by Alex Kirko
The castle towered over Lankershire from the top of the hill in the center. A ruthless sentinel of gunmetal-gray stone, it spread its shoulders above the towers of the pleasure ring at its feet. Scaffoldings sprung all over the surface like hairs on a gleaming suit of assassin mech armor, and it looked as if at any moment it might throw off the attempts to renovate it.
“It’s been five years,” he said as they entered the science district. “And all we did was build straight passages between the main rooms. I would tear down that monstrosity and replace it with a theme park if we had the time.”
Yvonne said, “This was a plain before he became Count. I still remember the excavator mechs and hovering trucks the size of hangars moving thousands of tons of earth.” They reached a crossroads, and she looked around. “Do we need to take a left or a right here? All these buildings look the same.”
They took a right and reached the Ascension Locus after ten more minutes of weaving their way through a maze of heavyset research silos. The Locus itself was something Kyle took special pride in. Two silver spires formed a gateway to the glossy black cylinder building with no windows. ‘Gateway to Hell’ they called it, and Heatsworth didn’t discourage it. In front of it, there was a stadium-sized square laid with white marble. Burl’s men stood on guard at the perimeter, black pieces on a white chessboard. Raised seats surrounded the square in a semi-circle. They were full, and friends of the recruits and members of the press had taken the front row. Kyle still remembered the horror he had felt at the prospect of defending his doctoral thesis all those years ago. Now he felt only tightening in his chest before making a speech.
“Moira is the one good at this,” said Yvonne as they walked up to a podium of black stone.
They stepped onto the platform reserved for the speakers, and light flickered to life, illuminating them and the volunteers waiting in the middle of the square. There were about three dozen of them, and they pulled closer when speakers began broadcasting every sound Heatsworth and Yvonne made.
“Welcome to the Ascension Locus,” said Kyle. “You are here because you were inspired by your friends’ example. They were the first to rise up against the Council’s oppression, and now you want to do your part. You are here because you want to take part in our fight against the tyrants who turned this planet into a holding pen for livestock. You were destined to be just a data record for the Council, to fade away after a century and half of none-life. Well, the Federation isn’t the Council, so screw destiny.”
The audience applauded, and he could see all the cameras trained on him.
“Please welcome Yvonne Heatsworth.” He stepped away and gestured his companion to the front.
The applause cut off, but she didn’t seem to mind it.
“I am Yvonne Heatsworth, the Elder Sister,” she said. “You have seen the materials by now, and you have seen what will probably become of you.” She swept the crowd with her gaze, and some of them looked up to meet her eyes. “The last thing we want is to take away your choice.”
A man pushed himself past the other candidates. He shivered but he jutted his chin forward and stared at her. He said, “Why should we listen to you? You were with the previous Count.” He started shaking but kept going. “I am Tiberius. This name was given to me, so that the Count would like it. I lived my whole life in a tiny apartment where water dripped from the ceiling. The first time I saw a computer terminal was in a brothel I got to visit for my sixteenth birthday.”
She stepped off the podium and approached the man. Kyle saw that his brown hair was peppered with grey, but he didn’t look more than twenty-five.
“Few lived like you, Tiberius,” said Yvonne.
“Well, it was the only way to stay safe, wasn’t it? To keep your head low and pretend you were into that prehistoric madness.” He took another step forward breaking from the group. “You ask us to become slaves again.”
Heatsworth saw Yvonne’s eyes harden. She moved toward the man and towered over him, a mask of derision on her face. “You were a coward, Tiberius,” she said. “There are three million people in the city. He tortured and killed thousands. You could have risked a different life.”
The man went silent. Somebody fired up the holographic projector above the square that now displayed his frowning face and Yvonne’s sneer. Kyle could imagine the buzzing of terminals as everyone and their brother blogged ‘The Count protects a monster’. He had gotten used to dealing with Yvonne and forgotten how differently from other people she treated him.
“Yes, I was a coward,” said Tiberius. “It’s why I keep the damn name to remember and why I’m here now. What I want to ask is who are you to speak to us? You stood by while the Ascended of the city raped, tortured, and killed. Why weren’t you punished by the tribunal, Sister? Why weren’t any of you punished?”
There was no more applause, only faint murmurs of agreement. Kyle looked at the auditorium and saw that almost everyone had their personal terminals in record mode. He opened his mouth to speak, but Yvonne was faster. She said, “Right now, you can’t make a difference, but you are free. The power you are about to get will chain you to the Federation. You will need medical help, you will need training to learn to function, and you will need food. There is a chance the neurological issues will never get fixed, and you will move in jerks and lurches for the rest of your infinite life.” She stepped back, giving Tiberius distance. “I don’t remember how I became this, but I saw new girls come in over the years, and I knew all of them had a choice, no matter how misinformed they were. They could stay with their families with humans or Ascend and serve forever. I must have chosen that, and now this is all I have.”
Kyle got off the podium, walked up to Yvonne, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Tiberius looked lost for words, and he couldn’t blame the man. By this point, all the lights were on their group and even his Ascended hearing couldn’t pick out anything except the sound of breathing.
“Yvonne is right,” he said. “Ascension isn’t reversible. But what also isn’t reversible is the death of your loved ones. I cannot promise you that Secondary Ascension will be able to fix the issues with the current process, but we will do our damn best to try, and that is more than the Council would ever do for its citizens.”
The applause started tentatively, but then most of the people on the tribunes joined in, and soon Tiberius nodded and headed toward the facility. The rest followed him.
Kyle turned toward the audience and said, “I am sorry the press isn’t allowed to view the procedure, but I’m sure that none of you want such footage ending up in the hands of our enemies. I urge you to welcome our new protectors in three days. Goodbye.”
He bowed, took Yvonne by the hand, and headed inside the Ascension Locus. The cerulean forcefield that protected the only entrance flickered off for a second, letting them in. Kyle stepped into the cylindrical reception area where scores of technicians and medics scurried about in white coats. Their cybernetic eyes swiveled constantly, looking both at the recruits and at the golden power lines and humming dark-green machinery that ran along the walls of the cylinder at every floor.
An alarm pinged, and a voice said, “Power surge in unit twenty-six, power surge in unit twenty-six. Emergency team, please respond.”
One of the recruits asked, “Wait, is this safe?”
A technician said, “The process is completely safe. We haven’t lost a single candidate.” He led the recruit to an elevator.
As Kyle looked up, he saw that the place had become a lot less chaotic since his last visit. The central area was around a hundred feet across, and he could see only about two dozen people on each of the four floors. It had been fifty before.
A familiar stout man broke off from the mass of researchers and headed straight toward them, harsh laboratory light reflecting off his bald head. The left side of his face was normal, with craggy features that didn’t match the wide smile he had. His right eye was a cybernetic implant that sported five cameras around a centra
l protruding lens. It was large enough to require major widening of the ocular socket, and the surgery had come out of Lankershire coffers.
Kyle said, “That eye of yours was a lot of paperwork, Reyes. How is it treating you?”
Reyes Carter blinked a few times, glanced at Yvonne, and then said. “Can’t complain. Works from infrared into ultraviolet, detects radiation and electromagnetic fields. I still can’t believe you managed to get me that prototype.”
“Still no hair replacement?” asked Kyle.
“I think he looks much better bald,” said Yvonne. “It's cute.”
“No, no time for that, hope there will be time after, but it’s fine.” Reyes turned around, making sure there was no one behind them. “Listen, I’ve got something to show you, Heatsworth, but I can’t talk about it here. You never know who might be listening.” He glanced at Yvonne again.
Kyle smiled. “Then lead the way. We’d like to see how the procedure works on one of the new recruits. Tiberius, I think his name was.”
Reyes chuckled. “What a memorable name. Do you know that half the staff here calls me Rees? After three years.” He shook his head and led them to one of the elevators. “I figured you might want to keep an eye on that one, so I sent him to the room I want to show you.”
The elevator doors closed, and they went up. Kyle could see the whole structure through the glass walls.
“Looks like a mine with a central shaft, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Might not have been a bad idea to build it underground,” said Reyes. “Definitely not bad.”
Kyle shook his head and said, “It would have sent the wrong message. Like we had something to hide.”
“But we do have things to hide,” said Yvonne.
They exited on the fourth floor and walked around the circular walkway that looked over the reception area. The three of them entered one of the offshoot hallways. The walls were azure, which made the black muzzles of plasma dispensers on them stick out like obsidian maws of death.
“Did you finally get to setting up proper security?” asked Kyle.
“This is the only place with such defenses,” said Reyes. “Note that the only door is at the end of the corridor which is forty feet long. Dispensers are placed every foot, so we can flood the corridor instantly with randomly fluctuating electric charges and plasma. Also, do you see that?” He pointed to thin crimson lines that went up the walls every two feet. “Forcefields for anything too fast to fry.”
“Looks like nothing is getting through here,” said Kyle.
“I should hope so. Designed the system myself.”
As they walked, identification for each of them scrolled along the walls in white letters. The door led into a decontamination chamber where streams of hot disinfectant gas blew on them from all sides.
Reyes said, “Honestly, I don’t think I will get that hair replacement. A lab coat and a bald head are much more convenient than what you have.” His mechanical eye was swiveling from Kyle to Yvonne and back.
Both straightened up their hair, and Kyle picked two pairs of infravision goggles out of a drawer in the corner and handed one to Yvonne. The lights switched off, the second door hissed open, and the trio walked inside. The room was circular with a dome ceiling and could fit thirty people even with all the machinery strewn about. A transparent Butcher-sized pod in the center was itself a part of a much larger contraption. Everything appeared in shades of green except for the five bright-red scientists who were in the room.
“This isn’t the normal system,” said Kyle. “Have you come up with something to decrease the percentage of Crawlers we get?”
“Does anyone know what color the walls in here are?” asked Yvonne. “What? I’m curious.”
“I believe they are metal grey because nobody bothered to paint them,” said Carter. “And yes, now we should get around ten percent Type 2—”
“Just call them Butchers, Reyes. Everybody does,” said Kyle.
“—Ascended. And I think the chance of us getting our first perfect Freefolk Ascended has increased, if we ever find someone compatible enough for the procedure.”
“Well, that’s good. The machine looks like it’s on a diet of bacon and sugary drinks, but I can’t complain if those are the results.”
The pod’s lid slid upwards without a sound. Two burly technicians carried unconscious Tiberius into it and placed him inside. He was pink: barely warmer than the surroundings. The door slid back down with a clang, and the chamber started to fill up with orange liquid.
“As you can see, we have improved the way we sedate the subjects. Now that they are no longer aware during the procedure, there is less damage to the neurons, therefore we have a higher success rate.”
“So why is the pod larger then?” asked Kyle.
All the scientists and technicians went to their infrared terminals, and Reyes beckoned Kyle and Yvonne to follow him to his own. He pressed a button, and the pod whirred to life. Kyle had been expecting nano-machine-filled syringes to stab into Tiberius, but lines of hot-metal-white light started to go across the recruit’s body instead.
“What does it do?” asked Yvonne.
Reyes said, “We have finally managed to build a scanner that can record all the changes our Ascension procedure causes in the body.”
Kyle said, “It was possible to get readings before.”
“The noise introduced by the scanning left too many gaps, and we had to guess. What I have created is precise.”
Kyle stepped up closer to the terminal and checked the readouts on the display. Scarlet text flew across it, and diagrams of the subject’s body flashed so rapidly that he had trouble making sense of them. They called him a genius, but he despised labels.
He said, “The Council has been trying to deconstruct the mechanics of Ascension for years.”
“They shouldn’t have kicked me out then.” Reyes smiled. “If we get an intact chamber, we should be able to reverse-engineer what exactly the Council and Freefolk Ascension procedures do to the body. And then we can improve upon that foundation.”
The preliminary scanning was done, and the liquid inside the pod began to cool, losing its color. Ports in the walls opened, and metal syringes slid out, stabbing into the base of Tiberius’s skull, his thighs, legs, and spine. He twitched once, twice, and began thrashing without opening his eyes.
“Autonomous reaction,” explained Reyes. “The nanites need to be able to check whether the neurons continue to work while they remodel the body, which is why we can’t just shut everything off.”
Kyle said, “When I Ascended, it felt like my bone marrow turned to lava and then somebody was scraping it out with barbed wire. It doesn’t look like your method is much different.”
“The difference is he won’t remember the procedure. You’ve already seen what comes next: three days of this with breaks for rest. Let’s go back to my office.”
Five minutes later he and Yvonne had cups of coffee in front of them. Kyle took his and smelled it.
He said, “This is wonderful, Reyes. I hope you won’t mind if we don’t drink any.”
“Thank you. They grow it near Delmor, so it’s not likely we’ll get any more of that particular roast until we win the war.” Reyes got up and began pacing. “Look, we’ve already run a few guys through the new machine, and we know what we need.”
The man looked between Kyle and Yvonne as if he was about to ask one of them to give up a right arm.
Heatsworth smiled and said, “A regeneration chamber, I know. I can get you access to my own.”
“We can run a lottery to get test subjects,” said Yvonne.
“Right. Want to become Ascended, Reyes?”
Reyes said, “Please, this is serious. There is little we can do by poking blindly with what we have. I mean, we could use more significant variations in the process—”
Kyle said, “I am giving my people a chance at a better future, not a chance to die from growing an extra head.”
Kyle took another whiff of the coffee. He missed the days when he could drink something except water, alcohol, and meat sludge. He could barely manage tea without vomiting, and coffee was too thick. The smell was almost as good as taste though.
Kyle said, “We need the one in Mortenton. It's unused, so we'll get reliable results.”
“The place is a fortress,” said Reyes. “Even if someone gets in, they will never leave with a pod.”
“Samuel Gallows believes the people I lent him can do it,” said Kyle. “Katherine will get the first look, and then you can take it apart if you need to.”
Reyes said, “Even one activation of the chamber might render it useless to us.”
Kyle said, “Let’s get it before we decide what we do with it.”
6
Misfits and Heroes
As cold as always, stars were blinking down at Blake from their homes in the sky. He barely felt the warm breeze or the earth under him, but the tangy smell of the giant hawthorn tree he was under had notes he could never hope to perceive with a human nose. Clumps of white flowers swayed in the wind, spreading the aroma and marking the territory around the trunk.
“Do you remember that night?” asked Aileen. “It was a lot like this one.”
He said, “You know what I miss about home? Summer flowers. Here, three or four plants will band together and squeeze everything else out of the area. As a child, I would walk onto a field in the evening and get assaulted with spices and honey and citrus. I would go from flower to flower, sniffing each and trying to break apart that bouquet into separate odors. I never could.”
