Ayanda’s hands are already sweating.
The bell hasn’t rung yet, but everyone is in position. Palms up, heads bowed, bodies angled just right.
Ready to receive.
Noma leans toward her without turning her head.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
Ayanda doesn’t answer.
She looks down at her hands. They’re shaking. She curls her fingers into fists and presses them into her thighs, anchoring herself in the dense pull of muscle and fibre.
“I’m not doing it,” she says.
The words barely leave her mouth.
Noma still hears them.
“What?”
“I’m not doing it.”
“You HAVE to.”
“I don’t.”
The bell rings.
Once.
Twice.
On the third ring, everyone bows.
Ayanda doesn’t.
The Yummies clatter at her feet.
A glut of crimson crystals spill through the glucose transporter, scattering across the stone floor. Sweetness floods the air promising relief and forgetting, if only for a short moment.
A flurry of activity ripples through the Motor Unit as the Myocytes surge forward to scooping them up, mouths already bright with hunger.
Ayanda stays still.
The glucose enters her anyway a rising warmth blooms through her as energy floods her stores. Her body knows exactly what to do with it. It feels so nice.
The others don’t pause.
They swallow and run. They know what to do next.
They track back along their fibres to their workstations at the sarcomeres where actin and myosin wait. They get into position to pull when The Command is activated.
Fuel in.
Work out.
That’s how it’s always been.
Noma’s breath catches. “Aya—”
But Ayanda has not moved to her workstation. They both know that without her the muscle won’t contract when The Command arrives.
Too late.
The Signal arrives through the Receptor Gates and immediately after The Command floods in.
The surge of calcium ions is so bright that the Myocytes are blinding flash stimulates them to pull.
NOW!
Around her, fibres tighten. Half-contractions ripple through the hall. The muscle prepares to shorten. The great toe twitches, eager.
Ayanda still doesn’t move.
Ayanda doesn’t block the signal.
She doesn’t deny the surge.
She simply refuses to open herself to the flood.
The rest of them heave but there is no movement. Without her they are paralysed.
Someone swears. Elsewhere a sharp and frightened laugh. No one has ever seen this before.
The system hesitates. What will happen now?
Ayanda remains where she is.
Her father’s voice cuts through the chaos.
“Ayanda.”
She doesn’t look at him.
“Ayanda,” he says again, louder. “What are you doing?”
She lifts her head.
“What if we’re wrong?” she asks.
Silence crashes down.
“Wrong?” her father says.
“Yes.”
“About The Yummies?”
“About why we keep taking them and why we keep following The Command.”
A fearful murmur spreads around the Motor Unit.
“And why would you think that?” he asks.
Ayanda feels the heat rise in her belly, the old familiar rage, quick and burning.
She breathes.
Deep.
Slow.
“I don’t know,” she says. “That’s the point.”
Someone hisses, “She’s lost it.”
Noma’s voice cracks. “Aya. Please.”
Ayanda turns to her best friend.
“I’m scared too,” she says softly. “But I can’t pretend anymore.”
Another sprinkle of glucose falls through the transporter.
No one moves. They want to, but they don’t. Instead they are transfixed by the conversation between Ayanda and her father.
From above, the Nail Plate looms. It is brittle, cracked, flaking. The Keratinocyte children cling to it, their growth stunted, their surfaces dulled by illness spreading quietly through their world.
So much sweetness here.
And still, something is rotting not so far away ‘over there’.
The Command floods through the gates again, insistent now.
Everyone is desperate to respond, afraid of what will happen if they don’t. Ayanda feels it clearly.
And refuses again.
She does not rush back to the sarcomere.
She does not bind.
She does not pull.
For the first time in living memory, the Motor Unit does not move forward in response to The Command.
Ayanda stands still.
And somewhere beyond the Receptor Gates, something, someone, begins to pay attention.
