. Come on, Amina. We need to get going. We have reservations.”
They say goodbye and keep walking.
“They seem like a nice family,” Mom says.
“They do.”
She puts her arm around mine again, and we keep walking, too. She starts to cough. Afterward, I see a bit of blood on her gloves.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask.
“It’s nothing. Just a bad cold.”
I know she’s lying to me. She’s very sick. I don’t understand all the numbers I see beside her head, but I feel like they’re not good.
I’ll stay with her until she’s gone, and then I don’t know what I’ll do. Jump out a window, maybe, or put a bullet through my brain. I don’t want to think about it.
“Where to now?” I ask Mom.
“How about we go somewhere warm?”
“The museum?”
“Sure.”
We walk toward the museum. Mom leans against me. I put my arm around her and kiss her forehead.
Another veteran passes us. He looks at me and smiles, but I don’t smile back at him.
I look away.
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