Kill Switch: Chapter 58
The Goo Factory
Vats and animal pens stretch across the floor of the goo factory, the animals squawking and purring and neighing, the vats hissing and bubbling. We dash by a chicken coop. It smells like death and shit mixed together. The chickens are half my size, bloated with hormones and chemicals, unable to move. Reminds me of the rollmatoids in the malward. We run past some button pushers wearing masks, all of whom turn their heads before returning to their work, which consists mostly of monitoring the conveyor belt where the animals travel toward the slicer, which demolishes their bodies and filters them down to goo. Very efficient. Very streamlined. The animals are so doped up they barely make a sound at the moment of death.
I hurdle the conveyor belt, splitting a gap between a horse and a bucket of rats, and dart toward the emergency exit.
When I open the door, the alarm sounds.
The gazes in the goo court turn toward me.
X slams into me.
“Hey!” X yells. “What’s going on, simul?”
I look around, paralyzed, wondering what to do next.
Yide is up ahead, dashing past Nighthawks.
“This way!” I yell.
I dart in and out of the neon tables of the goo court, past Nighthawks, and then find myself staring down a row of shops selling everything from jumpsuits to fleshysuits.
For a second I lose sight of Yide, and then I spot her again, running past a kiosk. Bunnfield and Claudette are slightly ahead of her, and X is just a few steps behind. That means I’m pulling up the rear.
Get going, I think. You’re gonna lose them.
I pass the kiosk and stumble into this guy with an offbrand vibe before turning a corner at the end of the corridor.
Up ahead is the security check for The Without.
I don’t know what we were thinking.
The security check is lined with middle managers, their blasters leveled at the five of us, who stand side by side, breathless.
My hand twitches toward my blaster, which hangs off my belt, but I know it would be suicide to open fire. We’re outnumbered fifty to five.
Apparently my colleagues have the same idea, because they too are just, like, standing there, doing nothing.
“Hands in the air!” A synth yells.
“Fuck it,” X says. “We’re dead either way. Might as well take out a few middle managers.”
I tend to agree, but something tells me to wait. I raise my hands in the air. “Look for an opening. Play it cool.”
“Vonn is right,” Yide says. “We’re surrounded.”
Another horde of middle managers is approaching us from the rear.
“I wish they’d just shoot,” X says. “Get it over with, you know.”
And then somebody does shoot, the sound of the blaster going pew pew pew, but there aren’t any pulses coming toward me, so I turn. The back line of Middle Managers turn as the sound of the pulses continue, increasing in frequency and volume. Somebody screams.
The alarm starts ringing.
A synth sounds over the overhead speaker.
“Attention shoppers,” the synth says. “There is an active shooter in the area. Please make your way to the closest store and bow your head in prayer.” And then the synth starts praying. “In the name of Efficiency…”
The pulses grow louder, the screaming amplifies.
A pulse intersects two Middle Managers and clips my ear.
I fall to the ground.
“There he is!” a middle manager yells. “Open fire!”
And that’s when the pulses really start flying.
“Run!” X yells. “Toward the elevator.”
I look up. My peripheral is full of Middle Managers, and since we’re all wearing gilets, I can’t tell who is who.
I stand.
Middle Managers are tumbling all around me. Everybody is shooting at everybody.
I jump over a fallen body, twist through a colloidal mass of gilets, and run through the scanner, which flashes red as I pass beneath it, an alarm ringing, the sound a frequency below the active shooter alarm, creating a dissonance that makes my head vibrate.
Pulses ricochet off the back wall. I dodge them one by one, ninja-like.
Although there are Middle Managers all around, I’m too scared to shoot, because I’m afraid that one of them might be a friend, so I take my chances, just a few yards away from the elevator now.
The door is closed.
I slam into it.
I jam the button.
The door kind of stutters, opening and closing in quick succession, and I jam the button again, and the same thing happens.
A blaster pulses heavily toward me.
“Stop!” Yide yells from within the elevator. “Stop pressing the button!”
I spin. A middle manager is a few feet away, his blaster pointed at my head. He pulls the trigger. I jerk my head reflexively, certain I’m about to die. The pulse blasts past my ear, hits the elevator door, and ricochets back toward the middle manager, hitting him squarely in the forehead.
“Hey!” Yide shouts.
She grabs my jumpsuit and jerks me into the elevator.
I turn my head.
The elevator groans. Through the gap in the door, all I see is a chaotic mass of pulses and middle managers.
“To the top!” X yells.
Bunnfield jams a button.
“Are we all here?” I ask.
“Yes,” Claudette says. “All five of us.”
I stand. Take off my visor. There’s blood everywhere. “Is somebody hurt?”
“Just you,” Yide says, touching my ear.
I bring my hand to my ear. “Oh right,” I say. “I got hit by a pulse. All good though.”
Yide squeezes my hand.
I smile.
“We’re close,” I say.
“Yeah,” Bunnfield says. “Close to the hornet’s nest. How the hell are we going to escape headquarters?”
“We’ll just have to blast our way through,” I say. “It’s worked so far.”
The elevator groans to a halt. The doors open.
“Hit the emergency stop button,” I say. “It will buy us some time.”
X presses the red button.
We step out of the elevator.
Headquarters is desolate.
No bots, no security guards.
I look around, confused.
It’s like the final showdown scene of a western. The streets are empty, the whole town is hiding. The only missing element is a scrum of tumbleweed blowing in the wind.
My boots crunch in the dirt.
“What the Inefficiency,” I say.
“It has to be a trap,” Bunnfield says.
“It’s definitely a trap,” I say. “But we can’t just stand here. So where do we go?”
“The only way out is past the mansion,” X says.
But before I can take a step in that direction, I feel an electronic grip around my body, a shock and a buzzing, and in my peripheral, I see Bunnfield press down on the trigger of his blaster.
“Shit,” he says. “We’re in a dead zone.”
“A deadzone?” I ask.
“An electric force field that shuts down everything inside.”
I step forward, and it’s like hitting a wall.
Something hisses. The air looks glitchy, a silver streak flashing.
I start pounding against the invisible wall, but it’s useless.
I click on my blaster. Nothing.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“You drop your blasters,” a familiar voice says.
I turn. It’s Vonn Senior, surrounded by security guards and middle managers.
“It’s the end of the line, Vonn 19,” he says. “You and your colleagues have put on quite the show, I’ll give you that. Your gaze ratings are through the roof. In that sense, your execution was the most successful of all time. Everybody is talking about it. But…” He raises his blaster. “I’m sorry to say that it’s time for you to die.”
“Don’t drop your blasters,” I say to my colleagues. “As long as we’re in the deadzone, we’re protected, they can’t shoot us.”
“You’re right,” Vonn Senior says. “I might not be able to shoot you, but then again, you can’t shoot me either. And what’s more, I can make the rest of your life miserable.”
A shock runs up my spine, rattling my bones. My skin is on fire. My ears ring with a high-pitched squeal that sets my teeth on edge. I cover my ears, but the awful sound only grows in volume. Finally, I’m released from the shock. I collapse, my whole body like goo. My colleagues tumble around me.
“Hold on to your blasters,” I gasp.
Vonn Senior snarls. “The shockwave you just felt was level one. It goes all the way up to level ten. Would you like to try two?”
“Bring it on,” I say. “We’re not giving up our blasters.”
And before anyone can protest, another shock, this one twice as bad as the first, the pain shooting through my mainframe, sending me into a seizure, my arms and legs flailing, my vision going all static and glitch, the air squealing like a pig at a slaughterhouse.