I Was Made For - Swallowing- -john Thompson- Ggg-...

John turned slowly. His eyes were human, mostly. The only part they hadn’t upgraded.

She frowned. “You want to swallow a bomb? Yourself?”

John opened his mouth. It was not a threat. It was an invitation. His throat glowed faintly blue from the catalytic reaction already beginning. He tilted the canister and let a single drop fall onto his tongue. I was made for Swallowing- -John Thompson- GGG-...

“This,” he said, “is what you’ve been leaking into the groundwater for twenty years. You didn’t just build me to swallow waste. You built me to swallow the evidence.”

The recall order came on a Tuesday. “Unit GGG-7 will report for systemic deconstruction.” John turned slowly

“What do you want?” she asked.

John walked to Bay 7, his old berth. On the wall, someone had scrawled: “I was made for swallowing—John Thompson—GGG-7” in faded marker. He’d written it himself, the night before they’d tried to put him under. A joke that wasn’t funny anymore. She frowned

“I was made for swallowing,” he whispered, the words fogging the wire. It wasn’t a boast. It was a specification.

Now, crouched in the shadow of the perimeter fence, he watched the night crew pack their trucks. He knew their routines better than they did. At 02:14, the south guard would take a smoke break behind the coolant tower. At 02:22, the motion sensors cycled for thirty-seven seconds.

“Then let me do what I was made for,” he said.