"Cut him deeper, Giska, his blood is still clogging the drainage pipes and the bio-scanners wont register the harvest!" Rea screamed over the deafening hiss of scalding steam, her voice completely devoid of mercy.
Her eyes, still unenhanced by the high-grade optics she so desperately craved, reflected the sickly green glow of the melting vats below. She did not look at Zeldin as a human being, let alone the man who had shared his meager rations with her for the past three years in the desolate slums of Neo-Soma. To her, he was nothing more than a fleshy biometric key, a walking lump of raw capital waiting to be liquidated into the glittering promised land of the Upper Sectors.
Giska grunted, his heavy boots skidding slightly on the rusted iron grating of Bio-Flesh Furnace 04. The air inside the Waste Sector was thick with the stench of charred proteins, industrial solvents, and the unmistakable metallic tang of fresh blood. Outside, the acid rain of 2099 pounded mercilessly against the reinforced polymer skylights, eating away at the structure just as greed was eating away at the remnants of their humanity. Giska adjusted his grip on the plasma surgical blade, its edge humming with a low, lethal vibration that cast blue light across his scarred face.
"Hold your tongue, woman," Giska growled, his voice a gravelly rumble. "The extraction requires precision. If I puncture the primary hepatic valve, the whole batch of organic material goes sour, and the black-market brokers won't pay a single Bio-Cred for contaminated goods."
Zeldin hung upside down above the roiling, bubbling vat of synthetic acid. Heavy titanium chains bit into his ankles, cutting off the circulation and turning his feet a mottled, bruised purple. The rush of blood to his head made his vision blur, a dizzying kaleidoscope of rusted pipes, flashing warning lights, and the cold, calculative faces of his betrayers. His arms dangled uselessly toward the chemical abyss below, his fingers twitching in a futile instinctive reflex to find purchase on empty air.
"Rea," Zeldin gasped, his voice cracked and strained from hours of screaming. "Why? I gave you everything. Every scrap of metal I scavenged, every credit I earned, it was all for you."
Rea finally looked down at him, her lips curving into a sneer that twisted her pretty, impoverished face into something hideous. She stepped closer to the edge of the catwalk, the heels of her cheap boots clicking sharply against the metal lattice. She reached down and tapped her own cheek, then pointed toward the neon-drenched spires of the city rising far above the smog layer.
"You gave me scraps, Zeldin," she spat, her tone dripping with venomous disdain. "Look at me! I am twenty-one years old, and I am still stuck with this basic, flawed, biological skin. Do you know what they call girls like me in the upper districts? Sacks. Just sacks of expiring meat. I want the full-scale cybernetic beauty surgery. I want porcelain-synth skin that never ages, chrome eyelids that catch the light, and internal micro-servos that make every movement perfect. Your petty scavenging would never buy me a single square inch of that life."
"But I loved you," Zeldin whispered, a single tear escaping his eye and falling upward across his forehead, mingling with the sweat and filth grime.
"Love doesn't pay for the upgrade licenses, darling," Rea mocked, waving her hand dismissively toward Giska. "Do it now. The midnight transport leaves the Waste Sector in twenty minutes. I want my capital cleared before the morning shift begins."
Giska didn't hesitate. Step by step, he stepped over Zeldin’s hanging form. With practiced, clinical cruelty, he grabbed Zeldin’s left wrist. The plasma blade flared to a bright, blinding white as it sliced into the flesh of his arm.
Zeldin’s body convulsed violently as the superheated energy edge severed the major veins and arteries cleanly, avoiding the bone but opening a wide, yawning crimson trench. A thick stream of dark red blood poured directly down into the specialized collection funnel that Giska had positioned over the vat. The automated systems of the furnace hummed to life, sensing the influx of fresh organic matter and beginning the separation process.
"Please," Zeldin choked out, the sudden loss of blood pressure making his consciousness waver. The pain was an absolute white-hot flare that consumed his entire nervous system, radiating from his forearm straight to his chest. "Giska, we were brothers in the trenches. You swore an oath."
"The Soma-Reign era doesn't care about oaths, kid," Giska replied coldly, switching to the right arm.
The blade descended again. Another clean, agonizing slice tore through the remaining healthy limb. The blood loss was catastrophic now. Zeldin’s heart hammered frantically in his chest, trying to pump fluid that was no longer there, driving his body into a state of sheer, unadulterated shock. His vision began to dim at the edges, tunneling down until all he could see was Rea’s cold, unblinking glare.
Rea watched the blood fill the collection tubes with a twisted sense of fascination. She could already feel the synthetic skin stretching over her bones, replacing her mundane humanity with corporate perfection. She turned her back on the dying man, walking toward the control console where a sleek, matte-black briefcase rested.
Giska wiped the plasma blade on his apron, his eyes fixed on the digital readouts of the bio-scanner. A soft chime echoed through the grimy chamber, indicating that the extraction was complete. The original organs were drained, their genetic markers logged and verified for the black market. Zeldin was no longer an asset; he was merely industrial waste.
"The bindings are cleared," Giska announced, reaching for the manual release lever on the crane assembly.
"Wait," Zeldin croaked, his voice barely a whisper now, the sound caught in his throat alongside the metallic taste of his own fluid. "Rea... look at me."
Rea didn't even turn around. She unlatched the briefcase, her face instantly illuminated by the bright blue glow of hundreds of thousands of digital Bio-Cred chits stacked neatly inside. Her fingers trembled with excitement as she ran them over the cold plastic casings of the currency.
"Drop him," Rea ordered, her voice flat, completely absorbed in her new wealth. "The steam is ruining my hair, and we have a clinic appointment to catch."
Giska pulled the lever.
The titanium chains snapped open with a sharp, pneumatic hiss. Zeldin felt the sickening sensation of weightlessness for a fraction of a second before gravity claimed his mutilated body. He plunged straight down into the synthetic acid of Bio-Flesh Furnace 04.
The impact with the chemical sludge was an explosion of agony unlike anything he could have imagined. The acid was designed to break down organic matter for recycling, and it began its work instantly. It tore into his open arm wounds, dissolving the muscle fibers and melting the fat layers alive. The scalding steam rose around him, filling his lungs as he tried to scream, burning his vocal cords until only a muffled, gurgling wheeze escaped his lips.
Half of his face submerged into the green, glowing liquid. He could feel the skin peeling away from his jaw, the raw nerves screaming in protest before the chemicals burned them to ash. He flailed his ruined arms, his exposed bones scraping against the interior walls of the vat, but there was no grip to be found in the melting stew of flesh and steel.
Up on the catwalk, Rea picked up the heavy briefcase. She clicked it shut, the solid snap echoing through the chamber like a final gavel strike on Zeldin’s life. She slung the strap over her shoulder, a brilliant, ecstatic smile finally breaking across her face.
"Goodbye, Zeldin," she murmured to the empty air, turning toward the heavy blast doors that led out of the Waste Sector. "Thank you for the upgrade."
Giska followed close behind her, his heavy steps fading into the distance as the automated doors sealed shut with a heavy thud. The lights in the chamber dimmed to a low, standby amber, leaving only the toxic green glow of the furnace to illuminate the horrors within.
Deep inside the bubbling vat, Zeldin’s consciousness began to fragment. The acid had already consumed half of his torso, eating through the outer layers of muscle to expose the white of his ribs. His left eye was gone, dissolved into a milky film, while his right eye stared blankly up at the ceiling pipes through the shifting vapors. He was dying, his life forcing its way out through every burning pore of his ruined body.
Yet, as the chemical soup began to seep into his exposed bone marrow, something went wrong with the furnace’s automated filtration cycle. A heavy deposit of illegal cybernetic scrap, dumped by some corporate smuggler hours prior, began to dissolve alongside his genetic material. The liquid metal and the melting cells began to collide, sparking with a strange, unintended bio-electric charge.
Zeldin’s heart gave one final, violent spasm, refusing to stop as the synthetic chemicals forced a radical, agonizing mutation through his remaining tissue. The pain didn't stop; it intensified, changing from a destructive burn into a constructive, terrifying force that began to fuse his melting flesh with the heavy metals of the waste pool.
He was sinking deeper into the dark, but the hatred burning in his chest was hotter than any industrial acid Neo-Soma could ever produce.
Aksara