by Josh Vogt
She just had to think like a janitor, right? What would a janitor do in this situation? First of all, a janitor wouldn’t have stuck her head inside a garbage bag. Health hazard, that. So that was one step backward …
A spot of wetness worked up her back, beneath the suit, tickling like an ant as it went. Or a spider. This thought sent her thrashing. She almost popped her shoulder out of its socket trying to grab at her back.
Her escorts shook her in warning, but kept moving her along. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to bear its presence. Whatever it was, she had no way to stop it.
The tiny intruder paused where the trash bag circled her neck. Then it bumped beneath it, continued up her neck and plopped inside her ear before Dani could squeal. She started to jerk her shoulder against the side of her head to dislodge the lump, but a voice buzzed in her head.
“Chill, princess.”
Startled recognition made her stop walking, but the Cleaners dragged her on. She scrambled to get her feet back under her as she whispered in reply.
“Ben?” Her voice sounded flat within the trash bag.
“Trottin’ along right beside you. Sorry for this whole mess. For what it’s worth, I figure that show back at the furnace is a sure sign you can handle your power well enough.”
Dani turned her head from side to side, but the blackness remained. “How are we communicating?”
“Oh, right. I left a bit of Carl in my stomach. He’s got this spiffy little trick where he transfers vibrations through the jawbone and eardrums.”
“Carl? Did he cook up that weird armor you were wearing?”
A cough. “Well, him and a few hundred of his pals. The bindin’s they’ve slapped on us cut off any outside energy, but they can’t fiddle with what’s already inside us. You learn to be ready for these kinds of situations.”
She smiled wryly, even though he couldn’t see. “Including your own boss deciding you’ve gone crazy and been Corrupted?”
“Eh. After seein’ enough of my coworkers bounce their sanity checks, I figured it pays to be prepared. Was only a matter of time for me.”
Her mind’s eye conjured images of Ben’s Corrupted arm, all black and green and gray. A shudder passed through her.
“Ben, what really caused the Ravishing?”
“Wanna worry about gettin’ free first?”
She bit her lower lip, not liking the feeling that he was brushing her off. But arguing would waste time she suspected they didn’t have. “Does that mean you have a plan?”
“I’ve been workin’ with this kinda equipment for years. You’d think I’d have figured out a few tricks around it by now.”
“Have you?”
“Here’s hopin’ so. Now, hang on. This next part might sting a bit.”
“Sting?”
A pair of droplets trickled through the bag lining and up her cheeks, where they zipped into her eyes before she could shut them. She blinked against the smarting and started bending over, an instinctual hunch against the invasion.
“Don’t be so squirmy. Our walkin’ buddies might get cranky.”
Dani straightened, eyelids fluttering as light blossomed.
“Howzat?”
She shook her head, trying to overcome the urge to knuckle her eyes. The world reappeared through a blue, glistening film; if she turned her head too fast, the edges of the hall swirled before settling back to true. The bag remained over her head, but the sprite projected a semblance of vision straight to her eyes, the same as it slipped Ben’s voice into her ears.
“Thanks,” she said as she took in their surroundings. Two Ascendants marched her and Ben—looking like a cheap scarecrow with his lanky frame and a trash bag for a head—down a wide hall, glass walls on either side. Through these, she glimpsed sunken rooms crowded with iron cages, dark figures chained within, crystal balls full of writhing smoke, glass doors rimmed with frost, and steel grates bolted over black pits. Every dozen yards, padlocked doors stood above stairs that led to the lower level. Dani wondered if the bag were taken off, would she hear screams and shouts of whoever and whatever was imprisoned here? Or would it remain unearthly silent?
“What is this place?” she asked.
Ben didn’t give any indication of their secret conversation. His infected arm had also been wrapped tight in black plastic bags and bound behind him.
“The Recycling Center. It’s where we bring Scum that we don’t wipe out right away. Sometimes, if they’re human—and we get to ’em in time—the Corruption can be removed. Other times, we study constructs or lost causes to figure out ways to fight ’em better next time.”
“And … what will they do to us?”
“Depends.”
“They’re going to put us in diapers?”
“That’s good. Keep a’hold of that humor. Helps keep the heebie-jeebies at bay.” He cleared his throat. “For me, they’re probably gonna stick me in containment until the Ravishing really does start gnawin’ on my brain. For you, I’m thinkin’ they’ll be druggin’ you up ten ways to Tuesday, or … well …”
Dani bit her lip. “Or what, Ben?”
“Ever see Ol’ Yeller?” He hastened to continue. “But don’t worry, kiddo. It ain’t gonna come to that.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause I ain’t dead yet.”
At that moment, they came within sight of a set of steel double-doors at the far end of the hall. They stopped before these, and one of their escorts placed a hand on the metal, face cast in shadow below his fedora.
Ben preempted her question by half a second.
“Quarantine,” he said. “It’s where we stick the really naughty kids who stay up past bedtime and refuse to brush their teeth.”
Dani felt rather than heard the doors open. The rumbling shook her from ankles to shoulders as the entrance slid apart. They were pushed into an oversized elevator, large enough to hold at least twenty people. Dani glanced at her captors, gauging their alertness. Was this where they made their escape? It gave them a confined space to fight in, but still … an elderly janitor and her against four muscled and possibly armed men? Dani didn’t want to know the odds on that brawl.
“Ben? What do we do?”
A shock jolted the chamber, and she twitched before she realized the doors had slammed shut behind them. As the elevator shook and descended, Ben’s silence gnawed at her. Did he really have a plan?
The elevator shuddered to a stop and the opposite wall split into another pair of doors, revealing a dark hallway lined with more assorted prisons. Rows of them stretched into the distance, light spearing the shadows between each cell.
“Get ready.”
Without a huff to betray him, Ben lunged forward, tearing away from his captors.
“Ben!”
She imagined shouts as two suits chased Ben, who careened from side to side, bashing his shoulders against pedestal bases, toppling globes and cracking glass doors. He pounded down the hall like a pinball, ricocheting from wall to wall, surrendering momentum to slam into frosted panes or kick at locking mechanisms.
Then an Ascendant threw himself forward. Arms wrapped around Ben’s legs, and the two fell flat. Ben’s laughter crackled in her ears, and for a moment she feared he’d lost his sanity after all. The guards dragged him to his feet as she was marched down to him.
She snorted. “That worked well.”
As she said this, their escort shuffled in place, looking this way and that. One drew out a radio and yelled into it, while the others formed a perimeter around the prisoners. Dani looked back along the hall and saw the results of Ben’s dash.
Black smoke poured out from a cracked globe, while sludge writhed out of a broken door and flowed toward their feet. Jagged claws cut through a dissipating curtain of light and dug into the floor. Dozens of eyes gleamed as they focused on the nearest prey.
“This here’s the problem with bringin’ an old hound like me home to be put down.” She could almost see Ben’s gr
in through the bag. “I know what we got chained up down here.”
In another second, the hallway crowded with hunched, winged, and fanged figures. Others strained to shake of their restraints, the bonds disrupted enough for them to bull through the rest.
“Duck and cover, princess!”
She dropped to her knees as something winged overhead and snatched up a guard. The man flailed, and his aura snapped into being around him. Smoke rose from the creature’s talons, and it dropped its prey. However, he’d already been taken to such a height that the landing left him stunned.
The other three spread out, auras bright, trying to push the escapees back into their cages. One woman disappeared under a wave of dark mud, which congealed into an egg shape. Handprints appeared from within, stretching the webbed skin like rubber. Another guard lashed whips of light at what appeared to be a cadaverous bear, and the third continued shouting into his radio while throttling an imp that gnashed at him with shark teeth.
Ben elbowed her. “Hustle thisaway! Don’t get lost.”
Still hooded, and with their hands bound, they raced into the maze of prisons.
***
Chapter Twenty-six
Dani focused on not tripping. Despite fleeing for her life, she felt ridiculous as they sprinted between rows of pillars, heads bent and arms tied behind their backs. She couldn’t help the thought that they ran through an amusement park haunted house. The Janitor’s Gauntlet of Soapy Horrors.
Ben seemed to turn at random. He cut down dark halls, taking them through empty rooms and past stretches of glass doors where motionless figures stood backlit by the glow of containment spells. Some of them were humanoid, while others had far too many limbs and heads, or none at all.
Ben and her breaths filled her ears as they ran, making it sound like a huffing competition. None of the walls were marked or sectioned off in any way she could see, and the blue film over her eyes cast everything into the same pallor, making it impossible to tell one corridor or room from another. Sweat ran down her face, unimpeded by eyebrows any longer, but the water lenses blocked any salt sting.
As they turned down the umpteenth hallway, Ben stopped so suddenly she smacked her face against his back. As she stumbled, he turned and tilted his head apologetically.
“This oughta be far enough. No sense keepin’ on if we’re just gonna trip over our own feet.”
Dani eyed the way they’d come. Lights flashed along it. Emergency alarms? She had no sense of how far they’d run. She flexed her arms, but the zip-tie still dug into her skin.
“How do we get out? Open sesame?”
He turned sideways, displaying his arms. “You mighta noticed I’ve got a bit of a way with water, yeah?”
“So?”
“So, with all them school smarts, I’m sure you’ve learned that we’re … what? Sixty or seventy percent water?”
“That’s something kids learn in kindergarten, Ben. What’s it—whoa.”
Ben’s arms withered as she spoke. The sleeve of his left and the trash-bag wrappings of his right hung loose over bone-thin appendages, while other spots in his body filled out until he had a padded waist and triple chin sagging out from under the bag.
The zip-tie slid over his wrists, and he sighed in relief as he tossed the binding away. After another moment, his bony hands swelled back to normal and the rest of his body thinned down. Flexing his fingers, he peeled the garbage bags away from his right hand, but left the arm covered.
“It ain’t that hard,” he said as he stretched and popped his knuckles. “You just gotta clench the bladder until things get back to normal.”
“I didn’t need to know that.”
A tug drew the bag off his head, revealing his haggard features. The stubble on his cheeks and chin made him look ten years older, though his eyes gleamed with energy. Dani thought he might be having a little too much fun showing off.
He released her bound hands, and she relaxed slightly as the bag whiffed off her head. Water dribbled out of her eyes and ears to splatter on the floor. She shook her head as normal senses returned, bringing with them a smell of lemon and pine. Cold air made her scalp prickle. She rubbed her bald head and where her eyebrows used to be, silently bemoaning the loss of her hair. Though, on the upside, it’d be much easier to keep her scalp clean.
Sirens wailed in the distance, warning them not to stay in one spot for too long. Warning lights sliced yellow and red beams across gray walls. Distant yelling was followed by howls, snaps, and splashes. These died off, and Dani glanced at Ben, who nodded for her to follow as he walked the way they’d been heading.
“Ain’t nothing to worry ’bout,” he said. “The Ascendants can handle themselves.” He trotted along, not quite as fast as before, but not wasting time either. Dani jogged to catch up, swinging her arms wide to enjoy being free.
“What are Ascendants, anyways?” she asked as they loped down the hall.
Ben grimaced and kept his eyes forward. “Well, you got the Chairman and the Board. So think of Ascendants as upper management. They’re the ones Purity gives a bit more oomph to.”
“Oomph? Do they get a little sproing and whizzbang too?”
“Their glow ain’t just for show, is what I’m sayin’. Those auras repel pretty much all but the cruddiest Corruption. They don’t ever gotta shower, use the bathroom, or all that other daily maintenance. They stay spit-shined twenty-four-seven. Plus they get better benefit packages, company cars, and gold watches when they … uh … what’s wrong?”
Dani went stock still in the middle of the hall and threw her hands up. “Why didn’t anyone tell me this from the start? I would’ve signed on without a second thought!” She shook her head. “I swear, if we live through this, I’m applying for the Ascendant fast-track.”
One side of his face scrunched up. “I wouldn’t aim that high, kiddo.”
She glared. “What? Don’t tell me this place has a glass ceiling. I saw plenty of women wearing those zoot suits.”
His frown deepened. “It ain’t that. It’s just most people don’t know that bein’ an Ascendant grinds down the soul, little by little, until all you’ve got left is a nice pile of white powder, with barely any humanity left to be worth a snort.”
He resumed jogging ahead, and, after a huff of disbelief, she followed suit.
“What do you mean?” she asked, once she caught up.
He eyed her sidewise, obviously displeased with her continuing the discussion. “Bein’ human means havin’ a little bit of dirt under the fingernails, princess. Ain’t none of us perfect or pure, no matter how much we wanna be. It ain’t in our nature. So when you get Purity’s little nightlight followin’ you ’round, forcing that kinda state on you … well …” He shrugged. “It might be fun at first. Never havin’ to shower or brush your teeth. Always smellin’ fresh-like, never havin’ to comb your hair. But all those little things ground us. They remind us of who we are. Strip that away, and you start thinkin’ all sortsa unhealthy things. You start thinkin’ you’re better than everyone else who ain’t Ascended. You wall yourself off from everythin’ and anyone that ever mattered. You get cocky. Anyone not at your level might as well be yesterday’s lunch—even other Cleaners who put as much sweat and blood into the job as anyone else.”
Dani pondered this as they ran along. It didn’t seem fair. Ever since seeing Francis in the library bathroom, she’d wanted to tap into the secret that kept him spotless. And now Ben was telling her it might have a cost higher than she was willing to pay.
“So that’s why Francis and the others always act like we’re something nasty they just stepped in.”
He nodded. “It takes a hard knee to the balls to make any of ’em realize they’re just as vulnerable as the rest of us.”
“Is that what we’re doing now?”
“Sorta. Except instead of a knee, we’re gonna use a sledgehammer.”
After another minute, a previous statement snagged on her mind and dragged a question
out. “Ben?”
“Eh?”
“You said ‘most people don’t know’ about what it’s really like to be an Ascendant. How do you?”
He slowed to a walk, and Dani backpedaled to stay at his side.
“I was one,” he said.
“What?”
Ben hugged his right arm to his side. “I was an Ascendant when this happened.” He flashed a ragged grin. “Hard to believe, huh? One of the youngest the Board ever approved, ain’t that the truth. You think Francis is a prick? You shoulda seen me. Why Karen ever stuck with me, I ain’t never guessed.”
“Your wife.”
Pain cracked Ben’s face into a hundred fragments. “Yeah.”
“Will you tell me what happened now?”
He hunched, his earlier willingness to explain spooked by her pursuit of the topic.
She reached out, not quite laying a hand on his shoulder. “Please, Ben.”
“Dani, this ain’t—”
“The right time? I don’t think there’s ever going to be a right time, if you have your way.” She stepped around and blocked the way, arms crossed. “You promised an explanation, and I’d like to hear it before we meet up with more goons who will try to scour us out of existence.”
Ben lowered his head, giving her an eyeful of gray ponytail and bald patch. Dani didn’t budge. She kept one ear attuned for sounds of pursuit, but didn’t think a chase party had come close to cornering them, or else Ben would’ve shown more need for haste.
He looked up, but didn’t meet her eyes. “A’ight. First thing you gotta know is that I’m thirty-two years old.”
***
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ben watched Dani as his words settled in. He felt funny admitting it, a mix of shame and relief he couldn’t sort right away.
“You’re … what?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Thirty-two. What? I don’t look it? And no, before you ask, I ain’t jokin’, and I ain’t crazy. Leastaways, not that much.” He bent his right arm around. “It’s been five years since the Ravishing latched onto me. I was twenty-seven then. See? I can do math.” He grinned briefly. “It clogged up my power somethin’ fierce, but it also has some other nasty side effects. Like shuttlin’ me to the grave a might bit faster. I figure I got the body of a seventy-five-year-old now, and I’m gonna be dead in another year or two.”