Heir Ascendant

by Matthew S. Cox

  She couldn’t take the easiest path. Even during the day, the route would be a hornet’s nest of drone activity. A solitary kid would attract attention. Maya grumbled to herself. Vanessa would laugh if she asked her to set Genna free. The woman could read people like text files and would sense Maya’s disloyalty. She’d never let her leave, and would probably consider her self-stealing property.

  With a scowl, Maya headed to the northwest, into the Dead Space and away from the road. Moonlight filtered in past large gaps in the walls of buildings, illuminating airborne dust in long, cascading beams. Every so often, the breeze knocked a piece of debris loose, creating a clatter of stone on pavement or the rattle of plastic swept out from an upper floor. Sharp clanks of small metal objects falling made her jump and gasp every time. She didn’t know what time it was, or how long she’d been walking, but her head swam and her feet hurt. Another alley crammed with people sleeping in boxes provided too much temptation. She ambled along, barely able to keep upright, until she found an unclaimed black carton that already had a thin blanket arranged along its bottom. Since it appeared empty, and didn’t smell too bad, she crawled in. Once she pulled the plastiboard flaps closed, she curled up on her side and used her arm as a pillow. Dizzying exhaustion dragged her under before she could feel too foolish for spending the night in a box rather than in a real bed with Sarah.

  Oppressive heat woke her. Sweat ran in trails down her face and back. Maya pushed the box flaps open with her feet, gasping at the rush of cooler air. No wonder no one slept in that box; intelligent people didn’t spend the summer in a jet-black shipping carton. She scooted out, stood, and stifled a yelp after stepping on the scorching pavement. A hopping dance moved her a few yards away to a patch of shade.

  The scent of cooking meat drew her attention to a fire in a barrel, over which a woman wearing a dress of plastic bags and wires handed pieces of what had to be rat to four children, three Hispanic and one as pale as Sarah but with blonde hair. The oldest looked about Pick’s size, and the group all wore skirts made from the same set of purple rose-patterned curtains. Between young age, long hair, and distance, she couldn’t tell girls from boys.

  Maya stared at the meat for a few minutes. The woman took notice of her and beckoned her over. Hunger pushed fear aside, and she navigated a patchwork of shaded strips to avoid burning her feet again. The oldest child, probably a girl, handed her a knitting needle with a half-rat impaled on it.

  “Thank you,” said Maya.

  A short distance away, five men emerged from the ground floor of a building. One carried a pistol, the other four crude spears. They set off southwest and soon vanished among the decrepit former city. Maya nibbled on the tough, stringy meat. Two of the kids tugged at her nightdress, feeling the silk and gasping with awe.

  She examined one child’s curtain-turned-skirt with the same degree of appearing impressed, hoping to forestall the sort of jealousy that resulted in theft. Her rat meal died a quick death, and she handed the empty skewer back to the woman.

  “Thank you for feeding me.”

  The woman smiled.

  Maya regretted looking at her teeth. “I… uhh, gotta go.”

  She waved, evaded curious small hands, and headed north at a light run. The Sanctuary Zone stood out against the horizon much less during the day, but remained visible in the haze. Off to the east, the continuous whirr of drone fans warned her away from the road. She looked back to the south and considered going home. No doubt, Sarah would be in a panic at waking up to find her missing.

  Every street looked the same. Even if she gave up on Genna and tried, she had no idea if she’d even make it back home in one piece. Everyone had warned her how dangerous it was to go outside alone. What if she’d gotten lucky making it this far? She’d probably get hurt trying to go back. At least north, the route was unmistakable… and she couldn’t give up on her mother.

  Maya held her arms out to the sides for balance as she walked up a section of concrete lane divider that had flipped onto a car, becoming a narrow ramp. She stood at the tip and squinted into the wind. A tiny dot of cyan light blinked atop the Ascendant tower, barely visible behind a dense fog of pollution.

  “Please be alive, Mom.”

  She jumped to the car’s roof, hopped to the trunk, and lowered herself to the road before jogging north into the Dead Space.

  aya walked for hours, ignoring the building sense of hunger in her belly, the pain in her feet, and the growing sense she’d been foolish for running off. Whenever the ground offered a patch of dirt instead of paved surface, she took the opportunity for comfort. Little by little, the glimmering city of white and silver drew closer. The abandoned parts of old Baltimore housed dangers she’d only read about on the AuthNet―Fade, other diseases, dosers, roving gangs, and territorial militias that supposedly got into routine turf wars.

  Some gangs even turned cannibalistic according to the Authority. Many shot down drones, even the bioassay units, which only tried to help everyone by monitoring Fade levels to provide early warning. She peered straight up as she walked, wondering if aliens sent such an awful disease to Earth to scrub the planet of humans before taking it over. No one she could remember from the company took that theory seriously, but everyone accepted Fade fell from the sky. It had to be a weapon left over from the war. Which side had made it, no one could agree upon, though everyone blamed old governments.

  Ascendant’s way, the rule of Vanessa Oman, offered a much better society.

  Or so they said.

  Maya stuck out her tongue. “Bleh.”

  A massive pile of concrete blocked the road ahead, five or six stories of some building’s face, which had fallen. She glanced up at the naked girders and gaping wound in the high-rise for a few seconds before climbing through a window hole. It had collapsed long enough ago for no trace of glass to remain. She jumped down on the inside and landed on all fours.

  “Hey. Check that out,” said a man.

  Maya snapped her head up. Two thin figures in ragged pants and jackets mixed of brown and black leather sat on either side of a metal basin repurposed to a fire pit a short distance to her right. A feral-looking woman with a shock of purple hair, so skinny she didn’t seem to have breasts, knelt on the far side, jabbing at smoldering wood with a longer stick. Her outfit looked like armor made from old tires, and she had lots of knives tucked in sheaths wherever she could tie them on. All three had skin as pale as ghosts, smeared with thick grime.

  The woman grinned at her. “Looks delicious. Kill it, eat it, or fuck it?”

  “Three, then two, then three, then one,” said the man on the left.

  “I ain’t gonna two it after ya three it,” said the other man.

  Oh, shit. Maya abandoned stealth and took off at a full sprint. The metal basin clattered behind her as the trio leapt to their feet and gave chase. She curved left, heading for a maze of smashed debris, hoping for a place too small for an adult to follow. Tears streamed out of the corners of her eyes, driven into her ears by the racing wind past her face. Whooping noises and cheers rang out behind her. Footsteps got closer. She yelled with clenched teeth, trying to milk as much speed as she could out of legs used to lounging.

  An angled section of fallen building offered a ramp. She scampered upward, heading for another window hole. One of the men seized her ankle with a slap and dragged her back. Maya grabbed the edge of the sill and glanced down at a wagging tongue, horrified that he tried to pull her foot to his mouth and lick her. She stopped trying to haul herself up and lunged backward, stomping his tongue into his teeth with her heel. The man stumbled away, abandoning his hold on her leg to grab his face with both hands, emitting a pained howl past his fingers. The skinny woman raised a bow and drew an arrow back.

  Maya let off an “eep” and dove through the window. She landed on her chest a few feet below as an aluminum razor-head arrow struck the dirt six or so inches to the right of her head.

  “Shit.” Maya shoved herself up. “I�
��m such an idiot. Why did I run away?”

  She snagged the arrow and scrambled ahead over the avalanche of debris. Office chairs, old copiers, desks, and large slabs of drywall created a maze that forced her to belly crawl in some places and jump to climb others. She headed for a patch of daylight about forty yards away at the end of a narrow tunnel no adult could fit in. Silence gave her confidence during the long crawl, hoping the freaks had lost track of her in the rubble. Still attempting to be quiet, Maya scooted to the end of the junk labyrinth and crawled out into the light.

  The skinny woman came out of nowhere and grabbed her by the hair, screaming, “Gotcha!”

  Maya growled and jammed the arrow into the woman’s thigh hard enough to sink the entire bladed point to the shaft. “This is yours.” She gave it a twist, which caused the woman to wilt down to one knee, screaming.

  The Frag abandoned her grip on Maya’s hair to cradle the wound. Maya scooped up a double-handful of sparkling concrete dust, hurling it into the maniac’s face before swiping a giant combat knife from the freak’s belt sheath. While the Frag howled and grabbed her eyes, Maya ran down a long section of street with minimal cover, the two men chasing. Buildings on both sides had been reduced to rubble fields and the occasional scrap of steel girder that stuck up like a middle finger to the society that had devoured itself.

  Raging obscenities spilled from the woman’s mouth. An arrow clattered to the ground somewhere off to the left. Maya hoped the glittering in the dust meant pulverized glass. Three blocks away, a cluster of still-standing skyscrapers with heavy damage offered a place to hide. She didn’t look back to see if the men continued to chase her or tended to their wounded sister/wife/whatever, and darted in a broken street-level window. She stuffed herself in the bottom drawer of an old office desk and pushed it closed. Tromping boots went by outside, came back, and went by again.

  “Ya’in ‘ere, tasty rat?” shouted a man, his voice filling the room around her.

  She pictured him sticking his head in the window, scanning the room for any sign of her. Maya buried her face in the bend of her elbow so she didn’t make any noise. Even the act of breathing in a tiny metal box seemed so loud that Vanessa could hear her from the Sanc. Realizing those people would’ve killed her brought irresistible tears, but Maya managed to weep in total silence.

  “Aha! Gotcha!” shouted the man.

  Maya refused to move since the shout didn’t sound any closer. He’s trying to trick me.

  Eventually, enough time passed without any audible sign of them chasing her. Hopeful they’d given up, Maya pressed her hands against the metal overhead and pulled the drawer open. She climbed out and crept across the room to the window. Listening to total quiet for a moment convinced her the Frags had given up. Maya slipped back out the window to the street. Fear shifted to anger at those people for costing her time. Time that could kill Genna.

  Scowling, Maya crossed left over a four-lane road, jumped the concrete divider, and hurried over a parking lot crisscrossed with grass-grown cracks. A building in the shape of an L rose some sixty stories overhead, with numerous sections of the exterior wall missing. In what had once been a courtyard, a giant pile of slabs and debris had collected, almost deliberate in its effort to be a monument. Laughter and chatter of childish voices far overhead sounded familiar.

  She crawled into a space far too small for a grown up to fit and spent a few beautiful minutes on all fours catching her breath. When she finally looked up, her heart skipped a beat. Not far from the end of the debris tunnel lay the mangled frame of a metal bed with an electronic handcuff dangling from one end.

  After a few minutes’ more rest, she crept out from under the mountain of debris and stood. A dark blotch to her right stained the pale stone in the rough shape of a flattened rat. The body was gone, likely someone’s dinner. Maya gazed from the splat mark up to a yawning hole near the fiftieth floor. She cringed as she looked back down, but the only trace of her abductors was a large swath of discoloration on the ground, plus a gouge where Moth’s arm probably hit.

  She eyed the spot where the rat landed again, cringing at the memory of Head’s reaction to Moth hurling it out of the building. No guilt existed for Moth―in fact, his death rather comforted her. The Chinese guy, meh. She didn’t feel much of anything for him. Head, though, she regretted a bit. She’d only wanted to create enough chaos to escape… though she should’ve known how things would’ve ended. Maya sank to a squat and sobbed, feeling horrified that her plan might’ve killed Genna if circumstances worked out even a slight bit differently. Poking a crazy cybered-up veteran square in his mental disorder ranked up there on a list of dumb things to do with juggling live hand grenades.

  “Stupidity and desperation often look the same,” said Maya, quoting Jerry Michaels, the Ascendant VP she disliked. A sly grin formed on her lips. The man had refused to stop calling her klutz after she tripped accidentally once. Three months after that, she’d rather purposefully swatted his coffee into his lap and said, “Oops. Guess I am a klutz.” That had been one of the few times she got a genuine smile from Vanessa―for a show of vindictiveness.

  Maya sighed.

  In a moment or two, she gathered her composure and set off again, wiping her eyes and sniffling. She didn’t look back at the building where she’d been held captive; for all she cared, the whole thing could collapse and the world would be a better place. A few children’s giggles echoed from high overhead. Another thing she didn’t want to look at―kids her age walking on steel beams. Watching one of them slip would be a nightmare she did not want repeating in her head.

  She followed a curving driveway out of the courtyard and took a left where it met the street. Still headed in the general direction of north, she walked past the slumped corpse of a parking garage, an old strip mall, and a scorch mark where some kind of shopping center existed before the war. Next to it, a field of chest-high grass offered not only a break for her tired feet, but also the fear of emerging covered head to toe in bugs. Four-inch roaches horrified her, but at least she could see those. Tiny ones she wouldn’t notice before they bit her everywhere skeeved her out more.

  She opted to stay on the pavement.

  Buildings crept by, and again the daylight weakened. Maya plodded on until it became dark and the city grew dense once more, but these high-rises creaked with every breeze, seeming as if they might topple at any second. Far more than the Habitation Block, this place looked dead. Light from up ahead cast long shadows from a pair of thin figures seated on the sidewalk in front of a building bearing a 7-11 sign. Inside, shelves toppled to the side like a giant’s game of dominos. Emptiness and white paint turned the old store into a giant lightbox. She crouched behind the rusting hulk of an old black pick-up truck covered in anti-Korean graffiti and watched the people fiddling with a small device on the ground between where they sat.

  “Come here, child,” said a placid male voice. The figure on the right waved at her.

  He sounded friendly enough, and after the fright with the creepy trio, it seemed a decent idea not being alone when it got darker. Maya changed course and crossed a small, empty lot to where the two men sat on concrete bars at the far end of parking spaces. Both had shaved heads and unusually pale skin, and wore robes made of red and burgundy fabric with a trace of periwinkle blue at the neck. Maya made no effort to hide the enormous knife, but the men didn’t show any reaction to it.

  “Welcome, child.” The second man pulled his hands out of his sleeves and held his arms out to the sides. “Please, sit and be welcome.”

  “Be welcome,” said the other.

  Maya approached, squinting at the intense fluorescent glare from inside the building. Eight hot dogs sizzled over the electric heating element of a little grill the men had set up, powered by a wire running back into the store. She eased herself to sit with her legs to the right, then smoothed her nightdress down to within an inch of her knees. Not putting weight on her feet felt awesome. She left the knife on the
ground by her rear end, hidden from view of the men, but still in easy reach.

  “What is your name, little one? I am Var, and this is Fud.” The slightly smaller man gestured at his companion. With the robes, white stuff on their faces, and shaved heads, they could’ve been brothers.

  “Lisa.”

  “Behold the innocent wanderer,” said Fud. “We see that you are alone and in need, and offer our aid.”

  “You’re not going to hurt me?”

  “Of course not, child.” Var tilted his head. “We have eight nutrient tubes. You are welcome to two of them.”

  “Thank you.”

  Both men bowed their heads in unison.

  “What fate has set you loose upon the world with no one to guide you?” asked Fud.

  “My mother was kidnapped. I’m going to get her back.”

  They made the same sorrowful face at the same moment.

  “Poor child.” Var leaned forward and lifted the lid from a plastic cooler case. He opened a cloth inside and withdrew a tortilla, in which he cradled one of the hot dogs before adding some shredded cheese and wrapping it closed. “Here. Take this nutrient tube with Jeva’s blessing.”

  Fud bowed his head and made an odd noise.

  Maya’s eyebrows crept closer. “Uhh, thanks.”

  He wrapped another hot dog and handed it to Fud before taking one for himself. Maya waited for them to start eating before she took a bite. They munched in silence, their expressions a creepy mixture of meditative calm and joy.

  “Have you considered allowing Jeva into your heart?” asked Fud. “Your unfortunate circumstances are not suffered by his children.”