Rise

by K. T. Hanna

  What’s so important about this file?

  Nothing. Impatience was one of my strongest traits. I could be stubborn along with the best of them.

  Why do I have to steal something?

  It was probably my imagination, but it felt like the system sighed. SC requires that you obtain this file. You must not take anything else. Retrieve this file and do not be discovered. It’s a simple task.

  I took the fact that it answered as a win, and didn’t ask anything else. I could feel lines underneath my skin as they crackled with pent up energy, and focused on those instead.

  Evening rush time was no joke at Heavenly. I could see the crush of bodies from outside. Luckily, it was far enough from my house that I wasn’t a regular. Popping into the crowded small bakery at rush hour was more distracting than I thought it would be. There had to be at least thirty people crowding the tiny space in front of the service counter, and easily half that again wedged into the small tables lining the opposite wall. Definitely more than the partially hidden fire code sign on the wall suggested should be allowed.

  There were undoubtedly more than forty-eight people in here.

  How did they enforce that sort of shit anyway?

  I’d never been stealthy. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had a reason. However, as a track athlete I was light on my feet. So, I slipped through the throng of people muttering apologies as I made my way to the counter to grab a number. No one blinked an eye as I did. It was how the system worked, and right now it was working for me.

  Being way back in the service numbers meant that no one took any notice of me as I made my way to the bathroom. My breath hitched as I walked past the single stall restrooms. A faint hint of artificial citrus wafted out as I did.

  I steeled myself and walked as purposefully as possible toward the employee only area just beyond the restrooms. My heart beat faster than ever, my palms sweaty, and I belatedly wondered if they’d dust for prints.

  A split second before I reached for the handle, I pulled my hoodie’s sleeve over my hand. Couldn’t leave anything incriminating behind. That was in the Terms of Service. Don’t let anyone else know about second chance. My breath caught again, and it was difficult to breathe. My skin tingled like the branches of my Lichtenberg were extending their tendrils and threatening to strangle me.

  Through the door, there was a round table with several cheap plastic chairs. On the right wall a well-stocked set of shelves with buckets and cleaning supplies took up most of the space. On closer inspection they were green cleaning supplies. It made me like the place even more. Damn it. I couldn’t afford emotions right now.

  Ahead, on the far wall, was a door marked Office. Trying to keep the time in mind I headed toward it, purposefully, like I belonged there. In the busiest hour of the bakery’s day, it was unlikely anyone would come back here. Still, it was better to be safe than dead. Again.

  The door knob didn’t turn in my jacket-covered hand. I frowned. Of course it would be locked. What had I been thinking? My fingers sparked and I withdrew my hand hurriedly.

  Only then did I notice the flat stainless steel panel to the side of the door. I had the sneaking suspicion that touching it was not a good idea. Is that a print reader?

  It took a moment, but the system replied. Yes. Best to circumvent it.

  But it didn’t give me any specifics, nor did it try to give me advice. In all honestly I was relieved it didn’t have a finger hidden somewhere in this room for me to use. Which meant it wanted me to use my ability.

  I waited for a moment after the thought, but either it wasn’t there, or it was ignoring my statement of the obvious. What’s the worst that could happen anyway? I hadn’t stolen anything. I could say I got turned around trying to find the bathroom.

  I placed my thumb against the sliver of wall between the panel and the door, breathing deeply as I did so. Electricity, right? Just a small shock should do it. Not that I knew how to do more than handle this power theoretically.

  My first attempt yielded a spectacular nothing. Just a tiny spark that would have been lucky to statically shock someone. My nerves made my hands clammy. Best not to have damp hands while conducting this stuff.

  So, I tried again. This time I tried to imagine a trickle of electricity filtering through into the wiring in the minuscule space between the wall and the panel. The tendril of power that flickered out from my pointer finger wasn’t exactly small. I jumped back as it escaped my body, or maybe I was pushed back a bit by the force—I really had no idea.

  But it did the trick, and I could hear the lock of the door click.

  Successful execution of: Rudimentary Electrical Pulse Control

  You have gained field experience.

  I didn’t have time to figure that out. Without giving it any further thought, I twisted the handle and entered the office.

  The fluorescent lights inside the room were blinding and it took a while for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I felt somewhat let down. The room was tiny, like it was the cleaning supplies closet before being turned into an office. The desk only just fit with about two feet to one side. Filing cabinets lined the back wall, haphazard drawers half open and closed. Nothing seemed locked.

  I took a deep breath and moved to the back, careful not to upset anything on the desk. The filing cabinets were old fashioned grey metal and had letters on them. I search for Dionce, but my joy in finding the drawer containing the Ds disappeared as I heard a door creak.

  Fuck.

  I whirled around and watched the office door, frantically trying to figure out somewhere to hide. There were no windows, so there was no escape. My well thought out plans came back to bite me. I was so sure this was the way to go.

  Think, damn it, think.

  I ducked behind the desk. I was barely flexible enough to curl up into the tiny hole in front of the chair. It was cramped as hell, but I could sit there and wait. It’s all I could do. Could I go to jail for breaking in here? Surely not, right?

  This time the creak was slightly closer, and I realized it wasn’t the doors, because the door didn’t creak when I opened it. It was probably the person’s shoes. My heart sat right in my mouth, like it though it a better cavity than my chest.

  I heard whoever it was move. They cursed softly under their breath. Though that might have been my wishful thinking, because I wanted to curse so badly. They were flipping through the small shelf almost directly behind the door if my hearing directionality was correct.

  I couldn’t hear their shoes creak again, but a shadow flickered in my peripheral vision, edging off to the side. No matter what I did, my eyes couldn’t focus on it. The muttering continued and wasn’t in sync with the movement I couldn’t quite see. The chill that crawled down my throat threatened to choke me. My imagination had been running wild since I’d died.

  Finally, the sound of paper crumpling reached my ears, and the person at the shelves made an exasperated tsking noise. They exited the room, shutting the door loudly behind them. The shadows fled in their wake.

  Taking a deep breath, I counted to ten before moving. I half expected the person to have lulled me into a trap and to be standing there, but they weren’t. Not wasting any time, I dove into the draw marked D. Dionce, Dionce...

  Found it. The file appeared to be thicker than anticipated and I didn’t have time to go through it. They wanted the file with that name, I guess that meant that Second Chance got the file with that name. I reached in and grabbed the file.

  A grating noise almost made me shit my pants. It wasn’t that loud, only unexpected. But not nearly as surprising as the cabinets pulling in on themselves like a Babushka doll. The wall behind it rose up into the ceiling, its tatty appearance making way for a solid steel door set in dark red brick.

  Alrighty then.

  I shoved the thick file into the waistband of my pants. Obviously it was some sort of
key. Did they mean me to find this entrance?

  Do not give away the existence of Second Chance.

  The system whispered the words into my head, because I might have forgotten them in the last thirty or so minutes. I rolled my eyes. Surely it wasn’t giving away SC if I just took a peek right? I mean, there was a door there, and doors are there for opening.

  Nerves firing brightly, I was scared to look at my hand. And yet as I reached for the panel at the side of the door, the same type of panel that I cracked on the office door, I could see lines of white and pale blue flashing under my skin, escaping from my fingertips. Almost like the electricity inside me was alive and excited all on its own.

  Since SC remained quiet in my head, I simply assumed I was okay to look. Surely it would warn me if not. I took the lack of response as agreement and focused on releasing the electrical charge. Convincing this massive door that I had the right fingerprint was somehow much more impressive than the entry to the office.

  Sparks jumped, sliding into the minuscule crack with eager abandon. My fingers tingled as the light above the door flashed green, and swung inwards.

  It opened onto a metal staircase, and I took a few steps in. I stood at the top of the railing looking down on long metal walkway. Other paths branched off it, going to places I couldn’t quite see. I glanced behind me and noticed the door had a print pad on this side too. Surely I had a bit of time to look around?

  Taking a deep breath, I began to descend the stairs as quietly as I could, arriving at the next platform, which brought me about ten feet closer to the activity below. I could make out cages. No, not cages. Like thick plastic or glass soldered together with steel. They receded into the walls at the end of the walkways that branched off the main thoroughfare. While I could just make out people and clipboards, I couldn’t quite see what was in those containers.

  A soft crescendo of beeps filtered up to me, as if medical monitors were everywhere. Maybe one more platform down would tell me more without giving away my presence. Although, what would they do if they found me? And who the hell were they?

  Be cautious.

  And it fell silent again. Thanks SC old buddy, old pal. Curiosity won me over though. This was far too surreal. Surely I was imagining shit. Death, it seemed, had gifted me with a need to know more.

  Only two more descents stood between myself and the bottom level. Anxiety crept up, yelling at me inside my head. Didn’t I know I’d probably be killed if I was discovered? What if they were cooking meth down here? I wouldn’t know until I was too high to act.

  But what if they weren’t? I crouched down low on my new platform, watching everything I could. The people down there wore lab coats. The few I could see had devices set over their eyes. I’d think they were night vision goggles, but they looked even heavier and somehow far more complex.

  What I’d taken for soft music, startled me when it turned into a loud screech that echoed up through the opening, before returning to the soft and whimpering moan. The more I studied them, the more they appeared mechanical in movement, like they’d been programmed to behave in a certain way.

  Almost like it heard my thoughts, one of them looked straight up at where I crouched. It took every semblance of control I possessed not to move, to let the dark colors I wore blend me into the background.

  The shadows up here in the metal stairway began to gather around me, like they were moving of their own accord. I counted to ten, but they kept getting closer. Finally the person looking at me looked back down at what they were doing, and their mechanical movements began again.

  However, my shadows didn’t give in. They stalked me, sticking to the solid surfaces and not the stairs themselves. I took a gamble and ran. Taking the steps two at a time, as softly as I could, I dashed up the two flights of stairs only to come face to face with a closed steel door. Without thinking, I pointed at the finger print pad and released a burst of energy in desperation. The door swung toward me so fast, it almost hit me. But I didn’t care.

  I dived through it and back into the bakery’s excuse for an office, clutching the folder against my abdomen as the door swung shut.

  A shadowy tendril got stuck between the metal and the brick, falling to the ground in a clump of noise I hadn’t expected. For a brief second I glimpsed a flash of metal through the dissipating gloom before the file cabinets slipped back into place.

  Successful execution of: Rudimentary Electrical Pulse Control

  You have gained field experience.

  You have increased your skill to: General Electrical Pulse Control

  Great, that was good to know. I took stock of myself, calmed my breathing down, and tried to regulate my heart rate. My mom always did that to prevent panic attacks, and I’d grown up knowing how to calm myself down. Not that I thought she’d ever imagined I’d be calming myself down from… whatever that was.

  Speaking of which. After another deep breath I angled a thought at SC. What the hell was that down there?

  Crickets. I glowered and focused on getting myself out of that room instead of dealing with the system. It gave me the distinct impression that everything was currently on a need to know basis.

  I approached the office door counting to three in my head. A sense of urgency yelled at me to move faster, but that would only lead to unnecessary mistakes. I twisted the knob with my covered hand, relieved that office didn’t require me to cheat my way out of it. No one was in the staff room. At least that was some luck.

  I decided to lower the hoodie since usually that made it seem more suspicious. Brown hair wasn’t exactly noteworthy. Dark jeans and my layered hoodie weren’t overly descriptive.

  It’s a pity electricity couldn’t make me invisible, at least not without shorting the wiring and plummeting the shop into darkness. So far I’d broken into dog knew what with my new fangled superpower. Wait. Did that make me a super villain?

  I got out of the room as fast as I could.

  The noise from the front of the shop hadn’t lessened even slightly. By my calculations, and by the few numbers it appeared had been called since I went in there, it had only been about ten minutes. Yet, they seemed like some of the longest moments of my life.

  Some of the longest, most adrenaline pumped moments.

  And it was still coursing through my veins.

  I was starving. I looked longingly at the food behind the counter. With three dollars in my wallet, I wasn’t exactly rolling in it, but I was sure I could afford a small something. Fuck it. I deserved this.

  My number was three away. Even as nervous as I was, as loud as the oh my hell what the crap voice was trying to be in my mind, the sheer excitement drowned it out. Right now, it felt like I could do anything, and my ability egged me on. Like it was telling me to use it, to fling it out.

  Be cautious of giving into your power. Pull it back.

  I blinked, and the server called out number forty-one. SC was right, I guess. Even though I tried to quell it, a small part of me didn’t want to. That portion of my brain rebelled against my common sense. It wanted to release my power, to see what I could really do. To be honest, so did I. But maybe not in a crowded bakery that doubled as a hideout for whatever the fuck was beneath it.

  I took my turn at the counter and grabbed a cheddar bagel. Doughy and cheesy. Exactly the carb fix I needed to soak up that excess buzz.

  As I stepped outside the bakery, the wind tousled my hair, and the smell of freshly cooked goods drifted out with me.

  A dark spot flickered in front of my vision briefly, causing me to take a step backward. Maybe it was a fly or bug, but it had seemed larger. I turned to look at it, but it disappeared. What had those shadows been downstairs. Or else, what had they pretended to be. Because I was pretty sure there was something mechanical under them.

  Instead, I turned my attention to Heavenly Dough’s security? What the crap was up with the
filing cabinet. Come to think of it, what was in that file. I munched on my bagel as I attempted to resist taking it out and checking. The system hadn’t expressly told me not to look at it now, had it?

  But the file felt heavy against my shirt, like a weight I might have to bear.

  Maybe I should go to the hospital and talk to Dr. Caroline again. That would be nice, but she had basically said to only visit as a last resort.

  If I was supposed to die, shouldn’t I be dead?

  Those were some big heavy thoughts right there.

  My feet automatically led me home. I was just over halfway through the third year of my degree. I’d lived here for a long time, and it really had become home. The soft yellow light that only sort of illuminated the entryway through the half glass door felt welcoming and cozy as I walked up the seven steps to unlock it. The yellowing walls weren’t helped by the partial lack of light either.

  Three letterboxes hung loosely on the wall. No matter what the landlord did, no matter how many times he moved them or tried to tighten their hold, the old house seemed to prefer leaving them jangling just that bit.

  I pulled out the folder, feeling sick to my stomach. Was a file really such a huge cost to exchange for my life? My inner conscience helpfully supplied the answer: that depends what they do with the information. Had it wanted me to see that underground facility? The wall didn’t move until I pulled this specific file. So many damned questions. I needed time to sort through them.

  I took a deep breath and flicked open the front cover. Frowning, I flipped through the first few pages. Whatever this was, it was in a language I couldn’t understand. All that did was make me curiouser.

  Opening the mailbox, I retrieved the mail for our little unit only to find a manila envelope in there as well. Just the right size to fit the damned folder into. May as well be useful and give no one else a chance to see that I was putting something else in there. I mean, this was the task right?