The Receiver

1 - R E AP

The bathroom tub blooms with flowers. The bright red poppies, like giant drops of blood, grow up out of the dirt. Beautiful but useless. Pushing the soft petals aside, I find a pod fat with seeds and pluck it out of the dirt then turn it upside down and tap the bulb against the inside of a recycled can of beans, collecting the tiny black seeds. From the medicine cabinet I use a pinecone, pigeon feathers, and a match to start a small fire in the sink. Mixing the seeds with a little rainwater I set them over the flames. While the opium tea boils, I get dressed.

From my closet I tug Dad's old boilersuit off the rack, step inside and zip myself up. After ten thousand washes and dries out on the line it's closer to terracotta than the brown it once was. And still smeared with bot blood. The Hesler Robotics patch on the left breast pocket is peeling up at the edges. I trace the circle with my fingertip—the stitched image of two shaking hands, one human and one robotic—and push the cuffed sleeves up to my elbows, pulling the platinum chain out from underneath the suit. Hanging at the end is Dad's wedding band, a metal sprocket left over from the assembly of his first droid. I swipe a bandana from a hook by the door, fold it into a triangle, and tie it around my neck.

When I check on the tea, it's ready. The thick sludge is black and bitter, but the closest I can get to bottled happiness so I don't care that it's also disgusting. I wait for it to cool, chug it fast, then go to the kitchen for a spoonful of maple syrup as a chaser. I grab my thigh pack from the hook by the front door, latch it on, and ease the door open just enough to poke my head out. I glance down the narrow hall. Empty. Creeping out, I pull the fabric up over my nose and tiptoe toward the back stairwell. Halfway there, I round the corner and freeze. At the opposite end of the hall, a bleached blonde dreadlocked woman stops too. Tarum. We lock eyes.

"Shit," I hiss.

Even from this far away, my eyes zero in on the puckered scar on her left cheek where the tip of a knife once carved four letters into her skin. They spell a word: RIOT. The rag with the jaw of a skeleton painted on it she usually wears is nowhere to be seen, exposing her face. Midway between us is a stairwell, the metal door draped with a haz curtain, the pixels shimmering every time the hologram glitches. My eyes flick back to her face and her eyes scream murder. Tarum takes a step in my direction and my pulse quickens. My hands shaking with a shot of adrenaline I break into a sprint, heading straight toward her, then bank right, barreling through the DANGER: HAZARDOUS AREA sign. I take the stairs two at a time and reach the first landing as she bursts through the door, vaulting over the metal railing onto the stairs below as a knife whizzes by my head.

Yellow tape shouting CAUTION: BIOHAZARD belts the door to the first floor stairwell entrance, but I tear through it into the lobby anyway. The door swings wide and I stumble across the leaf-strewn ground, losing my balance. Scrambling to my feet I whirl around and have my hands on the door just as Tarum reaches the threshold.

"No mask," I remind her.

My words stop her like magic. I give the door a shove and it swings into its frame. She pounds her palms against the metal, but doesn't come in after me.

"You're gonna pay me one way or another, you little sewer rat!" she yells through the small glass window in the door.

Though I know she's not coming through without protection, I still back away slowly.

"If I don't get to your sister first," she adds, stabbing the point of her knife into the glass. "The Brides of Riot take care of their own. You best watch your back."

Reluctantly, she starts her climb back up the stairs.

The lobby is a rainforest infected with vegetation both alive and dead. Patches of sunlight coming in through the windows illuminates the coarse vines that clot the floor, braided into thick knots. Spores of fuzzy mold cover the walls and ceiling like a billion black holes in deep space, interrupted by mushrooms growing out of the walls. The unnaturally green glow makes me feel like I'm standing at the bottom of a pond whose surface is laced with algae. Then the stench hits me, seeping through my mask. As my stinging eyes adjust to the darkness I see trapped animals, their bodies turned inside out. Four cats. A dog. Maybe a possum or some other unfortunate critter. It's hard to tell from the extent of the decay, all the pearly white carbon of their bones turned black. The worst is the carcass of the dog, probably a stray who wandered in to have her pups. She's been here long enough for the earth to start consuming her. I can tell by the roots growing through flesh and fur, green shoots twining themselves around the bones of her ribcage. I turn away, willing myself not to throw up, and find the exit.