Rush The Game

every face is the same as the last.
    A horrid thought hits me. I turn my head and look at Jackson. “Does it hurt them?” My question echoes through the room. His hands freeze on the tube he’s holding, but he doesn’t look up at me.
    “No brain,” he says. “Nowhere to process the sensation of pain. You aren’t hurting them and you can’t kill something that isn’t alive in the first place.”
    He’s right, but I feel sick anyway. I shove my emotions into a box and work my way down the line, aware of Tyrone creating a symphony of shattering glass behind me. I kill the next respirator and the next, telling myself these girls were never alive. They’re some sort of clones without brains, with machines breathing for them and feeding them. They’re shells destined to be used in a war against mankind, the ultimate spies, or maybe the ultimate stealth weapons.
    I keep my breathing slow and steady, forcing myself to be calm. The smell is stronger now, antiseptic overlying something that smells sweet and foul, sort of like burning rubber mixed with raw bacon mixed with the smell of the mushroom farm Dad and I once drove past on the highway. I glance at the others and notice that Luka has the back of one hand pressed up against his nose as he moves between gurneys.
    “Done,” he says a couple of minutes later. He’s reached the end of his row.
    “Done,” Jackson says.
    “What the hell is that smell?” Tyrone asks.
    I hit the button on the last respirator and pull out the tubes and wires. “Done,” I choke out, the word catching in my throat. I force a deep breath and almost gag. I look at the body in front of me, really look, and then I see things I missed up till now because I was so focused on just getting the job done.
    The skin of her feet doesn’t look right; it’s pale and shiny and there are blisters all over her toes. I move up to her calves and see more of the same. Turning, I check the next body. Her limbs are worse. There are actually chunks of skin sloughing off her feet and the blisters extend up above her knees. The next body has huge sections of skin sloughed off her hands and her arms are discolored.
    The smell . . . it’s the smell of decay. The bodies are rotting, the ones at this end in worse shape than the ones at the far end of the row. I swallow against the bile that crawls up my throat.
    “I think I know why security is so light,” I say. The others turn to stare at me. “There’s something wrong with them. Whatever the Drau have planned, this”—I wave my hands, searching for the right word—“ batch failed. They’re rotting. Decaying. That’s the smell. The Drau didn’t care about them because they didn’t turn out right.” I point at the girl’s feet. “Why bother to guard something that’s broken?”
    Jackson walks over and looks down at her, his expression blank.
    “Good call,” he says. He doesn’t sound surprised. A crazy thought hits me: Jackson knew all along why there was light security here. He was waiting to see if I’d figure it out. I shake my head and discount that thought. Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he just tell me?
    “Is this a test?” I ask so only he can hear.
    He turns his face to me. “A test of what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “If it were a test, you’d pass with flying colors, Miki.” So why does he sound angry about that? “Wait here,” he says, then strides across the room and pulls on a door I hadn’t even noticed before now. The handle turns, but the door doesn’t move. Jackson pulls out his weapon cylinder, touches the side, and when he fires it, the black surge isn’t greasy and oily, it’s a thin, powerful stream.
    “I saw this show once about how a company in Texas uses machines that shoot water at such high pressure that it actually cuts through steel,” I say.
    Jackson doesn’t answer. There really isn’t much for him to say. He turns his weapon on the row of respirators closest to him and destroys each in turn. Luka and Tyrone get to work on the other rows. But I stand frozen, watching Jackson. He puts his weapon away, taps the door handle, and it falls free. He steps into the room and makes a point of dragging the door shut behind him.
    I look at Luka and Tyrone. “Does he always do this?”
    “Do what?” Luka asks warily.
    “Take a little personal time?” There’s a touch of venom in my tone, and I don’t really care. On the last mission he disappeared for a few moments there at the end