From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  She swallowed.

  “So, I stayed. I joined Teledyne’s Specialist program. I was enhanced—physically and mentally, but not emotionally or spiritually. I did things that seemed near-identical to what I’d done as a sicaria. At first, I was only asked to do routine hits—a scientist here, a security officer there. The war with Obsidian loomed, and Teledyne invested more and more in us. As Specialists became more advanced, Teledyne needed more controls. There were rumors that some Specialists were going rogue. The company couldn’t stand the thought of losing so many expensive assets. So Internal Affairs was established. I had several different titles—Loyalty Manager, Violence Suppressor, Compliance Officer. It was all flowery, trumped-up, corporate bullshit. I was a murderer. It was worse than being a sicaria. As a sicaria, at least, you had a code of honor, and the Templarios were a family. Being an Internal Affairs Specialist was almost like being a robot. The suits on top input the codes, and I did what they said. The company figured out, quickly, that threatening people’s families wasn’t enough—if you wanted to follow through on those threats, you had to act. No one was off limits.”

  Lucia felt tears creeping into her eyes.

  “So I acted. One hundred and seventeen times, I acted. Spread out over five years. I remember every face, every scream. So many dates on the calendar remind me of a murder I committed because I was too frightened to choose any other life. The final murder I committed was my friend and colleague of 10 years, a man who I’m not ashamed to say I loved. He went through the Specialist program with me. He was there when I needed him most. He saved my life at least twice.”

  The tears started as Lucia continued.

  “I killed him, shot him in the back of the neck with a shotgun as he read a map. I didn’t feel anything at the time. I told myself I was different. The department called me the Frost Dancer—because I was ice.”

  Lucia sobbed. She tried to smile, to keep a brave face for the priest, but could not. She broke down into tears.

  McClaren said nothing. The priest reached out to touch the crying woman, but she shrugged him off.

  “And the worst of it,” Lucia said, pausing only to wipe her eyes, “is that I think this raider, the one outside the walls…I think he’s karmic vengeance. I think he’s all my sins manifested, here to end me.”

  “Lucia,” McClaren said, softly. “I know you’re remorseful. I know you have committed many, many sins. But one of the teachings of my God, a God I presume you also believe in, is that no soul is beyond redemption. Do you regret what you’ve done?”

  Lucia nodded, still sobbing slightly.

  “Do you feel remorse? Have you tried to be a better person?”

  Lucia nodded again.

  “Then, I don’t want to get into the theological particulars, but you have set the foundation for who you will be. At this point, you can do nothing about who you were, but you do not have to accept that identity as who you will be. There’s always a chance for redemption.”

  “I thought I had changed,” said Lucia. “I thought I had become better. But the arrival of this…this man, makes me think I don’t deserve redemption.”

  “No,” said Father McClaren. “This is merely a challenge. It’s up to you to answer it.”

  Lucia didn’t say anything. A few rogue tears continued to trickle down her face, but the wracking sobs had stopped.

  She looked at the priest.

  “I’m going to answer it, then.”

  McClaren nodded. “I think you should. The people of this town rely on you. If what you’ve told me is true, and the raiders are here for vengeance, I somehow suspect they’ll take it out on the town. And despite what their leader said, I would not plan on his restricting his rage to just you.”

  “You think he won’t keep his word?”

  “Wrath is, in my opinion, the ugliest of the seven deadly sins. Pride is more damaging, but wrath clouds judgment in such a way that all else ceases to exist. Lucia, this man has been hunting you for two decades. Anger is all he has left. You told me so yourself.”

  Lucia contemplated McClaren’s words. Her eyes had dried. She felt a smile creeping back onto her face, but suppressed it—the priest deserved honesty.

  “I think,” McClaren offered, “that who you used to be doesn’t need to define you, and while many of your skills may have been used for evil, none are inherently evil. You’ve changed. You have a moral, maybe even a spiritual foundation. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be leading this city. I think you should use your discipline as your advantage in this fight. I would think of this as a challenge of redemption.”

  Lucia nodded.

  “Thank you, Father,” she said after a pause. “I’ll consider everything you said.”

  “I’m glad you came to see me, Lucia. I hope your soul is unburdened. Whenever you feel it is right, I would be honored to hear your confession. If you have any doubt about whether you might perish tomorrow, I’d suggest we formalize it tonight, so you can make your peace with God. If you’d like, I can cut it short and offer you penance now.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Lucia said, locking eyes with the priest. “I have no doubt I’ll be alive this time tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The faint light of dawn crept through the heavy crowd as Lucia walked toward the gate.

  She checked her gear one last time. She had her holo-belt, calibrated just as she liked, to answer commands from her wrist pad. She wasn’t sure she’d have any more batteries after this, but desperate times called for desperate measures. On her right hip, she had a brace of three stilettos—mean little knives she could stab with or throw. In each hand, she held a Serbu Super Shorty shotgun, cut-down. The right hand shotgun was loaded with frag rounds, while the left held buckshot. She had some spare rounds on her belt, near her left hip, but hoped she wouldn’t need them. While the compact shotguns were easy to conceal behind her hologram, reloading them would be a chore. She had a sidearm, as well, a handgun, in a crossdraw holster on her left side, just in front of the extra shells. On her chest harness, she had a mix of grenades—chaff, for disrupting any advanced targeting systems the enemy might have salvaged; incendiary, for destroying heavy engine blocks; and a few concussion grenades.

  She breathed out.

  It was time to kill her past.

  Lucia walked out of the open palisade gate, cueing her holo-belt as she went. She assumed her guise as the Frost Dancer—blue China poblana dress, flowing blue ribbons in her hair, blue-tinged skin, and the sound of a howling arctic wind. She made a few adjustments on her holobelt, and the image multiplied—first twice, then four times, then eight…until there were 100 identical copies. They marched forward, their dresses swaying in the wind and ribbons flowing through their hair—an army of Frost Dancers marching toward their fate in the soft glow of the rising sun. She moved from hologram to hologram with quick leaps that kept her hidden. She activated the jammers on her belt—they would block the enemies’ radios and any thermal optics they had that would see only the Frost Dancer. As she went, she threw down a few puck-size repeaters—valuable microelectronics—the last ones she had. They would broadcast her images and sounds, adding to the enemy’s confusion.

  The enemy was arrayed in a line, their various trucks, cars, and motorcycles braced like soldiers from an ancient war, shoulder to shoulder. Their red banners flapped in the early-morning breeze. The only sounds were the rumbling engines.

  Someone on the left opened up, bullets cascading into the holograms. Lucia keyed a sequence on her wrist pad, and the images began dancing and flickering as the bullets hit. Lucia keyed another sequence, and they multiplied again. One dancer produced a shotgun and fired an illusory bullet. The enemy returned fire, harmlessly impacting the hologram. Lucia made sure it stopped to wink, wave, and smile at the enemy shooter.

  The rest of the enemy fired, and Lucia hit the dirt, her optic camouflage blending her in with the prairie. Her army of holographic dancers advanced.

  One of th
e enemy trucks drove forward, through the line of dancers. Lucia flickered a few out, then created more. The truck was driving near her, so she palmed an incendiary grenade. She figured Napalm would appreciate the irony.

  The truck sped through the ranks, its gunner spraying bullets indiscriminately, and got closer. She pulled the pin on the grenade and kissed it, for luck, before throwing it overhanded as hard as she could. The grenade went straight through the truck’s passenger window, blossoming in a fountain of flame. The trucks’ occupants screamed in pain.

  Lucia keyed another command on her pad. The holographic dancers stopped their advance, quit dancing, and began taunting. One dancer flipped the raiders off, while another laughed heartily. The pucks she’d thrown around emitted cackling laughter that blended with the wind. Gunfire broke out and bullets hit, some close to Lucia. But with so many targets, only one of which was real, the enemy couldn’t figure out how to track her. She reconfigured the dancers, who resumed their repetitive, advancing dance.

  A dune buggy zipped by, a rider wildly swinging a cobbled-together axe at hologram after hologram. As the buggy came close, Lucia leveled her Serbu, and fired a frag round.

  The round impacted almost immediately, the flak destroying the rider hanging onto the side of the car, as well as the driver. The vehicle spun, right in front of a pair of motorcyclists, who ran into it. Lucia hustled over and put a round into each of them, ending their suffering.

  She resumed her position in formation, mimicking the hand motions of the dancer whose hologram space she was sharing.

  Two cars broke away, driving through the ranks of holograms, heading toward the town, crew-served weapons peppering the palisade.

  As Father McClaren had predicted, the raiders had no intention of keeping their leader’s word.

  Lieutenant Griswold had planned for that.

  The first car drove over an anti-tank mine and exploded instantly, while the second hit a pit that had been camouflaged by the same holographic technology that gave Lucia her dancers.

  The enemy vehicle line was breaking, but not before a lone figure emerged on top of a truck’s cab.

  “Lucia!” Napalm’s voice boomed. “You said you’d fight alone!”

  “I am!” Lucia shouted back, her voice thrown to four different locations by the various mini-speakers she’d placed as she walked. “I’m the only one out here, cabrone! Your boys seem scared. Guess they can’t handle being beat by a girl.”

  Napalm threw his mic down and leaped into the middle of the holographic formation. He threw several grenades, one after the other, flames spiking toward the sky as the thermite ignited.

  “Face me! Face me you cowardly bitch!”

  She could see the veins on his neck straining as he screamed, a paragon of rage.

  Lucia bee-lined toward him, dodging from hologram to hologram as she did. Finally, she was upon him. She drew her matched pair of Serbu shotguns and fired with both barrels. The buckshot tore through Napalm’s exposed skin, but his scavenged body armor stopped the worst of it. Immediately, his skin began healing. Like her, he had the advanced healing package of an IA Specialist. Lucia drew her machete and prepared for a fight. She cued her holograms to draw machetes as well.

  “I’m right here,” she said. “C’mon, let’s go, Napalm, burn me up!”

  Lucia hit the ground and rolled as Napalm turned toward her voice’s last location, leveling his machine gun.

  The big man fired indiscriminately, his bullets going through hologram after hologram. A few hit the circling motorcycles, killing the raiders aboard. Lucia selected a chaff grenade and threw it. It exploded, glitching out the holograms for half a second. She waved at Napalm, and as the holograms came back online one by one, he fired at where she was, but she had dodged in anticipation.

  Napalm was fast, but not fast enough. Finally, Lucia heard what she had been waiting for—the telltale clack of an empty weapon.

  She charged as Napalm was reloading. She swung the machete quickly and knocked the rifle out of the man’s hand.

  Lucia channeled all the darkness she could summon from the depths of her soul. For one last time, one final necessary evil, she gave into the Frost Dancer.

  “You’re gonna die here, Napalm,” she said. “You haven’t fought as hard as your wife, but you lasted a bit longer.” The big man raged as Lucia taunted him. He’d drawn his machete and was swinging, but she was quick. He nicked her a few times, but her healing reagents restored her health in no time.

  “I’ll end you, you cunt!” Napalm shouted as he struck out. Lucia dodged and landed a kick in the man’s groin. He doubled over, but he managed to grab her. Lucia felt her bones being crushed in the Specialist’s iron grip. She struck out at him, but his grip only tightened. Lucia felt her hold on her machete loosen as Napalm grabbed his and struck her. The blade cleaved deeply through her collarbone and got stuck in her upper torso. She drew one of her stiletto knives with her off hand, stabbing it fiercely into Napalm’s gut. He howled and lost his grip. The two disentangled, Lucia with the machete in her shoulder and Napalm with the stiletto in his belly.

  Both of them healed, quickly, looking at each other for a second before circling back. Lucia keyed a command into her wrist link, and her holograms disappeared. Her personal hologram also disappeared, showing her as she truly was.

  Lucia wore no smile. Her expression was blank as she pulled the machete out of her torso and held it down at her side.

  Napalm seethed in anger.

  In the background, his raiders were dead or dying. Their cars, reclaimed and reengineered vehicles, were ruined. The stink of burning diesel, mingled with the smell of charred flesh and the faint odor of cordite, dominated the air.

  Lucia centered herself. She thought about her position as the Frost Dancer. She thought about her enemy—what she knew about him, what buttons she could press.

  He was nearly twice her size and every bit as skilled in close combat.

  But he was enraged.

  Lucia feinted left, then rushed right at him. Napalm didn’t fall for it, flinging her stiletto back at her as he drew his second machete. She caught the blade in the air and flung it back at him, only for him to parry it with his freshly drawn machete.

  She dove down and pulled her handgun from its holster, then fired a couple of shots. They impacted Napalm, and he took the hits, grunting. The rounds were laced with a poison Lucia had made, one that slowed down healing. She raised her handgun to fire again, but Napalm dove forward, striking her with his machete.

  The blade cut deeply into her arm, and she lost control of the handgun. It went spinning into the dust.

  “I’ll have my vengeance!” Napalm screamed at her.

  “Fuck you, pendejo!” Lucia spat back. Napalm swung at her again, and she ducked. She swung with the machete in her off hand. Her healing didn’t stop all the pain she was feeling.

  For a split second, she was overwhelmed—the pure fury of this man was too much to stop. A small part of her wondered if she was wrong, if this was what she deserved.

  She centered herself and gave in to the Frost Dancer.

  As Napalm swung again, she moved into the blow, and absorbed it full on—the blade cleaved through her leather bodysuit, through her right ribs, and into her vital organs.

  Lucia felt nothing.

  The blade was stuck, and Napalm struggled to pull it out.

  As he was, Lucia brought up one of her stilettos. She dug it into his belly, and he howled. She grabbed him with her free hand and brought him close. He tried to resist, but she kept her grip. As he struggled, she drew her final stiletto and struck at his face. He moved an arm up to block, but was too slow. Her stiletto went through his right eye.

  Lucia was aware she was bleeding. She was aware her nanite-enhanced body was having trouble healing; her wounds were too grievous.

  She didn’t care. She hammered the stiletto through Napalm’s eye. The big man clawed and swiped wildly, trying to escape. Lucia held him
tight.

  He was stronger, but undisciplined, unfocused. The pain, the withdrawals he was suffering, and the damage from her poisoned bullets were finally getting to him.

  Lucia wasn’t ready to declare victory. The Frost Dancer knew that a wounded animal was still dangerous. She had to finish the job.

  She maintained control over Napalm and twisted the stiletto in his eye, eliciting a scream.

  “You’ve failed, Napalm,” she purred into his ear. “But you’ll be with your family, soon. You stupid, stupid, man.”

  He might’ve said something by way of apology or remorse. Lucia might’ve cared, but the Frost Dancer didn’t. She let go of him, and struck the stiletto with her palm, banging the knife further into his head. He stumbled backward, convulsing from brain damage.

  Lucia calmly picked up her handgun. She pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger until the striker dropped on an empty chamber.

  Only then did Lucia blink, coming back to her senses. As the sense of being the Frost Dancer left, she was overwhelmed by emotion and pain.

  Napalm was dead. His corpse was mangled. The nanites were doing their best to heal him, but many shorted out due to the bullets she’d used.

  Lucia hazily vowed never to be the Frost Dancer again as she stumbled back toward the palisade. A mottled blob spoke to her in a voice like Lieutenant Griswold’s as she lost consciousness.

  * * *

  She awoke in a clinic. Doctor Olmstead stood by her bed, writing notes on a clipboard. The bright lights overhead alerted Lucia that the town was burning valuable fuel to make sure the clinic had power.

  Damnit, she thought. I should’ve warned them about this. It feels like a waste.

  “We knew you were something special,” the doctor said. “But until today, I wasn’t sure what. What you did to those raiders...”