Abram is shaking his head. “You turned him in. I knew you were a fucking worm.” He looks up. “Is he dead? Did you execute him?”
The most upsetting thing about the man’s smile is how genuine it looks. As if he has convinced even the smallest of his facial muscles to play along. As if it’s not a game at all but simply his reality. I take the end of his tie and hold it close to my face, examining its glistening fibers. “What did they do?” I ask him. “How did they make you like this?”
The man’s grin widens. “I feel fantastic.”
Abram pushes me aside and gets very close to Miller’s face. “Tell me what’s happening here,” he says in a low growl, no less threatening for being unarmed. “Where is everyone?”
“Branch 2 is in transition,” Miller chirps. “New employee concepts are being tested.”
The elevator dings. We have reached floor twenty.
“Would you like to learn more?” he asks.
I truly don’t know my answer to that question, but when the doors open and Miller steps out, we follow him.
? ? ?
We are in an open space the size of an airplane hangar. No walls from one end of the building to the other, no ceiling for at least three floors up. The only illumination is the pale daylight creeping through a few slit windows. I see everything in vague outlines, like the room has been pumped full of dark fog. And through this fog, I see people. Hundreds of people surrounding hundreds of machines: steel presses and cutters and more complex things I can’t identify. Some of the machines are fully automated, like the one that rolls out little brass cylinders and the one that fills them with black powder and the one that caps them with cones of lead. Others need human assistance, like the one that sends packets of clay-like substance to an assembly station where a man embeds some electronics in the clay and inserts it under the lining of a metal briefcase.
“I know this,” M mumbles. “I know these machines.”
“We are pleased to announce the reopening of Gray River National,” Miller says, his voice echoing in the vast dimness as he wanders off ahead of us, “made possible by recent advancements in human resource management. We look forward to providing simplified but effective security to all branches of the Axiom family as it continues to grow . . .”
His voice fades into the shadows. We have stopped following him. It took a moment in the low light, but I have begun to notice peculiar traits in the workers. Their movements are loose and their eyes are disconnected from their tasks, staring out the windows as their hands twist screws and connect wires, as if they’re only operating these tools because they happened to bump into them. I hear Miller’s voice in the distance, talking to no one, a subtle overtone to the harsh melody of the factory, the grinding of metal and squeaking of rusty wheels. A worker near me lets his hand wander into a press and pulls it away with two fewer fingers. The stumps ooze black fluid in a steady, pulseless pour, and the man continues his work.
“They did it,” Julie whispers. “They did it without our help.”
I approach the worker warily. He doesn’t pause or look at me. There is no sign of awareness. “Who are you?” I ask him. “How did you get here?”
He works and bleeds silently.
“Why are you doing this?”
His eyes meet mine for barely a second. His movements stutter, then resume, and a memory appears in my head. Not one from the basement, not from my first life but from my dusty, bloody second.
My relationship with most of my victims was simple: they tried to kill me, they tried to run away from me, and when those options failed, they screamed while I ate them. It was the standard stuff of wildlife documentaries. But there was one young man, perhaps a little unbalanced, perhaps unusually perceptive, who asked me questions while I hunted him. In his desperation, he tried to reason with me. Why are you doing this? he demanded. Why do you want to eat me? What does this get you? What is this for?
It was the only time anyone ever tried to reach me. All the others were happy to play out the standard scene of predator and prey. They had heard the reports and seen the movies; they knew what a zombie attack was supposed to look like and they played their role to the end, doing their part to maintain the narrative, awful but comforting in its consistency.
This young man ignored all that and did something absurd: he tried to communicate with the faceless symbol of relentless terror. And for a moment, it listened. His questions penetrated the thick crust around my consciousness, and a few cold synapses fired, generating a rare coherent thought. A simple answer: I don’t know.
My hesitation probably lasted about as long as this worker’s stutter. The young man’s boldness bought him just a few extra seconds of life. But what did it buy me?