Day 1,301.
The shriek of the steam whistle cut through my nightmare like a dull knife, gouging me back into consciousness.
I opened my eyes. Above me, the mold-spotted walls of my capsule pod. The air reeked of rust, sweat, and rotting flesh.
Another new day.
Another day in hell.
My name is Iris. Serial number: 101-C9-0047.
In this underground purgatory called "Hub 101 Heavy Industrial," I am a "Numbered" -- a lifetime slave with a barcode burned into the back of her neck.
We have one job: process corpses.
Mutant beasts, human cadavers, fungal rot -- all of it goes into the massive meat grinder they call "Moloch." Crushed, pressed, refined, and spat out as sticks of green gel that glow with an eerie fluorescence.
We call them "green tubes."
This stuff is the lifeblood of the entire wasteland. Werewolves need it to sustain their transformations. Augmented humans need it to stay alive. Everyone kills for it. It is energy. It is currency. The only hard commodity in this insane world.
And we Numbered are the tools that manufacture it.
Used up, broken down, we get tossed into Moloch and become the next green tube.
True service unto death -- literally.
I reached under my pillow by reflex, pulled out the filthy black rag, smeared grime across my face, then wrapped the cloth strip over my right eye. Disguised myself as an ugly, one-eyed woman.
Three years now.
Three years of this same routine, every single day.
Not because I'm actually ugly, but because in this place, a woman with a pretty face meets one of two fates -- dragged off to the "breeding shed" as a reproductive tool, or claimed by some overseer as his personal plaything.
I want neither.
I just want to survive. Save enough. Escape to the legendary promised land of "Avalon." Then spend the rest of this godforsaken life doing absolutely nothing.
As for who I am, where I came from, why I'm here --
I don't remember.
When I woke up three years ago, my mind was a blank. No name. No past. Nothing. Just the stinging barcode on the back of my neck and a faint voice telling me: your name is Iris, you are a Numbered, and your life isn't worth a damn.
Sometimes I dream.
In those dreams there are stars, a gentle man, and a little girl calling me "Mama" in a sweet voice.
But when I wake, I can't hold on to any of it.
Maybe they're just hallucinations. After all, spend long enough in a place like this and who wouldn't lose their mind?
Bio-Processing Workshop C-9.
The enormous pistons hammered away, each impact rattling my skull. Steam erupted from every seam in the pipework. The air was so damp it felt like someone had stuffed a wet rag into my lungs.
Down the conveyor belt rolled an endless stream of remains -- severed limbs of mutant beasts, fungus-riddled carrion, organs too mangled to tell whether they'd come from man or animal.
The Numbered fell on them like starving wolves, clawing and scrambling over the choicest pieces.
The production quota was a death sentence. Anyone who failed to meet it got thrown into Moloch by the overseers.
I didn't join the frenzy.
I leaned against the edge of the conveyor belt, a dull-issued knife in my left hand, a thin blade of my own making concealed up my right sleeve.
I was waiting.
Soon enough, the carcass of a black-scaled beast rolled up in front of me.
Good size. Scales intact. Five or six green tubes' worth of material, easy. The eyes of every Numbered nearby went red.
"Out of my way! This one's mine!"
A new boy lunged forward first, swinging a heavy axe down with everything he had.
Clang --!
Sparks flew. The black scales didn't even have a scratch.
The boy panicked, hacking again and again. The axe blade chipped and cracked, but those scales didn't budge.
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
I watched him coldly until, drenched in sweat, he gave up and dragged away a small hunk of rotten fungus, bitter defeat written across his face.
Then I stepped forward.
The thin blade spun once around my fingertip.
I crouched down, found the soft scale beneath the beast's throat where it curled slightly upward, and slid the blade gently in. A flick of the wrist -- severed the venom gland with surgical precision. Then I levered backward with force --
The entire bloody spine came out in one piece. I tossed it into the waste bin.
Without the skeleton and impurities, what remained was pure, high-grade biomass.
I pushed the meat into Moloch's intake port. The machine gave a satisfied roar.
Seconds later, the output chute delivered the finished product.
Six tubes.
One more than expected.
While the machine logged the batch, my hand darted out and hooked the scalding green tube. It vanished up my sleeve in an instant.
In Hub 101, most Numbered sleep in the corridors, a dozen bodies crammed together, piled up like garbage.
That extra tube is why I get to sleep in a capsule pod.
"Help... help me...!"
I'd barely stashed the green tube when a warped scream tore through the air beside me.
It was the boy from before.
Fungal slime had splashed into his eyes. His feet slipped, and half his body pitched straight into the turning gears of Moloch's grinding drum.
The machine didn't stop.
The drum kept turning.
Inch by inch, it swallowed him.
"Shut it down! Shut it down!"
A girl came sprinting over, screaming, hauling at the boy's legs with all her strength.
Mara. A Numbered from my block.
Heavy footsteps approached from behind.
"Who the fuck told you to stop working?"
The overseer they called "Iron Jaw" -- half his face metal, the other half sagging meat -- sauntered over. He didn't spare a glance at the boy whose lower half had already been chewed to pulp. He just stared, annoyed, at the jammed drum.
"If this batch is ruined, can any of you afford to pay for it?"
"He's just a child..." Mara sobbed.
"A child?" Iron Jaw snorted. "At best he's a consumable."
He raised his heavy mechanical leg and kicked the boy without a moment's hesitation.
What was left of that no-longer-human body was punted deep into Moloch's maw.
Seconds later, the output chute spat out two pristine green tubes.
"Doesn't matter what goes in," Iron Jaw said, picking up the tubes with satisfaction. "As long as what comes out is energy, the ledger balances."
He turned around, cracking his iron whip over the crowd's heads.
"What are you looking at? Stand around any longer and you're all going in to make quota!"
Everyone flinched and dropped their heads, throwing themselves back into frantic work.
My face betrayed nothing. I wiped a drop of blood from my goggles.
This is daily life in Hub 101.
This is my life.
The end-of-shift whistle finally blew.
A long line snaked out from the ration station. Dinner was "nutrient paste" synthesized from mutant excrement -- a grayish-brown slurry that smelled like fermented cabbage left to rot.
You eat what you can get.
While we waited, Mara stood just ahead of me. Shoulders hunched, her frail body trembling without pause.
I knew what she was afraid of.
Sure enough, sitting behind the dispensing window was Iron Jaw.
He ladled that revolting paste onto plates while his greasy eyes crawled over Mara's body.
"Hey there, little beauty. Come closer and let daddy get a good look at you."
He reached out with a filth-caked hand, groping toward Mara's chest.
Mara flinched away.
Clang --
The tin plate hit the floor. Nutrient paste splattered all over Iron Jaw's boot.
The air froze solid.
"Little bitch." The smile vanished from Iron Jaw's face. "Don't know what's good for you."
He reached through the wire mesh of the serving window, seized a fistful of Mara's hair, and slammed her face into the grating.
"No rations for you today! Since you don't want to eat, you can go service the mongrels in the breeding shed!"
Mara was hysterical, thrashing wildly.
The people around us clutched their plates, shuffled numbly past, and not one of them made a sound.
I sighed.
Then I stepped forward, reached through the wire mesh, and locked my fingers around Iron Jaw's wrist.
My fingertips found the nerve junction in his mechanical prosthetic with pinpoint accuracy and squeezed.
Iron Jaw winced in pain and had no choice but to release Mara.
"She didn't mean to." I kept my voice low, eyes fixed on his.
He blinked, momentarily stunned. Then a cold, mean smile crept across his lips.
"Oh, so you want to play hero? Night shift tonight. Come to the sorting warehouse for your 'bonus ration.'"
He leaned in close. His breath was a wall of decay.
"If you don't show, tomorrow I throw you and that little bitch into Moloch together."
He turned and walked away.
And in that instant, I noticed --
Wedged into the gap between skin and metal at the back of his neck was a purple chip.
That sheen. That precision...
Down here in this underground world of rust and slag, every augmentation is slapped together like junk. How could a bottom-rung overseer possibly have hardware like that?
A purple chip.
I didn't know exactly what it did, but I'd heard the rumors -- on the black market, a top-grade chip could fetch a hundred green tubes.
A hundred green tubes.
Enough to get me out of this hellhole. Enough to find a life where I don't spend every day wondering if I'll be fed to a meat grinder.
Back in the rest area, Mara clung to the hem of my sleeve, white-knuckled.
"Iris... don't go... Iron Jaw will kill you..."
"If I don't go, what -- you go instead?"
"Then I'll go! I will!" She sounded like she'd thrown everything away. "A worthless life like mine, what does it matter where I die --"
"Don't be stupid." I cut her off. "You go, you're dead for certain. I go, there's still a chance."
Mara stared at me, speechless.
I looked into those eyes of hers, still holding a faint spark of life behind them, and felt something stir. This girl had been in Hub 101 for over a year and still hadn't been ground down completely. That was rare.
"Wait for me to come back."
I turned and walked toward the corridor that led to the sorting warehouse.
The truth is, I'm not that noble.
Going to the warehouse wasn't just about Mara.
All I could think about was that purple chip on the back of Iron Jaw's neck.
The corridor was narrow and dark. The motion-sensor lights sputtered and buzzed like dying insects in their final spasms.
I felt for the thin blade inside my sleeve.
Tonight, one of us dies.