‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: After Spider runs away from Avon
The handlers drag Rayce by the arms, and something takes over inside his head. His lungs seize up, and his legs give way without anything like a conscious decision, so that his feet drag uselessly behind him.
Bad trainees get dragged, when they can’t be trusted to walk where they’re told.
He doesn’t look back at his owner. He doesn’t attempt one last plea for mercy. The world is as small as this corridor. The only thing that matters is staying floppy, but not so floppy that it makes the Handlers’ job harder.
He doesn’t see the room they take him into. The white walls are background noise. They manhandle him onto a chair, and he almost falls straight off the other side he’s so unprepared. Trainees kneel on the floor. One of the Handlers grabs the back of his shirt, and firmly sets him upright. He stays exactly where he is put, muscles locked tight.
There is a woman on the other side of the table. He doesn’t take in her features, just a vague impression of dark skin and disapproval. She’s not wearing a Handler’s uniform. But she could still be a Handler, out of uniform. He doesn’t know how to address her, if he’s asked to talk. Panic is swallowing the edges of his vision. The soft hiss-click of the door sounds very far away.
Then there is silence, except the rushing in his ears that pulsates in time with his heart. He feels the woman’s gaze crawl like hands over his body.
“Do you know why you’re here?”. He needs to answer a direct question, but his jaw refuses to unlock. He needs to answer. He needs to answer he needs to say something but he doesn’t know if she is ma’am or Handler or – “Your owner doesn’t want you anymore. You won’t be going home with him. You won’t see him ever again. Do you understand?” The weight of her expectation is crushing. The white walls are pressing in, a pressure that he feels from every side. The noise in his ears is louder. He needs to answer he needs to answer he needs to – “Are you listening to me?” Her tone is suddenly sharp, sharp enough to cut through the paralysis. “Yes, ma’am,” he squeaks. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Do you understand your situation?” she repeats. “Yes, ma’am.” She hasn’t corrected him. Hasn’t told him that he’s wrong. “Look at me.” He thought he was, but when she says it he realises his eyes are fixed somewhere around the middle of the table. He lifts them with effort. The woman’s face is narrow and severe, irregularly freckled and scored with the early lines of age.
“I’m going to give you something I doubt you’ve had in a while, Pet,” she says. “A choice.” It’s not a question or a command. He is mute. “I’ve been asked to dispose of you,” she continues. “As you may be aware, I have two options. We can refurb you, or we can bury you with the other failures.” It’s not a question or a command. But she’s looking at him like she wants a response. As the silence grates painfully across his nerves, he replays her words, trying to claw out some hint of her expectations from under the deafening imminence of his own death.
“I want to know which you’d prefer,” she prompts at length. “Ma’am?” His voice wavers. “It’s not a trick question. Either you get refurbed, or you die. I want your opinion.”
My opinion. It’s such an incongruous demand that some fragment of the old Rayce stirs, just a little, to consciousness.
“Why…” he falters, “Why would my opinion matter, ma’am?” He flinches immediately, expecting pain. He can’t ask questions here. Doesn’t he know that? “I don’t know if you ever worked with refurbs,” the woman is saying calmly. “They’re often difficult. Turning a profit is far from guaranteed. If you’re going to fight it every step of the way and turn out barely saleable at the end, it isn’t worth the time investment.” “But, I’ll be Wiped. Won’t I? I won’t … be me, ma’am. I don’t –” She waves a hand dismissively, and his jaw clacks shut. “Yes, you’ll be wiped. But the starting attitude post-wipe is usually a lot like the attitude pre-wipe. So if you tell me now that you’d rather die than submit to another round of training, I can predict that you’ll be trouble.”
Another round of training. Would he rather die? Training was hell it was hell, he thinks he will die if he has to do it again.
He will die if they kill him.
The pressure from the walls is crushing him, collapsing his lungs, compacting him into something infinitely small and beneath notice. The woman on the other side of the desk is very far away. His own body is very far away. He can almost taste the rubber between his teeth.
“Well?” prompts the woman’s distant, water-logged voice. “I don’t have all day.”
I can’t – he thinks – but those are forbidden words like don’t and no. The blood in his ears is very loud. He needs to answer, he needs to answer, he needs – does it even matter? Both are a kind of death, aren’t they?
“Whatever you want, ma’am,” he hears his own voice say quietly. For a second, her demanding, damning scrutiny lingers on his skin. Then she shrugs her shoulders, and writes something down. “Good enough, I suppose. Perhaps you will polish up acceptably.”