Complete Exhaustion of the Organism
ShortStory 5,115 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
"It’s not a real baby,” Jain says flatly. “And we should kill it.” Another sunless morning in the Waste. She and Stromile have woken up to a gift: a canister of pepto-pink fluid with an infant inside it. The tiny figure is chubby and squirmy and perfect, and it’s only now that Stromile finally takes his eyes off the thing."
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on Lightspeed, where the author gets the click.