by V. St. Clair
“How did you bring us here? How did you know where I wanted to come? Who are you and why were you and that Provo-Major in the bathroom with me?” she demanded, now leveling the sword at him suspiciously.
This day just gets better and better.
“I just told the door to bring me anywhere safe—I couldn’t think properly after weeks of being tortured by that ass—and now we’re in this random basement. I have no idea where we are right now, but that occasionally happens when I’m in a hurry. Do you happen to know this place?” he asked her in turn.
“Of course I do,” she looked stunned. “We’re at a meeting house for the resistance. This place belongs to Hera.”
7
Ana Crumb
“You have got to be kidding me,” the man said in a raspy voice, his lips cracked from dehydration. When Ana didn’t respond he added, “Well isn’t that a fine bit of irony…”
“Who are you and why in the hell were you traveling around with a Provo-Major in downtown?” she demanded of him again. She had just acknowledged this as a safe place for Hera’s supporters, but now she was questioning the wisdom of admitting this to someone who might not actually be part of the resistance. Why had she lost her head at such a critical moment and given away information that could kill them all?
But if he was really being tortured by a Provo-Major, then they can hardly be his friends…
And she, Ana, had fought a Major and lived to tell the tale! It was the first time she had ever met one in person, and she had thought they were impossible to defeat in battle, but it actually hadn’t been too hard at all. Maybe their reputation was overinflated?
Or perhaps this one just sucked at his job.
“It’s a long story, and if you don’t mind cutting these bands off of my wrists and getting me some water, I’ll tell it to you.”
Ana frowned at the delay, but saw no choice other than to comply with his admittedly reasonable demands. For now. He was hardly in any condition to fight her, she was still carrying all the weapons, and any enemy of the Provo could be considered her friend.
“Come upstairs then, and I’ll cut you free. They should have some scissors up there.”
She gestured for him to precede her up the stairs from the basement to the main floor, because she didn’t trust him standing behind her, especially with a Gift involving the creation of doors to other parts of the city at will. The man—Maxton—didn’t seem to mind this precaution; mostly he just looked exhausted and relieved.
Ana released the hilt of the thing he had called an ion-sword and the brilliant orange light immediately dissipated as the two metal brackets fell to the floor with twin clanks. She picked them up carefully so as not to reactivate them again, and cursed herself for a fool as she followed Maxton up the stairs.
How could I have been so stupid with that Provo-Major back there?!
She had done so well in her practicum today, and for five years before, only to make the colossal mistake of scanning the eyes of one of the most powerful human beings alive. Really, it was all Maxton’s fault for startling her in the ladies room of Club Roxx while she was changing clothes—she hadn’t even removed her necklace yet—and forcing her to confront the Major.
Under normal conditions she knew better than to look so far into someone’s mind they would notice the intrusion, but in the moment they made eye contact she panicked and her Gift kicked into overdrive. Now her most dangerous enemies knew about the power she had worked so hard to conceal since she was thirteen.
That was a problem for later. Right now she had to figure out what to do with this Maxton guy, and how to contact Hera to explain this whole mess to her. At least he had brought them to one of Hera’s cells, which cut out a lot of her travel time from Club Roxx and would make it easier to get a hold of her. Someone here probably knew where Hera was at right now.
But will anyone actually believe I fought a Provo-Major and won? She wasn’t exactly known for her combat skills. Then again, she hadn’t really done much fighting; Maxton had kicked him in the head and face while Ana stole his weapons and fended him off until they escaped.
A victory is a victory, she assured herself.
They stepped out of the basement and directly into a storage room full of boxes of merchandise. Hera operated several of her cells out of legitimate businesses whose owners were sympathetic to her cause, and this was one such place. It was cramped back here, amongst the boxes of bedding and pillowcases, but they passed between two rows of stock where Ana knew there was a table set up where Maxton could sit down while she went to find a box-cutter.
She was shocked to see Hera and two other people already sitting at it.
Hera was probably fifty years old but looked younger, her dark hair going to grey and her bright blue eyes giving her the impression of great energy and intelligence. She was a short, slightly plump woman who managed to carry her weight in such a way that she looked both sumptuous and sturdy. Ana had always thought she was a very beautiful woman, though Hera seemed not to notice or care how her appearance was regarded by others.
Hera’s lips parted in surprise at the sight of Ana and Maxton standing there, and then she was on her feet. The other two people with her followed suit, though they looked menacing where she merely looked concerned.
“Ana, what is this?” she prompted, taking in the sight of Maxton with obvious confusion. “I wasn’t expecting you here tonight, and why do you have a tied-up Gifted with you?”
“It’s…a really weird story,” she said lamely. She had absolutely no idea how to begin explaining what had happened; parts of it were still sinking into her own mind, and it only then occurred to her she was still holding the things she had stolen from the Provo-Major.
“Hi, I’m Max,” the other Gifted introduced himself, his voice hoarse. “I’ve been locked up in the Augenspire for—weeks, I think?—with a Provo-Major named Fox torturing me to find out your whereabouts, even though he knew I didn’t know you.”
This announcement was greeted with shock by everyone else present, and Ana wondered if they were going to have to kill Max to keep him from reporting back to the Augenspire when they inevitably caught back up to him now that he had seen where Hera was hiding and what she looked like.
“Please, sit down,” Hera spoke at last, gesturing to a chair. “Can I get you some water while Lolly gets those bands off your wrists?”
“Both would be great, thanks,” Max said rather pitifully, sinking into the nearest chair as though his legs had given out on him completely.
Both women hastened to complete their tasks, and Ana took a seat at the table as well, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. Her hands were shaking, which rattled the little chips on the keyring she’d stolen from Fox. Upon closer inspection there were quite a few of them, and Ana wondered idly if they opened all the secret doors in the Augenspire, or if they were for something else entirely.
After Max drank his fill and freed his hands, he looked around at the other four and said, “I suppose I should start with my Gift, since it’s the reason I’m here. I’m a Physman with the ability to open a door to anywhere of my choosing on this planet—well, with limitations, of course.”
Ana frowned and said, “You can transport anywhere on Elaria at will?”
“Like I said,” Max smiled wearily at her, “there are limitations. I can only go to a place I’ve already been; I have to be able to see it in my mind in order to open a door there. Since I’ve never left Silveria, that mostly restricts me to travel within the capital.”
“Mostly?” Hera picked up on the word immediately, giving him her complete attention.
If we can get another powerful Gifted on our side, his powers could be a great asset. It would be nice to be able to move around without having to waste time commuting.
“The thing is, my Gift is sort of unreliable. About fifty-percent of the time I use it I end up exactly where I want to be, no problem. The other half of the time I can end up virtually
anywhere, including a place I’ve never been before, which is how I stumbled upon you tonight in the bathroom…Ana, was it?”
Ana nodded, thinking maybe they shouldn’t use him as a courier after all, if his Gift only worked half the time.
“Is that why you fell from the ceiling when you appeared?” she asked with interest. At the time she had thought it was an odd way to make an entrance but hadn’t had any time to question it.
“Yeah,” he nodded confirmation. “If I’m popping up somewhere unexpected, I can’t always control the exit very well and the door can sometimes appear on the ground or up in the air, or somewhere else really inconvenient for me when I cross through it.”
“I suppose it’s not too surprising,” the woman named Lolly spoke now. “The more powerful Gifts tend to be somewhat less reliable than the lesser ones, don’t they?”
This was accepted as general knowledge amongst the Gifted.
“But it has never been fully proven,” Ana speculated. “And there are definitely a few noteworthy exceptions to this trend. Carl, for example.”
Max simply shrugged, not knowing or caring who Carl was right now.
“You said you were being held in the Augenspire…?” Hera prompted gently, though it was obvious to Ana she was very interested in hearing about the Augenspire from someone who had actually been inside it. “We haven’t spoken to anyone who has been inside yet.”
“It tends to be a one-way trip for our people,” Ana grumbled. “Except for the traitors that work for the government, of course. We’ve only talked to a few people who have been interviewed on the second floor for minor infractions, so we don’t have a great idea of what the place actually looks like.”
“What’s on the second floor?” Max asked with interest.
Lolly waved a dismissive hand and said, “It’s one of the least secure parts of the building, where they do most of their interviews and interrogations that don’t warrant higher security.” Her tone made it obvious that they knew enough about the second floor to not to be interested in it anymore.
“But you’ve been on one of the other floors if you were being held by the Provo-Major,” Ana pressed, leaning forward in anticipation.
“Not by choice, I promise.” Max grimaced at some private thought. “The Provo-Minor arrested me one day on some trumped up charge about conspiring with you, and they planted evidence on me so they could hold me. They must have been watching the videos about my Gift and decided I should be able to open a door to you so they could catch you at last,” he addressed Hera directly. “I take it they are getting desperate in their search; Fox certainly seemed furious that he hasn’t caught you yet.”
She frowned at this grave injustice as the others made noises of outrage and protest.
“More proof the establishment has gone to the dogs and needs to be ripped out by the roots,” Ana grumbled angrily. “They can’t find a good reason to arrest us anymore so they just make them up.”
“They first took me to the two-hundred-and-eightieth floor, which is apparently their normal prison for Gifted they have under arrest.” He didn’t seem perturbed when Lolly’s husband immediately began taking notes on this interior description of the Augenspire.
“Can you describe what you saw there?” Hera prompted. “We were under the impression the prison block would be in the basement.”
“I don’t think there is a basement to the Augenspire, for all the rumors about the place,” Max informed her. “I’m guessing it made more sense to put it on the upper floors where access is restricted and it’s much harder to escape. When they were bringing me in, the Provo-Minor could only get me to the two-hundredth level; they had to call a Provo-Major—Fox, in my case—to take me the rest of the way on a separate set of elevators, and he had to scan his ID-chip to get any of the doors to open for him. I think only high-ranking people can use the top hundred floors of the Augenspire.”
“That would make sense if the Viceroy and his family live on the top floor,” Lolly’s husband remarked.
“It’s not conclusive, but it does support our theory of the upper levels being segregated from the lower,” Hera acknowledged.
“Does that matter?” Max asked curiously.
“Everything matters,” Ana commented at the same time that Hera said, “It does.” Pausing to glance at Ana, she continued. “With the two-hundred-floor cap on elevators, we believed it would create a natural division at sky-layer between the top one-hundred floors and the lower ones.”
“Some of our people think the entire building is integrated, so all people can access all floors, and the Viceroy’s family lives somewhere in the middle of the building.” Lolly rolled her eyes as though this was ridiculous.
“Max has only confirmed that the top levels require biochip access,” Hera chided her gently. “We don’t know what level of access is required for those lifts, so it is possible that anyone in the building has sufficient clearance for all floors.”
“Must we debate this now?” Ana interjected here. “Time is of the essence if I’m going to get back to the Academy before curfew, and I would like to hear the rest of Max’s story before I go.”
Lolly’s husband was still taking rapid notes, quite enthusiastic by this increase in their knowledge of the Augenspire. Ana knew Hera kept maps of the place laid out by floor, with everything they knew about the building filled in. She also knew how hopelessly incomplete those maps were, and all past attempts by resistance groups to breach the Augenspire in the last hundred years had failed spectacularly.
“Anyway, Fox took me to two-eighty and put me in a cell, which was like a palace compared to the next place I ended up, but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. There was a cot with a pillow, a decent toilet and sink, and basic human amenities. The hall outside was pretty empty—nothing on the whole floor except those rooms as far as I could tell.”
“Come now, there must have been something in the halls you can remember,” Lolly’s husband pressed, clearly hoping to augment their sketches for that floor.
“It’s not like they let me tour the place before they locked me up,” Max answered flatly before moving on. “Fox kept asking me where you were, if I knew you, if I could bring him to you…” he informed Hera.
“And he didn’t care that you couldn’t tell him?” she asked.
“Oh it made him seriously pissed off,” Max grimaced again. “I think he was under the impression that all Gifted secretly know each other and that you must be Gifted too, so if he just interrogated me hard enough I was sure to lead him to you.” He rolled his eyes at this misapprehension. “He definitely wanted the glory of being the one to catch you; you must be giving the Provo quite a headache with your resistance.” He tilted his head at her and the others at the table looked viciously pleased.
“They pumped me full of Veritan and every other thing they could burn me with, but I couldn’t tell what I didn’t know, even under truth serum, so Fox got angry and took me up one floor to the prison where they torture people to death.”
The others stopped smiling.
“There were no cameras on that floor, no recording devices, nothing. Fox liked to remind me of that fact early and often as he was punishing me.” Max frowned at some memory only he could see. “There were fewer rooms, but more wall-space between them. From what I could tell, they had an intense magnetic field in the rooms, and every time the door opened, the walls and floor would pin me down by the ankles and wrists so I couldn’t escape. I’m sure they had other protections on it as well, to prevent Gifted from escaping. My Gift didn’t work at all in there, even though it usually works just about anywhere—and not for lack of trying—so they clearly know their business.”
The others frowned at this.
“Fox tortured me with chemicals, hallucinogens, floodlights, electric shocks, beatings, and about anything else you can imagine. Sometimes he would waterboard me just for fun, I think; he didn’t even ask me any questions during some of his visits. I was sure I
was going to die in there—and no offense, Hera, but if I knew where you were I would have told them anything just to speed up the process. I wasn’t sure how long Fox was planning on keeping it up, but then things changed when another Major showed up for the first time—yesterday?— named Topher.”
At this, Hera flinched almost imperceptibly and something became hard in her face when she said, “Tell me about that.”
Max seemed to notice the shift in her tone as well, though he clearly didn’t understand it any better than Ana did.
“I don’t think he was supposed to be there,” he explained. “He doesn’t seem to be friends with Fox, at any rate. He showed up in my room with his ion-sword drawn, but it fell apart as soon as he cleared the door. He wasn’t expecting it to happen, and when I asked he said he had never had a prisoner on my floor before so he hadn’t realized his sword wouldn’t work.” Max paused and frowned contemplatively. “He didn’t seem to know much about me, or about the seedier aspects of the prison-block. He gave me a painkiller and a hydra-cap though, asked me a few questions, and then Fox showed up and got all weird about him being there so he left.” He studied Hera for a moment and then asked, “You look like you’ve heard of him before.”
“I have,” she answered flatly, her tone uninviting. “I’ve heard of most of the Majors before, unfortunately.”
“Well,” Max continued, obviously searching for more information, “for a Major, he didn’t seem like a terrible guy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re all terrible men and women, but I’d take Topher over Fox any day.”
Hera frowned thoughtfully at this but said nothing. Ana was dying to know how she had heard of this Topher before, but before she could muster up the nerve to ask, Lolly did it for her.
