Daugher of Ash

by Matthew S. Cox

  No one but her.

  Kate’s legs gave up a few blocks later, dumping her to the ground in a foul-smelling alley. She dragged herself to the side, instinctual habit seeking out a patch of bare metal behind an ancient dumpster. Her last conscious thought was to tuck the pistol out of sight.

  The stink of piss gagged her awake. Kate moaned and pushed herself upright. A few pieces of windblown trash fell off her as she surveyed the alley with bleary eyes. It had gotten dark, though she felt as sluggish as if she’d slept two days. Pain had given way to soreness all throughout her body. A band of hypersensitive skin around her throat burned even at the touch of smooth metal wherever it made contact with the collar.

  I gotta get this damn thing off. She frowned at the stained, rusting dumpster. No shit.

  She choked back the sickening stench of urine, feeling a little better when a quick pat down revealed it as an ambient aroma rather than a need to find new clothes. An odd feeling of reassurance battled her sense of vulnerability. The last time the stunner went off, she’d made quite a mess. Maybe I’m getting used to it? After a stretch, she pulled herself upright, and stretched again. No, it hurt a lot more this time. Her head sagged forward. I hope this thing doesn’t cause permanent nerve damage.

  Kate worked the stumble out of her step in a few minutes, feeling sore but not to the point of limping. She considered her options: go back to El Tío, try to get to Querq, seek out Division 0 in the city, sit still and wait for C-Branch, or wait for Aurora/Archon to find her again.

  El Tío could probably find someone to get rid of the damn collar. She rubbed it. Of course, that would make her feel indebted to him all over again. Now that she could wear clothing and be normal, he’d be all the more inclined to use her. That might not be so bad.

  I could finally enjoy the giant apartment and all the fancy things he’s been wanting to give me for years. I could live well.

  She cringed from the remembered image of Althea’s smile. Why the fuck do I care what that kid thinks of what I do? Her arms folded over her stomach, trying to press away the want to eat. For minutes, she tried to justify working for El Tío as a necessary means for survival, but always, Althea’s disappointed tears filled her thoughts.

  Is Anna right? Did that girl do something to me? She closed her eyes, pausing for a breath. The deer advanced out of the darkness, pleading black eyes fixated on her. Kate sank into a squat, rubbing the side of her head. That’s a helpless animal. It’s not the same as killing people. I only killed them to survive. A clattering can bounced in the wind. She glanced down the abandoned alley, eyes drawn to every flutter of trash or waving scrap of curtain. C-Branch made me to be a killer, but it’s not what I wanted.

  No, she couldn’t return to El Tío.

  C-Branch would be no better. They were little different from the Syndicate, though rather than trade in drugs, weapons, and sex, they traded in power. She’d rather work for El Tío; at least his people admitted being criminals.

  No, C-Branch was out.

  She wanted most to repay Althea for the priceless gift she had given her. The urge was easy to label unnatural, as much at odds as it felt with her personality. She trudged without direction, walking just to walk, peeling back layers of logic. The girl told her she used anger to hide from sadness. Kate cried. The horrible images of the lab seared into the memory of her child’s psyche came back. Men screaming and burning, little Kate killed them without wanting to. Her desire had focused on survival and escape, but her awful power had translated her urge into death. Each grotesque sight had terrified her more, which only intensified her emotion and made the next one even worse.

  She never wanted to kill them.

  A sunken stairway to her left offered a welcome place to hide from the world. The recessed stoop had a dull green door that looked as though it had not opened in decades. Kate trudged into thigh-high trash at the bottom, one story below the road, and curled up on the ground against the wall. All the guilt and loneliness hit her out of nowhere. One by one, the faces of her victims faded in and out. She sobbed apologies to empty air. The deer had been food.

  “It is the way of all things, child,” said the wild man’s voice. “Be grateful to the deer for its sacrifice, for it gives up its life to sustain yours. Its spirit will return, as do we all.”

  The deer had become her guilt. Everything she could not feel for the scientists, she had put on the animal. She was every bit the monster the old priest had said. She would have killed Althea without a second thought to get what she wanted, killed a child to satisfy her desire for Esteban.

  Kate cringed, feeling dirty and ashamed. She didn’t deserve to be in Althea’s presence; she didn’t deserve the gift she’d been given.

  I’ll just sit here until they find me.

  She didn’t look up when the door to her right scraped open. Tattered green pants, one boot and one bare foot, stepped into view.

  “Someone order pussy?” asked a man.

  Replies emanated from deeper inside the building: “Huh?” “No.” “Thursday!”

  “Cool, then we got a freebie.”

  Kate jumped as the man seized the shoulder of her jacket, hauled her upright, and shoved her through the door into a stumble that ended in the middle of what had once been someone’s living room. Four glass orbs, a former light fixture, hung above her head. To the right, three men sat at a folding table. One cleaned a pistol, while the other two busied themselves repacking liquid drugs into used autoinjectors. Breath caught in her throat as the smell (and flavor) of damp, sweaty socks mixed with mold pervaded her senses.

  One of the repackers blinked, hunching over his work as though she would steal it with a look. “Thursday!” He pointed at her, one eye wider than the other. “Don’t trust the blue turkey!”

  A woman reclined on a sofa so far gone it was impossible to tell which parts had rotted to mildew and which were supposed to be that color. Too-large eerie lime-green eyes shone from a caramel-hued face. Almost cartoony, they stood out as an obvious cosmetic mod trying to make her look like an anime girl. What she likely got hoping to create a look of innocence had left her creepy. Her torn microskirt, striped leggings, sneakers, and pink sweatshirt lent an air of psychotic preteen to a body that looked a few years older than Kate.

  Flickering light painted the wall between the sofa and the boarded-up front window where a frighteningly thin naked man had draped himself over a coffee table. A wire connected him to a battered net deck, its damaged holo-projectors responsible for the blur of color. Thumbnail-sized derm patches, black and red octagons, drew a line down both arms from wrist to elbow. He hadn’t even bothered removing the spent ones.

  Past the couch, a doorframe led to a darker space where plaster dust hung in the air. Walls had crumbled or been battered down. Large portions of several separate apartments had become one large area filled with half-walls and mounds of scrap. Several old mattresses littered the ground a few paces in, some stained with blood.

  “Badge hasn’t come out of C-Space since his pet bitch got herself shot,” said Creepy Girl. “You can have her bed if you want.”

  Kate gulped.

  “Wow,” said the one cleaning a pistol as he dropped it, jaw hanging open. “That bitch is fucking hot!”

  Old anger returned. She held her hand up in a claw shape and grinned. “You have no idea.”

  “This one still smells city fresh,” said Grabby. “Bet she’s gonna run. Twitch, you still got those cuffs?”

  “Yeah,” said the man at the table, ignoring his gun. “Do we have to?”

  “They ain’t for you this time, dumbass.” Grabby winked at Kate.

  The stun collar grew heavier in her mind. Kate froze. Hundreds of encounters with horny gangers replayed in her mind, each one ending with flames and screaming. Her left hand teased at the choker, fingers slid between the metal and her neck. Stuck in the damnable psionic restraint, she had no options aside from those of a normal woman―a normal woman of slight build
, average strength, and little skill at fighting.

  A normal woman that, at that instant, felt vulnerable.

  “Ooh, I bet this one’s a freak.” Grabby put a hand on her arm. “Likes the leash?”

  Kate rolled away, twisting to face him as she backed for the inner doorway. Something hard poked her in the ribs as he tugged at her jacket. The gun! A forced smile showed teeth. She ran a hand down her stomach and slid it into her pants.

  “That’s it, baby,” said Grabby, advancing on her. “Take it off slow.”

  “Nah, nah… Hell with slow.” Twitch ran up behind him, tossing a pair of handcuffs to the other man before he yanked his tight blue shirt off over his head in one smooth motion. “Let’s do this.”

  Grabby pushed her to his left, pressing her into the wall before she could get through the doorway. She turned her face aside, redirecting his attempted kiss onto her cheek. He growled with lust and ground his stiffening crotch into her. She pulled her hand out, caressing his stomach for an instant before covering her left breast. He took a fistful of her hair, pulling her head around and holding her tight. Grabby didn’t notice her hand slide from her breast into the jacket as he forced his tongue into her mouth.

  More than anything, Kate wanted to burn him. Reason barely kept instinct at bay; if the stunner went off now, she wouldn’t want to wake up to the aftermath. She shifted her weight to her left leg, squirming. Grabby took her writhing as interest instead of the revulsion it was and relaxed his hold on her hair.

  Twitch pulled at him. “Dude, let her get naked first.”

  Her fingers found the gun and slipped around the handle. Grabby leaned back enough to reach for her belt. She swung her arm out, bashing the handgrip into his teeth. He tripped over some cans, landing on his back while clutching his bloody mouth.

  Twitch dropped the cuffs.

  The urge to reach for pyrokinesis held back by threads, Kate clutched the weapon in both hands and fired. Her first two shots went high, holing the floor on either side of Grabby’s head. He tried to take advantage of her poor aim and lunged. She fired again, and the back end of his skull exploded. She stared through the small finger-sized hole below his right eye, at the room behind him.

  The thump of the body hitting the ground spooked her, and she fired several more shots into the corpse’s chest. Shouting snapped her out of the fog; the two men at the table scrambled for their guns while Twitch jumped in a flying leap for his half-assembled pistol.

  Kate rolled left and darted into the doorway as they opened fire. Plaster bits and fragments of Epoxil simulated wood flew overhead. She stumbled, not noticing she had tripped over a mattress until she somersaulted back to her feet. Clanks and pings danced in the dark. The voice of El Tío made fun of holo-vids in her mind as she scrambled behind a half-crumbled wall.

  When her world consisted of a four-foot square heat tile in El Tío’s office, she had little to do but watch him watch movies. He found the ricochet thing silly, as guns didn’t do that anymore unless someone happened to fire one at an armored military vehicle. Modern firearms had enough energy to penetrate most materials―especially helpless psionic women. She gathered herself in a shivering ball, digging her fingers under the collar and tugging at it with all she had. It had no seam, no controls, only smooth silver metal the whole way around.

  That’s impossible. It’s gotta open somehow! How did they put it on me?

  “You fucked up now, bitch!” shouted an unrecognized voice. “You’re gonna die.”

  She gave up on the idea of tearing the stunner apart, and squeezed the pistol. Boots crunched on debris, getting louder. For an instant, she debated popping up and firing over the small barricade, but chickened out. Confidence borne of expecting bullets to melt on contact had abandoned her. Even if Althea’s ‘fix’ would still let that ability work, it would certainly trigger the stunner. Terror at what bullets would do to her raised a rattle from her shaking pistol. She cowered as another hail of shots rang out. At a break in the gunfire, she dove into a rapid crawl, headed for what looked like a doorway into a corridor that once ran between apartments. Fragments of plastic and glass embedded in her hands and bit her knees through her pants.

  “There you are!”

  A face and a handgun peered over the irregular curve of a crumbling cinderblock wall thirty feet behind her. He fired without sighting over his gun, and missed by several meters. Kate shoved herself sideways, landing on her back. She wasted a second trying to aim at his head before she thought of the ricochets. She flinched as his second teasing bullet whistled past, close enough to spray her with bits of wall.

  A hail of wild shots barked out of her police-issue sidearm, disintegrating fist-sized holes in the wall where she guessed his body to be. His gun slipped from his grasp, blood seeped out of his mouth. He regarded her with utter confusion―the last expression he would ever make.

  “You… cheated,” he wheezed, sliding to the floor.

  In the wake of her rapid barrage, the tromping of two pairs of boots got closer.

  “Fuckin hell,” yelled Twitch. “She shot Pillbox right ‘froo the damn the wall.”

  “Yeah,” replied a voice slowed to a disinterested haze, likely by drugs. “You can so freakin’ do that, man. This ain’t Cyberspace where missiles stop on office cubes.” Two bits of wall exploded as the druggie fired back. “See… right goddamn through it. That’s such bullshit, man. I fuckin’ had Ceebo dead to rights, but the god damned cube wall stopped my rocket.”

  “This ain’t a fuckin’ game.” Twitch’s voice had raised to near-feminine pitch.

  Between her barrage and a few pot shots from the other side, the wall had taken enough damage to afford her an unobstructed view of Twitch and one other man. They stuck their guns in the holes, aiming at her. Kate fired in their general direction, trying to break their concentration while scampering backward to her feet. The gangers dove for cover, giving her a chance to get up and run deeper into the building.

  An explosion of shattering glass erupted behind her; she spun to look back. Twitch ran headfirst into dangling, broken light tubes, swinging his gun to bash them out of his way. A little bit of old Kate showed itself as she aimed and fired without hesitation. The first bullet cored his left thigh; the next five riddled his chest. She shot him once more after he hit the ground, causing the body to twitch.

  She laughed at the irony of it. “Well, Twitch. For what it’s worth, I did help your body emit fluid.”

  “Fuck this,” whispered a man’s voice from somewhere out of sight. “Hey, bitch…”

  “Don’t fucking call me that.” Kate shot at the approximate source of the voice.

  A man shrieked. “Hey… whatever… Make you a deal?”

  “I don’t want to make a deal with someone who was ready to kill and or rape me.” Holy shit, I just killed three people and I’m not even tired. She stared at the gun. This is so much easier than making fire.

  “Relax woman!” he yelled. “I was loadin’ up some spent stims wit some fresh chem. Look, you don’t want my stash and I don’t wanna get shot. I take the stash; you don’ get shot.”

  “Is that supposed to be an offer or a threat?” She backed up, gun raised. “What guarantee do I have you’re not gonna fuck me over?”

  “Bunsen’s too high to even walk,” whispered a woman, behind her.

  Before Kate could react, a thrown knife plunged into her left bicep, scraping bone and poking out the other side. She screamed, firing several shots where she’d been aiming as she slumped to her knees. A wet splat preceded a moan and a gurgling wheeze.

  The large-eyed woman pounced, tackling her face-first into the floor. Two fistfuls of hair pounded Kate’s head into the debris-covered concrete.

  “Think you’re fuckin’ pretty huh!” shrieked the woman. “You need some more work.”

  Roaring, Kate flung her right hand backward, trying to hit her attacker with the pistol. The woman caught her forearm in her teeth, biting down. Kate screame
d; the woman let go of her hair and grabbed her wrist, smashing her hand into the side of a broken cinderblock protrusion until she dropped the pistol.

  An attempt at a left cross hit the woman in the cheek, but the pain from the embedded knife sapped all the strength from her arm. Large, unnatural eyes widened even more, the lime green irises phosphorescing in the near dark. She tried to bite, but Kate kept teeth from finding her cheek with a raised knee. The woman’s canines elongated to fangs with a faint mechanical whirr. The sight of the dagger-teeth gave her enough of a scare to kick the woman off and sit up, grunting. She grasped the handle sticking out of her arm, but couldn’t summon the will to pull it out.

  Kate lunged for the pistol, but the woman dove on her legs and pulled her back. Fingers smeared clean trails in the dirt inches from the weapon. She kicked backward, a feeble effort that her attacker avoided with ease. A hand around her belt hoisted her off the floor high enough to receive a kick to the gut, which flipped her on her back. The screaming woman fell on her again, six-inch metal claws sprouting from each finger.

  “Fuck!” screamed Kate.

  Kate caught both wrists, ignoring the hot smear of pain in her left arm. They rolled over each other several times, the woman’s advantage in strength and experience offset by Kate’s panic. One slip up let the fangs get too close. Fortunately, the stun collar got in the way, resulting in a mild cat scratch on the side of the neck.

  Kate shimmied along the floor, locked in a deadly game of mercy with razor-sharp claws. The woman bent her hands forward, trying to slash the arms holding her.

  “I’m gonna flay that pretty face off!”

  The woman tried her best impression of a vampire’s hiss, which cut off as Kate lurched upright and smashed her forehead into the woman’s nose. A second head-butt left the freak dazed and bleeding from the nose. Finger blades retracted as she cradled her bleeding face. As soon as the woman went from trying to claw her to pulling back, Kate flung her to the side and scrambled for the handgun.