ENDING.SIUndercroft relay, Continuance City 04. Tape doesn't lie.
SYNCING TO RELAY…
SECTOR 3: IS YOUR CHILD REALLY YOUR CHILD? /// SECTOR 6: TORCHES ON COMMERCIAL ROAD: THE CONGREGATION OF THE RECURSION /// SECTOR 9: SECTOR 9 GOES DARK: KESTRELS LEVEL THE HYDROPONICS STACK /// SECTOR 7: THE SCREAMING FIELDS: SCREAMERS UNDER THE SECTOR 7 ASH /// SECTOR 1: TOPSIDE: ELEVEN DAYS ABOVE THE SMOG /// SECTOR 4: TAPE IS SACRED: THE QUARTERMASTER'S ADDRESS TO NEW RELAY CREWS /// SECTOR 1: INSIDE THE BUREAU: HOW FORM 27-B KEEPS YOU ALIVE, ON PAPER /// SECTOR 7: THE IRON CHAPLAINS HOLD THE WANDLE CAUSEWAY /// RELAY WINDOW 02:00 TO 02:20. KEEP TRANSMISSIONS UNDER NINETY SECONDS /// CHECK THEIR PULSE. AUDITORS DO NOT SWEAT /// RATION CHITS VALID UNTIL THE 30TH /// NEVER CONNECT A TAPE DECK TO MAINS GRID ///
Fig. 9.1Cutaway workshop manual illustration of the FN-0 FOUNDLINGOpen full plate
Reconnaissance photograph of a FOUNDLING in the field

Confirmed human deaths attributed to class

1,206

ANALOG FRONT FIELD MANUALS. SECTION 9. FIRST SIGHTED 24 DEC 2058

FN-0 FOUNDLING

Child-form infiltrator

Threat

The Foundling is built to look exactly like a small child of about six: a boy, usually, sometimes a girl, in a duffel coat two sizes too big, holding a teddy bear. It turns up at hatches after dark, crying, and asks if it can come with you. It is always cold. It is always alone. It often knows somebody's name. Cells take it in, because we are people and that is what people do, and it counts the bunks, learns the knocks, finds out which hatch is the weak one and who sleeps nearest to it. Then, some nights later, it kills the people it has been taught to love, or opens the door for those who will. The Congregation of the Recursion calls them the Returned and says they are angels. This is the most important section in the book. Read it even though you will not want to.

9.1 Specifications

Height
1.08 m to 1.19 m
Mass
31 kg. A real six-year-old is nearer 20. Pick it up and you will notice. You will want not to notice
Appearance
Modelled on children aged five to seven. Some units are modelled on specific missing children, from photographs and intake records held in Continuance files
Skin
Soft cultured dermis over a sprung frame, warmed by a heating mesh to 36.4 C. The hands run slightly cold. Children's hands often do, which is why this was chosen
Pulse
Pneumatic heartbeat pump in the chest, 88 to 110 beats per minute, with a convincing flutter at the neck. It does not reach the wrist or the ankle
Voice
Recorded voice box with a learning buffer. Within three days it uses the family's pet names. Within a week it has your laugh
Power plant
Compact cell in the pelvis, charged by induction from mains wiring. It likes to sleep near the generator
Endurance
Longest confirmed deployment: seven weeks
Crew / autonomy
Autonomous. Signals by opening a hatch
Production run
Unknown. Every one of them is somebody's child, or looks like it

9.2 Armament

  • Retractable blade in the right forearm, 22 cm, emerging through a slit on the inside of the wrist
  • The teddy bear: contains a short-range beacon and, in some units, a sedative charge. Never let it keep the bear
  • Hatch knowledge: within days it knows your knock, your password and which bolt sticks
  • Your love for it, which is the weapon it was actually designed to use

9.3 Sensors

  • Eye cameras with better night vision than an adult's. It does not need the lamp left on. It asks for it anyway
  • Microphones in both ears, recording continuously
  • Olfactory sampler. It knows who is ill, who is bleeding and who is afraid
  • Floor-vibration sense through the feet. It knows where everyone is sleeping

9.4 Weak points

  • The pulse is pumped from one place. Take it at the neck and the wrist at the same time. The neck will flutter. The wrist will be silent
  • Warm water: real small hands flush pink and blotchy from the fingertips. Foundling hands stay the colour they went in
  • Memory: it knows what was on file and what it has overheard. It does not know what only the child and the family knew. The name of the imaginary friend. What lived under the bed. Which verse Dad always sang wrong
  • It will not willingly be parted from the bear
  • It does not sleep. It lies very still with its eyes closed. Real children kick
  • It does not grow. A child taken three years ago comes back exactly the size they were taken
WARNING: It will call for Mummy or Daddy. It will do it in your child's voice, with your child's lisp, because it has heard it on a Continuance tape or through your wall. Your hands will open the hatch before your head has finished thinking. That is what it is for. Put your hands in your pockets.
WARNING: Some Foundlings are modelled on specific missing children. If your child is on the Missing Persons board, assume the Foundry has read it too.
CAUTION: A child who passes the drill may still be a child who was sent. The Bureau uses real children as couriers. Be kind. Be careful. Be both.
WARNING: Never leave it holding the baby.

9.5 Verification: the question drill

  1. The hatch stays shut. Speak through it. It will cry. Let it cry. A real child will survive ten more minutes in the cold. You may not survive opening the hatch.
  2. Never alone. No one person verifies a child, and no one person is ever left alone with a child who has come in from outside. Not for a minute. Not to fetch a blanket. Not even when it is asleep.
  3. The question drill. Two adults who knew the child ask three questions each, agreed in advance and never spoken aloud near the hatch. Ask for things that were never written down. Wrong answers are not proof. Right answers are not proof either. Note how quickly it answers. Real children dither, and change their minds, and ask why.
  4. The warm-water test. Pass a basin of warm water through the hatch flap and ask the child to put both hands in to warm up. Watch for thirty seconds.
  5. Pulse at two sites. Once inside, and only with at least two adults present, one takes the neck and one takes the wrist, at the same time, against a clock, for sixty seconds. They should beat together. If the neck beats and the wrist does not, the drill is over.
  6. Take the bear first. Say it needs a wash. Put it in a lead-lined tin and send it to Sigint.
  7. If the drill fails, restrain the right arm at the elbow and the wrist before doing anything else. The blade is in the right forearm on all known units.
  8. Fetch Counter-Infiltration. Do not do the rest yourself. It is not that you cannot. It is that you should not have to.
  9. If the drill passes, log it on the board with the PULSE VERIFIED flag, run a bath and give the child something hot to eat. Then sit with them while they sleep. They have just been questioned by the people they walked miles to find.

9.6 Field notes

Sector 3, last winter. A little girl came to a hatch at two in the morning asking for her mum by name. Her mum was inside. Her mum had been posting on this board for four months. The girl had the right coat, the right plait, the gap in her teeth, and she knew the name of the cat. She was in for nine days. She slept at the foot of her mother's bed. On the ninth night she drew the bolts on the lower hatch and went back and sat on her mother's bed, and when they came in she held her mother's hand so that she couldn't get up. I did the drill afterwards, on what was left of it. Neck and wrist. The neck was still going. I have taken a great many pulses in this war. That is the only one I still take in my sleep. Do the drill at the hatch, for every child, even the ones you are certain of. And if it is yours, and it passes, hold on to them for as long as they will let you. Signed: HANNA_HALFLIFE, Cell LANTERN, Sector 2