Kate whirled around, whining at the sameness of every corridor. Having no better ideas, she ran in the direction she happened to be facing already. Sterile metal corridor zoomed by, a door here and there she didn’t spare a second look. She slowed to a creep at the sound of boots squeaking on the tiles around the corner of a four-way intersection.
Whispering came from the right hallway. Kate looked down at the floor; the faint hiss of tears boiling off the tops of her feet louder than the men approaching.
They want to hurt me too.
She raised her head, glaring at the open space in the junction.
Why does everyone want to hurt me? Little hands made fists. I hate it here!
The air between her and the corner ignited in a flash, and she pushed the whirling cloud of fire around the bend. She flinched at the sound of screaming and several errant gunshots, but kept her mind locked on the presence of the flaming cyclone. Each shriek scared her more and made the fire hotter. When all sounds of men stopped, she relaxed and the burn went out. She put a hand over her nose, a pitiful shield against the stink of scorched meat and plastic. Tiny fingers curled around the wall. She trembled, afraid to look at what she had done.
She stood in place bawling, ashamed of what these people made her do.
The blaring alarm urged her forward. She held her stomach at the sight of bodies collapsed over each other. At least five soldiers lay in a smoking heap. Tiptoeing over the nasty muck, she raised her arms and tried to get past them without touching anything. With nowhere else to go, she had to step on one man’s chest; a small charred footprint seared into muscle. She whimpered at the feeling of flesh boiling underfoot and almost slipped as his skin peeled away. The body moved, startling a yelp out of her. A glove flew to her leg, grabbing her about the ankle and lifting. Melting skin clung to her sole and tangled in her toes, stretching into thin strands.
Smoke poured from the armored glove. The soldier’s attempt to crush her ankle stalled when the material melted. He screamed as his fingers made contact with skin, and threw her leg upward. Kate fell backward, landing on top of another corpse, which ignited at her touch. She shrieked, flailing about in an uncoordinated attempt to stop touching the dead man.
The dead man she’d created.
Terror feasted upon her guilt, growing into a specter of doom. She had to get away from the dead bodies―she couldn’t stand touching them―before they came back to punish her.
She drew in a breath to scream.
A chirp froze her in place. The man sat up, a bright red patch of muscle in the approximate shape of a small foot in the center of his chest. He pointed a massive pistol in her general direction with his uninjured hand, sweeping it back and forth as though he couldn’t see her with the warped visor fused to his head.
Total panic washed over her. She shut her eyes and screamed as loud as she could, wanting the bad people gone. A thunderous boom resounded in the metal-walled corridor, and a rush of air from the side pushed her over. She sprawled on the floor, landing on dry crumbles instead of squishy dead.
Her eyes snapped open. Blackened bones and ash scattered around her, all that remained of the soldiers. The metal walls had blued from heat damage, and patches of steel glowed. She pulled her knees under her chin and stared at a smoking skull. Everyone she met in here would try to hurt her. She sat and rocked, teetering between sorrow and anger. What did she do so wrong that they wanted to hurt her?
After a deep breath, she got to her feet and glared at nothing in particular. I’m not gonna cry. There’s nothing wrong with me. They’re the ones who are bad. A woman in a white coat carrying an armload of datapads skidded to a halt as she spotted her. Kate stared a challenge right back. It took only seconds for the scientist to drop the pads and beg for her life. Kate stomped forward, moving without fear in the wake of the fleeing woman. That scientist didn’t want to hurt her, only wanted to get away. Kate’s lip quivered, but she didn’t hurt the woman.
Inferno consumed room after room as her rage lashed out at everything as well as anyone she saw who didn’t run away or beg. Anyone who wanted her dead, she surrounded in flames. She wandered lost, for a time forgetting her hunt for a way out and searched only for things to destroy. Offices burned, computer terminals went up in smoke, and blue fireballs incinerated anything that looked combustible. Hunger growled in her gut, and the scent of chicken soup on the air made her change course and move up to a jog down the corridor from whence it came.
Amid the silence of the facility, the patter of tiny bare feet on a metal corridor seemed the loudest sound in the world.
She jogged amid the pulsing red light from emergency flashers, heedless of the scent of smoke in the air. The fragrance of food led her to a pair of double doors, which she shoved aside on her way into a large cafeteria hall with long, metal tables. Three steps into the room, she caught sight of a man. She looked up at a soldier a second before a shot rang out. The impact hit her in the chest like a punch, swatting her to the ground. Molten lead dribbled over her ribs to the floor. Paralyzed from the strike, she stared at the ceiling tiles, unable to breathe or move. Tears sizzled off her cheeks. She wheezed, curling onto her side, and burst into tears, wailing like a child who’d skinned her knee. Boots tromped up behind her. A man in green camouflage hovered, a shaking pistol levelled at her face.
“Oh, man… What the fuck are they doing here? It’s just a kid.”
His boot touched her shoulder, nudging her flat on her back. He gasped at the sight of a giant bruise rather than a gunshot wound. Her crying ebbed to a snivel. She grunted, making him jump. A childish response to the source of her pain manifested as a scream and torrent of blue fire from an outstretched arm. Uniform and flesh blew off char-blackened bones, floating away as flakes of ash. From the thigh down, the man’s legs remained untouched. Everything above had reduced to scorched bone.
Kate rubbed her chest, whimpering, testing the bruise with her fingertips.
She looked at what she had done to him and didn’t know how to feel.
“They’re going to be mad at me for breaking soldiers,” she whispered. After a moment of consideration, she knocked one of the legs over and frowned. They tried to kill me, so I don’t care.
Unsure if she wanted to throw up, cry, or hide, Kate stood and limped among the tables with one arm tucked to her chest over the sore spot. Everything in here looked metal; aside from a few stacks of napkins, her power couldn’t ignite anything. A door at the far end led to an industrial-sized kitchen, and she soon found a storage compartment filled with slabs of ground beef sealed in plastic. The slabs were longer than her height, three inches thick, and wide enough for her to use as a mattress. She dragged one out onto the floor, and squatted over it, savaging the opportunistic meal. Her fingers pierced plastic and seared the meat on contact.
She glommed down handful after handful until she didn’t want to move. A gasp from behind startled her away from watching grease burn off her skin. She whirled, staring up at an older woman in a blue uniform coat bearing a white nametag. Flame surrounded Kate’s hand, incinerating a few squiggles of vat-grown beef.
“Hey, child. Easy. Where are your clothes?” The woman slipped her coat off. “I’m not going to hurt you. I work in the kitchen.”
Kate lowered her arms, staring without words as the woman wrapped the garment over her.
“There. You shouldn’t be running around na―”
Smoke peeled from the fabric a half second before it ignited in several places. The woman gasped and stepped back. Kate remained motionless, making a face that asked the woman why she was dumb. Burning cloth slipped to the floor around her and became ash.
“They didn’t make me right,” mumbled Kate. “I’m not useful.”
“Aww.” The woman reached to pat her on the head, but thought better of it.
“Back away from the girl. Do it now!” shouted a man.
The woman jumped. Kate edged about in a slow turn to face the door.
&n
bsp; A soldier pointed a rifle at them, taking cover in the entrance of the mess hall. The woman moved to get between them, but stopped before she took full step when Kate shrieked.
“Leave me alone! Stop making me hurt people!”
Her rage exploded as a cloud of fire in midair by the door, blasting the soldier off his feet. Blue muzzle flare spat from the weapon; bullets raked over the ceiling, far from hitting anyone. He slid out of sight, screaming. Kate looked up at the kitchen worker. The kindness in her eyes had faded into the realm of terror.
Kate folded her hands in front of herself. “You’re nice. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The woman forced a smile. “It’s not right. What they do here is not right.”
Kate left her there and padded back across the mess hall to the door with one hand on her full belly.
The dream blurred through a dozen more dead soldiers and screaming scientists. Kate stared at her little fingers clutching a door handle. She pulled and shoved, and the grey slab swung away. Wind lofted her hair and made her squint as she stepped onto a metal porch amid the glare of sunlight.
She raised an arm to shield her eyes from the majesty of nature she had never seen before. Pine trees waved back and forth in the wind, highlighted with bits of white settled on the needles. Fresh air smelled funny, but it carried away the stink of burned flesh. The touch of a breeze on her skin mesmerized her. Moving air had always come straight down from above, never a sideways gust. This wind still made her shiver, but she marveled the way it made her feel free.
Rows of parked trucks sat in a snow-covered dirt lot at a wall of trees. Far off in the distance, the silhouette of an enormous city segmented the sky into blocky patches of blue. She looked at her feet, stepping with care on her way down the four steps until her toes met loose soil. A giggle escaped as she explored the feeling of standing on a surface other than shiny metal.
Flickering drew her attention to a dozen little red dots swarming on her chest. Soldiers, hidden among the vehicles, aimed rifles at her. A young man with light hair and a long, sand brown coat emerged from a dark car closer to the building. A leather-gloved hand waved at the soldiers to hold their fire.
Kate bit her lip and ground her toes into the dirt as he walked over. She looked up when the red dots vanished and his shadow fell on her.
“Hello, Katie. I’m Agent Perrin.”
“Why don’t you have head voices?”
He chuckled. “For my job, I have to know secret things. I have a machine in my head that helps me keep secrets. Please don’t try to peek. It will hurt you if look too hard. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I don’t want people to hurt me!” she shouted, stomping.
All of the soldiers shifted.
“Shh.” Agent Perrin raised one hand. “No one is going to hurt you, Katie. We can’t let you wander off alone. The world is a dangerous place for a child your age to be alone. If you promise me you’ll behave yourself, I’ll make sure no one hurts you.”
Kate glared at him.
“Would you like a nice dress?”
She folded her arms. “No, I’ll destroy it.”
“What about a pony?”
“I’ll kill it if I touch it.”
“You don’t want to be alone, do you?”
Her face twisted up to cry, but she held it in. “I don’t wanna die. I think you are lying. Those green people want to hurt me.”
“Katie, you are a special little girl with special abilities. Bad people in the world will try to use you as a weapon.”
She tapped her foot. “Isn’t that what you want me for? They said I wasn’t useful.”
“Well… Certain issues have presented themselves, which makes training you as a field operative a tad awkward. We will change plans and learn from you instead. No one is angry with you for what you’ve done. We’re… curious now. You’ll be safe here. No one will hurt you.”
“You wanna put me back in a tank and lock me up forever. No. I’m going away. I don’t wanna be here!”
Kate ducked around him and started to run, but halted when all the red dots found her chest again.
“We can’t let you leave, Katie. You may be a little child, but you are too dangerous. Power like yours is not meant for a mind so young. I’m sorry.”
“No…” She looked down, trembling at all the red fireflies on her bare chest. “I’m sorry.”
A low rumble began from inside the building and fire was everywhere.
ate jolted awake, still floating in gel. Momentary panic resulted in silent screams and clumsy flailing. At the realization she was no longer a child and not locked inside the tank, she went limp. A rare sense of coldness surrounded her each morning, created by the several second delay between waking and her subconscious furnace firing up. The morning chill seemed stronger today, pronounced enough to make her shiver and curl into a ball. It intensified over her shoulders, spreading across her back. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, but the unnatural cold faded.
She lost all feeling in her left arm.
Seconds later, it moved of its own accord, stroking her hair.
I’m so sorry, Kate, said a voice in her mind. Female. British.
She blinked, unable to sense or move the limb, which continued its reassuring caress.
What the hell is happening to me now?
Her left hand moved to her shoulder, hugging herself. Trying to make you feel better, luv.
Why is my arm numb? She grabbed the renegade limb by the wrist and held it out.
The voice in her mind sighed. It’s what you want, isn’t it? No one can touch you. I was just trying to be nice and make it feel like someone was comforting you.
She shivered. Are you a ghost?
I suppose that’s close enough for the moment. Sensation returned to her arm; a warm glove sliding up from her fingertips to her shoulder. I hopped inside you. Please don’t panic.
Her hands explored her body, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
Will you relax? I’m a friend. I want to talk, that’s all.
Kate swam to the bottom of the tank and waved at a sensor, which created a holo-panel inside the gel. One button initiated the release sequence. She flipped upright and kicked off the bottom, gliding to the wall by the stairwell.
What about? asked Kate, keeping her head below the surface of the draining fluid.
You’re not as alone as you think you are, said the voice.
Once the fluid level stabilized at the halfway mark, the tank wall lowered into the floor. Kate climbed up onto the metal porch, turned around, and bent over the pool. As soon as her skin met air, the layer of viscous fluid whitened to an ashen film.
Oh, no thank you, luv. I’d rather not share that feeling.
Her attempt at gracefully exhaling the fluid back into the tank turned into a shuddering coughing fit as ice-cold vapor exuded from her back. Kate held on to the edge to avoid falling head first into the goop again, cringing at the sensation of her lungs draining. After a few coughing breaths of air, she sat up bleary-eyed.
“Fuck that hurt. You had to make me choke?”
“Sorry.”
Kate startled at the woman’s voice so close behind her. A tall figure, white as new-fallen snow, moved past the end of the curved stairs with the grace of a ballerina. Hair the color of lemons hung down to the backs of her calves. Her curvaceous hips and full bosom brought a full on blush; the sight of all-black eyes caused a momentary stunned silence.
“You’re naked,” whispered Kate.
“Well, you’re one to talk.” The woman looked around. “Or hadn’t you noticed your lack of apparel as well?” Her tone went playful. “Then again, I expect these rooms were intended for two, weren’t they?”
“I don’t have a choice.” Kate covered herself with her arms as best she could.
“From the looks of that dream, it didn’t always bother you.”
“I’m not a damn kid anymore. What’s your excuse?” Kate looked dow
n. She hadn’t felt shame until she’d come to the city, until people saw a naked girl and tried to do stupid things.
The woman spun hard enough to cause her hair to furl outward. Her body disintegrated into a cloud of fog, which slid through the tank and materialized on the other side. Kate clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress a gasp.
“I can’t take things with me when I go play with ghosts.” The woman winked. “I’m Aurora by the way.”
“Put something on.” Kate looked away.
She gestured at the empty cabinets. “Sure, I suppose I’ll just nick something from your expansive wardrobe.”
Kate shot her a glare.
“Sorry, sarcasm is my first language. You don’t need to feel awkward; I’m not ashamed of my body.” Aurora winked. “Normally, I rather enjoy making people uncomfortable, but I’m trying to be sensitive to your feelings.”
“Are you hitting on me?”
“Not by intention. Would you like me to?”
Kate brushed particles of incinerated gel off her arms and legs, swatting at her rear end as she moved down the steps and over to the small closet where her bracelet waited. She made it a point not to look at Aurora.
“I wouldn’t care,” muttered Kate. “Man or woman… I just…” An unremarkable outfit, plum sweatshirt, jeans, and basic shoes appeared around her as she clipped the bracelet on. “Hate being alone.”
“If you wouldn’t melt my skin off, I’d go for a toss with you, but…”
“Are you saying that purely to piss me off?” Kate whirled on her, making fists.
“No, I’m being sincere.” Aurora glanced at the door. “Bother. You’re about to have guests.”
The strange woman imploded into a cloud of silvery mist and sank into the floor. A second later, the door buzzed.
Daugher of Ash Page 5