Part 1 | Chapter 9 - Manifest

Part 1, The Ticking Clock

Chapter 9 - Manifest

Which mess you all at? - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

I’ve got new hire orientation, late dinner for me today :D - JT, ID:MRG2012658B

4-9. Conrad and I are here now. - MK, ID:MRG2002322G

I’m on my way over - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

How long you staying? - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

We’ve eaten but we’ll stay for a bit - MK, ID:MRG2002322G

I thought you had the late shift again today? - CD, ID:SB0088907B

I got reassigned. They took me off everything for the next few days. - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

Did they say why? - CD, ID:SB0088907B

I assume they’re just rearranging the schedules. - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

----------------------------------------

Security are sweeping apartments again. Hide your contraband! - JT, ID:MRG2012658B

Don’t put shit like that in chats - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

I didn’t hear anything - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

Why would they tell you? Didn’t you recently get sidelined? ;P - JT, ID:MRG2012658B

When? Your new place? - CD, ID:SB0088907B

Nah, my parents place. Unannounced too. - JT, ID:MRG2012658B

They’re meant to give you 6 hours notice - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

When did that ever mean anything? - MK, ID:MRG2002322G

They’re meant to follow protocol. You could complain? - HC, ID:MRG2044987D

And put a target on my back so we get searched next? - MK, ID:MRG2002322G

----------------------------------------

What’s the plan for tomorrow? - CD, ID:SB0088907B

You coming to my manifestation still? You don’t have to - CD, ID:SB0088907B

Cause I’m okay if you don’t want to - CD, ID:SB0088907B

Meiko? - CD, ID:SB0088907B

This user is currently unavailable.

----------------------------------------

I’m a fucking mess. That's the only words I have for how I feel as I wait in the staging area at the side of the manifestation amphitheater. Meiko hasn’t responded to a message now for almost a full 24 hours.

I barely spoke to my Dad when I got home last night, and I when I left before him to get the train into the central district words just felt ineffective. He hugged me though, I could almost feel the trembling in his arms when he did. I hugged him back so hard.

I could have been warmer to him, and said a proper goodbye. It’s intentional. It's self destructive, but it’s also about the only thing I have left when that stranger left me nothing but a card. I can feel pain or I can feel nothing, and I’ve struggled with feeling nothing for too long, so I’ll choose pain.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

“You will be handed a lancet for pricking your finger when you are brought to the stage.”

I’d considered more extreme options. How far could I get if I ran? Definitely out of the district. Maybe as far as the edge of the greater Central Cooperative City. Once I leave I’m out of Murasaki’s system - no credits, no food, no water, no shelter. No idea of what even happens beyond the city. The bars on our cages are so strong because we have no idea what beyond them even looks like to prepare for it. And that all assumes that Meiko’s disappearance is a coincidence. I don’t know what Mum manifested, but I bet a hostage would be pretty useful in controlling a powerful host and symbiont.

“You will step onto the platform when instructed, and touch your blood to the metal. It only needs to be a droplet.”

The pit in my stomach feels so deep I’m not sure I’ll ever climb out of it. I never knew my mother, but I wonder if she knew what was concealed in her genetics when she was here a little over twenty one years ago. If she knew at that moment that the birth control had failed and she was pregnant.

“You will feel the bond form. You don’t need to be scared, symbionts will never harm their host. You don’t need to tell anyone what manifests, the sensors will detect it. For most of you, that will be the end of it and someone will help you off the stage.”

I wonder where she is now. If she's still alive. If she tried to keep me, or was I taken from her regardless of what she wanted at her new employer. I don’t know how many handlers is normal for this, there are maybe twenty employee’s waiting to manifest today backstage with me, and nearly as many handlers on staff.

“For a few of you, recruiters from other companies may attempt to place a bid for your contract. If you are a serf, their buyout bid must include the purchase price of the land under the city tied to your serf status. It is very rare bids go that high. If you are not a serf, it will be up to Murasaki to weigh the price offered and your potential lifetime value to the company.”

The girl next to me is almost crying. I’ve lived with these building nerves for so long that I feel well past tears.

“If you are purchased. You will proceed to inter-company transfer. Handlers on the stage will guide you.”

The wait is both the slowest moment of my life, and also passes too quickly.

----------------------------------------

As I step onto the stage, the faces of the crowd are hidden beyond the bright white of the lights. I can feel the thrum of energy from the metal platform, see the throbbing red forces pulsing through those archaic runes.

And… my fears drain away.

The moment my foot touches the metal I feel a presence, my heart and mind opening almost like those moments where I blink, then blink again, and suddenly see what no one else can. But instead of my vision it's my whole consciousness. I can’t explain it, but I feel vast, disconnected from myself but more connected with the world around me than I have ever felt. I feel blood in my body, rushing in a circuit with the beat of my heart. I feel the membranes of my own tissue stretch and contract. Chemistry, complexity, spun together with a thread of something… alive. Somewhere beneath me is an earth made of the same things I am, smelling of humus and acid and rainfall, rushing with the same energy that keeps me alive… yet so far away. Is this what everyone feels?

I’m not even aware that I’ve pricked my finger. But I can see the line of blood I drag across the metal, seeping into the pits and indents of its tarnished ancient surface. The runes flare crimson.

And a mind touches my own.

Tentative, quiet, probing.

From the blood a dark shape blossoms, slowly. Shapelessly, it swells, and blinks open two eyes that burn like fire, the edges of its form ephemeral like smoke. Then it congeals. For a moment it stands taller than my own head, elegant long muzzle inclined to look down at me, eyes burning. I stretch a hand, the form is obviously an Equus but I have never heard of one described as pure black, and I have never seen one with eyes of fire. At my touch, something passes between us, an understanding, and the form withdraws, solid mass dissipating. It shrinks, taking on a more compact form.

It settles on the shape of something vaguely Canis in its resemblance, with taller shoulders, a sloping back and a mane of bristling black fur down its spine ending in a dropping tail. It is solid black in a strange shapeless way, like the slightest turbulence might scatter its mass. Its eyes glow, and I feel its mind touch my own, foreign, but rapidly unraveling to tie itself to me. Within moments I know, just as easily as I can unconsciously command my hand to open, my muscles to move, my lungs to breathe, that this creature is now a part of me - the edges between our own consciousness and bodies indistinct. The connection with the earth contracts, but I can still feel its ghosts wandering in my mind, fragments of a greater.

It looks at me with eyes of fire, blinking once slowly, and draws its lips back to grin off-white teeth in a jaw of black smoke. Faint sparks of plasma crackle between its fangs.

It's a vertebrate, but I have no clue what it is. I’m aware of the change in lighting as the screens above me suddenly dim, blacking out.

The center screen contains only one word.

Classified.