Ascendancy

by Karri Thompson

  Was I ready to enter the clone of an institution in Region One that I hated more than anything in the world? No, but what did I have to lose? Everyone I loved and had trusted, with the exception of Ella and Dr. Love, was either dead, a captive, or had turned on me.

  Identical to GenH1, where I’d been imprisoned, forcibly inseminated, and had given birth to my three babies, GenH3 loomed before me, its glass walls and windows mocking my plight. What the hell was I thinking? Was I losing my mind? How could I even get inside?

  I looked down and laughed at myself. My clothes were stiff and wrinkled, my right pant leg was ripped, and the canvas of my shoes was stained with mud. The sunburned skin on my nose was starting to peel, and I could only imagine what the bags under my swollen, sleep deprived eyes must have looked like.

  Yeah, right. I couldn’t walk in casually, pretending I was an employee or visitor. Besides, they’d ask to scan my non-existent L-band upon entry.

  And then I remembered the key to the mover in my pocket. The last key Magnum had given us was universal, unlocking and opening everything from a mover to an A.G. Lift and a bot-closet. Maybe this one could work here, too? I didn’t wait to think it through.

  I ran toward the back of GenH3, searching for an employee or bot entrance. And there it was—an unmarked door. If the blueprints were identical to GenH1, it opened to a foyer next to a bot-exclusive A.G. Lift.

  Heart pounding, I held my breath and dashed forward, meeting the door while holding the soft, rubbery, poker-chip-size disk between my thumb and index finger. The door slid open without setting off an alarm.

  As I scanned a foyer identical to the one at GenH1, the memory of my existence there sickened my stomach, and I stifled a cough with my fist. Like clones, the two hospitals were identical twins. I wracked my memory, trying to recall the E-Paper I used when I navigated GenH1 and wished I still had the E-Pin containing Magnum’s notes and direction.

  Where would Michael be? Maybe the eighteenth floor, the same floor where Travel was detained in GenH1 after he attacked the doctors for stealing Victoria, a floor with rooms equipped to act as jail cells.

  A service lift was straight ahead. It opened silently with my key and I entered, dodging a small bot that didn’t recognize me because I was unbanded.

  Unable to read my voice commands, the lift stopped where the bot wanted it to go—floor sixteen. Damn it. I knew I couldn’t have been that lucky. I exited and crept through the hall, my back pressed against the wall, hoping guards weren’t taking random viewings of the monitors in this wing of the hospital.

  But they’d never guess I’d be here. Michael was augmented, so they couldn’t force him to tell them where I was, but even if he did, it wouldn’t be here. Michael would never expect a rescue.

  The sound of scratching fabric drifted down the hall, and I immediately recognized it as someone walking in a GenH uniform. A bot closet was to my back, and I snuck behind its door, bumping into a SERVE that was plugged into the wall.

  Without a solid plan or a map to avoid the obscuras, I sank to the floor of the closet and held my head in my hands. What to do next. Think. Think! The bot rattled to life, its yellow eyes lighting up the small room. Its plug disengaged, it slipped out the door.

  Follow the bot. That’s what I could do. And hope it, or another one I came across, would eventually take a lift to the eighteenth floor. The bot was halfway down the hall, and I took brisk but light steps to catch up with it.

  “Excuse me. Who are you?”

  I turned. A GenH3 employee came up behind me, his arms swinging at his sides, his green uniform telling me that he was some kind of tech, level four.

  “I’m a…”

  But what excuse could I give, unbanded and not wearing a uniform? I didn’t belong there, especially during that time of the night, and he knew it. He lifted his wrist. The screen on his L-Band lit bright white against the squishy red band.

  My hand shot from my pocket. I aimed the laser pistol, pulled the trigger, and a red bullet of palpable light sliced through the air with a small pop and swish, meeting its target in the shoulder.

  The man fell backward but recovered quickly, rising to his knees and lifting his wrist a second time. Blood trickled from his wound, turning the front of his tunic a deep maroon.

  “No!” I said and leaped forward, body slamming the tech to the floor.

  He collapsed onto his back, and I struggled to pin his banded arm to the ground with my left hand, still holding the pistol in my right. Kicking beneath me, he jerked to a sitting position and struck his fist against the side of my face. The punch was weak due to his wounded shoulder, but it was enough to throw me backward.

  I pounced forward again to regain my dominance, and as my hair swung forward he grabbed a fistful and pulled.

  “Son of a clone, you mother—” Holding on to his arm, I rammed my knee against his jaw. My kneecap met its mark. The tech groaned, and under the same momentum my knee slipped upward, scraping against his mouth and butting up under his nose.

  A burst of blood hit my chest, and the man’s movements beneath me became smaller until they ceased.

  Keeping his right arm pinned to the ground and straddling his chest, I leaned over him, catching my breath. The tech was conscious, but too winded and injured to struggle.

  “Why?” he asked weakly, his teeth dripping in the blood running from his nose. “Why?” he rasped. His bottom lip was red and swollen, and a bruise began to form on his chin.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” I raised the laser pistol and brought it down with a hard whack against the side of the tech’s head. His eyes jerked shut and his breathing slowed. “I could have killed you, but I didn’t. Consider yourself lucky,” I told the unconscious tech.

  But it was me who was the lucky one. No SECs, no GenH3 security pounding down the hall toward me—which meant that during the struggle, no one was watching the monitor that recorded the coming and goings in this hall. I could only hope that would continue to be the case.

  I pulled the tech by his heels across the smooth gray floor. When I reached the bot closet I stuffed his limp body inside, drawing up his knees and pushing him against the back wall until he was in a sitting position with his head slumped between his thighs. I took a spot next to him to collect my thoughts and let my blood pressure cool.

  The tech couldn’t have been more than twenty with his boyish, and now blood-smeared, face. He was tall and lean with muscular arms, and I knew the only reason I was able to overpower him was because of his laser wound and the fact that, like all clones, he was passive and didn’t expect a fight. I lifted his wrist. The face of his L-band lit, and the name “Timothy Conner” appeared in the upper right-hand corner.

  “Sorry, Tim, but I couldn’t let you report me. Someone will eventually find you.”

  The one-inch hole in his tunic was singed black, and the wound beneath was no longer bleeding, the laser bullet having semi-cauterized the wound.

  Now what? Walking the halls meant another possible clash with an employee.

  I turned on one of the infinity lights, and while listening to the soft breathing of Timothy Conner, tapped my finger against my temple. Think, think, think.

  Giving my body a stretch within the tight confines of the closet, my feet hit a vent next to the bot charger. I remembered Michael’s fingers poking through the grate when he’d looked down upon me in my isolation cell at GenH1 while Dr. Little was punishing me for my escape.

  Yes! I sank my fingers through the vent’s slit and pulled, forcing it from its place in the wall. It gave, the screws succumbing to the drywall and producing a light dust that made me cough.

  The blow of constant air was dry and chilly, but it was wide enough to crawl through with the infinity light guiding me. The vent jutted left and I crept along, not knowing what to expect or do next. I was doing something, and that was all that mattered. It kept my thoughts from my battle with the tech, and the fact that I was leaving him there to suffer.<
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  The duct came to a “T” and I guessed “left,” hoping Michael’s cell was in the east wing and I’d be able to find a way to climb two floors. But when it came to a dead end, I dropped to my back. I cried, defeated, missing Victoria and imagining myself lost forever in the guts of GenH3. During a remodel years later, they’d find my bones and ironically perform a DNA test to determine my identity.

  The infinity light rolled from my grip, and I noticed a grate to my left bigger than the ones used by the hospital’s system to regulate air temperature.

  I tugged on the grate, using the strength in my arms and my weight as I braced my feet against the floor, but my attempts to dislodge it were futile. It was adhered to the wall from the other side, so I turned and gave it a hard kick, and a metallic twang echoed through the vent. Not good, but necessary. I kicked it again, and this time one corner broke away from the wall. Giving it a good slam with my shoulder finally knocked it free, and the grate dropped away with a clang.

  I tied a knot in the open end of the pillowcase containing my food and secured it through the belt loop at my hip. Holding the infinity light with my teeth, I squeezed through the opening, grabbed a wooden beam above me, and pulled the rest of my body through, my feet landing on a two-foot-wide metal ledge. Once I was stable, I shot a stream of light across the wall.

  Metal bars ran vertically to meet perpendicular four-inch by eight-inch beams of artificial pine. Wires of every color sprouted into the walls. Small, marble-size glass balls clung to the inner walls at each corner, tiny black wires curling down from their centers: obscuras—the assaulting eyes of this century.

  Thank God GenH walls were thick and hollow in order to hide the building’s inner workings, mechanical and electrical, which meant they were probably thick enough for me to sidestep through. Magnum had mentioned something about that once before. Now I understood what he’d talked about.

  The number sixteen was laser-stamped in the center of each wall, and when I flashed the light upward, I saw the number seventeen twenty feet above.

  To climb up the wall and get to the next floor, I needed horizontal ledges I could scale, but the closest one was about ten yards to my left. Below me was a ten-foot drop. I took a deep breath of stale air, grabbed a handful of wires with both hands, and made the leap, bracing my feet against the inside walls. With a controlled swing, the tips of my toes touched the next beam.

  A long walk and squeeze between studs were next. After turning my head and pushing through the first series of ten unforgiving beams of steel, pain formed in my shoulder blades and lower back from a quadruplet of fresh bruises.

  Gripping the infinity light between my teeth, I climbed to the next floor, hand over hand, my fingertips raw and my toes numb. The pillowcase pinched between the beams, and I banged my elbow, almost dropping my light.”

  My thighs burning, I caught my foot on a wider ledge and pulled myself up.

  The eighteenth floor was another twenty feet above. As I trailed my light upward, looking for a doable route, the inner walls and subfloor began to buzz, a deep, penetrating vibration that wracked my body.

  I braced myself between the beams, my teeth chattering while the shaft of an A.G.-Lift less than five feet away trembled as the lift shot downward. Then I remembered Magnum saying that traveling through the walls of GenH1 would be too dangerous due to the unpredictability of the lifts.

  I realized I had no choice other than to jump from one side of the shaft to the other, and then make my way to a section of wall with enough beams for me to climb. Sizing up the distance between shafts, I took a deep breath. Could I clear the void before me? My heart beat hard and my neck filled with heat as doubt entered my mind.

  No! I can do this!

  I backed up ten feet and made the run, pushing off hard with my right foot.

  The metal maintenance platform rang like a bell when my feet landed, sending a gong-like reverberation among the walls.

  Yes!

  I wiped my damp forehead and eyed the next space I had to clear. The five-by-five platform didn’t provide much running room for my second leap, but I sprung from the platform to the other side, my ankle rolling under my weight and my hands frantically reaching for a beam to hold myself steady.

  A needle-thin pain exploded from the side of my foot and grew, spreading like fire, engulfing my entire foot. “Just walk it off,” I told myself. “It can’t be broken.”

  But that wasn’t my only problem. The pillowcase had slipped free from my waistband with my last jump. And there it was, knotted end caught within the “V” of two beams five feet below where I stood. I couldn’t have cared less about the food and supplies it contained, but the rolled E-Paper and pin with direction to Chu-Lung’s was inside.

  I studied the bag as it swung like a pendulum by its stiff knot. Lying on my stomach and reaching my arm below the subfloor, I could barely scrape the top of the pillowcase with my fingernails.

  “I can do this. I have to do this—for Michael, for Victoria,” I told myself, though now a flame of doubt flickered in my mind and grew, making me wonder if I’d done the right thing in making the decision to save Michael rather than going straight to Chu-Lung’s.

  But the guilt I’d feel for leaving him behind was stronger than any doubt—stronger even than the pain throbbing in my ankle—so I gripped the beam with my legs, its square edges cutting into my skin. Leaning far over the edge with both hands, I caught the knot and worked to pull it free.

  A whir rattled my chest, thrumming through my knees and pelvic bone.

  “Come on. Damn it!” I screamed through locked teeth while somewhere below me the A.G.-Lift roared upward. Please stop at a lower floor! Stop! Stop! But the vibrations grew stronger.

  Another mighty tug and the knot popped from the crossbars. I tossed the bag onto the platform behind me.

  Pushing up and away, I inched my body up and over the edge of the platform. Tightening the muscles in my legs drew me farther from the shaft just as the lift zipped upward. A flash of black shook the platform while I held the saliva-slick infinity light in my hand. A blast of cold air followed as the lift came to a stop several floors above me.

  For several minutes I sat with my back against the wall, catching my breath while the insides of my thighs, bruised and swollen, burned from gripping the square beam. Exhaustion crept up my legs and trickled through my arms, making my hands shake when I pushed myself up and stood.

  One more floor. But it had to be done. Using everything I had, determination being more powerful than my failing strength, I moved on and struggled forward.

  When I finally made it up to the eighteenth floor, I squeezed through the interior walls until I found an air duct and wriggled inside. The cool air made my eyes water and my nose run. It became colder as I crawled, my sore ankle became numb and tight, and my kneecaps hurt.

  I needed to find Michael. Fast.

  I began in one direction, turning left at every turn, and looking through each grate as I passed by. Most of the rooms were empty, and the ones that weren’t contained what I assumed were transplant patients—and none of them were him.

  When the duct turned down what I thought was the last wing, my heart rang with anticipation. He had to be there. If he wasn’t, the only thing I could do would be to retrace my steps and make my way to Chu-Lung’s, alone and sick with grief.

  The first room was empty. A moon-like glow coming from the next room cast the grate in bright, blue light. There was no sound as I crept toward the vent and when I reached it, I peered between the horizontal weave of the thick wire.

  A metal, lidless vessel and pedestal sink dominated the far wall of the tiny room. A wooden chair with metal legs stood in the corner, but the angle of the vent openings prevented me from seeing the bed.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the soft breathing coming from whoever lay below. It was deep and steady, distinctly male, and when the person shifted positions and let out I sigh, I recognized the voice as Michael’s.
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  Chapter Nine

  “Michael,” I whispered into the cold, dim room, my heart beating in my throat.

  No answer.

  “Michael,” I said a little louder.

  “What?” came a gasp. “Cassie?”

  “I’m in the vent above you.”

  “What? You shouldn’t have come here! It’s too big of a risk!”

  “I couldn’t leave without you.”

  “But, I’m…I’m banded.”

  The bed creaked again, and his wrist, bearing a red band, appeared on the other side of the grate.

  The back of my throat tightened and my eyes rimmed with tears. “Then it’s a good thing I still have this,” I whispered, and pulled my L-Band inhibitor from my pocket.

  I pushed it through the grate and Michael took it, our fingers meeting in a kiss. “I can’t believe that you did this, and you’re here,” he said once the inhibitor was under his band.

  “Why not? You’re the one who gave me the idea.” I laughed. “We need to get you out of here before a random viewing is taken of your room.”

  The bed creaked again and the tips of his fingers poked through the lowest slat on the vent. As I pushed the tips of my fingers against them, he let out a sigh. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “Me, too,” I said and backed away from the vent to make some leg room. “Lie down. Pretend you’re sleeping, just in case. I’m going to kick the grill away. Be ready to catch it.”

  The vent’s epoxy was thick at the corners, but ran thin on its vertical and horizontal edges. When I heard his feet hit the floor, I braced myself against the side walls of the duct, brought my knee to my chest, and straightened my leg hard, kicking the center of the grate with the sole of my foot. It popped loose on three sides and snapped back into place.

  “One more time should do it,” I whispered.

  Smack! My heel met its target. The vent broke free and toppled below.