The "acid-scrub" wasn't a shower. It was a long, concrete trough filled with a stinging, lemon-colored liquid that bubbled whenever it touched organic matter.
"Get in," the guards commanded, prodding them with electrified pikes. "Unless you want the Gut-rot to eat your skin off by midnight."
One by one, the survivors stripped. There was no modesty left. Their bodies were a map of the Academy's cruelty: Grog's shoulder was a purple, swollen mess; Mei's leg had deep, jagged tooth marks from the Dwellers; and Ren's collarbone was bruised black from the kick of a guard's boot.
When they stepped into the trough, the screaming started.
The acid hissed as it ate away the layer of toxic sludge and Dweller fluids. It felt like being flayed alive by a thousand tiny needles. Ren clenched her teeth so hard she felt a molar crack. She watched as the water turned a murky, brownish-red. Bits of dead skin and parasite eggs floated to the surface like seafoam.
After the scrub, they weren't given clothes. They were given "hulls"—stiff, grey jumpsuits made of a plastic-paper hybrid that chafed against their raw, stinging skin.
"Where's Specs?" Mei asked, her voice a thin rasp. She was looking at the empty bunk where the kid with the glasses used to sit.
Ren didn't answer. She was looking out the small, reinforced window toward the "Factory Sector" of the Academy. A thick, greasy plume of yellow smoke was rising from the chimneys.
"He's being 'processed,'" Ren said.
"What does that mean?"
"It means the Academy doesn't waste calories, Mei. Use your brain."
A bell rang—a sound like a hammer hitting a hollow skull.
"All units to the Grinder!" a voice boomed over the speakers.
The Grinder was the heart of the Academy's "Ranking Tournament." It was a circular pit, fifty feet deep, with walls made of smooth, blood-stained glass. At the bottom, the floor wasn't flat. It was a series of rotating metal plates, some covered in rusted spikes, others dripping with a slick, black oil.
The remaining eighteen students stood on the rim, looking down into the dark.
Iron Jaw stood on a floating platform above the center of the pit. In his hand, he held a bag of small, jagged crystals.
"Rankings are shifting!" he shouted, his voice amplified by his chest-bellows. "The Heart you brought back from the Gut? It's been converted into 'Neural Shards.' These little beauties, when pressed into the skin, boost your synaptic response. They make you faster. They make you meaner."
He tossed the bag into the pit. The crystals scattered across the rotating plates, glowing with a faint, sickly violet light.
"Only ten shards," Iron Jaw grinned. "Eighteen of you. The bottom eight after this round don't get dinner. They become the dinner."
The floor beneath them vanished.
Ren hit a rotating plate hard, the air whistling out of her lungs. She rolled instinctively, narrowly missing a row of vertical spikes that rose from the floor with a hydraulic hiss.
The pit was a chaos of screaming and grinding metal.
"Ren! Help!" Mei yelled. She was clinging to a ledge, her fingers slipping on the oily glass.
Ren looked at her. Then she looked at a violet shard glowing just ten feet away on a bed of rusted needles.
"Get up yourself, Mei!" Ren roared over the noise. "In the pit, there is no Alpha Squad! There's only the Rank!"
Ren lunged for the shard. A boy—one of the quiet ones from the back of the truck—tried to trip her. Ren didn't even look at him. She swung her elbow back, feeling his nose collapse under the strike. She grabbed the shard.
It was freezing cold. As soon as her skin touched the crystal, it felt like a bolt of lightning traveled up her arm and slammed into her brain.
Her vision turned purple. The world slowed down. She could see the individual drops of sweat flying off Grog as he wrestled another boy for a crystal. She could hear the heartbeat of the girl next to her—thump-thump, thump-thump—sounding like a heavy drum.
The "Grinder" started to live up to its name. The outer walls began to shrink inward, pushing the students toward the center where a massive, rotating screw was churning.
"The shards! Get the shards!" someone screamed.
The fight turned nasty. This wasn't combat; it was butchery.
One girl had her hand caught between two rotating plates. The sound of her fingers being pulverized was lost in the roar of the machinery, but the spray of red was unmistakable. She didn't stop fighting; she used her bloody stump to try and gouge the eyes of the boy holding a shard.
Ren felt a surge of unnatural aggression. The Shard wasn't just a tool; it was a parasite. It wanted her to kill.
A boy named rael, who had been Rank 4, lunged at Ren with a jagged piece of metal he'd hidden in his jumpsuit. He was fast, his eyes already glowing with the violet light of a shard he'd already consumed.
"Mine!" Rael shrieked, his voice sounding like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.
He swung. Ren ducked, her movements blurred by the neural boost. She didn't use a weapon. She grabbed Rael's wrist and twisted.
CRACK.
The bone didn't just break; it tore through the skin, white and jagged. Rael didn't scream; he laughed, the shard in his brain overriding his pain receptors. He tried to bite Ren's throat, his teeth bared like a rabid dog's.
Ren slammed her forehead into his face. Once. Twice. Three times. Until his face was a featureless mask of red pulp. She reached into his pocket and tore out his shard.
She now had two.
The Result
"Stop!" Iron Jaw's voice boomed.
The floor plates locked into place. The grinding screw halted, dripping with bits of fabric and flesh.
Only twelve students were still standing. The others were either crushed in the machinery or lying in heaps, their bodies broken beyond repair.
Mei was alive, but barely. She had no shard. She was huddled in a corner, her jumpsuit torn, staring at Ren with eyes full of pure, unadulterated horror.
Ren stood in the center, two violet crystals clutched in her blood-slicked hands. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps, and the purple light in her eyes was so bright it cast shadows on the floor.
"Look at the board," Iron Jaw commanded.
The projection flickered.
> NEW RANKINGS:
> * Ren – (Dual Shard Integration - Critical)
> * Grog – (Single Shard - Stable)
> ...
> * Mei – (Fodder - Pending Disposal)
>
"Mei..." Grog whispered, looking at the girl. He had a shard embedded in his forearm, the skin around it turning a bruised black.
"The bottom two," Iron Jaw said, pointing to Mei and a boy with a shattered jaw. "You didn't get a shard. You didn't show 'initiative.' Guards, take them to the Vat."
"No! Ren! Please!" Mei screamed as the guards grabbed her by the hair. "We were in the truck together! You saved me in the cage!"
Ren stood still. The Shards in her mind were screaming at her to kill the guards, to kill Iron Jaw, to kill everyone. But her body was heavy, the "crash" already beginning to set in.
She watched as Mei was dragged toward the heavy steel doors that led to the Factory. She knew what was in the Vat. It was where the protein maggots came from. It was where the "Medical Waste" went to be broken down into the grey sludge they ate for breakfast.
The survivors were marched back to the barracks. There were more empty bunks now. The room felt bigger, colder, and smelled more like a slaughterhouse than ever.
Ren sat on her bunk, staring at her hands. The violet light was fading, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache in her skull that felt like a parasite trying to dig its way out.
"You could have helped her," Grog said from across the room. He was clutching his stomach, his face grey. "You had two shards. You could have given her one."
Ren looked at him. Her eyes were empty.
"If I gave her a shard, I'd be Rank 12," Ren said, her voice sounding like dead leaves. "And tomorrow, I'd be the one in the Vat."
She lay back on the thin, moldy mattress. She could hear the pipes in the walls humming. Somewhere deep in the Academy, the grinders were turning again, processing the "failures" into the next day's meal.
She closed her eyes, but she didn't see darkness. She saw Mei's face, and she saw the violet glow.
"Welcome to the Academy," Ren whispered to the empty room. "Eat, or be eaten."