Heir Ascendant (Faded Skies Book 1) Read online

  “Head’s right.” Genna’s voice moved away. “No. I’ll take us to the edge of the Sanc.”

  Someone climbed past the bag, and the whump of an ass hitting a seat above and behind followed. Whining turbines gathered strength, drowning out the noise of two doors sliding closed as the beating of rotors emerged. Gravity increased for several seconds before it fell off. Turns caused the unattended duffel to slide back and forth within what Maya assumed to be a small Authority helicopter. Her body suffered the mercy of whatever metal she bumped into. Every wriggle seemed to make the tape tighten, and the cocoon-like bag squished her legs into her chest.

  The uncomfortable flight ended in a few minutes. Before Maya even realized they’d landed, Genna’s muttered cursing drew close and the nylon prison sailed into the air with a harsh yank. Maya braced for impact, but hit only the woman’s back. She kept quiet and waited, bag swaying as they ran for several minutes. A handful of hard turns and sudden stops caused short periods of floating followed by crashing into the woman carrying her. Muttering surrounded her, indistinct save for Moth’s deep timbre talking to someone over a comm about which tunnel to choose.

  With only sound to go by, she had no idea where she’d been taken; it felt like she’d spent hours trapped inside a bag. Sudden weightlessness lasted barely a second before her body slapped into a hard surface; she couldn’t suppress a whimper.

  “Hey, you just dropped a child, not a sack of gear,” said Icarus. “Didn’t you used to be a mother?”

  The toe of a boot pressed lightly against Maya’s back, stepping close to the bag. The Asian man gurgled and gasped for breath.

  Genna’s voice came from right above her, in a low, threatening tone. “Look, you drugged-out piece of shit. She’s not a child. She’s a Citizen―privileged, pampered, rich, comfortable, ain’t got no damn clue what the real world is like.”

  Icarus wheezed and coughed. “Is that her fault? What would Sam say if he saw you hittin’ on a little girl?”

  A body thudded into the ground close by; labored breathing rasped inches from Maya’s face.

  “Bitch,” whispered a male voice.

  The tape over her mouth prevented her from smiling

  A scrape of heavy metal slid on paving in the distance. The bag went airborne again, soon squeezed against Genna by the narrow vertical shaft they descended. Echoes of boots on steel rungs, a thick, moldy smell, and total darkness, suggested a sewer. Maya hated feeling helpless. She couldn’t escape―yet―so she listened. Mother had always prided herself on her ability to find the advantage in any situation. Maya wondered how much of the trait she’d inherited.

  Echoes of dripping water, squeaking rats, and boots sloshing in muck continued for quite a while with little conversation or hesitance. These people seemed to know where they were going now, without the constant need for guidance from the man on the other end of the radio.

  Genna’s rhythmic gait stumbled with a blurted, “Fuck!”

  The bag slipped off her shoulder and swung; Maya’s shins absorbed the brunt of impact with a hard post that rang out with a bell-like bong. The tape kept her scream inside.

  “Keep a hand on my shoulder,” said Icarus. “You’re in my element now, sweet cheeks.”

  “You call me that one more time, and I’ll make a necktie out of your guts.”

  “You wanna hit of Vesper? Open your eyes to the dark, too.”

  Genna lurched as though she shoved him. “Keep that shit to yourself. I’d sooner get implants.” She grumbled. “Why’d I get stuck carrying the brat?”

  The clap of a hand on leather echoed into the distance.

  Icarus chuckled. “Must be your nurturing motherly instinct.”

  Swoosh.

  “Missed me,” he said. “Remember, I can see down here.”

  Click.

  “Gah!” he screamed. “Bitch. Great, now I’m fucking blind!”

  “And I have a flashlight,” said Genna, a hint of smile in her voice.

  Icarus’s muttered curses grew distant with an irregular sloshing gait. Maya pictured him staggering along, unable to see, with a hand on the wall. Light glinted in from pinholes in the nylon; too small to offer any view of the outside, they reminded her of stars.

  “That sack is hangin’ like dead weight,” said Moth in a deadpan voice. “Make sure you didn’t kill her yet.”

  Maya decided she did not like Moth in particular.

  The bag dropped again, but this time settled gently on the ground. The zipper opened a few inches. Maya squinted at Genna’s blinding flashlight until the stink of mildew and rot caused an involuntary convulsion.

  “You still alive?”

  Maya nodded.

  Zip.

  Darkness.

  aya listened to the scuff of boots on dirt and paving for many long minutes, fidgeting at her bindings despite knowing it futile. Constant swinging motion during the journey might’ve rocked her to sleep had she been comfortable, but not in the middle of a kidnapping. Eventually, they jogged up a long set of switchback stairs, around and around. Soon after exiting the stairwell, the echoing scrape of a door conjured the image of a cavernous space filled with the stench of garbage, urine, and decaying meat. A few steps in, the bag landed on the floor―not quite dropped.

  She lay still, curled on her side, as people moved and shuffled about for about ten minutes. Eventually, someone approached and the zipper opened. Genna knelt close with an unreadable expression. Maya squirmed enough to peer up at her, and they stared at each other for a few seconds. With a smirk, Genna pulled the bag out from under her, dumping her face down onto a large, red, moth-eaten throw rug rife with the stink of old socks. Whatever pattern the maker had woven into it had long since faded to irregular blotches accented by rat turds, one of which lay inches from her eye. Maya wriggled around and sat up, bracing her hands on the coarse fabric behind her back.

  Most of the wall to her left was gone. The enormous gap revealed miles of blackened, scrapped city stretching toward a distant glittering jewel of civilization. Flames lit the dark here and there, small cook fires or things still burning from endless civil unrest. Old high-rises, bent and broken, leaned at dangerous angles. Small figures scampered among the exposed steel girders of the closest building on the left, playing in the snowy static glow of a faltering electronic billboard. The children all wore rags and dirt; few had shoes. Their small bodies climbed with practiced ease across the steel jungle, laughing and calling to each other.

  A warm summer wind kept the stink of wet mold at bay and tossed Maya’s long, straight hair out of her face. Unsure how to process the sight, Maya lay there on the rug, bound and gagged with tape, watching other children play. She fidgeted with a halfhearted attempt to break free while wondering how children on the verge of starvation could be happy. A distant woman’s voice called, and the feral children effortlessly glided around the exposed steel beams, scrambling one after the next into a shadowed doorway.

  To the right of the breach, a glass desk nestled between the wall and a pile of junk, topped with several computers and holo-displays. Rats crept about, sniffing at wires and exploring crumb-laden plates made of old lids. Most of the systems were naked; bare wires and circuit boards lay exposed to the air, components patched and spliced into each other in ways their manufacturers had never intended.

  A man in a battered rolling chair swiveled around and stared at her; wild, curly hair twitched in the breeze, his paunch barely reined in by a grimy tank top. Vitiligo splotches of beige and pink mottled his dark brown face and hands. Blue-grey eyes widened at the sight of her. He seemed terrified of a bound nine-year-old. The chair creaked, threatening to crack as he leaned away. One of the intangible holographic panels behind him looked like a nose-cam view out of an Ascendant drone flying around her penthouse home.

  She thought him an enormous rat, building a nest of trash to hide in.

  “Put her in the back!” he wailed, pointing at her. “She’s watching me.”

&n
bsp; One of the rats stood on its hind legs and put a paw on the blotchy man’s arm. He picked it up like a beloved pet and stroked its fur.

  Click.

  Maya looked toward the noise behind her. The black-painted blade of a combat knife scraped out of a metal sheath on Genna’s harness. A small gust rattled the wood and metal bits in her dreadlocks. The woman knelt beside her, staring down at her with a worrisome neutral expression. Maya gazed again into Genna’s eyes. Hatred had receded, though she sensed little compassion. The woman bent forward and put the knife to the tape between her ankles.

  “No!” screamed the pudgy man, still petting the rat. “She’ll kill us in our sleep. I told you not to bring her here. We needed a safe house. We could’ve set up a shipping container out in the Spread. Stashed her in that. Keep the heat away from us.”

  “Stow it, Crash.” Icarus flung himself into an old reclining chair on the near side of the rat nest. “You’re a paranoid bastard. She’s just a kid.”

  Genna ignored the hacker’s continuing protests and cut the tape. Maya didn’t flinch as the sticky substance peeled away from her legs. She remained docile as Genna pulled her around to repeat the process and free her hands. A practiced flip of the wrist inverted the blade, and Genna slid it back in the scabbard without looking before taking her by the hand, pulling her upright, and leading her a few steps to a metal-framed bed against the interior wall, opposite the rat-nest computer desk.

  Maya sat on the side, hands in her lap, wearing a sad face as though she’d been grounded. Genna held up a pair of electronic handcuffs, took one look at Maya’s tiny wrists, and pointed at the footboard. Without a word, Maya slid back and turned to put her legs closer to the frame. Genna locked one end around her left ankle and the other to the bed. The girl stared at the cold metal. A five-digit code display above a row of tiny rubber buttons smeared a red glow across her skin.

  More comfortable than the tape, but equally inescapable.

  She looked up at Genna and mumbled through the X.

  “Yeah, sure, kid. Pull it off if you want. It’ll hurt.” Genna wandered off to the left and went past a disaster of a once-green sofa, heading into a hallway leading deeper into the apartment. “I need a damn shower. Scream and cry all you want. No one out here is gonna give a shit.”

  “Put her in the bathroom,” Headcrash said. “Or the closet. Or somewhere she can’t see us. If she can see our eyes, she’s gonna infect our minds.” Spittle foamed around his teeth as he rasped, “You’ve already killed us by cutting her loose.”

  The woman gave him a sour look and vanished behind a door, slamming it a second later.

  Maya pulled her nightdress down over her knees and set to the task of peeling the tape away from her cheeks. Moth distracted the splotchy man from his ramblings about a child slitting their throats in the night by yelling at him in regards to the Authority showing up.

  After wadding the removed gag into a ball, she tossed it to the floor and curled on her side. The mattress stank like wet dog, likely due to the missing wall and steady breeze of humid air. At least it was summer so she wouldn’t freeze in her nightie. She passed a few minutes flicking rat droppings off the bed while listening to the hiss of water from pipes in the walls. How long would it take Mother to realize she’d been taken and send help? Five more minutes? Ten?

  “You sure you got the right kid? Cierto?” Moth’s best attempt at whispering sounded like normal speech.

  “Y-yes.” Headcrash gestured at his terminals. “I checked it eighteen times. Every site, every decoy.”

  “La niña don’t look much like Oman,” Moth said. “Skin’s too light, almond-shaped eyes, slight build.”

  “The bitch is pretty damn skinny too,” said Icarus.

  “Skin’s too light?” Headcrash reached out to pet a rat.

  Moth snarled. “No, chiflado, her mama’s dark like Genna.”

  Icarus laughed. “She’s the same color you are, Ramirez. Maybe you her daddy.”

  The doser’s grin died under Moth’s glare. He broke eye contact with the giant and focused on repacking his infiltration gear.

  The hissing of water pipes in the walls ended with a distant squeak. Headcrash muttered about checking numerous residences and security schedules, confident the one with fourteen guards was a fake.

  Genna walked in, trailing the scent of a recent shower.

  “I don’t have a father.” Maya’s tiny voice silenced the room. “Mother ordered a custom genetic profile. A little American with select features from Southeast Asian, Sudanese, and Egyptian was combined with her egg. Mother wanted the perfect pretty face for commercials to sell medicine.” She picked at the mattress for a moment before looking Genna in the eye. “It’s the only time I see her… when we are recording an ad. She doesn’t even call to say good night.”

  For several seconds, only the distant moan of the wind through the shattered buildings broke the quiet.

  “Oh, my heart fucking bleeds,” Moth muttered.

  Genna ignored Maya’s glance, looking away and a bit downcast. The woman emitted a soft grumble a few seconds later and trudged over to the ancient couch on the left side of the room, in what had been the corner before the outside wall fell off. Moth walked out, heading down the hallway past the bathroom to the kitchenette. He took a seat at the table, barely visible around a corner of exposed cinder blocks. Sporadic clumps of drywall clung to nails wherever rotting studs remained. His shadow illustrated the procedure for disassembling and cleaning a handgun. Soon, a new chemical stink slithered over the mildewed air.

  Headcrash stared at Maya for several minutes before he attempted to turn his back on her. After a series of half spins and sudden reversals, he managed to focus on his terminals again. Maya grasped the top of the foot rail with both hands and pulled herself closer, listening while fidgeting with the thin silk spaghetti strap over her right shoulder. She frowned at a small gold-colored tag. What Vanessa had paid for her nightie could feed these people for a month.

  “Persephone,” Headcrash whispered, gathering a rat from the computer and letting it go on the desk. “Resend last message.”

  Muted beeps simulated the clicking of keystrokes as ‘Enter Password’ appeared on the screen.

  Headcrash looked at his compatriots, as if weighing their ability to overhear his whispering. Maya leaned closer, tilting her head to listen to the man a few feet away.

  “Quantum Reach.” The words leaked from his throat, air without voice.

  Maya smiled and scooted back.

  “Message transmit success,” chimed the computer.

  She lay flat and reached over her head, but the chain kept the pillow away from her. Once more, Maya curled on her side and closed her eyes. It wouldn’t be long before the Authority showed up to rescue her.

  “Something’s not right.” From the sound of his voice, Headcrash had moved away from his desk, trying to be quiet. “Look at her. She’s going to sleep, calm as a cat. Children don’t fucking do that when you kidnap them in the middle of the night!”

  “She’s a Citizen,” Genna muttered. “Citizen’s don’t live in the real world. They have no goddamned clue about pain or suffering. They don’t know shit doesn’t always have a happy ending. In her little mind, she’s convinced Mommy will make good on the ransom and she’ll be home in a few hours.”

  Headcrash sucked air past his teeth. “Then why did Ascendant Pharma ignore our first message?”

  Maya rolled over to face them, watching them with narrowed eyes. She tugged at her leg, more annoyed by the unwanted anklet than trying to get it off.

  “She has no concept of what’s happening to her or how much danger she’s really in,” Genna whispered. “It’s… almost kinder.”

  The hacker made an odd warbling noise.

  “Is that pity I hear?” Icarus asked.

  Genna gave him a close-up look at her middle finger.

  Headcrash ambled across the room and curled up under his desk, behind the shifting pi
le of junk, clutching a rat like a stuffed animal. Genna tried to relax on the couch, but couldn’t stay in the same position for more than a minute. Maya gazed into the fabric pattern of the mattress before her eyes, almost comfortable in the sporadic bursts of warm air from the large swath of missing wall. After several long minutes, the dull clicking of interlocking metal plates sliding over each other invaded the silence. Moth trudged across the room, headed for another hallway on the right.

  “Do your arms hurt?” Maya sat up, looking at the giant without fear.

  He stopped in mid-stride, bringing a disbelieving glare around on her as though he wanted to hurt her for daring to speak to him.

  “I’m sorry if they hurt.”

  Moth exhaled through a clenched jaw. “You tryin’ to grate yourself to me so I won’t kill you when we’re done?”

  “Ingratiate,” Headcrash said, pointing a rat at him. “The word is ingratiate.”

  Moth grabbed his crotch at the hacker. “Aquí tengo su clase de inglés.”

  “It won’t work, will it?” Maya tilted her head.

  The coldness in his voice left her no doubt. “No.”

  “Then it won’t matter if you tell me. How did you lose your arms?” She scooted closer. “If you’re going to kill me anyway, then you can be nice to me for a little while first.”

  Moth flexed his right arm; metal ingots scraped as his fist clenched. “Songnim City. Some dink bastard with a MPRS-18 got inside our perimeter in the middle of the night.” He glared at Icarus.

  “Son of a bitch!” roared the skinny guy. “I’m not a goddamn Korean, you fuckin’ cretin. Go eat some burritos or something.”

  “Go eat some burritos?” Headcrash’s barely-awake voice wafted up from the floor. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

  “Screw you, too.” Icarus leaned back as if to go to sleep.

  “You fought in World War Three?” Maya twisted her leg, appraising the cuff like an expensive bit of jewelry. “Maya Oman wasn’t even born then. You must have seen bad things. So much fighting and killing. I’m sorry if you lost friends. Did you have to watch people die a lot? You must’ve killed a lot of enemies.”