It will be an end to all violence, all struggle, all hate, all war, all bigotry, and everything else that we despise. When everyone has everything, what would there be to fight over? Nothing.
Arnon D’Bvaym
ZED’S FIST CRASHED into a rozie’s face, making a sound like an ATV driving full-speed into a wall. The rozie’s neck bent unnaturally as its head snapped back, its body following, but another rozie moved forward to take its place, eyes burning with the same hungry intensity as all the others. Zed kicked at this one, then retreated into yet another of the factory’s labyrinthine hallways and slammed the door behind him. As had happened many times before, the door immediately bent under the weight of a crowd of rozies.
Kayla and Westley were breathing heavily, spots of sweat covering their foreheads. They scanned the hallway, opening and closing doors in a desperate bid to find a clear path to escape. Panting, 64Bit looked back at the door as it bulged inward, knowing that he could only run so long before he was too exhausted to move any farther. They were going to die soon— maybe even including Zed and the trunk. All torn to pieces. The only reason they had survived so far was because, like back in Fort, the rozies would fight each other to get through doorways and down hallways. These fresh rozies, uncoordinated and unnatural as their movements were, had a feverish intensity that could not be stopped.
“Here!” Westley cried. Everyone ran to him and passed through the doorway into another hallway in Id’s nonsensical factory. Why were there so many rooms, and so many empty or stuffed with redundant equipment? Why did the floor’s organization seem completely random? Why did it feel that they were trapped in one giant circle? 64Bit saw shattered glass on the floor, but no broken doors or windows—they couldn’t have passed through here already. Right?
The mindless rozies were already pouring into the previous hallway as Kayla slammed shut the next door. Within moments the rozies were pounding against it, slamming in mindless, endless repetition, like waves crashing against a worn-down boulder. Westley, Zed, and Kayla immediately fanned out, inspecting new, identical doorways, but 64Bit stood in place.
Running endlessly, blindly forward wasn’t doing anything meaningful. They drew farther and farther from the stairs that they knew would lead up, they lived another few minutes longer, and eventually they would find a dead end, another group of rozies, or the edge of the factory. That would be the end.
64Bit’s attention was caught by an uncommon entry, a hallway with no door and an opening that stretched up into the darkness above. They had passed a small number of similarly strange rooms and hallways in their flight, but each one they had passed without entering: lacking a heavy metal door, they would do nothing to slow down the rozies behind them. 64Bit stumbled toward this different hallway, forcing his shaking legs to run just a little farther. Perhaps he would die—or perhaps a new solution was what they needed.
“Bit, get over here!” Kayla shouted from farther down the hallway.
Kayla’s voice held no power over 64Bit—the closer he got to the hallway, the faster he found himself moving. His tired, stressed mind felt increasingly focused on the open passageway, its symbolic message of freedom; his brain inexplicably insisted that he keep moving forward, upward, that escape was close at hand. He heard shouts and crashes behind him, breaking glass and the squealing of tearing metal, but kept putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as he could. They would follow him—or they would leave him.
“Kayla has . . . threatened leaving me before. . . after all . . .” 64Bit gasped as he ran.
The hallway turned and at its end 64Bit saw a large door with no handles. He stumbled for a moment, disappointed and afraid, before resuming his pace. The rozies would be pouring through the destroyed door now—if they were not just behind already, they soon would be. 64Bit had no choice but to keep running and hope.
“Hope,” 64Bit muttered, and would have laughed if he had the breath for it. “Hope! Oh, Creator, please!”
64Bit already heard footsteps behind him and felt too tired to muster up any more fear, but then he recognized the sound of metal legs rapidly clicking against stone. Zed, on the trunk, reached 64Bit just as he arrived at the end of the hallway. 64Bit ran his gloved hand against the door, searching for a receiver to connect to . . . there.
64Bit heard the soft hum of the elevator. Just before he feared his heart would stop, the elevator door slid into the wall and 64Bit stumbled inside.
Kayla flew through the air, to 64Bit seeming as if she materialized out of nothing, into the elevator, followed by Westley, Zed, and the trunk, the group roughly jostling 64Bit and pushing him farther in. The groans and cries of rozies behind them multiplied, echoing down the hallway and within the tight elevator, feet slapping against stone floors as they ran mindlessly forward. 64Bit smelled the sweat of his companions, amplified in this small space, and heard their quick, shuddering breaths. The sudden realness of the moment was overwhelming. 64Bit stared down the hallway.
“Close the door! What are you waiting for?” Westley shouted. 64Bit slapped his hand against the wall and commanded the doors to close, the elevator to rise. Both happened at once, and 64Bit breathed a sigh of relief as his view through the doors of the rozies became smaller and smaller even as they drew closer and closer.
Then he felt a tug on his robe and was pulled to the floor. Panic filled 64Bit. He pushed against the wall as the elevator juddered to a stop. 64Bit saw hands on the floor, on the almost-closed elevator doors—the rozies were trying to pull the elevator down.
64Bit felt the fabric of his robe tear, then he was free. Zed knelt next to the sliver between elevator doors where rozie hands stuck through and, with a grunt, began tearing hands from wrists. The hands, once separated from their bodies, curled up and fell to the floor. As Zed tore rozie hands off, more appeared, then more.
“Up, up, up, now!” 64Bit pushed himself to his feet and stumbled around. Once his hand reached the right spot—near the door, about the height of his head—his mental command of Up was obeyed. The elevator shuddered to life again and began lifting. Rozie wrist stumps slid away, unable to find purchase, as the elevator lifted and then passed the ceiling, out of reach.
A dead silence filled the elevator, broken only by the heavy breathing of 64Bit, Westley, and Kayla, and of Zed picking up the hands and tossing them into the trunk’s open lid. 64Bit tried to catch a glimpse of the master each time the rozie lid cracked open, but the trunk snapped its lid too quickly.
64Bit couldn’t describe what he felt. His body still had adrenaline pumping through it, making him feel energized and shaky at the same time, yet his mind was so, so tired. He slumped to the ground again and hoped that the elevator ride would be a long, long one directly to the surface.
No, not true—he wanted the ride to be over quickly, so they could get out of this hellhole.
“You—you are insane, Bit,” Westley said with a little levity in his tone. He was leaning against the elevator wall, wiping sweat from his face with his arm.
Kayla nodded. “We should all be dead. A few more of them would be if I still had my gun.”
Zed ignored Kayla; he looked up, now sitting on top of the trunk. “I feel her still,” he murmured, his soft voice almost imperceptible. “We’re getting closer.”
64Bit couldn’t decide whether the weight he felt was the pressure of the elevator moving upward or the heaviness of his own bones; regardless of which was true, the still, silent elevator felt as if it moved very slowly. Given how tall each factory level was, 64Bit doubted that they had passed many floors. Depending on how deep the factory was—and how much of it was built into the mountains above—it could be a very long trip to . . . wherever the elevator went. Somewhere farther up. That was all 64Bit cared about. Somewhere away.
Sitting with his back leaning against the elevator door, Westley said, “Did you hear that?” He paused, then repositioned himself to stick his ear to the door. “There it is again!”
“Westley,” Kayla said, eyes closed and breathing deeply. “You’ve gone mad.”
“Bit, stop the elevator!” Westley cried. When he lifted his head away from the elevator door, he left an ear-shaped mark of sweat and oil on it. “I heard someone! We should stop!”
64Bit paused. There was nothing he wanted more than to rush to the surface as quickly as he could. But he forced himself to crawl over to Westley, stick his own ear against the elevator door, and listen for a few moments. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Then we passed it.” Westley stood, looking agitated. “It wouldn’t hurt to just stop for a moment and look outside. Or maybe we passed the floor already and that’s why you can’t hear it. I heard someone who needed help!”
“Westley, there’s nothing but rozies out there. It’s a trap— they’ll use any trick available to them to catch us and eat us,” Kayla said.
“But what if it isn’t a trap?” Westley turned around and stuck his finger in Kayla’s face, glaring; his eyes then softened, and he looked away. “I think you’ve forgotten the reason we came here in the first place, Kayla.”
Kayla looked away. “It wasn’t my only reason.”
64Bit’s ears burned with Westley’s words, though with shame or frustration he couldn’t tell. Even if Westley had heard someone calling for help—and through all the stone and metal of Id’s factory, 64Bit found that very unlikely—what could they do? They were barely surviving themselves.
“Stop the elevator,” Zed whispered.
64Bit, Westley, and even Kayla stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Zed, the same rozie that had sounded the factory’s alarm in an attempt to get them to the surface faster. Zed’s eyes were fastened to the roof of the elevator, staring unblinking, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. With a popping sound that made 64Bit shudder, Zed looked down and stared at each of them. He growled and the trunk stabbed a metal leg into the ground, creating a divot in the elevator floor. “We’re getting closer to her. Stop the elevator!”
Not needing to be told a third time, 64Bit rested his gloved hand on the elevator wall and within a moment felt its signal. Stop, 64Bit commanded. The elevator’s previously smooth ride slowed, then stopped. Then, initially shaking again hard enough that 64Bit and Westley were forced to brace themselves against the walls, it began moving upward again.
“She’s calling us,” Zed said simply. His face didn’t betray any fear, but his set lips and slightly narrowed eyes showed more concern than 64Bit thought was possible for the rozie’s face to express. Zed looked at 64Bit. “I can already feel her trying to reach into my mind, like forcing a large hand into a small glove.”
“Id?” Kayla asked, expression darkening.
“No one else.” 64Bit felt his heart skip a beat. A clicking sound filled the air; 64Bit looked at the trunk to see its leg rhythmically going up and down. As it did so, Zed absently reached down and stroked its surface.
64Bit shook his head. Dwelling on all the ways that he would likely soon die wouldn’t increase his life expectancy. He placed his hand on the elevator wall and said to the group, “Be ready to jump out.” He connected with the receiver and thought, Open. The doors opened just a crack before shuddering to a stop; Zed shoved his hands between the two doors and pulled with all his might, shaking with effort, before there was a large snap and the doors opened all the way.
Outside the elevator, 64Bit caught a glimpse of another long, dark hallway with several rozies animatedly ambling about, then another hallway slid into view as the elevator continued its climb. This one was empty—and its light hadn’t gone red.
“Go!” Kayla announced as she hopped out of the elevator.
Zed followed behind her, hopping on the trunk as it exited, then Westley jumped. By the time 64Bit jumped out, the elevator had already lifted high into the air; he tumbled through space, arms held protectively over his head, and then landed in Zed’s arms. Zed briefly looked him over as if the rozie were inspecting an item that fell off a shelf for broken pieces, then dropped 64Bit on his feet. He landed with a stumble, dazed.
64Bit didn’t have time to catch his breath—a panicked cry echoed through the air, “Help! Please!”
Without a glance back, Westley took off down the hallway. He stopped at an intersection, looked around, then dashed off again, Kayla hot on his tail. 64Bit did his best to keep up, Zed matching pace with him atop the trunk. The rozie’s brows were furrowed in deep thought.
“Perhaps we could awaken your master. Do you think you could patch him up in five or ten minutes?” Zed asked.
64Bit focused on breathing and following Westley and Kayla, but he waved at Zed to acknowledge that the rozie had been heard.
Zed sighed and pulled 64Bit onto the trunk beside him, then tapped the side of the trunk. It picked up its pace and began gaining on Kayla and Westley.
“If we can’t deal with Id then there’s little hope for escape,” Zed said. “Not since she knows we’re here. She’s surprisingly well integrated with this place—I can feel her like a pebble in my shoe everywhere we go. Your master would make a good distraction—a better sacrifice than those two would.”
64Bit stared at the expressionless rozie, unable to respond. Zed glanced out of the corner of his eye and smirked.
“Yes, I didn’t think you’d like that idea. We’ll see what ultimately becomes necessary. Remember, I only care that you make it out alive. Well, as the plus one for myself and the Lady, of course.”
“Help me!” The small voice echoed past again, a little louder this time.
Zed looked forward, annoyed, as Westley led the way into another stairwell, following the voice. “This whole thing might prove to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
#
CORTEX CRAWLED UNDER a lab table, holding himself up with his good arm as he tried to crawl quickly. He didn’t know when he had hurt his other arm, but it was the same one that had been bitten by the rozie head a lifetime ago. Perhaps it had been reinjured when Hannah kicked him across the floor. Cortex glanced backward and caught a rozie staring at him blankly, bent over at the waist to look at him under the table; it was one of the mindless monsters that Id normally kept with her, the one with long fingernails. Rather than crawling after him, the creature stood and attempted to flip the table over. Metal bent and the table shifted, showering Cortex with items that bruised his head and cut his cheek, but the table, bolted to the floor, didn’t flip over. Cortex crawled forward and ducked under another table just as a computer crashed to the floor right where he had been.
“Help me!” Cortex yelled, wondering why he kept trying. He was trapped in Id’s lab—there was nobody else here but monsters. His one friend, Hannah, had been taken over by Id. Cortex was utterly alone again. It would be easier to give up and die quickly.
This time the rozie slammed its fist down on the lab table, buckling it on top of Cortex. Cortex screamed as he felt metal painfully press his foot into the floor. He tried to claw himself forward, using both arms despite the electric pain that shot through him when his bitten arm scrabbled at the floor, but he couldn’t free his foot. Still, he continued kicking and clawing, doing everything in his power to pull himself forward as the rozie stepped around the table and walked up to him.
As soon as the rozie neared, Cortex shot out his hand and grabbed the rozie’s ankle. Kill Id, Cortex commanded, but felt no response. Kill Id, kill Id, kill Id, Cortex kept repeating, sobbing as the rozie lifted its foot over his head, knowing that he was going to die.
A metal chair slammed into the rozie’s head, knocking it off balance as its foot shot down. The rozie grazed Cortex’s side rather than crushing his head; Cortex lost his grip on the rozie’s ankle as it stumbled sideways. Almost unable to believe that he was still alive, Cortex froze on the ground as he heard more crashing, and voices . . . human voices.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you still had a knife?” An angry female voice shouted. “I could have stabbed Zed’s other eye three times by now!”
“Just take it!” A male voice called back, followed by a crashing sound and a cry of pain.
Cortex renewed his efforts to free himself. He knew he should stay and help whoever had just saved him, but the only thing he could think of was running as far from Id’s personal rozie as possible. Perhaps, if it was distracted enough, he could slip into the hallways and make his way toward the surface— maybe he could disappear into the woods before he was found again. He could sneak back to Fort and survive there as long as he found stored food, and assuming that some survivors returned to help him . . . Maybe even 64Bit, who hadn’t been in the city at the time of the attack. With this goal fixed firmly in his mind, Cortex braced his free leg against the bent table holding him captive and pushed with all his might while pulling on his trapped leg. A quick lance of pain ran up his leg as his ankle caught on a sharp bit of metal for a moment, and then he pulled free. Cortex stumbled to his feet and began limping away through the maze of metal lab tables that filled the spacious room. He spared a glance backward and saw a girl, teeth bared, standing on top of a table and brandishing a knife at the rozie. There was another person, a young man, who threw a chair at the rozie that had attacked Cortex. The rozie struck the chair out of the air, forcing the girl to dodge around it, and struck forward, hitting the young man in his shoulder. He screamed in pain.
To his horror, Cortex saw another rozie enter the room. This one had a cold expression, its eyes set like ice, and the area around its mouth was dyed a bloody red. The creature scowled as it looked around.
Don’t get distracted. Run. Survive, Cortex thought. He’d slowed to a walk while looking at the newcomers; he forced himself to begin running again, weaving through the tables on his way to the other side of the room.
Just as Cortex reached the open doorway, a door slid up from the floor and blocked the exit with a sinister shoosh! Cortex froze. He was trapped—Id was here. Why else would a door lift from the ground?
More crashing and shouting. Cortex didn’t spare a moment to watch the fight—if these two strangers were somehow holding their own against two rozies, so much the better for everyone involved. Besides—with the omnipresent dim lighting of Id’s factory, Cortex wasn’t certain that he would be able to see much anyway.
Cortex limped along the wall, holding his reinjured arm with his good arm, hoping to find another open doorway. Perhaps he was wrong—maybe the door that had closed had some sort of sensor on it. Maybe doors closed automatically at certain times of the day. He had to hope that the spot of darkness in front of him would become another open doorway, a path to potential freedom . . .
Id’s leering face materialized out of the darkness. Her good eye fixed firmly on Cortex. You have quite a gift within you, boy—I don’t know what you did to Hannah, but she’s proving to take an exceptional amount of my focus to control. With her this resistant, scrubbing her memories again won’t be worth the effort—I’ll need to make up a reason that she was terminated. Id snorted. But perhaps I can learn something from you. We’ll call it a payment for all the trouble you’ve caused me. A vivisection might do . . . Id twitched her fingers. Her short-haired rozie servant materialized out of the darkness and lunged toward Cortex; it was missing one arm, and half of its face had been stripped away. Walking behind it, camera eyes staring forward and her expression entirely blank, was Hannah.
The short-haired rozie grabbed Cortex and squeezed his arm tightly. Cortex grabbed its hand and tried to command it to let him go, but he wasn’t surprised when the command wasn’t received—Id’s personal rozies felt more like extensions of her than anything else. As the rozie dragged him toward Id, Id lifted into the air, above the tables, and began gliding across the lab room, carried by the column of wires and tubes extending from her back. Now, let’s take care of that rat problem.
Cortex wasn’t prepared for what he saw on the other side of the room. Id’s long-nailed rozie was being held to the ground by a large, metal trunk with long, spear-like legs that extended from its bottom. Id’s rozie shrieked metallically as the red-mouthed rozie pulled at its arm, eventually popping the thing off. For a moment, Cortex wondered if he was somehow dreaming.
“Incredible craftmanship—a pity,” the red-mouthed rozie grunted as it tossed the arm to some people nearby and grabbed the other arm. Cortex recognized the young man and girl from earlier, but the world felt truly surreal when he recognized the third: 64Bit. Except, despite his face, build, and the unmistakable screens with pixelated eyes on his face, it also didn’t look like 64Bit. The usually clean and fussy boy was very dirty, especially his ripped clothing, but his face was mostly clean— and featured several scratches and bruises. 64Bit watched the fight between the rozies with a fierce intensity, as if he couldn’t decide which he wanted to win. The other two were looking at Id and her approaching rozies. The girl pointed and shouted. The red-mouthed rozie looked up as he tugged at the other arm and scowled. “You.”
If Id recognized the rozie, she gave no indication other than a twitch of her head. Instead, Cortex felt a signal pulse from her to the rozie, almost like a hand gripping its brain and squeezing. The red-mouthed rozie grabbed its head and screamed. “No! No! Out, out, OUT!”
Several things happened at once. 64Bit looked at Cortex and his jaw fell open, pixelated eyes growing slightly within his eye screens. The long-nailed rozie leaped to its feet from under the trunk, knocked the red-mouthed rozie over, and began stomping on the other rozie, its remaining arm hanging limply at its side the entire time. The girl bared her teeth and brandished a knife as Id’s short-haired rozie servant let go of Cortex and ran forward. The trunk made a strange belching noise and Cortex heard something drop to the floor, then saw a wrinkled hand fall limply on the ground just within his view, the rest of the body hidden behind a table; the trunk then collided with the short-haired rozie and pushed it against a table, snapping at the rozie with its lid as the rozie fought to stay out of the trunk’s body, legs moving incredibly dexterously as it did so. And, at nearly the same moment that the short-haired rozie let him go, Hannah grabbed Cortex under the arms and lifted him into the air, her face still blank. Id floated in the air above all the chaos, her face an intense mask of concentration, eyes closed but clearly rolling within their sockets, her hands twitching occasionally.
Cortex stretched his hand toward 64Bit and screamed, “Help me!” He didn’t even know what 64Bit could do; Cortex just knew that he was scared and that 64Bit was the first face he recognized and wanted to trust. Maybe 64Bit had even brought these people to save him.
Horror filled 64Bit’s eyes. His gaze rapidly shifted between Cortex and the body that the trunk had spit out. He was probably about the same distance from both; running toward Cortex would require passing the trunk fighting the short-haired rozie, while running toward the body would require passing the screaming, red-mouthed rozie and Id’s long-nailed rozie attacking it.
64Bit twitched.
Cortex tried to stretch his arm farther as he felt Hannah begin to carry him away.
64Bit dashed toward the body on the floor, skirting past the fighting rozies as he did so.
Cortex stared sightlessly, arm still outstretched, as Hannah carried him from the room. As the darkness of the hallway beyond covered him, Cortex felt as if he were being lowered into a grave.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 