Terminal White. James Axler

becoming wider, and its fingers rammed through the woman’s face, smashing through her skull in the blink of an eye. The woman let out a bleat, then her flailing body was dangling from those weirdly extended fingers, dancing like a string puppet.

      A mutual gasp fluttered through the room as the pilgrims watched, and Kane and Brigid took a surreptitious step back, adopting ready poses.

      The woman’s body seemed to dangle for a moment before stiffening again as the spine arched, thrusting the woman’s breasts forward while her feet slipped backward on the temple floor on pointed toes. A whimper seemed to emanate from her throat, and Kane saw blood rushing along the shaft of stones that now crossed the temple chamber, leading from the woman to the stone monstrosity that had emerged from the caldron. The woman shivered, shook and dropped, unleashing one last gasp of pain as she crumpled to the deck.

      Across the room, the stone figure seemed to become fuller somehow, more substantial, sinews forming between its broken body of stones.

      “Take me next!” cried one of the pilgrims to Kane’s left, stepping forward.

      “No, take me!” a man demanded from Kane’s right. “I lost my wife to the west snows!”

      Beside him, a woman stepped forward, ripping open her cotton blouse. “No, me. My children were taken by the snows. Let my unquenched love for them power you, oh lord,” she implored.

      “This is getting out of hand,” Kane muttered as more of the pilgrims offered themselves to the stone monster.

      The stone figure thrust its arms forward again, and those limbs broke apart into tendril-like appendages as they sought their next victims. The Cerberus people had seen the individual stones do this before, under lab conditions, but never anything on this scale. One of those snaking, tendril-like arms reached toward Brigid Baptiste, cutting the air like a handful of tossed stones held in freeze-frame. Kane saw it coming, shoved her back protectively with a swift jab of his arm. Brigid fell to the floor and the arm hurried on, touching the pilgrim behind her, burrowing into the poor deluded fool’s face even as he screamed in pleasure.

      “Take me, oh lord,” the man cried, tears of joy and pain pouring from his eyes like an overworked storm drain. “Let me live in y— Argh!”

      The man and another pilgrim stumbled back, giving themselves willingly to the artificial man. Their legs buckled, knees folded, and they sunk to the floor as their blood and life was sucked from their joyful frames, feeding into the patchwork body of the stone creature who had emerged from the fire.

      Then the stone monster tilted its head back, blood rushing visibly between the mass of stones, and it cried out, an eerie, inhuman howl—the first cry after birth.

      “The lord lives,” the senior acolyte cried joyously. “He lives in all of us, in all of you.”

      “Not for much longer he doesn’t,” Kane muttered, powering his hidden Sin Eater pistol into the palm of his right hand from its hidden wrist holster. He had had enough of this.

      The Sin Eater’s holster was activated by a specific flinch movement of Kane’s wrist tendons, powering the weapon into his hand. The weapon itself was a compact hand blaster, roughly fourteen inches in length but able to fold in on itself for storage in the hidden holster. The Sin Eater was the official sidearm of the Magistrate Division, and his carrying it dated back to when Kane had still been a hard-contact Mag. The blaster was armed with 9 mm rounds. The trigger had no guard, as the necessity had never been foreseen that any kind of safety features for the weapon would ever be required. Thus, if the user’s index finger was crooked at the time the weapon reached his hand, the pistol would begin firing automatically.

      Beside Kane, Brigid was sprawled on the floor, her head spinning where it had struck the hard slate there, trying to shake the muzziness that occluded her thoughts. Wake up, she told herself. Wake up and act. If her body understood the words, then it didn’t seem inclined to play along.

      All around Kane, people were dropping as the life force was sucked out of them by the stone abomination. Pregnant woman; bald man; teen with acne and dyed hair; overweight farmhand with a beard that touched his belly—all of them fell as the stone monster touched them with its distended fingers, exchanging their lives and strength for its own. The stone thing was buoyed with every touch, rising taller, each step more determined, and all the while its gaping wound of a mouth shrieked its hideous ululation.

      “Time to put this stone wannabe out to pasture,” Kane grumbled as he stroked the trigger of the Sin Eater and sent a stream of bullets at the rough-hewn abomination.

      Designated Task #009: Food Harvesting

      Food is grown in massive hydroponics labs located in the west and north corners of Delta Level. Vast artificial fields have been sown with seeds which grow various crops—tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc.—in uniform lines. The crop is tested thoroughly throughout its lifespan to ensure it is growing in the correct manner: size, shape, color. Any imperfect crop is removed and recycled as feed for the animals in one of the other areas of Delta Level.

      Picking the crops is partially automated, but the amount of moisture coupled with the gentle touch required means that humans are considered superior and more efficient with much of the menial work. As such, I have been assigned to work here two days a week as a rest from the construction of war machines on Epsilon Level. My first assignment is to tend to the pears which grow with resilience from a line of trees in room D41977. The crop is hard-skinned and tasteless, but it holds nutrients enough to sustain life. Most of it will be turned to pulp which is then added to the daily meal ration each citizen is allocated, wherein its lack of a distinctive taste will be rendered irrelevant.

      My crop picking is slow because I am still new to the task and have yet to get used to the automated ladders used by the pickers. These ladders stand at a thirty-degree angle with a wheeled base, and they follow the instructions of a computer brain. The brain analyzes the optimum speed for fruit picking based on a scan of each tree and its crop, then follows that calculation to provide a window within which the tree must be stripped of its bounty. The speed seems fast to me, and it becomes inevitable that many of the crop which I pick are bruised. The supervisors show no concern for the bruised fruit, and merely chastise me for my inadequacy in stripping every pear tree in my designated batch.

      “Your deficiency will be taken out of your food allowance next week,” a supervisor informs me without looking up from her tally sheets. I stare at the gray peaked cap she wears for a long moment, wondering if she might meet my eyes and perhaps explain how I am to increase productivity, but she never looks up.

      The conclusion of my shift is accompanied by a very real sense of disappointment, the knowledge that I have failed to live up to the expectations that the barons have in me as a citizen of Ioville. My back aches from stretching, my arms, too, from constantly reaching above me. I vow to try harder tomorrow.

      —From the journal of Citizen 619F.

       Chapter 3

      A stream of 9 mm bullets zipped across the temple at the wretched stone monster that had emerged from the fire. Kane watched as the bullets trailed from his Sin Eater, while around him two dozen of the faithful who had joined him on this pilgrimage looked horrified at the sudden turn of events. They believed they were there to give of themselves whatever their god required, even if it was their lives. But Kane didn’t believe—he knew better. He knew that this stone monstrosity was nothing more than a trick. The iron content in the blood it was being fed combined with the trigger inside those stone seeds, bringing it to nothing more than a cruel imitation of life. At least that’s what Kane guessed was happening as he squeezed the Sin Eater’s trigger.

      Bullets hurtled toward the stone menace. The first bullets struck its rocky, mismatched hide and the creature let loose a surprised shriek, its distended fingers pulling free from two more sacrifices—a dark-skinned woman with a mop of braided hair and one of the robed acolytes who was ministering the proceedings. The stone monster’s fingers rattled back into the hands,