Apex Magazine Issue 66

By Sigrid Ellis

Apex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field. New issues are released on the first Tuesday of every month.

Edited by Hugo Award-nominated editor Sigrid Ellis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
FICTION:
Brute — Rich Larson
Candy Girl — Chikodili Emelumadu
The New Girl — Marissa Lingen
The Stagman's Song — Ginger Weil
Tiger! Tiger! — Elizabeth Bear (eBook/Subscriber exclusive)

STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT MICRO-FICTION WINNERS:
Stone Woman — Robin Wyatt Dunn
When a Crossroads is a Corner — M.J. Starling
Whispering Waters — Jessica Walsh
The Fitzpatrick Solution — Loreen Heneghan
Guided Breathing Exercise: Being Mindful of the Succubus in Your Bedroom — Christine Purcell

NONFICTION:
Interview with Ginger Weil — Andrea Johnson
Interview with Mark Greyland — Loraine Sammy
Clavis Aurea: A Review of Short Fiction — Charlotte Ashley
Statistics vs. Story — Ozgur K. Sahin

POETRY:
Brains, Brains, Brains — Puneet Dutt
Sonnet 29 — Ama Codjoe

NOVEL EXCERPT:
A Man Lies Dreaming — Lavie Tidhar (eBook/Subscriber exclusive)

Cover art by Mark Greyland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Nov 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311017611

Book preview

Rich Larson

The apartment’s DNA scanner can pick Anton out of the crowd almost a block away, so the sliding doors were unlocked and the lobby lighting was welcoming when me and him arrived with the crate. Automated apartments are cushy like that, but I would get lonely without human voices. Anton likes it better that way so he can concentrate on work. The latest of which was, of course, the crate: a cube of dull green armor, military–grade stuff that looked ready for an atomic bomb.

We’ll need cracking equipment, I said. It’ll cost.

There’s someone with a cracker down Tiber Street, Anton said, grinning and adjusting the top hat he never sets at the same angle twice. We can rent.

Anton is a real piece of eight. He always wears a gilled coat, the kind you see in old European net plays, and when he grins like that people sink into his gravity well to become pucker–faced meteoroids. He has a kind of charisma, and a fire lit under his brainpan that drives him along at unholy speeds when he gets his hands on something exciting, something like the crate.

When the elevator opened, Anton guided the crate inside and I squeezed in behind, boned fish in the corner. We’d found the thing in floodland, sending up a lazy beep beep from Old Vancouver’s watery grave. Extracting it took most of the week — long nights in wetsuits and choking on boat fumes — but the salvage claim had gone through, and it was all ours now. I was moderately curious, but this one was Anton’s holy grail. Anton thought it was going to be something big.

It could be nothing, I said again, doing devil’s advocate as was usual.

Possible, possible, Anton said. But why put nothing in a mobile bomb shelter?

The elevator breezed open and we floated the crate over to Anton’s workshop. Walls recognized him and put on the lights. This was where the business, Anton and Hume Scavenging, went on. Four years of quality and exceptional service.

We’ll stow it under the counter, Anton said. And throw those sheets over it.

Nobody’s coming to look for it, Anton, I said. It’s all ours now. We slung it under the counter, no sheets, and it sat there looking real fucking innocuous.

§

We rented the cracker on Tiber Street, beside the yellow–taped hole they were still planning to fill with cement. It belonged to a woman with two cigarettes in her mouth. Anton thanked her for the discount with pale arms around his neck.

I didn’t know you knew her, I said, adjusting the recyclable rucksack we had filled with equipment.

Biblically, Anton said, spitting out the taste of her smoke. He laughed at his own little joke and I smiled by accident. Anton. For at least the past decade, except for the incident with Dolly from the supshop, Anton had always told me who he was docking up with.

She’s not too troll, I said, thinking of the seams of her tights and the pristine edge of her collarbone. He grunted his ‘you know, no big issue’ assent. I still don’t know how Anton does it. Friends tell me he’s handsome but I’ve never seen it. His face is just Anton’s face, asymmetrical and, I think, a bit smug.

We’re going to crack open some bottles, too, Anton announced, waving his skyper. The order form for a lunch and liquor was still blinking on his screen. To a week of hard work, yeah?

Yeah, verily, I said.

We clinked imaginary beer.

§

Cracking equipment is hard to assemble while drinking, but we did it. By the time Anton positioned the pincers all around the crate, making sure everything was lined up, the excitement was coming off him like radiation.

Looks ready, I said. Let’s shatter the bastard.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction, Anton said grandly, and he turned the handle. The crate split apart with a sound like bones breaking. We’d both been getting into the spirit, so when we saw what was inside, it was a bit of an anticlimax. It looked like an incubator, the kind they use to heat up eggs for clone–grown dinosaur collectors.

Might be a Rex, I consoled him. Those sell tidy. But of course I was kind of glad it was nothing earth–shattering. Anton’s gut feelings were right too often, and gut feelings shouldn’t be.

Nobody cares about eggs this much, Anton said, reaching for the control. The incubator gave him a green light, so he flipped it open and we saw that it wasn’t holding an egg at all.

Describing the contents is hard. It was shapeless, furrowed red meat and quicksilver splashes. It undulated and shivered in slow motion. It smelled like something bitter.

What the fuck? I asked.

Looks like… nano. Anton put out a hand like he was going to touch it.

Don’t touch it, I said. A ripple went through the thing, like responding to the sound. It was flowing together into sort of a starfish shape, all pumping muscle and the silvery stuff weaving into it.

Nano–bio, Anton finished. How fucking peculiar.

This is one wyrd gene–job, I said, watching the thing coil against itself.

It bucked, sudden, like hips at climax, and in a blink it was on Anton’s arm. He gave a muffled whoa of surprise, stumbled back and around in a circle. I made a grab for the thing, but it had already slithered up his sleeve and out of reach.

Godshit! Anton gasped. He hit the floor on his knees and I pushed him the rest of the way down, ripping off his red thermal. After that came off, I didn’t know what to do. The thing from the incubator was straddling his spine, stretching little fluttery stubs out over his shoulder blades. It took me off my guard, the wyrdness of the whole affair, and how it was sort of beautiful.

Oh, man, man, man, Anton said. Help me remove this little monster. He didn’t sound panicky, which is another excellent thing about Anton. He stays arctic cold under aggressive circumstances. He was even laughing a little, and a laugh of my own was halfway up my throat when the little stubs sharpened, right before my eyes, and plunged as tiny spines into Anton’s bare back.

He whimpered, and I knew this was bad, because he had never made that noise in my memory. Small beads of blood were welling up, all along his spine, and then somehow sluicing away. My first thought was that Godshit, this thing was vampirous. It was sucking him dry in the unsexy way. I tried to pry it off, but it was like grabbing gelatin, slipping and sliding off my fingers.

Then Anton held up a hand, like suggesting that I stop, and he got up off the floor.

What the fuck is it doing? I asked, stepping back. Anton looked slightly woozy, but he was alive. The thing from the incubator seemed to calm down, flattening itself along his back like a fleshy hug. I reached for my skyper where it had toppled from my pocket.

Hume, I think it plugged in, Anton said.

I’m getting the emerg–serv, I said. We still have credit with them, right?

Leave the skyping, Anton told me. He grimaced and propped himself up against the counter. Little twitches were running through him, miniature seizures.

That thing just grafted onto your fucking back, Anton, I said back. Make me a damn compelling, you know, argument, or I’m getting them.

Hume, Hume, Anton said, in his calming way. I’m about to. Whoa. Another twitch twanged through him. You remember those spinal gears? For paralyzed people?

The things that looked like spiders, I said. Yeah, verily.

Like spiders, right, Anton continued. They lay new roads for the nerve endings. Bypass the damage. We’re looking at some remarkable nano–bio prototype for the same thing. He was twisting and flexing.

You’re not paralyzed, Anton, I said.

No, he said. I’m well beyond not–paralyzed. Hit me.

Hit you.

Hit me, Anton repeated. I’ve never slammed one to Anton; I’ve wanted to now and again. The adrenals and the fact he was requesting it and the wyrdness of the whole thing made me amenable, so I took a bit of a stance.

Only if you’ll come to emerg–serv, I said. Get that fucking thing off you.

Anton nodded solemnly. So, thinking maybe it would give his brain a bit of reboot, I swung. Anton was gone, blurred off to the side like a screen glitch, and as I went for the left cross on instinct he squeezed off from that one, too. Anton did a lot of things well, but he didn’t box. The last punch was a lazy drifter, as I was flabgasted, but it was still way too weighted for Anton to pluck it out of the air, as he did, and stop my fist.

Godshit, I said, looking down. The thing had sent tendrils down his arm, red cords of twitchy muscle. Like an exo, but meat.

Smart little brute, Anton said, barely breathing hard. Finders, keepers, yeah? I knew he meant the both of us, because we always say that after we find something really big.

Yeah, I said. Verily.

§

The brute took up residence between Anton’s shoulder–bones, clinging at him like a starfish. First few days, we tried running tests and such, poking the thing with probes and once putting the pair of them into a scan tunnel. It looked to be alive, certain, and the scan showed electrical pulses running through a sensory suite and also through a fleshy nub that Anton thought might be a crude sort of brain stem.

Paramilitary, I said. Some mad prototype. Who buys?

Nobody, until we know how much it’s worth, Anton said.

Fucking thing’s going to eat you in the night, I said, even though the tests showed no damage being done.

Anton’s laugh sent a quiver through the knotted red, the rippled silver. He said it was like being on phencyclines twenty–five–seven, everything jacked up, everything quick. He was always juggling things, seeing how many bolts or airpens or tangerine oranges he could keep in the air at once, plucking and throwing too fast to see. A few times he tried to lift the old boat chassis, knees popping, red–swathed biceps shivering, and I thought it budged a bit, but didn’t tell him.

I’ve been thinking, he said to me a day later, tossing a spanner up and down behind his back. We don’t need to tell anyone about this thing. The salvage claim went through, yeah, but something like this doesn’t get flood–dumped purposefully.

Think some brain team is crying over it in a labo somewhere?

Think it got lost, Anton said, looking thoughtful. As you do, in floodland. Think some transport fuck–up. Never got where it was meant to.

Have a look at the new scans, I said, flipping him a sheaf of hardcopy. He peered at it, squinting for the dimness, and suddenly I saw a little red filament reach around from his collar and wriggle towards his eye like a fucking water snake. I unshuttered my jaw to tell him such, but Anton had noticed. He tugged it closer with one finger and let it branch a tiny membrane over the white of his eyeball.

Helps in the dark, he said. No big issue, Hume.

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