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Chapter Text

This has got to be the worst way to die. I mean that, really. When I was a kid, I used to have this morbid fascination with death. I would wonder things on the thread of: how would it feel if I died by vehicular manslaughter? I was a scrawny little thing, and I wore these big floppy sandals that dragged on the crackled pavement with this kshhh sound and got in the way of each other. So, say I tripped on the road: the driver would turn the corner, and suddenly I would be street meat. That’s the sort of thought I had when I was ten years old. I had pondered every which way I could have died from age ten to age twenty-nine. I’m thirty now, which means I’ve exhausted all my thoughts and gone out of bounds.

My mind really is a terrible place. I am Jack’s sick, self-obsessed deprecation. Or something. The food packet in my hand shifts in the draft blowing white-hot snow into the crevasse and the movement is at the perfect angle to brush the apparent fractured wrist I’ve accumulated. That would explain, probably, the random bulge in the wrist of my snow suit. One hop for joy had forced me on a literal downward spiral through a snowy ravine of hell down into the throat of Creeper oasis and awarded me a great big buggering pain in my arm. Stupid food. Stupid Creepers. Stupid Sera. Stupid everything.

“Hey!” Someone’s shadow breaks the light above my head, thank somebody. “Are you alive down there?”

Because I hate myself, and because the snow seeping in through my suit and my sweater and my skin and my bones makes even the marrow shiver, I sit myself up on my good hand and pass an arm over my head once for good measure. Sera’s face peeks over the lip of the hole I’ve dug myself and grins. “You lived! Shame, huh?” I watch her belay the rescue line to the clasp on her chest and inch herself onto a steep platform maybe ten meters above my head. They disappear over the edge, then pop back up flamethrower-first. “Good thing my baby’s still safe.”

“Hell, Sera.” I tip my head back and the rest of my body follows suit. The snow takes this as the cue to sink back into the very particles of my body. “It’s hell.”

They have the gall to give me a pitiful grimace. “Is that what dying feels like?” The way the question rattles off the walls and bounces across the pit of despair is all too reflective of the effect it has on my eardrums hearing the stupid thing every day. I dismiss her with another wave of my lame hand and shiver. Everything has wind here. “You won’t be mad if I just take this and not you? I mean,” they gesture at the rescue rope, “I won’t get down there on this, and I’ve got the flamethrower, and you’re as good as…”

“Jus’ go,” I tell her. She gives me a thumbs-up before she climbs her way up out of hell. Just as their foot disappears over the ledge I start thinking maybe I should have told them to stay, but what good would that have been? I’d just be the whiny Matariel all over again. Apparently, Matariel 8 had been a bit of a complainer. Sera’s ship takes off meters above my sick and cold living corpse and rustles snow over the edge that lands on my face in plumes. Ain’t that a kick in the head? Something rumbles in the distance, deep and low and, if I had to guess, hungry. Right. Creeper territory. A cave off in the distance quivers under the weight of movement and a huge segmented carapace peeks around the corner and steps into view while little ones follow.

I’m done for.

Legs each set to a segment slip and tumble down the wall before the Creeper rolls and stands over me, body heat and fur in my face. Its gaping maw opens right over my head, inches from my nose, teeth circling, and

The cycle of reprinting sucks. I mean, just the worst. But it’s better than dying forever. One moment I’m gone and the next I’ve blinked awake to the printer room. It’s not lost on me how impressive it is that humans have come so far, I guess. Somehow we still don’t have flying cars, which is even more impressive. Funny, that.

Like flying cars, though, there were these huge ethical concerns. Except, obviously, the whole “human reprinting” thing was a bit more of a conundrum than just carbon emissions. Cloning up to that point had existed as a separate and fictional concept for the sole point of entertainment and maybe waxing hypothetical for the more thoughtful viewer. I was not one of them. The idea with Expendables was to kill, kill, kill, until they found out what made us live, live, live. Viruses, radiation, vaccines, food: all of it has been tested on Expendables, like me. So that’s where the ethical issues came in. There were also religious concerns–something about “you can’t make man in man’s image” and “every soul deserves one body,” but I’m not a believer in anything except eating and sleeping. Long story short, Expendables became banned on Earth and legal in space for the efficacy of survival on other planets.

That means I’ve been at work since I got here. I mean, they told me there was this one time…

“ Matariel, did you find it? ” Camael had asked over the comms.

“The extra cable, Cam?” I even apparently twisted the cable in my fingers when I had that hand. “It’s here.”

Cam said they called Haniel over, and Haniel had boredly asked me if I was experiencing nausea or dizziness. I allegedly said yes. Then I was told to take off my glove and between the opening and closing of my eyes when I blinked my hand had been blasted clean off by space debris. They reprinted me as I had been before that, because they didn’t want an “imperfect” Matariel with a missing hand. I still don’t know if it was the radiation or the air getting vacuumed out of my suit or freezing in the great big cavern of space that killed me. I woke up in the recycler room with an abstract sense that I had gaps in my memory. Ariel had come by and petted my hair with a bit of clinical detachment, smiled at me. Told me that I was special, because I was going to have the shortest lifespan.

“I know,” I muttered, “ten minutes.”

Ariel’s cheesy pink smile did something that haunted my mind–it set me at ease. “Actually, it’s more like fifteen. Lucky you, yeah?” And the process had gone on. They injected me with water to keep me hydrated, whispered nice things in my ear, generally took care of me. 

“Keep the memory going. Focus on blood samples,” Haniel had told them in that collegiate monotone, “tubes in every hole.” 

Ariel had snickered on the last word. Yay me, the court jester with a tube up my ass. That was all true, though, because blood really did come out of every cavity in my body. And right before I died again I remember thinking, gosh, a life insurance policy on me would have cashed me out to riches enough to put Mansa Musa to shame . Literally, I’d have money from here to Timbuktu, except for Expendables’ exemption on life insurance. The next time I was printed, my first thought was, damn . 

You might be thinking, how did you even become an Expendable? and to that, I tell you, I chose to do this . Then you’re probably wondering, why in hell would you do this to yourself? and I ask, does this look like heaven to you? It’s a nice banter we have.

Thanks to Sera and I’s brilliant brainstorming session with our good pal Mary Jane, we decided that macarons would be the new hamburgers in a few years. Genius, really. Same shape, same fame. And because we’re both morons, we took a big one from this loan shark named Mr. Ze. When the macaron business didn’t pan out, we were cornered in an alley and hogtied in our very own restaurant to watch some of Mr. Ze’s goons go all Leatherface on some poor guy who slacked a few payments. Mr. Ze themself was something right out of a George Raft movie, if you ignored the fact that me and Sera were pathetically kneeling on the sticky linoleum bawling like a couple of loons instead of kicking miraculous ass and swooning a horde of gorgeous women. What a sight that would have been. Mr. Ze’s right hand man had leaned over and told us, “They’ll chase anyone who misses the deadline to the ends of the Earth.”

I had looked at Sera, who had the same idea as me at that moment. For all our idiocy we sure could work well together. We figured, at that second, we’d get the heck off of Earth. No ends, no end . We each applied to a colony expedition but some million people or something were also trying to haul ass, so I just applied to the first form I could find.

A news reporter came by the station, talking in that superficial placating voice they all use. “It’s a race to the exit as people desperate to leave the planet pile into the interplanetary port. Anti-migrationists say appealing this for Earth’s sake is like speaking to a brick wall, but we’ve come here today to see what applicants had to say.” The camera panned to this huge banner that waved over all of our heads that had this big picture of Kel Benedict plastered on it and some slogan about their journey to the stars. “This is the expedition championed by Congressman Benedict, who lost their last two elections in a tight race with Michael Hyve. What is this failed politician’s goal among the stars and, more importantly, will they succeed?” In the blink of an eye, he’d gone from a few meters away to being right in my face, nearly shoving the microphone down my throat. “I’m here live with an applicant. Excuse me, are you a Kel Benedict supporter?”

From behind me, an explosion of red hats barrelled towards the reporter like a river of blood and I dragged myself to the other side of the counter to stay afloat. I filled out whatever was left of the stupid paperwork and shoved it to the person behind the desk, who looked like they would rather be on their phone off in a secluded mountaintop cabin far away from society than here. They had bright red hair though, which I can get behind. They leaned forward and I caught their nametag. Nathaniel.

“You’re… applying to be an Expendable?” Nathaniel asked, and the miasma of disbelief in their voice pulled my thoughts out of the molasses. “You read the paperwork?”

“Yep.” Nope.

In retrospect, I definitely should have read it, and I definitely shouldn’t have lied.

In retro-retrospect, I should have probably tried to develop some trade skills or something. Beef up my hands-on approach. Instead I stuck myself in office jobs and toll booths and a whole slew of other symptoms from this disease called capitalism, or something like that. Sera, on the other hand, got a job as a flitter pilot as easy as pie. The lucky bastard. From where they stood next to their employer, they looked at me and smiled.

“You know what you’re getting into?”

I looked down at my fates. Plural. And I nodded.

Nathaniel typed something out on their computer and soon enough a lean no-nonsense figure clacked towards me with thick boots and a demeanor of ice. They stood next to me and looked at my paperwork, then at me, then at my paperwork again. (Was everyone really all that disturbed by my choice? If they were, the blame is on me. I wouldn’t want to be me either.) They turned to me with a schooled expression and asked me, “You read through the paperwork?”

Again, like a complete and total idiot, I whimpered a quick, “Yes.”

So there I was, in a deep, dank basement with some person I didn’t know that had hair that smelled nice and suspenders so high they could wear their pants like a cloak. “You know,” they said in that deceptively smooth voice, “this is going to be extreme. And… fun.” But from the way their tongue caught on the last word, I had more doubts than I had freckles on my arse. Still, I generally prefer to look on the bright side. I had a job and a clean slate somewhere far away from bloodthirsty lumberjack loan sharks and I was the only one who applied, which means I got it easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I couldn’t tear my attention away from this person’s hair. They talked about the cycler room, and the printer, but all I could think of was how something old woke up from hibernation deep in my chest.

When they turned around, I tried to get a glimpse of their lanyard. “We’re going to need a scan of your biodata,” Cas told me, then led me to a room where I could remove my clothes. I’m not exactly a creature of dignity, or anything. I pulled on this weird rubbery full body suit, then I got up on the metal table, which promptly chilled my whole back down to the bone. Cas hooked a bunch of wires up to my head, chest, and stomach and leaned over my face, popping a pimple on my forehead. At least it wouldn’t be there for my next “regeneration,” apparently. They ran a quick “personality backup”, then pulled out a syringe. They smiled at me, which clearly was not a practiced expression for them, and then injected me with this viscous green fluid that sent me back in time, back through all my memories. In an instant it was difficult pifficult lemon squifficult. Everything rushed through my head at once like a flood of salty seawater the taste of homebaked cookies and pennies you swallowed off the floor.

Every time I told myself I wanted to live, every time I convinced myself I wanted to die–every single moment hit me. Suddenly I was in the car with my mom and she turned to tell me something and I pressed a big red button and then…

Well, the devil is in the details.

I don’t know what happened next, or how I got there, but I was next sitting on a bed just crying. I couldn’t stop crying. It had all been so much on my mind in such a short amount of time. People aren’t made to handle things like that. At some point the door creaked open and Cas stepped in front of me. They pulled my hand from my face and placed a revolver between my fingers. The metal of the handle was cold, colder than the metal table. They guided my hand up, up, up, until a small cylindrical barrel kissed my temple. I held death in my hands and suddenly it wasn’t all that appealing. Every notion I’d ever had about ending it, about taking the easy way, about splattering my brain so bad my autopsy would just say “mashed like a potato” all went out the window.

“Try the trigger on the tip of your finger, Matariel,” Cas told me gently, “how does that make you feel?” For all the expression of therapy, Cas sure was doing a bad job. This whole situation would’ve sent an actual psychologist a paycheck big enough for a trip to the moon.

I couldn’t get a word out. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to eat and sleep and have sex and fall in love and live.

“This is the final requirement to be an Expendable,” Cas said. I heard rattling next to my head. My hands shook so badly the gun made the tiniest clik chink chik sounds in the shell of my ear. “You have to get conditioned to death. This is your job. Show me you have faith.” They frowned at me when I couldn’t bring myself to comply.

Grabbing the gun from my hand, they pointed the barrel right between my eyes. I stared down the deep black gullet of the firearm for a long, long moment. What if this didn’t work? What if everything failed? What if I died?

Cas pulled the trigger. The engine roared. The magazine spun in its socket.

When my brain didn’t get painted across the wall like an abstract art piece, I unclasped my hands from my unknown prayer and got the courage to look up. The magazine was empty.

Chapter Text

My first day was harrowing, needless to say. I had a lot of moments where I thought, what have I done ? Of course, that didn’t slow the colony ship down or eject me back to Earth or anything. Not that it mattered, because I’d be shark food if it did. Still, Matariel 1 started off on their four-and-a-half-year-long journey into space with a positive attitude and high hopes.

“Matariel 1, you are nine calories over the ration allocation,” the tinny loudspeaker warned me loudly, blaring through the whole cafeteria. So I put the extra steak square back meekly. I’d hoped no one saw that, but everyone was staring at me instead. And then they kept staring, because they realized I was the only Expendable on the ship; in other words, the only moron dumb enough to sign up for the program. I tried to keep my head up, but it was dead quiet in there, like if you breathed the loudspeaker would warble EXTERMINATE and blast you with a death laser from the great metal beyond. Then Kel Benedict walked in with their lackeys in tow and applause erupted from the tables. Red hats popped up in every corner of my vision. I lowered my head, thought to myself, what did I get myself into?

Then. Then. Then.

That’s when I saw him. That’s my favorite part of the story.

Dantalion Lowe locked eyes with me across the cafeteria and a million years passed in a second. He smiled, beckoned me over, looked at me. So I sat next to him. That was the best day of my life. He talked, I talked, we talked. Even in the second we said hi, it was instantly like a wealth of something between us.

“Speech! Speech! Speech!” The crowd chanted all around us. Dante covered his ears. He was one of the people who had the money for cool stuff like cosmo-genetic modification, or maybe his family was rich way down the line, because he had these slitted eyes and fancy super-hearing ears that only a few people had. (In any case, he certainly looked unique.) The uproarious chanting died down quickly, but he kept his hands on either side of his head.

“Enough, enough,” Kel said, their blue bob shaking this way and that. They really sounded like Sue Sylvester in that moment, which made me tune out from the rest of the speech. (It did not dawn on me how often I relied on fiction as a crutch for occasions like this.) “You’re going to burn up all your calories. We’re on a specialized caloric intake, people.” I looked away from the speech when Dante set his hand on mine. I really wish I could say I heard the rest of it–the parts about calorie-burning and sex-positivity and whatnot–but Dante and I had run off to his bedroom by that point. By the time we emerged back into the cafeteria, pink in the face and dunked in sweat, Kel was going on about a “pure white planet,” or some crap.

Dantalion and I both made a face.

“We will infest the planet!” Kel declared victoriously, fist in the air. Their supporters leapt at their feet, screaming and cheering and reveling in the majesty of some failed politician. We’d see about that. Me and Dante infested the ship, but with love. It was corny, but love butters you up like a good cob, and I was head-over-heels. He made what would have felt like forty years a bearable time to be alive, which was really saying something because death didn’t have stakes anymore. He was always there for me, even at my worst.

I couldn’t have asked for anyone else.

Thank you, Mr. Ze, for making me kick myself into taking the first ship off Earth. Really. This is the first time someone’s taken such good care of me, and I took care of him, too. Dante’s on the security detail here, so I have to take care of a soldier, a firefighter, a bodyguard, what have you. It’s not easy, but neither am I. We love each other, and that’s enough. He was the only one who didn’t treat me like I was… well, expendable. To him, I wasn’t a lab rat, or an experiment, or a man overboard. To him, I was somebody. 

He didn’t like talking about death. Something about it turned off all the lights in his eyes. So I didn’t talk about it, and he never asked.

Other people did, though.

“Hey, Matty-Mat,” one of the randos on the ship would ask me, giggling like it was some clandestine thing, “what’s it like to die?”

Their friend next to them would laugh. “Yeah, tell us!”

Imagine living shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow with these donkeys.

“They won’t say it,” one of them would tell their friend, and nudge them a bit.

It was enough to tip me over the edge. And Dante, apparently, who would step in. He would always take care to remind us what a little oasis we have up here and the little metal pill of reminder in his hand would usually keep them at bay. I never thought it was possible to look so gorgeous with a trigger on your finger.

“Matariel 9’s ration allocations have been reduced to half and they have been assigned to cycler cleaning until further notice.” The loudspeaker bounced around the tin can that was the detention center, which basically looked like what you would imagine an American Human Kennel Club might look like. Except no one was there to push fingers and treats between the bars. Dante was with me, though. He always was. And I sort of grew to like my job, even though I hated reprinting. I was important. For the first time in my whole life, I was somebody that mattered. I took my job in stride and held my chin up high every day until I got to see the sun again.

Finally, one day, Kel came on the speaker system while Dante and I were getting ready for bed. “ My friends ,” they said, but their voice indicated they could care more about the shit in the toilet, “ it has been four long, long years on this ship, but it has come to pass that we are landing on our very own planet of purity, of ingenuity. ” There was a kshh sound from the living room when our TV clicked on and blinked white. Dante and I looked at each other in disbelief.

“It’s just TV snow,” Dante mumbled.

“Meet Niflheim,” Kel announced over the PA, “our new home.”

“Or real snow,” I commented.

Next thing I knew, I was being kicked out into the great snowy unknown with white desert as far as the eye could see. It was sort of like being stuck in TV snow, the way the wind blowing hissed past your ears. The snow blew tiny knives into my face, prickling against my cheeks and nose. “Inhale, Matariel,” Raphael instructed over the comms, “imagine there’s a virus in the air and force it to fill your lungs, take up space.”

They didn’t sugarcoat anything when it came to my job. I imagined that every air particle down to the tiniest quark entered my nose, traveled down my esophagus, and swirled around in my lungs until they were at maximum capacity. I saw all of the shared air of all the things that could possibly be on this planet bouncing around in my chest and escaping when I let out a slow inhale. Then I repeated, and repeated. On the bright side, the air tasted cold, like a nice cold.

There really was a virus in the air, and it Hurt with a capital H. I was just grateful the chill felt pleasant on my poor, abused lungs. They tested me, took blood samples, cut my stomach open, did all sorts of things to me, and then me again, and then me again and again and again. One time, I even survived long enough to see the cycler.

“Oh, shit,” one of the cyclers said, “they’re alive!”

“Who cares,” their partner replied, “they’re a goner anyway.”

The cycler was way different than the virus. But thanks to Matariel 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 getting cut open, burned, stabbed, gassed, whatevered, we had a vaccine that worked. In droves people exited the ship to see the planet in its plain hospital white glory. My greatest gift to mankind: fresh air.

Months later, me and a couple of researchers from Science made the great trek into one of the many ravines nestled deep into the crust of the planet. These ravines were dotted with these organic tubelike structures, similar to something you’d see on Earth. Back where there are volcanoes and lava, the magma does this thing where it functions like a living being: it burrows deep underground carving out these deep and winding chambers under the Earth by eating away at the layers of sediment. (I always thought it was fascinating, the things nature was able to do to itself like that.) On Niflheim, these tubes were also dug out of stone. What made them particularly fascinating to Science was the fact that there were no visible volcanoes for miles and miles, and counting. Jofiel led the way with Sandalphon and Muriel in tow, so I was bringing up the caboose. 

“Can you believe we lived in that thing for four years?” Muriel asked, gesturing at the spaceship that was slowly minimizing in our trek in the opposite direction.

Sana laughed, pulling out his earbuds that were playing some J-Pop song I wasn’t privy to. “I know, right?” He turned pace to walk next to Muriel, bumping their shoulder with his. “We landed, like, a year ago and we’re still on a TV dinner diet.”

This prompted both Muriel and Jofiel to laugh. Hindsight being 20/20, this whole naive distraction we had about leaving the ship we called prison for the first time in years might have been a catalyst to the following unfolding events. We entered one of the aforementioned ice caves with the stone tubes and I remember marveling at how smooth they were. “Look at the tubes,” Muriel pointed out.

“I wonder what could have made these,” Jofiel had thought aloud, “because they’re almost… organic. They don’t follow any rhyme or reason, they’re just in and out.”

It was at that moment that I slipped and fell off a small ledge. Jofiel, Muriel, and Sana all laughed at me. “Didn’t you practice breakfall?” Sana asked. 

“What’s breakfall?” I asked him. 

He’d hopped down with me and helped me up, smiling. “It’s when you break your fall, idiot. There’s a technique Jo taught me once, and—“

The world devolved into chaos when Muriel screeched, the noise rumbling the ravine. We heard skitters and whines and tittering and a whole manner of noisemaking from all around the cave as a hardbacked little creature tumbled out of one of the tubes and wriggled vaguely in our direction. Muriel, in a bit of a panic and also in what I could only have guessed was embarrassment at the noise, had pulled out their gun and shot in any and every direction. Bulletholes dotted every wall, every pillar, every stalactite that wasn’t the critter. However, it did scare it off enough that it went running back to the others, wherever they were. Muriel panted like a dog in the summertime while Jo, Sana, and myself watched dumbfounded and shocked like brainwashed lab rats in front of an iPad screen playing LiveLeak at full volume. The cave creaked ominously, something that vaguely sounded like get out! before it shook like an earthquake. Muriel shot Jo one last horrified look before they were bombarded with icy stalactites.

“Muriel!” Jo had shouted, before someone had grabbed their hand and promptly pulled them from the path of another descending spike. “ No! ” Sana had tugged Jo to their chest while I stood there like an idiot. Pebbles of snow tumbled down around me, landing on my shoulders and getting caught in my hair. It was a bit of a macabre setting for a blizzard, but I was nailed in place by what I’d seen.

Next thing I knew, I was back on the ship stationed in front of a small television screen that crackled angrily. Kel’s image fizzled into view and the second I could make out their face they screamed at me. “You useless fucking moron! What the hell were you doing? Pushing Muriel in the way?” I didn’t even flinch. Being yelled at wasn’t a foreign concept to me as an Expendable, after all. “You’re meant to be expended, damn it! What do you think you’re here for?!”

Well. Ouch.

“A fertile life was given so, what, you could live in their place?” Kel continued. “Might as well have asked God to strike us all down and give you a goddamn light show, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. You didn’t argue with Kel Benedict. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes forward, like a good little soldier. Jofiel’s soft cries behind me certainly hadn’t helped.

At that moment, Kel’s assistant Joel scurried in, all teeth and eyes. He smiled at them placatingly and showed off a fancy tablet screen–the kind only rich kids back on Earth got. “Kel, you might want to see this.” He’d nudged them to lean in, eyes on the screen, and played back one of our recordings of the creature from the ice cave. The chattering sound it made was unmistakable. “Disgusting, isn’t it?”

Kel frowned deeper. If that was possible. “Well, what the hell is it? It’s creepy.”

It was like a lightbulb went off above Joel’s head the way his face had lit up. “Creepers!” He beamed at Kel, full of himself the way a dog walker’s bag might be full of shit. “That’s what we’ll call them! Creepers! And look at it. Vicious, innit?”

As always with Joel, Kel had nodded in approval. “Hungry, by the look of the thing.”

While the two of them watched, Jofiel continued to wail loudly behind me. I don’t really do well with emotions, so it was starting to get awkward. I shuffled around on my feet, shifting slightly to the left, when Kel’s head snapped towards me and their eyes met mine. “Hey, Pippi Longstocking,” they growled, “don’t go anywhere. If you move from that spot I will hunt you down and sue all of your bloodlines to the end of human existence.”

So the Creeper thing went over as well as you might expect. My shift doubled, and I’d been put on half-half-rations and sent out into the snow; fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, no breaks, I was out there. I couldn’t stop until I brought home a Creeper sample. Or until I died, in which case they’d reprint me and probably send me back out again, I thought. Then, on one fateful day, Sera flew by and dropped me off my favorite food packet: savory. I had been so excited I’d done a little leap for joy.

Then I fell.

Chapter Text

How did I survive that?

I think that, even now, even as the Mama Creeper scuttles its way over me. Please, please let this nightmare be over. I’m sure they’ve already printed Matariel 18 by now, anyway. Instead, a slimy appendage creeps its way around my leg and now I’m being dragged through the snow. Oh, Jesus, that arm will never heal right. Little Creepers dig themselves under me and carry me to their dungeon of feasts, I imagine. “Saving me for the family, eh?” I mutter to the Mama Creeper. It doesn’t respond. The little ones ripple under my back, possibly in excitement for their upcoming meal, and carry me onward. “Are we going somewh’re special?” I struggle over an apparent slur in my speech. Still, none of them respond aside from unintelligible chatter. I get carried through one of the tubes in the rock and ice and, oh. The sun. I shield my eyes but gosh, it’s good to be on the surface.

The Creepers promptly roll me onto the floor. “Hey! Does brain damage make me taste bad?” A Creeper scuttles up to me and chitters, and I swear if the thing had a mouth it would be smiling. It scurries off with the others, leaving me alone. In the middle of nowhere. “Not cool, ditching me out here, you know!” But the Creepers have all gone. I’m well and truly alone. 

What a cruel way to go out, then; dragged out into the snow and left to fend for myself against the cold. I can almost hear the thunderous roars of the depths. Except I’ve gone mad, because by God, my salvation is here. A big rumbly truck rolls along in the distance. I run wildly towards it, flailing my arms in every direction, even though my wrist is definitely, unmistakably done for. “Hey! Hey! Wait!” The truck driver doesn’t hear me but I speed forward anyway, as fast as I can. Time comes to a slow screech. Each boot hits the ground to a soft, slow drumbeat. My arm pushes forward through the molasses, stretching out farther than it’s ever gone. I’m almost there, almost there…

I latch onto the back of the cargo vehicle and haul my body onto the remaining ledge of palette in the back. My breath can barely fill my lungs before it needs to escape and be recycled again. I tuck my knees against my chest and find it in myself to regulate my breathing until the truck pulls up to the ship. The garage door squeals open and the second it stops I hop off the vehicle and stumble my way inside among shouts of, “Hey, stop! You can’t come through!”

At first I think they’re talking about me, and to that I almost fall to my knees and beg, but I hear the driver shout back, “What’s the matter?”

“Look at how big that rock is!” Uriel shouts. “They made rocks that big specifically so they wouldn’t fit into this very garage!”

Jo pops their head out the window. I guess this is a side gig. “What in the world are you talking about? Science asked me to bring it in.”

While they argue, I manage my way through the dock with feet that refuse to fully pick up off the ground. I’m shivering so hard the room is chattering with my teeth. I almost make it to the stairs before someone’s shoulder bumps mine. “Oh, Mat!”

Turning to face them is agonizing. Sana smiles at me. “H-hi, Sana.”

“Didn’t expect to see you out there today. Thought you were inside.”

“U-um,” I mutter, and clear my throat rather obnoxiously, “wh-what time is it?”

Sana pops a confused eyebrow my way. “About 3:30, rainstorm. Keep up.”

They walk off before I can say anything else. That can’t be right, 3:30. That would mean I’ve been out of the base for over ten hours, and they’ve probably reprinted me. Oh, shit. I pick up my feet and haul myself up the stairs where the horrible speaker crackles on right in my ears. “ This month’s special guest of honor for a dream dinner with Kel Benedict will be announced tonight, so hold onto your hats! ” the announcer announces announcingly. Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck . Shedding my uniform, I rush down the hall passing room after room until I nearly trip over my feet when I come to a stop. The door peels open agonizingly slowly. I shove my way in and I can finally, finally stop moving.

“What the fuck?”

Embarrassingly, I jump in the air and screech like a cornered animal. Have you ever seen a rat jump? Imagine that, but far more embarrassing. My own face rises from the bed, glaring at me. “Why aren’t you dead?”

“Uh…” I blink stupidly. This me, Matariel 18, is way different than the others. And I’m not even experiencing it, I’m watching it happen. “Why’s your hair cut short?”

“Malfunction in the machine,” they snarl, “according to Sera, your life should be cut short.”

I’m completely mind-fucked right now. Not even that, I’m fucked, period. “B-but–”

“‘B-b-but,’” Matariel 18 mimics with a pouted lip, “one of us has to go, stupid, and it’s gotta be you.”

“Wh– me? ” What did I do? “What did I do? You should be the one to die! You’ve only been alive for–”

“Two hours,” they finish, “which is why I deserve it!” A look I didn’t even know I’m capable of making passes over their face before they pounce on me, baring their teeth. “You had your life, asswipe, it’s my turn!” Matariel 18 looms over me with firm hands around my throat, holding tighter when I struggle. “It’s cycler time, and you’re on fire, my friend.”

I kick my legs around under them before finding where only I know their weak spot would be–hint: it’s the groin. I force my knee under their crotch and shove as hard as I can, stunning them. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Matariel 18 whimpers and curls over themself on the floor. “That hurt!” 

I slam my boots into the ground when I approach to show them that I mean business, then I lean over them. “Did you?” I demand. This is a matter of life or death. “Did you sleep with him?!”

“That’s why you came barreling down the hall.” Matariel 18’s hands scrabble against the ground as they turn their face up to mine. Horrifically, they smile, nod. Their mouth opens in a chuckle, then bursts into a laugh. “And you know what?” They grin wider, and their face shifts. Goes soft. The next words are barely above a whisper: “He liked it.”

Have you ever heard the ending of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture , where all the music crescendoes and there are cannons spitting fireballs on every side of the theatre, and the bassists and violinists are sweating all over their strings and the timpani player has gone mad and it’s pure chaos? This next part is something like that, climaxing when I scream at my Multiple: “You motherfucker!” The violinists cry out in pain when I begin to make a dash forward, and the bassists’ eyes fill with tears when I collide with Matariel 18. The timpani player nearly splits the calfskin with the punch I throw in 18’s face, and the piccolo player loses her breath and falls out of her chair when 18 tussles me to the ground. The horns keen out with every slap, every kick, and the cannons finally go off when 18 lifts my head up and slams it against the ground maniacally. The 1812 Overture has never ended so violently.

This is the part of the story where you may be wondering what the hell just happened; who is Matariel 18; why have you chosen to conduct your epic failure with the soundtrack of an old Tchaikovsky overture; et cetera. Well, you may want to recall the mention I made of clones, if that sounds familiar. If I’m dead (or assumed dead, in this case), they reprint me as soon as possible. It’s their job. If they reprint me while I’m still alive, we have a case of Multiples–see: above. Back on Earth, the debate with Multiples fell in line with the ethical issues.

Some freak named Oliver Sullivan (also known as the brains behind reprinting) was convicted of murder. Serial murder. A few years ago there was a series of brutal attacks that targeted homeless people, ending with them dead in some horrifically tragic way. I always went to their vigils. It was horrible. The cops had their suspect pretty quickly, but at the time of the murders, he was at Wild West reenactments. When it came to his arrest, they brought two pairs of handcuffs. Both Olivers were turned in and held in custody, murders presented as fait accomplis for the both of them, even though only one of them actually did it. That was good, except the murders continued on. 

To everyone’s shock, a third Oliver Sullivan was out there carrying out these vicious attacks on innocent people, brutalizing citizens left and right before the printing company could type out a word of public address.

Some random newspaper called them Multiples, and the name stuck. It was a word associated with horror, with death, with a whole list of existential conundrums that would’ve stricken fear into the heart of Aristotle. Kel Benedict still fought for reprinting as an upside to humanity’s survival on other planets, even after claiming they believed Multiples were spawns of Satan. “In the case of Multiples,” Kel had said, “we will eradicate them on sight, for the upholding of public service and the wellbeing of the general populace.”

The government had allowed it, and Expendables had been deemed legal off-planet.

When I wake up in a shaky bin with motion sickness, I can’t help but think of my previous selves. According to Dante, Matariel 3 had been extra clingy, while 4 was independent. 6 was… excitable, 8 was whiny. None of them, though, were off the deep end. None of them except 18. Finding the strength to sit up on my good arm, I peek through the garbage over my head. They’re rolling me through the hallway to the cycler room. 

Even this nutcase is scared of permanent deletion.

My wrist twinges under me when we enter the cycler room, cuing me to leap out of my trash prison and out of the bin. If one of us has to go, it’s them. They whip around to face me and waste no time battling me to the floor. We roll around until my head peeks over the fiery hole of the cycler. This is it.

“Wait, waitwaitwaitwait!” I beg listlessly. No dignity to be lost between me and myself, I suppose. “Half it, we can half it! Rations, workload… D-Dante. I-I’ll even cut my hair like yours, dye some grey in there– uck! ” They cut me off with a forearm pressed to my neck.

“Half it?!” 18 spits in my face. “Why are you so afraid to die? You’ve gone so many times, what’s different now?” The fire in their green eyes lights a flame in mine. Lit up like this, I can see every detail of their face: the twitching lip, the darting eyes, the upturned brow. They’re as afraid as I am.

“Every time I’ve died, it– it was just like falling asleep and waking back up. But this–” I jerk my head in the direction of the cycler, “if I die now, it’ll really be over. Could you live with yourself if you commit this suicide?”

The cycler bubbles contentedly behind me. 18 eases their arm off my neck, shifts so they’re not straddling my chest, turns away from my eyes. “I hate you,” they tell the air softly. For a moment, I’m not quite sure who they’re talking to. “You’re a pussy.” So it’s me, then. 18 leans over my face, nose-to-nose, frowning. “It’s why I changed myself. I changed my name, I cut my hair–”

“You changed your name?” I ask. I hadn’t ever thought of doing that.

“Yeah. Don’t wanna be attached to you. It’s Matya, by the way.” They fist their hands in my shirt and narrow their eyes. “And you wish you were me.” Then they thrust me forward roughly, tipping my head over the lip of the chute.

“But I am! I am you!” I plead.

“Didn’t seem like it when you jumped on me for sleeping with my girlfriend.”

“ My girlfriend!”

The whistle of death dances down the hall to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Matya wrenches me off the ground and drags the two of us to a hiding spot under the stairs. They force my back up against the wall and their hand stays pressed against my chest. It’s a bit existential, my heartbeat under my own hand, attached to someone else. Matya seems pretty unbothered on the surface, but I could spot something on my own face a mile away. “Why did you–”

“Shh!” Matya hushes me, glaring right at me. They turn back around just as Sera rounds the corner of one of the adjacent corridors. She stops at Matya’s abandoned trash cart, then takes the initiative to dump it down the chute. I flinch when I hear it hit the lava and sizzle and to my surprise, Matya does, too. That was going to be one of us. More footsteps echo down the hall and blue hair peeks its way in.

“Haniel,” Sera greets them, “I thought you wouldn’t make it.”

“I’m very punctual,” is all Haniel says.

Sera sidles up to them nonchalantly and shoots them a large grin. “Ever tried this?” She fishes a small baggie out of her pocket and waggles it around in front of Haniel’s face. “Pure, raw Oxyzofol.”

I suck in a quick breath. Matya eyes me from the side. “What?” they whisper.

“That’s what’s in flamethrowers,” I tell them back, “when I fell, Sera came down to get the one they dropped.” Matya’s eyebrows climb their forehead before they tune back into the conversation we’ve been eavesdropping on.

“This is rare, Han,” Sera stresses, “hard to get. Even climbed down a hole to save ‘em.”

Haniel, for once, looks the tiniest bit shocked. Their lips part a minute amount and their eyes widen enough for the whites to peak over the tops of their irises. “Wow.” Sera nods proudly.

Something insistent jabs me in the shoulder and I find myself looking right into my own eyes. Still disorienting. “Should we kill her?” Matya asks me quietly. Sera waves Haniel off in the corner of my eye, which is the only thing that stops me from blurting out in surprise.

“What? Why?”

“It’s her fault we’re here. It’s her fault we’re in all that debt. They put our name on all the loans.” Matya’s face twists with ugly contempt for Sera, and maybe for the world. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so much bloodlust at once. As Sera turns to leave, Matya whispers to me, “Let’s do it.”

“Are you crazy?” I whisper back. “They’re– they’re, like, my only friend!”

“What we went through together doesn’t mean anything.” Matya stands abruptly, exiting our safe space.

“Wait!” I whisper after them, but they’re already gone with a smile on their face.

A heartbeat drums loudly in my ears as the blood wooshes loudly through my body. It roars when Matya meets Sera halfway and gives them a little wave. “Hey, Sera,” they coo, “business booming much?”

To her credit, Sera looks genuinely unsure of what they’re referring to. “Uh,” she stammers, “what?”

“The junkie,” Matya tells her, clasping their hands behind their back. They take a few steps to the side and I realize they’re beginning to circle Sera like an apex predator. “Must be nice, saving up to pay off all that debt.”

The realization hits Sera just a moment before Matya barges into them and forces them to stumble into the trash chute. My hands clap over my mouth before I can cry out in alarm, or throw up. Matya stares down the chute with a smile on their face. It’s the most wretched thing I’ve ever seen, the way they laugh in the orange light of the lava core.

“Are you mad?!” I hear Sera shout from the chute and the relief is so palpable I nearly fall over under the weight. “What’s your problem?”

“Sad accident, is all,” Matya mutters to themself. They step away from the chute and wander around before picking up a metal rod. My eyes don’t leave them as they meander back to the hole and dip the rod all the way down before wielding it over their head. The end is bright red. “What do you think of my toy? I found it lying around.”

“Um,” Sera stammers, “it looks… hot.”

Matya smiles a big, toothy grin. My stomach churns. “Thanks!” They lower the end back down into the chute, close to the wall. I hear it scrape the gravelly side, sliding around.

I can barely make out Sera choke a little, “Wh-what are you doing?” 

“Playing,” Matya responds, sounding genuinely excited, “haven’t you ever wanted a stab at dying?” Down the chute, Sera yelps.

“Stop!” I shout before I can stop myself. Matya turns to look at me before they glance to the side and toss the rod away. They drop to their knees and stick their hands down the chute, reaching for Sera. My heart nearly tumbles out of my arse with relief. I watch Matya hiss something in Sera’s ear before pulling her all the way out. Footsteps boom over my head and I catch a familiar voice in the fold.

“Matariel!” Dante shouts, making a beeline for Matya. “What happened? Are you alright?” His hand meets their cheek gently, feeling their face before patting down their shoulders and chest. Matya smiles kindly at him. It’s the first naked expression I’ve seen on their face.

“I’m okay. Sera here fell down the chute.” A hand goes out to gesture at my friend, who adjusts her glasses nervously. Her hands are trembling.

“Yep,” she mutters, “would’ve been toast if it wasn’t for Matariel.”

Dante grins and nods at Matya in approval. Their eyes flicker towards mine, and their smile grows just the smallest bit wider. Fucking bastard. They kiss Dante’s forehead while he attempts to wrestle them back with their face in his hands. “I thought I told you to take it easy, angel,” he tells them, and the nickname makes my chest catch on fire, “you were just printed.”

Matya reaches a hand up to rest on one of Dante’s and it looks for a moment like they’ve forgotten where they are. They grasp his hand and lean into the touch. “Should’ve done,” they reply gently.

Someone clears their throat awkwardly. “Well,” Sera interrupts, “I’ve heard someone’s dealing Oxyzofol. Powerful stuff.” Matya hums. Sera’s eye twitches. “A bit here and there’s fine, but it was, like, a lot. Allegedly. So I’m gonna go check that out. You two have fun here.” She scurries out of the room, Matya’s eyes on her back. I can almost feel the gaze myself. They turn back to Dante, who does a little bird motion with his hands.

No. Not B6.

“B6?” Matya asks, sliding a hand around his waist and tugging him close. The two of them stand stomach-to-stomach while my own bubbles with bile. 

Dante giggles in their arms and gives a little squawk. “B6.”

Their hands intertwine and they run out of the room.

I stole my own girlfriend. I’m going to kill me.