Ascendancy

by Karri Thompson

  Two thick comforters for a mattress, an oversized fuzzy blanket from Trail’s bed, and two squishy pillows from the spare room made our sleeping arrangement a small paradise. But maybe it had more to do with the fact that Michael was lying next to me with his arm stretched over my waist and his warm breath against my neck.

  After giving my pillow a good fluff and cozying into it and the bedding, he scooted up behind me, stroked my bare arm with his hand, and nuzzled his chin atop my shoulder. When his arm met my waist he whispered good-night, keeping his body inches from mine.

  He respected me. He loved me. He didn’t try to use my weakened emotional state to his advantage.

  Did I love him? If I did, my love was conditional, tainted by the times he’d lied or kept information from me. His reasons for doing so were justified to an extent, and I understood his tug-of-war among preserving the Van Winkle program, following the directions of his superiors, and following his heart, but every time I thought about my grandfather lying in cryogenic stasis amid the rows of others from my time, I couldn’t help but get angry at him for not telling me about them.

  As Michael’s soft breathing slowed, his body relaxed, drawing away from me, and I knew he was asleep. With our heads atop fluffy throw pillows from the couch, my eyes closed and my thoughts wandered to Victoria like they always did before I fell asleep. I love you, my sweet baby, I mouthed without making any sound, but then another sound came instead.

  “Michael,” I whispered, giving his shoulder a shake. His eyes fluttered open and he rolled onto his back. “Do you hear that?” He rose up next to me. “It’s like a humming of some kind.”

  “It sounds familiar, but I don’t remember where I’ve heard it before,” he said.

  Rubbing his eyes and holding his head, he crawled to the front window, and keeping low, I came up next to him with my eyes just above the sill. A SEC was stopped at the sidewalk in front of the house, its eyes telescoping in our direction. I held my breath, and my heart throbbed in my throat.

  “If it enters the house,” I said, pulling the pistol from my pocket, “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It’ll send out a distress signal and relay our location throughout Liaison. We’d be caught in a matter of minutes.”

  The bot turned and moved to stand in front of the next home, its heavy steps ranging against the sidewalk. Its proximity still didn’t explain the strange humming sound, an audible vibration that continued to gain momentum.

  And then we saw the source of the odd noise. Down the street there was another SEC a block behind the first and accompanied by an officer of the region. A bright red light projected from the bot’s abdomen in a wide, concentrated beam that began at the home’s roof and rode the structure’s contour downward.

  “What is it doing?” I asked.

  “Taking thermal scans—making sure the number of bodies matches the number of L-Bands in the house.”

  “They know we’re not banded, so if—”

  “Exactly. We have to move quickly. Let’s try the back door.”

  I grabbed the E-Paper and key Magnum left for us, and we shot toward the back of the house.

  “Damn,” said Michael who got to the window first. “There’s another one taking scans from this side along with two more officers on foot.”

  “Then we’re trapped,” I said as the bot walked behind the back lot of the next house and began its scan. “We can’t get to the mover without being seen, and this neighborhood is probably crawling with SECs.”

  “Then there’s only one thing left that we can do. Make ourselves invisible to the scan, and I think I know how.” Michael rushed to the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets. “Get the tub started.”

  “The tub?”

  “The bathtub. Cold water. Not hot. Go!” he said when I hesitated.

  For its small size, I was surprised the bathroom was outfitted with a separate tub and shower stall. Without a window, the room was dim, relying on the natural light from the hall. The tub was far from fancy, but it had a motion sensor. With the wave of my hand, I filled the tub with water cold enough to give me goose bumps when I dipped my hand into it.

  Michael rushed into the bathroom with a large bowl filled to the rim with ice cubes. “You’re going to get wet,” he announced, “so you might want to take off some of your clothes.”

  He dumped the ice into the cold water, raced from the room, returned with another load, and jumped in place as he tore his shoes from his feet. I did the same with my boots but stopped there, unlike Michael who stripped down to his boxers. “Get in,” he said and stepped into the tub.

  “Oh my gosh! It’s too cold,” I said after a toe dip.

  “There’s no time to be cold.” He offered his hand and I took it.

  The ice water instantly numbed my feet and sent an uncontrollable shiver up my spine. Awkwardly standing facing each other, we lowered to our knees, dropped to our rears, and adjusted the positions of our legs as they overlapped until they were completely under water and ice. The tub, being two feet too short in length for what we wanted to accomplish, hindered our movements, which were already more difficult due to the sharp chill of pain and involuntary chattering of our teeth.

  As I struggled to keep my chest above the icy water line, water sloshed over the edge of the tub. “When the beams rip through this room, dunk your head under and count to sixty. Make sure every part of your body is submerged. Even the crown of your head above water will trigger an alert. We have to appear colder or at the same temperature as the surrounding air.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said through rattling teeth.

  The low-pitched hum rattled the house, and two rays of red light, one from the east and another from the west, penetrated the bathroom at the far ceiling. “Now,” said Michael.

  Simultaneously, we took big breaths and lowered to our backs, scrunching up our legs to submarine our heads. My tunic, caught by the drag, rippled up to my shoulders, creating an instant well of pain where it pressed into my shoulder blades. As Michael’s stiff fingers gripped my leggings at the thigh, I pinched my nose shut with my thumb and index finger and started to count.

  Were both of my knees under the water? My body was so numb and prickled with pain, I couldn’t tell. What about the top of my head? I lost count. Was I at ten or twenty, fifteen or twenty-five? I started counting again, and at twelve, my lungs felt like they were about to explode. No. No. No! I released half a breath of air and opened my eyes to watch the bubbles rise and mingle with the stands of my hair floating at the surface.

  The thermal readers were directly over the tub, raking their relentless beams across the surface of the water. The beige towels hanging on the wall turned pink as the rays continued their probe, and the tub glowed like a lava lamp when the beams hit the water. As I said thirty-two one thousand in my head, the beams pierced the walls in front and behind me and disappeared.

  I shot from the tub gasping for air, sending a spray of water at Michael who rose almost at the same time. “That was close. I don’t think I could have stayed under a second longer.” I shivered, catching my breath and so chilled I could barely inhale. “Now what do we do?”

  “We wait. If there isn’t a knock on the door within the next few minutes, we’re clear,” he said, stepping from the tub. “In the meantime, let’s warm up. If we’re going to get caught, I’d rather get caught warm than cold.”

  He turned on the hot water in the shower. Steam rose between us, and in my shirt and jeans and Michael in his boxers, we stood inches apart as the hot water gushed from above, washing away the chill that left me frozen to the bone.

  “Yup, if we’re going to get caught, I’d rather get caught like this,” he said, bringing his head closer to mine and running his hand along my cheek. Even in the low light of the tiny room his eyes sparkled.

  As the water pulsed across his broad shoulders, I stared at his thick biceps, defined pecs, and grilled abdomen. When the water pu
shed his hair forward, he brushed it away from his eyes and delicately rubbed his bruised jaw and cheek.

  Michael took a deep breath through his nose and dropped his eyes. I looked down at what he saw—my thin, white tunic practically transparent as it clung to my skin, sucking against every curve of my upper body. No big deal, since he’d already seen me in my bra—or maybe not. He kissed me, his hands heavy against my back, his body pushing against mine, and I kissed back, not wanting to stop but knowing it was the right thing to do.

  “Hey,” I said, releasing my lips. “No knock on the door. It worked. We did it. We’re safe—at least for a while.” I eased away from him, left the shower, and grabbed a towel for myself and another one for him.

  “You know I love you, Cassie, right? I want you—all of you. But I understand you need to wait, we need to wait until this is over. I would have married you before we left for Tasma. Shen-Lung would have performed the ritual himself. He told me he would. He said it would be an honor. Maybe—”

  I stiffened. “You talked to Shen-Lung about it?” I threw the towel across my shoulders.

  “Yeah, I did. What’s the big deal? It’s no secret that we’re together, is it?”

  “No, it’s just that none of the presidents need to know or be involved in our personal business, that’s all.”

  “Whatever.” Michael snapped the towel and worked it up his body, starting at his ankles, taking out his frustration with me by jerking the towel around as he patted the water from his back.

  When he left the bathroom, I washed my clothes with body soap and left them to air dry over the shower door. A shabby robe hung on a hook behind the bathroom door. I put it on and entered the living room to find Michael in the kitchen eating crackers. He wore one of Trail’s shirts and a pair of Trail’s pants that were way too baggy while his wet clothes lay over the back of the chair.

  “I’m sorry, Michael.”

  “Don’t be. I’m over it. I have just one question. When this is over and you’re ready, it will be with me, right?”

  “Of course it will be you. There’s no one else in my life. You know that.” I leaned forward, wiped some crumbs from his lips, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thanks. I just needed to know that.”

  I slumped into the seat at the table across from him. “It was too good to be true, wasn’t it, Michael?” I said.

  “What was?”

  “Everything—going to Tasma, taking control of the project, keeping Victoria, meeting our daughters. Didn’t you sense something just wasn’t quite right when we left for Tasma?” I sighed, letting my shoulders droop.

  “Honestly? No. I didn’t think we’d be lied to and deceived again.”

  He lowered his head and focused his eyes on the floor between his feet. Dr. Michael Bennett—with or without his GenH1 uniform and his passion for genetics, was still a naive, twenty-one-year-old guy, born into a world where the lack of freedom was normal and people believed the government’s number one concern was its citizens.

  Even after all we’d been through, he slipped back into the obedient clone believing that everything and everyone in the world was good. “I want to believe that someday we’ll meet our daughters. Maybe after whatever this big event is that Magnum talked about. And then we’ll get Victoria back, too.”

  I stood facing the curtained window and crossed my arms hard against my chest. “We can only hope.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I took another look at the map. Chu-Lung lives in this region, Sector Nine, Division Forty-Six, Subdivision Three—Jackson, Queensland,” I announced after coming out from the bathroom wearing my semi-dried clothes, holding the unrolled E-Paper. I flicked to another screen. “According to Magnum’s notes, its population pre-plague was less than two hundred people. Post-plague it just over 100,000.”

  “Why the dramatic change?” he asked as I plopped down next to him on the couch.

  “It’s home to one of the largest on-shore oil fields in the region. A thousand years ago, the majority of its oil was unreachable, but now with high-powered hover drills, Subdivision Three has become one of the biggest suppliers of fuel in the world.”

  It was just like Magnum to provide me with the historical details. He knew that I would want to know.

  “And Chu-Lung lives there?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t say why.”

  “Maybe it’s because Sub D 9 is also home to a GenH satellite hospital specializing in organ cloning and replacement. Chu-Lung might work there,since he’s a geneticist.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s a twenty-four hour drive from here to Sub D 9”

  “Twenty-four hours? We can’t drive for a full day,” said Michael.

  “Yes we can. I’ll pull over every five to six hours so we can rest.”

  “Oh, so you’re going to do all the driving.”

  “Yeah, I think I should. I’ve done twenty-four hours—and even more—plenty of times. On a paleontologist’s budget and having to travel with a boat-load of supplies, flying was always out of the question.”

  I’d driven ten hours straight into the heart of the desert with my mom throwing up every hour from a bad case of food poisoning—that’s what you got when you ate a sandwich from a truck stop vending machine.

  It was no walk in the park, but it was doable, and I could do it again and for twice as long.

  We found extra socks and Michael grabbed a T-shirt from Trail’s dresser. Then we raided Trail’s pantry for food and supplies, securing them in an empty pillowcase. When it was dark and the moon was high in the sky, we pulled the dotted bands up our arms, hidden under our sleeves, and slipped through the back door, avoiding the obscuras.

  When I passed the fallen pair of whimsy birds and the overturned dog bowl, my heart shrunk and I silently vowed that someday we would save Trail from his miserable fate, just like we would Victoria and the twins.

  The blue Model Three mover was at the end of the street just like Magnum said it would be, but a pair of Region Three officers were a block ahead of it, scanning the L-Band of a man who was walking his dog.

  “No,” I gasped. “What the hell are they doing?”

  “Probably checking the bands of anyone on foot. They think we don’t have a mover.”

  A siren shot through the night air, and two security movers with rotating lights on their roofs rounded the corner to turn down our street.

  “Damn. In here!” I whispered loudly as I jumped behind a set of hedges next to the sidewalk. But Michael wasn’t fast enough.

  The movers slowed to a stop. “Hey, you, come here,” shouted the officer in the passenger seat of the first mover as he stuck his head through the window, pointing at Michael.

  “Michael,” I whispered through the leaves. “Run.”

  “It’s okay. They didn’t see you. I’ll surrender and do what I can to distract them and draw them away from the mover,” he said from the side of mouth. “Go to Chu-Lung’s. Get the answers Magnum wouldn’t give us.”

  “No,” I said and lovingly placed my hand on the side of his face. “Not without you.”

  “You have to.” He put his arms behind his back, slipped the armband from his bicep, and tossed it in the bushes behind him. “It’s the only way to stay safe and find Victoria and our daughters.”

  “No!” I trembled. “I can’t.”

  As the officer approached Michael, I pulled the pistol from my pocket and stuck the tip of the barrel through the leaves, aiming it at the officer’s head.

  “I need to see your band,” said the officer. A second officer and a SEC joined the scene, followed by a third SEC with active weapons. There were too many. I couldn’t take out all three and expect not to be caught, especially with the SECs.

  “Why?” asked Michael. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  He continued nonchalantly down the sidewalk. I knew what he was doing—leading them away from me.

  “Stop right there,” shouted the officer.

  Mich
ael rushed forward, but he wasn’t fast enough for the SEC which dropped its wheel and came up behind him, knocking him to the ground with a hit to the center of his back.

  I cringed when he hit the asphalt, and the SEC pinned him to the ground. When one of the officers secured Michael with his laser cuff, the officer said, “No L-Band. You must be Dr. Michael Bennett. We’ve been looking for you. Where’s the girl and the baby?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “My name’s William Hooper.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Where are we taking him?” asked another officer. “To the station?”

  “Nope, this one’s special. He’s going to GenH3.” The officer smirked with a gnarly half smile.

  Watching Michael being tossed into the back of a security mover was almost as painful as watching Victoria leave for who-knows-where with Magnum. But at least they didn’t know Victoria and I had been separated, and so Victoria was obviously not in their custody.

  When they were gone I rescued Michael’s armband from the bushes. Alone on the sidewalk and with the sack of supplies thrown over my back, I hobbled toward the mover, my legs weak from overuse and the lack of sleep, my head so foggy with grief I could barely see.

  But, no, what was I doing? I couldn’t go. Not without Michael. And what if they decided to make him disappear through a so-called hover accident like they’d planned to do with Travel?

  GenH3. That’s where they were taking him and that’s where I needed to go. Save Michael. That was all I could think about. Walking north, the same way the officer’s movers had headed, I staggered through a small grove of trees, avoiding obscuras.

  The cameras were easier to spot now that I knew what to look for. A bulbous protrusion at the top of a light post, a small, shiny hollow on a “Life is Precious” billboard. Yeah, right. As if that bullshit slogan could brainwash me. I gave every one of those billboards a dirty look as I passed them, and drunk on exhaustion and depression, I shouted “Woo-hoo!” into the night sky. Then I passed a sign that read “GenH3” with an arrow pointed straight ahead.