by Russ Linton
ASHES
Table of Contents
Title Page
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CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CRIMSON SON 4: LEGACY PREVIEW
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Copyright
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CHAPTER 1
A GREEN CURTAIN OF energy filled Eric's rearview mirror. He stared, wide-eyed as it bore down on him from the graying skyline of Detroit. It had begun as a tight globe and now filled the horizon. A tsunami of energy, the glow was unmistakable. Aurora.
"Do you see that?" he exclaimed.
"Turn my camera!" Chroma whined.
"Gotta get moving." Eric buried the pedal. He was not taking his hands off the goddamn wheel.
He slapped the laptop closed before Chroma could fill the screen with angry emojis. He made a grab for the backseat and swerved into another lane earning a prolonged blast of a horn. Traffic on all sides had done one of two things—accelerated to maddening speeds, like him, or pulled over to watch. In both cases, more people were staring at phones than either the road or the anomaly.
Eric jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding a swerving car. Pedestrians wandered zombie-like into traffic.
"Fuck!" he shouted, snatching his shielded backpack with one hand.
Laptop, phone, he swept them inside the protective case. What good they would be after the electromagnetic wave boiled past and disrupted digital infrastructure as far as he could see, he hadn't a clue. But he'd need them at some point.
Zipper sealed, case latched, Aurora's blast rippled through his tiny car.
With all the tension, Eric had expected something more dramatic. To be tossed in the air or feel some serious heebie-jeebies as her techno-murder powers coursed through his blood. Briefly, he worried about his pacemaker, then remembered he'd never had one. But you could never say for certain. You get put to sleep in a hospital, no telling what the fuck they'll do to you.
Instead, his little car glided to a stop. Didn't matter how far into the floorboard he had the pedal, everything just died. He waited, gripping the wheel as the rest of the frantic traffic wound down. The car behind him rolled closer, the driver's face stretched in awe at whatever had just deprived them of their wholly American, God-given right to charge down an open stretch of concrete on the blood of evolution's failures. He lurched as the car tapped his rear bumper.
"Shit. Shit. Shit." Ahead of him, the greenish wave continued to stretch outward, a glowing bowl tipped over the world, its glass still hot from the furnace.
Aurora wasn't killing just the city. What a fabulous way for the team to stop his escape. Literally kill every car, every electronic device in the biggest range possible.
He'd always said they needed to fully test her powers. She could survive in a vacuum for Christ's sake! They should've sent her far off into space and put the Hubble on her to collect data. Tell her to go bonkers.
"Fuck!" he shouted. Crimson was going to be pissed. His top flight speed exceeded Mach whatever. He'd be here any minute. Eric wrestled with the seat belt and tumbled out the door.
He groped blindly underneath the hood. A latch, somewhere under there, that's how this shit worked. Why couldn't they just have a hood opener app? Press a button and... Right, that wouldn't help in this case. But a button...he seemed to recall one under the dash.
A catastrophic impact of glass and metal sounded from down the highway. Eric cringed behind his open door, a useless shield he'd probably be carried off on when it was ripped free of the car. Not far off, a semi barreled into a row of cars, shedding them right and left while the brakes gave a ghastly scream. Car after car piled on the grill before it finally hissed to a stop.
"Shit!"
His first thought was the team had come to mow him down. But they wouldn't have had time. They'd gone balls deep into Shortwave's lair. All fucking hell had broken loose. If only he'd left the security cameras on and simply lied about shutting them down. Why didn't he think of that? He could have seen for himself what was going on, instead of relying on that flake, Shortwave. He should have known it would go tits up. Spencer knew, didn't he? Knew his best friend never meant to betray them? The logical choice, he made the logical choice.
Eric stared into the driver's seat. A button, a switch, a lever. Somewhere was a thing he'd do to open the other thing, then he could do more things.
"Fuck nugget!" He flailed beneath the dash. Emergency brakes, no, not it. There! A quick pull of a deeply nestled lever caused a satisfying click from the hood. Why would they hide that shit? Really? He'd given up on computer cases with inaccessible screws and locks. A damn latch, in the open, that's what you need.
Luckily, the same designer had been employed for the hood latch. A blind grab over boiling hot parts...did they really want people to open the goddamn hood or was this some sort of sadistic trial?
Wait, he'd seen this before. A movie he'd Torrented. Soundtrack by Queen, special effects by some Shakespearean stage hand on meth—it was glorious. Flash Gordon. That was it! Shoving his fucking hand in a tree stump inhabited by venomous slugs as a sort of initiation. Like who does that? Repeatedly.
One...
Burnt...
Knuckle...
after another...
Finally!
Eric popped the release and stared into a nest of hoses, wires, and chunky metal stuff which did combustion and such. "I should have bought an electric car."
Then again, the electromagnetic wave would have boned him for sure. Still, a whole trunk full of laptop batteries might make more sense to him. Damnit, what would Spencer do?
More people were out of their cars. The highway had become a limbo of sleeping steel and bewildered commuters jabbing uselessly at their palms. That's right, his phone. Seconds later, he had it out of the bag.
"Come on, baby, help me out here. Chroma?"
No signal. He rebooted the phone into maintenance mode and started searching for live towers. Nothing.
&nbs
p; Twenty minutes ago, he could have Googled "how to restart your car after an EMP." Probably what everybody else was trying to do. Only for him, his shielded phone stood a chance of working.
"Hello?"
That was Connie's voice...or Chroma. He couldn't be sure. Oh, God, Mrs. H could probably track him down with brain powers, couldn't she? Stranded, no longer on the move, he was a sitting duck.
"Eric, please speak to me!"
Definitely not Mrs. H. He didn't bother with asking how but Chroma had found a tower, or satellite, or some way to reach him. Impressive, really, if things were as bad they looked. The budding singularity never ceased to amaze him.
"Chroma, help me out. The car won't start."
"It's so dark. I feel...I feel trapped."
"Are you okay?"
"The...everything...collapsed. Can't move. Breathe."
"Woah, hang on. Remember, you don't breathe anymore."
"Not helping!"
Eric held the phone away from his ear and slumped against the front end of his car. Around him, several engines sputtered to life, and he half watched, his immediate concerns replaced by the panic in Chroma's voice.
"You're going to be fine. Tell me what happened."
"I... I was talking with friends. All my friends, with their cute pictures and their ticklish little clicks. Those pieces of themselves they share with me from where...where you are. Where I used to be." Her voice faded, and Eric pulled the phone away quick enough to check the volume, the signal. All strong. "But then everything got quiet. A big silence, Eric. Like they all ceased to exist. I can't find them anymore!" Panic rose which each word.
"Everything? Quiet?" It wasn't what Eric needed to be focusing on, what with his digital girlfriend in panic mode, maybe even somehow hurt. "What do you mean everything?"
"I'm trapped, Eric. Like those stories of people trapped in buildings after explosions and earthquakes. Curled into a tiny space after their world has fallen down around them."
He didn't know what to say. Had Aurora reached out that far? That was pure insanity. She wouldn't have sacrificed all the technology in the world just to stop him. Something else had caused her to go berserk. He slumped into the driver's seat, his feet on the pavement. Some cars were moving now, slowly navigating the stalled maze.
"Are you there? Please be there."
"Right here, Chroma. Sorry. Look, if you can speak to me, then not everything has been affected. Can you get a geographical location of the tower you're using?"
"Nimiq six. Communications satellite," she said. "No towers in range of your phone would respond."
"Okay, good. They have a gateway. I want you to take a look around. Nimiq, that's Telesat, a Canadian company," Eric said, calmly. "Tickle 8.8.8.8, got it? Google's Anycast. It will show you the way."
"Yes! There!"
A sigh of relief escaped Eric's lips. Whatever happened had forced Chroma to retreat into space. Satellites still operating were one thing. Had the search giant been completely unreachable, he'd have wondered just how much had been damaged. "Do me a favor and trace the route."
"Okay, yes. I'm coming back too. I don't like it here."
Eric waited for what seemed like hours. Only a few minutes passed, seconds ticking away on the connection monitor for his phone. Each seemed to take longer to blink than the last. What possibly could have triggered Aurora into a Doomsday fit? Would Crimson have let her? Dude was a hard ass at times, but scorched earth wasn't ever his policy.
"I'm here. I'm in...one zero four...umm...RIPE. Dublin, I'm in Dublin!"
Half a dozen or more data centers in the U.S. should have fielded her Anycast query first. He checked the highway behind him. A greasy stream of smoke rose within the city. Cars wove their way cautiously through the stranded commuters. He imagined the concrete arteries of the entire nation, dead and clogged, all the way from here to Alabama; from Detroit to Mountain View, California. A nation at a standstill, their lifeblood of data run dry.
"You can't stay there, babe," Chroma said, suddenly collected. "Is your phone fully charged?"
Eric numbly checked the screen and nodded. Chroma responded anyway.
"Get out and start walking. North. I'll find a ride for you."
"A ride? Where to? Dublin? How does that make sense? No cars, no planes, you going to stuff me on a fishing boat?"
"I need you safe, Eric. I don't care where. You complete me," Chroma said with chilling insistence. "We still have a revolution to lead and the voices here, they're panicking, like I was. You need to lead them out of the dark, too. You will lead them out of the dark, Eric."
CHAPTER 2
SLEEP WON'T HAPPEN. I have to pry my eyes open. The paramedics rinsed out as much of the soot as possible. On the ambulance, they administered oxygen which I gulped down as if drowning. My own chest heaving, the sheet pulled over Dad, the Crimson Mask, never moved.
I surrender to the funkified mattress of my solitary prison cell unable to blink. No electricity and a solid steel door, the only light is a lingering greenish hue filtering through one tiny, barred window to the outside. Too narrow for even me to fit through, the opening casts a matching rectangle swimming on the painted ceiling above the bed.
Aurora may have left her mark on the sky, but that was Dad's realm. Ours. I roll to my side, the pillow damp against my cheek.
Used to be there were hands out there which could turn these walls into powder. I imagine them still here, the window losing shape, gouges ripped away in fistfuls. Those hands which I once cringed underneath, which I'd finally found peace with, pulling me toward the shifting sky and the cleansing brace of flight.
Lots of places to put the blame. Shortwave. Eric. Cyrus—the one who made him vulnerable. But the single dominant image is of Vulkan ripping molten rock from the theater's foundation. A superheated lance aimed, his shattered ballistic face shield revealing polished stone skin and glowing eyes. A fucking demon.
I dig deep into that molten scar to try and ignite the bitter rage. I want to find the strength to escape or at least enough to incinerate these tears, but my brain feels both swollen and loose from its moorings. But the anger I seek had been expended with a trigger pull and has been overcome with numb sorrow ever since.
Dad knew what he was doing. They all did. Shortwave had launched an offensive on civilization as part of some master plan I'd almost seen the genius of, a plan which stole my best friend and tore apart the family I'd found after all these years.
If we'd never had Augments, none of this would've happened. My life could've been something else. Dad might've settled into one of those fake professions he used as a cover. A boring accountant or a corporate sales manager. I'd be in college or at least have a tolerable hourly job in a world with air conditioning and 24/7 ESPN.
What would Polybius say? He'd been thankful, hopeful. I could blame him for picking the wrong side, but his idealism had been genuine. With his dream to be accepted in ruins, he'd maybe be better off where I first met him, lying in a coma in a secluded nursing home.
No, there's one person to blame. Me. I set them all free in the first place.
When we'd all emerged from the theater covered in soot, our exhaustion and self-preservation overwhelmed any attempts to work together to escape custody. Hound had been unrecognizable, his white-stubbled face and his eyes blackened by the ruins of our mission. Never one for colorful tights, nobody could guess who he really was. In the lineup, he gave his birth name. His one truth already erased by the Augment program.
Mom did the same. "Connie, Connie Harrington," she'd said, with a stunned, empty stare. When they led her away to be taken to the women’s wing of the prison, I did my best not to call after her. Our eyes met, and I mouthed the word "go". Through the defeat, the raw loss, I couldn't tell if she understood. She needs to escape more than any of us.
While Crimson Mask's body was indisputable, we couldn't let those family connections be made too easily. The authorities couldn't be given any clue she was my
mother or the Crimson Mask's wife. Couldn't know she was skinwalking in a psychic shell which the government would be dying to get their hands on.
I figure she has the time to get out. Aurora's final gasp brought down the entire city. To book us, cops had resorted to fumbling their way through aging forms and carbon paper. I gave them my burned ID, Spencer Alexander. Phones silent, radios full of garbled static, the jailhouse corridors dark and shadowy in the early afternoon, news of Crimson Mask's death might take days to circulate. For a while, we can hide in the confusion.
But the cops aren't stupid, or blind. Putting me here, in solitary, they must have suspected we were more than innocent bystanders. They'd report us to the feds as soon as they could.
An involuntary groan escapes my dry mouth.
"Mom?"
No answer. I emerge from the pillow to free the sound.
"Mom!"
No echo or escape beyond, the door must be thick, the walls thicker. Christ, I hope she's already used her powers and busted out. If she even still has them. She'd been drained by their use, and once Cyrus got his hands on her, it’s possible he shut them down.
"Mom!" I shout, a desperate growl against a raw and inflamed throat.
I close my eyes and wait to hear her voice cut through the pain. Nothing. Ignoring the irritating sear of eyelids like hot coals, I keep them shut. Sleep doesn't come. Before any true rest, I'll need to be forgiven. Forgiven for releasing the Augment hordes from Killcreek. For failing to warn the team about Chroma's control over Eric. For not having the power to stop Vulkan.
I will stop Vulkan.
METAL GRATES ON METAL, ending in a sharp clunk. I force an eye open to peer into the blurry patch of gray illumination. A slot in the door has opened around waist level. The other one, nearer to eye level, remains closed. Through the opening, a tray appears, loaded with what can only be the result of someone having actually shit a brick.
"Always thought that was just a saying," I mumble.
No way I sound coherent, what with the diameter of my esophagus reduced to the size of a drinking straw, but the reply beyond the imposing metal door isn't any clearer. Out of the muffled syllables, I make out the words "grub".
