Grey Death

Here's the next draft. Reviews are always welcome, of course, but they'll be most helpful in either the next couple days or after a month or so. (Deadlines for different levels of competiton.)

A girl you’ll never meet walked slowly, so slowly through a passageway in a building you’ll never see. The building was huge, built mostly of metal and grey plastic; the girl was four feet tall and had dark brown hair, a precious two inches of it, and her complexion closely matched the color of the grey walls.

            Exhausted, the girl sat down. She was dressed in a heavy grey jumpsuit with a zipper that ran up the front and down her left arm. The zipper pull was bound to a bronze band round her wrist by a peculiar seal. While she caught her breath, the girl’s grey eyes roved about the passage, falling at last upon the seal:

                        Mirkima::Theta

                        7-10-3

                        Clone

            It was nothing new to her. The last five letters were common to the seals of everyone she had ever met—Mirkima had never seen the Human, and never wanted to.

            Mirkima flicked the seal over to read the reverse side—she had nothing better to do.

                        All Clones Shall Catch Grey Death

                        All Clones Shall Be Harvested

                        Every Clone Will Serve The Human

                        No Clone Will Leave The City

            Not that Mirkima had ever agreed to it. Still, the choice was not an especially free one, and serving the Human did have its perks—the antidote, to start with. Grey Death had no cure, save an antidote provided by the Human.

            It was this antidote that Mirkima sought now. She hadn’t really caught her breath, but it was past time to move on—she wouldn’t be able to walk in eight hours or so. A quiet groan seeped from the little Clone’s lips as she leaned forward, pushed against the floor, and stood to her feet. Mirkima continued on her way, along well-known hallways toward the Grey Ward, where she had gone many times for antidotes to cases of Grey Death milder than the one she now suffered from.

            The swirling miasma of the Outside was familiar and favorite to her. There was no light Outside, but that didn’t matter—no Clone cared for light particularly. It was the air that they were after, the screaming pleasure of the air Outside. The pleasure might have been the thickly flowing Grey Death, or perhaps it was something else—the pleasure might have been a taste of freedom from the Human.

            Mirkima lived for that pleasure. No amount of it ever satisfied her. She spent less time in good health within the city than Outside, though she spent the most time in the Grey Ward. She wasted more time everywhere now, for her jumpsuit had grown heavy; the same mystery that made the Outside coveted by the Clones seemed to weigh their jumpsuits down.

            Mirkima drew near the Grey Ward, one step after another. The door receded of its own power when she came within a meter of it, and stood there awkwardly, waiting for her to pass.

            The walls and floor of the Grey Ward were plated with sterilized aluminum, and the robots that functioned inside were plated with the same material.

            Mirkima presented her seal to one of the robots—no explanation was needed; the wretched shade of her skin was telling enough.

            “Mirkima—Theta—seven-ten-three—Clone,” the robot murmured. “You have reached the antidote limit calculated for your blood level. It is time for you to be Harvested.”

            This shadow every clone knew would one day catch them. Mirkima’s life was finished—all that was left was a last hour of suffering, when every drop of blood in her small body would be extracted, and transformed into antidote, to replace the antidote given her.

            A beep sounded to her left as a panel slid upward and an eyeless robot rolled out to her. It could only have been a Harvester. A frightening array of tools was mounted into its four arms. Mirkima stiffened as it lifted her onto a small platform between its treads and rolled away.

            The Harvester carried her down a hall, and then turned abruptly into a dimly lit room. A set of fixed arms stretched over an aluminum table, casting shadows that were like the legs of a spider. With mechanical precision, the Clone was deposited on the table. Force greater and deeper than the lifeless steel gripped her—a lifetime spent in the shadow of the inescapable.

A soft noise burst onto the mechanical ambiance. Mirkima shot a glance at its source—if there was any chance, this was it. It was like the footstep of a Clone, yet he was more than Clone. His stride was regal, his stature, majestic. Golden hair fell down to his broad shoulders. The enigma of his powerful eyes, blazing gold irises set in pure white—captured the Clone’s gaze. He could only have been the Human.

            “Stop.” he said, with the authority of a lion. “I’ll take her place.”

            The robots paused, then released Mirkima. The Human lifted her off the table, and set her on the floor.

            “Why?” Mirkima asked. “All of the Clones hate you. Why would you waste your life for my debt of blood?”

            “Why do you care about me?” she screamed.

            The human knelt to her eye-level. His words were sad, perhaps, but far from fearful. “Mirkima, you are my creation, my child,—and I love you desperately. Clone blood is thin. Your blood could be made into a few doses only, but my rich blood will suffice for all Clones, so that there will be no more Harvest. Long has it been time for the Harvest to be finished, and its end draws near at last.”

            At first, Mirkima tried to fight the tears that sprang to her eyes.

            He grasped the seal on her jumpsuit, and with the strength of a Human, he broke it.

            “You won’t need that anymore, for it will only slow you down, reminding you of your past.”

            Slowly, surely, he stood. The Human lay down on the table. As the restraints tightened around his stout wrists, he spoke again.

            “Tell the other Clones. I’ll see you again soon, Mirkima, beloved.”

            The final Harvest commenced. Soulless Harvesters pierced the Human with complex instruments of something not unlike torture. Mirkima fled as the Human screamed in agony.

            None of the doors were locked, and no one stopped her. When she could no longer hear the Human’s suffering, she collapsed, at last, in exhaustion, and cried herself to sleep.

            Mirkima awakened, opened her eyes, and breathed in. The pale color of her skin had returned, and her breath came easily; she could feel the place the robot had pricked to administer the antidote.

            “My creation, my child,— I love you desperately,” Mirkima repeated. She sighed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “You won’t need that anymore, for it will only slow you down, reminding you of your past.”

            Mirkima’s eyes returned to the broken seal, and she unzipped the ugly, weighty grey jumpsuit. It fell away, revealing clothes that were white, pure white, a purity she had never known before, except for the Human‘s eyes. At last, Mirkima could stand, and move, and breathe freely, for the Grey Death was finished.

            Real life had begun.