15: The Hidden Laboratory
10:13, Fifthsol 6th M6, 2226
I've almost stopped noticing the incessant throbbing in my head, either from hunger or panic. Shiro guides us into ever-smaller lab spaces, as if searching for someone squirrelled away deep underground. Workers bustle around us like automata in pink uniforms, a much softer pink shade than the vivid azalea hue of Kida Biotech's guards and high-ranking scientists.
I'm so hungry that my nerves are fraying. I wonder if the automata would notice if I were to run my fingers along their bare forearms to scavenge a little energy as they shuffle past. Shivering from four sols of starvation and ever-increasing disquiet I tramp after Shiro. "I thought that we were going to your room."
"I need you to meet someone first. She's too good at hiding."
"Megumi didn't even hug you. She didn't even look at your foot. She—"
"Listen. Meg only wants what's best for me. Unfortunately, her idea of what's best differs from mine. The most important thing is keeping her happy so she'll fix you."
"Fix me?" I halt in my steps just before a lab door, that ill-fitting seedling of rage now thoroughly warmed and watered. "She hasn't even tried to fix you! Why is she letting you limp around with broken meatware? Doesn't she care that you'll turn into..." I point at an automaton muttering through their teeth as they trundle past, "...into that?"
Shiro smiles. "I don't have meatware, Heems."
"What?" Why is he saying that? Shiro is Eris-born. He obviously has meatware. "Of course you have meatware."
"Why do you think I have radiation poisoning? Why do you think you can touch me? I never said I had meatware. You just assumed that."
"But I know you have meatware! You even said..." Thinking back on our conversations, I don't recall having ever discussed meatware with Shiro. The moment that I'd been unable to make a host of him, my parasite brain had jumped to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that my meatware was somehow interfering with his.
It had never occurred to me that Shiro, or indeed anyone on Eris, might not have meatware, nor that my glitch only works on the implanted. I'd wanted to run away to Pluto; if I had done I'd have starved to death within five sols. "Everybody on Eris gets implanted at birth, so why weren't you?"
"My Dad came from Earth forty years ago to develop meatware, but he never implanted himself, nor his kids, with it. He said that even if Eris babies get implanted with meatware to survive longer here, his kids are official citizens of Earth. He said he'd keep us safe underground and take us back to Earth on his passport when he retired. Then, four years ago, he left us here. Meg thinks that we're Eris's elite because we have a connection to Earth. But we're the same as you Eris people. Abandoned."
"If she doesn't have meatware, why isn't Meg dying of radiation sickness?"
Shiro hobbles into the lab with me and taps at a steel pillar. "Meg has lived for thirty-two years under four metres of recycrete. She's barely ever left this building. Why do you think she never lets me leave? No domes, no sim bars, no hovs, no shuttles. Nothing. We're stuck underground with these braindead workers. Meg's Mum was one of the only three successfully implanted adults during my Dad's first meatware trials forty years ago. When she died, my Dad went back to Earth. Meg thinks that he left to get a new partner."
"Why didn't he take you with him?"
"I don't know. That's when I started running away. At the beginning Meg always found me after a few weeks. But she always underestimated my ability to unlock security systems. I never stayed trapped down here for long. The first times I ran away were just to do silly things like suck shade and meet men who weren't sims. After that I joined smuggling rings to earn money and to learn how to get to Earth illegally. Meg's people always found me. This time I managed to avoid her for almost a year." He gives me a sad smile. "Worth dying of radiation sickness for a little freedom."
I'm gripped by a sense of dread so acute that my voice falters. "You're not dying. You don't even have sores yet. You can't die. You—"
"Look at me, Heems. I'm dying. I don't exactly look nineteen anymore."
"You're... you're nineteen?"
"Yeah. My Dad left when I was fifteen."
No. Shiro can't be nineteen. He's so confident. He knows so much more than me about how Eris works, about life, above love. I'd barely left my foster parents by nineteen. My headache returns with renewed vigour. Shiro is hardly even an adult, yet he has endured so much.
"Is that why Anushka lets you hide in her foster home?"
"Yeah. She took me in a few times when I was fifteen. These days she lets me stay whenever I'm visiting Eris-1. Wardens don't look in foster homes for ore thieves."
A thought hits me, a question that I don't want answered, but some grotesque fascination at the Kida family's schemes drives me on. "If Meg's Mum died, where's your Mum?"
"She still lives here. Unless she's dead. Take your pick." Shiro throws an arm out at a trail of workers. Four ladies in their fifties shuffle past us with soft-pink uniforms and dead eyes. "My Dad loved Meg's Mum. Didn't seem to like mine enough to tell me who she was."
I shudder, horrified. What has Isamu Kida done?
"That night you saw me break in here? I was trying to find Meg's personal files. She says that she has no idea where my Dad lives, but I'm sure that she has a record of his Earth address somewhere. I was going to force him to register me as an Earth citizen or I'd threaten to expose everything in these labs to the Earth governors."
"I don't get it. Meg's the queen of Eris. Surely she could just pull strings with the Governors' Councils and get you both passports, regardless of what your Dad wants."
"Meg doesn't want to go to Earth." Shiro waves his arm in an arc that takes in the lab around us. "She loves all this. I've promised her so many times that if she lets me get to Earth I'll change my name and will never mention Kida again. She doesn't believe me. She thinks that I'll get shade-brained and start talking to everyone on Earth about what goes on here."
My heart begins to ache. Shiro's been robbed of so much. "Earth is the reason you've been running away. The reason you're... dying. And you gave it up for me."
"I haven't. Meg's going to fix you. She's obsessed with Kida Biotech's image. Any hint that meatware has side-effects and the Governor-General could declare a pandemic, rebuild underground living and stop meatware implants permanently. So Meg needs to help you, and to help those whose meatware has been breaking down completely. This is in her interests too, for the sake of her empire."
"And if she can't fix me?"
"Then I'll ask her to put meatware in me. It'll protect me from radiation sickness so I'll live longer, and you can feed on me. I'll take care of you."
The very thought makes vomit rise in me. "No. I'm never hurting you. I don't ever want you to live like that."
"It's not like I can run away to Earth with you, Heems. Nobody has meatware on Earth so you'll not be able to feed. Feeding on me here, on Eris, is the only choice."
"No. By all means ask Meg to put meatware in your head to save you from radiation poisoning, regardless of the risks. But if you do get implanted, I'll never touch you again. I love you, Shiro. So, I'm never feeding on you. Ever."
Shiro's expression crumples. Tears cloud his eyes. "Then you're going to die of starvation."
"Then you're going to die of radiation sickness."
"If Meg can't fix you, Shy can implant and modify meatware. Shy's not a genius like Meg but maybe she can find a way. If she's even here anymore."
"Shy?" I ask as we round a curve in the corridor. It ends at another lab door.
The iris scanner remains red on Shiro's approach. He presents his eye to the scanner again. It remains locked.
"This is the first locked door we've come to. This Shy really is secretive."
"She's the only person I trust around here," Shiro whispers. His bright eyes glaze over as he lens-hacks the iris scanner. "I didn't know that there was a lab hidden away down here."
The door clicks open, and we push warily into a well-stocked lab. Petri dishes cover every surface and vats of churning liquid give off a sugary scent. Workers look up momentarily as Shiro wanders between benches and fume hoods, before going back to their tasks of hauling trays of glassware and pipetting the strange sugary liquid into petri dishes.
"She's got to be around—"
Shiro lets out a blood-curdling wail. He falls against a wall, his limbs flapping.
I rush to him and ease him onto his knees. "What's wrong?"
"Run, Heems." Shiro's eyes dart around his skull like they're evading a waking nightmare. "Run, now!"
"What's happened?"
"Run! Get the wardens! I was wrong!" He shoves at me, his face fixed at a point over my shoulder.
"I'm not going anywhere without you. What's wrong?"
Shiro points to the lab bench behind me. I turn to see an automaton worker with deep-set wrinkles sitting hunched at the bench, pipette in hand. His eyes are dead and dull, yet have a piercing quality that I know only too well. His face seems eerily familiar.
My heartbeat begins to roar in my ears.
It can't possibly be.
"Do you know that man?"
"He's my father."
"No. Your father abandoned you for Earth. No. This man can't be..."
Holy Shiva.
We've been so stupid.
Shiro, a wily thief who trusted nobody has made the worst mistake of his life to trust his own sister.
Shiro's father sits in front of us, a slack-jawed cognitive ghost of his former self, when he is supposed to be on Earth. That was what Meg had needed Shiro to believe four years ago when she decided to absolve Isamu Kida of his duties and take Kida Biotech for herself. How many more of Megumi Kida's enemies are hidden in locked labs with no mind and no identity?
An alarm begins to blare, tearing through my eardrums. Shiro slams his hands against his ears. His hacking of the iris scanner must have triggered security.
The room erupts in pink as thick-set guards shove into Shiro. He crumples to the floor with a groan.
I scream and lunge, only for each of my limbs to be captured by three guards, careful to avoid my bare skin as if they know what I'm capable of.
Shiro is whisked away through the lab door. I give chase but a guard grips my clothed wrists and hoists me up on tip-toes, whilst another activates an iris scanner beside us. They nudge open a storage cupboard door and launch me towards its far wall. I crash against a stack of empty chemical vats. The cupboard door slams in my face, leaving me in near-darkness.
I wail and kick and punch against walls and ceiling. There's no way out. All that my lenses tell me is that I'm six metres under the Kida building and that my heart rate is dangerously high. All external comms have been cut off. I'm trapped.
I curl into a heap against a wall and weep for Shiro.
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