Ascendant Unrest

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Thank you,” said Maya.

  She went to hug him, but he put a hand on her head to hold her back. “You’re welcome, kid. S’awright.”

  Maya tried not to feel insulted when he wiped his hand off on his poncho.

  “Yes, thank you.” Sarah smiled at him. Her eyes fluttered and her expression collapsed. She gagged and coughed. “Ugh. What is that smell?”

  Chuckling, the man walked off, dragging his hand truck back to the foggy door.

  “Fish.” Maya took Sarah by the hand, decided on going to the right, and walked. “Come on. I’m not sure exactly where we are, but if we can find an info kiosk, I can get to The Hangar.”

  “Okay.” Sarah pulled her dress up over her nose until they reached the end of the concourse, and the reek of fish no longer tainted the air.

  Most people ignored them, but every so often, someone glared or hurried away. A light rain fell, though already being soaked, Maya didn’t mind. Rainwater had to be far cleaner than what she’d fallen into. The memory of that water’s taste made her gag.

  An advertisement on the wall for Ambutin, an Ascendant-made drug, depicted a man leaping out of a wheelchair along with some diagrams showing synthetic stem cells repairing nerve damage. More spray paint scrawled ‘die bitch’ over it.

  Soggy pant legs flapped around her feet as she hurried forward, hoping to find a cross street or something with an information kiosk. She didn’t dare ask anyone for directions. Even if a nine-year-old looking to go to a bar didn’t get her in trouble, most of the people who noticed her made it clear in their glares or rapid retreats they wanted her to stay as far away as possible.

  An electronic poster on the left showed a mother and baby smiling over the logo for Natacil, a nutrient-enhanced breast milk replacement made by Ascendant. A hacker had changed the catchy slogan below the drug name to ‘profit pigs.’

  “Wow.” Maya frowned at it as they passed. “I hope no one recognizes me.”

  Sarah gripped her hand tighter. “They’re pissed.”

  The long, rectangular courtyard ended at a street with active traffic some forty yards away from where they’d emerged from the underground. Maya again chose a right turn and tugged Sarah by the hand among a crowd of pedestrians. Here, few people bothered to look at them long enough to recognize their filth. Bumps and jostles continued for the length of a block.

  “Grr.” Maya leaned side to side, trying to peer around all the adults but had a clear view only of grey ponchos, handbags, and the occasional potbelly. “I can’t see. Look for a kiosk.”

  “What’s it look like?” asked Sarah “And I’m not that much taller than you.”

  “Silver. Has lights. A box.”

  “Like that?” Sarah pointed.

  When Maya couldn’t spot it, Sarah dragged her ahead to the edge of the curb. Not an information kiosk, but a freestanding sign board with an ad for Xenodril depicting Maya in a glittery blue dress with a huge smile. Someone had bashed in the clear covering over the poster, and spray-painted ‘How much is life worth?’ over it, along with ‘murderer.’ ‘Burn Ass-endant’ decorated the other side.

  “No. That’s not a kiosk.” Maya sighed. “That’s either scary as hell or cool.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Cool if they don’t blame me for it.”

  Sarah shook her head. “You had nothing to do with it.”

  The whine of fans grew louder. Maya clamped on to Sarah, hiding her face against her friend’s shoulder. A standard Authority patrol drone glided by above, ten or so feet over the heads of the crowd. Hats went flying, hair fluttered, and about half of the people raised a middle-finger salute.

  Maya peeled her face away from the still-wet fabric of Sarah’s curtain-dress to watch the drone glide away. “This is bad. It feels like the Sanc is going to blow up at any minute.”

  “Yeah.” Sarah looked around.

  Sniffles and tears came on; the more Maya looked around at so many people, the more alone she felt. She wanted Genna back and couldn’t handle the idea of being on her own without a parent. For five years, she’d lived under the care of an AI, an ever-present voice in the ceiling. All the parental authority without any of the affection. In the brief time she had with Genna, she’d come to love the woman a thousand times more than her biological mother. Again, the image of Genna collapsing in a hail of bullets flooded her mind. Sarah held her upright when the strength left her legs, and rocked her again.

  “Come on. We gotta find that bar, right? Before someone mugs us and takes our stuff.”

  Maya pushed aside her grief, wiping her nose on the back of her left arm. “They won’t do that in here. There’s too many Authority drones, and even in the bad parts, they don’t really mess with kids. Unless….”

  “What?” Sarah’s confidence faltered.

  “We find some shithead like Mason.”

  Sarah’s eyes bugged. “Is that—?”

  “We keep out in the open and with crowds. Stay together. Scream if anyone touches you.”

  “’Kay.” Sarah nodded and squeezed her hand tighter.

  A faint strand of hope struggled inside her. Maya couldn’t give up just yet. She had to at least try to find someone who could take Sarah home. It wouldn’t be fair for her to get someone else hurt, especially her best friend. Hell, she’d almost already been killed too. Not like Mr. Needle would’ve just let her go. Maya shivered.

  “What?”

  “Thinking about the guy with that needle. He woulda killed you too.” She teared up again. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

  Sarah grinned. “Did you see his face when I kicked him? I thought he was going to explode from pure anger.”

  “Yeah.” Maya almost smiled.

  At the end of the next street, a bright red awning caught Maya’s eye over a row of padded stools. Two men in cheap suits sat at a counter, scooping at bowls with chopsticks while slurping up noodles. A short, heavyset Chinese man behind the counter tended a number of steaming pots. Sarah stared at the place with longing in her eyes.

  Maya nodded and approached the counter. “Excuse me, sir. Do you have any work we could do for a bowl of soup? We don’t have any money.”

  The proprietor looked at them, eyebrow raised. “You two are far too filthy to work near food. I couldn’t even let you clean the bathroom.”

  “Mmm,” said the nearer customer, his mouth full of noodles. He nodded sideways at the girls and put two NuCoin up on the counter.

  “Thank you,” chimed Maya and Sarah at once.

  The cook ladled out a bowl each of basic ramen soup and handed them over with pre-wrapped disposable chopsticks. “G’won over there.” He gestured at an alley across the street. “The two of you are in dire need of soap, but the lot what hangs out in that place won’t care. Stairs on the left.”

  Maya’s face burned with shame at someone reacting to her the way she’d felt about Farnham. If they stank, she couldn’t tell. Nonetheless, she didn’t press the issue. After thanking the kind stranger once more, the girls carried their soup across the street. Sarah diverted down a set of concrete steps to an open basement-level door below what appeared to be an electronics store.

  The room at the bottom had a number of dingy mattresses scattered about along with copious amounts of random junk and trash. They sat on the least-fetid looking mattress and opened their meals. It took a moment or two for the soup to cool enough to eat in earnest. A pair of older women with wild greying hair wobbled in, both wearing a mismatched collection of random scraps and coats. Neither so much as looked at the girls as they crossed the room to the back corner and sat where a massive collection of old kitsch―mostly cat figurines―gathered around a pair of mattresses pushed close together.

  Maya sipped at her soup, testing it while the women pulled out cans of Tuna Blast cat food and forks. Sarah slurped, evidently having a higher tolerance for heat. Gathering a bundle of noodles on her chopstick, Maya stared at the women and raised her fresh, hot noodl
es to her mouth. Is that going to be us in fifty years? Still on the street and happy to have cat food? She looked away from them, gazing into her soup like a fortune-teller reading broth. People feeding them out of pity would last a while yet, at least until they stopped being small. But then what?

  Maya ate faster as the soup cooled, and soon they stared at empty bowls. The strong flavor of the broth, like liquefied pork, annihilated the memory of gulping down the water in that sewer.

  “My legs hurt,” whispered Maya.

  “My everything hurts,” said Sarah.

  Maya looked around. “Is it safe to sleep here?”

  “How should I know?” Sarah yawned. “Those women haven’t even looked at us, but the place doesn’t have a door.”

  “Hmm.” Maya tapped her feet while gazing around, debating. The chase had left her exhausted and her brain had reached a state of such fogginess that not even worry for Genna hit her with any real meaning. “I don’t care.”

  “It should be okay,” whispered Sarah. She got up and gathered some old blankets. “We can hide all the way under so no one’ll see us.

  “Mmm.” Maya curled up on her side.

  Sarah tucked up at her back, a protective arm over her, and arranged the foul-smelling cloth to cover them. Though Maya’s face pressed into bedding that stank like an old man’s foot, she fell asleep in seconds.

  Maya awoke to Sarah shaking her.

  “Hmm?” Maya straightened out, stretching, squinting at the invasion of daylight from the doorway and broken wall.

  Men’s voices overhead yelled back and forth.

  “The guy from the store next door is pissed about a jammer. His phone won’t work.”

  “Oh,” said Maya. “No one’s gonna get shot?”

  Sarah looked up at the floor. “I dunno. They’ve been yelling for a while and some stuff has slammed. I’m surprised they didn’t wake you.”

  Maya sat up, wiping crumbs from her eyes. Seven other people, all older than forty, snored away on the other mattresses, leaving a handful still empty. A group of cats had gathered around a third can of Tuna Blast the old women set out for their furry friends.

  “You okay?” whispered Sarah. “I think a roach bit me.”

  Maya shivered. “Eww. Where? Nothing bit me.”

  Sarah blushed. “My butt. There’s a little sore spot. Burns like a bug bite, but I didn’t see a mark.”

  “C’mon,” whispered Maya with a perplexed shrug. “Let’s get out of here before anyone wakes up.”

  “Good idea.”

  Maya crawled out from under the ratty blanket, waited for Sarah to stand, and hurried up the stairs to the outside. The bright day offered little sign of rain, and it appeared to be before noon.

  She yawned again, ready to go back inside and crawl into bed. “I slept too much. I wanna go back to sleep.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Sarah.

  They took turns relieving themselves out of sight behind a dumpster before scurrying out of the alley, holding hands and keeping a wary eye out for anyone trying to grab them.

  “So what are we looking for?” asked Sarah.

  “An information kiosk.” Maya craned her neck around, searching.

  An hour or so of walking later, the endless parade of buildings gave way to a section of green on the left where the New Baltimore Nature Preserve occupied a space of about nine city blocks. Mostly trees, grass, and a shitload of pigeons. Gleaming sunlight drew her attention to a shiny silver obelisk bearing a display screen on each of its four faces. It sat at the center of a circle where a red brick walkpath split apart to go around a grove of dogwoods. As soon as she looked at it, she changed her mind about using it. The people coming after her, if they had influence over Ascendant security, might be able to detect her accessing any electronics connected to the AuthNet.

  She veered left into the park, adoring the feeling of walking over wet grass. Not far from the edge where the grey city gave way to green, she flopped on a park bench and swung her legs.

  “Why’d you stop? Tired?” Sarah perched next to her.

  “Yeah. And hungry. I’d kill for a cheese sandwich.” Her mood plummeted as guilt over Sarah’s father combined with her heartbreak at Genna dying. She pictured the first time she’d ever tasted one of those sandwiches, and her friend’s giant, eager smile.

  Sarah nodded, despite a quivering lip and a stray tear running down her face. “Yeah.”

  “I’m going to cry over cheese sandwiches,” said Maya.

  “Me too.”

  “I got an idea.” Maya teased her toes at the grass. “Why don’t we go to the VA hospital and find your dad?”

  Sarah looked up at her, bottom lip still quivering, but her tears stopped. “Really? How? Do you know where it is?”

  Maya narrowed her eyes at the passing people on the far side of the short grassy stretch. “I don’t know. It might be dangerous to use the kiosk, but I’ll figure something out.”

  19

  Minor Details

  With a renewed sense of purpose, Maya slid from the bench to her feet and headed toward the information kiosk. A search for the VA hospital had to happen so often that it wouldn’t stand out. Plus, she could hover a little way off and tell Sarah what buttons to push in case anyone monitored the camera with facial-recognition software.

  They crossed a long swath of grass, let go of each other’s hands long enough to let a tree pass between them, and continued along the park. A whiff of fried food triggered a growl from her stomach and made her turn.

  The kiosk could wait a few minutes.

  Maya headed for a pushcart where a man sold some manner of meat-on-a-stick as well as sandwiches. A small line had gathered by it. Maya scampered up a grass-covered hill and trotted over to wait at the end. Her voice echoed from a canyon of buildings on the right, a ghostly whisper encouraging people to buy Gabatin-EX and break free from the chains of depression.

  “Umm,” whispered Sarah, “what are we doing? Did you find money?”

  “No.” Maya bit her lip. “I was going to try begging again.”

  Two people ahead of them got their food and walked away, leaving a man, a couple with a toddler, and a bored older-teenaged boy in a nice suit ahead of her. Maya sized them up, feeling a bit like Vanessa for calculating her best odds at sympathy. One instinct said to go for the mother with a small child, but they might be the least likely, having their own kid to provide for. She eyed the boy in front of her. Maybe eighteen, he looked like an intern, and gave off a laid-back vibe.

  Sarah jumped, clamping a hand on her butt and twisting to look. “Ow. Did you poke me?”

  “No,” said Maya.

  “Damn bugs,” mumbled Sarah.

  “Excuse me,” said Maya in a small voice, smiling at the intern.

  “What are you doing here?” bellowed a woman from behind them.

  The intern glanced back but didn’t say anything.

  Maya twisted around to peer up at a woman wearing an immaculate white skirt suit, tiny gloss-white handbag dangling from her left arm. She had a pointlessly small hat with a spray of mesh bedecked with pearls and a nose that could’ve cut armor-grade steel. Something about her triggered instant dislike, and without even thinking about it, Maya gave her Vanessa’s head-to-toe glance, smirk, and ‘you’re not worth my time’ face before looking back to the intern. “Sorry to bother you, but―”

  “Don’t ignore me. You two don’t belong here,” the woman muttered. “Those Authority fools are too busy with nonsense while vagrants are running about.”

  “Excuse me,” said Maya to the intern. She spun to face the woman. “You’re more bothered by a couple of poor kids being in the park than you are at what Ascendant has been doing to everyone for years?”

  The woman frowned. “This park is off limits to vagrants. You people belong in the Ash district.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” yelled Maya. “You’re whining about the Authority dealing with real issues and rea
l corruption because they’re not here to chase a couple of kids out of your stupid little park?” She trembled with anger. Trying to stare down this woman while having to look up at her left her feeling small, alone, and missing Genna. Angry tears streamed from her eyes as she shouted, “You don’t have any idea what’s been going on, do you? Or is it that you don’t care Ascendant’s spraying Fade on people to make them buy drugs? As long as you get your fancy clothes and fancy house, it doesn’t matter how many people they kill. You’re a sanctimonious, elitist, prissy, chicken-nosed bitch!”

  The intern cackled.

  Behind him, the husband snickered while his wife gasped.

  “That’s it. I’ll not be talked to like that by the likes of you.” The woman pulled out a minicomputer. “I’m calling the Authority.”

  “Oh, you’re calling the Authority.” Maya held up her hands in mock fright. “Oh no. Whatever shall I do?”

  Sarah lunged at the woman, who assumed it an attempt to stop her from calling. She jerked her arm up and away to protect her phone and exposed the real target: her pristine white suit. Sarah smeared black handprints down the front, raspberried the woman, and took off running.

  Laughing, Maya darted after her, leaving the snob babbling incoherently, too shocked to form full words. They raced across the grass to the city street and plunged into the crowd, slaloming around slow-moving people while dodging briefcases, coffee carriers, and the occasional stroller.

  Maya ran at her side to the end of the block; the traffic signal shifted red within a second of their reaching the edge. She didn’t stop, hoping the few seconds it took the cars to get rolling would allow them across.

  “Sarah!” yelled a man.

  Unable to stop for fear of traffic, Maya sprinted to the far side amid a cacophony of blaring horns. Sarah crashed into her when she halted on the other side, arms wrapped around to cling, her body shaking with breathless laughs.