by Alex Kirko
Kate stared at her with a blank look for a moment before she burst out laughing.
Mary said, “I don’t see what’s funny. I mean, I don’t have anything against them sleeping with whomever—I don’t even know what kind of company I prefer. It depends on a person, I suppose—”
“Stop apologizing, for Gods’ sake,” said Kate, stifling her chuckles into hiccups.
“Okay, but I’ve been working a month and I saw, what, ten heterosexual families? A lot of single people, but barely any couples or groups or whatever. Is there some kind of law in Lankershire? To control birth rate, or maybe your leader has some kind of—”
“Mary, if you would just stop and listen, I wouldn’t choke. Turn left here,” she gestured to a side passage. “It was the opposite. The previous Count, he wanted to build this half-feudal city-state. You know that Lankershire is the only county in the Republic, right?”
“Always wondered how that happened.”
“That was way at the beginning of Terra Nox, so I don’t know or care. Probably something to do with assassin mech production. Anyway, the Republic left Lankershire alone, and the Count could do whatever he wanted. He had this idea of a medieval community. Faux-stone low-rise buildings, cobbled streets, patriarchal families, that sort of thing. People who decided to stay single or those that didn’t fit were humiliated at best and sometimes simply disappeared.”
“Shit. No wonder it all ended in a rebellion.”
“Many left when Kyle came into power. Many are choosing to move to Seind now.” Kate stopped in front of a door. “We are here.”
Mary looked around. At first glance, it was a hallway like any other: metal floor, softly textured walls, and bluish lights every twenty feet. But this set of apartments was quiet. The city was rebuilding, and it was strange to walk anywhere and be greeted with silence. Kate pressed the doorbell. “Patrick, it’s me. I’ve brought a friend, she will be helping you.” She stopped pressing the button and turned to Mary. “You’ll get along great, I’m sure.”
The pause lasted twenty seconds before a soft beep signaled that the door was now open. They went inside.
The apartment was a battlefield. Everything was tossed, and a man was buried in a wardrobe waist-deep, throwing pants, shirts, and jackets onto the bed behind him. It already had a foot-high pile of stuff on it. Mary realized he was mumbling something at a speed that made his voice sound like buzzing.
“No, no, no, now where could you be, come on, don’t do this to me, I won’t put you away again—”
“Patrick, do you need help?” asked Kate, taking a careful step inside. When he didn’t react, she moved closer. “Patrick, it’s time for your checkup.”
She touched the man on a shoulder and he whirled around, raising his arms in defense. Or, rather, his right arm—his left one was a five-inch-long stump. He blinked a couple times and relaxed, turning his right side toward them and cradling his mutilated arm. “My God, Doctor Lind, you spooked me. Didn’t I tell you to just call out my name if I’m busy? You know, this isn’t very nice—”
“I tried that two times. This is Mary, she’s with the City Hall.”
“Hello,” said Mary. “I still don’t know what I’m doing here?”
“We’ll get to that,” said Kate. “Patrick, what were you searching for? Maybe we can help.”
The man rubbed the scars that trickled down from his eyes like burned tear tracks. He was less deformed than the other Crawlers Mary had met, but it was still bad. She noticed, however, that Patrick stood upright and moved with fluidity that others of his kind didn’t have. The man twitched slightly, cocked his head, and turned to Mary.
“A trinket, really. But maybe she can search with me after we are done. Mary, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
It felt right calling him that even if the man was younger than her. Heatsworth had developed his Ascension procedures only a year ago, and Patrick looked old. By that age most humans retreated into the blissful numbness brought by drugs or virtual reality.
Kate walked up to him. Patrick rolled back his left sleeve, and his stump came into view. It was sealed in light-blue plastic. Kate pulled up her personal assistant and entered a command. “I warn you, it’s not pretty,” she said.
Mary shook her head. “Kate, come on, you know I’m not squeamish.”
The wrap slid open, and a heavy smell of disinfectant and decay hit the room. What remained of the arm was greenish-white, and flesh was blackening in necrosis, flaking away, and being replaced by baby pink that faded into the same sickly color as the rest of the arm. It smelled like a chunk of ham left too long in a hospital.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Mary asked.
“An artillery beam,” said Patrick.
“A flawed Ascension is what happened,” said Kate, pulling out an array of medical instruments. She began cleaning the wounds and giving him shots both into the arm and just below his neck. “Or an incredibly successful one—depends on how you look at it. The nanites in Patrick’s system remember too much of what he was like before the procedure. He suffers few side-affects compared to other Crawlers, but his body tries to regenerate into two patterns at once when he is wounded. I’m trying to override it to turn him into our first full Ascended.” She finished and closed the wrap back. “This should be fine, Patrick. I’ve changed the inhibitors, and the boys are convinced that the new computer virus will make the nanites’ software capable of at least growing back your arm.”
“They said the same damn thing the previous two times,” he said. “I’m fine.”
Kate’s personal assistant beeped, she looked at it, and cursed. “Listen, I have to run, don’t forget to take your nutrients. And tell Mary what you need, will you?”
Before Mary could reply, her friend was already out the door, and she was left with the cripple.
“So,” she said. “How can I help?”
“You don’t look like a volunteer, girl,” He sat down on the bed next to the pile of junk. “I remember the capital: the viridian university and the gold Council towers.” His left shoulder jerked, and he slapped it. “Wish I could have stayed. Why didn’t you? Come, sit down.”
There was a console in the corner, linked to a computer that looked too advanced for an Ascended. It was the only place in the entire room that was clear. Everything else was clattered with data drives, clothes, and all manner of trinkets. She sat in the chair at the console.
She said, “Wherever I wanted to go, there was a glass wall. Ascension was supposed to be this great adventure, but there isn’t much to do for a daughter of a minor noble house, and I couldn’t even enjoy the stuff normal people can experience because of their implants. It sucked.”
He nodded and rose in a lurch. “I have a trophy somewhere around here. It’s a golden cluster of grapes about the size of my fist. It has For fifty years of service written on it.”
She spotted it immediately, peeking from behind a photo on a shelf in a corner. Mary let her gaze trail over the spot and sweep the rest of the room. “I don’t see it anywhere,” she said. “Have you looked under the bed?”
She lay on the floor, and they began searching together. After five minutes she asked, “So, I bet you’re eager to get healthy and back into the fray?”
Patrick grimaced. “Plenty of younger, more capable folk out there. Heatsworth is growing the numbers like he wants to go on conquering the galaxy after Terra Nox. I joined because I couldn’t sit on my ass and watch kids rush to their deaths—not after the life I led.”
“I heard a lot of people were in an impossible situation in Lankershire,” she said, diving into a pile of surprisingly clean clothes.
“I wasn’t,” he said. “I handled food distribution. Signed orders that held people on the edge of starvation for years. Just because otherwise I would be dead like my wife.”
He looked at the stump of his arm then, and Mary saw the regret in his eyes. Only now she doubted it was the regret that he had gotten i
njured. More likely, he regretted that the artillery beam hadn’t finished the job.
“I mean, the Federation needs a larger army, right?” she asked. “The Republic has way more soldiers.”
“I’m not a military man.” He shrugged. “It just seems strange to me when squads upon squads of Crawlers get spit out of the production center while the technology is still crap. Kate says that in a month or two she might crack the tremors most of us have and stabilize the regeneration. Pushing so hard now is weird—” He cut himself off and stared at her. “Are you interested in the military?”
“Not really, I’m just worried that the Republic might take back Seind.”
Mary got to the corner where the golden cluster lay, and took it off the shelf. She handed it to Patrick. He snatched it out of her hand with a speed that even she had trouble following.
He said, “Several floors in this building are occupied by soldiers who got hurt. A lot of them have trouble moving about. I try to help, but it would be great if you joined me. We Crawlers aren’t made for peace or loneliness.”
Mary checked the time. Her workday had been over half an hour ago. “Give me your contact info,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I need to go back to the office, finish some stuff.”
He smirked. “Bureaucracy never sleeps. Just come by when you can.”
“You’d think the top brass in Lankershire would have thought this part through better. Established a war hospital or something.”
“It’s not about physical recovery,” he said. “Most of us heal up in a day or two, just like normal Ascended. It’s about living through the down time. Take care, Mary.”
She left him sitting on a bed and looking at the award he had gotten from the man who had turned an entire city into a twisted historical phantasy.
The evening found her in a bar, wearing an ephemeral blouse and a pound of make-up. A gentle beat pulsed in the background like a distant orgy, and patrons broke into pairs and groups. She saw her in the corner—a slender blond thing with a haunted look—and waited ten minutes to make sure the girl wasn’t going to meet anyone. Her target eventually flicked on her portable terminal and closed her eyes, probably reading or watching something.
“Hey, is this seat taken?” asked Tara.
“No, no, not at all.” The girl’s eyes turned out to be blue. “Sorry, I just— I mean, they are rebuilding my house, and a family needed a place to stay, so I invited them in, and—”
Tara laughed, slid into the spot opposite her, and leaned forward inspecting the freckles on the girl’s nose. She was like a cute chocolate bear. Childish and a bit plump and oh so appetizing. “Why don’t you start with a name, darling? I’m Beth.”
“I’m Sue. Your hair—it looks amazing. It must have cost a fortune to get it like that.”
Tara pulled a lock in front of her eyes. Half of the hairs were crimson in this light and half were black—her own color. “You have no idea,” she said.
Two hours later they were resting at a hotel. Tara stretched on the bed and discovered that she had worked loose that kink in the back that had been bothering her for two days. She leaned over the sleeping form of Sue, gently pressed the injector against the neck, and pushed the button. The drugs went in with a soft hiss, and Sue’s breathing grew even deeper. Tara moved closer, light fuzz on her lover’s skin tickling her lips. It clung to Sue’s sweaty stomach but stood on the shoulders, reacting to the cold. Tara smiled.
She licked the salt off the right side of the neck, starting at the clavicle and going up to the ear lobe in a sinuous sweep. Her grin grew wider as she felt the girl quiver. Too bad this would be the last time for them.
Tara inhaled and bit.
Sue’s breath hitched and she tensed, but the moment passed and she relaxed, melting into the sheets. Tara took two more gulps, pulled back, and sealed the wound with a kiss. Tiny sparkles danced across the skin as the nanites self-destructed, their job done. She felt a wave of content and warmth wash over, and she stood up, closed her eyes, and stretched. She too was covered in sweat, but the air didn’t feel cold, instead she felt like standing next to the fireplace back in her family home. She ran her fingers over her still unfamiliar curves—she was beginning to like this body. The drugs she had drunk with blood made everything feel misty.
She let herself enjoy the moment for a while but soon it was time to go. Tara sighed, picked up her panties, put them on, found the rest of her things, dressed, and left, avoiding all the hotel cameras the same way she came in with her catch. It was a shame she wouldn’t ever see the girl. Sue was sweet, and not once through the night had Tara been tempted to take a piece of her through skin contact.
Tara skipped her way back to the office. More than a hundred people flew through her doors every day, so there was nothing suspicious about her coming in long after the normal working hours were over—the paperwork did pile up. She flicked the lights on and sat at the console. It felt like the walls of her tiny office were closing in on her.
She started on the daily quota of searching.
Tara’s fingers danced across the interface, browsing the City Hall folder structure at one-tenth the speed that a non-Ascended with basic implants could attain. Nobody had gotten around to setting up proper permissions yet, so she made use of full access while she could.
That monster had called her sister during the initial attack, and she was trudging through the folder tree in search of an explanation. The brute had turned out to be the new mayor, and some people from Lankershire believed Moira to have come from the Linheld family, but most knew nothing except her being a Sister—some kind of sex-slave to the Count.
She remembered a tiny thing hiding her face behind locks of dark hair and tugging at Tara’s trousers as they walked around their family house in Delmor. She remembered the slender beauty that girl grew into, a lover of music who was always buried in a book to the point where nothing could distract her. Even when Tara would walk by and pull her sister’s ear, she would only go red and pull the book higher to hide her face. Moira. The name still tasted bitter on her tongue. No one had seen her Moira in a century, and this woman was nothing like her little sister.
She knew, however, that the mayor was an Ascended like her, and most Ascended were shit with computers, so she had a chance. After two weeks of fruitless search Tara was starting to lose hope. She wandered past plumbing schematics to the transport network blueprints. Tara saw a folder that was named with a long string of random symbols and stopped. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?
She opened it and saw her name.
There were files for her, for her mother, for her father, for each of her siblings including the real Moira. There were files for families allied with them and for families opposing them.
“That bitch,” she said.
There was a file on a restaurant Tara frequented in the capital and files on the officers she had worked under. There were hundreds of names she didn’t know. She gestured at the file with her name, and it opened to reveal page after page of random symbols.
“Why can’t it be a neatly wrapped unencrypted archive?”
Her console had only physical access. She needed to somehow convince Mark III or another hacker to risk his life by coming here and decrypting the files. She contemplated sending the data to an outside account, but that was too risky. Besides, what was in the files wasn’t as important as their existence. She saw now how the monster had everybody fooled: even Tara could guess only at half the info in that folder.
An alert pinged in the corner of her display. She blinked, trying to remember what it meant. She had set that thing up during her first day on the job, more out of hope than reason. Tara opened the message.
Blake Drummond has arrived in the city. Current address is—
She stared at the text until tiny flecks of light began to dance before her eyes, and she remembered to breathe. She had been so sure he was dead, but then why had she set up the city logs monitoring? It hit her then
: she had been lying to everyone she met for a month. Somehow her life had turned into the exact nightmare she had tried to avoid by joining the military.
Tara switched off her terminal, got up, and headed to the apartment complexes.
A rain had recently passed, but she could still taste it in the air. Tara looked up and inhaled the night. The sky was clearing, and she could see stars twinkling at her in a thousand colors from breaks in the cloud cover. Had they always been this bright? There was a park nearby and the city smelled fresh and green and so new. Federation soldiers patrolled the streets in twos, breaking apart most altercations without dragging anyone to jail. They made her feel safer.
She found herself in front of a white door without a name and hesitated. She stood there for two minutes but finally raised her hand to the doorbell. Before she reached it, however, the door slid sideways, and she saw Blake. He was still in that mech suit of his, except it now had a couple new burn marks.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “I assume you have some business with me, miss? You’ve been standing here for a while.”
She looked above the entrance and saw the camera. She gulped and said, “I just heard that you were in the city and wanted to meet one of the best engineers on the planet again. It’s me, Mary. Remember your biggest fan?”
He didn’t move for nearly thirty seconds while lights slid along the v-shaped pattern of coolant tubes on his helmet. Drummond stepped to the side eventually and beckoned her into the room. She nodded and walked in noticing that it was just a standard forty-foot empty apartment. He must have just arrived.
“Wait a second,” he said and started circling around the room. He stopped near the wardrobe, near the door, and near the bed. He was done in a minute. “Sorry, I had to feed a loop to the bug they’ve placed. The room is clean now.” He moved closer to her, and blue coolant flickered where his eyes would be. “Tara. I thought you were dead.” He moved a hand to touch her head and stopped halfway. “Since when do you have red hair? I could barely recognize you with my scanners.”
