by Red Harvey
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Nuff Said Publishing www.nuffsaidpublish.com
Daughter of Zeus
Copyright 2019 by Red Harvey
May 2019
Editor: Rachel Dawes
Cover Art by Jenna Anderson
Produced in the US
Nuff Said Publishing
Tampa, Florida
Atlanta, Georgia
United States
Daughter
of
Zeus
By
Red Harvey
To Jason, my love and #1 nerd.
"Oh darling,
you can't fix yourself
by breaking someone else."
--anonymous--
One
Tranquility Hospital did not live up to its name.
Unlike the waiting room at the State hospital, patients in need filled the seats. And unlike the State hospital, Tranquility did not have major sponsors. Instead, Gold Buyers and Quick Loan posters covered the walls. The staff at Tranquility mirrored the dismal surroundings: peeling paint, dingy floors, and entry doors to the ER, which slid open on a mechanical belt, a door that chose the darndest moments not to open. There were no pristine counters, smiling nurses, or dissipating doors. What Tranquility did have was a steady influx of patients.
Ada Freyr watched as paramedics wheeled in a man they claimed the State hospital had refused. They wrestled the mechanical door open, then waded through the scores of idling people. The process took about twenty minutes. Sub-par treatment seemed the norm at Tranquility, and so they parked their burden by the nearest dirty wall.
The paramedics left the way they'd arrived—without a word to the attending. "John Doe" lay for ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes.
Finally, she sauntered to the gurney, grabbing an eye-scroll from a nearby tray as she passed. She lifted one of his eyelids, scanned his retina, and pretended to analyze the blue dialog screen spelling out his religious and political affiliations as "N.A." After a few nods, she pocketed the pen and wheeled him away. No one had paid attention to John's presence thus far, and his departure was likewise uneventful.
She whisked Mr. Doe down a restricted hallway, stopping at a door marked "Staff Only." As she pressed her palm to the flat gray pad, the lock synced with her wristlet. The door opened, and she rolled the man inside. The room was full of storage boxes, utility supplies, and space to spare for a private conversation.
After closing the door, Ada perched on a stack of boxes. She assessed the sleeping man in front of her. After a few moments, she had come to a decision.
The room was silent until an unconscious fart escaped his ass. A smell akin to rotting bacon filled the room, and she coughed. When her nostrils cleared, Ada placed a finger to his chest, emitting a solitary blue spark, a spark which always amazed and scared her.
John Doe's real name was Dorrie Botwell, and he was suddenly awake as she was sure he'd never been before in his life.
Dorrie scanned the room, settling on Ada. He clutched at his chest. "What'd you do to me?"
Sweat poured down his mottled face. The poor bastard looked to be on the verge of a heart attack.
"I did what I promised. Now that you've learned I'm serious, I hope you'll tell me what I want to know."
"I don't remember." Remembering seemed the last thing on his mind. He wiped at his brow and breathed shallowly.
Ada was unmoved at Dorrie’s well-being. She wondered if this is how her father got things done, by simply not caring.
"You remember," she said.
Dorrie slumped in the cot, jowls sagging. "I know he moved, but that's it."
The information was far from new, and she was getting impatient. "Where?"
"I don't know." Dorrie licked his lips.
He was lying, and she knew how to smoke out a liar. "Where?" Ada repeated. A blue spark fired from her fingertips, and she held it above his heart, a fierce anchor aching to find purchase.
He whimpered. Face strained, he scooted on his ass to get away from the heat of her hand. With the smallest of mental commands, the line from her finger grew longer, following Dorrie, nearly touching him.
"Okay! He moved to Atlanta. That's all I know!"
Waggling her fingers a bit made the spark dance, and he moaned in fear.
"Atlanta's a big fucking place. Where in Atlanta?"
"I don't know! He moved there a long time ago. Met a cute girl, I heard. Maybe he got married, had some kids. Maybe he's gay—it's Atlanta after all. Hell if I know. That's everything, I swear." He avoided her gaze, prompting her to believe he still held back vital information.
"Is he still there?"
"Yes, he's there!" A small pinhole burned through his shirt from the concentration of heat. The smell of burning hair wafted through the room. "Please stop!"
If the fear in his voice was real, Atlanta was where she had to look next. There would be no more leads in Colorado.
She withdrew her hand. "Why was it so hard to tell me the first time?"
Dorrie’s shirt was singed. He patted furiously at the puffs of smoke rising from his chest. When he had sufficiently doused the potential chest-hair fire, he answered.
"You'll know when you meet the bastard," Dorrie panted.
Everyone Ada questioned had referred to her father by that less-than-endearing term at some point in the conversation. When she finally met Corentin, she might refer to him as "bastard" indefinitely.
Calling him “papa” was out of the question.
~ * ~
Theoretically, Ada could have driven from Tranquility Hospital to Atlanta. She had the information she needed, and she could have moved on. Something held her back, but nothing as blah as morals. No, her real problem was money.
Six months with a part-time job equaled stone-broke. Her empty pockets barely funded a trip to Tranquility. Atlanta would have to wait, unless she was willing to cross a few more lines, even further than putting a man in cardiac arrest.
Ada could have asked her family for the money, like a normal person, but she no longer cared to rationalize as a normal person. Asking for money would raise questions like:
What's it for?
Where are you going?
and
Why haven't you been eating lately?
Better to get the money her way. Her mother was already worried about her behavior. The rest of her various aunts and cousins followed her mother's example, pestering her with questions. Regardless, Ada had braved the nearness and manipulated them for information on Corentin.
It had taken her months of tedious conversations to extract the right names, but finally, she had found a lead in Corentin's old work-friend, Dorrie.
Suddenly, the automatic collision feature kicked in, and the car swerved to miss something darting across the street. Ada's body jerked with the car, and she nearly slammed into the windshield.
She brought the driver window down, fully intending to curse at the idiot, when a group of children ran by. They were in pursuit of the something that had almost caused Ada’s accident, an obvious idiot. Said idiot clutched her face, running in a zigzag pattern to avoid her captors. The woman's jaw line featured a deflated appearance, hanging off her face like wax dripping from a candle. Probably an anti-aging gone wrong, or a demotion from Prominent to N.A.
>
As they were taught in school, the children were intent on berating the Undesirable citizen.
A Reversal.
Anyone who appeared out of the ordinary was to be mocked and subjugated. Perversion was shameful, and so it was discouraged.
Ada heard whimpers from the victim the brats relentlessly tracked. She flashed back to her childhood Reversals and cringed. It wasn’t until she’d gotten married that she’d found anything wrong with them. Her husband, August, had watched her laughing at a Reversal on day, only to question her on it.
Everyone does it, she had answered.
But does that make it right? he had asked.
She waited for the street to empty. Then, she pointed a finger outside of the window, releasing a zap of electricity. The bolt hit the pavement, sparking the children's shoes. They crumpled, grabbing their feet, crying out when the soles burned their hands.
Guilt nudged her, but mostly she worried about being reported.
The image of the dangling jaw line stayed with her.
She shook with anger on the rest of the drive home. Damn kids left her little choice, but what did it matter when the world was shit anyway. Lately, she scared herself with the scope of her power and in the ways she chose to exercise it.
Always angry, always.
The anger manifested after August's death, growing when the State held her for re-conditioning. Weeks after they released her, the feeling remained. Furthering her anger was the lack of information she encountered in the quest for her father. Dorrie had given up a small piece to a very large puzzle.
Using her mental ability, she connected with the electronic interface in the car, shifting to the auto-pilot function for the rest of the drive home. She needed time to just sit, and that’s what she did.
After the blue station wagon parked, she stayed in the vehicle to mentally compose herself. A calm state was a necessity, otherwise people stared. Staring meant attention, the type of attention which drew bored children to the scene. She'd already zapped enough brats for one night.
Ada flipped down the visor to check her eyes, and of course, they were a harsh shade of blue rather than their usual hazel. The color would return to normal in a few hours, but she didn't feel like sitting in the car to wait it out. She slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses.
The car's power indicator was in the red anyway. She plugged the battery into the outlet as she threw an absent look at the sky. Few clouds populated the dark purple haze, backlit by an unforgiving and orange sun. If the particles in the air hadn't been clogged with harmful pathogens, the amethyst hue would have been an incredible sight. The beauty of the poisoned sky made her long for a Clean and Clear, yet her mother needed one more than she did. Her cough was getting worse, hoarse with blood and phlegm, and she couldn't afford another synth.
An observation plane, or o-plane as the kids called them, shook the leaves in the trees as it flew by. Two more o-planes followed, the screech of their ascent loud and insistent. When new people moved into the neighborhood, it took them months to acclimate to the noise. Time passed, and they became numb, finally realizing why the housing rates were so cheap. O-planes were an annoying part of every citizen's life, but mostly stayed out of sight, out of mind, but not for derelict neighborhoods like this. They flew in plain view, almost like a threat, or at the very least, a constant reminder that the neighborhood was being watched.
Combat mission planes, or c-planes, made the most noise. C-planes had been flying out of the nearby base more often, most likely to aid in that latest war. Ada couldn’t even remember the name of it.
A couple of children rode by on bikes. They didn't wave, and neither did Ada. One smiled, displaying two brown spots where teeth should've been. His appearance didn't faze her, though it had when she first moved back into her mother's neighborhood. Growing up in the area, the setting never seemed as bad as it did when she had returned as an adult. She and August had lived in an apartment downtown, close to her job at the school, and she had gotten used to the tranquility. Her mother's surroundings boasted old tires, torn furniture, graffiti on the sidewalks, and dead grass on every lawn. As the years passed, the dilapidated conditions resulted in an outright decay.
As she neared the side of the house, she felt eyes on her. She mumbled, "Sacra forda."
Her mother assured her the Latin phrase translated to "holy pregnant cow", but Ada never verified the claim. Like most of her mother's phrases, she merely repeated them.
"Still driving that electric clap-trap from 2020, eh?" Her neighbor, Harmon, locked up his vehicle, a new truck with a 70-gallon gas tank.
If he spent more money on his home and less on Prominent toys, his roof shingles wouldn't be hanging off, and his driveway wouldn't be split.
Ada mentioned none of this. "Yup. It's easy to keep a car for forty plus years when it doesn't need gasoline."
Harmon was undeterred by Ada's dig. "Well, I don't need to tell you how you're hurtin' the oil industry, costin' people their jobs."
Old Harmon ranted about his Prominent talking points to anyone unfortunate enough to listen. Instead of ignoring him, or agreeing with him as most of the neighbors did, Ada went a different path. "And your car's ruining the planet. Of the both of us, I think I'm gonna sleep better tonight."
Against the glare of the setting sun, he squinted. After a moment, he smiled, though the effort seemed to pain him. "You sure have a silver tongue."
She had another response ready, but it wouldn't have done any good. In her mind, Ada saw herself removing her glasses, showing off her eyes, and scaring the shit out of Harmon with a light show. She could've fried his heart easily, and considered it.
Behind her, her fingers tingled, hands crackling with energy. For two breaths, she readied herself for a confrontation. He would drop like the sad sack he was, and no one would be bothered with his trite comments ever again. The incident would be over quickly, and she could hide the body in the backyard.
Don't.
The voice sounded a lot like August's. He chastised her sometimes, just as he had when he was alive. He grounded her, and forced her to remember the consequences. If she fried Harmon, her mother's reputation would spiral, and her next stop would be a permanent move to a State facility. Sanity slowly returned.
Poor Harmon eyed her, probably deciding whether she was fiddling with her keys or itching her ass. She walked away from him without saying anything.
Before she got to the front door, Harmon muttered, "Goddamn Tramp hippies."
Two
Inside the house, Ada's mother, Gemina Corentin, watched a television set at ear-splitting volume. Ada was used to it. She recognized her mother's need to escape from reality.
Old dishes decorated the hallway table in the living room, and laundry waited to be folded on the kitchen table. In a few hours, Ada would clean up the mess herself, or at least the old Ada would have. Current Ada didn't care about the ascetics of where she lived. Other tasks demanded her time.
Gemina waited until the front door was closed before harassing her daughter. "Ada, where were you?"
She kept silent.
"Ada?" The television quieted. "You're really not going to tell me where you've been all day?"
Ada popped briefly in the archway of the living room. "Mom, I'm a grown woman. So no, I'm not going to tell you where I was." She disappeared back into the kitchen, opening cabinet doors.
The television resumed, but to a comfortable roar. "What am I supposed to think? You stay in your room for months, not talking, not eating. Goodness knows, I understand why you felt you had to do that, but..." A pause after Ada slammed the cabinet doors shut, then, "Suddenly, you start going out every day, all day and all night, and I can't ask you about it."
Ada heard mumbling as Gemina wondered aloud if her daughter was on drugs or in training to be a Sammie. In answer to her mother's muttered lecture, Ada rolled her eyes. She waited, and two minutes later, her mother’s tirade was done. Ada joined her in the living roo
m, settling next to Gemina with a tray of food in her lap.
"No drugs or State training involved, I promise."
"But they took you away before." Tears glistened in Gemina's eyes.
"That was different. August had just died," her mother winced at the word died, "and they wanted to assess my loyalty."
Two Sammies came to the apartment door that particular afternoon, smiling as they told her she needed to come with them. Mindful of her status, and wishing to keep it, Ada complied. The re-education camp wasn't as awful as the rumors promised. She took part in the group meetings, the private disclosure sessions, and the virtual re-integration scenarios. Though all of it, she overrode the sensors remotely, tipping her results from deviant to normal. After a couple weeks, she'd been sanctioned to leave, but with a downgraded status two notches above N.A. Mastering a hack of the intricate Prominent database was out of reach for an amateur. Her inability to prevent the loss of status resulted in the simultaneous loss of her salaried position and furnished apartment, luxuries reserved for middle-ranking Prominents.
"I'm dealing with things in my own way," Ada said.
She chewed her food, mulling over the nothing-ness status to her life. At least, she had her mom. Good ol’ mom.
"I've dealt with things, but you, sweetheart, you need to—"
"What's on tonight?" Misdirection was the only weapon she could think to employ against her mother's reasoning.
Though Gemina cared for her daughter's well-being, television programs also rated high on her list. Without a beat, she described the anticipated speakers of the night. Many of them were political, religious, and sometimes both.
Ada didn't mind the political or religious speakers. Gemina Corentin's eye-scroll would never have N.A. under religious affiliations. To be godless was to be poorer than poor, she often said. The neighborhood Ada and Gemina lived in was not the best, but by State standards, it was preferable to N.A. placement.
They were lucky to have a roof above their heads, and to live without the threat of daily harm. N.A. abodes were barely livable, and the poor suckers who ended up there deserved it, by Gemina’s estimations. She wasn’t a cruel woman, but she did enjoy a Reversal every now and again, just as Ada once had.
