I Was Made For Swallowing- -john Thompson- Ggg-... 〈TOP〉

But wars ended. Contracts dried up. And John, with his eerily calm digestion and his empty, metallic-smelling breath, became a liability. A living trash can with a pension plan.

“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.”

“You’re bluffing,” she whispered.

“Unit GGG-7,” said a voice, flat and tired. Dr. Voss. The woman who’d designed his pancreatic filter. She held a remote detonator—a failsafe embedded in his lower spine. “You were never meant to run. You were meant to take in and break down. That’s all. That’s everything.”

John looked past her, through the grimy window, at the moon riding low over the chemical tanks. For the first time, he felt something close to hunger. Not for food. For justice. I was made for Swallowing- -John Thompson- GGG-...

Dr. Voss went pale. Her thumb hovered over the detonator.

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. But wars ended

“I want to finish the meal,” he said.

He heard boots behind him.

And tonight, he intended to swallow the whole damn company whole.

“You can push that button,” John said. “I’ll fall apart right here. But the samples are already with a journalist. And my body—what’s left of it—will be a crime scene they can’t bury.” A living trash can with a pension plan