Petal couldn’t find her because of it, but maybe she could locate some of these girls who were—perhaps still are—chipped. She saved the necessary info down to her terminal in case she lost the connection and navigated to the teleport module.
Thunder rumbled overhead as Petal set about locating and extracting the lost souls from their unnatural disasters. She’d lost none of her speed on the controls; in fact she moved faster now. She didn’t know if the simpler tasks or more compelling conditions spurred her. She found three women and two children in North America in a matter of minutes, the sixth not 500 miles away from where she sat. Petal engaged the CCTV hack app she’d received as an incentive for her latest job and waited for the arcs to align. At that instant, she enacted the first extraction.
As the first foundling appeared outside a relief center, Petal watched her look around in terror and confusion. Dirt covered her skin and night gown, as if she had been unearthed. Even from a distance, she looked years older than the photo taken months before. Relief flooded into her expression. She lowered her hands, no longer needing to ward off whatever had been approaching. She jerked her head around the empty street and saw the relief center’s sign. Without another glance, forward or back, she ran inside.
Petal stared at the space she’d been standing in, unable for the moment to think clearly or act. She blinked and saw the Indonesian girl’s face. She extracted the other lost souls without taking the time to watch. As the last one arrived back in her hometown, Petal could only feel her heart thumping in her chest, her shoulders release.
An alert chimed on her rig. Petal’s gaze slowly drifted up to the top monitor where it reported that a hurricane now scoured the Atlantic coast of Florida. Petal shifted at her terminal and with a sequence of graceful motions, effortless as dance, she relocated the first selection of voiders into the eye wall of the storm.
Petal felt a vastness open in her, a laying out of possibilities and matrices that until now had not existed. Gauging her next move, she analyzed the shift.
Rise
by Nicole Givens Kurtz
In the distance, Phoenix rose out of the Arizona desert like the mythical bird of legend. Its wings stretched far and wide in brilliant glimmering glass and metal monoliths and skyscrapers. Phenomenal Phoenix promised heavenly homes and a new start. Burn your past life and rise into freedom.
The wind howled as Trixie and Fox yanked their hoods over their heads and stepped onto the gravel road. The truck driver roared by them, spraying apathy and debris. Trixie adjusted her braids into a low ponytail beneath her hood, before hugging Fox to her. Overhead, the mountains reached for the night sky. Decked out in diamond-like stars, the velvety evening heaven had been decorated as if in celebration of their arrival.
“Nobody wants us.” Fox shrugged out of her embrace. Already taller, her younger brother teetered in the awkward stage between child and man. Tinged with disappointment, his words pinched her heart.
She hugged him close. “Then we’ll have us. You build a home out of people, not places.” Trixie linked her arm through his.
Despite the scowl on his face, she saw him grin quickly before allowing it to dissolve again.
“We’ll rise from the ashes of our past.” Trixie patted him on the back.
“Uh huh. Covered in soot.”
A small chapel rose out of the dust. Trixie headed there as the Arizona sky opened up and rain fell hard and fast. Running to the worn wooden door, she and Fox huddled from the raging squall. The tiny archway provided little cover as the rain pelted them.
“Can’t you do somethin’?” Fox shouted above the clap of thunder.
Trixie sighed. “It’s just a little water!” “I’m drownin’ standin’ up!”
Trixie placed her palm against the wood and concentrated. She could feel the molecules accelerate faster. The wood crackled and buckled beneath the fire. She burned through the door enough for her to stick her hand in and unlock it.
“Come on!” She pulled Fox inside.
Mold, dampness, and desert odors collected in the chapel’s stuffy air. The pews sat in neat rows. Fox picked up one of the tiny tealight candles and passed it to her. With a snap of her fingers, she lit all three rows of candles, including the one in Fox’s hand. Her powers had grown since the Flagstaff forest fires.
“Trix!” he shouted, startled by her actions. He replaced it with the others before turning back to her. “You could’ve burned me.”
She looked back over her shoulder. “No. I’ve got better control now.”
Fox inclined his head, but thankfully did not push the matter. Trixie wiped the ash from her hands and took a look around. The tiny chapel had been deserted. Dust bunnies and layers of sand covered everything. Not that the conditions meant anything.
In the desert, dust and sand covered everything, except in Phoenix. She would dust off the ashes of her past.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been blessed in this place in a while.”
“It’s a blessing for us, then, isn’t it?” Trixie picked up a hymn book. Its jacket had been worn down to cardboard inside.
Fox quirked an eyebrow at her. “I guess so.”
She paused at the hesitation in his voice. Fox’s locks, a bright sun-brushed red, provided evidence of their father’s Irish lineage. His dark skin spoke to their momma’s deep roots in Africa. Like so many in the after-throes of a collapsed country, the genetics didn’t matter—only what they could do with their abilities did.
But not in the land of the sun. All were equal there.
“I know it ain’t the best of situations but it’s the only place for tonight. Tomorrow—”
“—we see the sun.” Fox finished. She placed the book back on the pew.
Fox tossed his hood back, and his long dreadlocks spilled over his shoulders. His eyes glowed in the evening’s gloom. “It ain’t gonna be no different there. Nobody wants us. Too dangerous.”
Trixie plopped down onto the first pew and conjured fire from her palm. She held it high as she searched around her immediate area. Fatigued, hungry, and crashing from the adrenaline waning in her veins, Trixie couldn’t quite put her hands on the right words to ease Fox’s fear.
“All are welcomed there. You remember those stories of emancipation we read on the Internet? Of the Israelites out of Egypt? Of the Africans who escaped slavery to the North?”
Closing her eyes, she forced the flames in her hand to recede.
Her palm stung, but she didn’t bother to check it, not any more. Her hands carried the blackened char of ash. The doctors and scientists couldn’t stop that. The tests, the surgeries, and numerous drugs all failed to eradicate it.
A genetic oddity. Magician.
Freak.
Nigger.
She rolled over onto her side. None of the labels meant anything in Phoenix. Everyone could take flight.
“I bet that place ain’t seen nothin’ like us.” Fox huffed. He kept trying to find some identify, some adjective that would make him fit in to a world obsessed with identifying everything and shoving it into its proper place.
“We are dangerous, Fox. And tired. Well, I am.” Trixie stretched out on the pew and folded her hands behind her head. Her thick frame didn’t fit entirely on the narrow wood, but she made it work. Her hoodie served as an adequate pillow.
“Maybe we wouldn’t be dangerous, if they hadn’t kept us like animals in that—that place,” Fox said.
The pew behind her creaked beneath Fox’s weight. Books, no doubt the hymnals, hit the floor with a series of thuds.
“Fox—”
“All right. Lettin’ go, sis.”
She smiled. “Goodnight, Red.”
“I’m a man, not a color.”
She giggled as sleep approached. His complaints at her teasing meant Fox hadn’t lost all of his innocence and youth—yet.
#
The smack of the chair forced Trixie to jump awake with a shriek. Startled from her slumber, she fell with
a crash to the floor. Worn and frayed carpet had muffled some of the sound, but Trixie had been spooked. With her elbow smarting, and a full on grimace, she got to her feet.
What the hell?
They weren’t alone. She stood with her hands aflame and her temper even hotter. “Who are you?”
A large man dressed in a black robe stood across from her. White blonde shoulder-length hair and cold azure eyes loomed beneath the cloak’s hood.
“Hello?” Trixie stepped in front of the pew where Fox had just sat up.
“Trix?” Fox yawned from behind her.
“Who are you?” Trixie positioned her hands.
She took in everything in flashes. The brightness of the chapel. The silence of the people. The scent of something other in the air. The hush from outside. Last night, the chapel had been abandoned. No signs of life at all, but then—in her exhaustion, and in the gathering dark–she could have miscalculated.
“Hey! She’s talkin’ to you!” Fox pulled himself up to his full height.
The man in the robe faced them. He threw back the cloak’s hood, and nodded in Fox’s direction. “You aren’t headed for the sun, are you?”
“Who are you again?”
“The sun is a funny thing. It attracts with its beauty and warmth. It also kills with those same qualities.”
When he spoke, it thundered, like a powerful waterfall. The hairs on her neck rose at the man’s sheer power. Fear gnawed at the edge of Trixie’s courage. What was he?
“Oy, we asked ya first.” Fox’s glowing eyes shifted to her and then back to the man.
Trixie lowered her hands and mentally extinguished their fire. If this escalated, Fox could get hurt.
“I’m sorry. We trespassed on your property.” Trixie picked up her pack.
The man nodded again. “Apology accepted.” “We didn’t see no sign. Nothin’.” Fox added.
The leader in the cloak had taken several small steps toward them, but halted at Fox’s words.
“So, uh, who are you?” Trixie asked. She adjusted her hoodie as she walked closer to Fox. If they had to make a run for it or fight their way out, she wanted to be within arm’s reach of him.
She wouldn’t let anything come between her and freedom. To be her true self. She’d rise above.
“My name is of no importance. What I do, now, that Trixie and Fox, is what matters most.”
“How do you know our names?” Trixie took several steps back.
The man flashed strong white teeth. It lacked warmth. “One death dealer knows another.”
Trixie tightened her hands into fists. Death dealer. No one had called her that, not since the lab.
“I don’t deal in death.” Not anymore. “No?”
“No.”
Bleary-eyed, hungry, and threatened, Trixie struggled with indecision. With the stranger’s intense watching, she wanted nothing more than to bolt, to run—or burn the entire place down to the ground.
The latter sounded much better. She’d show them death. Inside her, the other voice that wanted to ignite the very tattered fibers of the world and watch it be devoured by her fury and outrage awoke. Her palms itched and she uncurled her hands, raising them.
Yes, she would show them all how to frighten, to harass with power, to be victims, like so many of her people had been victims—of dogs, chains, whips, spitting, beatings, lynchings—and police sanctioned murder.
“Let’s push on, sis.” Fox whispered behind her. Fox.
The fact he remained, standing beside, and depending on her, wrenched her back from the edge. He forced her fury to recede.
She thought of rising on new wings. They were above petty revenge. Freedom awaited.
Trixie swallowed the acidic taste on her tongue, and backed away from the man and his troop. He remained standing, his pink face shining as if he were sweating hard. His bulk. His voice. His unrelenting stare had nothing on the creepiness and the iciness of his smile.
And he kept grinning as she stepped through the chapel’s door. Once outside, Fox yanked up his hood. “What the hell?”
“Let’s just go.” Trixie started toward the mountains again. “We need to find some food.”
Death dealer.
She hadn’t heard that term in, well, since the first time they’d escaped from the lab. Death trailed them, like a powerful and expensive perfume that lingered in the room once you’d already gone. The bodies in their wake hadn’t all been their fault.
Still, it lingered in her. The redhead nurse kept screaming as the lab burned around them, her hair aflame, and her eyes wide with agony…death dealer.
Trixie shuddered.
“You all right, Trix?” Fox came over to her.
“Yeah. Fine.” She tried to put the memory away, but the woman’s screams echoed deep into her psyche. Phoenix would burn it out. Then she’d stop hearing them. Now, the desert quiet amplified the memories. “We’ve got to get to the city. Get food. Get water.”
In the faraway distance, the metallic and mirrored city buildings reflected the sunlight and sparkled. A new day lumbered on. Trixie shook her head as the heat raged around them. They’d never make it walking, not in this heat. Her legs kept moving forward despite the truth in her logic.
The chapel grew smaller and smaller behind them. No one had come after them. It felt strange. So many had chased them. Followed them around stores, around neighborhoods, and around the lab.
Watching. Just like that man in the robe.
Most of her life Trixie had known only three things: Struggle. Fight. Run.
Despite the danger that wearing hoods invoked, they had yanked them on. It made it hot. Sure, it deflected some of the sun’s rays, but the fabric had been crafted for colder climates. They’d gotten them in Flagstaff.
“Who was that guy?” Fox asked, his face partially shielded by his hood.
“Dunno.” Trixie kept walking. “He knew us.” Fox shouted.
“He knew our names.” Trixie added.
“More than we got on him, huh?” Fox looked at her and with a shrug, turned back to the road.
“We need a ride.” Trixie wanted to put as much distance between her and the man as she could. Something about him left her unsettled. She hadn’t come all this way to meet her death and neither had Fox.
#
Weeks later
Trixie crossed into Phoenix proper and the man in the cloak didn’t follow. She watched through the sliver of window blinds, but nothing seemed amiss in the pristine, perfect days of life in paradise. Manufactured air pumped through the domed in metro area. The bustling city had been contained from urban sprawl. To Trixie’s dismay, the rising bird had been caged.
Trixie stepped out of the adobe home she and Fox shared.
Over the last two weeks, her alarm had lessened. They were settling into an uncomfortable, but not unpleasant, existence. Trixie struggled with the newness of it all. Clean streets. Free food rations. Air conditioning. No poverty. No politics.
“No peace,” Fox remarked, spooking her from behind. She closed the blinds. “What?”
He tapped his temple. “No peace in here.”
“This place is perfect.” Trixie gestured to the tranquil scene just outside the windows. “No violence. No trash. Quiet. Even the vehicles are hushed.”
They’d been accepted into the city as prelims. Their citizenship relied on how they contributed to the overall progress.
Fox shifted. “Yeah. Too quiet. There’s no laughter, talkin’, or arguin’.”
“You miss the noise? The conflict? The fighting?” “No, but—”
“Then it’s perfect.”
He frowned. “The air has an aftertaste.” Trixie sighed. It did.
“So, it isn’t perfect. What if I go out and yell?” Fox walked to the door. It hushed open.
“Fox. We been through this. Regulations. This is quiet time.” “My point.”
With that, he retreated to his room, a tight triangle corner of their adobe. Once they
became full citizens, they’d get a bigger space.
Trixie gazed out over the neighborhood from the open door.
“Ah, there you are.” The voice slithered around the sidewalk’s curve.
Two weeks he’d waited. The Gringo.
She and Fox had discovered others who spoke of the pale cloaked man they’d met at the chapel, the one who had called himself a death dealer. He’d been called The Gringo, yet no one knew his real name—only his lethal punishment for people who dealt in death, an avenging angel of sorts.
“Your handiwork, excuse the pun, is stamped all over this sector, Trixie.”
Trixie narrowed her eyes as he faced her. Her palms itched in anticipation. “What the hell do you mean?”
The Gringo laughed. “Don’t you smell it? The fear your presence generates?”
“We’ll call the police! Get out of here!” Fox took out his phone.
The man tossed a fireball at Fox. Trixie screamed and dove in front of the hurling flames. The heat blew through her, singeing her eyebrows, brushing her face.
She scrambled to her feet and set her own palms on fire. The Gringo had encroached on their yard. Who is this guy?
“The Gringo has powers!”
“No kidding!” Trixie leapt back into the door. It closed, slicing off the sound fight.
Fox panted a few feet away. Already his shape threatened to shift. His eyes glowed scarlet and his knuckles curled into the beginnings of paws.
“No, Fox!” She hurried to calm him. Across from the door, his serum sat on the table, amber liquid in capped syringes. Trixie snatched the cap off of one and slammed it into his buttocks.
He howled in alarm, and raced off through the house.
Outside, the Gringo continued his assault. Glass shattered. The scent of burning vegetation wafted inside.
“What do you want?” she shouted through the open door. Blue and red lights spilled in. The police had arrived. “Citizens. Desist your use of powers,” a disembodied voice commanded. Disrupting the sanctioned quiet time was a serious offense.
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