ISSUE #13 | Full Story, "Recesses of Uriel"

***AS SEEN IN*** **PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #13**
**WRITTEN BY A. Katherine Black**
*Illustrations by* *Maura McGonagle*

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The silker sat alone in the middle of bridge twelve, a suspension she and Seventy-Six had spun years ago, a bridge that only moments ago had supported a heavy flow of handlers, headed to Uriel operations to receive their assignments for this cycle. A finger twirled one end of her braided silk belt, a souvenir from a recent bridge job. Her two legs dangled over each side of the bridge, toes dancing against the depths. Wires strung above the bridge emitted a thin UV light that spilled over the silker before vanishing into the darkness beneath her feet. She watched the openings of the caves and tunnels dug into the wall of Uriel cavern, as genmods emerged from their pens, without her. Without Seventy-Six.

She’d rushed to the assignment room at the start of this cycle, pushing through the crowd, her meager human limbs twitching. Hoping she and Seventy-Six would be assigned to dark zone exploration again. She’d thought about taking another snack break during their exploration. Seventy-Six deserved it. No one had to know.

Beyond the entrance ledge of packed earth, inside the main cave, the boss had stood on her stool as always, thinly illuminated by grublights, tablet in hand. Her voice echoed against the slick stone walls. Orders were issued. Cleaners wordlessly noted their assignments and peeled away toward the fish pens. Blockers went next, filing out to merge with their mites and begin their tasks. Carriers left for the beet pens, flyers for their bats.

Silk assignments always came last. The other silkers received their duties, one by one, and slipped away to merge with their racs, until she stood alone. The boss left the stool, came to meet her on the other side of the room.

“Bad slip,” she’d said, eyes on the tablet. “First diagnostic on Seventy-Six was inconclusive. Keeper’s re-checking systems. If equipment passes, means the rac’s gone bad. Come back next cycle. Same rac or new rac, work’ll be work.”

That was it.

The boss walked off toward control, leaving the silker without her rac. Without Seventy-Six, the same rac she’d been handling for year upon year upon year. The assignment room was large enough for a rac to make a breezy jump on its eight legs from one end to the other, but it had felt small just then, holding only one human.

The silker had never left operations on only two legs, at the start of a work cycle. Seventy-Six remained in its pen, while she sat alone on a bridge of their making. With dull, insufficient eyes, she watched the other genmods as they poured out of their pens.

Every one of the creatures was larger than two humans, at least. Beets were as big as four. Red lights spread across the shadowed expanse, blinking on the necks of every genmod, signaling an active implant. The lone silker’s neck ached for the weight of a helmet like those the handlers wore back in operations, as their genmods carried their minds out across the cavern for work—work feeble humans could never achieve on their own.

Fish, scaled legs and sucker limbs, slid across the cavern wall toward population center, to feed on unwanted moss and fungi in the habitats while humans worked elsewhere. Mites, their pincers snapping echoes across the vastness, split into two groups, some to fill cracks in the older habitat huts with regurgitated earth, others to shape bricks and stack them to dry near the lava tubes. Beets, their armored bodies colored in various shades of earth, trudged downward toward the lava tubes, to gather dried brick eady for delivery to the next construction zone. Bats dove and darted around stalactites just below the cavern ceiling, their black bodies only shadows against the faint sparkle of embedded crystals. Some glided in the direction of population center, others to the farthest reaches of the cavern, ready to receive and deliver messages of the cycle.

The racs were last to emerge. Always last, just in case an implant went bad and one of them decided to make a morsel of another genmod.

They spread out across the cavern walls and ceiling, abdomens and spinnerets bobbing as they disappeared in the near-black that blanketed everything outside population zone. Watching from her pathetic human body, she could almost feel the power of eight rac legs, the slight breeze of passing mods sending ripples across her rac’s hairs, the deep black of the cavern transformed through rac eyes into rich greens and purples. Without her rac, the silker squinted from the bridge with blind humanity into the void, the beautiful colors of the dark taken from her.

Just last cycle she’d been with Seventy-Six, as usual. Moving beyond the weak grublights at population edge, they’d ventured into a far corner of the cavern in search of new anchor points. Their feet gripped damp walls as they searched the colorful darkness for smooth solid spots that might hold suspension silks for upcoming expansions.

The air tasted of wet and sulfur. They tapped the walls, feeling for vibrations, until they hit a hollow sound, indicating a cave or tunnel, drawing them in to investigate. The silker pushed her rac quickly toward the discovery, and they turned in.

A human might have stood upright in the tunnel. The silker could have, if she’d been there, instead of lying in a chair back in the merge-room, next to Seventy-Six’s empty pen. But it was just the right size for the rac, who moved forward in spiral fashion, avoiding juts, unnecessarily breaking a few stalactites and stalagmites along the way.

For many rac lengths, the wall was cool to the touch. The heat came suddenly. Through rac eyes, the silker could see the wall glowing in a way that meant lava. And a bonus from the boss.

Relinquishing control slightly to Seventy-Six, the silker moved her fingers in her merge chair and tapped the com. She told the boss about the lava tube, not asking at the size of her bonus—that depended on econ factors the silker didn’t care to understand. Any bump was good. Could garner a bigger hut, or at the smallest an extra bar visit or two.

Returning her mind to the rac after a near compliment from the boss, the silker found Seventy-Six tearing down the tunnel, away from the direction of Uriel Cavern, in pursuit of a tantalizing pattering of a thousand feet. Some sort of pede. Feeling as generous as the boss, the silker slipped back from Seventy-Six and let it dive into the hunt. She’d never been there for a meal. Forbidden, maybe, but she’d been a handler longer than not.

The kill was quick. A pede the size of the rac’s leg was no match. Rac fangs pierced the creature’s outer layer, as Seventy-Six began its meal. Subtle colors refracted through the pede’s translucent body as it wriggled its final fight, all thousand legs kicking.

Pleasure hit the silker like a torrent as her rac sucked in luscious protein, wet and rich. Satisfaction erupted like nothing else. She tingled from head to toe. The rac leaned closer into its kill, enveloping it with front legs, and the silker felt herself slip back into the human body. Images flickered. Urges. Wanting. Needing. Running.

A voice broke into the com next to the silker’s human head.

“Connection with Seventy-Six lost. What’s going on out there?”

The silker just got a pay bump a few breaths ago. Bad slip to ruin the celebration with details.

“Dunno. Nothing. Lost contact.” Two arms and two legs limp against the merge chair.

“Drones bound for last signal locale. Hold for re-connect.”

She lay in her chair, merge helmet snapped onto her implant, waiting for input. UV light fell from a seam in the ceiling, chasing her eyes to a corner of the room before she succumbed and closed them, recalling the rush of that kill.

Less than a quarter cycle later, she guided Seventy-Six back to its pen. After drones found the new tunnel and re-connected the silker with her rac, she’d been ordered to bring it back for diagnostics. They could have crawled back along the wall, but, still feeling the rush of the kill, the silker and her rac made several leaps through the wide open space of the cavern, savoring the expanse below their eight legs, before nearing population center and operations.

Back in the pen, the silker looked through rac eyes at her human body on the other side of the window, reclined in the merge chair, revoltingly soft. She slipped out of the rac and into that body, unsnapped her helmet and sat, looking at the rac look back at her.

“Silker, report to med room for implant impedance check,” said the com.

She headed for the door, opened it, and closed it, still in the room. The UV light turned off, tricked, leaving only the weak glow of a small grublight hanging on the wall. The rac shifted to face the silker by the door. Dim light reflected off every one of its eyes.

A hatch opened on the other end of the pen, and in dropped a smaller spider. Not a complex genmod like the racs, only a simple mod, for larger size, about half that of a human. Livestock. Seventy-six turned immediately.

The chase was short, up and around the side of the pen, ending with a cracking sound the silker could hear through glass. She watched the rac devour yet another meal, breathing in the moist earth on her side of the window, remembering the taste of that earlier kill. She swallowed.

“Silker, you’re wanted in med room.”

***

A cycle later, the silker was alone, without her rac. Sitting on a bridge they built together, her insides awash with the thrill of the hunt, and tense with understanding of Seventy-Six’s fate. A fate that loomed not because of the rac’s actions, but because of the silker’s choice, because the silker let Seventy-Six roam as a free rac, if for only a few breaths. The silker’s insides calmed as she stood and headed toward population edge, to wait for the next cycle, when the keeper would be off-duty.

***

The keeper was always in the same cheap bar where most keepers and handlers spent their pay. Walking across suspension bridge one-oh-eight, the silker ran her fingers along the interwoven threads of the bridge’s handle, feeling the strength of rac silk, fingers dancing over every intricate knot tied by Seventy-Six, under the silker’s direction.

She paused in a dark section of the bridge, just outside the flood of the bar’s UV lights. Closing her eyes and gripping the bridge’s threads, she felt the chaotic vibrations pouring out from the bar. People moving around each other, against each other, away from each other. She wanted to settle into that moment, standing on silk, nestled in darkness. But she had to move.

UV lights hung in disarray inside the bar, casting odd shadows. Moss grew thick on the walls and the edges of tables. Keeping this place clean was not a priority. The keeper was in a back corner, sitting in front of two overturned mugs, a third in hand.

The silker went to the bar, entered her name and order on the console and waited for someone to slap her drinks on the counter. She drained the first mug, savoring the burn of bitter moss spirit creeping down her gullet, before grabbing the second and weaving through the crowd toward the keeper.

“Seat open?”

The keeper looked up from his drink and paused, lingering on the silker’s face before nodding toward a stool across the table. This wasn’t the first time they’d sat together.

The silker took the seat next to him instead. They sipped their drinks in silence, letting the noise from the operations crowd fill the space between them. Their mugs were half drained when the keeper spoke.

“Seems Seventy-Six’ll be scrapped.” He took a sip, not looking at the silker who’d merged with Seventy-Six for over a decade. “Rough slot.”

The silker’s movements slowed. Her back curled. Her head throbbed with the pulse of bodies moving around the bar. Any of them would be easily snapped, easily drained by Seventy-Six. Her molten heart erupted, spreading, shifting hot beneath her skin.

The keeper tilted his head to drain the last of the moss spirit from his mug. His neck shone bare, soft. Setting down his overturned mug next to the others, he pushed back his stool. The silker reached out. Brushed the skin on the back of the keeper’s arm. Muscle shuddered beneath the silker’s human fingers. Her hand traveled, lingering on the center of the keeper’s back before crawling up to the neck, and curving around to run along the collar bone. Blood pulsed under the silker’s touch.

The keeper knew the silker’s touch, or thought he did. “My hut isn’t far,” he said.

She slid her own mug, spirit still inside, up against the others. “I know a better place.”

They crossed the bridge in silence, hands reaching out, exploring curves beneath clothing, until they arrived at the entrance of an unfinished cave, slotted for development in the months ahead.

They faced each other under the glow of the last grublight, inhaling scents of fungus and earth, sweat and spirit. The silker loosened her belt under the keeper’s gaze, then grabbed his arm to draw him deeper into darkness. When only the faintest outline of the keeper was visible, the silker advanced, pushing him against the damp wall of unpacked earth.

She kissed his neck, raked her teeth against vulnerable skin, as she untied the front of his shirt. The keeper’s ragged breath rippled across the soft hairs on her check. She flipped him, pressing his chest against raw earth. Slipping his shirt over his shoulders, her mouth worked down his spine as she gathered his arms, hands trapped in his sleeves. The keeper moaned as her mouth lingered at the small of his back, as her fingers tied the spider silk belt around his wrists.

Deft as any silker in the cavern, even without a rac’s limbs at her disposal, she swiftly wrapped it next around his ankles. She stood, and with one strong tug, the keeper’s feet lifted from the ground to join with his wrists. He fell with a grunt.

***

It was a slow move across the construction section of the cavern, now shut down for sleepcycle and only sparsely lit with grubs. The silker cursed her weak, soft body as she slowly dragged the keeper across loose earth, his weight resisting forward motion.

He said nothing, stifled his grunts. A good keeper knew when the hunt was over.

Sticking to the shadows as much as possible, save for a few tense moments crossing suspension bridges eight and sixty-two, the silker arrived at the back entrance, where keepers accessed the genmod pens.

She loosened the binding on the keeper’s wrists and heaved him up and sideways. He groaned as she raised one of his hands in what must have been a painful angle, high enough to reach the scanner. A red warning light appeared. No access.

She pulled the keeper’s arms higher behind his back, bringing the other hand toward the scanner. He resisted, leaned his head away from the door, until an odd pop echoed against the empty air, and he yelled. His resistance gave way. His shoulder jutted out strangely under his skin. She pressed the other hand against the scanner. A click sounded.

She pushed the door open and dragged the keeper through.

Cursing her human muscles, the silker bent and grabbed the keeper’s good arm to drag him further in. Faint lighting in the tunnels forced her to squint at labels as she passed pen after pen, interspersed with control modules. Genmods rippled and twitched behind doors. Swooping flutters from the bat pens overhead, abrasive rubbing from the mite pens underfoot, heavy sounds of scaled bodies sliding against packed dirt in the fish pens on either side, until, finally, they reached the rac section.

The keeper moaned, shifted against the silker’s pull. She walked faster, thighs burning. She needed her rac. She dropped the keeper and grabbed a grubbag from the wall. Holding the dim light up to door after door, she found Seventy-Six. A slash chalked across its number, with writing underneath. Scrap.

She found the nearest console and began tapping. Training procedures… short-range mergecoms… And there it was. A green light blinked against a map of the docking bay and pens. Just a few doors away, shelves that held training equipment.

Movement sounded behind Seventy-Six’s door. She almost spoke to her rac. Almost there, she would have said. But she’d never spoken to Seventy-Six out loud. Something wrong about starting that now.

Using the grubbag, she reached the shelves within minutes and tore through sacks until she found what she recognized from her old training days. Dumping the grubs from the bag, she filled it with the equipment they’d need.

Making her way back to her rac, she saw the keeper was gone. Drag marks on the dirt told he went deeper in, toward the docking bay. No time to bother.

The silker worked the console again, first with a quick impedance check on Seventy-Six’s implant. Connection still good. Then a check on the receiver. Also good.

Disable long-range reception. Done.

Activating one of the short-range transmitters she’d just found, the silker slipped it over her head. It slid onto her own implant connections and snapped in place. A deep buzz rang in her head, irritating. Her right eyelid to twitched. No connection.

She stepped to Seventy-Six’s door, leaning her entire body against it. Her senses expanded. She saw the beautiful dark of the pen, full spectrum of blues and greens and grays. She felt her human heart beating on the other side of the doorway. Her rac placed a leg against the door, and the thump came through, loud and full.

Senses slipped again, and she was back to her small, thin body, dulled, darkness closing in. She’d have to get closer to make the connection.

The silker stepped back, tying a bag of extra equipment to her belt. Her first-year instructor’s yells came back to her, from all those years ago. “No one ever opens a door to an uncontrolled mod! You got that?” And the class always yelled back, “Sir, yes, sir!” And the silker opened the door.

A sweet, potent stench of blood and iron spilled out of the pen. Darkness remained. Several large round eyes of varying sizes reflected dim grublight from the middle of the pen. They stood, the two, unmoving. She wondered if it remembered her from the other side of the window. She remembered the joy it felt, they felt, at capturing the pede in the dark zone.

She took a step forward. The rac stepped forward as well. It would be a tight fit through the door meant for humans, but she knew Seventy-Six could do it. Slowly moving a hand to her helmet, she tapped the search button again.

She stumbled as her senses fell in and out. The world flipped, from clear and crisp to dull and soft, as her mind jumped between her human self and her rac. On unsteady legs, she stepped forward until she was in the doorway. Either Seventy-Six was going to eat her and escape, or it was going to merge. And escape.

Her senses fell back into the rac. For a split second, she saw her human body, and something rising behind it. Two hands. A rock. She fell back into that body, her movements stunted, disoriented from the back and forth.

Before she could react, Seventy-Six jumped toward her. One of its front legs grabbed and gripped her torso, burning where the millions of tiny hairs sunk through her clothing and into her skin. Still in forward motion, it threw her to the side and landed on top of the keeper. His scream pierced the empty halls and quickly drowned to a gurgle. A loud crunch, and the keeper became another meal for rac number seventy-six.

The silker lay on the floor of the pen, listening to the crack and slurp for a few seconds before she stood, carefully, and approached the back of the rac. Their equipment made connection. She flew into its senses, seeing the broken body in front of their pincers, seeing the human standing at the rac’s side, torn clothing, scraped face, vacant eyes.

The silker pulled herself back slightly into the human mind, just enough to propel her weak, soft legs onto the wide rounded body of the rac, sitting in the nook between the thorax and the abdomen. Rough hairs pierced her skin. She lay just below the back eyes and reached her arms out, bracing herself against Seventy-Six’s body. Sinking back into the rac’s senses, they finished their meal, drinking the sweet rich syrup of the former keeper.

Pulling silk from their spinneret and fluffing it against their back legs, they secured the human body against the rac. Stepping over the empty corpse of the keeper, they crawled through the tunnel, past the other pens, until they emerged into the cavern. They headed away from the harsh lights of the human city, toward the dark zone.