Heir Ascendant (Faded Skies Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Maya lowered herself to the next length of pipe and crept along, doing as much as she could to keep quiet. She’d follow the arrows and leave without ever being spotted by the people who made them. A few minutes later, another arrow on the wall pointed at a left turn. She followed a curved length of still-intact pipe. After so many open waterslides, being in a tube felt strange. The old passageway was huge, tall enough for a grown man to walk upright in. By this point, the water barely made it up to her ankles. At the center of the macaroni-shaped segment, she felt confident no one was around and peeled off her nightdress. Water splattered around her feet as she wrung it out, rolled it up the other way and wrung it again. Once it stopped dripping, she flapped it out a few times and put it back on. The cold, damp fabric made her squeal on contact, and locked up all the muscles in her back for a moment.

  She emerged from the end of the curve into a straightaway where big chunks from the top of the pipe had fallen in. Thin streams of water dripped in from most of the cracks; rats teemed around the concrete bits on the floor like liquid shadows. Maya raised her empty hands and blinked. The knife! She looked over her shoulder at the way she’d come, unable to think of where along the wet rollercoaster ride she’d lost her grip. She gulped, figuring it a miracle she hadn’t cut herself.

  Rats in front, nowhere to go behind her, she stared at the little furry menaces and tried to summon up enough courage for a mad sprint past them. Doctor Chang and Sarah said they wouldn’t hurt her, but who knew if apartment rats had a nicer disposition than these rats? People living out here got wild and nasty―wouldn’t the rats too? Eventually, she darted forward, hopping around chunks of concrete and other debris carried here by the water. Fur brushed across her right ankle. She yelped, terror and tears blurring her vision and thoughts to one thing: get away!

  Her panic-powered sprint came to an abrupt end when she collided with something much softer than sewer pipe or even a dirt wall. She bounced off and landed on her butt, hands braced behind her, legs apart, sprawled at the lowest part of the curved passage.

  A man filled the end of the tunnel where it opened into a sideways passage. His olive-drab poncho wavered in a mild breeze, covered with two straps connected to satchels on his hips. He carried a long sniper-style rifle across his back, topped by a military-looking scope with rubber lens caps. Round goggles hid his eyes from view, and a pewter-colored spray of facial hair poked out around a breathing mask over his mouth and nose. A string of giant mousetraps hung from the back of his belt.

  Maya stared at the pistol strapped to his right thigh and the huge knife on his left. Her mind went blank. She couldn’t decide if she should scream, run like hell, plead and beg, or say hello.

  “Hey there,” said the man, his voice scratchy as if he didn’t get to use it much. He pulled his goggles up to his forehead, exposing two discs of clean pale skin around hazel eyes. “You fall in?”

  Maya pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, shivering. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  He ducked the edge of the pipe and took a step closer before squatting. “Easy, kiddo. Whatcha doin’ down in the Jigsaw River?”

  “Uhh.” She slid backward a few inches. “People were shooting at each other and I was right behind one group. Bullets were hitting the ground all around me and I didn’t want to get hit.”

  “Bit tricky down here. Easy to get lost.” He offered a hand. “Ye can call me Pope if’n anything.”

  She stared at his fingers for a moment before deciding to accept the handshake. “Maya. Do you live here? Are those arrow marks yours?”

  Pope emitted a wheezy chuckle. “Yep. I don’t like people much. I’m happy with my rats.”

  “I met someone who had pet rats before.” Maya cringed at a flash of the upside-down image of Head’s face a second before he plummeted over the edge.

  “Hah. Ain’t pets, kiddo. They’re dinner.” He winked. “You don’t look like no Frag.” He lifted her chin with a finger and studied her face before taking a knee, threading his fingers around her left ankle, and pulling her foot up. She swallowed, but didn’t move as he poked at her sole. “You run away from home, kid? You don’t look like you been out of doors very long.”

  She stood once he let go of her leg. “I only wore shoes when…” We’re filming an ad or doing a publicity event. I was never allowed outside. “I stayed inside all the time. Carpet.”

  “Oh, a Citizen.” He clucked his tongue. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Not everyone out here’s a bad sort. Course… you right in assumin’ it. Better to stay alive that way. But no, I ain’t gonna do nothin’ ta hurt ya.”

  “I’m lost. I don’t know where I am.” She let some of her worry leak from her eyes. “I was from the Sanctuary Zone, but my birth mother got bored with having a kid and threw me out. I found a real mom. The Authority took her away and I’m trying to save her.” Pope patted her on the back, a hermit’s best attempt to be reassuring. She had to work to keep her embellishment tears from becoming too real. If she let in a thought of Sarah or the unfinished card game, she’d lose it. “Can you help me get to the Spread? I need to find someone there.”

  Pope scratched around the edges of his breathing mask. “I suppose I might be able to help with that. How’s about you do me a little favor in return.”

  Maya shivered. The list of favors someone like her could do for a grown man came up on a short and very disturbing list. The memory of Mason’s computer screen leapt to the tip of her brain. Her head shook back and forth in a rapid no before she realized she was backing away and sniveling.

  “Hey kid. Easy. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t wanna.” She pulled down on the hem of her nightdress, holding it tight.

  “Sweet shit on toast, girl. Did someone touch you?”

  Maya gulped. “Uhh, almost. I ran away.”

  “That ain’t what I’m gonna ask ya ta do. Not e’en close.” His face reddened with a flash of rage. “You point me at that sorry son of a bitch and I’ll make sure he don’t bother you again.”

  She stared into his eyes for a few seconds before clinging to him. The fear from the past few days melted out in a short period of uncontrollable shaking. Something about him made her feel safe. It didn’t bother her when he rose to his full height, picking her up and carrying her along a series of tunnels. He eventually descended a metal ladder to a square passageway with train tracks set in a groove along the floor. She came close to falling asleep with her head on his shoulder, no longer having to worry about danger coming out of nowhere.

  A shift in gravity startled her awake as he set her down, seated, on a green cloth cot. They’d stopped in a rectangular room attached to the subway tube. A grey metal table with three chairs stood a few feet away. Three military-style trunks sat in front of a long locker cabinet to her left. In the far left corner, a toilet jutted out from a pipe, cordoned off only by the hint of where a wall used to be.

  Pope left her on the cot and went to one of the footlocker-sized cases. Maya yearned to find Genna, but she’d gotten herself hopelessly lost underground. She pulled her feet up onto the cot and rested her head against her knees, hoping that her sense of this man hadn’t been wrong. If he wanted to harm her, she couldn’t get away. He returned in a moment and handed her a cooked but cold rat-on-a-stick. It smelled okay, so she nibbled at it. A lump tightened in her throat at the memory of her reaction as ‘Eww!’ when Sarah first mentioned eating rats while they’d been out scavving. Again, she felt foolish and guilty for running off―but what other chance did Genna have?

  “Why do you live down here?”

  He took the long rifle off his back and laid it on the table before sitting in one of the chairs closest to the cot. “I came back from the war to everything I’d known being gone. Had a wife, two sons, brother… three sisters. Parents. No damn idea what happened to any of them. The whole
area we’d lived in was in ruins. Wasn’t no VA left then… uhh, sorry, Vet’rans Administration. Everything wound up shut down in some transitional period, then the damn blueberries took over. Spent a couple years searching but… best I hope for is they didn’t suffer.

  “This new privatized government don’t have any room for fools like me that did the dirty work of the old regime. They’d just as soon forget we exist. Worse, ‘round here, they’re little more than hired thugs of Ascendant. Sometimes almost can’t tell ‘em apart.”

  “I’m sorry about your family.” Maya gnawed on rat meat tougher than the one the woman had given her and a lot saltier. The idea of eating rodent bothered her much less than she expected. Remembering Sarah telling her that she’d eat rat if she had to made her homesick enough to wet the corners of her eyes. “You were in the army?”

  “Yeah. Ranger.” Pope chuckled. “I had the simple job most of the time.” He patted the rifle. “Some people think it’s easier to put a target down when you’re too far away to hear them scream, but they don’t know what it’s like. I got to look them right in the eye every time.” He sighed. “So. How did a tiny little critter like you wind up all alone out here?”

  Maya explained her walk from Block 13, the only omitted detail being her true identity.

  “Diego is going to somehow help you?”

  “That’s what Missy said.” Maya pulled a leg off the rat and nibbled on it.

  “What d’you expect ta do if you even make it inside the city?”

  She turned tiny rat bones over in her fingers, debating how much she could trust him. “I’m going to sneak into Ascendant and hack their computer. I can change the information so they let her go.”

  Pope laughed until the grim look on her face made him pause. “No shit?”

  “No shit.” She hesitated, feeling like she’d fallen in way over her head. “Unless you can help me save my mom.”

  “Ehh.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t do Sanc Zones… or people much, for that matter. I’ll get you home safe, or take you to the Spread. Your choice. This down here ain’t no place for a kid, so you can’t stay with me.”

  She worked the other rear leg back and forth until it snapped off the carcass, and pulled the meat off the bones with her teeth. Asking him to bring her home might be worth it only to watch him beat the hell out of those three idiots who wanted to eat her, but the Spread was so close. Genna couldn’t have much time left. One tear slipped down her right cheek. She had to still be alive.

  “I gotta try. If I can’t do it, will you help me get home after?”

  He dragged his hand down over his mouth, chin, and beard. “I suppose. If you manage to not get yourself killed.”

  He’s trying to scare me. “Okay. What was the favor you wanted me to do?”

  Pope leaned forward, forearms across his knees. “I found an old survivalist bunker down in the deep tunnels. Door’s locked from the inside. Been trying to get inside that thing for a year. Place has got to be loaded. Only way inside is this ventilation pipe I ain’t about to fit through. ‘Mere a sec?”

  Maya set the plate down and walked over to him. “‘Kay.”

  He put his hands on her hips, fingers straight like knife blades, and pulled back to measure her width. “You’ll be able to fit easy. You crawl in and open the door. Should be safe. If it ain’t, back out and no harm done.”

  She tapped her foot, thinking it over. Every minute wasted could be the one where they shot Genna in the head. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Pope led Maya along a confusing network of passageways, including a few stretches of the Jigsaw River. She hiked her nightdress up despite the water only reaching mid-shin at its deepest. He halted in the middle of the chute and pulled himself up to enter a break in the side that led to a square-walled corridor heading perpendicular. Maya climbed the rounded tunnel and braced one knee on the smoothest part where the concrete had long-ago crumbled away. A gap between the outer corridor wall and the section of pipe offered a view down a drop of about three or four stories, rife with exposed rebar, weeds, and jagged pieces of fallen debris. She peered up at Pope, waiting in the square hallway.

  He grabbed a dead caged lightbulb at his head level on the wall and reached one arm out to her. Rather than take her hand, he clamped his fingers around her forearm and hauled her into the air like a sack, carrying her safely over the pit before setting her down on her feet. He didn’t let go until they’d moved well away from the edge.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t be down here.” He winked. “Too easy to get yourself killed. Half of this place is ready to collapse at any moment.”

  She smiled at his back as he walked ahead, entertaining the thought he might not dislike people―or at least kids―as much as he said he did. No fault existed in his logic, however. This place was a deathtrap. After a short walk, he turned right at a four-way intersection and they cut across a room that looked like an electrical switching station for an old subway. Pope headed down another two long, straight passageways full of grime and chemical odors. Maya spent a little while trying to balance-beam walk on a train rail since it hurt her feet much less than the gravel on either side of it. The weak glow of his flashlight hid most of the details of her surroundings other than a thick mossy smell. Despite being close to blind, she had a feeling she’d gotten as filthy as she’d ever been in her life.

  He took an abrupt left into a short alcove that stopped at a heavy door, like something out of a starship or maybe an old war movie about submarines. He knocked on it, making little noise.

  “Keyhole and a crank. Couldn’t get the damn thing to budge… but.” He pointed the flashlight to the left, where a hunk of wall crumbled away to expose a dark metal pipe near the ceiling about eighteen inches around. “I think that’s the air vent for whatever’s in there. It’s about eight or nine feet.”

  She gulped. “O-okay.”

  Pope clipped the light to his belt and rummaged in one of his satchels. He pulled out a rope, which he tied around her waist. “I’ll hold the other end. If you need to get out fast, scream and I’ll pull.”

  “Okay.”

  He boosted her up to the hole. Maya leaned her head into the pipe, finding only darkness, silt, and metal flakes.

  “Can I have the light?”

  Pope unclipped it and held it out. Maya aimed it down the tube, expecting to see rats, but relaxed at a ninety-degree turn about ten feet in with no vermin in sight. Against her better judgement, she crawled inside, displacing loose dirt. The rope tugged at her hips whenever the cord snagged at the jagged break. Its presence lent a sense of calm. One shriek and he’d sweep her back out to safety. At the bend, she peered around at another elbow only twelve inches later. She wriggled in, rolled over, and crawled around the second bend into a five-foot section that ended with a curve straight down.

  She crawled over and peered down at a square folding table with one empty Hydra tray and a fork on it. Since the opening sat two feet away at the bottom of a stub, she couldn’t see much else of the room.

  Her surroundings didn’t give her enough space to turn around, forcing a headfirst descent. She pulled herself as far as she dared into the drop before gravity took her the rest of the way. Catching herself against the sides, she stopped sliding with her face a few inches from the end of the pipe.

  “Pope?” she yelled.

  “Aye?” His voice echoed down the tube.

  “The pipe sticks out of the ceiling. Lower me slow.”

  “Roger,” he yelled.

  Maya wound her right leg around the rope as he pulled it taut, hooking her foot for a grip. With the flashlight leading the way, she let herself slip forward. The nylon bit uncomfortably into her hips, thigh, and calf, but supported her weight. He fed line at a slow but steady pace. Once she emerged from the pipe end, dangling above the square folding table, she squirmed around to examine the chamber.

  I feel like the woman in Tomb Explorer… but she’s got big guns and big
ger… Maya rolled her eyes. Why do they always make characters like that?

  The room looked small, not even half the size of her old bedroom in Vanessa’s penthouse. Two fluorescent light bulbs ran across the ceiling, one on either side of the vent pipe. A hollow cubby in the right wall held a thin mattress. In the left far corner sat a plastic toilet. Shelves full of junk covered the walls, and a pair of metal cabinet doors seemed like they had something valuable behind them due to the presence of a giant padlock. The inside face of the thick door had a large wheel connected via gears to two metal slats. She whistled. Whoever built this place did not want anyone getting in here.

  She extended both hands and her untangled left foot in preparation for touchdown. The rickety card table wobbled as it absorbed her weight. Her body dangled by the hips until the rope gave her enough slack to kneel. Maya untied the knot and pulled the rope away from her leg. She panned the flashlight around again, making a sour face at a strange unpleasant stink in the air. One of those cabinets must be full of bad meat. She pointed the beam on the floor, finding it mostly clean except for a dark brown/red stain that appeared long-ago dried. Her gaze traced it back under the table she knelt on, and she locked eyes with the half-exposed skull of a dead man.

  She screamed.

  The rope whistled back up into the pipe. A few seconds later, the whump of Pope falling on his ass echoed from the hole in the ceiling.

  “Shit!” he yelled. “Girl, you okay?”

  Maya dropped the flashlight, buried her face in her hands, and bawled. “There’s a body in here!”

  Pope grunted. “Can you get to the door?”

  “He’s under the table!” Maya wailed. “I don’t wanna step in him.”

  “It’s okay, Maya. Calm down. Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “Yes!” she yelled, hands clamped over her eyes. “His face is half gone and I can see his skull!”

  “Listen to me, kiddo. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.” He cleared his throat. The scratchy wheeze in his voice faded a touch. “You want to get away from him, right? In order to do that, you’re going to have to open the door. I can’t get the rope back to you down the pipe.”