“Days or weeks without sleeping. Hibernation, in some cases. Cyclopean eyes in the worst ones. The Insom strand is short for insomnia, and one of a select few not named after an animal counterpart. It is rather an unfair advantage in the world of academia. The hosts will never tell you that, however, for it is not without its side-effects.”
—Professor James Anthem to the students of MZ-208: Etymology of the Strands at Galt Alese.
----------------------------------------
Anthem wakes in darkness. The space is coffin-sized, pipes jutting out close enough to poke his eyes out. There’s a spray, a hiss, and then a puff, not unlike the outlets lining Kaskit. A viewing port shows a fire roaring outside, where a field medic tends to wounded men. The man glances toward the space holding Anthem and occasionally refills tanks leading to those pipes. Anthem’s universe fills with hisses, gears clicking into place, the cracking of burning sticks. The inoculations pull him in and out of sleep, but he sobers up when the door unlocks, and he stumbles into the grass outside.
The medic eyes him, kneeling over a wounded lying on a stretcher five feet away. “Feeling better?”
Anthem doesn’t know what he’s talking about until he rolls over and looks down. A bloodline runs down his pant leg, but the pain is gone. He opens his trousers to look at the wound, seeing it mostly scabbed over. “What?”
“Blastema strands,” the medic informs him. “Had to neutralize you right after, though. The stuff is highly disagreeable. Would have had you growing another leg if you didn’t need one.”
Anthem sits up. “You’re a medical zoologist?” He’s seen Blastema strands work in the labs at Galt Alese, but they never healed a wound so quickly. What other tech is the Emergence Corps hiding?
“Nope, and you’re lucky—had the ball gone a few centimeters deeper, you’d be in there for a few more days.”
Anthem rises from the grass, his tunic caked in sweat. “And you are?”
“Paulson.” The medic points at Anthem’s groin. “You owe Sergeant Nedland your life.” He shakes his head. “Some cruel joke to play on your squad.”
Anthem frowns. “Seems like a ballsy joke.”
The medic tends to one of the wounded. “Then who did it?”
“Frine’s men.”
“The 2nd squad? Hallisey’s?”
Anthem nods. “They fitted me into that suit and injected me with a paralyzer.”
“Is that what happened?” Paulson rummages through a sack and administers a neutralizer concoction to another wounded man. “Look, Frine is rotten to the core, but he wouldn’t have done anything like that. Probably it was someone else. Did you see them?”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“All I know is you keep calling him a meathead.” The medic, this man Anthem hadn’t even met until today, raises an eyebrow. “What? It’s all over the camp. I don’t see why the whole squad would go to such a length.” Paulson shrugs. “LT’s going to investigate, probably, but Sergeant Nedland said you were barely coherent when he found you. Maybe you just dreamt it was Frine. Too much air.”
At the mention, Anthem takes a vesicle beside a log and inhales a thick waft.
“I was saving that,” says Paulson. “You may have wasted someone’s last clean breath.”
“I think I’m owed a bit.” Anthem inhales another puff, exhaling slowly. “And I know what I saw. I felt their hands. I heard Frine and Hallisey and maybe four more of them.” He doesn’t mention the quip he’d thrown at Frine before they started planning the exercise. That was the first time Anthem had used his brain in months. “Who won?”
Paulson marks something down on a report. “The 5th. They’re already gone.” He stands. “I would tell you that the 3rd, your squad, was second place, but I don’t think you’d much like to know that.”
Anthem shrugs. He might have been away from this place if he had never started anything with Frine, and that failure to his squad might be worse than the pain without the neutralizers.
The medic smirks as if he just orchestrated some great con to get the fact of Anthem’s defeat out in the open. “Look, you’re lucky to be alive, so consider that a blessing. The best thing you can do is pray LT believes your side.”
“Prayers are the ignorant’s cries,” says Anthem. “Logic is better.”
As men in cots stir behind Paulson, their limbs cut, wounds festering, a scent of rot and fetid flesh crawling through the air, Anthem fathoms how close he came to being just like them. Anthem would have bled out on the range if Frine had his way.
One of the wounded screams, and Paulson runs to him, tripping over his bag and spilling some of the contents. Anthem offers to clean it up, and the medic doesn’t protest.
Below him is a mess of instruments Anthem doesn’t recognize, as well as containers of pills, bandages, gloves, scissors, and a bundle of empty syringes wrapped in cloth.
“Throw those out,” says Paulson. “They’re contaminated now.” He grunts as if it’s Anthem’s fault.
Anthem goes along with it, eager to stem any more grudges that might form. He holds the bundle above the flames and regards the syringe closest to his hand. It is empty and unprimed, and it is then that the seeds of something start to form. He pockets it and throws the rest in the fire.
He needs to thank Nedland for saving him, but more than that, he needs to tell someone about Frine, though not in a way that the meathead finds out. Maybe going to Fletcher will be too suspicious, and he’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a dagger in his back.
He turns to go.
“Oh, and private?” Paulson calls out. “Regardless of what the 2nd did, if they even did anything, don’t go spreading it.”
Anthem stops. “Why not?”
“Because morale is important. Infighting? Those thoughts stick, and who knows? Maybe the men will slip up when the maligned are at their bayonets. Maybe they’ll remember some grudge or past wrong and make a lapse in judgment. That stuff will kill us faster than any strand or any hazing rituals. Men who have been here longer than I have can tell you that.”
Morale is all well and good when you’re not encased in armor on a shooting range and paralyzed. “Hazing?” asks Anthem. “So this is normal?”
Paulson shrugs, and when he sees Anthem not moving on from the conversation, he removes his gloves and tosses them into the fire. “Look, the Ape is quite a useful strand. It has allowed Frine to succeed in situations where other men would have cowered in fear or died. The lieutenant knows this and has forgiven him certain… aggressions.”
Anthem feels his face scrunch, the muscles tightening. “Like what?”
“Like when Hallisey lost his whole squad during a patrol outside the RLZ. The maligned cornered them, and it was not worth going back to rescue the poor sods, but Frine didn’t think so. He must have cut down twenty of the things to get to the men and pulled them out like dead weight. They survived, though barely.”
Hells. If Anthem was in such a situation, he might have been indebted to Frine forever. What a nightmare that would have been. He tries to imagine Frine as that kind of hero but cannot form the image. “It’s no excuse, though,” Anthem says. “Just because you’ve done great things doesn’t mean you’re incapable of bad.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Never said that was the case. I am only suggesting that you consider this from different angles. Always think of that the next time you say anything.”
“A threat?”
Paulson sighs. “A warning.”
----------------------------------------
Anthem finds Unwin sitting in a circle of soldiers in the middle of a game. They pass a pouch between them, claiming its contents are worth ignoring. Unwin takes the role of provisioner this round and listens while another soldier tries to convince him why the pouch shouldn’t be opened. When Unwin calls the bluff, he looks inside and scowls, the winning soldier collecting his loot.
Unwin finds Anthem and bolts up. “Hells, man, you’re alive.” He looks down. “Can you walk with that?”
“It’s more like a cramp now.” He looks to the men. “Sorry.”
“I should be sorry.” It’s Orey who pipes up. “Shouldn’t have told you to go there.” The others regard him. “But how was I supposed to know Frine was in wait like a fucking jungle lynx?”
“So you all know?” Anthem asks. “Thank Hells. Paulson was making me seem I dreamt it.”
“Paulson does that,” says Unwin. “Not to prey on you, just to ensure you’re level-headed. He encounters so many doped-up men that he starts questioning what anyone says.”
“Another round?” asks Hamill, sitting cross-legged and shuffling the playing cards.
“Nah,” Unwin says. “Supplies are in. From the Second Signature herself, they say. Reinforcing the war efforts.”
“They’re always reinforcing the effort.” Hamill places the cards down on the table and stands.
“Yeah, but this time it’s different.” Unwin finds Anthem. “This one’s been delayed, apparently. Maybe for good reason.”
“Maybe not. Who do you get your ideas from anyways?”
“No more swingers?” interjects one of the soldiers.
Anthem’s stomach curdles at the thought of the eels hanging from trees around the RLZ. “I can’t believe you guys still eat that shit.”
“Only Devitt.” Unwin points at the private, who interjected. “And just once, right?”
Devitt smiles, sticking out a forked tongue. “Fire is the great cleanser.”
Anthem laughs at the absurdity, though Devitt appears to know that he is the closest of them to malignment and that others should interpret his advice as warnings instead.
Anthem joins the game and wins a round as the provisioner by calling Unwin’s bluff. Afterward, the two of them leave with Hamill, weaving past the boilers and the culturing machines set up in the square, the 1st squad working the latter as punishment for last place in the range. Frine sits at the foot of the steps leading up to Cliff House, playing a game of cards and swigging back a bottle of some dark spirit. A young whore with makeup plastered all over his face sits on Frine’s lap, stroking his arm.
“Crazy how they’ll come out all this way just for a profit,” Anthem says.
“Stowaways, too,” Unwin replies, staring at Frine a bit longer. “Maybe he’ll warm to you after today. Did you in enough. Scared the shit out of you.”
Anthem doesn’t believe for a second this will be the end of it. “I only heard just now that he saved his sergeant.”
“Not so much fun to talk about past failures.” Unwin nods. “You take help wherever you can get it, even if it’s from a headstrong ape.” He prods Anthem on the arm.
“Apes don’t try to get their men killed. I think I’ll tell Fletcher.”
Frine throws his cards on the table, looks around, and catches Anthem staring. The meathead sneers, then smiles. When he sees Unwin, he turns away and grabs a new hand.
“If the lieutenant even believes you,” says Hamill. “Maybe just talk to Hallisey.”
“Hallisey was there too,” Anthem reminds them.
“Their squad is pretty tight,” Unwin cautions. In other words, don’t try anything.
They leave the courtyard, working their way through Cliff House’s lower passages and to the cave underneath, where the path of palisades leads to the bullwheel terminal. Even now, men welcome new arrivals, sergeants gathering their squads. A litter of crates sits on the side of the cave, and atop them stand other men handing out provisions. It’s as busy here as in the square above, maybe more so.
Unwin says something to Hamill, but Anthem doesn’t hear, his mind still on Frine’s manic whispering as he was bound. How could he prove this to Fletcher? Should he talk to someone higher? Worse, how could he ensure Frine is adequately dissuaded to never go after him again? Anthem can’t prove much of anything, but as his thoughts collect and pieces settle into place, he thinks he might not have to.
“What kind of supplies do they have here?” Anthem asks, trying not to appear too interested or curious.
“Everything.” Unwin leads him to a provisioner sitting atop a crate. “Food, ammunition, tools, personal effects.”
“What was that last one?”
“Ah, you!” The provisioner finds Unwin. “Saved the pennies for you, private.” He points to a bulky sack that looks too heavy for anyone not infused by the Ox.
Unwin takes the sack, offering Anthem a glimpse of the torn and battered books inside. “Old stuff. Pre-Bursting. No one writes about the hero’s journeys when the threat comes to you. At worst, it’s kindling.”
“At best,” corrects the officer and scribbles something down.
Anthem prefers textbooks of applicable information more than fictitious dribble, but passion in any medium is worth appreciation. Anything to distract from the maligned looming around the dark corners is welcome, too. Not just the maligned, either.
The idea that’s been building up since seeing the syringes comes to Anthem in orderly and familiar steps. Best of all, he doesn’t have to say a single word about it to anyone. “I don’t suppose you have any lab equipment?”
The provisioner looks down with glasses magnifying his eyes to the size of fists. “Zoo man? What kind of equipment?”
Anthem thinks for a moment to ask how the provisioner knows him. “Condensers, I guess. Reducers. Hells, maybe a microscope?” When the provisioner stares blankly, Anthem continues. “Burners? Crucibles?” Still, silence. “Petri dishes? Beakers? Test tubes, for Hells sake?”
The provisioner shakes his head. “Maybe the bullwheel terminal has some lying around, but none for soldier provisioning. Sorry, private. What in the Hells would you need them for, anyways?”
Anthem doesn’t answer, says his thanks, and leaves with Unwin and Hamill. They find Frine standing now as a bouncer would outside a terminal’s tavern. He doesn’t notice the three of them walking by.
A nearby table starts a game, the players comprising men from the 4th and 1st squads.
“Another?” Unwin asks. “You’re a better liar than Hamill, at least.”
“He had you fooled too!” Hamill squeaks.
“You guys go ahead,” says Anthem. “See you tonight.”
Unwin pauses before pulling Hamill along and joining the table. The Ox-infused hands out the novels, and the men seem content to take them, already laughing at some of the opening passages.
As the conversations resume, Anthem looks up to that impending visage of Cliff House that welcomes them as sleeping souls in its quarters. There are too many empty rooms and dead ends in that place, any of which Frine could corner him and finish what he started. So, Anthem sits out in the open, in a corner well within eyeshot of Unwin and Hamill.
No man, Anthem knows, can hide forever. A problem may creep about you constantly, closing its tendrils around you until you suffocate. Anthem feels such a presence this night, his concerns as phantoms looking over his shoulder. He knows that they will only leave once he does something.
A gathering of cooks vivifies rations near a fire, garnishing canned cultured meat with spices and exotic proteins from the supply run. It’s anyone’s mystery exactly what proteins those are, and Anthem makes no effort to solve that case as he waits for the cook to finish a round of meals. When he throws a ration can away, Anthem catches it and pockets it. Scraps of sticky cultured meat line its edges, but it will do.
Some swingers flock to a coshtal fruit the foragers missed. The fruit is almost like a banana but split down the middle where its juice oozes. Anthem plucks it from the tree, peels it, discards the soft innards, and pounds the skin. A fine, floury powder covers his fingertips, almost the same shade as his flesh. There’s more than enough.
Stokk root and grinnem seeds are easier to find. The former is a potent plant protein, the latter a sweet condiment spread the color of blackberries, and some of the rations contain both. Anthem barters for a bundle of stokk root with the provisioner, offering his help to carry some crates, then convincing another few bored-looking soldiers to take over. Acquiring the grinnem seeds is more straightforward when Anthem requests them as a prize for beating another squad’s sergeant in the pouch game. The rules are plain to everyone, but the nuance is lost on them.
The clamor rises as the night dredges on. Anthem stops at the water boilers, claiming he wants to refill his canteen. The staff doesn’t argue, and with his boiler, he strips the discarded can he obtained earlier of its food particles and fills it to the brim with water.
He sets up on a corner of the courtyard, back within sight of Unwin, Hamill, Devitt, and the other soldiers who have moved on to a different game. Life springs up around him, the fires burning high and bright, all seen by the Lone Soldier shining overhead.
A single finger’s tip of coshtal powder bubbles up along with Anthem’s anticipation since hearing Frine’s voice at the shooting range. The mixture fizzles to white in hot water, muting to brown when he sprinkles the grinnem seeds. The tiny barbs of the stokk roots pinch his skin, producing minor cuts. He crushes them together, adds them to the mix, and stirs with a stick he finds nearby. The mixture dissolves into a thick orange paste. Once the bubbling ceases, Anthem takes the syringe he pocketed from Paulson and fills it with the orange mixture. Plenty remains, and it’s a shame he has to dump it.
Stay alive, he tells himself. You will sleep at your study’s bedside again. You will stand next to the substrate in the lecture hall again. You will teach and research, and you will stay alive.
The syringe sits lifeless in his clutching fingers, the liquid in the chamber the same shade as Frine’s receding hairline. He has slaved over his books and spent sleepless nights perfecting his experiments. The jungle could break him, but it will never strip the past that has shaped him. He will get out of here one way or the other. No one will stop him from returning home.
No one.