Immortal

12. Survivors

There was a different facility a good distance away where we were spared a day or two of difficult work hunched over our screens. It was in the B district of our sector, it required special clearance just like anywhere else. The time to do visit came once or twice in a completed work cycle. In a way going there was kind of like a vacation. The building I was walking to, looked similar to a prison and psych-ward mixed into one building. It was lined with heated fences and electrical wiring. There were chain link fences with signs posted all over the perimeter. The security around the area was maintained at all times. In some ways, depending on how you looked at it, the area from the inside it looked like a farm. The fences here weren't made to keep us out. They were designed to keep its inhabitants in. The worst these fences would do for me  if I dared myself to climb; was give me a few second or third degree burns. Our bodies though would eventually regenerate from in two or three days.

This facility was a unit used to house successful art forms. Most of the ones that made it past the laboratory phase where transferred here. Based on laws there was also a staff that was in place that lived on the grounds. Those that worked here never left the grounds (that I was aware of). No one who worked here ever complained of the work either. It was actually better than most other limited jobs available in our sector. To get a job at a site like this really though took a hefty price that even fewer ever talk about.

The main purpose of the Successful art forms where to be used as bounty hunters. Our leaders didn't exactly trust our kind to hunt those of us who escaped. Most of us wouldn't come back if offered freedom to leave. The loss of our lives being present here was worse than the loss of a Art form. There was rumors that our kind could leave this world. I didn't know how, or where one would go to get out. I knew that you needed the right connections to achieve it. The chance to really do so was in the top one precent. Meaning that getting an opportunity to leave this world behind was almost as impossible as was to die. Some of the other work loads they tackled where usually as maintenance work in areas that were worse then any of the work we did.

There were at times vague reports of vigilantes who would escape and never return. Usually those rumors were covered up pretty quickly and never openly talked about. Most of the ones who got out where from districts with the right tools to create the bridge to exit. So really, the art forms where made and trained at this facility to track, and bring back those who escaped. Once they graduated from whatever program was implemented here for them they were transferred then deployed. Usually the ones who were successful were rewarded. The being who was captured was then wiped of all memory completely. Based on punishment written into the laws of my sector (punishment varied by sector)  the defector would then have his eyes burned by liquid steel and their tongue removed. They would be left to wonder underground service tunnels in the dark, until their sentence ended but usually they never came back.

I didn't have much hope of being someone who would ever get out of this world. The thought had crossed my mind about the different possibilities I would encounter if I had the choice. Honestly though, I'd be overwhelmed by the idea of where I would go first. What I would do once I got there, and how I would lose the trail of the bounty hunters that came after me.

Inside this gated district, you would find art forms gardening or laying out appealing self made decorations in the outdoor areas. Although the facility was supplied with food they still had extra land to grow their own choice of crop. They were left un-disturbed most of the time but monitored by guards. It was kind of like stepping into a controlled paradise I couldn't understand. The facility we had visited this time around looked remodeled from the outside. It was painted with a yellowish tint, and had white accenting. It looked less like a holding facility and more like a hotel. Something about it still gave me an eerie feeling like I was walking into a building full of extractors.