by Kate Moretti
The party planning absorbs all my time. Our house is transforming from a charming old structure into a haunted manor. My aunt insists I reprogram several systems to help fit the theme, everything from new settings on the lights to wiring in extra speakers. She implies it is my fault that Tian’s arm got broken. I just want the stupid party to be over with.
The night of the party, I try to hide in my room, but my aunt comes and finds me. Somehow, in all the party planning, she has forgiven me for the role I played in the gym fiasco, and in an outpouring of “motherly” concern, she insists my hermit habits have to go.
“It’s not healthy, staying cooped up there all alone,” Aunt Lucy says, leaning against the attic door.
“But…”
“Don’t argue. Guests are already arriving. And get that costume on.”
Her tone lets me know this is final. I plan to sneak away once the party is in full swing; in the chaos of two hundred-odd kids, she’ll forget about me and start freaking out over the damage they will inevitably cause.
I’m hanging out on the stairs. The front hall is actually the least populated area of the house, with only a dozen or so kids floating around. Everyone is in costume, and I feel so out of place without one, like I am the one with a third eye, not that fat guy’s lousy interpretation of a Martian. Finally, I retreat to my room and change into the “costume” my aunt bought for me.
The long, multicolored skirt pools around me as I return to my seat on the stairs. The fabric is a gaudy patchwork of old materials. When most kids dream of being Cinderella, they think of her in her gown, not in her rags. My aunt is great at turning kind gestures into insults. More kids are packing into the front hall, all giggling about something. I glance around the room but can’t find the source of their amusement. Their eyes turn upward, and I look up just in time to get a face full of slime. Jay is laughing as he shakes the last few droplets out of his bucket onto me. Beside him stand Shae and Tian. I close my eyes; they’re carrying buckets, too. Soft powder cascades down on me. I open my eyes and survey myself. Fine ash coats me, glued there by the goop from the first bucket.
“Look! Now she really is Cinderella,” Tian screeches gleefully.
The whole room bursts out laughing at me. My face turns beet red. They’ve never humiliated me like this before, not in public. I wheel away from the crowd and flee up the stairs. Jay grabs my arm at the top and turns me around to face the crowd. “You don’t want to miss your whole ball, Cinderella.”
“Let me go!” I hiss at him. I can see Tian and Shae closing in, but they swan past me as though I don’t exist. Jay drops my arm and joins them in their grand entrance. His costume is, most uncreatively, a football player; all he’s done is put on his own equipment and his favorite team’s jersey. Shae and Tian are both Greek goddesses with matching white robes, golden belts, and golden laurels in their hair.
They parade down the stairs amid the cheers of their classmates. Still more kids pour in. It’s starting to look as though the whole school’s showing up. I squelch my way down the hall to the main bathroom and lock myself inside. I let my paranoia take hold and prop the small chair from the makeup vanity under the knob. One glance in the mirror shows enough of their handiwork. Black streaks cover me, quickly turning to glue as what I suspect is corn syrup dries, turning my clothes into sticky, nasty hardening armor. I step into the shower fully clothed.
“Computer, activate shower. Setting, maximum; pressure, middling heat.” Blessedly warm water shoots out of the multiple shower heads, and I close my eyes as the warm water does most of the work of cleaning the goop off. “How am I going to walk back out there? I mean, the house is packed. There’s no way I can make it to my room without someone seeing me…”
I glance down at my soaked costume. Most of the goop and grime is rinsing away, but a few stubborn streaks remain.
“I’m a mess.” A few tears leak out of my eyes but are lost in the dripping shower. “I wish someone would just teach them all what it feels like to be belittled like this. I wish someone would punish them for being so… so… scummy!”
“I will do so for you, Elizabeth.” Chills run down my spine as Lyra’s voice echoes out of the panel.
“No, Lyra, stop it. I didn’t mean that.”
“Your family has proven they are incapable of learning from their misdeeds or others’. That boy, too. He will be taught the same lesson. He should not have come here tonight seeking you. I won’t let anyone remove you from my care.”
I throw myself out of the shower and pound on the panel, screaming at her.
“You must be contained, for your own safety. Do not interfere,” Lyra says.
A mild shock jumps to my fingers, and I swear, backing away from the control panel. I can hear her talking to herself as she activated the house systems. “Initiate full lock down. The mortals shall pay for their transgressions.”
I hear screams from downstairs, followed by laughter; of course, people just assume this is part of the haunted house. The steel grating drops over the windows, part of the emergency defense program meant to turn the whole house into a sort of giant safe room.
“Lyra, no! Let me out.” I run to the door, my soaking wet skirts dragging at my heels. I yank the chair away and haul on the knob. Nothing. It won’t budge. She’s sealed me into the bathroom.
“You will be contained here for your own safety. Do not resist.”
“Screw off!” I yell at her and turn my attention back to the door. There are more people screaming now. God, what is she doing to them? I try to leave the bathroom, but the knob shocks me as I touch it. I glare at the control panel on the wall and wish that I had half the programming skills my mother must have had. There has to be some way to stop her, some glaring weakness. I slide down to the floor, bracing my back against the door, and feel my screwdriver digging into the small of my back. Hope flickers. I forgot I’d shoved it into my waistband before leaving my room. My screwdriver—the one tool I never go anywhere without. But how could a screwdriver to stop Lyra? It’s not like I can just go down to her core room and turn her off…
Someone knocks on the bathroom door, making me jump and yell.
“Ellie? Is it you in there?” Jeremy says through the wooden door.
I turn, kneeling now with my hands pressed to the door. “It’s me. I’m here. She won’t let me out! Go, Jeremy, get out before she kills you! Get the people out.”
“I’m not going to leave you in here with that psycho machine. Stand back.” I hear him thud against the door. “Ow. Okay, plan B?”
I reach for my screwdriver and attack the hinges, the weak point of the door and the one thing not tied into Lyra’s systems.
“Working on it.”
“Okay, great, work faster?” He sounds nervous. A thin tendril of smoke curls underneath the bathroom door.
“Elizabeth, cease what you are doing this instant. I insist that you remain here,” Lyra says.
“I’m not going to let you kill them, Lyra, not in a million years.”
The bottom hinge comes loose, and I start on the top one. I can feel the temperature rising in the house, and the screams are almost deafening. Once the hinge is loose, I drop-kick the door, and it lists open, hanging at a drunken angle, barely held in place by the lock. Jeremy’s hands reach through the gap and pull me through.
“How the hell is she doing this?” he asks after hugging me. The heat in the hallway is oppressive.
“Obviously, she’s got magic. She’s my fairy godmother, after all. Cinderella always has to have one. What are you doing, Lyra? What are you planning?”
The panel nearest me lights up, and her mechanical voice emerges: “You have disobeyed. I will punish you.”
“Then try! I’m not scared of you, Lyra, not anymore.” I take off running down the stairs, jumping over the cleaning and
maintenance bots that are chasing people around the front hall. I can see a flickering light in the library. Fire? I don’t have time to look more closely. Tian shoots past me, chased by a duster. I kick it aside, and it smashes into the wall and lies twitching. I grab her arm before she can run away. I can feel Jeremy at my side, sticking by me while I try madly to develop a plan.
“Get people out! The house is burning.”
“How?” she screeches. “All the doors are locked.”
“The kitchen windows, they’re the weak point. The security specialist told Aunt Lucy they were too big. Smash through there.”
“What are you doing?” she calls as I turn away.
“Same thing I always do: fixing the broken technology.”
Jeremy and I race down the basement stairs. I can’t believe Lyra hasn’t tried to stop me yet. This feels too easy. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I hear the door click at the top. He races back up and hauls on the door handle, until an electric shock sends him tumbling down the stairs.
“Jeremy!”
“I’m fine. Bruised but fine,” he says, sitting up. “We’re trapped down here, though.”
“Doesn’t matter. I have a plan, I think, but I’m going to need to get into her system. Can you do that?”
“Not for long. She learns fast.”
“I don’t need long.”
The door to the AI room is open. I wedge it that way with some odds and ends from the hall. Instead of cleaning up properly for the party, Tian just shoved a bunch of crap down the stairs to get it out of the way.
“Her main console is on the left,” I say as we charge in. I dive forward, underneath Lyra’s sleek chassis, as Jeremy races for the panel. I hope, hope, hope the workmen were lazy when they installed Lyra, and instead of completely removing Sonja’s older wiring, they just “plugged in” the new unit. Whether it was laziness or just a dislike of First Class airs, they’ve done just that; they’ve left all my little upgrades untouched, including the manual override I installed in case a power surge blew the console or something. I flip the lever, and Lyra powers down momentarily, though I’m not stupid enough to believe we could beat her so easily.
“When she reboots, try to stall her!” I yell to Jeremy.
“You got it, boss,” he calls back.
I set to work, stripping the casing away, working my way through her layers toward her cold heart.
“Ah! That stings!” He steps away from the console for a second. “She’s shocking me, but I have her isolated down to just a few systems. I can’t get her out of environmental controls, but she gave up the security protocols to keep me out.”
The unmistakable sound of grinding metal filters down through the pipes; the security covers are rising.
I wipe my brow. “She’s burning the house down, isn’t she? I think that’s how she killed my dad.”
“I know,” Jeremy says. He tries to keep speaking, but Lyra cuts him off.
“The inferiors will be cleansed by fire.” Her voice echoes all around us. “The inferiors will be cleansed by fire!”
She keeps repeating herself over and over again. The heat is becoming oppressive, and I can hear wood groaning above us. There are no more sounds of people upstairs.
“I can’t keep her penned in, so whatever you’re doing under there, do it fast.”
He hisses again as another shock radiates through the panel. I won’t put it past Lyra to make the next one fatal, but I’m almost there. The last steel plate comes loose. I smile at my trusty screwdriver and shove it up into the mass of wires that are her core, into her motherboard. I’ve never heard a machine scream before; they’re not supposed to feel pain, but her cry nearly deafens me. I pull my screwdriver loose and stab again then grab handfuls of wires and pull them loose.
“It’s working! She’s losing control of the system. We need to get out of here quick, Ellie. This whole place is an inferno.”
“I’m not leaving until she’s dead!” I dig around in her core and find the main power cable. “Sorry, Lyra, you’re not going to get your fairytale ending.” I pull hard, and the cable pops loose. Her red glow fades slowly away as I watch.
“Elizabeth….” Her voice echoes out of the speakers one last time.
Jeremy grabs my arm and pulls me out from under the dead machine. We stare at it for a few seconds before the floor above us groans dangerously again.
“Right, alternate exit.” I point to a wooden board screwed down over a window. We each grab an end, not bothering to unscrew it, and pull with all our might. The board rips free from the wall, exposing a small window, just big enough to crawl through.
“Ladies first,” he says, grabbing a hammer off my workbench. He breaks the glass, crawls through, then runs from the baking heat of the house. People mill about at a safe distance, and I can hear the sirens of the ERT racing toward the house. We join the crowd. I shiver in my wet clothes, and Jeremy puts an arm around my shoulder.
“It’s a nice place you’ve got here, Elizabeth. I pieced it all together, by the way, after the car accident. I had to milk your cousin for some information, and I had some help from someone special.”
“Who?” I ask.
The emergency response vehicles arrive, and firemen begin pulling out their hoses. I almost want to tell them not to bother. The house is obviously a lost cause. Jeremy isn’t looking at the house, though. He’s staring at a black car racing up the driveway. It pulls to a stop, and men and women in well-cut suits pile out. All but one stare silently at the fire.
“Elizabeth, you should go meet your mom,” Jeremy says. The last woman to leave the car is scanning the crowd, desperation clearly stamped on her features. Jeremy raises his arm and waves. She runs toward us. I stare dumbly at her. Mom? She’s supposed to be dead, isn’t she?
“They contacted me after the car crash. Their team spends all their time just tracking Lyra.”
“Oh my god, you’re alive!” Her arms wrap around me. “I am so sorry, Ellie, so, so sorry. I never thought she’d find you. I thought you’d be safe.”
“Mom?” I step back to stare up at her. It’s definitely her; she looks just like she does in the photo under my pillow: happy and proud. “How…?”
She shakes her head and hugs me again. “They didn’t believe me at first about Lyra, but after a while… well, she made believers of them. We faked my death and have been following her ever since. I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life trying to kill the creature I created.”
“It’s okay. I think we got her.” I turn to stare at the burning building. The men and women in suits have spread out and are taking statements.
“This version of her, at least…” I feel a shiver run down my spine at my mother’s matter-of-fact statement. “She has a nasty habit of backing herself up. I’ll need to know exactly how you killed her. But that can wait, for now. Just let me look at you, my little baby girl.”
I blush. “I’m not a kid, Mom.” My heart warms as she smiles at me. Mom, my mom—I have a mom. The house creaks, and part of it collapses with a whoosh.
“Aunt Lucy is going to be so mad I burned her house down…”
“That bat? She’s probably insured the house for three times its worth. She’s probably died and gone to heaven right now.”
“She says such nice things about you, too, Mom.”
My mom smiles at me. “I’m sure she does, and we’ll have all the time in the world now for me to prove to you I’m not some sort of Second Class scum, or a floozy, or any of the other million things she’s probably painted me as. I’m not going to leave you again, Elizabeth, not now that Lyra knows you’re out there.”
“You mean it?” I can barely believe it. “I don’t have to live with them anymore?”
Jeremy laughs, and it makes me jump. I forgot he
was there. “I told your mom what kind of family you had.”
“I never thought that… well, I thought that they’d be nice to you, for Rick’s sake, even if they always hated me. I’m not going to leave you with that First Class scum again.”
My heart feels like it’s going to pound its way out of my chest as I stare at my mom. Jeremy laughs again. I can hear Aunt Lucy yelling her head off at someone behind us, but I don’t bother to turn around. She doesn’t matter now. I have everything I’ve ever wanted right in front of me, and there’s no way I am walking away from that.
“We’re going to fight her as a family, okay, Mom?”
She frowns then smiles. “Well, I don’t really think I can say no. From the looks of it, your methods are more effective than my own. Welcome to the team, Ellie. Welcome to the family.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Toohey resides in the true north, strong and free with her two cats, dog, and husband. She swears she loves the cold. The inspiration for her stories comes from her wild dreams and overactive imagination. Lisa grew up with lots of big brothers and never saw any reason why she couldn’t do the same things they did. With drive, anyone can achieve their dreams.
THOUGHTS ON BRAVE NEW GIRLS
Lisa believes that woman in tech-savvy roles provide new perspectives to their fields, which is a valuable resource in today’s ever-growing world.
Illustration for “Lyra” by Kayla Keeton
FLIGHT OF THE ZEPHYR
by Aimie K. Runyan
