LEGACY RISING

by Rachel Eastwood

  Legacy found herself at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

  “Wow,” Dax said. “What’s your name, brother?”

  “Vector Shannon,” the boy said, looking up only to swing a handshake at Dax, then at Legacy. He smiled and pushed his glasses further up his pug nose. His wrists and palms were wrapped in tight gloves, which meant his work was delicate enough to cause arthritis. “Engineer and inventor, among other things.”

  “What are you working on?” Legacy asked.

  Vector winked. “Top secret, that is.”

  “Come on,” Neon said, indicating the rest of the workshop. “Let me give you the tour.” His flourish first encompassed an intricate box which a teenaged, freckled blond boy was fastening to a safe. “This is our Cipher-Scope. It’s a recent production, and it can open any and all mechanical locks. Oh, and this is Levi Connelly.” Levi waved and smiled. Trimpot bent toward Legacy and Dax. “His placement scores were abysmal, but. He is loyal. Oh, and the Contemplator!” Trimpot sprang to the next table, which featured a crank, a system of gears, and a horn. There also appeared to be some thin filament between the gears. “Here, look,” Trimpot said, churning the crank. “You just point it toward an automata and . . .” The horn unleashed an ear-splitting wail. Trimpot quickly stepped back and flashed the pair his most charming smile. “It still has a . . . few kinks.”

  A plump, blue-haired girl in a handkerchief skirt and boots swept by, examining a rotating chart of names and messages, almost too busy to notice the new faces. Then she froze and whirled. She pointed a single finger at them as her eyes ticked from Dax to Legacy to Dax to Legacy, her mouth forming a cute little O. Without awaiting an explanation, she turned to their pink-haired leader.

  “Neon!” she rebuked. “You can’t just—What the—Again? Who are these people?”

  Trimpot came forward, simpering at her as if she didn’t understand the delicate art of hosting. “Forgive my associate,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face them. He slid his arm around her back and gestured to each of them in turn. “Rain, these are Dax and Leg. Friends to the cause. Potential recruits, daresay? Dax, Leg, this is Rain Ellsworth. She’s head of our communications, and she’s also medical.”

  “I’ve only been trained as a nurse,” Rain said.

  Medical? But . . .

  “I thought Chance for Choice was nonviolent,” Dax spoke.

  “Well, we are,” Trimpot allowed. “But most of us have abandoned our homes and our legal identities, and so finding care should we require it can be difficult.”

  Trimpot and Rain shared a significant look.

  “Let me take that atrocious thing off of you,” she said.

  Trimpot nodded, and she stepped behind him to strip off the frock coat.

  “We thought it’d help him blend in,” she explained sheepishly.

  “Not so, turns out,” Trimpot said.

  “Imagine,” Dax said. In spite of the seriousness of this moment and this place, Legacy smiled.

  “Well, I really shouldn’t be up so late,” Rain said, looking away from Trimpot to glance at the two guests. “I’ve got work in the morning.”

  “But I thought none of you had legal identities,” Legacy said.

  “I still do,” Rain answered, folding the printed frock coat over her forearm. “Vector and I both still work in the city. Anyway, good night. I hope to see you two again.” Amicable farewells were exchanged, and the girl deposited the coat on a rack before striding to a flexible brass periscope and checking the park. She then activated the door and stepped out of the side of the hollow copper mountain.

  “And how long can protest remain civil?” Trimpot continued, not missing a beat. “I mean, at some point, that becomes just martyrdom, and who is that helping?”

  The thought of the rebels becoming violent, in all honesty, hadn’t really occurred to Legacy. For the past several months, it’d been nothing but rumors, news stories, supposed clandestine rallies, and that one big installation of graffiti in the business district. They hadn’t even infiltrated the founder’s ball . . . except that they had. Legacy wondered what would’ve been planned if Trimpot’s real name, Leopold, hadn’t been on their blacklist already. Vector was working on some kind of glass cannon.

  As she allowed her eyes to roam the workshop, she noted the various weapons in states of production, both melee and ranged.

  “It does look like the stakes are getting higher,” Legacy conceded, unable to tear her eyes from a table of hand-held saws.

  “We would like to keep anything like that from happening,” Trimpot replied. It was clear what “that” meant in this sentence, and also, that he didn’t see this is as a particularly realistic goal. “But . . .”

  “But if not, then what’s the plan?” Dax asked. “Long-term.”

  “Well, we’d like an open and friendly audience with the duke, but what is more likely in our future with that route is jail.” Trimpot seemed to not know the next course of action himself. He paused to consider. “So if you cannot hope for an understanding to be reached between the common and ruling class,” he continued thoughtfully, “I suppose a revolution is imminent. And then . . . we demand sovereignty. We restructure the laws. We begin again.”

  Legacy didn’t say it, but this sounded as painfully idealistic as the duke had accused her of being. They were all going to get themselves killed, or worse, lots of other, innocent people in the process.

  “What laws, exactly?” Dax asked.

  Legacy looked to him, then back at Trimpot.

  “I could get to be an actual engineer and inventor,” Vector muttered from where he stooped, several yards away now. “Instead of a fucking airship mechanic.”

  “Exactly,” Trimpot chirped, snapping his fingers. “There’s also a black market of sorts? I’m sure you’ve never heard of it, but that frock coat came off of it. There are certain goods which are unavailable to the likes of you, or me.” Then how did you get that frock coat? If it’s not available to the likes of you? Legacy wondered. “These luxury items should be available to the whole of the population. For a price, of course, but they shouldn’t be hoarded, like secrets. Oh!” Trimpot added. “And your thing, too! What was it? The CCSS. We’ll abolish the hell out of all that.”

  Yeah, you sound very genuine . . . like the duke, but less eloquent. What do you want from us? Legacy thought with a scowl.

  “Why are you showing us all this?” she blurted. “It’s dangerous, you know, for you to just bring people here. It’s dangerous for us both that I’ve seen that!” she cried, gesturing at the glass cannon behind her. Vector looked up at her with a matching scowl. “Why are you telling us all this? Your names? Your plans?”

  “Funny you should mention.” Trimpot tilted his head, examining Legacy more closely. “It sparked my interest when you told me that you’d started a little riot in the concert hall. Not just anyone can start a riot. That takes passion. More than passion. That takes eloquence.” He had a suspicious glint in his eye, as if he might just eat her.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “I’m talking about your gift with words,” he replied. “And I bet you Enhancement for Employment Opportunities didn’t even station you in anything of the sort.”

  “I’m a metalsmith.” You already knew that.

  “Well, there you go,” Trimpot simpered. “This is exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about. Chance for Choice could give you a job with words.”

  Legacy had never really thought about it before . . . but she did suppose she liked words. She just had a natural affinity with metalwork, and no one had ever asked what else she might want to do. If anything, she’d been grateful for the placement score, considering the alternative, though it was just another difference engine tallying a human being.

  “What words, exactly?” Legacy asked. “How?”

  “My words,” Trimpot replied. “My speeches.”

  “So, you want to start li
ttle riots,” Dax said. His gaze was weighing on the other man quite heavily.

  “Why, yes, I do,” Trimpot replied. “I really do. I’m getting tired, Dax. I’m getting tired of this notion of civil disobedience. I’m ready to apply a little pressure.”

  Dax’s eyebrows settled lower, and for a minute, Legacy thought Trimpot was about to get told off. Those were Dax’s angry eyes. But then he said, “Hell yeah. I’m in.”

  The two shared a perfunctory handshake, and Trimpot glanced at Legacy next. “And you?”

  “I—I’ll think about it,” she answered.

  “Please do. Well. It’s late, isn’t it? I’ll show you two out.” Trimpot led the way back to the door. “Now remember, you’ve got four seconds to clear it or you’re going to get . . . hurt. Only visit at nighttime hours, for the sake of inconspicuousness, please, and we next meet behind the engines factory in the industrial quarter. August 7th, at midnight.”

  With that, he checked the periscope and depressed the door’s lever, shooting it open. The newcomers leapt back into the world of Heroes Park—so subdued and common by comparison, so lacking in plots and talk of war—and the door shot shut again behind them.

  The two hadn’t walked very far, still in the thicket of metallic trees between this quarter and the next, when Legacy shifted a look at Dax, then away, up into the canopy of obsidian. It gleamed with the million tiny reflections of moonlight on wet copper. “You agreed awfully quickly,” she couldn’t help but observe. “Not really . . .” . . . like you. But she tried not to talk like that with Dax. It was embarrassing to be too familiar, particularly after tonight’s debacle. That damn speech he’d overheard. If only she hadn’t mentioned that she was in love with an ineligible man. “Kind of odd, I mean. So much at risk.”

  “I don’t see any other way around it,” Dax replied. “Got to do something, haven’t we?”

  “I don’t see why,” Legacy said. “Maybe I’ve got a way with words, but I love my job. I love working at Cook’s. And you, you make good money at the CCSS labs, and you’re good at that, too. You’re good with numbers, and . . . organizing . . . stuffs,” she finished lamely.

  Dax stopped abruptly and turned ninety degrees to face her. “Are we really going to keep doing this?”

  Legacy stopped and turned, too, though they were being coated in a fine drizzle where they stood. She was forced to search his eyes to read his covered face. They glimmered hotly, like the canopy overhead at high noon.

  “Keep doing what?”

  “Pretending, Leg,” he said, exasperated. “I didn’t—I didn’t say anything because I thought—you—” Legacy’s eyes widened as if she was staring down a very long fall, and the only urge seizing her was to leap. Oh my god. Oh my god. “I wanted you to have a chance,” he went on thickly. “Maybe it was just my imagination, or we were just being teenagers, and I didn’t want to ruin everything, and I wanted you to have a chance at being happy, even if it wasn’t with me, but after tonight—after what you said, I—”

  “There is no chance of being happy,” Legacy blurted. “Not without you.”

  For a moment, he just stared at her, and if she was gauging his emotion from eyes alone, he was both confused and overworked.

  Then, in a swift motion, Dax tore the strap of his rebreather open with one hand, and the mask dangled away from his face. With the other, he reached out to Legacy, threading his fingers along her jaw and into her hair, pulling her close. Her mouth fell open, her toes stretched up, and it was as if this had already happened a million times before when their lips finally met. It was almost a memory. In the saddest of her fantasies, maybe she thought that he’d be weak, maybe she thought he wouldn’t be able, but on the contrary, his now free hand dug into the small of her back and bowed her against him, his kiss evolving into a primal manliness she’d never seen emerge from him before. A whimper escaped her lips in the shape of his name.

  As his mouth tore from hers and migrated hungrily down her exposed throat, the rasp of Legacy’s breath suddenly awakened her from this blurred dream. “Dax,” she gasped. “Your mask!”

  “I don’t care,” he said, unbuttoning her vest without patience. “You don’t know how long I’ve been-- I don’t-- Leg-- The mask can wait.”

  The forest of Heroes Park must have been chilly; Legacy was shivering.

  And Dax was wheezing.

  But he charged her up against the brass trunk of a tree anyway, its leaves clinking discordantly with the assault. His hands moved beneath her damp shirt, and she felt how they trembled over her breasts. She felt how they were like ice. Because his circulation was already beginning to fail. “You need your mask,” Legacy insisted, wriggling to separate from him.

  “I need you,” he countered, snatching her hips and pulling her firmly into his embrace again. He jammed his hands down her pants and clung to her ass, hoisting her easily into the air; even fully dressed, she felt naked. His mouth crashed into hers again and she forgot the entire thrust of her stance. Blood flooded her tingling cheeks as their sexes ground together to the melody of their symphonic panting. How could this be happening? Dax Ghrenadel didn’t think of her like that . . .

  But it was his icy fingers tugging her pants down. As if he’d waited all these years, and he couldn’t walk another mile, weather be damned.

  “You feel so hot,” he told her, nuzzling into her neck and biting. Sucking. “I don’t have enough hands for everything I want to touch.” His hands moved to peel down his suspenders and then to the buttons of his trousers, fumbling them open without parting from her pulse.

  No! We can’t! Oh shit! We can’t, we can’t, we can’t!

  Technically, they could, but New Earth had always lacked the components requisite to manufacture birth control. It was one of the reasons for the severity of the Companion Law. If they had sex and she got pregnant, she could either beg Liam to raise and claim Dax’s child as his own, or forfeit it to New Earth Extraneous Relocation, where it’d be raised in an orphanage, sent to work in some mass production unit, never knowing either of them, and she, she’d be a felon . . .

  Meanwhile, Dax rubbed into her and moaned from where he remained latched to her neck. He took one wrist and pinned it to the brass trunk, his other hand still clutching her bare buttock. Were they really still in the public park? It had become like a private universe. He was breaking out into a sweat now, she could smell the salt on his skin, part arousal, part oxygen deprivation.

  “No,” Legacy sighed, forcing herself to unweld her body from his. “You need your mask.”

  For a moment, they shared an anguished stare, Dax’s complexion bright and already exhausted, Legacy’s demeanor firm, however desperately she yearned to stay tangled in this thicket for hours. She ran the palm of her hand down his face, which, however drained, whatever grimace, was still so handsome, and so rarely seen. Her thumb skated mournfully across his lips, and he pressed a kiss there before lowering her to the ground and politely tugging her clothes back into place before fastening his mask.

  They didn’t speak the rest of the walk to the domestic district, but Dax threaded his fingers through hers, and that was new. She made sure to keep the pace languid for two reasons. To help Dax get his breath back, and to make this feeling last as long as possible, just in case it would have to come to an end someday.

  Augh. What happened last . . . night . . . Why do I feel like . . . shit.

  Legacy’s half-asleep brain murmured and fizzled, not unlike one of her father’s latest inventions, to the comforting tune of a drill, crescendoing into a brassy clatter downstairs. It must’ve been morning. Didn’t sound like Mr. Legacy’s ocular bot prototype, Blink 9, was coming along so well. Mrs. Legacy was probably already gone for her shift at Nanny’s Assemblage, an eatery which touted the only flavored, synthetic vitamin pills in all of Icarus. (“NEW ARRIVALS: Lemon-esque and Smoked Chip!”) Legacy wasn’t sure how the pills became vitamins. They were made of coal tar and ammonia, among other things.

&nb
sp; Legacy cracked one tentative eyelid open, the glint of light refracting off Flywheel’s wing patterns dazzling it shut again. He landed on her pillow with a delicate thud. “August the Fourth, Two Thousand, Three Hundred and Twelve,” he informed her dutifully, not to be ignored. “Thirteen new messages.”

  Legacy pulled herself into a sitting position, glaring at Flywheel with resentment as he took off into the air again, immediately banging into her shower screen, spinning in a circle, and landing with a plop in the pile of her discarded stirrup pants. She couldn’t even remember peeling them off in her exhaustion the night before.

  As she stood, stretched, and got her bearings on life in general, the first message played. It was her dad.

  “Hey, Ex, we’re about to head home and we don’t see you anywhere and we’re worried sick. Get in touch, all right? The founder’s ball has just let out—”

  Oh yeah! The founder’s ball!

  “—and we heard about the commotion in the concert hall—”

  Oh no, the concert hall . . .

  “—but the guards aren’t giving us further info as to where you are, or what the hell happened!”