Daugher of Ash

by Matthew S. Cox

  “For a little ting, you eat like ‘Arley.”

  “Greg… are you really from Jamaica or do you fake that accent?”

  “You know damn well where I’m from.” He chuckled. “Works, doesn’t it?”

  She leaned back, looking up at him. “Yeah.” She opened her mouth, but hesitated. After a sigh, she let off a wistful laugh. “That’s the problem.”

  Greg poured the shot of whiskey into her mouth; she clamped her jaw shut, swallowing the puff of flame. She got up and wandered to the cabinets, setting the bracelet inside as he went for the door.

  “Greg?”

  Before it could close behind him, he leaned a foot back to catch it. “Ya?”

  “Thanks again for letting me crash here.”

  “No problem.” He winked, and walked off, letting the door close.

  Kate made her way to the tank while examining herself for injury. Blood had become black streaks smeared here and there, flaking off as ash while she moved up the stairs. She sat on the edge of the metal deck and dangled her feet into the syrupy gel. It bubbled and popped, like some kind of volcanic muck. After letting all the air out of her lungs, she shoved off, suppressing the urge to squeal at the brief presence of cold all over.

  She went fetal and sank. After a few seconds to prepare herself, she inhaled warm goop. Many people were uncomfortable with breathable gel. Even those who had military training for jump travel took years to become acclimated to aspirating liquid. A few weeks ago, the idea of being inside a tank again had frightened her more than breathing the slime. She weathered the memory of screaming and uncurled once she adjusted to inhaling and exhaling syrup. The huge entertainment tank had at least a ten-foot diameter, plenty of room for a foursome. She swam to the bottom, where it projected a holographic control panel through the clear wall. One button closed the cylinder against the ceiling; another filled it to the top.

  She skipped the sexy music.

  Weightless in the dense gel, she let her limbs go wherever chance took them. Everyone else that came to Greg’s establishment sought a few stiff drinks and the novelty of fucking in a tank, some manner of kink started by military people who’d spent far too much time in deep space. For Kate, this placed offered a sealed tank, a locked door, two bouncers, and a friend between her and the world. As much as floating in a cylinder made her feel like a caged science project all over again, she couldn’t argue it was more comfortable than trying to curl up on a slab of concrete.

  Here, she could sleep.

  The constant heat stopped whenever she lost consciousness. Living on the street, she would wake up every hour or so when she got too cold. With consciousness, came warm comfort. Ever since she had found Greg, she could make it through a whole night again. She daydreamed about him touching her, sliding her hand up and down her arm while pretending it belonged to him. Her imagination whispered his fake Jamaican accent over her shoulder. Et gon’ be all right, girl.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes, and tried to feel safe.

  Mechanical thrumming pervaded the gel. The faces of two men in white lab coats, one dark and one light, morphed and stretched in the curved glass as they leaned close. They stared at her while peeking at datapads and rubbing their chins. Three other men in coats stood farther back. Kate swam to the wall of the tank, palms pressed to the surface, flashing a wide-eyed smile at them. Her reflection had no shape: no chest, no hips, and a wide-eyed ‘please like me’ face she hadn’t made in years. Stringbean limbs swished back and forth amid a floating cloud of auburn hair. Sometimes the boredom got so bad she made friends with her reflection, pretending she had a sister trapped in a backward world she could talk to.

  The oldest of the men, wrinkled face and silvery hair, walked up between the nearer two. They argued, but she couldn’t make out more than warbling tones due to the thick material. The urgency in his expression seemed strange. She listened to their thoughts.

  The older man shook his head. Absolutely not. We’ve put far too much effort into this project.

  Doctor Solomon, are you forgetting the purpose? asked the man on his right. The genetics team can’t explain or correct her persistent skin temperature. We can’t use her for anything. The project is a failure.

  The old man gestured at her. Look at her. She’s only seven. Psionic or not, she’s still a little girl. I won’t be a party to killing a child. Scrap the project; I’d like to work with her on my own time. Who knows what a few years could do? You’re so worried about hitting milestones, you’ve lost sight of the long-term picture.

  Horseshit. The younger scientist scowled. You’re a sentimental old fool.

  Kate’s smile collapsed into a grimace of terror. She shivered and tried to slap the glass, but the viscous fluid did not allow her hands enough speed to make noise on impact.

  We’ve been unable to find a way to mitigate her constant pyrokinetic emanation, said the younger one. Her external temperature is enough to damage or destroy most anything she touches. Equipment, disguises, vehicles… she is completely unusable.

  She doesn’t melt through metal, said Solomon. Her external temperature ranges from 600 to 800 degrees. There are materials that can withstand that. There’s got to be a way.

  Oh, fine then. We’ll make her a metal dress. That won’t stand out. The man on the left rolled his eyes. You’re too close, old man. This isn’t your granddaughter; this is a weapons project. Have you forgotten that?

  Her pathetic, begging expression went from man to man as she read their minds: the two younger ones were terrified and wanted to kill her, the middle one didn’t care at all, and the dark one hated it. Only the old one thought of her as a real person.

  Kate stared at Doctor Solomon, sending her voice into his mind. Please help me!

  Solomon whirled on the dark-skinned man, red-faced and screaming. She’s a human being. She’s just a little girl. How can you even suggest what you’re suggesting?

  The man on the right poked a finger at his datapad. She is too dangerous. We can barely contain her now. What’s she going to be like at puberty? What kind of abilities is she going to have as an adult?

  The younger pale scientist held up a hand. We have no idea if she will experience the usual peak in the younger teen years we so often see with telekinetics. Her powers may weaken, grow, or stay the same. We’re in uncharted territory, Ramesh.

  Ramesh frowned at her. Kate paddled away from the tank wall, not liking the look in his eyes. I cannot risk what may or may not happen. If she does surge, we’ll have no way to predict how to deal with her. We have clearly done something beyond any previously recorded pyrokinetic.

  Pale shook his head. Agreed, her test data is off the charts… However, all that is meaningless if she cannot interact with the world without standing out.

  Solomon fumed. We could try treating her like a damned person. If she thinks of us as family, we won’t need to control her. Her side effect might even go away as she matures. W-we could develop some kind of heat-mitigating bodysuit. Indirium threads ought to do the trick.

  Ramesh waved him off. Even if we went to that expense, the suit would be as hot as she is. She still couldn’t touch a damn thing… and forget thermal sensors. The assassin everyone sees coming from orbit.

  The old man sighed, head down. Please, Ramesh, I can’t in good conscience be part of destroying a child. Let me work with her on the side, out of my own budget.

  The Director isn’t willing to wait another seven years based on a maybe. Ramesh had no trouble looking right at her, even when thinking about killing her. We’re going to scrap this attempt and try again.

  Her best pleading stare had done nothing. Ramesh wanted to end her life; he reached past the curved shell toward a button out of sight. In his thoughts, a killing liquid seeped into the gel she breathed. They weren’t even going to let her out of the tank. Her safe place, her bed, changed in that instant to a death trap. She wailed in silence, breathable gel unable to produce sound as it pa
ssed over vocal cords. Solomon pounced on Ramesh, wrestling him away from the kill button. Pale jumped into the fray.

  Kate clawed and kicked at the glass, desperate to get out.

  Armed guards rushed in and subdued the old man before dragging him away into the hall. Dr. Solomon screamed loud enough for Kate to hear him call them monsters. The other two stood, fixed their coats and shirts, and Pale wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. Both of them glared at her as if it was somehow her fault.

  Terror became anger.

  Kate floated in the center of her tank, glaring at Ramesh, hating every inch of him. Tiny hands balled into fists. She wanted him far away from her. She wanted him not to hurt her, wanted him to go away. His dark skin turned red, blisters appeared all over. Some swelled to the size of oranges and burst, releasing bloody steam as all the fluid inside his body boiled. His wailing gurgled to a halt as he collapsed, twitching and dead, leaving a bloody hand smear down the outside of the tank. Vapor peeled from his lifeless mouth.

  In a moment of lapsed anger, Kate attempted to scream at the sight of what she had done, and burst into tears. She calmed in a moment as the need to escape overpowered her repulsion at the gore. The silence of her fluid-filled capsule left her heartbeat thunderous. She looked at Pale, projecting a telepathic shout.

  Let me out!

  Pale leapt away in horror.

  I promise I won’t hurt anyone if you let me out.

  He shook his head so fast his glasses flew off.

  Kate pointed at what remained of Ramesh. He wanted to kill me. Do you still want to kill me?

  He stared, backing away. Oh, God, kill it. Kill it! “N-no.”

  Kate closed her eyes and curled up, head to knee, hands clasped under her chin. Panic took her; they were going to leave her locked in here until they could kill her. She looked up and down at the metal discs at either end of her clear prison, blurry from the peach-hued slime. Most of her life had been spent stuck in the tank, which used to feel safe. The outside world had always been scary, and whenever the men let her out to play ‘games’ with funny machines, she longed to go back where she felt protected.

  Now, she wanted out more than anything.

  She stared past her toes at the wavering dark lines of vents in the floor. The gel escaped that way, perhaps she could too. She swam to the bottom, laced her fingers among the metal slits, and pulled. Her feet slid over the slick plastisteel, and her effort did nothing but terrify her more. Pale edged closer to the tank, reaching for the bad button. Kate snapped her head up to stare at him; he leapt back, screaming. Finding the floor useless, she kicked off and floated up to eye level with him.

  She pressed her hands on the cylinder wall, pushing and banging. The man continued backing away. Kate sobbed in silence, trapped in liquid, looking all around her for anything she could do to run away before the men came back to hurt her. A flash in her memory brought back the image of a small metal can. They asked her to hold it, but seconds after she grasped it, it burst and sprayed her with something they called ‘soda.’

  Kate braced her hands against the wall and closed her eyes. She focused on her desire to generate heat. Power flowed into the slime around her; before long, the thick syrupy gel flowing into her lungs became too painful to inhale. Kate held her breath and kept pushing. The gloopy sputtering of boiling gel grew deafening in the narrow cylindrical prison. Sparks arced and snapped in the liquid as the millions of nanobots that fed and tended her met their demise.

  Her eyes opened to slits. Red light flashed outside as an alarm went off in the room. A digitized woman’s voice said something about temperature limits. The trembling scientist crept closer to the tank, another try for the kill switch. Kate thrust her legs down; a mute scream of terror displaced the gel from inside her. All of her fear spiked into a psionic outburst.

  Splintering cracks raced down the cylinder wall with ear-piercing squeals; a split-second later, it exploded. A torrent of thousand-degree viscous perfluorocarbon fluid boiled the skin from Pale’s face in an instant; arm-length shards of tank glass impaled him before he could scream.

  Kate flowed with the tidal wave of deadly slime, by some minor miracle avoiding more serious damage than a few small cuts. The flow carried her against the wall, under the lockers where they kept the silver hot suits the men always wore to ‘handle’ her. She lay on her side, staring at the skinless, poached corpse studded with razor spears of glass. Blood swirled in the steaming gel around him.

  She tried to scream, but sputtered gel and choked.

  Whenever they took her out of the tank, one would hold her upside down by the ankles so she could drain her lungs. She liked the men in white coats before they wanted to kill her. Even if they had to dress head-to-toe in bulky silver suits to do it, most were willing to play with her. Up until that moment, they had been nice. Kate scowled at the smoking wreckage of the tank. Maybe it wasn’t nice that they left her in there so much.

  With no one to help her clear her lungs, she gasped and coughed, spitting out gel until she cried from how much it hurt. Elbows and forehead on the floor, she wailed as fluid leaked from her mouth. For minutes, she remained in that pose, trying to listen to the rush of air in her throat over the blaring alarm. Her first attempt to stand ended with her foot flying out from under her and her body landing flat on her chest with a squish. On the second try, she fell hard on her butt. She dragged herself on all fours through the slippery fluid, searching for a dry spot to stand. Realizing the entire room had flooded with two inches of goop, Kate sat back on her heels and tried not to look at the dead men as she scooted on her knees toward the exit. When the door opened, she offered a neutral face tinted with pleading at a man and a woman in green camouflage. They gawked at the carnage.

  Kate flashed an innocent face and waved. “Hi. I’m sorry for breaking the machine.” She pointed at Ramesh. “He wanted to hurt me.”

  Her hope shattered when they reacted with fear and aimed rifles at her. She shrieked, raising her arms, wanting them to go away. A tornado of azure flames burst forth from the space between her hands. Both soldiers howled and fell in place, their uniforms burning.

  Snarling and gasping for breath, she crawled over the bodies to the open door. Charred handprints seared into flesh as she pulled herself out from the muck.

  Why does everyone want to hurt me? What did I do? Am I bad?

  Slime steamed away from her skin as she crept to the edge of the peach colored puddle and found footing on bare metal floor. Kate held her arms up, watching the liquid sizzle away to flaky, white powder that she brushed off. Her hair lofted in a noticeable breeze in the hall, though she still felt warm.

  A man in a lab coat rounded the corner, his casual stroll a clue he was unaware of what had happened. Again, she tried an innocent smile and wave, but he screamed. The sight of her out in the open, uncontained, terrified him. Everyone in white so far had wanted her dead.

  She wouldn’t let them kill her.

  Kate leaned at him; the stomp of her foot sent a wet slap echoing as she screamed, “Go away!”

  Fire erupted out of the air and coiled around him like a snake. He shrieked and flailed, falling over seconds later with ghastly burns. Kate bit her lower lip as she crept up to the moaning body. She stood near his head with her feet together, swaying side to side as if playing with a dress she couldn’t wear. The sight of what she could do to people horrified her. Small test robots and target plates didn’t smell this bad when she made them burn. Kate stared at the floor; part of her felt guilty, but nothing in the ‘play room’ had ever tried to kill her. A glance around at featureless, sterile corridors offered no clue which one would take her to the place they always took her to play. Maybe if she went there and did what they wanted, all of this would stop.

  The man wheezed. Blood welled out of his mouth, pooling on the floor. She crept backward as it seeped closer and closer to her toes.

  “I just wanted you to go away,” she whispered.

  Tears
fizzled from her cheeks. Is this why they all hate me?

  He gurgled, trying to crawl.

  You want to hurt me, said Kate, with telepathy. That’s bad.

  The scientist shook his head, still trying to slide away from her. No, no, no.

  Kate peeked at his surface thoughts, but found such agony she recoiled with a shriek and hid her face in her hands. Red hair swirled as she shook her head. The man convulsed, gasped, and went still.

  She tried to talk to him with her mind voice, but sensed emptiness. The puddle of blood continued expanding, forcing her back in tiny steps until her shoulders met the frigid wall. Kate tried to press herself into the metal, more afraid of him dead than alive. The odor of burning paint made her turn; black lettering smudged wherever she had touched it. Curious, she dragged her fingers over the wall, erasing the writing like wet ink, but leaving the shiny silver wall unscathed. For a moment, she played with the funny letters, oblivious to the dead man behind her.

  A loud klaxon went off in the compound, snapping her out of her finger ‘un-painting.’ She looked at her hands, swatting them together to clear off ash. Eyes closed, she took a few steps, refusing to look until she was sure she wouldn’t see the body. Sirens blared; the normal bright lights cut out. The hallways became a nightmare of blackness, punctuated by flashing crimson.

  Kate remembered this game, and did not like it. She couldn’t see in the dark, but the men with the black masks could find her. The last time they made her play this game, she tried to run into the maze and hide, feeling her way with hands on the walls. The men chased her, shooting her with painful darts that made her woozy and sick. To win the game, she had to stay away from them, not be caught, but she couldn’t see. The fourth time they dragged her to that awful game, they left the lights on―and the dart guns stopped hurting her. Whenever she saw them shoot, the chem darts melted on contact.

  After what she’d done to the bad men, she feared they’d use something worse than darts on her now. Trembling, she sniveled and ran forward. This whole place was evil; everyone here wanted to hurt her. They never let her spend much time out of the tank, leaving her with no idea which way to go. Being out of the tank without six men directing her every move felt almost as scary as the button Ramesh wanted to push.