There was a word for the Tads: Cephalopod. Cephalopodian.
The Law referred to them using the actual word, Cephalopodians, as if giving them an exotic word would somehow make them more humane, more beautiful. As if somehow, the word would make the Tads less like half-aliens that hatched like tadpoles from a tentacle monster raping a human sacrifice, make them more like humans, and make us looked past the fact that they tentacles for sexual reproductive organs and gills flaring under their ribs and jaws. What it did, though, was marking them superior in the society hierarchy, in the eye of the government and the politicians, reminding us to be obedient because the Cephalopodians knew every inch of us even if we didn't know anything about them.
The Tads looked like humans, but they weren't humans.
A lot of people struggled to accept that.
The Tads may have carried the physical appearances but they weren't some facets of the dead human's sacrifices. The Tads weren't parts of the dead person's soul, or representing the sins the human committed. The Tads weren't anything human.
Most people tried to explain the Tads' existence beyond the interspecies product, the same way they tried to reason Its existence. Always cycling back to the human as though we would be the most powerful part of the equation.
We weren't.
It didn't care. It just needed warm bodies—warm incubators—to mass produce hatches and clutches of itself.
The wallaby bodies that littered Macka Lake bank prior to human found plugged up and filled with alien eggs was proof of that. The deformed wallaby-with-tentacles that chased after and healthy wallaby was more than enough to drive home the message.
Maybe humans were the most compatible. Maybe not. Maybe, it didn't matter.
Maybe, this disaster could have been stopped if we were so egoistic and assumed It was after us, if we just packed up and moved away from the Lake instead of waging a war against this creature, instead of sending down marines and men to eliminate It only to realize too late that we were providing It ammunition.
Though it didn't matter, now, did it?
We were stuck here.
⸻
The Picking Date was announced the next day, the time plastered on the front page of every newspaper. The numbers stared wide-eyed at me, screaming in all-caps, rigid and bold.
Three more days. Seventy-two hours, before the next sacrificial deadline. A Sunday. We would be home for dinner.
Mum pinned the newspaper clip on our fridge and helped us select our best outfits. Ame meticulously shined her dress shoes the whole afternoon, choosing a simple, long blue dress that accented her lanky, skinny adolescent frame even more, and borrowed a ribbon from her friend to tie her hair. Sitting in our backyard chatting over the beers I had stolen from Lorgan's trunk, the sun chill on our skin, it was easy to close my eyes and pretend this was the normal, every day I could have. Easy to say there was nothing wrong in my life.
I wished I could do that.
⸻
There were two crumpled letters in my back pockets.
One from the City, reminded me that I was selected to clean the Chamber, encased with an Instruction Sheet. The other from the Mayor Eidel. Ava, it read, We would love to have you over for supper this evening. I have tarts. It'd be wonderful. I look forward to your response. Signed, Thereas Eidel. It didn't ask anything else, but it didn't need to.
⸻
A black pickup materialized behind me, trailing for a few seconds before it honked loudly. The driver's window rolled down.
"Get in," Lorgan said. "I'll give you a lift, there and back. Are you going to the SSC?"
The tiny warning at the end of the City's letter flashed back to me for a second—To ensure your safety, please DO NOT bring anybody else on this trip with you—before I promptly shoved it off.
"Yeah," I said. I dismounted and reeled my bike up at the bike rack at the back of his truck. "Thanks, Lor,"
The day's warmth crept up the back of my neck, beading in the sweat collecting between my shoulder blades. I slotted myself in the shotgun, waving the blue smoke out the window. The truck interior was tinted black, the semi-darkness rendered Lorgan's soft outlines into severe angles and steep slopes. I spotted Lorgan's gun on the backseat, a belt of rounds spreaded next to it. A cigarette was hanging from Lorgan's lips, the smell of faux-peppermint stuck on the car's seat, soaked into the fabric and stitched on Lorgan's skin. He flicked the ash out the tiny crack of the window on the driver side, exhaling smoke, before placing his hands on either side of the wheel, pulling away from the curb.
The ride was silent. Lorgan drove me to the Sydney Service Centre first to grab the city-issued cleaning equipment and sign some papers, and before long we were already North of the Eastern Distributor Freeway, wind thumped on the windshield. It was a hard habit not to lean over and turned on the radio to fill in the void. Its presence intercepted the electronics and GPS signals—at first was just around here at Macka Lake, then Sydney was down, until one day the country's last back-up electronics system fell after the fifth batch of Tads came to the surface.
Just like that, one bright day, the planes stopped taking off and the boats left the major docks never coming back. Nobody left, nobody came.
I rolled down the windows, letting the breeze in. The salt from the sea swept across the shore, thickening on my skin and my tongue. Darlinghurst scrolled past us in monochrome streaks of gray and green, then the Circular Quay emerged into view, bumbling and thrilling and alive. Skyscrapers stood tall and proud like soldiers, casting protective shadows onto the hubbub belows. Weaving between the jacaranda trees, little girls and boys raced one other, sunlight filtered through the thick canopy, illuminated their bright, innocent faces—still so naive and trusting, still so fragile and precious to comprehend the magnitude of the horror they were living in.
And I wondered: were their parents looking out from the boutiques' or cafes' shop windows, smiling at their children, and did the same thing I did since the beginning of every summer. Were their parents also tallying the chance, counting the odds that their son or daughter would be picked, reassuring themselves the odds was less than one percent, that their child would be OK? Or were they bracing, tip-toeing between despair and faith, hope against hope?
⸻
Mission Point marked the shift in territory.
Here, civilization became reminiscent of the past.
Weed overgrown on the side of the road, broke through the pavements and the asphalt, climbing up the rusted handrails. Wild yellow flowers fluttered as the truck zoomed past. I glanced back at the side mirror, watching the Quay and the landmark Opera House sinking beneath the horizon, delineated in golden and pink, a beautiful picture sliced into fragments by the beams and arches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Cantilever curves soared and dipped, soared and dipped, soared and dipped—until all that reduced down to were round points shifting and rearranging themselves, and a static, eerie tranquility caressing the air. The Lake curved on our right, lapping, tiny wavelets chased each other to the shore and crashed in a burst of white foam.
The Tads got North Sydney, while the remaining human survivors huddled back in South Sydney. The roads up North weren't maintained anymore after the reallocation. Some of the Tads adapted to living with humans and integrated into human modern society, a lot of them moved to the South. However, most still preferred to dwell in the isolated, brooding silence of nature, happily living in identical modest brick townhouses that differed only by their address numbers, enjoying a job in farming and agriculture, assimilating themselves into the countryside lifestyles. Zoe and I used to lean out the rails at the Quay, watching the Tads sunning themselves along the shores in colourful summer dresses, giggling and grinning and looking all too human, their light laughter traveled across the Lake, sounded like the now-sacred images Before the Fall. Zoe had looked at the Tads with something in her eyes—perhaps contemplativeness, or respect, or fear—her voice was hollow when she wondered aloud, Doesn't this make you doubt yourself? What if we are just loathing on a harmless race?
Paperbarks and maples circumvented around the Lake's banks, the layering white barks reminded me of rare snowfalls in the winter. Sparrows perched along the tattered electric lines, chirping down at us. Waterfowls quacking in the distance, gathering in a close circle as they waddled across the lake, their graceful forms ducked underwater and returned to the surface moments later, happy and unharmed. A lone white-bellied sea-eagle looped in lazy infinite-figure above our head.
They're killers and rapists, Zoe, I had said. All of them.
⸻
Instead of stopping at the border as I expected, Lorgan drove me all the way down to the Dock.
We cruised through the shaded neighbourhood. Biles pushed up my esophagus as soon as I recognized the first person we passed, as well as the two people that were talking on the lawn on our left. Out of the corner of my eyes, a quick shadow vaulted over to his friend's backyard, face splitted in a wide, mischievous grin. People were milling about, jaywalking across streets, a spitting reflection of Darlinghust and Circular Quay—only that too many of the population looked akin to one another.
I felt myself cringing away from the window, shrinking as the Tads paused their Sunday and watched the stranger's truck with wariness in their eyes. I didn't know all of their names, but I knew their faces. I knew how they looked when they got Picked. And somehow, that snippet of fleeting memory felt too private, too intimate. I knew how they died. I knew they were forced into the Chamber, howling and raving, their cries were muffled as they were suffocated in the water, tentacles encased them, tentacles filled them up until every hole in their body was stretched and abused, choking in altering coercion substances. I knew how they spiralled into a sex fiend, I knew what they look like always bloated and plugged up and leaking with alien fluid. I knew their hazy, placid look when they were pumped full of eggs, I knew their crazed look when they felt empty, when they needed to be full again.
I knew all of them drowned themselves in June. The tentacles stopped seeking above. And they, brainwashed by Its fluid, went mad with some sort of madden keen need and dove into the water. They all ended their life the same way—Zoe drowned herself at the first snowfall, after giving birth to a clutch of twenty. Her dead body stayed afloat, uncollected and covered underneath a flimsy, thin layer of snow. And when the snow melted three days later, the body was gone, no trace found, no bones or flesh remained.
"God," Lorgan said, breath caught as if he saw ghosts. I flicked my gaze up, and my heart stopped.
Zoe.
Hidden. Behind a tree. The green-tinted shadow almost masked her out of sight.
I froze, affixed.
"Lor."
Lorgan's jaws clenched, gaze trained straight ahead, gripping the steering wheels white-knuckled as he flattened the gas pedal. Both of us seemed to breathe shallowly, as if we couldn't trust ourselves not to break down. Yet, even when we exited the Tads' Residential Area in a trail of rubber tires squealing, the Lake opened up in front of us, a part of me refused to be loosen in relief.
I could still see Zoe staring down the path—advancing toward me—her mouth opened, forming the words I knew too well.
You're a selfish, selfish bitch, and you're going to pay for it.
⸻
The truck crawled along, the pebbles crunched underneath the tires. Lorgan pulled to a stop once the Chamber was within our sight. It's not far enough from the Tads, a panicky voice at the back of my head hissed, Isn't far enough from Zoe, but I swallowed it down.
"Stay for a minute," Lorgan stopped me before I jumped out of the truck. He twisted the key backward, letting the truck idled. Lighting another cigarette, Lorgan threw the half-empty pack at the dash, his fingers trembled as he took a few successive drags. Gasoline exhaustion and nicotine smoke entwined and pooled between us. His eyes flitted over the rearview mirror for a split second, a sharp scrutiny over my face and body, drilling at a spot on my forehead. He grunted, low and almost inaudible. "Your Mum or Dad know you're here?"
"Not exactly," I said. They didn't know when they were leaving for work this morning, but they definitely would by now. Their colleagues, or maybe Ame, would have already told them. Or maybe they saw my name on the newspaper section that acknowledged Zoe Eidel's death and thanked me for volunteering to be a Chamberlain while they read the newspaper together on the morning train. It didn't matter, though. Lorgan would have already guessed that already.
I looked out at the Lake, the rhythmic crashing and pulling of the waves against the sandy shore. The water was a translucent green-blue under the sunlight—sparkling, dazzling. The reeds shifted to the breezes, murmuring amongst one another. The Chamber floated peacefully in front of us, bobbing up and down to the waves, balanced on the lifebuoys and anchored to the floating dock. Content.
"Do you love her?" Lorgan said, slow and careful.
Zoe used to like to ask that question all the times. "I don't know," I said.
"Please tell me this isn't some lovebird, starry-eyed soap mission," Lorgan drawled. The sentence itself hovered indefinitely between a question and a statement.
I wiped the thin sheen of cold sweat on my jeans. Wiped it again. "Would that make this feel justified?" I said. Calm. Monotonous. Emotionless. My hand clasped over the pocket knife in the front pocket of my hoodie, the cold metal seared into my palm.
Lorgan drummed his fingers on the windowsill, his features were unreadable. "Tell me."
"Zoe ran toward the beach. Somebody was there waiting to pick her up."
Lorgan studied me. "So you know that Zoe is a Runner beforehand."
"I know that Mayor Eidel arranged things to get her family out. I didn't know how. They obviously didn't anticipate Zoe was picked." I said. I thought her mother would have a safe basement where the whole family could squirrel away, but I was wrong.
"Had the poor girl run a little faster, she would have escaped," Lorgan snorted, curt and humourless.
"Well," I said, staring out at the lake. The sky was blue and cloudless, the sunlight draping a golden sheen on the landscape. "Mr. Eidel wasn't around anymore."
Lorgan tapped the ash out of the window and sighed. "So what? What are you looking for?"
"Code, map, contacts. Whatever. Maybe Zoe carried on her something."
"If not?" Lorgan asked, mouth a rueful thin line. "Are you going to torture a Tad-Zoe? Cut its tentacles and shove it back to its own mouth until it spat out her memories?"
I jerked. "God. No. I'm not a heartless monster." It sounded weak.
I heard it. Lorgan heard it.
It wasn't exactly my plan, but it wasn't an option that I completely ruled out either.
"Jaysus," He barked out a guttural laugh, leaning at the headrest and shook his head as though he couldn't quite believe it.
We sat in silence for a while, me half-coughing and half-wheezing, careful not to inhale the smoke as an itch in my nose and throat becoming more irritating. I chanced it, and put the window all the way down. The chill air rushed in, salvaging in skin and chapping my lips.
It was a very beautiful day outside. Picnic weather.
Lorgan shut his eyes. Tired. "You know," He said, not straightening in his seat. The syllables were drawn out, his South American accent wedging back in all the familiar places. "I thought for a moment you would say you were here because you want some closure."
"I cried."
"You didn't cry because you missed her when she was Picked. You cried because that upset your plan."
"Don't be ridiculous," I said, small and faraway. "I'm sad that she's dead."
"Do you?" Lorgan said, even, unchallenged and unjudging.
My gaze dropped to my knees. "Look. I'm not ashamed of it," I said, quiet, didn't quite manage to hide the tremor evidenced below the suppressed yell, cracking each word apart. "I can't live like this, being in this constant fear and trepidation. I'd kill myself than be an incubator. I don't care how, I had to get away from here."
He took a short buff and blew the smoke out downward. "Ava, it's oneth in a thousand every year. Less than one percent chance that you will get Pick for your whole lifetime. The risk isn't worth it, is what I'm saying."
"You and I both know the stats are higher than that."
And that was the truth. More than just one human was sacrificed per year. That was why all the Chamberlain were never returned, that was why the Aboroginal who still worshipped the Lake, still snuck in here sometimes, went missing. It was becoming more demanding, the Tads were becoming more demanding.
It would be until things got so out-of-hand that the Fed would release the real numbers. It didn't seem to mind the gender or age or race of its vessels, as long as they had a hole for the eggs to pop out. The Tads had already worked their way into the government, started fucking humans and producing more of hybrid tentacle-monsters. The Federal had already favouring the Tads' genes because the Tads could live on both land and in water. And with the sea level rising, they were willing to play the game of fate and evolution to save the remaining humans. What was there to guarantee that things will stay the same in the future? What was there to guarantee the government wouldn't one day just decide to abandon us?
Mrs. Gilmore withdrew deep within her own house, couldn't bear to see copies of her dead daughter parading around—knowing they had inherited Emilija's memory, knowing they knew her inside out, knowing they could manipulate and coerced her into becoming another Unfortunate.
And it didn't really matter. The Tads figured out a way. Three months after the hatching, somebody broke through her locked front door and found her dead in the bathtub, half-submerged in water. Her pelvic and anus were torn wide open. Bunches of deformed black eggs piled next to her—unhatched and dried. Several more eggs were still inside her. Her mouth was gagged, head tipped back at an awkward angle.
They must have ambushed her when she went out to get groceries. There were no signs of forced entrances.
If I wasn't Picked, I was going to end up like Mrs. Gilmore. All of us would. She was lucky that she died, unable to reproduce, but God knew what she must have gone through before that. I wouldn't know if I could have shared the same fate.
Lorgan raised his voice, heat edged into his tone. "You're committing suicide."
"I'm freeing myself," I snarled.
Lorgan turned to look at me, alerted. "You can't risk your whole family's life on this. Assuming you got your hands on the stuff, you think Mayor Eidel would just stand by if you got discovered? You'd be locked up as a Runner, and your Mum, your Dad, your sister would pay the price. They didn't know any of this, they didn't know your plan."
I turned away, my lips already twisting into an ugly snarl. Lorgan lurched, seizing my forearm.
"Ava. The moment you step out of this truck, the hunt begins. They had her memory, they knew how you'd react. You're digging your own grave. You'd be Its appetizer." I ripped away from him, clutching the bruised area. Where his nails buried deep into my bare skin, blood welted in half-circles, sending throbs up my shoulder joints.
The last part—the Just like my son part—was left unsaid, yet it rang between us like an echo of a slap.
"I know what I'm doing," I spat out and banged out of the truck. Grabbing the cleaning equipment from the back of the pickup truck and I powered toward the Chamber, jaws clenched.
⸻