LEGACY RISING

by Rachel Eastwood

  “They saw us, they saw us,” Rain whispered. “We’re so caught. We’re so caught!”

  “Shh,” Dax said.

  The throng shuffled past, toward the well-lit building.

  Legacy stared after them with peculiar interest.

  “I think that must be their administrative, governmental, you know, official center of the like,” Vector deduced. “Look at it. All of these other spots are dark. That’s got lights. All these other spots have open entryways. That one’s probably got a lock, so—Shit!” He smacked his forehead. “Left the Cipher-Scope on the elevator!”

  “It’s okay,” Legacy responded. “They’re going in. We can just sneak in behind.”

  She couldn’t help but stare after the people of Old Earth.

  One of them looked just like her.

  When Trimpot and his followers entered what appeared to be the administrative facility of this dome, he immediately gestured for them to diverge from the crowd. Hallways branched in separate directions. The shuffling horde must have been directed by some kind of hive mind, for they did not speak amongst one another, nor were they being led, yet each seemed to share their destination.

  “Clearly we shouldn’t follow the zombies,” Trimpot said, indicating the hallway opposite of the retreating mass. “They’re not going to be going anywhere of high clearance. All eyes on me?” As if that was ever an uncertainty for Neon Trimpot. “Let’s move.”

  The group slunk along the wall. The doors here didn’t have doors. Nor did they have, then, locks. They only bore vague labels, like FREIGHT CHECK and ORDER RELAY.

  “Seems like a . . . factory, almost,” Trimpot noted with disdain. “Or a loading dock.”

  GENERAL MEDICAL STATION. SMOCK STOCK.

  “Why isn’t anything being guarded around here?” Vector wondered aloud.

  “I was thinking that too,” Rain whispered back. “And I also think we’ve disproved your theory of New Earth as exclusive resort location for the super-rich, Neon,” she smirked.

  Trimpot only sighed in response.

  RECORDS.

  “Here we are.” Trimpot smiled, and the group ducked into another storage area, this significantly less organized than the crates. In fact, it more closely resembled an unkempt library. There were thick books of pressed gold paper, each bearing the acronym N.E.E.R. and three letters of the alphabet, some high on the shelves, others vertically stacked in no discernible order, and still more open on tables.

  “N.E.E.R.?” Dax wondered aloud. “That sounds familiar.”

  “N.E.E.R.,” Vector repeated. “New Earth Extraneous Relocation. It’s the New Earth’s contingency plan for unplanned births. You know. The ‘mistakes.’ Obviously, it doesn’t get much play on the radio waves, but it’s always referenced like an adoption program. Or like, you know, a relocation program. Send your accidental baby to work in the mass production units of Heliopolis! That sort of thing. Put them where there’s room for them.”

  “Like Old Earth?” Dax suggested darkly, poking open a dusty volume titled L-I-T. Then he remembered Legacy. How she’d been able to use her DNA to open the door. Did she maybe . . . have a brother or a sister here? Some kind of family? Dax cast his eyes about, but she must’ve been behind one of the shelves. He began scouring for the volume L-E-G.

  “L-E-G,” he muttered to himself, scanning. “L-E-G.”

  There! It was upside down and misplaced between D-I-M and D-I-N, but there it was. Dax snatched it from the shelf and began flipping through names. Of course, with a name like Legacy, it was bound to be quick work. “Leg!” Dax called over his shoulder. “Get over here! I think I may’ve found something!”

  “God, keep it down,” Trimpot snapped. “We’re being stealth, aren’t we?”

  Dax’s eyes ticked over the names on the sheets, and he’d almost forgotten that he was calling for her until he saw the name.

  LEGACY, PATRICK AND FURNICE. COUNT: 1. SEX: FEM. WARD ENTRY: AUGUST 27, 2291.

  That was Legacy’s birthday.

  “Leg!” Dax cried again.

  “Keep it down!” Trimpot reiterated. “Although also, Legacy, could you pass me that eyeball thing, please? I assume it can record an image.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “Legacy,” Trimpot said again, testily. “The eyeball thing, please.”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and glanced around the room. “She’s not here,” Rain deduced.

  “Shit!” Dax cried. “God damn it, when did she leave?”

  “I don’t know!” Trimpot responded with equal fervor. “I was looking out for guards and stuff, same as you! Come on, we’ll just . . . find her. She can’t be far.”

  An automated voice pounded through a speaker system in the ceiling. “Severe storm warning,” it noted coolly. “Severe storm warning in approximately thirty minutes. Please return to your units. Thank you.”

  “We’ve got to get our stuff,” Trimpot said immediately. “That stuff can’t get wet. The damn Contemplator is in that open crate! We’ve got to get our stuff, and get out of here.”

  “Like hell!” Dax yelled. “We can’t just leave Legacy behind, you traitor!”

  “We have no idea where she is, mate! No way to get in touch with her, either! Maybe she’s back at the elevator, waiting for us!”

  “I’m not leaving without her!” Dax insisted.

  “We have to leave at some point,” Vector interjected, “or we’re all good as dead.”

  “And she heard the announcement too, if she’s here,” Rain added helpfully. “She should know to start heading back to the elevator, shouldn’t she? Won’t she meet us there?”

  Dax glowered at the other three, infuriated that none of them—nor he—had noticed her absence sooner.

  “Fine,” he seethed. “Let’s go, then. But I’m not going up without her. You can be damn sure about that.”

  The group fled from the administrative building with no proof of what they’d seen, then exited the dome. They could see what the mechanized voice had been talking about. The clouds were low and thick, rumbling ominously. Clusters of lightning laced the sky in the distance, approaching. The crew circled back to collect their clothes and Trimpot’s satchel from the crate in which they’d been hidden, and within a minute, they were rushing through the overgrown cattails and ferns, racing to the freight shaft which tethered the Old Earth to the New.

  But when they reached the wide glass capsule, its Cipher-Scope still attached, Dax froze.

  “She’s not here!” he announced.

  “The storm is coming!” Trimpot countered. “Get in the damn elevator, Dax!”

  But Dax balked. “I’m not going without her,” he reiterated.

  “All right,” Trimpot allowed. The sky was starting to pelt rain. “Just get into the elevator and we’ll wait for her.”

  “Do you promise?” Dax asked, edging toward the cabled box of glass.

  “I promise,” Trimpot said. But as soon as Dax was inside and the doors had shut, with the rain hammering on and streaming down its sides, Trimpot lost his grip on his claim. “We’ve got to go!” he insisted. “Look! You can see the damn thing from here!” And it was true; a curtain of rainfall was closing in. “It’s bound to be dangerous to operate the lift in weather conditions like that! We can’t wait any longer, Dax!”

  But they’d already waited too long.

  Sheets of water slammed into and lashed across the elevator’s glass walls.

  “Augh! Forget it!” Dax shouldered the doors open himself, staggering into the maelstrom. The wind howled, clawing at his clothing, and the water poured at a vicious slant. “I’m staying! I’m not going back without her! Don’t you fucking go anywhere! You said it yourself! Can’t operate a lift in weather like this!”

  While Trimpot, Dax, Vector, and Rain had been examining the records room, Legacy had broken away to follow the milling crowd in which she’d seen that girl. She couldn’t shake the certainty that this was significant. Who was s
he? And did this relate to why her DNA was able to open the door? Was this the coal miner?

  But, when Legacy followed the group, what she found was not an answer.

  Everyone waited in a docile line, filing toward a single woman with a large, glass syringe. With dull, listless eyes, they offered her their arms, and she plunged the needle in, depressing the plunger. After each arm, she’d sterilize the needle, refill the syringe with a combination of sickly yellow and dark green fluids, and then go again.

  The girl was in the line, waiting.

  Legacy stared at her from the doorway, unable to believe her eyes. They looked exactly alike. The girl had her silver hair cropped short. But otherwise, they were identical. How could it be?

  And what was being put into their bodies?

  Legacy’s eyes narrowed. She could see a back room through a glass panel behind the nurse, and in it gurgled and hissed a drink cart much like that which she’d seen on the third floor of CIN-3.

  Legacy ducked from out of the room and doubled back to the next entrance, which was simply labeled SUPPLY. She ducked inside.

  There were two vats there, and cartons full of nothing but syringes. Hundreds of syringes. The vats were huge and brimming to the top. Much like the free drinks at the radio broadcast station, the containers were glass, set on a wheeled cart, and had valves at the top for release.

  The first vat was familiar enough. It was a dark, mossy green, and was labeled, TO CALM THE NERVES.

  The second vat, the sickly yellow, gurgling vat, was labeled, DULL CURIOSITY.

  “Severe storm warning,” an electronic voice interrupted her thoughts. “Severe storm warning in approximately thirty minutes. Please return to your units. Thank you.”

  Legacy froze, expecting the woman administering the shots to turn and look upon her, but the dance of doses continued unhindered.

  Well, they’re already in a dome, Legacy thought. But I’ve got to get out of here. Not before doing something, though. Never before doing something.

  Hoisting herself onto the wobbling wheel of the cart, Legacy reached and fumbled for the glass valve of the first vat. Discovering it, her fingers tangled there and twisted. She felt the tension give, and mossy green tonic coursed across the floor.

  She wouldn’t have much time now. The woman would surely see this puddle spreading from the supply room soon.

  Stepping carefully onto the second wheel, attempting to distribute her weight, Legacy reached for the second glass valve and then felt the cart wobble and tip toward her. She had only enough time to twist and kick off, escaping their weight and slamming onto her knees. The vats shattered behind her, puddles of dark green and sick yellow mixing and flooding out of the room.

  Because Legacy had landed on her knees, she wasn’t visible from the room beyond. Still, she heard the nurse exclaim and advance. Crawling through the colored fluid, into the hallway, she lunged to her feet and ran.

  She hoped the others would do the same, wherever they were.

  Legacy couldn’t remember the last time she ran so hard. Harder than the run toward the Chance for Choice headquarters with Dax, and harder than the run toward CIN-3 with the rebel mob, she ran now. She left her clothes behind in the crate. The long grass whipped at her, the wind moaned, and rain lashed over the earth in sheets. In the distance, there were the cables stretched taut; there was Icarus, looming. It seemed a lifetime away, and she’d never been more desperate to reclaim her little slice of hell.

  As she clambered through the bog of half-dead trees, the mud and slush sucking at her bare feet—Damnit, my boots! she thought, in spite of it all—a vague shape came lumbering toward her across the wetlands.

  Legacy paused to glare. What was that?

  It was fleshy and pale, almost totally shapeless, but if a shape had to be applied to it, then it was oblong. And it was rocketing toward her with a sucker mouth clapping open and shut. Although Legacy had never seen such a thing before, it was a nematode. It was a double-ended, predatory nematode.

  The thing reared up and shrieked, its sucker opening like a sphincter to reveal rows of lamprey-esque teeth, and Legacy dove behind one of the jagged, decaying trees, into the muck, and shrieked. The nematode crashed toward her, but there came a crunch, and a splintered root whistled through the air. It sliced into the nematode’s abdominals, or what might have been the abdominals of another animal. It floundered, the flesh ripping like tissue, and black, gooey innards spilled from the wound.

  Legacy, trembling and blank, crawled backwards. She grasped a warm tree trunk and crept upward, grasping at it desperately, until her shock-addled brain realized this wasn’t a tree trunk. It was Dax. She peered wordlessly into his blue eyes.

  “Come on!” he rapped out, grasping her arm and running with it. Legacy yelped at the jolt, but she followed. “They might’ve already left! God damnit, Legacy, what were you thinking!”

  “I had to know!” she cried in response, focusing on the elevator cables ahead. “I saw her! A girl who looked like me! And I had to know!”

  They broke through the fronds of the bog, and the freight lift stood in view, pelted by rains but unmoving.

  “Oh thank God!” Dax cried. The door slid open before they even arrived at it, and the drenched couple collapsed inside, neigh giddy.

  “Go, go, go,” Legacy jabbered, almost to herself. “Go, go, go.” The elevator didn’t move, but she didn’t notice. She was delirious with relief.

  Legacy sprawled out on the elevator floor, drained, nonsensical, and it was Dax who pulled her into a sitting position, cradling her against his chest. She’d almost forgotten about the rebreather entirely—but he was unfastening hers.

  Legacy looked at him now, and really drank him in, as if they were strangers. His white shirt clung to his chest, transparent with rain, and his wet hair, saturated to black, hung in his face. Droplets of rain stood out on his pale cheeks and dripped from his chin. His mask was gone. “Dax?” she asked. “Are you—?”

  He tore the rebreather from off her mouth and descended, kissing her as if she were the oxygen, as if he needed nothing else. His fingers raked through her braids, his other hand skating over her cheek, her chin, her neck, as if to memorize this water-slicked terrain.

  “Wow,” Trimpot drolled, turning his back. “Classy.”

  “Never leave without you,” Dax confessed into her neck, burrowing into her hair like Flywheel had. “I’ll never leave without you.”

  She knew he needed his mask, but she couldn’t bear to tell him to stop. Her body was submerged in an effervescent sensation comparable to champagne, and her neck went slack, her head tumbling, her smile shameless. She buried her fingers into his hair and only opened her eyes when he was directly over her, peering down, his mouth so close that his breath was hers. “I think I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you,” Dax whispered back.

  “Daw,” Rain said.

  Vector stared out the glass and politely ignored the entangled couple on the elevator floor. “I think the storm is passing,” he concluded.

  “Thank Christ,” Trimpot muttered.

  Chapter Eight

  The sun had not yet risen by the time the Chance for Choice crew emerged from the glass elevator, back into the crate-filled basement. “I guess we’re not going back down there, then?” Rain suggested hopefully. She still looked rather squeamish from the mention of some tubular, double-ended beast with black guts. “I mean, if you see a monster, you see a monster, right?”

  “I don’t mind if we never go back,” Trimpot grumbled, extracting the Contemplator from his satchel. “Place ruined my shoes.”

  As the group surged along the side stairs, no one noticed that Dax’s hands never left Legacy’s hips. It wasn’t entirely sexual; part of him just wanted to ensure that she was safe, and sound, and in his arms. She was, after all, still wearing that muddied smock which spoke volumes of her near-death, of how she’d abandoned her possessions in a crate and still was almost left behind,
if it weren’t for Dax’s dedication. Of course, part of this was also the sheer enjoyment of her hips.

  Meanwhile, Vector offered hopefully, “I could probably throw something together to combat those monsters, you know.”

  “Why bother?” Trimpot asked, shoving open the door to the ballroom of the Center. “The only thing down there was an adoption front for a slave ring.” Perhaps realizing retrospectively how callous this sounded, he amended, “Maybe later, you know, when we have some more power.”

  “I kind of agree,” Rain said.

  The group emerged into the courtyard, where a light rain had precipitated to mimic the driving shower below. Legacy slid her hand into Dax’s front pocket. Like him, she simply wanted to feel close. She wanted to feel as if she were a part of him, and they were one. Turning her eyes up to his, she asked, “They were New Earth orphans?”

  Dax’s eyes ticked over her face like a newcomer, lost in uncharted territory. He had to try to find some way to tell her . . . without ensuring that she would immediately return unarmed in search for her long-lost sister.

  “Clearance, please,” one of the guard automata accosted the group.

  Trimpot cranked the Contemplator again, battering the thing with pulses of a sonorous message. “Good God, this is handy,” he purred as the turn-key guard coasted off again.

  The group moved through the dark and lifeless business district of Icarus, huddled together against the cold drizzle but otherwise not seeming to be felonious revolutionaries. Only Legacy had a suspicious air about her, being as that she was barefoot, and dirty, and wearing a shapeless gray tunic emblazoned N.E.E.R. on the breast. Dax was aware of this, though. It was one of the reasons he didn’t take his hands off of her. No one was going to take her from him. Not for any reason.

  After arriving at headquarters, Trimpot, Rain, and Vector diverged, and the lovesick couple moved on through the brass forest, toward their respective units. Legacy forgot about the mention of the orphans on Old Earth. She fluttered like Flywheel, tethered to the ground by Dax’s arms alone. They broke through the brass forest and into the industrial territory. Legacy shuddered and laughed as Dax pushed her hair from off her neck, and then came the sensation of lips on her skin.