Possession.

Part 1

Moss is softer, quieter in the rain. The boy’s shoes made no sound as he stepped into the clearing. Above him swayed a ring of black pines, the highest losing form as they met the heavy clouds. It was not dark. Two beams shot through the forest, making bars on the moss where shadow hit the ground. The boy stayed behind the bars as he stepped forward. The truck was audible now, it’s idling engine puttering above the sound of rain on pine. The boy lowered himself in line with a downed tree beside the road. The truck was empty. In the distance, the boy could make out the hazy silhouettes of two men and a dog. One held an umbrella, the other, a flashlight. They scanned the trees. The boy slid over the log and, crouching, began to make his way across the wide dirt road.

The boy froze, his right eye was blinded by the beam of the second man’s flashlight. Above the rain and the putter of the truck, the yelps of the dog bit at the air. They were getting louder. The boy ran. With each step, mud spit his pants. He reached the trees on the other side of the road and glanced behind. The dog, a Rottweiler, slid around the bonnet of the truck, rolled once in the mud, and continued the chase. Its body dark, its saliva as white as its teeth, its teeth as bright as a flashlight.

The boy was falling. The ground had stopped short. The boy hadn’t noticed. His eyes fixed on the dog, he had run straight off. The water now rushed up to meet him. He closed his eyes.

The boy felt nothing until his knees hit the bed. They sank someway into the mud. He kicked. The water was colder than the rain. He broke the surface, gasping for air. Above, the cries of the dog had subsided. He pulled himself from the water and stood, hunched on the stony shore of the lake. He shuddered, a small cry escaping his lips. Ahead, the lights of an immense dark structure, as large as a city, pierced the rain like stars.

This was where the boy needed to go, though he knew not why. Almost without thought, his legs began to move, as if affixed to some unseen and ineffable conveyer belt.

Part 2

In the rain the trains cried. The boy listened as they sung across the tracks of the overpass above. It was lit by columns of white spotlights. The boy stood in its shadow. The night had given way early morning and the low lying clouds were no longer black but dark grey. The boy drew the tattered worker’s jacket he had found in a dumpster closer around him and began walking forward. On ground level, the facility was falling into disrepair. Around him sagged dilapidated warehouses, their corrugated iron walls rusting, bending and falling away, betraying steel skeletons. Now and then, the hard curves of a silo would appear towering above the buildings, grey pipes twisting up into the network of concrete above. Beneath years of black grime, the boy could make out dim lettering on each building. ‘Hanger C’, ‘Par electronics - solving the population crises, one worker at a time.’ ‘Waste Silo 4A’, ‘Worker storage B’. He stopped at the building marked Worker Storage. It was in better condition than the rest, its paint showing only recent signs of decay. The boy sniffed and shuddered, pulling his damp red jumper up over his nose. From the walls came the clammy smell of decomposing bread. The boy grasped at the large roller door and pulled. Above, a metallic squeal as dark chips of paint and rust fell from the rollers. They stilled on the dry floor of the warehouse to be unsettled again as the boy walked inside.

The warehouse was lit by a single fluorescent tube light that hung, lopsided, in the center of the space. Now and then it flickered. Below stood the cold shapes of boxed cages in rows, like the Warehouses outside. Inside each cage stood ten or twelve men and women, their skin pale, their arms heavy by their side, their heads hung so that the chin touched the chest. The boy stepped lightly down one of the aisles. Now and then, one of the figures would twitch an arm, slightly raise a head and then, return to its stupor. Around him came the softs grunts and snores of people in sleep. The smell of moldy bread was overpowering. It flowed from the fallen bodies. Those workers who had reached their expiration date had begun to decay, pale mauve flesh becoming visible under transparent skin. The boy quickened his pace.

Another glow. From above, on a suspended platform a wire-bound tungsten lamp ticked on. It was fixed atop a red bolted door. A bent ladder curved down. The boy turned and was met with a legion of blank faces staring at the ground. He climbed.

The iron door was fixed with a porthole through which the boy could make out the pale figure of a worker, slumped back in a revolving chair, his chest slowly rising and falling. In front of him blinked a small red light, fixed to a desk of switches. It was blinking, periodically bathing the curve of the worker's body in a red glow. On the desk, above a switch, there was a piece of peeling masking tape, marked in black pen, ‘door control’. The boy was on his tip-toes, his small fingers grabbing at the edge of the round window. He stood back and walked to the edge of the railing, surveying the rows of cages below. It was quiet, save the hum of the tungsten lamp, the soft grunts of the workers, and a throbbing vibration, which the boy felt more than heard, emanating from deeper within the facility. The platform spanned the width of the warehouse. Suddenly from the corner of the room, a shower of sparks fizzed from broken tungsten, illuminating for a second the top of a silver dome as they bounced off it. The boy started and turned.

The dome was the size of a small telephone booth. As the boy had approached, the silver surface slid away with a laboured hiss to reveal an arched opening. A small LED light tinked on within the booth, illuminating its interior. The boy drew in a breath and swallowed. Inside was a silver helmet lined with patches of glowing orange that throbbed in time with the heart of the facility. It was suspended from the ceiling by a thick network of wires. He stepped inside, the headpiece lowering with quiet clicks, to adjust to his level. His fingers shaking, the boy grasped the smooth edges of the helmet. It was cold. He pulled it down over his forehead. His shoulders slumped.

Behind the ear of each worker, a small light blinked on. With eerie purpose, the workers straightened. Those decomposing began to twitch violently, letting out soft moans. Behind the red door, the worker at the desk stood, knocking his roller chair back.

The boy extended his arm.

Every worker in the warehouse held their arms straight out.

Inside the control room, the worker's hand lulled, limp wristed like a marionette, over the yellow switch and the peeling masking tape. The worker at the desk lowered his arm, catching the switch with the top of his wrist. There was a hiss, as the bolts of the red iron door slipped away. A moment, then, together, their arms bent up to their heads. Together their cold fingers grasping at thin air. Together, they pulled up, removing an unseen helmet.

Pulling the headpiece off, the boy watched as the strings were dropped, and the workers' arms fell from their heads and lay limp at their sides. Their heads followed and the warehouse was filled with the movement of a hundred chins coming to rest on the thick blue overalls of the worker's uniform. Quietly, the boy approached the red, bolted door, pulled it open, and slipped inside the facility, willed on purely by the throbbing, the incessant throbbing from the deeper heart.

Part 3

The facility had a heart. The boy could feel it pulse up through the ground, pricking goosebumps up his neck. It hung, an enormous sphere of luminescent metal, suspended by steel and concrete arteries in the center of the massive silo. The silo stretched on and on and the white mid-morning sky was a full moon in a starless night. Down here, the space glowed a faint blue in time with the heart’s beats.

Behind the boy, fists were pounding up against a thick glass portal, set deep within an electromagnetic door. He watched as the fists stopped and were replaced with the faces of men and women, contorted with fear. At their centre was a man, thin, draped in a worn labcoat and emanating an authority that rippled through those around him. The others moved aside to let this man through despite the earlier maddened push. The man unfurled a piece of paper and pressed it to the glass.

You are being Controlled Alex! Wake up son! Please!

Alex took a step closer. He watched as this gaunt man, his father, dad, dropped the note, reached out, and pulled a small locket from his neck like it was a religious talisman. He pressed it, open, to the glass. It was old, worn a bronzy brown from years of handling, opening, and closing. Affixed in a heart-shaped frame, was a photo of a boy in a red jumper. Vague recognition bubbled up like gas escaping a peat bog. That boy in the locket was Alex, and Alex was the boy.

Alex felt cold - a cold that penetrated the bones and chilled them to ice. There was a sharp pain behind his right ear and the scream of tinnitus pitched through his skull. Alex could not recall where he was. The memory of a van, of hands pulling him into darkness, flashed across his vision. In front of him, Dr Par was slapping his palm against the thick glass. His father and the creator of the chip lodged in his neck. Alex took another step forward. In his neck, a light ticked on.

The boy’s pupils dilated.

There was no recollection. The boy turned slowly back towards the heart. From the porthole, Dr Par could make out a metallic chip, fixed within the boy’s neck with crude stitches, a small light emanating from it. Down his neck lined a thin trail of blood, mixing with the crimson of his jumper. The boy began to walk towards the heart. Dr Par began to cry.

The core thrummed with a force so palpable it seemed to shatter any sense of the world around it, a beating heart in a black void. Set into its side was a single red button. The boy stretched out an arm. His hand lulled, limp wristed like a marionette, in front of the button. He pushed forward.

The connection was severed, the drone lost in the incineration. Somewhere, far from the fireball of the institute, a dark van idled in the rain and inside it, a steel controller helmet was removed.