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  I trip over a body part on the ground and go down hard, screaming as the glue holding my leg together rips open. Blood is gushing, the metallic scent surrounding me as the puddle on the ground grows. The pain from the wound is nothing compared to what happens next, though.

  Ribbed metal plates close over my limbs, “biting” me over and over again. The skin on my hand tears, exposing bones as I try to fight them off. My left hand gets caught, and I let out another scream as my fingers are smashed into pieces. I don’t know how long the attack goes on, but it stops as suddenly as it started.

  Without further knowledge, I can only think that the burst of energy these inanimate items got doesn’t last forever. I’m battered, broken, and bloody, but I’m not dead yet. The girl still needs food, and I need to make her happy. It’s all I want to do, all I hope for right now.

  With thoughts of her in mind, I drag my body over the ground, hurting more than I ever have before. Gravel, glass, and metal pierce what’s left of my skin, but I don’t feel it. I must be past the point of feeling, or maybe I’m in shock; all I know is I can’t feel anything physically anymore. I wouldn’t even know I was moving if I didn’t see the pavement sliding in front of me.

  I’m shaking and ready to pass out, when I see the “M” that once meant food almost right in front of me. Its golden light isn’t shining, but there’s light inside the building. I roll onto my back, and use the one good hand I have left to grab onto the bench just outside the doors. It takes more than a few tries, but I crawl onto the seat, breathing hard. I need to close my eyes for just a minute. Just one minute of rest is all I need. I know it’s dangerous in this place, but nothing came at me as I crawled here, and I just need this.

  There’s nothing to tell me how long I’ve been asleep once I open my eyes again, but I don’t seem to have been harmed any further while I slept. The pain has returned, and most of my body feels like it’s being stabbed by knives, or is on fire, but I force myself to sit up first, and then to stand.

  Leaning against the wall, I shuffle to the door. The few feet seem like miles, but I make it in. There’s no human life inside, but things are humming. Lights flicker, the grill sizzles, and I smell French fries. Glorious, wonderful French fries.

  Stumbling forward, I stop at the counter as one of the cash registers rises and turns, its menu screen seeming to stare at me. I hold my hands up in surrender and beg.

  “Please. I just need food. I mean no harm. Please.”

  It tilts, making me think it understands me, before nodding down at a stack of bags on the counter. I open one, and things start happening at once. Burger patties fly off the grill and into the bag, fry baskets come out of their hot grease, and dump their contents into the sack as well. I almost pass out from how good it smells, but I remember the girl, and force myself to stay on task.

  “Thank you,” I tell the things that just helped me.

  I don’t hesitate to turn to the door, because while I feel relatively safe in here, there’s no telling when something might go haywire and come after me. What I see on the other side of the glass causes me to pause before I go through it, and I drop the bag.

  “Yes! Do it,” the girl shouts, and her cries are joined by the other women surrounding her.

  They’ve all got objects in their hands. Things that shouldn’t be hurtful to me, but I know are just that. The electronic appliances shake in their hands, trying to get free as I step back. I’m thankful I’m in here, until I hear the crashing behind me.

  Chancing a look back, I see the first fry basket right before it smacks me in the face, searing its design across my forehead. The register hits me in the stomach, and I have no fight left in me as everything else in this place comes for me.

  The female squeals of delight surround me as I’m attacked, and I feel them run past me as I take the abuse. I don’t know how it happened, but I know she tricked me. She played me like the violin I could never master, and now I’m going to die because of it.

  “Such a good boy,” she coos, her face over mine, batting away the basket that’s been hitting me non-stop since this all started.

  I hear yelling and clanging, not sure what’s going on, or if I really want to know. “Why? How?”

  “We need to eat, and only those truly good can get food is this city.”

  “You’re not good.” It’s a statement and not a question, because I have no doubt how evil she is.

  “I’m a Siren, a queen of the sea. Now that nothing and everything is the sea, I cannot live like I once did, taking men underwater with me. My sisters and I had to adapt because we need to eat, to feed, to live.”

  “You did something to me.”

  She laughs, but none of this is funny. “I made you believe you could live with me. It was so very easy with you.”

  “Why are the things in here coming for me now?” I ask, as she once again uses the toaster in her hand to fight off the fry basket.

  “You took their food, and then you dropped it on the floor, wasting it. They do not take kindly to waste, as they saw too much of it when there was nothing they could do to stop it. Now they can punish those who waste, and they do so freely. This world has gone crazy. The power has shifted, and if you can’t adapt, you die.”

  “I tried… I tried to help you.”

  “You did help me. Can’t you see?”

  “No,” I tell her honestly.

  I can’t move my head, and both of my eyes are nearly swollen shut. I’ve been forcing them open so I can look at her. Look at this creature who is stealing my life.

  “I could tell you I’m sorry, but I am not. You men of this Earth took it all for granted, and now it is our turn to rise.”

  “Rise? There are not enough humans left for you to use and manipulate.”

  “Maybe not forever, but I will live longer than you, foolish one. Many men have died for the promise of a kiss from me, and some have died while I gave them what they wanted. Bending you to my will was far too easy.”

  “Believe me, if I could fight right now, you’d be dead.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “You gave me hope.”

  “And now I’m going to take it away.”

  The toaster in her hand comes down on me before I can take my next breath. One slot covers my nose, while the other smothers my mouth. I smell my flesh burning as it comes to life over me, slowing taking the life from me. I try to figure out if it will be the lack of oxygen that kills me, or the burning of my body from the outside in. I don’t even know which wins out as my skin and bones catch fire, and the last breath leaves my body.

  I knew better than to hope, and yet I let myself be tricked into believing. I had a chance to survive, but a pretty girl was literally the kiss of death for me. If I had a prayer left in me, I’d send up a plea that she doesn’t get them all, that one man on what’s left on this planet will outlive her, and watch her last breath leave her, just like she’s watching mine leave me.

  ORIGINAL SYNTH

  Brendan Deneen

  The warehouse is cavernous, and dark, and filled with boxes and dust.

  I pull the door closed behind me slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible, ironic considering I just smashed one of its window panels in. Not that you can really hear anything over the thunderstorm that feels like it’s been raging for days.

  When I reached in to unlock the door, I caught myself on a still-connected shard and now I’m bleeding pretty badly. Honestly, though, it’s the least of my problems today.

  I’m soaked. I’ve been sprinting through the rain for hours, blindly hoping to find a hiding place like this, breathlessly ecstatic for a moment’s rest.

  They’re coming for me.

  He's coming for me.

  I struggle for a moment and then manage to tear a strip off the bottom of my sopping wet T-shirt, and wind the wet material around the wound, the blood instantly staining the material pink, then a full red. My hand is throbbing but the makeshift bandage seems t
o have slowed the bleeding down a little bit.

  As I struggle to catch my breath, I walk around the warehouse, making sure it’s as abandoned as it looks. Other than copious amounts of mice pellets, I don’t see any evidence that anyone’s been here for a long time.

  Which is no surprise, considering what’s been happening with the economy since the current administration took over nine years ago.

  It’s hard to believe how quickly time has gone by since that election. That insane fucking election. A nightmare collection of horrible, corrupt candidates. Accusations of voter fraud. Interference from foreign powers.

  I didn’t vote for anyone. I thought they all sucked. They were all as bad as each other.

  I was a fucking idiot.

  There’s a pile of half-rotted, broken-down cardboard boxes in a corner and I collapse into them, feeling the water stream off me with the impact. I wipe my face with trembling fingers and lean my head back against the wall, closing my eyes for the first time in as long as I can remember. When’s the last time I slept?

  Even through my closed eyelids, I can see a flash of lightning. Thunder rumbles seconds later.

  An image of Casey suddenly appears in my mind and the memory of her hurts so much that I immediately open my eyes in the hope of making her disappear. It works, but the pain in my gut at seeing her again, even just an imaginary version, remains.

  We fought a lot in those first couple years after the election. She was enraged by the new administration’s actions, by what she perceived as decisions motivated by hatred and fear and greed and ignorance.

  I told her she was being irrational. I told her we should give the new administration a chance.

  We drifted apart as time passed. As the wall was built. As we went to war on multiple fronts, on top of the nonsensical wars we were already fighting. As we teamed up with questionable allies.

  I wasn’t an active supporter of everything that was happening but a lot of what the administration said made sense to me. Our country had to come first. There were just too many threats out there. And so many problems here on the home front that we had ignored for too long. The administration’s actions may have been a bit of an overreach but they didn’t seem like an overreaction.

  Casey didn’t agree.

  After the day suitcase nukes went off in fifteen major U.S. cities and the resulting collapse of the economy and the installation of martial law, I wasn’t entirely surprised when Casey told me she was leaving. “Escaping” is the word she used. I was heartbroken, but not surprised. She had met someone else, someone who was as extreme in his beliefs and fears as she was in hers. The last I heard, they had fled to Canada and then Europe. I think. The administration pretty much took the internet offline right after they dissolved elections and presidential term limits, so it was next to impossible to keep track of her.

  I was insanely depressed when she left. I guess I should have tried harder to listen to her concerns. I was just so caught up in my job, in keeping my job. Not an easy thing to do when a country is falling apart around you.

  When the administration announced mandatory DNA submission to keep us safer, I was still reeling from the loss of Casey and I got swept up in the president’s rhetoric. I was probably a little drunk, or a lot drunk, when he made his big speech, flanked by his private security officers, and I was one of the first people to sign up. Hell, maybe the first.

  After I got home from the government’s local medical “pop-up” center, I drank myself blind for about a year.

  I lost my job at some point during that time, though I’m not exactly sure when. And I didn’t get fired just because I was drunk every waking minute. Although that probably didn’t help. Everyone I knew lost their jobs. Everyone got more and more scared. Some of that fear turned to anger. People started speaking out against the administration, and then they started vanishing. As time went on, there were fewer and fewer people in houses, on the streets. More people spoke out. More people vanished. Cities fell into disrepair. Oil prices went through the roof. Lots of people fled to the suburbs, then rural areas, hoping they could find food. For some reason, I stayed put in the city. I kind of liked having it mostly to myself. There was something soothing about all of the burned-out buildings. Weird, I know.

  There were whispered reports of a rapidly-dwindling population as more and more civilians spoke out against an administration that was clearly out of control. And yet totally in control. There was talk that our country was growing weaker and weaker on the world stage as a result, that one of our new “allies” was planning on invading once our population levels reached a certain point. After all, who would fight back? We were all just trying to figure out how to get food onto the table. What little food even existed anymore.

  By the time I sobered up, mostly because I had run out of money and had lost so much weight, I did my best to take stock of myself and finally realized how wrong I had been. I took a look around. I started reading through the paperwork Casey had left behind, hidden under our… under my bed. I started talking to the few people who had remained in the city. Started attending secret meetings.

  Things were a hell of a lot worse than I realized, than they appeared. And they appeared pretty fucking bad.

  One of the speakers at a meeting was a scientist. A doctor of genetic something-something. He had worked for the administration but escaped after he realized what they were really doing. He had a long, nasty scar on his face that a newly-grown beard only partially covered. I had trouble understanding what he was saying. He definitely didn’t dumb his presentation down for the audience. Most of us kept catching each other’s eyes, as if to say “Do you get what the hell this guy is trying to say?”

  But enough of the message came through: The administration wasn’t using our DNA to keep us safe. They were manipulating it, splicing it, creating people. Creating an army. The scientist told us that the administration was calling them Synths.

  Apparently it wasn’t as simple as just cloning one guy a thousand times. After the first Synth, the next version of the same guy saw some kind of “degradation,” to use the word the scientist used. And apparently the administration didn’t want Synths based on them. So, they implemented that mandatory DNA testing as a way to get what they needed. They could repopulate the country with the same exact people who were still here. Kind of. The scientist said they had used the first batch of Synths to replenish the military, which did made some kind of sick sense.

  As everyone in the audience started to grasp what was being said, a terrified silence descended on the room. We had all handed over our DNA. It was mandatory, no way around it. People who said “No” were found and taken away, even if they tried to escape. And the scientist said that the administration had figured out a way to accelerate the process, that there were probably versions of all of us out there already…

  I’m not sure if I heard the door crashing in first or saw the bullet hole explode in the scientist’s chest. I do remember how surprised he looked. I think he even said, “Oh.”

  In the chaos that followed, it was hard to tell how many soldiers had crashed the meeting, shooting anyone who resisted. I was one of the only lucky ones. I hadn’t sat near the sole window on purpose, but my dumb luck paid off. I threw it open as violence erupted behind me and stupidly glanced back as I squeezed my way out. I think I was curious if the people who had just crashed the meeting were Synths.

  There was one non-soldier among them, a very calm-looking guy in a business suit. He had his phone held high and appeared to be recording the whole thing. He swung the camera in my direction just as I looked at him.

  I landed on the ground, cursing at myself for rubber-necking. I could have just kept focused on my escape but I’d been curious about what was happening, was enticed to see the progression of violence. And now I was probably in the administration’s database. Probably? Shit. Definitely.

  As soon as I got home, I grabbed a few essentials and started moving from abandoned apartment
to abandoned apartment. I was hoping to get out of the city, knew some people who had told me to visit them out in the sticks if I ever escaped, but it became pretty clear to me that someone was on my trail, no matter how well I hid myself. Someone who seemed to know my mind as well as I did. It didn’t take me long to figure out who it was.

  ***

  My head jerks up suddenly, slamming painfully against the wall behind me. I must have dozed off. I’m still damp but nowhere near as wet as I was when I first stumbled into this warehouse. My hand still hurts. A lot.

  Was that a sound that woke me? Or just my imagination? Hoping it was just a dream. God, I’m starving. Maybe there’s a—

  “Jonathan.”

  The voice reaches me from the shadows and I feel an insane shudder wash over my body, a coldness more bracing than any winter. Goosebumps erupt across my skin as I stand up, relying on the wall to make even this simple movement possible.

  When he steps into what little light there is, I don’t know which is more shocking: how much he looks like me or how much he sounds like me. But it’s a younger me. The me that first met Casey. The me that thought life was heading in a certain direction.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” I manage to say.

  “You know who I am,” he says. “And I just want to talk. I’m excited to meet you. Very excited.”

  I hold my hands up as he steps closer. “Stay back!” I’m trying to sound threatening but my voice cracks. His smile is pitying and I hate him for it. Casey often complained about that exact same condescending smile, and now I finally know what she’d been talking about.

  He holds his hands up too, and steps closer. The mirror image is too much to handle, so I drop my arms back down.

  “I just want to talk,” he repeats. “I think I’m the first Synth to meet an Original. I have so many questions I want to ask you.” He stops moving when he’s a few feet away from me and he lowers his arms. He pushes his wet hair out of his eyes, a gesture I used to make back when I had longer hair. Back when it wasn’t thin and graying. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”