Prophet's Journey, page 21
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
Worth a try.
Althea closed her eyes. Though she had no plans to stop fighting, she tried to sound as despondent as possible. “I’m sorry, Father. I’m trying to go home, but I’ve been kidnapped. I don’t know if I’ll ever see you or Karina again. I love you both, and I’m sorry for going away.”
It didn’t take any acting at all to surrender to quiet tears and cry herself to sleep.
21
That Didn’t Take Long
Althea woke to Teal’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. She yawned, trying to stretch, but still couldn’t move. Sunlight filled the area from ample holes in the walls as well as where windows had once been.
Teal took the blanket and folded it before stuffing it in the pack. Partially due to being tired, partially out of protest, Althea didn’t bother trying to sit up or move. The woman turned the warmth emitter off and left it on the floor to cool. She filled another cup of water, then pulled Althea up to kneel, letting her drink.
“Want more?”
“Yes, but that’s a small bottle. We should make it last.”
“It’s a genesis canteen.”
Althea stared at her.
“You don’t know what that is, do you?”
Althea kept staring at her.
“Of course not. That normal dress of yours throws me off. I keep forgetting you’re still a Scrag. It makes water from the air. Little more complicated than that, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about a reservoir of liquid hydrogen.”
“No. I’d rather hear about you untying me.”
Teal laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Give me a minute. Do you want more water?”
She shrugged.
The woman took that as a yes, so she hit a button on the top of the canteen, which activated a thin stream of water that took a laboriously long time to fill the cup. Watching it made Althea have to pee, but she tried to ignore the feeling.
After feeding her the second cup of water, Teal packed the canteen and cup in her satchel, added the warmer, then hefted the backpack over her shoulder. At long last, she untied Althea’s ankles and took hold of the tether. Althea struggled to her feet, begrudgingly following Teal outside. She shot a scowl off to the sky at still having her hands tied behind her back, but didn’t think begging, screaming, or nagging would help.
It didn’t bother her to make water next to someone. Among Scrag tribes, sometimes the boys would get into competitions to see who could throw water the farthest. It did, however, bother her that the woman wouldn’t untie her to make water. She considered that quite mean, but her powers still refused to work on this woman.
Soon after they resumed walking toward the rising sun, it occurred to her that Teal had not eaten, had anything to drink, or made water. Althea kept glancing up at her, confused, then hanging her head.
“What? Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Are you gonna eat?”
“I don’t need to eat as often as a human does.”
“Do you eat?”
“Yes. My body takes raw materials out of food and uses it to repair itself just like yours does. We’re more efficient at it so I only require one or two meals a week… unless I’m hurt.”
“You should let me go. If you’re made of”—she pondered the word and forced it out in a slow, deliberate pronunciation—“tech-no-lo-gy, The Many is gonna do stuff to you. He won’t let you take me away from the Badlands.”
“Do you want a nice piece of tape over your mouth?”
“No, please.”
“Then stop talking about that spooky crap.”
Althea peered up at her. “I’m not lying.”
“You might believe it. That doesn’t mean it’s real.”
She stared down at her feet while trudging along. “I’m only trying to warn you before it’s too late.”
“Where’s that damn tape?”
“Please, don’t.”
“Then stop saying creepy stuff.”
Althea sighed and followed the woman, half a step behind. Fortunately, Teal didn’t walk too fast, but the tether didn’t exactly give her much room to go exploring for a sharp piece of glass. Still, she kept looking around for one just in case, intending to fake tripping and falling to grab it.
Dense ruins gave way to open dirt marked with the scars of ancient roads for a little while before they wandered once more among crumbling towers built by the Ancients. Every so often, she spotted frozen words or symbols on a window or wall. They made her think of Paama and Ooru, and the Transit tribe’s gods. It did seem strange that the Ancients would put the symbols all over the place, especially since no real sense of reverence existed about their placement. She had seen similar markings in the bad city, though with different pictures. The words had probably been different as well, but she hadn’t known about frozen speech at the time.
Althea considered trying to scare the woman by mentioning the Zero police. Since Teal had come from the bad city, she had to know about them. That didn’t necessarily mean she would be afraid of them, however. A warning that the Zero police would be angry at her for kidnapping Althea might make the woman keep her hidden when they got there and hurt any chance of calling for help.
Did not saying anything count as a lie? For the next half hour or so, she tried to make up her mind about that. Eventually, she decided that this woman had kidnapped her, so if the police got mad at her, she deserved it. Helping someone steal her had to be worse. As Teal had said about the Transit tribe, ‘it was on them’ to get out of here. It was on Teal not to make the Zero police angry.
A bright green blob of energy cruised by moderately faster than a thrown rock, passing through the space Teal’s head had been in an instant before. The woman dropped to the ground with such speed she seemed to vanish and reappear.
Althea looked to the left at where the glowing mass had come from.
A shiny, silver machine man stood amid the rubble of a collapsed building, pointing an equally silver rifle in their general direction. The robot had features that generally approximated humanity in overall shape, though didn’t at all try to look like a real person. Despite her standing out in the open and Teal flat on the ground, the tall robot continued trying to aim at the woman.
“Gah. Kid!” Teal grabbed Althea by the arm above the elbow and yanked her to the ground. “Get down!”
Althea fell on her side, half on top of Teal. “Untie me! You’re gonna get me killed!”
The woman sprang up into a crouching run, hauling Althea across the street to take cover in a ruined building as green energy blasts whizzed by inches behind them. She tossed her to the ground in the corner, drew her gun, and leaned out the doorway, shooting bolts of blue light off to the left. Teal ducked back an instant before another green blob hit the doorframe, causing a section of concrete to melt into an orange, glowing mass.
Althea stared at the end of the tether by her foot… and grinned. The woman didn’t hold onto her anymore. She rolled onto her knees, leapt to her feet, and ran to a doorway that led deeper into the building. A short hallway brought her to a room containing little more than crumbled pieces of ceiling and walls. She sent a surge of strength into her legs, then jumped out the window, landing on dirt covered in a dusting of small concrete bits.
The little stones stabbed into her feet like knives, but she kept going, her desperation to get home to her family far stronger than her fear of pain. Two Silver Men walking across the road a distance off to the right rotated their heads in her direction for a second, but continued shooting green blobs toward the building where Teal had taken her, for some reason disinterested in attacking her.
When she reached paving clear of tiny rocks, Althea sprinted hard down the street. She looked left and right for somewhere to hide, but the buildings here still had doors with knobs she couldn’t reach with her hands trapped behind her. She considered dropping to the ground and trying to squirm her arms around in front of her, but that would waste time and let Teal catch her. She had to keep running. The first opening she spotted without a door, she dashed for… only to find what she thought to be a building was, in reality, a free-standing wall with nothing behind it.
Fear kept her going forward.
She dashed across the rubble to the next street where she spotted a somewhat-intact car and ran to it, spinning around to grab the handle behind her back. She pulled at it, grunting and snarling, but the door refused to open. Not wanting to waste time standing there in the open, she gave up on the car and kept going, flying down the street so fast her hair fluttered behind her like a flag in the wind.
Smashed buildings on both sides offered little in the way of protection for a block and a half. Finally, she noticed a four-story structure with metal walls that hadn’t collapsed. She leapt another ruined car, zoomed over a length of sidewalk, and rammed her body into the door. The hit knocked most of the air out of her chest, but the door popped open. She bounced off it, stumbling into corridor, and slipped to land on her butt when ancient carpet ripped away from the floor under her.
Growling, Althea threw herself upright and ran to the only open door in the corridor, all the way at the end on the left. She hurried inside, kicked the door closed, then spun to look around at a small apartment. With little time to think, she crossed the main room to a short hallway, hurrying down it to a bedroom that reeked of mold.
The bed had collapsed into a mound of junk, as had the cabinets. She headed over to the closet, ducked inside, and tried to bite the doorknob. Her mouth wouldn’t open wide enough to get a grip, so she leaned back and snagged the edge of the door with her toes, pulling it shut. Shivering from forcing so much adrenaline into her system, she backed up one step and sank to sit on the floor, trying to stay quiet.
Her everything hurt.
She closed her eyes, studying her life shapes and fixing small tears in her muscles or little cracks in the bones of her legs, hips, and feet. After a moment, the pain faded but the exhaustion remained. She rested her head on her knees, her hot breath blasting down her legs. Dark grime highlighted her toenails. Smudges of dried blood and dirt covered her legs. Her dress still stank like a compost pile, but she’d gotten away.
This isn’t as bad as before. She tugged at her wrists. Just need to find some glass. No stupid cuffs on my legs. The rope’s easy to get rid of.
Still, she had to wait for Teal to go away. No telling how long that woman would spend searching for her. Hiding in this closet for the rest of the day would probably be good enough. She could worry about getting rid of the cord later. Someone used to live in this place, so there might even be knives she could use. As soon as she got out of here, she’d go back to the Transit village. If she couldn’t convince Ell-Gee to travel with her to where Kye was, she’d make him go. That man would probably be able to open the cage and let the queen out. And when he came back okay from going in there, the villagers would hopefully understand the place didn’t have any curse.
And then she could try to convince Kye to bring her people away from the CRP. They lied to themselves without knowing it. Being underground wouldn’t protect them. It would only take one wheelbot getting down there and many people would die. Those machines didn’t work for any gods. They wanted to kill everything that moved.
That’s weird. Why are they shooting at Teal? She’s kinda like one of them.
Althea decided not to waste any time thinking about stuff she’d never understand and merely tried to be still and quiet. She breathed hard, chest pressed against her knees. Every time she inhaled, the cord squeezed her wrists. It infuriated her to have her hands stuck behind her, but trying to wriggle them around in front would make too much noise for now. She’d have to wait until that woman gave up and went away.
“C’mon out,” said Teal, right outside the door.
No! Althea nearly burst into tears, but a flash of anger came on too fast, stomping on her childish reaction and leaving her glowering instead of sobbing.
“The cord’s sticking out from under the door, kid. I can see you.”
Althea looked down. Sure enough, the thin black cord passed by her toes and went straight under the door into the room. With a sigh, she wobbled to her feet and bumped the door, but it didn’t open. She twisted to the side, reaching, but couldn’t get a hand on the knob while tied. She faced forward and tried to use her toes, but her foot slid off the knob without turning it. She’d effectively locked herself in the closet.
“I’m stuck. I can’t get out.”
The door opened. Teal stood there giving her a ‘really?’ smirk. “What are you doing?”
“Trying not to be kidnapped.”
“You have spirit, I’ll give you that.” The woman picked up the end of the tether.
“How did you find me?”
“Followed you. Not exactly difficult. You’re pretty fast for a human child, but I’m pretty fast, too. And you breathe really loud.”
“No I don’t.”
“My ears are pretty sharp.” Teal winked.
Head down, Althea trudged ahead of her to down the hall and outside. Upon reaching the crumbling sidewalk, she peered up at the woman. “Please don’t take me to the bad city. I have to go home to my family.”
“Kid, there’s nothing to be afraid of. My employers aren’t going to hurt you… probably.”
“Probably?” Althea raised both eyebrows. “You don’t even know?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be in their financial interests to kill you, but they might do tests or something.”
“I hate tests. There’s too many questions and I feel dumb if I get them wrong.”
“Not that kind of test.” Teal looked away, fidgeting. Though she didn’t radiate any real emotion, she seemed guilty.
“Please!” Althea bounced on her toes. “I wanna go home. I love Father and Karina and they miss me so much.”
Teal sighed. “When we get to the city, if you can do that psionic stuff to the corporate people and force them to let you go, that’s not my problem. I’m just—shit.”
“You have to make mierda?” Althea blinked.
The woman whirled toward her, scooped her up over one shoulder like a sack of grain, and sprinted. Teal’s superhumanly fast stride hammered her narrow shoulder into Althea’s gut. A hail of green plasma blobs raced by, splashing into clouds of emerald light on contact with ruined walls or the ground behind them. Four tall, silver-bodied robots hurried down the street after them, but didn’t appear to have any chance of catching up to the synthetic woman.
Streets and alleys blurred into the distance. Althea bounced, her head hanging behind Teal’s back. The woman’s bony shoulder repeatedly jamming into her gut brought her to the edge of throwing up. She turned off her sense of pain, weathering another several minutes of being carried like a human duffel bag. Eventually, Teal slowed to a brisk walk, navigating dense piles of rubble that had collected in an alley too narrow for the CRP androids. She kicked apart a fence at the end, jogged across a street lined with half-melted cars, and rushed down a stairwell to an underground basement.
Teal carried Althea to the corner of the room, setting her down on her feet beside a thick pipe that emerged from the floor and ran straight up into the ceiling. After tying the end of the tether to the pipe, high enough to be out of Althea’s reach, she hurried to the stairwell, leaned against the wall beside it, and pulled her gun out of its holster.
“It’s stupid to leave me tied.”
“Shh.”
Althea peered up at the knot above her head. She tugged at the cord, trying to pull it down enough to bite, but the woman had looped it over a valve. Desperation growing, she looked around the floor for anything sharp, swiping her foot at a few promising shards, but they turned out to be flimsy plastic.
“If we have to run, it will take too long to untie me.”
“Be quiet or they’ll hear us,” whispered Teal.
Frowning, Althea stared at the floor, unable to decide between furious or terrified. If one of those robots found her tied to a pipe, she’d be in big trouble and not the ‘locked in a room as punishment’ kind of trouble. She couldn’t even sit on the floor with the tether secured so high off the ground. If bullets, or whatever those energy globs were, started flying, she had no way to get down.
Fear won out over anger. Althea’s eyes flared brighter as she dumped psionic power into her body. Her already sore muscles throbbed, becoming stronger. She gripped the tether and pulled as hard as she could, trying to break the thin, black cord. Her feet slipped over the concrete, so she twisted around and braced one leg against the wall, pushing. Dark moldy slime gathered between her toes, her foot plowing a trench in the gunk. The cord stretched a little, but refused to snap.
Althea fought until her muscles hurt too much to move. Defeated, she slumped forward out of breath and healed herself. Her body had had quite enough of temporary amplified strength for a while. The mere thought of doing it again any time soon hurt.
While Teal kept watch at the door, Althea paced as much as the six-foot lead allowed. She hated being kidnapped by someone her powers didn’t work on. When the Slave Catcher had tied her to a post, she’d sent out a psionic beacon asking for help, not particularly caring who showed up to provide that help. She hadn’t wanted that awful man to die despite how cruel he had been to her, so she worried that beaconing now might hurt Teal. However, the woman didn’t tie a cloth over her eyes to blind her. If something big and nasty like the canid showed up, she’d be able to calm it down and prevent it from killing anyone.
Fortunately, her mentally screaming for help would not attract the CRP robots since machines didn’t react to her powers.
In the quiet of the abandoned basement, Althea closed her eyes and tried to gather her psionic power into a beacon, reaching out into the world, hoping someone nice would find and help her. A short while later, she figured it had either worked or wouldn’t, so she relaxed.
