Ascendant: The Complete Edition

by Richard Denoncourt

  Instructions finally arrived.

  Peter came up to the attic that night while Michael was reading an old science fiction novel about a trip to Mars. There was no electricity in Gulch at this hour, but he was already used to that from back home. He liked reading by candlelight.

  “What’s up?” Michael said.

  Peter looked bored. “You’re supposed to come with me to Blake’s office.”

  They walked all the way there, Peter obviously uncomfortable with the idea of riding double on the motorcycle. Michael could tell by the way he’d glanced longingly at the bike on their way out of the garage.

  Insects chirped in the night. The humid air coated Michael’s face, smelling like tree bark and wet stone. He and Peter didn’t talk at all during the first half of the trip—then, for whatever reason, Peter began rattling off advice about living in Gulch.

  “…Another thing you have to remember is to stay away from those guys you saw at the café. They’re local thugs. They work for Meacham as security and who knows what else. They hate our kind.”

  “What do you mean, our kind?”

  Peter threw a furtive look at Michael. “Telepaths.”

  Their shoes shuffled against loose bits of stone. The town was dark and quiet, the buildings like massive walls with nothing on the other side.

  Michael couldn’t stand the silence.

  “How many telepaths are there in Gulch, anyway?”

  Peter looked down at his hands and counted using his fingers. “About twenty. Most of them are Type IIIs. Me, Eli, Ian, Arielle, Charlotte, and Blake are the only Type IIs. Oh yeah, and Dominic.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Glad you asked.” Peter said, his shoulders puffing up a little. “Let’s see.” He bent down and picked up a small stone. “Type IIIs, the weakest, are also called ‘sensors.’ Their ability is limited to sensing lies, emotional shifts, stuff like that. If this rock were a Type III telepath, its power would be about this strong.”

  He dropped the stone. It bounced a few times before settling on the pavement. He picked it up again. At this point they had stopped walking.

  “Type IIs are sometimes called ‘senders.’ They can do pretty much everything a Type III can do—sensing, hypnosis, stuff like that—except they can also send thoughts, images, and sometimes illusions into another person’s mind. Or, if they’re an empath like Arielle, they can manipulate a person’s emotional state. Dominic can mess with your perception of time, which is how he pulls off his agility trick. That takes years of practice.”

  He showed Michael the stone. “Type II telepathy looks like this.” He lashed his arm outward and sent it skipping up the street.

  With a gathering sense of excitement, Michael followed Peter to the stone and watched him pick it up.

  “Type I’s,” Peter said, tossing up the stone and catching it, “are called ‘Ascendants,’ or ‘mental dominants.’ They can take over a person’s mind, make him do things he otherwise wouldn’t do.”

  “Huh,” Michael said, recalling Boyd’s horrified expression as he had sliced open his own throat in the basement of Lanza’s.

  Peter continued. “If this rock were a Type I telepath—”

  Michael could only react in stunned silence as Peter whipped the rock at the nearest window, shattering it.

  They reached an intersection with five roads branching away from a small community park. Michael only saw it by dim moonlight, but he could tell it was a beautiful spot full of greenery. A granite fountain sat in the center, surrounded by stone walkways. Around the park, the buildings were all abandoned. Most had holes where windows and doors should have been, probably because the wood and glass had been scavenged.

  Trash had piled up in the gutters along the streets. The outer walls of the buildings were stained and pitted. The rusted shells of old cars sat motionless in the dark, stripped of their wheels and doors.

  “This is the Hollows,” Peter said. “No one lives here, though people talk about restoring it. But who has the money for that?”

  They came to an abandoned movie theater called The Matinee. As Michael studied the building’s garish face, with the unlit display shelf jutting over the entrance and the ticket booths covered in faded red paint, he sensed the shadow of a distant past where late-night traffic hummed in the street, and well-dressed couples came arm-in-arm to watch the double feature.

  The thought died as a rat scurried across the sidewalk and entered a hole in the building’s front.

  “You’ll get used to them,” Peter said. “They’re everywhere. Eli thinks we should open up a restaurant and make hamburgers out of them. Put the Cold War Café out of business.”

  “I’ve eaten rat before,” Michael said.

  “Really?”

  “Yup. Lots of protein.”

  Peter grimaced. “I think Eli was just kidding.”

  They went around to a side door in an alley. Peter yanked it open to reveal a flight of wooden stairs leading up.

  “You ready?”

  At the top of the stairs, a dusty, low-wattage bulb hung from the ceiling by a cord, its light barely reaching them.

  “No way,” Michael said and backed up. “I’m not going up some shady set of stairs in an abandoned building just because you said I should.”

  “Quit being paranoid. Blake’s office is up there.”

  “Oh yeah? If Blake’s such a big shot, why is his office out here in the Hollows? Explain that.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “I told him this was a bad idea.”

  “How do I know there aren’t a bunch of guys up there just waiting to jump me? Huh?” He spoke in a harsh whisper. “Where are Eli and Ian? You sure they’re not up there waiting for me? I can see Eli cracking up right now.”

  Michael was taking short, shallow breaths. He tried to relax, but this place just felt so foreign to him, with its lack of street prostitutes and drug dealers and patrolling FSD vans. It was just so quiet out here. Anything could happen and no one would ever know about it.

  Peter smirked at him, and the smirk eventually became laughter that made him shake. “Look at you, all scared.” In between bursts of laughter, he said, “Damn, I wish the others could see this…Oh man, this is too much.”

  Michael crossed his arms and waited.

  Peter wiped his eyes and sighed. “Gulch is the most boring place this side of the mountains. You’d be lucky to get your ass kicked. At least then you’d have a story to tell.”

  “I’ve got lots of stories,” Michael said without amusement.

  “Really? That’s great. Now get up those stairs or I’ll kick your ass.”

  Shaking his head, Michael made his way up slowly. Peter was probably right; this place did seem pretty boring.

  Upstairs, something was burning; he could smell it: a pile of tobacco leaves, it seemed like. His parents had never been smokers, and the only smoking Michael had ever done in his youth was to impress a gang of kids that lived in his neighborhood. But this was something else. The entire hallway stank of cigarette smoke.

  Michael held back, and Peter, with a frown, took the lead once more and knocked three times on a worn wooden door.

  “Who is it?” a rough voice said, followed by a rattling cough.

  “It’s Pete. I brought Mike.”

  His words were followed by the wet sound of a smoker’s throat being cleared inside the room.

  “Bring him in.”

  Peter turned and winked at Michael, then made for the stairs.

  “Wait, um, Pete?”

  “Yeah, what is it?” Peter said, obviously a little annoyed at having been stopped.

  “Those girls, Arielle and Charlotte—well, I don’t want to cause any problems, if you know what I mean.”

  “Arielle’s my girlfriend,” Peter said. “In case no one’s told you yet.”

  “Oh, right. Got it.”

  “Charlotte’s all yours, though.” Peter began to walk down the stairs backward, something he made lo
ok easy. “You can take her if you want, but beware”—he cranked his eyes open as wide as they would go, like someone telling a ghost story; he even lifted his hands and wiggled his fingers—“she has secrets.”

  He hopped backward, twisted in mid-air, and landed halfway down the stairs. Michael shook his head.

  “Show off,” he said as soon as Peter had left.

  Clearing his throat, he pushed open the door to find Louis Blake sitting behind a broad desk on which there was nothing but a pack of cigarettes with a matchbook resting neatly on top.

  The smoke made his eyes water. Michael entered, coughed once, and looked around to inspect an office much smaller than he had imagined. The office was unfurnished aside from an old leather couch the color of dried rose petals and a few bookshelves.

  Blake indicated with a tilt of his cigarette that Michael should sit on one of the two wooden chairs facing the desk. Michael went ahead and sat, making sure to keep his eyes on Blake’s the whole time. He still didn’t trust the old man. Maybe it was all those years of seeing his face on “Most-Wanted Terrorist” posters that made him so hesitant.

  “I would offer you a drink or a snack,” Blake said, “but as you can see”—he lifted his hands and looked around—“this place isn’t outfitted for guests.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Blake tapped his finger against the pack of cigarettes a few times, pensively, like he didn’t know what to say next. “I hope Dominic made it clear that we’re not kidnappers. He was supposed to give you a choice in the matter of coming here.”

  “He did.”

  “Good. Do you know what happened to you in the basement of your parents’ restaurant?”

  Michael shrugged. “Dominic said I had an episode.”

  “A rage attack would be a better term. They only happen with Type I’s. Except that in ninety-nine percent of all cases, the first attack usually kills you. You’ve had two in your life, the first when you were only three years old.” A cloud of cigarette smoke obscured his silvery eyes for a moment. “And yet you’re still here.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t your foster father tell you? Your mother was a Type I. The only one ever born naturally. But she died before we even knew what she was. That’s why Kole needs to get you back—to perfect the genetic map that explains how you’re capable of doing what you do.”

  “So he can do what?” Michael said. “Reproduce it?”

  “Exactly.” Blake put a cigarette to his lips and lit it. “Imagine soldiers that can do what you did that night in your parents’ basement. Imagine how devastating that kind of power could be if you could use it at will.”

  Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Could I use it at will? This ‘death whisper’?”

  One of Blake’s eyes flinched a little. He sat back and exhaled a plume of smoke.

  “Where did you learn that term, ‘death whisper’?”

  Michael shrugged. “I think I heard it once, a long time ago.”

  “Hmm.” Blake looked down at his desk, deep in thought.

  “You could teach it to me, how to control it and use it safely, right?”

  “No, I couldn’t. And besides, would you really want that kind of power?”

  “I could use it to get back at the men who killed my mother.”

  “Maybe.”

  Michael leaned forward. He’d been wondering about this since yesterday. Could he learn to kill a man without needing a physical weapon? There were certain men in this world who deserved to die, like Welcher and Boyd and his uncle Sal, and Harris Kole.

  “Teach it to me.”

  “No,” Blake said.

  His tone indicated there was no way he’d reconsider.

  “Why not?”

  “I said ‘no,’ Michael, and you’re not going to change my mind. I promised your mother I’d protect you, teach you how to defend yourself. That’s why you’re here.”

  “But I could protect myself—”

  “Not a chance. No man should have that kind of power, especially not a boy as young as you.”

  Michael sat back, fighting the urge to plead further. “So this isn’t about protecting me, but about making sure Kole doesn’t build an army of Type I’s.”

  “It’s to protect you from yourself. That kind of power would turn you into a killer. Is that what you want your life to be?”

  Michael looked away, silently reflecting on what Blake had just said. Of course he didn’t want to kill anyone, not unless he had to.

  And yet the feeling of power he’d experienced that night—he’d never known such a thing. Such hunger and pleasure...

  “Why did I cry blood?”

  Blake stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s a sign of how close you came to killing yourself.”

  “So I almost died that night, in the basement.”

  Blake nodded, keeping his eyes on Michael’s. “You most certainly would have died without Dominic’s help.”

  “But we don’t know that for sure.”

  Blake shrugged. “Do you really want to find out?”

  He went about lighting another cigarette. Michael got the distinct feeling the man was trying to smoke himself to death.

  “Who exactly are you?” Michael said.

  “I’m nobody anymore. But I used to be a major in the People’s Republic military. Harris Kole and I were friends until he got promoted to general, after which he began to see me as the competition. What happened between us is a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you someday, but for now all you need to know is I started leaking information to a group of revolutionaries located in the Eastlands. I turned traitor.”

  “Because Kole wouldn’t promote you,” Michael said.

  Blake shook his head, his face foggy behind a curtain of smoke. “Because I loved your mother. I wanted to run away with her.

  “Didn’t work out that way, though. I got caught and managed to escape before they could execute me. I came to the Eastlands and tried to join the Liberators, but they wouldn’t have me, even though I had provided them with years’ worth of classified information—documents and codes that saved hundreds of lives…” His voice trailed off in disappointment. “Very few people in this world trust our kind, Mike. We’ve only been around for about seventy years. I was one of the first.”

  “The Children of the Atom,” Michael said.

  Blake nodded. “No one understands where telepathy came from, but the entire world is trying to find ways to harness it. Some of us discovered how to turn it into a weapon, and that weapon is you. The night your brother died, you had a telepathic episode that resulted in the deaths of almost a hundred people in your neighborhood. I tell you that not to make you feel guilty, but because I want you to understand the extent, and the destructiveness, of your ability.”

  Michael sat motionless. When he spoke, his voice lacked any sort of emotion, and yet he felt like curling into a ball.

  “Can you teach me how to control it? So it never happens again?”

  “I can try. But you have to promise me two things.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Blake stubbed out the cigarette. “One, don’t ever ask me to teach you the death whisper. It’s not going to happen. And two, don’t make me regret bringing you here.”

  Chapter 6

  Morning came with a wash of sunlight through the window that filled the entire room.

  Hearing movement downstairs, Michael flung himself out of bed and got dressed. He took the stairs lightly so as not to startle whoever was down there.

  The aroma of meat and a delicious sizzling sound drew him forward. He rounded the corner to see Peter in the kitchen making steaks.

  “Pete,” he said. “Uh, good morning.”

  Peter didn’t look at him, instead focusing on the meat. “I’m making breakfast. Usually it’s me on Tuesdays, Eli on Wednesdays, and Ian on Thursdays. Then we restart the cycle. You can take over for Ian since he can’t cook worth a shit.”

  “Where do
you get the food?” Michael said, studying the stove to see what kind it was. Gas, just as he had thought. Very nice. A half-dozen uncracked eggs sat in a bowl.

  “From the farms,” Peter said, sounding annoyed. “How about cracking those eggs? I’m making omelets.”

  “Sure.”

  Michael cracked the eggs one by one with the ease one acquires after years of working in a restaurant. He still remembered perfectly how to do a whole dozen in thirty seconds. Peter stabbed the steak he was obviously trying not to burn. He lifted it with a fork to inspect it and let it fall back into the pan.

  “And that’s how you do it,” he said.

  “What, burn it?” Michael said, not trying to be cocky though it had come out sounding that way.

  “Smartass,” Peter said. When he saw how quickly Michael had opened the eggs, he whistled. “You’re good at that.”

  Michael shrugged. “My parents owned a restaurant. By the way, you’re going to ruin that steak. Here, watch this.” He poked the steak with his finger, then lifted it and checked the underside. “You’ve seared it already, which means it doesn’t need to be on any longer. The meat’ll turn dry. You have any butter?”

  “Uh huh,” Peter went to the icebox—no refrigerator here, Michael noticed—and brought out a pair of cubes wrapped in aluminum foil.

  “That’s it?” Michael said.

  “Hey, this ain’t your parents’ restaurant. We got limited supplies in Gulch.”

  “No problem, I’ll just use a little. My father taught me how to cook steak once. It was a special occasion. The regime only gave out meat on Harris Kole’s birthday, but they stopped doing that years ago.”

  He used the butter, along with a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary sitting on the windowsill above the sink, to give each steak a nice golden crust. Peter watched, hands on his hips, one reaching up now and then to scratch the underside of his chin.

  “That smells delicious,” Eli said, barging into the room.

  He was wearing only a towel and was still damp from his shower. His pale belly hung over the front edge, the skin transparent enough to show blue veins underneath. The lack of hair on his chest made him look like a giant, muscular baby.