Sometimes, we spot other machines in the distance, but they are never close to each other.

Even then, one is enough to decimate everything around it.

And humans…I haven’t seen another human below in a long, long time.

As I cross my arms, the woman on the floor groans and grips her stomach.

Oh no.

I don’t realize I whisper the words until they reach my ears.

“Shit,” Sam whispers too.

Her wide eyes meet my own and I am dimly aware that Mina is crawling closer to us.

The woman is left alone on one side as she groans louder.

There is movement in her stomach.

Something large presses against her skin from the inside and my heart drops.

It is time.

As if on cue, the inside wall pulses and I hear the sound we all dread.

The smooth surface above us whirs open and one of those mechanical arms appears.

It’s different from the ones on the outside—the ones it walks on.

This one is smaller but it has no trouble grasping us just the same…if it catches us.

But it’s not coming for us.

We know what it wants.

The woman…she is ready to give birth.

I watch as the arm grasps her around the neck and for a moment, I’m frozen.

One by one, it’s done this.

Taken us.

Bred us.

At first, we’d fought back, tried to get it to stop.

When had we stopped fighting?

The thought energizes me and I’m moving even before I can reconsider.

“Adira!” Sam’s scream doesn’t register. All I can see is the mechanical arm closing around the woman.

All I can feel is my own hatred.

I reach it in a matter of seconds, my arms closing around its claw.

I pull. With all my strength, I pull. But it doesn’t budge.

“Let her go! She deserves to live. We all deserve to live!” The words leave my lips in a scream that echoes in the little chamber. “Haven’t you done enough?!”

I’m hanging on to it and I swear the metal claw goes still for a moment.

And then I’m flying backwards like a fly.

My back collides with the wall behind me and pain shoots up my spine as I fall forward on my face.

I’m dimly aware of Sam rushing over to me, of Mina’s scream, and I lift my head.

Through my blurred vision, I see the arm retreat with the woman.

And then her screams…

We won’t see her again.

But the machine will come back, and it will be one of us next.

Chapter Four

ADIRA

Night has come.

The sun has risen once more.

My body still aches from the latest attempt at autonomy. Freedom.

My gaze adjusts to within the orb as the empty food sac slips from my fingers.

It lands at my feet and I watch as it…disappears into the metal wall.

“Do you think it will ever stop walking?” Sam asks.

Her voice is distant.

She is staring outside the orb too and I wonder if she is having the same thoughts I am.

“I’d like to think so,” I reply, but even that thought makes a strange feeling go down my spine.

When the machine stops walking…what then?

Will any of us be left?

Will humanity, by some miracle, have survived?

Walking. Walking. It always heads towards water. It’ll spend several days sucking it all up, and then it will be off again.

In the time I’ve been in the belly of the beast, I’ve seen it drain seven lakes.

Seven…all gone.

I don’t know what it does with all that water.

I wonder if it takes it all, evaporates it somehow.

Destroys it.

Something tells me that’s not what it’s doing.

But with the water disappearing down below…so is life.

The Earth is becoming dry.

Parched.

We built all basis of life on the single pairing of two chemicals. Two parts hydrogen. One part oxygen.

Water.

When searching distant stars, it was what we looked for.

And I wonder if that’s what they were looking for too?

Is that why they came here?

Is that how they found us?

I stare ahead at nothing.

Not looking at the other side where the Feeders are.

Not focusing on the two other women around me.

Just three of us left.

It is going to end soon.

For hours, the machine walks.

There is nothing to do but sit and be swayed within it, my gaze focused in the distance.

My mind…my emotions…blocked.

I only rise when I spot greenery.

Life.

We are near a forest…or at least, what used to be one, and the machine leaves trampled trees in its wake.

The trees will die soon. Just like everything else.

Sam sees me move and glances down below.

“Recognize where we are?”

“No idea.”

Nothing looks the same out there.

I don’t even know if we are in the same state anymore.

“Me neither,” she says. “I wish…”

She doesn’t continue.

It makes no use to say it.

I know what she wishes.

To see some form of life down there.

Hope.

Her dark hair is dirty and she runs a hand through it.

We all are dirty, despite the strange way the machine cleans this compartment.

It sucks up the waste we leave behind. Bodily secretions disappear into the metal wall as if it wasn’t there at all in the first place. But it can’t wash away the filth that has settled on our skin over time.

“Do you think anyone’s left out there?” Sam is still looking down below.

I shake my head.

“I don’t know.”

“What about the animals…”

Her voice has hope in it and even though Mina doesn’t speak much, I hear her scoff.

Since being within the machine, we’ve seen no life below.

Not even a flicker of it.

I spent my whole life taking care of animals… To think so many have died too…

It’s something I leave untouched in the back of my mind. Like a safe sort of place I can go.

I imagine the animals are all hiding down there.

Somewhere.

That all life isn’t being snuffed out little by little.

And even though we don’t talk about it, about the other women who’d been in the beast’s belly, what happened to them, we all know our end is coming soon too.

There’s no use talking about it.

Especially when…

As if my thought summons it, there’s movement.

The walls pulse. The hole in the top opens and the arm descends.

Instinctively, we all jerk and scramble away.

Sam lets out a scream as the arm brushes her foot and my mind goes into panic mode.

It’s ready to breed another of us already?

Sam collides with me, her elbow digging into my gut as I scramble backward too.

But Mina…Mina isn’t fast enough.

The metal arm closes around her belly and she screams, her gaze locking with mine.

Panic floods through me.

We have no weapons. Nothing to fight with except our sheer will.

But that is never enough.

Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m struggling from underneath Sam, trying to release myself.

Attacking the thing never works.

But maybe this time…

Mina screams as the arm pulls her toward itself, her hands grasping at the smooth surface beneath us, trying to grip on to something to no avail.

The pure terror in her eyes hits me deep.

It’s like looking into a mirror.

That could have been me.

It will be me.

And that’s the thought that pushes me forward.

My hands close around hers, and I pull, screaming.

It feels like my joints are going to be dislocated as the claw retreats into the machine, pulling Mina, and, in extension, me, with it.

She screams again, hanging on to me for dear life, and in the back of my mind, I feel skinny arms wrap around my legs.

Sam.

She’s helping too, trying to pull us back.

But it’s useless.

Mina doesn’t budge. The arm keeps retreating, and it is too strong for the strength of all three of us combined.