Terminal Point by K.M. Ruiz

Syndicate over the past eleven years, Ciari,” Erik said.
    â€œI train my people as you require me to, sir.”
    â€œAnd therein lies the issue. They are not yours. They have never belonged to you. We own them, as we own you.”
    Ciari expected the pain, the flip of that switch. For one crystalline moment, she thought she could feel the hum of the neurotracker implanted in the back of her head as it processed the order for punishment. Perhaps she did, but it was drowned out by the searing agony that burned through her brain, pressing against the interior of her skull and spiking down her nerves.
    She screamed when it became too much, too hot, knowing that to hold it all in would just drag it out longer. The sound of her voice echoed in her ears. It was the only thing she heard, the only thing that made any sense as she writhed on the floor, both hands clutching her head, incapable of making the pain stop. When it became too much, when it seemed as if the agony were too big for her skin to contain, Ciari clung to the self-inflicted pain in her gut to differentiate between the real world and the threat of insanity that began to crawl through her mind.
    I want, Ciari thought through the fiery feeling of having her brain torn apart. I want you—
    She tasted blood on her tongue, smelled metal all along the inside of her nose and mouth. She swallowed air and couldn’t breathe, her nerves following the dictates of a machine and not her own body.
    It went on and on and on.

 
    FIVE
    AUGUST 2379
LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY
    â€œWhat the hell is Cinnamomum verum ?” Kerr said. He held up a silvery foil packet to the fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling of the vault, squinting at the faded text printed over the front of the packet.
    Jason telekinetically added another box of seed packets and clear glass vials to the top of a pile. The entire stack teetered precariously near the entrance to the storage vault they were ransacking. “Hell if I know.”
    â€œCinnamon,” Kristen piped up from where she had climbed one of the storage racks and was methodically handing boxes down to a scavenger for loading. When he didn’t move fast enough for her tastes, she dropped the boxes on the floor. “Spice out of Sri Lanka.”
    â€œRight,” Quinton said as he hefted a box onto a gravlift. “What’s Sri Lanka?”
    â€œIt was an island country in the Indian Ocean. Rising sea levels swallowed half of it. The Border Wars destroyed the rest.”
    â€œHuh.” Kerr turned the packet in his hands from side to side, wondering what the seeds would look like. “Guess whoever built this place had the right idea. You know, I never did believe those conspiracy theories on the pirate streams about the government hiding supplies. Wonder if anything else they talk about is true.”
    â€œMost of those people are dissidents repeating false information,” Lucas said. “They don’t know any better.”
    Quinton eyed him. “You said most. What about the rest?”
    Lucas smiled slightly, but his only answer to Quinton’s curiosity was “You don’t need to worry about the rest.”
    â€œIf we can’t trust government history, and pirate streams don’t have the entire truth, how do you know all this stuff?” Jason said, warily eyeing Kristen where she clung to a metal shelf.
    â€œGovernment history is fairly accurate,” Lucas said as he entered information into his datapad. “But only if you sit on the World Court or know how to pry it out of the server farm that handles the data traffic for The Hague.”
    â€œWhy didn’t the governments from before the Border Wars use what was up here to save their people? The terraforming machines alone could have saved billions,” Kerr said.
    â€œWho would have gotten the right to use them first? Third-world countries? First? In the face of declining resources, overpopulation, and