“184, 185, 186... Done!” Julia shoved the last silver packet into the container, straightened the edges, and kicked the lid shut.
Drax raised a bony eyebrow, involuntarily amused by these flashes of anger. The red-haired member of the basketball team wore a tight blue jacket and short shorts. Over all of it was a transparent garment for maintaining sterility, mandatory for food preparation. But now, having pulled off her mask and hood and dashing from the table with the packaged products to the container, Julia resembled a swaying white-and-blue stalk with a burning tuft of fire on top.
Beside her, Drax hummed the words of a song he had heard at the gym under his breath, carefully stowing his portion of the prepared food. After the unpleasant and amusing incidents of his first school day, the three days that followed had become a true paradise for him. The Iternians in his class had been wary of the Malformed exactly until they met him at the gym next to Augustina, where Mateo had dragged him, promising he would like it there.
“Like it” turned out to be an understatement. He had found a second home! In the kids’ section hung punching bags that withstood his fist; the muscular Barjoni servants readily gave him a few pointers on proper weightlifting and cheered on Mateo, spurring him toward greater achievements and nicknaming him “shrimp”; the coach understood the problem of his inability to raise his arms upward and devised an individualized program for Drax of pulling weight toward himself. At the gym, no one looked at him like a beast. Their motto was: “Came to get better? Go on, sweat some more.” Abnormal or Normie, at the training session, people cared more about how much you could lift, how fast you could throw strikes, and what you could teach.
Julia trained there too, practicing techniques on an unusual construction consisting of a post with legs sticking out toward the fighter. She methodically struck the target with her shins and delivered lightning-fast elbow strikes that bounced off the post. Sometimes it seemed as if she were trying to break her own limbs. The legs forced her to adjust stances for different attacks.
Having assessed her fighting style with its emphasis on elbows and legs, almost without using fists, Drax approached her, and Mateo introduced them to each other. Sweaty and heated with adrenaline, the girl wasn’t afraid of him. She trained in the Muay Thai style, which traced its origins to a vanished country of the Old World. The eighth-grader was on the school’s martial arts team and had placed eighteenth in a tournament last year. After a brief sparring session with Drax, rubbing her reddened elbows, she admitted that the Abnormal league wasn’t for her.
Just like that, the barrier between the class students and Drax finally crumbled to pieces. He no longer set out for school extra early but rode the bus together with the others. As it turned out, people tended not to consider the Malformed dangerous so long as he was chatting with students. A couple of times they ran into Gunther, and the arrogant youth came over to clarify whether Drax was bothering the kids. Mateo invited him to perform an inappropriate sexual act and flipped him with the middle finger. No further misunderstandings arose.
Mateo taught Drax how to play cards, and another Iternian from their class introduced him to a male nurse who signed the boy up for medical volunteer courses. His huge fingers guaranteed he would never become a doctor, but he was firmly resolved not to fall behind Tigrin. Meeting with acquaintances from the Nest hadn’t worked out yet, but they regularly called one another. Egor told him about a peculiar Softskin in his building; Tigrin was studying a guide on trap-making, and Virsavia mysteriously refused to explain what she was doing at night in the music club.
Upon learning that Julia did charity work, Drax volunteered to help. Yesterday they had collected trash, and today they had come with the other kids to the southeast of the city, to a district designated for industrial zones servicing cargo bound for other countries. Unlike the rest of Baal, there were significantly fewer flitting drones and technological marvels here. Even Drax could understand how the walkers worked: workers sat in the cabins, directing the claws of these four-meter yellow behemoths that carried multi-ton loads.
But the bus took them further into this corner of the now-familiar technological world. The factory of Rho Biotechnologies Corporation towered above the surrounding humble warehouses like a palace. Fenced in by a force wall, it featured trimmed lawns and a staff parking lot on the outside. The gray material of the building was not ordinary stone and remained smooth despite its considerable age. Horatia, together with the other chaperones, made sure the children put on their suits and was bored in the break room while they prepared food in the cafeteria from synthetic products grown in vats on the underground floors.
Taste-wise, the vegetables remained consistently disgusting, like their natural analogs, and all the meat variants were slightly chewy, lacking juiciness, but were sufficiently caloric.
The place made Drax somewhat nervous. He didn’t feel direct danger and trusted Horatia, but something inspired a respectful wariness in him. From the strictly dressed clerks to the uniformed workers and cooks in white, there were a lot of people. The guards were rarely seen, but while they were transporting the food for loading, he caught glimpses of shadows out of the corner of his eye. Not belonging to Softskins, hunched, moving on four limbs, they artfully vanished behind turns without disturbing the children.
These were not machines. Robots rarely flapped during steps and didn’t smell.
In the loading hall, the kids set about the last part of their task. First, they packed the prepared soups, poured into cans, and sealed the meat into packets, then stacked the food into spacious containers in a large hall with conveyor belts. Several workers were present here, readily explaining any questions.
From them, Drax learned that the silver packaging preserved the meal’s heat and protected it from spoiling. A worker brought out a sample marked with a manufacturing date a century old. He opened the ancient package, and a piece of ham appeared before the Malformed, smelling only slightly less fragrant than what he had sliced today.
Yet another mystery to add to the list of things to learn.
“Stupid thing!” Julia cursed, punching the code into the container lid. The display flashed red.
“Why are you so pissed?” Drax asked. “Yesterday we had fun.”
“Yesterday we were allowed to be ourselves! Ga-ah.”
“We’re still ourselves today.” Drax finished stacking his food.
“Look.” She opened the lid, shifted the arranged packets aside, then tried to pull the lid back but couldn’t budge it. “If things aren’t lying in strict order, it won’t close. In the cafeteria, we measured out exact volumes of food and greens, not exceeding the portion by a gram. Without entering the issued password, the seal won’t engage.”
“Well, yeah.” Drax closed his own container and entered a seven-digit password. The lid let out a soft hiss and suctioned itself to the sides. He lifted the weighty gift and placed it on the conveyor belt, which carried the cargo away for loading. “The needy in the Ravaged Lands count on being able to access the food by entering the agreed password. Changing it on them would be a cruel joke.”
“Okay, you’re right about that last part. But doesn’t this all stress you out?” Julia gestured around. “Strict, cold instructions. We’re performing a routine, devoid of the slightest individuality, worthy of drones!”
“Is order a bad thing?” Drax moved to help her.
The girl held out a hand, stopped him, finished assembling her cargo, and picked up the loader remote. The device, operated by Julia’s fingers and resembling a flying fork, slipped under the container and lifted it onto the moving belt.
“I don’t know,” she answered, setting aside the remote and continuing: “I only know that if I’m being forced to do charity as punishment, I at least want to leave my mark, to work in my style! Automate everything, and then what’s the point of a person?”
“What kind of mark did you want to leave?”
“Maybe I’d have liked to tuck in a note wishing all the best to the kids there.”
“They don’t have lenses.” Drax touched the translator near his eye. “Trust me, if your note fell into my hands, while I was out there, I’d just chuck it or eat it.”
“Well then, spirits, a toy, something material.” Julia threw her hands up in irritation.
“Or someone might crap on the food as a joke.”
“Only a pervert would do that! How many perverts do you know who are willing to volunteer?”
Drax thought about the question. No, he could in no way imagine Raoul preparing food here. The latter would sooner have staged a massacre immediately.
“They tell us that by helping those living outside Iterna, we better realize that they are people too.” Julia furiously ruffled her hair. “Bull-crap. Machines prepare food and load it hundreds of times faster than us. You haven’t seen the other halls: this place ships enough to supply entire neighborhoods. And being forced to act within such strict frameworks doesn’t evoke anything in me.” She exhaled, packing the next load. “You know, Iterna used to have places like free soup kitchens. Now they only operate in the Frontier and refugee camps. There, people interact with foreigners, understand them. But here I...”
“I get it. On my first day here, I helped... tried to help an acquaintance carry toys up to his apartment. He was scared at first, then we got talking, and Horatia chewed me out.” Drax chuckled, remembering.
“There you go. Imagine if you’d delivered that load to him without ever meeting him. Or assembled it here. Would you have felt anything? The government is obsessed with safety. Yes, yes, nothing threatens us here, but we also learn nothing about those living outside. Might as well make us cram a textbook. Bueh.”
Drax didn’t argue, flattered by her words. Nothing threatens. He wasn’t perceived as a threat! He was bringing benefit to the herd, maybe not as fast as machines, but he was laboring for others, repaying the debt for his rescue and simply because he wanted to help. What did it matter that he would never see the face of the person who got the food he prepared? As if the starving cared who exactly saved them.
At the same time, there was a sense in Julia’s words. The charitable missions were meant to teach children to perceive those living in other lands as people like themselves. Direct meetings with Nonus, even with that jerk Gunther, were far more conducive to bridging gaps. But his buddies didn’t know how dangerous it was outside Iterna.
You could get to know people once you grew up. What mattered was living long enough to reach adulthood.
“You said you’re doing charity as punishment. Care to elaborate?” Drax asked.
“Argh, I called Mateo a stinking piece of burnt bacon and dented his locker with a hit.” Julia waved a hand. “I have nothing against other immigrants; I only have a problem with that jackass. He... never mind. It’s personal. The teacher overheard us; my parents and I got called to the principal, and I was deemed prone to racism. It’s not my fault his hide reminds me of that. And here you go, two months of community service for behavioral correction.” She pouted. “Nothing against cleaning, but this way I’m not being taught anything I don’t already know. Meeting you was way more useful.”
“Likewise,” Drax thanked her. Roundhouse kicks held no particular value for him; he wasn’t that flexible. But elbow thrusts for slashing veins... he hadn’t thought about that before.
Around them, the rest of their small group was finishing up work. A guy who had managed to prepare four containers before everyone else was yawning, sipping soda, then went to help an immigrant girl, struck up a conversation with her, and asked about her homeland. Mateo was nowhere to be seen.
“You think he’s okay?”
“He won’t ditch us, if that’s what you mean,” Julia assured him. Their friend promised to arrange a royal surprise, and the group pooled their today’s credits for him. “The little shit isn’t the type. But he probably spent all the money on some useless crap. Can’t expect much else from an immigrant. Understand, I’m not saying you people are worse than us! It’s just that those living outside don’t possess the enlightenment of the conquerors of the Extinction.”
Drax suppressed a chuckle, nodding politely. He didn’t consider the girl arrogant. She hadn’t complained after he threw her onto the mat during sparring. But the teacher hounded Julia about math, the failure of which had forced her to attend extra classes. Mateo, meanwhile, did complex calculations in his head, quickly figuring out what to buy and where.
Blue lines ran along the walls, and the lights dimmed. At the foreman’s clap, the kids stopped packing loads and, gladly stripping off their transparent garments, headed for the locker room. Drax undressed right there in the hall, carefully bumping fists with each of his buddies. Everyone had agreed that shaking his finger was cringeworthy; offering a hand to his grabber was a little scary; but this friendly exchange of greetings was just right. Outside, in the corridor, a shadow flickered, disappearing before he could look out.
Damn it. He wanted to know who that was! They resembled the scouts from his native homeland, but those shadows had been far stockier. Drax crouched down, touched the floor, and ran his finger from the barely noticeable trace of the worker’s boot that had brought dust in here to the spot where the unknown’s limb should have been. Nothing. Not the slightest trace.
“Can you call them? The guardians?” he asked the foreman.
“Don’t trouble your head.” A smile played on the man’s lips.
This isn’t my last time here. Sooner or later, I’ll solve this mystery. Drax mentally added another goal for the year to his list. The local workers treated him with no fear at all. It had to have something to do with the shadows.
“To other news. Tourist visits to the Land of the Oath have officially resumed, and hundreds of citizens are eagerly heading to Stonehelm, intending to see with their own eyes the incredible aftermath of the battle with the Chosen Prince...” the anchor narrated from the display screen installed in the locker room.
Toward evening it had grown colder, and the chaperones made the kids dress warmer. Julia was pulling on long pants, and Drax was putting on a black sweater bought by his mom. Horatia waited patiently for him.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but is that your kink?” Julia pointed to the ID on Drax’s neck.
“It’s harder to lose here,” he replied, touching the strap.
“Drax, people take you for a pet with that collar.”
“Let them. I’m not an animal.”
“Then you shouldn’t give wagging tongues extra ammunition. Why do you need a noose?”
“I warned our excessively calcified one,” Horatia tossed out.
Julia smiled with the corner of her mouth, walked up, and reached for the ID card. She unclasped the strap and began fitting it onto the boy’s wrist.
“Rho Development takes pride in its achievements in the service of Iterna. Although many know us thanks to the orbital elevators and the genetic enhancements of our glorious defenders, we consider solving the problem of hunger in the country our true achievement. Successful advances in the field of synthetic nutrition allow humanitarian missions to equally provide sustenance for both adults and infants...”
The display showed a man in a white coat transitioning from images of people in black with silver masks unpacking containers of provisions to infants sucking baby food from bottles bearing the Rho Corporation brand. The locale resembled familiar deserts, but here the Softskins lived in sturdy settlements rather than crowding together in mobile clans. Sand was hurled over fortress walls by the wind; civilians wore bulky suits on streets flooded with blinding sunlight. Those clad in black and silver were clearly troops.
The man in white returned to the screen, and Julia’s gaze glazed over slightly.
“Something's wrong?” Drax whispered.
“That’s Argus Rho.” She nodded at the display. “Boy genius. Test-tube abomination. He has more doctoral degrees than you can count. Former Elite. His power lies in the manipulation of technology. And... his brother murdered my siblings.”
“My condolences.” Drax took her hand with two fingers.
“For what? I never saw them. They died more than ninety years before I was born.” The girl shrugged. “It’s just strange helping it. I probably ought to hate Argus, but I don’t give a crap about him.”
Drax raised a finger, opened his mouth, closed it again, and lowered his finger.
“I’ll never get used to how long people here live,” he admitted.
“You think it’s easy for me? My old guys know my every trick. Better get used to it; we’re going to live just as long, Vileheart.” Julia thumped his chest with her fist. “Let’s go see what kind of surprise our slacker has cooked up. I’m prepared to be disappointed.”