Ascendant- Nation of Nowhere

by Richard Denoncourt

  Michael saw no way to hide what he was thinking. It really did feel like Blake was reading his mind, which made him supremely uncomfortable.

  It’s Charlotte, Michael sent.

  Now Blake was the one to pause.

  Charlotte. How so? Do you…like her?

  Not exactly.

  It’s perfectly normal for a boy your age—

  Uncomfortably, Michael shifted in his seat. No, not—it’s not that. She crawled into my bed the other night. I know she’s with Ian. But she keeps sending these thoughts into my head. Like she’s toying with me.

  Ah, Blake sent. I see.

  Well? After a few seconds of zero transmission, Michael tilted his head in question. Now, all of sudden, you go quiet?

  The old man seemed lost in thought, as if teenage sexuality was a subject he hadn’t dwelled upon since he himself had been Michael’s age.

  I would stay away from her, he sent finally. She’s easy on the eyes, but she’s a troubled girl.

  Stay away from her, Michael sent back. Check. Should I also avoid snakes? Try not to touch hot frying pans?

  Their eyes met, smiles creeping up their faces.

  You’re a real comedian, Blake sent. But seriously, don’t let her problems become your problems. And whatever you do, don’t get in bed with her again.

  What’s her deal, anyway?

  Blake paused again. Michael sensed—or thought he did, anyway—a shift in the man’s emotional state. It was probably his imagination, but he could tell the subject was off-limits.

  Like I said, she’s troubled. You’d be better off stepping on a bear trap, Blake sent.

  What about Arielle?

  Don’t get in bed with her, either.

  That’s not what I meant, Michael sent.

  The Jeep had entered town, bumping along the cracked pavement. They were still in the outskirts, where most of the buildings were abandoned. Michael liked it out here. It seemed quiet and peaceful, as if reality had been hollowed out, leaving a comfortable space in which he could let his guard down.

  Everyone loves Arielle, Blake sent. She’s like the daughter of this town—the favorite daughter. If you hurt her, a lot of people—me included—will get very angry with you. She’s innocent.

  And I’m not, Michael sent. I have all that blood on my hands.

  Sighing, Blake shook his head. None of what has happened so far is your fault. But what you choose to do from now on…that’s on you.

  Michael said nothing, only stared through the open window at the buildings as they progressed from rundown and abandoned to restored and picturesque. They passed Arielle’s business, the Cold War Café. He desperately wanted to get out of the Jeep and go inside, maybe order a cup of coffee in the hope that she was there to sit with him again.

  You’ll be okay, Blake sent. You’ll do just fine from here on out.

  Thanks, Michael replied. I hope I don’t disappoint you.

  You won’t. Also, just remember one thing.

  What’s that? Michael saw the old man was smiling mischievously.

  Keep it in your pants, where it belongs.

  Michael let out a low chuckle, despite the chill that ran down his back.

  Yes, sir.

  Chapter 20

  A brutal winter came to the mountains.

  Icicles formed on the buildings of Gulch, and the air became like sandpaper, scratching and reddening the cheeks of all who went outside. People trudged along the streets, holding their jackets tight and puffing out steam that quickly dissipated. Only the children enjoyed the snow; they built snowmen and had snowball fights while their parents counted how much firewood they had left for the week.

  The Cold War Café became the warm, beating heart of Gulch, offering hot chocolate—for an extravagant price due to its limited supply—and cookies shaped like Christmas trees and Santa Claus. Michael finally learned what Christmas was, though he didn’t take part in the celebrations. They were too foreign to him, and the religious aspect unsettled him because the only gods he’d ever known were Harris Kole and his father, Harold Targin Kole.

  The jukebox played old Christmas tunes by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and other long-dead, prewar singers. The atmosphere was jovial and engaging, and the booths were almost always filled. Arielle treated Michael with a detached sort of friendliness, obviously stemming from the awkwardness caused by Charlotte’s nocturnal visit. He tried not to imagine what Arielle thought of him.

  Blake and Dominic’s training sessions became even more rigorous as the boys were forced to go out into the snow.

  “For the next few weeks,” Blake said one morning as they stood in the pre-dawn darkness surrounded by forest and mountains, the air biting into their skin, “we’ll be learning meditation techniques that will help you to suppress pain, adjust your body’s rate of metabolism, and—with enough practice—enhance your senses by borrowing those of the people around you.”

  The meditation sessions were long and rigorous, everyone freezing during them. They weren’t nearly as interesting or as invasive as the one Michael had experienced at the waterfall. They involved hours of sitting in silence. The hardest part was calming the constant waterfall of thoughts pouring through his mind, so he could find that space behind the waterfall, which existed purely in the moment.

  More than once, threatened by hypothermia, the boys would move indoors by the fire, where they would continue their practice. Sharpening, was what Blake called it. Sharpening the mind by blanking out the past and future—neither of which really existed—to focus on the present.

  Michael failed to reach any milestones, though he did feel more peaceful and relaxed during the day, even when Warren and Elkin were nearby.

  Their training with pistols was much more exciting. Reggie turned his clothing store into an obstacle course four days a week, setting up spring-loaded cardboard cutouts of tattooed slavers and cannibals with sharpened teeth for the boys to shoot with BB pistols. He taught them different formations they could use to storm a raider camp or a slaver base. Reggie’s training sessions were fun and went by quickly.

  Except when Dominic was there.

  “Now try shooting those targets,” he told them one day with a grin.

  The training became doubly difficult as Dominic used telepathy to cloud the boys’ senses and disorient them. They had to practice getting into formation without saying a word, which required communicating with each other using hand signals Dominic kept changing into obscene gestures, just to mess with them.

  The hardest part was keeping Dominic from overhearing their mental speech.

  This is ridiculous, Peter told the group one day, without opening his mouth.

  You’re telling me, Eli sent. Dominic’s a real—

  A real what? Dominic broke in. Two extra laps up the mountainside tomorrow, fat boy. And one more for the rest of you.

  Damn it, Eli sent the group. Sorry, guys.

  You dumbass, Ian replied, rolling his eyes.

  Michael would have joined in, especially now that he knew how to speak telepathically. But he was intimidated by these other boys. Their jokes didn’t always make sense to him. He was sure he would screw it up if he attempted to be funny or conversational. Mostly, he kept to himself, only speaking when responding to a direct question, asking a question himself, or volunteering useful information.

  Also, he was just tired.

  An incredible exhaustion the likes of which he had never felt before started nesting in his head and bones. When he got back to his bed every night, usually around seven or eight o’clock, he barely had the energy to read. Most of the time, he would simply collapse on top of his mattress with his clothes still on, already asleep by the time his face smacked the pillow.

  It was the best sleep of his life.

  Twice a week, they played poker under the observatory’s dome.

  It was part of their training, though they liked to think of it as something they did for fun. Dominic supervised them, so of course
it wasn’t much fun at all. He mostly yelled at them. They played with painted wooden chips on a table that had been left on the second floor of the observatory. It was cold and drafty up there. The boys stuffed themselves into their warmest jackets and boots before setting themselves to the task of cleaning each other out.

  But the point of the game was not really to gamble money. It was to learn a special sort of telepathy Blake called “empathic reception,” a passive ability that allowed one person to pick up on subtle shifts in another person’s emotional state.

  On a cold Tuesday morning, Dominic hit them with a special surprise.

  “You’ll have a guest instructor one day a week. I expect you boys will keep the cursing to a minimum while she’s around.”

  She?

  “We’re always gentlemen,” Eli said, lifting his arms in protest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said. “What are you trying to say, Dom?”

  Ignoring the others, Michael turned to face the doorway. He had a sense—maybe telepathic, maybe not—that he knew exactly who was about to walk in.

  The door creaked open to reveal a bundled-up Arielle in a brown coat with pink mittens and boots. Her face was bright and rosy from the cold air outside.

  “Hi, boys,” she said with a wave.

  The boys were too stunned to do anything but nod and murmur. Since when was Arielle one of their trainers?

  She turned out to be just as scrutinizing and demanding as Blake and Dominic. Michael now understood how she’d been able to start and manage the town’s most popular business. Arielle was more than just headstrong and independent—she believed she was better than everyone else.

  She’s a snob, Michael sent to Peter. He tunneled it so Arielle wouldn’t hear him.

  Focus on the game, Peter replied.

  Right. Wouldn’t want to insult your girlfriend.

  She’s not my girlfriend anymore, not since she caught me making out with Samantha, that chick who lives on Radium Road. I didn’t tell you about that?

  No. I didn’t know you two had broken up.

  Well, don’t get any ideas. She won’t be anyone else’s girlfriend while I’m around.

  Or because she’s too stuck up to lower herself to guys like us.

  Speak for yourself.

  “Imagine you’re synchronizing your heartbeats,” Arielle explained. “Try to tune into the emotional states of your opponents. Feel what they’re feeling, and you’ll be able to sense when they have a good hand.”

  When Arielle was with the boys on poker night, Dominic usually left them alone. No one knew where he went—they just assumed he was taking a much-needed break. The training often seemed as stressful on him as it was on them. One night, he came in and watched them for an hour, said nothing, then got up and left. Michael later found out the reason—Dominic had a habit of taking midnight jogs. Maybe he just hadn’t been able to sleep?

  After enough training sessions with Arielle, Michael began to notice changes in his environmental awareness. He learned to sense when an opponent was lying, when his heartbeat had quickened in a risky situation, or had calmed under the assurance of a safe bet. The stakes rose each week.

  Arielle would pace the room during the games, tuned in to their emotional wavelengths. Michael could feel her digging around inside of him. He watched her sometimes, and his tumultuous feelings for her often overrode his responses to the cards or chips in front of him. When his heartbeat quickened, it was because she was near him, not because he had a good hand of cards. How much he won or lost didn’t matter, but it meant the world to him whenever she was impressed.

  “Damn this game to hell,” Peter said one night as Michael collected everyone’s chips. He’d been on a winning streak lately. “How is he doing that?”

  Michael shrugged, avoiding Arielle’s eyes. He could sense her knowing expression, and maybe a hint of a smile.

  Winter turned into a damp, cool spring. Blake and Dominic moved most of their sessions into the Hollows, where the abandoned buildings offered possibilities for urban tactical training.

  “As I’ve said before,” Blake told them, “combat telepathy is mostly defensive, and involves heavy use of telepathic communication and coordination.”

  They were all squatting on the roof of an old office building. The streets below were empty and cracked, with nothing moving over them but the wind and occasional flurries of trash.

  “This part of your training will be competitive. You’ll partner up and use everything you’ve learned so far to succeed in your mission”—he held up two flags, one red and one blue—“which is to obtain these.”

  The game was called “Capture the Flag.” Michael had never heard of it, but he got the gist of how it was played when Blake explained how it would help them advance in their abilities.

  The goal was for each pair to cross an invisible line—in this case, a street bisecting the Hollows—to find and capture their opponent’s flag and bring it back to their side. They had to do this without being seen or “tagged,” as it was called.

  The pairs switched each week; sometimes Michael worked with Peter, sometimes with Eli, rarely with Ian. Blake’s decisions were based partly on personality types. Ian and Michael were more introverted than Peter and Eli, which affected the way they communicated. Combat telepathy, Blake told them over and over, was about balance. Eli was bigger and less stealthy, though his ability was strong when it came to sensing an opponent’s location. This made him a good fit with Ian, who was fast and capable of using an illusory technique known as a “decoy.” He could fool a person’s senses, making them believe they were seeing him in one location when he was actually in another. Peter was a natural athlete who could get from one location to another quickly while blocking an opponent’s telepathic radar. His position was one of support, mostly, though he was also the best of the group when it came to recognizing and communicating details about the environment that could provide hidden advantages. Blake called it “scoping the field.”

  Michael’s talent was more difficult to identify. He could do what Peter, Eli, and Ian could, but not nearly as well. He was clumsy and often tripped while getting into position for a raid; his communication skills were decent, but he tended to go quiet—Blake called it “going dark”—which happened when he was thinking intently about what to do next instead of following his intuition, as Blake recommended. Intuition was everything, but it took training to maximize its benefits on the battlefield.

  The first few times they played, Michael got tagged more often than anyone else, even Eli, who by virtue of his size should have been the easiest to spot.

  “Spiteful wrath,” Michael cursed often.

  Your emotions will give the enemy an advantage, Blake sent to him as they played. They’ll smell it on you.

  Michael tried his best. Arielle would be great at this game, with her ability to sense a person’s emotional state from long distances and identify exactly who they were. He, on the other hand, was not great—or even good—at Capture the Flag.

  One day, during an exhausting session, he got fed up and pulled Peter aside.

  We need a decoy, he sent to Peter as they hunkered in the shadows behind a building at the edge of the Hollows. They had twelve minutes to capture Ian and Eli’s flag and bring it back.

  Like one of Ian’s decoys?

  No. They’ll be ready for that. I mean something else, something we haven’t used before. Follow my lead.

  I hope you know what you’re doing.

  Peter followed Michael to a building overlooking the parking lot where Eli defended the flag alone. As long as a person was in a safe zone, they couldn’t be tagged. Ian was most likely on the prowl, looking to sniff them out so he could tag them and win the round.

  I can’t block them much longer, Peter sent. Ian’s nearby.

  Keep blocking him. I have a plan.

  Michael mustered all of his concentration—eyes shut, with his fingers pressing
against his temples—and projected the sound of a child crying.

  It wasn’t a real child, of course, but Eli didn’t know that.

  For all Eli knew, the sound was coming from one street over—the hideous wailing of a child in a hellish amount of pain. It took on a life of its own, frightening Michael more than he wanted to admit.

  He’d heard a child cry like that back in the People’s Republic, when FSD agents had been stuffing a family into a van to be carted off to a labor camp. They had covered the mother and father’s heads in black hoods, leaving the two children alone on the street.

  The kids, a boy and a girl no older than six, had been left behind by the van, screaming and crying, a punishment to their parents for breaking Federal Law. Eventually, two women arrived to take them somewhere safe, probably one of the State-run orphanages where children were conditioned to love Harris Kole and the People’s Republic and become soldiers and Line guards devoted to their duties.

  Michael would never forget the way those children had howled that day, as if their arms and legs had been being broken. That pitiful wailing was exactly the sound he reproduced.

  He knew what he was doing. Eli wouldn’t be able to ignore the sound of someone in danger, especially a child. Ian probably could, and maybe even Peter, but Eli just wasn’t wired that way. He fled the parking lot in search of the child, leaving the flag unguarded.

  Go now, Michael sent.

  Peter was off in a flash. Michael was impressed at how quickly he used the grappling rope to climb down the side of the building. Michael climbed after him. Together, they ran laughing back to home base, the red flag in their possession.

  They found Ian waiting for them, standing with his boot crushing their blue flag. He could have taken it to his own side, and the game might have been a tie. But he hadn’t. Something was wrong.

  “We made it,” Michael said in response to Ian’s crossed arms and heated gaze. “Safe zone.”

  Ian was scowling, obviously upset over something other than losing.