Arrival Read online

  This time, they registered into my reality.

  “It’s found another breeder.”

  Chapter Three

  ADIRA

  Present day

  ? days since captured by the machine

  I’ve become accustomed to the sway.

  It lulls us as this thing moves.

  One can almost forget where you are, in the belly of the machine.

  There’s four of us…but…there’d been more.

  When it had first put me inside itself, the small space had been full.

  Now, not so much.

  Every four weeks or so, one of us is taken away.

  And I have been in here for more days than I can count.

  There’s space to move, but nowhere to go.

  It’s surprisingly bright inside the machine, like being behind a glass window.

  This high up, we can see everything beneath.

  We can see the world from its view.

  And boy…are we little.

  Insignificant.

  “I think he’s going to die soon.” The voice of the woman beside me. Sam.

  Maybe short for Samantha. I never asked.

  “Who?” My voice sounds detached. Filled with apathy. Hearing it sounds like a stranger using my mouth and not me.

  Sam jerks her chin to the other side of the orb. Through the barrier there.

  For there are two compartments in this belly of the beast.

  We are simply in one.

  On the other side are people.

  Humans.

  Men.

  And they are…

  My throat moves as I pull my gaze away.

  You’re a coward, Adira.

  Maybe I am.

  But I don’t need to look to see what’s going on in the second compartment. The image is already burned into my brain.

  I’ve stared at it, even when I didn’t want to see.

  The men are cocooned by…vines…

  Only…

  They aren’t vines at all.

  They pulse, move…as if alive.

  All across the wall…the floor…the vines are everywhere.

  It is like a jungle in there, wrapping around the bodies…piercing them.

  If I go close enough, I can see blood moving through the vines as the machine feeds.

  “I think he’s trying to say something,” Sam whispers.

  My eyes move to the male she’s referring to.

  He is facing us. His face pressed against the transparent barrier that separates our compartments.

  Everything but his face is covered with vines—veins—and as I stare at him, I realize that Sam is right.

  His lips are moving, but we can hear no sound.

  There’s a deathly pallor to his skin. He’s gone pale as the machine drains his blood. How long has it been feeding from him?

  For some reason, I move closer, brushing past the three other women in the compartment with me.

  My body feels weak as I move over and the man’s eyes lock on mine as I near.

  Hope flares in his gaze a little as I draw close.

  His lips move again and I can just about make out the words he is mouthing.

  “Help…me…please.”

  I stare at him. Maybe, before all this, I would have been able to cry. To grieve for what I’m witnessing before my eyes.

  But no tears come now.

  Instead, I press my hand against the barrier. I’d be touching his cheek if not for the separation between us.

  “It will be over soon,” I whisper.

  Maybe that’s all he needed.

  Some kind of comfort.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, watching him, until his eyes finally close.

  And then, he is gone.

  His body is ripped away as the last drop of blood leaves his veins.

  I see what’s left of him fall as the vines release him and the orb expels him from itself.

  Every bone in his body will be broken when he lands.

  But he is already dead.

  He’ll feel no more pain…

  I pull away from the barrier and slide back to sit between Sam and one of the other women.

  Mina her name is.

  She hardly speaks.

  Across from her is another female.

  She rests away from us. Her belly is swollen and it presses against her torn dress.

  It’s grown even more. It wasn’t that big yesterday.

  I remember when the machine took her.

  When she’d been bred.

  That was about a month ago.

  She groans, her eyes flicking open, and pain registers on her face.

  I can’t imagine what it feels like, having something unknown growing within you.

  But I’ll know soon.

  Soon, it will be my turn.

  “Do you want some?” Sam stretches the fluid-filled sac toward me and I shake my head.

  “Eat it, Adira. You know the orb won’t feed us again for the rest of the day.”

  And she is right.

  The fluid-filled sacs appear through the wall on rotation.

  Sustenance in the form of some kind of pulp that keeps us alive.

  I shudder to think where it comes from.

  I want to tell Sam no.

  Maybe if I refuse to eat, starve myself, the machine won’t try to breed me.

  Even as I think this, my gaze flicks to the woman resting on the floor across from my feet.

  She is bone thin. So thin, her massive belly looks out of place.

  Her belly moves as whatever is growing within her writhes underneath her skin and the little appetite I had is suddenly gone.

  Sam jerks me with her elbow. Her arm shakes as she holds the thing out to me.

  She is so thin too, I can see her bones. My gaze moves up her arm, knowing what I’m seeing is a mirror image of myself.

  But there is one difference between us.

  There is still hope in Sam’s eyes.

  Her arm shakes again and I know even the mere act of holding out the sustenance sac to me is draining her energy.

  Hating myself, I reach toward her and take the sac.

  It’s an unappealing light-brown color, like dirty milky water.

  Bringing it to my chapped lips, I nip a hole into it and force down the contents.

  It’s more like gulping rather than drinking.

  I throw it down my throat, the liquid only hitting the back of my tongue as I take it down.

  It’s sickeningly sweet and once again I divert my mind from thinking of where it must have come from.

  To my left, Mina watches us.

  She says nothing, but her gaze speaks volumes.

  Pure hatred.

  The same that I feel toward this thing that is carrying us.

  The gentle sway continues as the machine makes its way across the landscape below and for a moment, my gaze falls beneath us.

  It’s funny how quickly things can change.

  Down below doesn’t look like the Earth I knew anymore.

  More like a world ravaged by war and natural disasters.

  How long has it been since the machines arrived?

  I don’t remember now.

  Days meld into each other. I only know that time is passing because night comes and the sun rises.

  Somehow, it feels like time is leaving me behind.

  Below is a dry barren land.

  Dust has settled over everything.

  Buildings have been burned, crushed, destroyed.

  Vehicles sit in what were once roads.

  Vines and wild plants have started to reclaim what used to be a small town.

  Whatever water, trees, vegetation that had dotted the landscape before are now all gone.

  Earth has been captured.

  It is their world now.

  And we are mainly insects in their way.

  Sometimes, we spot other machines in the distance, but they are never close to each other.
r />   Even then, one is enough to decimate everything around it.

  And humans…I haven’t seen another human below in a long, long time.

  As I cross my arms, the woman on the floor groans and grips her stomach.

  Oh no.

  I don’t realize I whisper the words until they reach my ears.

  “Shit,” Sam whispers too.

  Her wide eyes meet my own and I am dimly aware that Mina is crawling closer to us.

  The woman is left alone on one side as she groans louder.

  There is movement in her stomach.

  Something large presses against her skin from the inside and my heart drops.

  It is time.

  As if on cue, the inside wall pulses and I hear the sound we all dread.

  The smooth surface above us whirs open and one of those mechanical arms appears.

  It’s different from the ones on the outside—the ones it walks on.

  This one is smaller but it has no trouble grasping us just the same…if it catches us.

  But it’s not coming for us.

  We know what it wants.

  The woman…she is ready to give birth.

  I watch as the arm grasps her around the neck and for a moment, I’m frozen.

  One by one, it’s done this.

  Taken us.

  Bred us.

  At first, we’d fought back, tried to get it to stop.

  When had we stopped fighting?

  The thought energizes me and I’m moving even before I can reconsider.

  “Adira!” Sam’s scream doesn’t register. All I can see is the mechanical arm closing around the woman.

  All I can feel is my own hatred.

  I reach it in a matter of seconds, my arms closing around its claw.

  I pull. With all my strength, I pull. But it doesn’t budge.

  “Let her go! She deserves to live. We all deserve to live!” The words leave my lips in a scream that echoes in the little chamber. “Haven’t you done enough?!”

  I’m hanging on to it and I swear the metal claw goes still for a moment.

  And then I’m flying backwards like a fly.

  My back collides with the wall behind me and pain shoots up my spine as I fall forward on my face.

  I’m dimly aware of Sam rushing over to me, of Mina’s scream, and I lift my head.

  Through my blurred vision, I see the arm retreat with the woman.

  And then her screams…

  We won’t see her again.

  But the machine will come back, and it will be one of us next.

  Chapter Four

  ADIRA

  Night has come.

  The sun has risen once more.

  My body still aches from the latest attempt at autonomy. Freedom.

  My gaze adjusts to within the orb as the empty food sac slips from my fingers.

  It lands at my feet and I watch as it…disappears into the metal wall.

  “Do you think it will ever stop walking?” Sam asks.

  Her voice is distant.

  She is staring outside the orb too and I wonder if she is having the same thoughts I am.

  “I’d like to think so,” I reply, but even that thought makes a strange feeling go down my spine.

  When the machine stops walking…what then?

  Will any of us be left?

  Will humanity, by some miracle, have survived?

  Walking. Walking. It always heads towards water. It’ll spend several days sucking it all up, and then it will be off again.

  In the time I’ve been in the belly of the beast, I’ve seen it drain seven lakes.

  Seven…all gone.

  I don’t know what it does with all that water.

  I wonder if it takes it all, evaporates it somehow.

  Destroys it.

  Something tells me that’s not what it’s doing.

  But with the water disappearing down below…so is life.

  The Earth is becoming dry.

  Parched.

  We built all basis of life on the single pairing of two chemicals. Two parts hydrogen. One part oxygen.

  Water.

  When searching distant stars, it was what we looked for.

  And I wonder if that’s what they were looking for too?

  Is that why they came here?

  Is that how they found us?

  I stare ahead at nothing.

  Not looking at the other side where the Feeders are.

  Not focusing on the two other women around me.

  Just three of us left.

  It is going to end soon.

  For hours, the machine walks.

  There is nothing to do but sit and be swayed within it, my gaze focused in the distance.

  My mind…my emotions…blocked.

  I only rise when I spot greenery.

  Life.

  We are near a forest…or at least, what used to be one, and the machine leaves trampled trees in its wake.

  The trees will die soon. Just like everything else.

  Sam sees me move and glances down below.

  “Recognize where we are?”

  “No idea.”

  Nothing looks the same out there.

  I don’t even know if we are in the same state anymore.

  “Me neither,” she says. “I wish…”

  She doesn’t continue.

  It makes no use to say it.

  I know what she wishes.

  To see some form of life down there.

  Hope.

  Her dark hair is dirty and she runs a hand through it.

  We all are dirty, despite the strange way the machine cleans this compartment.

  It sucks up the waste we leave behind. Bodily secretions disappear into the metal wall as if it wasn’t there at all in the first place. But it can’t wash away the filth that has settled on our skin over time.

  “Do you think anyone’s left out there?” Sam is still looking down below.

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about the animals…”

  Her voice has hope in it and even though Mina doesn’t speak much, I hear her scoff.

  Since being within the machine, we’ve seen no life below.

  Not even a flicker of it.

  I spent my whole life taking care of animals… To think so many have died too…

  It’s something I leave untouched in the back of my mind. Like a safe sort of place I can go.

  I imagine the animals are all hiding down there.

  Somewhere.

  That all life isn’t being snuffed out little by little.

  And even though we don’t talk about it, about the other women who’d been in the beast’s belly, what happened to them, we all know our end is coming soon too.

  There’s no use talking about it.

  Especially when…

  As if my thought summons it, there’s movement.

  The walls pulse. The hole in the top opens and the arm descends.

  Instinctively, we all jerk and scramble away.

  Sam lets out a scream as the arm brushes her foot and my mind goes into panic mode.

  It’s ready to breed another of us already?

  Sam collides with me, her elbow digging into my gut as I scramble backward too.

  But Mina…Mina isn’t fast enough.

  The metal arm closes around her belly and she screams, her gaze locking with mine.

  Panic floods through me.

  We have no weapons. Nothing to fight with except our sheer will.

  But that is never enough.

  Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m struggling from underneath Sam, trying to release myself.

  Attacking the thing never works.

  But maybe this time…

  Mina screams as the arm pulls her toward itself, her hands grasping at the smooth surface beneath us, trying to grip on to something to no avail.

  The pure terror in her eyes hits me deep.

  It’
s like looking into a mirror.

  That could have been me.

  It will be me.

  And that’s the thought that pushes me forward.

  My hands close around hers, and I pull, screaming.

  It feels like my joints are going to be dislocated as the claw retreats into the machine, pulling Mina, and, in extension, me, with it.

  She screams again, hanging on to me for dear life, and in the back of my mind, I feel skinny arms wrap around my legs.

  Sam.

  She’s helping too, trying to pull us back.

  But it’s useless.

  Mina doesn’t budge. The arm keeps retreating, and it is too strong for the strength of all three of us combined.

  “Let her go!” I scream, the words leaving my mouth with all the force I can muster. “Let her go!”

  If it hears me, I know it doesn’t care.

  “Please,” I beg, and a part of me wishes my plea will be heard.

  But nothing stops the thing.

  Mina’s gaze locks with mine.

  I see the moment she gives up like a fire dying in her eyes.

  And then, she slips from my grasp.

  The force of the pull is lost and I collapse, but my eyes remain locked on Mina’s as she disappears into the dark hole.

  I want to go after her.

  But before I can move, the hole closes, as it always does.

  It closes, but not before Mina’s screams reach our ears.

  ADIRA

  When Mina returns, Sam and I are waiting.

  There is movement. The wall pulses and the hole opens.

  Mina’s body is a blur as she falls through and we rush to break her fall.

  She is choking, her body heaving and shivering at the same time, and she is wet.

  She clutches her belly, and I swallow hard.

  We don’t need to speak.

  We all know what’s happened.

  It’s the same thing that happened to all the others.

  “Kill me,” she chokes out. “Kill me now.”

  I glance at Sam and my heart slams against my chest. I can feel Mina’s pain.

  “Do it!” she screams.

  Her eyes are on us now, red, bloodshot and she chokes again, spitting blood.

  The fluid promptly disappears into the wall of the orb.

  She claws at her stomach and a lump forms in my throat.

  I can’t see clearly and it takes me a moment to realize tears have clouded my eyes.

  I try to hold them back as I watch her claw at herself, trying to remove it.