Migration Read Free

long Disposal corridor to the last room in the group, Disposal 10, and found a new face waiting for him. A young girl, maybe sixteen, was standing silently in the half-light.
    He looked her up and down, registering at once the fire in her eyes, the bandage that wrapped around her hand and wrist, the tilt of her hips that tried to say “Fuck you” louder than the shout of uncertainty that was etched across her face.
    “Who the fuck are you?” Mo asked gruffly.
    “Maddie,” she replied, like they were already arguing.
    “You don't look old enough for this shit.” Mo eyed her up and down again, checking out her footwear, her ink, her hair that was cut short over her ears. Her tits.
    “I can handle it.”
    “Really??” Mo puffed a little air out of his nose. “Then you'll be the first one!”
    He shook his head and sighed, before aiming his words at her in three punchy volleys. “Nobody. Handles. It.”
    Silence edged into their brief conversation, making them both wait awkwardly together in the small room. Maddie with a “So now what?” look on her face and Mo with a “Really? I have to look after you?” on his.
    After a few seconds he broke his stare away from her and scanned the room. Empty drink cans and trolley straps lay scattered on every counter, and the bolt gun dangled untidily from the ceiling with two knots punctuating its spiral cord. On the floor, a large, waterlogged cleaning cloth lay half on the flat and half crawling up the wall, and to the left of the nearest hatch, a light blood spray tracked straight up twenty centimetres, blooming broadly before it ran out.
    “Fucking Zayn!” Mo muttered with his teeth clenched around the words.
    Mo had disliked Zayn long before he’d filed the report on him. He disliked him for many reasons, but mainly because he was shit at what he did. Well, that and the fact that Zayn felt that he was better than everyone else in Disposal. He hadn't committed any offences to get busted down. He had no anger issues, no practical or ethical hang-ups with AarBee either. He just didn't give much of a shit about what he did before migrating. He was all swagger and bullshit and the big man (the result of high-status parentage, not anything earned) and he knew he’d be migrated early, no matter what. He was here for the kicks, and he’d be gone soon. He was the sort of asshole that went out on safaris for Ghosts and Lifers, who bought his way out of trouble and treated everybody he was unlikely to need on the other side like shit.
    Mostly though, Mo just disliked him because he was the worst Duper in the place. Whatever Mo had done in the past, whatever issues he had, there was nothing that he didn't do expertly. Whilst Zayn sometimes took three or four bolts to terminate a Dupe, lazily hitting them in the mouth, across the bridge of their nose, perhaps popping an eyeball out or detaching an ear in the process, Mo did it first time, every time. Clean. It was important to him.
    He picked up the damp, sticky cloth that lay on the floor and wiped the blood from the wall.
    “Come on,” he looked over at Maddie and pointed to the cans on the side. “Let's get this fucking mess sorted. Once they start coming, we won't have time for this shit.”
    They spent the next ten minutes throwing stuff out, wiping down surfaces and hooking kit back where it belonged. The anti-bac spray got rid of the smell of stale sweat and blood that had hung in the air, its orangey freshness giving a strangely domestic feel to the sparse and clinical space, but nothing could shift the smell from the Chute that clung in the background. It was a warm, felty, dark aroma that clustered in the back of your throat, like a mildew infested sail cupboard in the bowels of an old boat or a wet wooden counter top from a butchers shop.
    When the hatch to the Chute opened, the stench would seep through the passages in your face and crawl across your tongue. Mo had noticed Maddie gag a couple of times as they