Kate glanced around a room twice the size of Robbie’s entire apartment, at a two-hundred-inch holo panel showing a paused cartoon. Plants, both fake and real, sat everywhere possible to put them between shelves of useless decorative objects and furniture. A tall black woman in a pink dress had one hand out toward a VidPhone, inches from hitting the emergency button. On the other side of an obsidian table, the man she had come here looking for clung to a pair of kids. Dreadlocks hung to the shoulders of a twenty-thousand-credit suit, but he looked only in his mid-thirties.
He had everything she could never possess: wealth, an opulent home, but most biting of all―a family.
“Who the hell are you?” Darius reached out with one leg, trying to drag a briefcase closer.
“You don’t recognize me?” Kate circled left; a hard stare chased the woman away from the VidPhone. She frowned, opening her hand to reveal a fist-sized fireball a second before flinging it into the briefcase.
Darius lurched back, sliding in his chair. “N-no! I don’t.”
“Daddy!” shouted the daughter; she hid behind his chair, cringing from the glare Kate sent her way.
She forced her way into his mind, wading through his fear in search of any recognition or knowledge of the secret project. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Since when do executives have the first clue what the rank and file are up to?”
“What the hell are you talking about? What do you want?”
“I’ve come here to kill you, Darius. For what your company did to me.”
“No!” screamed the little girl, jumping in front of him. “You can’t hurt my daddy!”
He grabbed her shoulders, nudging her toward his wife. “Margaret, take the kids. Get out of here.”
The woman didn’t move.
“No!” screamed the daughter.
The boy sobbed, hiding his face against his father’s chest.
Darius fixed Kate with a calm stare. “I don’t know what was done to you, but… Whatever you do to me, please don’t hurt my family. They had nothing to do with it. Ashley, Charlie, go with your mother.”
Kate gathered a fireball as big as her head in one hand. The roaring flames drew a shriek from Charlie. Ashley trembled, but continued to fight her father’s attempt to push her away.
“Margaret, get the kids!” yelled Darius, not taking his eyes off Kate.
As still as the woman stood, it seemed she no longer breathed. Darius pushed his children to the side harder, but Ashley growled and held on.
He gave up trying to push the girl away. “What did they do to you?”
“Something terrible.” Kate gazed over ripples of light blue fire sliding across the top of the sphere. “They made me.” She remained silent for a moment. “How old is your boy?”
Darius clasped the child’s head in his hand, pulling him close. “He’ll be eight in three months.”
“Your company wanted to kill me when I was younger than him.”
“Go to your mother,” whispered Darius. Both children refused to budge. “That’s got to be more than ten years ago. My father ran the board then. I was still pursuing my doctorate.”
She held the seething orb closer to her face, mesmerized by the patterns. “Twenty-five years ago, your company conducted a genetic experiment with DNA taken from some Russian woman, trying to make a weapon. They got me instead. Eighteen years ago, they called me a fuck up and tried to kill me.”
Darius broke out in a sweat. “Look, miss. Twenty-five years ago, I was in seventh grade. I had no more to do with what happened than the people next door. I accept that my corporation wronged you, and if there’s anything I can do to help―”
“Help?” She shouted, flinging the fireball over Darius’s head into the wall. Curtains went up in a flash. “Your company wanted to kill me when I was a child. Do you honestly think I’m going to trust them? Even if they had the ability to fix me―which they don’t―as soon as they had me helpless, they’d bury their mistake like I never existed.”
Darius leaned his chair back on two legs. “Kids. Go to your mother.”
“Don’t kill my daddy!” Ashley shouted. “It’s not his fault.”
“Why should I care about your father? His company took mine.”
“Please…” Darius set his jaw, hiding his fear in clenched muscles. He pushed at the kids. “Run.”
“She’s bad!” shouted Charlie. “We didn’t take your dad! You never had one; they made you in a jar!”
Kate’s anger manifested as a cyclone of orange flames, coiling around her body and rushing to fill the room behind her. The sudden conflagration caused a severe wind that dragged the nearest plate to the floor and whipped her hair back.
“You dropped my mom’s dinner,” said Charlie, pointing.
Kate stared into the reflected blaze in his wide, brown eyes.
Darius gave her an apologetic look before twisting away to shield his kids.
“Don’t look,” he whispered. “Don’t watch.”
Ashley cried.
Kate played with a flame between her fingers. “I don’t want to harm your kids, Darius. Please ask them to move.”
“You’re going to make them watch?” His voice cracked. “They don’t deserve that any more than you deserved what happened.”
“I’m not going!” yelled Ashley. “If I let go, she’ll kill you.”
Charlie sniveled, unable to speak.
It’s not his fault. Aurora’s odd telepathic statement replayed in her memory. Both children sobbed. Kate turned away from Ashley’s accusing stare.
“Margaret, come take the kids and go to your mother’s. I won’t use my family as a shield.”
Kate let the fire on her hand go out. “You don’t have to.”
He lifted his head with a hesitant look.
“You’re right.” Kate stared at her fingers. “It wasn’t your fault. I, uhh…”
Darius closed his eyes, squeezing the kids. “Margaret…”
Kate whirled around at a sudden crash in the outer hallway. A flickering red light danced in the corner of her eye. Margaret Reed’s finger had pierced the holographic panel by the VidPhone, impaling the emergency call button. She withdrew her arm, covering her mouth, trembling.
“Sorry I interrupted your dinner.” Kate let her arm fall limp at her side.
She collected all the fire: the curtains, patches on the floor, and the inferno hanging in midair over the sectional. The flames collapsed into a scintillating orb, which she directed to a halt a few feet inside the door.
Four Division 1 police officers burst through the smoke, pistols rising. Kate pushed with her mind, detonating the energy sphere into a wave of concussive force that knocked her back two steps, and bounced the police off the wall to the floor. She ran over them and looked back at Darius holding his family; tears of jealousy steamed away from the corners of her eyes. He bowed his head, relieved.
“Wrong house. I was looking for a government weasel.”
A gloved hand closed around her ankle, but released with a howl of pain an instant later.
Kate jumped into the hall, sprinting for the stairwell.
hick, foul-smelling muck sizzled out from under Kate’s feet as she descended the ladder. Squealing and fizzling preceded puffs of smoke that stripped the air from her lungs and brought a tear to her eye. The cops had been on her heels for several blocks, no doubt tracking the intense heat source they could not explain. Out of breath and in pain from lack of food, she had sought refuge in the one place she hoped the police would not follow―The Beneath.
East City rested atop a layer of massive metal plates, each a hundred meters square and twenty-five meters thick. The fifty-meter gap between the bottom of the city tiles and the natural Earth was known as The Beneath. Depending on how angry they got, the law might chase her into a black zone, but they would never go down here. Kate wasn’t even sure she wanted to.
At the bottom of the ladder, she stepped shin-deep in more black slime. The awful
ness bubbled and popped around her with a sound as though someone had dropped an air hose into a vat of syrup. The stink of burning sour raspberries mixed with industrial chemicals brought momentary relief from the feeling of hunger.
She expected difficulty getting out of the muck and pulled her leg up too hard, causing her to flail and grab the ladder not to fall. The intense heat of her skin boiled the substance away before it touched her, leaving a thin layer of steam between her and the ooze. Hindered only by the stench, she covered her face and rushed to the edge of the puddle. Narrow corridors lined with pipes and gridded floors led off in several directions.
Luck had been with her; a wet patch of sidewalk had caused her to wipe out while taking a corner and sent her sliding into a storm drain. The last time she had gone below the city, into the guts of the tiles, was over a year ago. That time, El Tío’s contact provided them with a hacked code to open a police hatch. Circumstance, in the form of a broken sewer pipe, let her in today.
She went straight, choosing the largest corridor, and let off a yowl as soon as she stepped on harsh grating meant for thick boots. Arms raised to the sides, she crept forward, gasping and wincing each time she eased her weight down. Rectangular LED lamps reacted to her motion and flickered to life, illuminating a flaking yellow placard warning about the requirement to wear safety gear at all times, including a helmet, goggles, and metal-toed boots. She held out a middle finger to the sign.
“Fuck you.”
Having had enough of walking on upraised dinner forks, she jumped up and grabbed on to a dark pipe small enough to get her hands around. The next thing she knew, she lay flat on her back, on the grating, convulsing. A glop of molten plastic slid away from a hand-sized patch of bare wire and landed on her chest. Smoke peeled out from under the dancing blob as it zipped left and fell to the floor.
“That… wasn’t… a pipe.”
A thousand tiny steel daggers stabbed her back, butt, and legs, but she dared not move. Once the paralytic effect of the shock wore off, she eased herself upright. Kate glared at the patch of naked wire. Fortunately, the heat-resistant bracelet didn’t conduct, and her NetMini survived.
“Aren’t they supposed to label those damned things ‘high voltage’ or something? I should complain to the city.”
Kate gritted her teeth and hobbled to the end of the passageway, where it connected at a T to another hall with a mercifully smooth floor. A cursory pat down found no blood, despite her having been certain falling on that Hell-spawned grating had torn up her skin. She sat on the floor, rubbing her sore feet and waiting for the pain of the near-electrocution to fade. After several minutes of sitting idle, the need in her gut outweighed her inertia.
At least the cops aren’t going to come after me down here. I shouldn’t need to stay underground too long. I don’t think any of them saw my face.
Aimless, she roamed along a series of corridors. Technically, she hadn’t yet entered ‘The Beneath.’ She considered staying within the plate interior, which could be safer, and avoided ladders in either direction, searching for a place where her NetMini could pick up a signal. After an hour, ‘signal interference’ had become a swear word with which the bracelet mocked her.
She froze at the distant echo of voices and listened. When their volume didn’t change, she figured the locals weren’t walking around and decided to creep in the direction of the sound. The scent of cooking meat reawakened the monster in her belly, urging her up to a full run. She brushed aside dangling cables and cobwebs and approached a reinforced hatch-like door. It stood ten inches off the floor and sealed by means of a mechanical wheel, like something out of an ancient submarine. She ducked to squeeze past, while stepping over the lip at the bottom. A four-foot corridor connected to a matching door, suggesting a join point where two city plates met.
Jumping through the second hatch proved to be a mistake as the large chamber on the other side had an inch of water on the ground, which boiled off on contact. Her feet shot out from under her with a sizzling hiss and she slid out of control, landing flat. The cloud of steam at her back robbed her of all traction and sent her sliding like a stone on ice. A dozen and change people, unshaven, unwashed, perked up like meerkats as she careened ass-first into a huge pile of wet boxes and junk.
Kate rolled onto her front and folded her arms under her forehead, furious to the point she could not form the requisite thought to stand. Her curse had forced this life upon her. It had made her wipe out in a puddle twice in one day, walk barefoot over a medieval torture device, and nearly electrocuted her. It also came close to making her traumatize two children. Shit, I probably did that already. Screw ‘em. Compared to me, they have a perfect life. So what if they have nightmares about fire for a few years. She kept her head down in an effort not to summarily destroy the first thing she saw capable of screaming in agony.
“Yawrite?” whispered a female voice. “Nassa fall ya took.”
Kate spoke into the hollow between her arms and the ground. “Bad day.” Her stomach growled. “Got any food left?”
“Jash came back from a huntin’ bit ago. He got some big ones. What ya got ta trade?”
“Need anyone killed?” She pushed up and sat back on her heels. The girl standing nearby looked in her later teens. A filthy, threadbare tartan-pattern coat, blue and white, covered less-intact rags, and she wore one boot and a sneaker that had to be forty years old. “I don’t have much else.”
“Nice joo-ree.” The girl indicated the bracelet.
“I can’t trade that.”
The girl spun about and trotted off. Kate stood, following her over a field of debris, broken pipes, and support struts. People had made a campsite of this chamber, hanging clotheslines and building impromptu walls to section it off into living spaces.
“I’m Cady. Evar-wun jes call me Cee. Talk ta Gene.” She waved in the general direction of a few men sitting around a crate of synthbeer cans on her way to a makeshift table consisting of a slab of metal on boxes. “He’s inna middle.”
Cee moved around behind the table and retrieved a large dead rat from a box, which she proceeded to skin and clean. Kate glanced up at the metal roof, wondering if the police were still out hunting. With one hand on her stomach, she meandered over to the three men and sat on a section of shelf repurposed to a bench. Having neither the interest nor the ability to trade what they would most likely ask for, she remained quiet.
“What are you hiding from?”
Kate glanced at the man nearest her, not sure what to make of the grungy clothes or the drawn, wrinkled face. His eyes, like beads of glass set in the side of a leather satchel, glinted beneath a spray of thick brows. She leaned forward and squeezed both arms into her stomach in a futile effort to weaken hunger.
“Not much of a talker, eh?” He leaned back into a long swig from his can. “Most people aren’t much for talkin’ at first.”
“You Gene?”
The man laughed. “Well, that’s not really my name.” He lowered his voice. “I’m Ajit, but these people think I’m a genius.”
“Are you?”
“Perhaps by comparison.” Ajit took another swig and winked. “Well, maybe a little.”
“Police might be after me. You know any way to get to Sector 2629 from here without going topside? I have no damn idea where I am.”
“Yeah. Not a great place to be, that. Specially not for a woman… or anyone that ain’t half metal. You sure?”
“I got friends there.”
She sat up as the bench buckled from the heat. Seven men glanced over with varying degrees of curiosity and interest. One hand patted the bracelet, ever so grateful for it. At the same time, she felt resentment at being so far from normal. Archon’s offer replayed itself in her mind. Stupid. What the fuck was I thinking going after Darius? Now I’ll never get to West City. I’m going to spend the rest of my life underground with the off-gridders. Shit!
A loud bang silenced everyone as a portable cooking surface exploded,
followed by Cee’s screams as globs of burning fluorescent-blue thermo-gel showered her. Each point of flame resonated in Kate’s mind as the feeling of a single heat mass fragmented into dozens of small flecks. They winked out as she willed them dormant.
“I just tapped it!” The girl kept screaming as she flailed and fell in a smoking heap, unaware the fire had already gone out.
Kate shrank into herself as the off-gridders clustered around Cee. Shrieking became sobbing while they tended to a few minor burns.
One of the younger men waved a large wrench at the whimpering teen. “I told you was a bad idea lettin’ this idiot near the cooker. Now she’s broke it.”
“I’m sorry!” wailed Cee. “Ah jus’ tappa lid t’open it, and it went off.”
“Easy, Zeb,” said Ajit. “You’re the one that made her cook for everyone. You can’t blame her if the parts you scavenge are crap.”
“The explosion was my fault.” Kate stood. “Leave her alone.”
“Oh, that one’s funny.” Zeb wagged the wrench at Kate. “Alla way over there.” He grabbed Cee by one ankle and dragged her close. “This stupid clumsy bi―”
Ajit grabbed Zeb’s arm at the exact moment a blue fireball sailed past his face. Everyone froze; heads swiveled at the whoosh of the fire.
Kate bounced an orb of fire over her hand like a baseball. “Go ahead, Zeb. Hit her.”
They all stared. Cee kicked her leg free and crawled backward, taking cover in a chamber cordoned off by hanging sheets.
Ajit let go of Zeb and approached. “Psionic, right?”
“Yeah. Things tend to get warm when I get pissed off.” She squinted. The splattered blotches of thermo-gel ignited. “Sorry about the cooker.”
Zeb retreated to his bunk, grumbling.
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