Ascendant Unrest

by Matthew S. Cox

  Maya shrank away from him, terrified and furious at being tied up in equal parts. “W-what?”

  He gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze and pushed her over to lie flat. “Ascendant is not, nor ever was, releasing Fade, and Maya Oman never existed. She’s only a computer simulation created for marketing purposes. We also weren’t going to threaten your friend. This needle isn’t for her. As long as you live, you represent an obstacle to our goals.” He lowered the syringe toward her neck.

  She struggled and screamed, trying to lean away from the point.

  Sarah pulled her legs up, rolled to the side, and mule-kicked him in the hip hard enough to make herself slide off the bed. The hit knocked Mr. Winnow two steps to his left. He recovered his balance and lunged at Maya again, ignoring the floundering redhead on the floor.

  “Wait!” screamed Maya. She forced herself to keep thinking. If she breathed too hard, she’d be sitting in piss. “It won’t do any good to kill me. Vanessa will just make another one!”

  Sarah rolled around and tried to bite Winnow on the leg.

  Hal gestured at her, not taking his eyes off his game. “Mike….”

  The shorter man stormed over and grabbed Sarah. She growled and thrashed, but couldn’t escape his grip before he tossed her face down on the bed and pounced on top of her. She screamed into the mattress, unable to budge with a grown man’s weight pinning her.

  Winnow grabbed Maya by the throat, needle poised. “What do you mean by ‘make another one’?”

  “I-it’s what she said to the other mercs.” Maya trembled; streams of hot tears ran down her cheeks to the mattress. “I don’t have a father. She ordered me from a gene clinic. Her egg, custom genetic profile to make me pretty for commercials. She’ll just do it again and throw up a wall of bullshit until the next ‘daughter’ is old enough. Please don’t kill me. Please! I swear I’ll sign the company over to you. You need me as the oldest heir.”

  “Come on, man. Kid’s got a point,” said Ruiz. He fidgeted with his necktie. “Bad karma offin’ a kid anyway. She’s so little. Do we really gotta―?”

  The windows exploded inward with a shower of glass fragments; flashes of muzzle flare lit up the night outside in time with a rapid series of gunshots.

  Hal’s head burst like a melon struck by a train. His minicomputer tumbled to the floor and spoke again in the demonic-deep voice, “Level complete.”

  “Fuck!” roared Winnow, grabbing the back of his leg and collapsing over sideways.

  Mike stopped holding Sarah down and pulled a handgun from his coat. He dove to one knee between the beds, using the empty one for cover, and fired at someone outside.

  “Motherfuckers,” screamed Genna.

  “Mom!” shouted Maya. “Mommy!” She burst into tears. “Help! They’re gonna kill me!”

  Winnow got back upright; blood stained his left pant leg.

  Maya grunted and swung her legs up, mashing both feet into his nuts.

  He grunted and stumbled back, raising his fist as if to jam the needle into her heart―only he’d lost the syringe.

  Boom.

  A fraction of a second after the deep rapport outside, a blast of blood burst from the center of Winnow’s chest with a wet splat. He gawked at the wound and collapsed. Maya hurled her weight to the right, rolling aside to avoid having a dead man land on top of her.

  “Shit!” shouted Pope, outside. “Incoming!”

  Car tires squealed, and a floodlight lit up the smashed windows.

  An angry, grunting nasal-roar came from Genna.

  “Stay down,” yelled Pope.

  Mike popped up, aiming. He let off a shot; the bark of his gun so loud it seemed to compress Maya’s brain. A chatter of automatic fire came from outside, sending Mike into a jerky dance. Gurgling, he careened over sideways.

  “Mom!” screamed Maya, lying on her chest. She refused to look at Winnow and shimmied backward off the mattress until her toes touched carpet.

  Sarah rolled onto her back and kicked her legs out to fling herself to her feet, hopping around in an effort not to fall over.

  Men in whitish armor rushed in, aiming submachine guns around at the dead men. A few ‘just to be sure’ bullets perforated corpses. One man headed for Maya, another, Sarah, who screamed and tried to hop away, but the man scooped her up. The other tossed Maya over his shoulder like a duffel bag and carried her outside.

  “Mom!” shouted Maya. “Help! Put me down! Let go of me!”

  Sarah grunted and growled in the arms of the man behind her. The two armored figures not carrying them pointed guns toward a shot-up car on the left. Genna popped up from behind the hood with an assault rifle, but before she could get off a shot, both men fired at her.

  A noise like a stepped on goose came from Genna as she collapsed out of sight. Her rifle landed on the hood and slid, abandoned, to the sidewalk.

  “Mommy, no!” shouted Maya, along with an explosion of tears, squirming, and growling. “You assholes! You shot my fucking mother! Get off me!”

  Shouting degenerated into wailing as the man carried her to a waiting car and tossed her in the back seat before slamming the door. She squirmed around, trying to get her hands on the lever to open it. The driver side door opened and Sarah flew in headfirst, her face landing in Maya’s lap. The man slammed the door behind her and opened the front.

  A loud boom came from the direction of the shot-up car, and one of the men staggered forward with a neat fountain of blood gushing from the side of his helmet. He fell against the car, blocking the window by Maya, and collapsed.

  “Go, go, go!” shouted another.

  The man who’d tossed Sarah jumped into the front seat and stomped the accelerator before he even closed his door. Squealing and smoke filled the air as the car swerved onto the road. Cursing, the driver pulled a hard right turn that hurled Maya into Sarah. Another harsh maneuver seconds later threw Maya into the door and sent Sarah crashing into her. They slid across the seat and mushed against the other side when the man jerked the wheel to line up with the road. Sarah bounced away and landed on her back across the seat at her left.

  Maya, tears streaming from her eyes, wailed and bawled. She saw Genna go down over and over and over in her mind. “You bastards,” she muttered. “You fucking bastards.” Sorrow gave way to pure rage, but the brute force anger of a scrawny little couldn’t defeat nylon cord. Livid at being tied, she kicked the back of the passenger seat again and again while screaming curses and incoherent wails of sorrow.

  Nothing mattered now. They’d killed her mother. Maya didn’t care how foolish or unlikely it would be for a girl her age to end Vanessa Oman. She resolved to make that bitch pay for Genna’s death―or die in the attempt.

  17

  Best Friends

  Rage faded to an exhausted slump a minute or so later in the back of the speeding e-car. Maya curled against the seat, angrier than she’d ever been but still crying quiet tears. Her legs ached, her hands and feet had gone numb, and her skin burned under the rope.

  “Maya,” whispered Sarah.

  Maya stared into space, daydreaming about the shocked look that would be on Vanessa’s face when she barged into her lavish office and shot her.

  Sarah grunted, acting like the car’s motion flung her against Maya.

  A hand grabbed her arm.

  At the painful squeeze, Maya glared at her. She almost lashed out, but Sarah pulled her right arm out from behind her back and wiggled her fingers. Only red marks remained around her friend’s wrist―no cord. Using her body to hide her task from the driver, she cleared the rope from her left wrist and chucked the tangle to the floor before mushing herself against Maya and attacking her bindings. Something scraped over and over at the knot between her wrists.

  “How did you do that?” whispered Maya.

  “Shh.”

  The car skidded around a left turn, earning horns and beeping from at least three people he cut off. Once he straightened out again, he slowed, perhaps i
n an effort to drive casual.

  Maya tensed, waiting for the feeling of tightness in the cord to lessen.

  “Don’t be stupid,” whispered Sarah, lips close enough to kiss her ear. “Pretend you’re tied still.”

  She wanted to jump into the front seat and kill this man for shooting Genna, but Sarah was right. He had armor, and she didn’t even have a weapon, much less the strength of an adult. Maya nodded.

  The scratching stopped, and Sarah wormed a finger around for a few seconds and tugged. The rope let go. Maya pulled her hands free but kept them together behind her back. Sarah stared between the front seats at the road. As soon as the man tapped the brakes on approach to a red light, she overacted being thrown to the floor. Out of sight on the ground, she untied Maya’s ankles in a few seconds, using a single pointy lockpick to attack the knot, before freeing her own legs.

  After stashing the little rod back in her curtain-dress, Sarah climbed, grunting and squirming, up into the seat, pretending to be tied.

  Maya gave her a ‘now what?’ look.

  Sarah mouthed ‘next red light.’

  Maya nodded.

  “Oh, shit,” muttered the driver. “What is that thing doing?”

  The high-pitched whine of drone fans approached from behind and left. Sarah looked over her shoulder but cringed away as strong light flooded the car.

  Maya huddled behind her friend, peering out the window at a dark blue Authority drone overtaking their car with ease, its .50 cal machine gun trained. It skimmed low, barely a foot above the roofs of passing cars. The armored man kept looking back and forth from the rearview mirror to the road ahead. He accelerated.

  So did the drone.

  “Fuck is wrong with them?” mumbled the driver.

  He tapped a finger on the wheel and took a sudden right turn, swerving with a fishtail that narrowly avoided sideswiping a line of parked e-cars. The drone kept going straight, unable to follow without crashing into the building at the corner. Before the man could finish laughing, the drone emerged from a side street two blocks behind them.

  Maya squirmed up to look out the rear window. Sarah did the same.

  Shoulder to shoulder, the girls gasped in unison as the drone tilted forward and gained on them.

  “Is it gonna shoot us?” asked Sarah.

  Maya slid down, rotating to face front. “How should I know?”

  Sarah lowered herself.

  “Dammit! What the hell?” grumbled the driver. “Damn blueberries forgot who they work for.”

  Two more small sedans skidded into view from the left, adding to the chase. Identical to the one Maya rode in, they also had white-armored men driving. She stared at the cyan accents on the shoulder of the man in the front seat. Ascendant security? But why?

  The drone raced up alongside their car, the tip of the machine gun inches from the driver’s side window. A voice emanated from a loudspeaker. “Stop the car or be subject to annihilation.”

  Maya blinked. She knew that voice. Zeroice!

  “Stupid bastards overstepping their power,” mumbled the driver.

  “You’re about to overstep a giant machine gun to the face,” said Maya.

  He slowed and pulled to the curb.

  The instant the car came to a complete stop, Sarah climbed over Maya’s lap, pushed the door open, and dragged her out.

  “Hey!” shouted the driver.

  Fans whirred higher as the drone popped up over the car to ‘look’ at the girls. Sarah screamed as if the gun would fire on them.

  “Wait,” rasped Maya. “It’s―”

  Sarah dragged her into an alley at a full sprint.

  The machine gun went off in the distance.

  Maya twisted back to look, stumbling into a loping run. The drone appeared to be firing on the approaching cars; a huge blast of orange muzzle fire burned into her retinas. Sarah kept pulling, dragging her down the alley. Multiple shadows slithered over the wall, filling her head with visions of armored men coming after them.

  “The drone’s friendly!” shouted Maya. “Zero hacked it!”

  “There’s more coming!” Sarah’s feet hit the wet paving with sharp claps. “I don’t wanna get shot.”

  The hand squeezing hers could’ve belonged to a tiny cyborg. Maya tried to keep up, mimicking Sarah’s stride. Another alley later, they raced into an open-air bazaar. Dozens of carts hawked wares ranging from treats to jewelry to drinks and even clothes.

  Fragrances of perfume, Chinese food, searing meat, coffee, incense, and frying chicken came and went as they darted among people. Except for one guy who gave Sarah a healthy shove while muttering ‘damn pickpocket,’ everyone else ignored them. Maya wanted to scream back at the idiot how no one could pick a pocket while running at full speed, but the man disappeared in the crowd before she could take a breath.

  After crossing the courtyard and ducking into a side street, Sarah pulled her into a cramped alley full of dumpsters and loose trash. Something caught her eye and she made a sharp right turn, skidding to a halt in a squat past the second set of trash boxes. She pointed at a narrow slot in the curb and pushed Maya toward it.

  “In there. Go! They’re coming!”

  Panic overrode reason. Maya stuck her feet in the storm drain and slid forward. She hung by her fingertips for a second until she noticed a rung on the wall and stretched to get her foot on it. Sarah scooted through and dropped, ignoring the ladder, and landed in a tumble about eight feet below.

  Maya hurried down a series of metal bars stuck in the concrete wall like staples. As soon as her foot hit wet dirt, Sarah grabbed her hand again and pulled her into a concrete tunnel half the size of the tubes comprising the Jigsaw River. Despite being smaller, the place still made her think of Pope. She flashed back to him shooting the one Ascendant soldier in the helmet, and then the two cars coming after them. Did they kill him too? Did he run?

  No… he wouldn’t have just let them take her.

  Sarah stopped at the end of the tunnel and spun around before climbing down another ladder into a cistern chamber. Crying and shaking from grief, Maya followed her to a small platform overlooking a huge area filled with brown water. A thin layer of dark grey silt coated the dingy concrete slab, tinted green with moss at the waterline.

  Her friend crumpled in a heap, out of breath and shivering.

  Maya fell to her knees, sat back on her heels, and bawled into her hands.

  Sarah pulled her into a fierce hug. Gasping for breath, she didn’t try to talk.

  “They killed her,” sniveled Maya. “They shot her. It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Sarah took a few breaths. “The only ones whose fault it is are those guys who kidnapped us.”

  Maya looked up. Sarah’s reassuring blue eyes and hopeful expression made her sob harder. “Your dad’s my fault too.” She wailed for a while, unable to talk.

  Sarah squeezed her, rocked her, and rubbed her back until she calmed.

  “I shouldn’t have stayed with Genna. I should’ve let her take me back to Vanessa and lie, say she rescued me. I should just go back to Vanessa and let her use me. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  “No way!” Sarah put her in a headlock and raked her knuckles back and forth over Maya’s head. “Not happening.”

  “Ow!” Maya pushed at her but couldn’t escape. “Stop!”

  “You’re my best friend, and best friends don’t let each other do dumb things!”

  Maya pulled at Sarah’s arm around her neck. “She’s just going to keep hurting everyone around me.”

  “You don’t even know it was Vanessa. Those guys were trying to take Ascendant from her. She didn’t do that.”

  Drips and ploinks echoed in the massive chamber around them. Maya scrunched up her face, breathing hard, scowling at nothing in particular. She coughed on air that tasted like wet dirt.

  “You’re right. My dad should’ve bought me clothes before beer. He should’ve done a lot of things he didn’t do.” />
  Maya gawked at Sarah. Hearing the girl admit that felt like a knife in the heart.

  “I keep trying to take care of everyone. I didn’t know how to handle someone trying to take care of me, especially a younger kid.” Sarah looked down, tracing lines in the silt with her finger. “Dad loves me. I know it. He’s just got problems, and he can’t deal with a lot of things. I’m not going to let you be stupid.”

  Maya sniffled. “I’ve never had a best friend before. Never had a friend before really. Not ’til I ran away and met you and Marcus and Anton and Pick and Emily. What’s a best friend?”

  Sarah held out her hand. “It’s kinda like being sisters, only we didn’t have the same mother. Well, maybe not exactly. Sisters fight more than best friends do.”

  “Really?” Maya took her hand.

  “Yeah. Naida has a sister. Pick says they hate each other.”

  “That’s sad. How can sisters hate each other?” Maya squeezed Sarah’s hand. “Best friends.”

  “Best friends.” Sarah grinned. “Dunno. He said something like his grandmother likes the younger sister more than Naida and they fight all the time. Maybe ’cause Naida’s a… you know.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m never gonna be a prostitute, so if we were sisters, we wouldn’t have to hate each other.” She wiped tears from her cheeks. Though her heart remained like a lead weight inside her at the loss of Genna, she couldn’t cry anymore. “What are we gonna do?”

  Sarah took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Hide here ’til they stop looking for us.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  Maya frowned at her feet. “I left my shoes behind again.”

  Uncontrollable giggles crippled Sarah for a few minutes. “Next time someone grabs you, ask them to let you get dressed.” She pantomimed being chloroformed. “Wait, Mr. Kidnapper, let me put my shoes on.”

  Maya punched her in the shoulder. “I am so sick of being kidnapped. I’m going to make it stop.”

  “How?” asked Sarah, still trying to stop laughing.

  Eyes narrowed, Maya picked up a small rock and threw it into the water with a plop. “I’m going to kill Vanessa.”