Machine God: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Final Draft)

Caged In

Maybe they did listen to my request. In the upper right corner of my cell's ceiling lurked another security cam, rotating its oval-shaped body. I moved around the tiny cell and saw the cam following my every step like a triggered predator. It was placed so high I couldn't reach it, even if I stepped on my bunk bed and jumped up.

"Can you hear me?"

I waved at the cam and greeted my stalkers. No answer came back, apart from the faint fzzz sound from its mechanism.

Maybe in time...

The walk around my cell tired me. Easy to achieve, considering its width was only triple my body size. My butt sat down on the bunk bed. The opposite wall stared back at me and I wished there was a window, or any kind of variety in this steel box.

I shouldn't have gone with the trio.

I should have stayed in the rubble.

Damn it, I was shoulding all over myself.

Granted, lying around pieces of concrete and tech trash wasn't my idea of comfort. The dust itched my skin and the dank smell scratched my lungs. But at least I was free to do whatever I wanted, which was better than being a caged animal in this nightmare they called the Bulwark Cluster.

Where was it anyways?

In the middle of another ruinous city?

My eyes closed as I tried to dig up memories from my subconsciousness. Everything remained a mystery. Why did I lie in the middle of nowhere, inside a desolated city that looked as if a nuclear blast wiped it out? And why were armored squads darting through the ruins—looking for valuables to salvage?

Too many questions, and no one in this steel fortress would answer them.

Man.

It sucked to be me.

At least it couldn't get worse than this.

Unfortunately, it did.

<time stretch>

I didn't know how much time I had spent in this cell already, but my stomach was on a riot and my throat was dry as a burned dune. My feet touched the ground and pushed me up. The camera still focused on my head with its low-level humming.

It was time to make another request.

"Can I have something to drink? My throat itches."

In case there was no sound, I touched my throat dramatically and put out my tongue, hoping to play a man dying of thirst. The stalkers on the other side of the camera didn't react, probably because they didn't care. So much for society.

The trio had found me in the middle of nowhere, made me promises and threw me into the slammer. It was hard to ever trust my fellow humans again.

My curiosity took me to the door again, but with no windows, it was impossible to see what was going on in the corridor. Worse, the entire cell seemed soundproof, because I couldn't hear a noise except from the inside.

This place was created for one purpose only: to keep me in solitary confinement.

Locked up from the rest of the world.

Woo-hoo.

Sucked to be me, the sequel.

<time stretch>

My life in the cell, part III.

It felt like forever already, but it could have been only a day.

Maybe two.

A week?

Jeez, even a month?

I couldn't tell.

When you were cut off from the outside, squeezed in by window-less walls, you lost your sense of time.

Eventually, I grew tired and lay down. Straightened my limbs on the small bunk bed, ready to slumber. Or so I thought. The second I closed my eyes, an electric volt zapped me from underneath. By instinct, I rolled to my left and fell onto the cold, hard floor. Before I hit the ground face first, my arms shielded me. The pain spread through my ribcage, but waned quickly. Curiosity and frustration mitigated the ache.

But what was that?

I pushed myself back up and inspected the bed. Some kind of circuit pattern ran through its surface. My hand hovered over the bed and caught the voltage. The hairs on my arm shot up.

What in the world—

"You don't have the right to sleep," a female voice said.

It seemed omnipresent, but I was pretty sure it came from the camera in the ceiling's corner. At least someone spoke up.

"You don't talk to me, you don't give me food or drinks and now you're upset when I lie down?"

"No one is upset. You just don't have the right to sleep, that's all. This is a cluster rule and must be abided by all citizens, or soon-to-be's."

Who in the world wanted to become a citizen in this place?

"Well, how about you stuff your rule up your—"

The female voice broke up my sentence.

"Watch your mouth before you unleash an insult. Foul speech is punished with extended isolation. I'd strongly refrain from that option, unless you want to be imprisoned forever."

"Thanks to you."

"This was a necessary measure to maintain justice."

"You have a twisted sense of justice."

"Mmm. You will soon realize that the opposite is the case."

The odd thing wasn't just the rule, but the voice that declared it. She almost sounded like a child, like a preteen girl.

"Can I at least sit down?"

"Only for the duration of thirty minutes at a time."

"You've got to be kidding—"

"I'm not. We take our rules very seriously."

"No doubt about that."

I rested my butt on the middle of the bunk bed and stared at the steel wall in front of me. Tiredness crawled into my mind, but the prospect of getting shocked again prevented me from lying down. With no sight of food and drinks in the near future, I minimized my energy consumption.

Closed my eyes.

Focused on my breath.

And stayed awake as long as my body allowed me to.

Whatever happened next, I had to be prepared for it.