Drowned

The hum of the u-vulbs was monotonous in the extreme. The light they threw around was wasteful and offended my ego as much as my retinas. They were everywhere here and their persistent existence was enough to make me pull my hat down over my eyes just to eat lunch. I could get away with it most days, as the Captain was usually too busy to bust me for a uniform infraction.

It was cold. Bone chilling cold that seeped into your… no wait. That wasn’t right. Mess was stuffy, the kind of humid you get from piling too many bodies eating too much protein into one linoleum lined room.

No one looked good in the white light of the vulbs. Candlelight at least, was forgiving to the horrendous acne of youth and could conceivably make even the most pock marked kid look less like fertilizer. Biolamps were my personal favorite. The blue glow of the bacteria was gentle on the eyes and gave everything a sort of magical halo. Stubbs had told us once that from above the surface, water appeared blue. As a kid I always imagined that the world from above would look like it was lit by a whole colony of bac-bugs, their little squirming bodies casting light and making everything shine. The older I got, the more ridiculous it seemed that anyone would think water had a color, let alone chose blue to describe it. Water was black. Water was clear inside the bubbles, but the void that pressed on us from every possible degree around the spheres was dark and colorless.

White was the color of money, so of course the Academy wanted to bathe everything in the garish life-giving light only they could afford in such quantities. I thought every bubble had at least a few u-vulbs in service. The fert-plant had a row of them at the docks, and a couple in the recreation rooms. Efficiency dictated the vulbs be put in the two places people spent the most time in, giving the body much needed ultraviolet rays for at least five hours a day. Apparently, there were bubbles that had run out of the vulbs some time ago. I thought every nest held each bubble in enough regard to keep them healthy, but coming to the Centrux had been a rude awakening. Despite the fact that a nest relied on every bubble to do the job they were designed to do, the Centrux Union prioritized only those they thought worthy. Which of course meant only the Lucks, and the Centrux Barracks got the lionshare of resources. It was the bubble that housed the union leaders, and the bubble that trained the force that kept the union in power.

There was shouting, muffled and warped like a fish eye lense getting too loud in some places but too distorted in others. They were shouting my name, calling me back. No. Wait. There was only one voice, dropping my name like a stone to anchor me back into the moment.

"Drow," A voice floated beneath the din of a few hundred soldiers stuffing nutri-paste down their gullets while catching up with their mates. Therau's pronunciation of my name had become something of a joke in the first few weeks of arriving. His bubble was further north than the fert-plant and had held on to some archaic accent that made it hilariously difficult for the surly teen to say certain words. Drowned was apparently one that was too crunchy for even Therau's accent to sand off the corners of. He'd instead chosen to butcher it completely and ended up with a word that he rhymed with "row". As these things tend to, the nickname stuck and even the Captain used the hobbled name, throwing it at me like a hogtied insult. Still, it was better than being called Popsicle- one of the more torturous names the other children had given me back at the plant.

"Drow, what did that paste ever do to you?" He asked heavily, his tone made every word feel like a crate stacked on cold concrete. I glanced down. Apparently while trying to force myself to stay awake over the hypnotic droning of the lights, my hand had been busy.

"Don't judge my art," I hissed through a sneer. Truthfully, I hadn't a clue what design I had scraped into the ash colored sustenance. It could have been a map of the fert-plant. It could have been an anatomically correct organ of some variety. Or it could be the errant spasms of a limb spent too long in the gunnery position. Therau snorted but didn't press. He never pressed when it came to the erratic things I would get up to when I wasn't completely paying attention. All the same, he knew better than to let me zone out too long in such a crowd. Especially today.

The vulbs were a mundane annoyance to focus on while we tunneled through our lunch break towards the next section of the day. I was not agitated by the flagrant show of excess the Union enjoyed throwing around. I was nervous that the day's rank-up might skip me over. Again.

I had risen through the ranks easily enough within the first year but that was before the Ranks had been forced to shift their focus. Normally, the military under the Union's control served as a sort of outlandish police brigade deployed to bubbles to maintain order and called in when some little remote section of the nest refused to work until a list of demands was met. Stubbs used to say that in the early years of the nests, the army had been converted from the surface military and had been about honor and serving the people. Stubbs' stories always went like that, though. Fairy tales of justice and peace.

But we were still about justice, right? Rounding up the rebels that would strike down all the Union had made for us. Our homes, our lives, would be sunk into the frigid arms of dead water. We couldn’t let them get into the water. But…. no… I didn’t know that yet, did I?

The Union had declared that the Saint of the Deep had been confirmed, only to be stolen away by a resistance group calling themselves the Depths. Who in their right mind would think giving themselves such a name would be a good idea. Everyone knew the Saint of the Deep was the savior that would bring us back to the surface. The fert-plant butchers had made the resistance seem like a band of unsung heros working to bring equality to every bubble. I'd thought the whole thing sounded like a load of foam, all for show and certainly not worth putting your hopes and dreams on. In any case, I had never taken the rebels to be religious let alone callous enough to steal away our one hope of getting out of the deep, frigid water.

Every rank-up since the kidnapping of the Saint had been useless lateral movements, reallocating officers to better stations that would facilitate a rumored operation soon to come. It was all very efficient, as everything in the nest tried to be. And like everything in the nest it was a giant parade of the wealthy puffing their chests to receive status they hadn't worked for. At the very least none of the tanned skinned well-offs had risen in rank either. I'm not sure I could have stayed cool if Kinnory had gotten to Staff Sargent before me. I had earned my crescents with blood, bruises and no small amount of bowing and scraping. I still didn't understand how Kinnory had made it as far when his boney arms couldn't hold a rifle without shaking from the weight, but I suspected that either his wallet or his knees were sore from the effort.

As soon as I could, I bolted straight to the auditorium to bounce about uselessly while waiting for mess to be over. Rank ups were always exciting days. Especially today. Wait… why today?

Memories were blending over the sound of water filling my ears. The crowded auditorium flashing in my vision with the fiery docks I’d been standing near. That memory, the day I’d been charged with rounding up the Depths to interrogate and find her. The Saint.

That day… it was so long ago now. But I could still smell the boot polish as the tidy little officer mounted the stage to announce the rank ups that would lead me to… to what?

‘Don’t let them submerge.’ The cryptic order was one that had seemed the most important. So when the boy had slipped off the edge of the dock, his frail body making barely any disturbance in the murky bay, I had thrown myself after him. To save him? I think maybe that was what I’d wanted to do.

Was I dying? I opened my eyes now, the green and brown shades of the unfiltered ocean water stung. I could make out the shape of the boats above, They were sinking faster than I’d thought, their undertow yanked me down like rope tying me to a fated death. Drowned. I was going to drown and finally live up to my name. The memories of the mess hall, and the rank-up that lead me here. I really was dying wasn’t I? I wondered if they would box me up, put my name on the ice chest and send me back to the fertilizer plant to be processed. Would Stubbs and the others cry when they had to feed my popsicle body through the blades?

My hand involuntarily went to the locket at my throat. The heart that all members of the faith wore, their symbol of the Saint and her promise. Well, I suppose I was going to meet her soon.

My lungs burned from holding my breath, but I still couldn’t find the boy. I couldn’t return… there. He was wedged under a beam, one of the dock supports, that had come loose. I awkwardly wiggled my arms and legs, trying to move my body deeper down. We’d never been taught to swim. It wasn’t like we were ever near large enough bodies of water to need it.

My eyes stung. The cold of the water bit into my joints like iron jamming up my gears as I thrashed. I was going to die. My blurry vision was burning at the edges with black spots, my ribs ached with the strain of keeping the poisonous exhale from escaping my lungs. I couldn’t exhale. If I exhaled then I might inhale and if I inhaled… well, I really was going to die wasn’t I?

The debris falling from the carnage above was becoming harder and harder to flail away from. I’d managed to gain some semblance of control over my movements but everything was slowing down. My muscles screamed for oxygen.

Then pain lanced out over my back as something heavy dropped onto me. Another beam, I think. It was enough. My body convulsed, expending the spent air from my lungs in a flurry of bubbles that stole my life and hopes up to the surface with it. I waited, body pressing under the beam as it carried me deeper down, trying to stop myself from breathing in the water that would freeze me from the inside out.

It was too much. I opened my mouth, and let death take me.

Death tasted saltier than I’d imagined. And hurt less. My ribs spasmed, sucking in and out as life giving oxygen pulsed into my limbs and brain. I wasn’t dead. I was steadily regaining the depleted oxygen. I opened my eyes, salt still stinging them but my vision had lost the dull corners of a fade-to-black ending. I’d been dragged down level with the boy, his own eyes wide in panic before me. He wasn’t dead either.

The boy was hyperventilating. Underwater.