Weekly Drabble #308: From the Top of the Spire (Patreon)

This week's prompt is 'don't fall' from Pethrai D'arkos, returning us to Horrak-Sarn, that place where dreams come true!

For a given value of dream, of course...

~

From the top of the Spires

The view was breathtaking, Candace had to admit as she sat on the building’s edge, looking out towards the horizon and the setting sun. Beautiful... and terrible. Horrak-Sarn stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see, a dead forest of skyscrapers that ranged from those merely as tall as those back on Earth to some large enough to hold entire cities’ populations within them. There were no mountains, no trees, no lakes, rivers or oceans. There was only the City.

Candace had long ago lost any sense of time in relation to Earth, but she’d recently met a man who wished her a Happy New Year, insisting that the day was January first. He said he’d been keeping meticulous count of the days since his arrival on Horrak-Sarn. He was probably a little crazy and his methodology was open to debate, but it was more than anyone else had been able to offer. She’d counted the days after that until March 27th, her thirty-fifth birthday.

Twenty years. She’d been here for twenty years, since her family had decided go for a road trip. Mom wanted to see the countryside, not just the view from the freeway, so they’d taken a detour. The Masters didn’t just take their ships to abduct hundreds of people at once. They had traps scattered all over Earth, including the one laid along that lonely stretch of road that Candace and her family had been driving along.

On Earth, scientists used pit traps to catch ground-crawling insects and other small animals. It was basically a jar in the ground or at the top of a small ramp that they’d walk right over and fall into. The scientists could then go around to each site and see what they had caught. It was the same thing here. Two decades later, and Candace still didn’t understand the science behind it, but it was basically a little pocket of reality that you’d just drive into. Just as the trapped animals would scrabble helplessly at the smooth glass sides, so too anyone who drove into the alien pit trap would be unable to get out. Not until you were collected.

There’d been one other car in the trap, a young couple on their way to a lakehouse getaway. They’d been there for just over a day. Candace had thought she couldn’t be more scared as they waited, certain they were going to starve to death. She’d been wrong about both things. The trappers came and she’d learned how truly terrified she could be.

Her father, brother and herself had been sent to the slave pens. The last sight Candace had of her mom was blurred through her tears as she watched the guards drag her away. She’d been selected for ‘something special’. At the time, Candace hadn’t known what that meant. She’d thought she’d known; her mother had been beautiful, but it wasn’t her looks that had caught unwelcome attention.

One of the older slaves had laughed at her when she’d told him her theories. Your mother wasn’t picked out as a comfort woman, girl, he’d told her as they’d worked. His chuckles had been sad and painful. If she was, she’d be lucky. I know what you’re describing. Something about her caught the Masters’ attention and they’ve got no need for human companionship. She’ll have gone to the labs, and if there’s anything left of mercy in God, the Masters won’t be too curious.

That was when she’d learned that the Masters weren’t human. Twenty years had passed in the slave pens. Her father had died after ten, his body worn down on tasks that machines could have handled and from the beatings he’d gotten trying to protect his son and daughter, often to no avail. Candace had been young and pretty, and Mitchell had a lot of his mother in him; he was as beautiful as a young man could be. Both of them had quickly attracted the wrong sort of attention and both of them had learned to use that currency to survive in the pens.

Even among slaves, there were those who had and those who didn’t. As long as you served, the guards rarely intervened in how the cattle governed themselves – and often they were the source of that unpleasant attention themselves. Food, water and medicine were never denied to the slaves – at least, not habitually. Starved, dehydrated and injured workers were slow and inefficient. The Masters might use humans as slave labour, but they expected a nominal level of work from them, and overseers and gang bosses who let their crews fall beneath that expectation were not rewarded. The worst punishment was to be sent to the Masters to ‘assist’ in their work. The second-worst was to be demoted to a slave yourself.

Most former guards and overseers did not last long in the pens. The fear of those consequences made sure that even the most sadistic and callous of minders kept the ‘cattle’ in good condition. As a means of discipline beyond the beatings, food might be withheld as punishment for a day or two, water for a shift, medicine unless it was absolutely necessary but the slaves were generally kept in good health... but given nothing else. They were, as Candace had heard time and time again for close to two decades, cattle.

When dad needed extra painkillers for his back, when Candace needed morning-after medication, when Mitchell needed a new coat, or even if any of them just wanted something – those were all ‘luxuries’ and they had to be paid for, one way or another. Their father had hated it, but it had kept them alive and it had kept them together. Until the day a passing higher-up took a liking to Mitchell and took him with him back to the tower.

Candace never saw her brother again. After that, dad had started to fade. He blamed himself. The trip had been his idea, he’d chosen the scenic route with the pit trap, he hadn’t gotten them out in time, he’d let mom be taken, he couldn’t protect his children from the reality of the pens. Mitchell was the last straw for him. The last sign that he’d failed his family, when he couldn’t even keep what was left of his family together. He just... gave up, going through the motions and withering away, day by day.

After he was gone, it had just been Candace. She’d survived another eight years in the pens before she’d managed to escape. Life outside wasn’t any better. At least in the pens, you knew your next meal was coming and you could be reasonably certain that you’d get to see the next day. Out here in the wild of the City, you had freedom... but all the dangers that the fences, turrets and guards of the pens had kept away from the cattle could now get to you.

She’d always been good at climbing, even when she was little, with a wirey frame, quick hands and sure feet. In the pens, her partners had often lamented her lack of ‘bazooms’ and backside, but they’d accepted what she had to offer well enough. Even after she was no longer quite as young and lithe as she’d once been, she’d still been a skilled, capable climber. She’d made a small name for herself among the staff and guards. Bendel had been her crew boss for most of her time there. He’d been a hard man, strict but fair. Better than some of the other overseers and he’d appreciated her abilities.

“Climber,” he’d say. He never called her by her name, but at least it was better than her number, ‘you there’ or just ‘slave’. “We’re doing a connection test on that aerial. Here’s the kit, now get up it.”

“Climber, I need someone to replace the UV bulbs along the overpass arches.”

“Climber, there’s some dead Craven stuck in that antenna. Clear them out.”

Bendel had always been good to her and her family. She and Mitchell had never had to ‘trade’ with him for extras... but she also remembered the time he’d fractured her jaw for talking back, and she had scars on her back from the time she’d refused one of her assignments and he’d brought his lash out. Because he liked her, he gave her a bit to bite down on first.

As slavemasters went, he hadn’t been the worst. She’d almost been sorry to see him go down under the press of bodies during the escape. Like her mother and brother, she had no idea if he was still alive.

Twenty years on Horrak-Sarn had left their marks on her. She’d been fifteen when they’d been taken. More of her life had been spent in this hell than on Earth. Sometimes she dreamed about it. She dreamed of waking up to find her family with her. They’d made it to their vacation and all of this had been a nightmare. When she’d been younger, she’d cut herself in desperate attempts to wake up, but there was no waking up. Slave or free, there was no escape. There was only the City, stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction.

Breathtaking.

Candace watched the pale alien sun set, the shadows cast by the mega-towers swallowing more of the urban landscape beneath them. Night was coming. She’d have to find shelter soon. Or.

She stood, bracing one hand against a concrete column. The air up here was thin and cold. She looked down. This tower was two kilometers tall, and it wasn’t even the largest one. She couldn’t even see the ground, just the enveloping darkness of swelling shadows. Twenty years of a dream she couldn’t wake up from, but to end it all she had to do was take one step forward and give herself to the shadows. It wouldn’t even hurt. One instant she’d be falling and the next... the dream would be over.

It was March 27th. Her thirty-fifth birthday, celebrating twenty years in Horrak-Sarn. Her mother, her father, her brother were all gone.

One step was all she needed to let the nightmare end.

Candace put one foot out over the emptiness. It felt like it was reaching up to her, whispering to her. She closed her eyes.

“Happy birthday,” she said to herself as she tried to decide whether she wanted to see the sun rise... or if she finally wanted to wake up.