by Alex Kirko
“Take the police garage. We don’t need it.”
Nigel rolled his immense right shoulder and grimaced, pulling tight the scar tissue near the milky white of his left eye. “Wonderful, sleeping on hard floors again.”
Physical discomfort in a Butcher was usually a sign of an oncoming acute pain attack. Just in case, she looked Nigel over, but he didn’t show any other signs. No erratic eye movement, no muscle tremors, no loss of balance. Must have been the nerves.
“Whining, Nigel?” she asked with a smile.
“Nah, just the campaign starting to get to me. Marching through the jungle sucked, boss. Don’t know how the Freefolk do it.” He typed something on his PDA. “There, told the team. We’ll bring our staff from the barracks. There are only twenty of us, so we’ll manage.” He thumbed at the still growing crowd. “Can you believe all these folks knew an attack was coming and still stayed?”
She said, “We don’t have a right to be tired.” Moira shivered. “And I wouldn’t put it past the Council to downplay the invasion and try to slow us down with civilians and ruined buildings Two million were living here, and a million left. At least two hundred thousand died when the Council bastards started firing at any civilian buildings in sight.” She tightened her fists until steel-hard nails cut deep furrows into her flesh.
A drop of blood fell on the white-gold marble steps and Nigel scrunched his nose. He asked, “You okay, Moira?”
“This is just like them,” she said, staring at the ground. “Treating everything like a fucking resource for keeping their precious status quo. Well, we’ll make them regret it. We’ll take these people in and they’ll work for us. We’ll start sending volunteers to Lankershire for Ascension tomorrow night.”
“You sure, sis? Kyle wanted to wait until Seind settles down. Can’t have spies visit the labs or something,” someone asked in an unforgivably cheerful voice.
Moira turned, saw nobody, then looked down.
“Laura.” She kept her tone carefully neutral.
“Sister!” Laura sauntered up to them, and it looked like she was swaying more than normal. “How does it feel to be the head of an overpopulated, explosive ruin?”
Nigel backed away nearly tumbling down the stairs, but Moira didn’t pay him any mind. She was focused on the diminutive blond in front of her. Laura sported a cruel smirk, and something dark lurked behind her eyes, less restrained than normal. A lazy cat, looking at a nest of baby mice.
“Laura, you were supposed to secure the south-west part of the city.”
“All done! It was leveled.” She giggled. “Horrible, really.” Laura examined the nails of her right hands, saw a smudge of blood, and licked it off. “Hm. Dry.”
“I saw at least two dozen towers still standing in that area when we entered the city.” Moira could feel cracks running through her façade. “What happened?”
“Well, their entrances were blocked with junk. Cars, all kind of debris. So I took one of those Council turrets? Great stuff. Shot right through.”
It took considerable effort for Moira not to grab Laura’s shoulders and shake her. “Sister, you didn’t.”
“Yep.” Laura did a little turn on the spot. “The people inside? Ungrateful assholes. A lot of them ran out just as the buildings collapsed. Can you imagine if I hadn’t showed up? They would have all died.” She gave the thumbs up.
“Laura,” Moira said. “You were the reason those towers collapsed.”
“No, I’m sure they were just about to, and I saved all those pure souls,” her sister said with the carefree smile of drunken innocence.
Moira knew she was going to regret asking the question, but it was her job. “How the hell did you manage to get hammered?”
“See, we passed this destroyed bar, and I guess the patrons decided going on a bender would be better than evacuation? Anyway, there they were lying all dead-like, and I thought, why let good stuff go to waste?” Moira was sure Laura knew she was getting on her nerves with her innocent child act. “So I helped myself.”
“Some?”
“Maybe a gallon or two? They’d have started rotting in a few hours anyway, so what’s the harm?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Go to the officer barracks in the back of the City Hall and get yourself cleaned up. And burn the alcohol out of your system—that’s an order.” As she watched Laura walk away, Moira added under her breath, “Sometimes I can’t believe she is two centuries older than me. What’s wrong with this girl?”
Nigel stepped back toward her and said, “We all have different ways to cope, boss.”
He watched Laura’s retreating form with longing.
She had always been impressed by Laura’s ability to find bars anywhere the girl went, completely ignoring the ads for direct neural stimulation and cerebral injections of neurotransmitters that were all the rage these days. Laura seemed to have some extrasensory organ for locating alcohol. Actually, she could have one. Who knew what kind of Ascension her sister had gone through back in the day? Moira’s parents hadn’t been born then, not to mention her. Anyway, Laura’s habits led to tons of problems for Heatsworth as the girl hated drinking alcohol that didn’t come from a mortal vein. And she was one of Moira’s tamer sisters.
She was debating ordering the mob to disperse when her people finally got the City Hall’s communication system working. With a faint whirring of motors, holographic projectors extended form the walls, their beams intersecting above where she was standing. A thirty-foot image of a man in a black military uniform appeared.
When he wasn’t trying to stand out, Kyle Heatsworth was about as remarkable as a steel sheet at a metal factory. He was of average height, build, and appearance, favored plain clothes, and his hobby was collecting shoes most of which only he could tell apart.
When he wanted to, he could rivet the attention of any room to himself and keep it there until he either released the audience, or they collapsed from exhaustion. She had seen it once during a military meeting. Admittedly, that man had already been tired, and Heatsworth’s plan had taken five hours to go over.
The Count’s image hovered above the plaza, his posture that of a king addressing his subjects.
“My name is Kyle Heatsworth, Count of Lankershire, leader of the rebellion against the Council. Or, as we call ourselves, Federation of the Unbound.”
An angry murmur swept over the crowd, and Kyle made a placating gesture. It was some feat to look as if he could see everyone when he was in fact back at the Lankershire castle.
“I offer sincere condolences for the deaths of your friends and loved ones. Please remember that it was the Council that downplayed the threat posed by our forces on purpose and didn’t order a full evacuation. Let us offer a moment of silence for those who fell.”
He didn’t say anything for a second, his eyes downcast.
“I assure you that our soldiers and engineering corps will do what they can to help the people still trapped under the debris. If your house has survived, I urge you to go home and take in another family for the time being. There is plenty of accommodation vacated by those who did evacuate, and your new mayor Moira Heatsworth will soon be able to reallocate you.” Kyle straightened his back. “This is a trying time for you, but it is also an opportunity. Most of you are humans, raised as cattle under the heel of the Ascended with no hope for a meaningful future. We offer you that hope. We offer you to join the Federation and become an Ascended if you want to. Our military has the technology that allows everyone to do that, and once we iron out a few issues, it will be available to civilians. Should you wish to remain with our enemies, we won’t stop you from leaving Seind with your belongings.” His gaze swept over the assembled crowd. “We are offering the freedom you have been robbed of since before your birth.”
The hologram winked out, and silence settled over the plaza. After a minute or so the crowd started to break up as homeless families left with those willing to take them in, conversations starting again.
; Nigel snorted and said, “Well, that speech sucked compared to the one he gave when we moved on Seind.”
Moira said, “Back home we were able to undo most of the Council brainwashing. These people have been spending their lives suckling on the teat of the government controlled networks. They are still easy to manipulate.”
After she made sure she was no longer needed, Moira said goodbye to Nigel and went back to the City Hall. She walked past the civilian offices—a beehive of hexagonal capsules each only a few cubic feet in size. In some of them workers rested while being plugged into the computer network. No Ascended, Council or otherwise, could get the implants required to work in virtual reality, but her position allowed her access to the second-best thing. The mahogany doors to her office swung open without a sound. Someone must have oiled the mechanism since her visit two hours before. It was strange to have no one hold the door open for her.
“Welcome back, Miss Heatsworth,” said Jim in his upper-class accent.
His voice always brought memories of her parents who tried too much to sound like nobility. She had asked Jim to get rid of that lilting of vowels and sharpness of consonants that grated on her nerves. It wasn’t too hard, because she had done it, but this was one of the few orders her assistant wouldn’t obey.
The office was about one hundred square feet in size. Jim’s capsule rested in a corner, and her chair waited for her in the middle of the room behind the terminal, bolted to the artificial stone floor. Harsh lights shone from the high ceiling, casting sharp shadows on everything.
“Switch on the interface, Jim. How are you feeling?”
“Not good, miss, but that’s to be expected. I’m scheduled for a walk later today.”
“Jim—”
“There is no reason to worry, miss. Let’s get on with your day, shall we?”
She wondered for a second whether pushing him was worth it but decided not to. Had it not been Howdinger’s syndrome, he might have talked about it more, but Jim must have been sick of people pitying him. Even after five years, she had no idea why Kyle had assigned the brilliant cripple as her assistant and why Jim had agreed. Surely, there were better ways to spend what was left of his human life.
“Master Heatsworth asked you to call him at your earliest convenience, miss. Also, a patrol has discovered your biological sister unconscious in the rubble—”
She felt the walls close in on her, and suddenly it was difficult to think, impossible to breathe. Her heart, too big for her current body, started to beat in her ears with resonating thumps.
“They found Tara?” she asked, her voice sounding strained even to her.
“That is hardly the most pertinent matter, miss—”
“It’s Tara,” she said, feeling her face contort into a grimace. “It’s not important? After everything my family did?” If she had a table, she would have slammed a fist on it. Damn holographic interfaces and fragile consoles. “Where did they find her? What condition is she in?”
She thought Jim suppressed a sigh. He didn’t bother with projecting a hologram often and rarely left his capsule, but she learned to attribute facial expressions to him anyway. Otherwise it would have been far too easy to forget that her assistant was human.
“Your biological sister crashed into a neural stimulation complex, and a wall collapsed on top of her. Sergeant Hale discovered her while looking for surviving civilians. She sustained broken bones all over her body, but there was no damage to the head. She is cuffed and in the process of being transferred here.”
Moira exhaled slowly, trying to calm down. They had placed inhibitor cuffs on her—that took care of her main concern. After all these years, she would be able to get her heart-to-heart with her elder sister. The last one to Ascend before her family had run out of money and influence.
“Connect me to Hale,” she said.
“But Master Heatsworth—”
“Can wait. Jim, I don’t hold it against you that you have trouble recognizing emotions—you live in virtual reality. But I’m the boss. Connect us.” She glared at his capsule, as if he had eyes there. “Now.”
“Very well, miss.”
An image of a black assassin mech-suit appeared before her eyes, accompanied by the muted roar of gravicycle engines. The featureless obsidian helmet became transparent, and Moira saw a woman in her thirties sporting a head of angry auburn hair and a plasma burn scar running down her right cheek. The communication program made it look as if Hale was awake inside the suit.
“Sister Heatsworth,” the woman greeted her.
The title was a relic of the previous Count, and Moira hated it. Kyle could have gotten rid of the tradition. “Words can’t hurt you,” he had said. He was wrong, but just as it wasn’t Jim’s place to question her orders, it wasn’t her place to question him.
“Sergeant Hale. I’ve heard you captured Tara Linheld.”
“Yes, Sister. We will arrive at City Hall in ten minutes.”
“Let me see her.”
The sergeant raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. The military discipline was why Moira liked dealing with soldiers. The gravicycle stopped as did the armored truck behind it. After dismounting, the Sergeant walked up to the other vehicle, the view switching from the bike to her helmet. She was in the gaming district—one of the richest in Seind. Or, rather, it had been before the battle turned half of it to rubble.
“Private, unlock the back door,” said Hale. “Sister Heatsworth would like a word with her biological sibling.”
A scrawny man with black studs of mech pilot implants jumped out of the cabin and walked to the back of the truck.
“She’s out cold, I don’t know what you expect to see, ma’am,” the Sergeant said. “It might be better to—” She froze. “Fuck.”
Moira had to agree. The back of the car was open, although how Tara had managed to override the lock from inside was anyone’s guess. How she had escaped the neuroinhibitor and the guard was much less of a mystery. A man lay supine on the floor staring at the ceiling with a confused expression, crimson liquid oozing from the wound in his neck as if he was an almost-empty blood pack pierced with a needle. The electromagnetic handcuff lay on the metal floor, still encircling Tara’s right arm which was chewed off below the elbow joint.
Moira stared at the appendage. Ascended teeth were made for puncturing, not for tearing. The pain must have been horrendous, especially with the bracelet scrambling most of the nanites in Tara’s blood. And the back of the car wasn’t sound-isolated, so her sister couldn’t scream.
“Get the techs,” Hale ordered. “We need to change the codes on the other prison trucks. One of them should come here to check the locks to figure out how the hell she got out. Call the biology squad too. We need to send the settings to DNA scanners—we should be able to catch her. Move it!”
After her minions scurried off, Hale said to Moira, “I’m sorry, Sister, I will take responsibility—”
Heatsworth cut the connection. What she wanted to say broke too many regulations. She was dimly aware of the faint hiss of a stasis capsule being opened. Soft shuffles approached her from behind, and a jittery emaciated hand landed on her shoulder.
“We’ll find her, Miss Heatsworth.”
She turned. The ever-present dark-red bodysuit hugged Jim’s gaunt body, and he quivered, using her for support as much as he tried to give moral support to her. Moira shook her head and slung her assistant’s right arm over her shoulders. Compared to him, even her smaller body was a colossus out of an Old Earth legend.
“Thank you, Jim. Let’s get you back into bed.”
Before she closed the lid of the capsule, she swiped his greying hair to the side. It was hard to tell because of the wrinkled skin, but Jim was just over thirty. She knew that he wanted to distract her from her chance of revenge slipping away. It worked.
She remembered playing with Tara when they were children. She had been smarter than Moira. Definitely smart enough to know that trying to escape the cit
y with a missing arm and black-listed DNA would be too much of a risk. No, she would stay in Seind, heal up, and hunker down somewhere. Catching her was only a matter of casting the net right.
Moira exhaled, calmed down, and got to work. Something nagged at her mind, but it must have been unimportant.
There were many reasons why Seind had been chosen as the first major target of the campaign. It was the closest and the most defensible out of the neighboring cities, for one. But the fact that Seind produced some of the most popular entertainment programs for the unaugmented—Microwave Heart chief among them—was the main reason for its capture.
When tens of episodes were released every week, viewers got glued to their five-sense entertainment centers and implants and forgot about all their troubles. Cutting the Republic off was sure to shake some of its citizens awake.
“You have a call from the leader of the screenplay writers, miss,” said Jim.
“Patch them through.”
What she expected to be a simple series of conversations with the movers and shakers that had stayed in Seind turned out to be like trying to corral a bunch of kindergarteners. Everyone thought they could gain something from the Federation’s control that the Council couldn’t give, and all of them were prepared to change their mind about staying if they found out they had been mistaken. By the time Moira was done with redistributing abandoned towers and supplies and convincing everyone that the brothels and entertainment centers would soon reopen, she was more tired than she remembered since becoming an Ascended. The hardest part was telling people there would be no censorship and reading disbelief in their eyes.
The communicator logo started flashing, and when she saw who was calling, she cursed under her breath. This was what she had forgotten. “Hello, Kyle,” she answered, keeping her voice level. “I hope this won’t take too much time. Seind is a mess.”
“Moira.” His voice was honey poured over razor blades. “My right hand. The brightest of my stars. Remind me why I gave you the task of governing Seind.”
