Chapter 476
The sky was always the color of bruised plums. It had been that way for years, ever since they came.
The beings didn't arrive in ships, not in the traditional sense. They simply... were.
One moment, the sun beat down with a familiar indifference, the next, a sickly, violet light had painted the world, and they were there, their forms tall and insectile, moving with an unsettling grace.
Sarah remembered the first days well. There was a panic, a desperate scramble for understanding.
It didn't take long for that to fade into resignation. They weren't interested in communication, only in collection.
Humans were gathered, herded into vast, fenced-in areas, their lives now reduced to a cycle of sleep and processing. The processing was the part that made the plum-colored sky seem almost merciful.
She walked through the narrow corridors of the holding block. They were made of a cold, grey metal that seemed to drink in any light that managed to reach it.
The floor beneath her worn boots was perpetually damp, the smell of antiseptic and something indescribably metallic, always present, clinging to the back of her throat like a foul taste. The beings moved among them, tall, dark, and angular.
They did not speak, instead they communicated with a series of clicks and scrapes, sounds that set her teeth on edge, sending shivers crawling up her spine.
Her stomach clenched as she approached the processing chamber. The sound was the worst, a constant low groan punctuated by the whir of machinery.
Even those who hadn't seen it knew what it meant. She was grateful that her job kept her away from direct contact with the slaughter.
She was assigned to the 'organ sorting' station, which, even in its sterile euphemism, was enough to churn her stomach into knots.
Her hands, encased in thick, rubber gloves, worked with an almost detached efficiency. It was the only way to cope.
The organs were varied, each unique yet identical in their function within the beings' cold, industrial logic. Livers, hearts, kidneys, they passed beneath her fingertips.
Each one was a reminder of the life she once had, the one they'd all had before the change in the sky.
She thought of her mother often. They had been separated during the initial roundups.
A day did not go by when the hope she might be alive did not torment her, clawing at the edges of her sanity. But somewhere, buried deep beneath the layers of despair and grief, there was a spark.
A burning ember of rebellion that refused to be extinguished.
She knew it was a foolish hope. This was not a war they could win.
These beings were beyond their comprehension, an unfeeling, efficient machine bent on consumption. But the thought of living another day, existing like this, it fueled her defiance.
A strange quiet strength began to brew inside her, and it began with small acts.
She started by sabotaging her station's equipment. It was nothing grand, simply a matter of misaligned screws and subtly damaged circuits.
The machines would stutter, pause, sometimes even fail entirely, before being fixed by the tireless overseers. She took a grim pleasure in it, knowing she was causing at least a small delay.
She had learned their schedules. She'd seen how their focus would sometimes wander, their attention span was strange.
They were creatures of ritual and pattern, and that was something she could exploit.
She had also found that some of the workers felt the same. It began with silent exchanges, glances that said more than any words could convey.
The seed of a plot was planted, watered with fear and desperation. They began to collect the sharpest, most durable items from their work stations: metal fragments, shards of broken glass, anything that could become a weapon.
Their plan was reckless and doomed.
Her group had planned to take the overseers by surprise during a 'maintenance window'. They knew it would be a bloodbath, but they had to try.
Tonight, it would start. She checked the sharp, rusted piece of metal she had taken from the conveyor belt.
She slid it into the sleeve of her drab, gray uniform, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She moved with the others into the large area where they performed maintenance.
The violet lights were much dimmer, casting long distorted forms across the floor. The beings appeared from behind walls and corners, their clicking scraping like knives on metal.
They didn't speak or acknowledge, just moved into their areas.
Sarah's heart thrummed in her chest. The air itself seemed to vibrate with the tension, every worker tensed for the signal.
Her grip tightened on her weapon. The maintenance period began.
She and three others surged into a being, each person slashing a tendon of its legs. The beings howled, a strange mechanical whine.
It collapsed and Sarah and her group attacked once more.
In that instant the quiet factory floor turned into an explosion of violence. The metal scraps, repurposed as blades, tore into the aliens' limbs and abdomens.
Their blood, a dark, viscous fluid, splattered on the cold metal, filling the room with a foul stench. Other humans surged forward to fight and attack, chaos consumed everything.
Screams mixed with the scraping whines, a symphony of agony and rebellion. Sarah, fueled by a desperate, hollow hope, fought with a savage ferocity.
They did not make much headway though. The beings, although surprised by the humans' sudden uprising, reacted with chilling, practiced efficiency.
They moved in unison, like segments of a larger machine. Those they didn't simply subdue, they tore apart.
Their long, razor-sharp appendages sliced through the rebels, the floor slick with blood. The uprising turned into a slaughter.
It became a lesson, not of triumph, but of terrible futility. One by one, they fell, and they knew it.
One of her close allies was torn apart, their flesh and bone scattering along the ground.
Sarah, bleeding and exhausted, watched in horror. She could see it now, the inevitable defeat closing in.
She knew their plan was hopeless. Her breath became ragged and weak and her hope began to turn to despair.
She stumbled back against a wall, trying to grasp onto the remnants of her will.
An overseer approached her, its dark, multifaceted eyes glinting with an emotion she couldn't understand. It wasn't anger, it wasn't hatred, it was simply... indifference.
The beings grabbed her by the throat, a single long appendage wrapped around her windpipe, lifting her off of the ground. The air was squeezed out of her lungs, her vision turned gray as she fought for her next breath.
She looked towards the others still putting up their feeble fights. She saw the same inevitability on their faces.
As the world began to fade, she caught a final glimpse of the plum-colored sky, still watching indifferently. She closed her eyes, surrendering to the void.
Then the being slammed her to the ground, again and again, cracking her skull against the cold, metallic floor. Then she saw only violet and cold.
Sarah didn't die right then. The beings weren't done with her yet.
They didn't dispose of bodies. Instead they carried them off to the deepest levels of their processing.
The very machines she had once maintained were now processing her.
They started with the flesh, of course. There was a complex series of belts and blades that turned human muscles into indistinguishable paste.
They also removed the organs, which were packaged and shipped away like any other product. Sarah's brain, still working, felt every violation as a cold, crushing horror, and her blood was drained, leaving nothing but the shell of her bones.
The machines began to break her down further, crushing her bones, separating bone marrow and collagen. Even her teeth were separated from her gums and added to a bone mixture.
Nothing was spared. Finally, her essence, everything she once was, was reduced to its basic components, ready for integration into their monstrous network.
Her remaining 'parts', if they could be called that, were placed into storage, a holding container, suspended in a nutrient solution. They weren't done with it yet.
Days turned into weeks. Her sense of self, her memories, her very soul, became fragments, scattered pieces of a life that now meant nothing.
And then came a sudden shift, an unexpected alteration in the processing. The nutrient solution was pulled away, replaced with a cold hard metallic container.
The fragments of Sarah were pushed deeper, forced into a mold. It became clear what they were doing.
They weren't merely processing flesh, they were processing life into building material. Her remaining structure was reshaped, becoming part of the factory itself.
She would become an indistinguishable part of the factory floor where she had once fought against them, her very being a testament to their ruthless efficiency. A step, a handrail, an unseen pipe.
The world moved on, a silent, monstrous machine churning beneath the bruised plum sky. Sarah, as a human being, ceased to exist, but a very tiny bit of her remained, a part of the factory.
Each step, each mechanical groan, became her lament, echoing in the cold, metallic heart of the machine she had died to fight. And with that, Sarah's final defeat was complete, a very brutal and dark ending indeed.