Prophet's Journey, page 30
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
“I like flowers.” Althea grinned.
“Hah. No, kid. That’s a drug. Oh, shit.”
Althea looked at the floor. “Where?”
“No… that Many thing… is that why Sigma Six reprogrammed itself and went crazy?”
“Could be,” said Lieutenant Raines.
Althea shrugged. “I don’t know, but we should get the hell out of here.”
Teal laughed. “Yeah, good plan. And hey, you remembered.”
“Yep!” She grinned and ran for the door. “Which way?”
Lieutenant Raines glanced around, looking far off into the distance. “Follow me. I have an idea.”
He rushed out and headed down the hall. Althea chased him.
“Where are you going?” yelled Teal.
“Following the ghost!”
“I can’t follow a moving cold spot.”
“Follow me,” called Althea.
Lieutenant Raines ran along a series of corridors, turning left or right seemingly at random. They passed a few small robots carrying bundles of scrap metal or boxes. The machines didn’t attack, though did chant, “Intruder alert” over and over.
“Shit, here they come,” yelled Teal.
“What?” Althea peered back at her.
“I hear them coming. Sounds like a lot.”
“Faster,” said Lieutenant Raines.
Teal surged forward, scooped Althea off her feet, and carried her up to a superhuman run. “Point me where to go.”
Lieutenant Raines rocketed forward, faster even than Teal could go. About a hundred meters ahead, he disappeared into a branching corridor.
“Left by the yellow flashing light,” said Althea.
When they reached the turn, Althea spotted the ghost waiting by a doorway on the right only long enough to be seen, then disappeared into it.
“There.” Althea pointed.
Teal zoomed up to the door, which opened by itself, revealing a wide corkscrew passage up and down. “Oh, shit. It’s stairs for wheelbots.” She dashed to the left, going up, running around and around for seeming ever until they shot past Raines.
“Stop!” yelled Althea.
Teal leaned back, easing from ridiculous to sprinting to jogging to standing still.
“We went by him. Go back.”
“Okay.”
She ran down at a normal human pace. Two turns later, they reached the door where the ghost waited.
“Here.” Althea pointed.
Lieutenant Raines vanished. Teal put her hand on the wall beside the door, her face a stern mask of intense concentration.
“Are you making mierda?”
“No. Trying to hack this thing.”
“What does that mean?”
The door slid to the side.
“It means this opens when I want it to.”
“Oh.”
Teal sprinted ahead, carrying her into a tremendously long corridor with too many doors to count on both sides. Lieutenant Raines waited for them so far away he looked like a small shimmering light.
“All the way to the end,” yelled Althea.
“At least the directions are easy.”
Teal sprinted, clearing the vast hallway in a little under a minute. Shiny steel came to an end at a wall of raw earth and stone, as though the corridor either hadn’t been finished yet or they simply abandoned making it any longer. Teal slowed to a stop. “Okay, now where?”
“He’s still standing right here.”
Lieutenant Raines pointed at the wall on the right. “Ask your friend to dig there.”
“I can hear him. Where is ‘there?’”
Althea pointed at the same spot.
Teal set Althea down and attacked the wall with her bare hands, her arms a blur spraying dirt and small rocks to the floor. Althea bounced on her toes, shivering with worry. Her fear deepened at the clatter of metal footsteps echoing in the corridor.
“They’re coming!”
“I can hear them, too,” grumbled Teal.
Althea stared down the long hallway, whining out her nose when the first line of silver men appeared. Two wheelbots zoomed out in front of the emotionless army.
Lieutenant Raines disappeared.
Althea stood in front of Teal, hoping the walkers wouldn’t be able to shoot toward a child, and thus not at Teal either.
One of the wheelbots stopped, turned, and fired both its rotary cannons into the crowd of advancing androids. Clangs and sparks filled the hallway beyond a thickening haze of smoke spewing from the guns. The other wheelbot also stopped, pivoting around before opening fire on the rogue wheelbot. Multiple green plasma orbs sailed out of the smoky haze and melted the possessed robot into a heap of burning slag.
Teal grabbed Althea’s left wrist and dragged her through a narrow dirt tunnel to a subway tube. The ghost reappeared, waving for them to follow him down the tracks.
Althea pointed. “That way!”
They ran down the tunnel for about a minute before reaching a chamber awash in sunlight. An ancient high-rise appeared to have had a small subway platform in its basement, and the ceiling caved in many years ago. Two stories of featureless grey walls stretched above them to ground level. A large mound of dirt and broken concrete stood against the left side, but didn’t quite reach half way up.
“That’s going to be a nasty climb,” said Teal. “Go on, fly out of here. I’ll catch up.”
“I can’t fly.” Althea clung tighter. “I just fall slow.”
Lieutenant Raines pointed. “Other side of the heap.”
Teal ran up the hill of dirt and rubble.
A CRP flyer, one of the larger types like the one that tried to kill Althea, lay inert on the floor near the wall. Up close, it looked way bigger than she thought, nearly twelve feet across from wingtip to wingtip.
Althea screamed and tried to squirm free. “No! It’s gonna blow us up!”
“Shh. It’s offline.” Teal held her tight, jogging down the other side of the mound.
The closer they got to it, the more Althea struggled to get away, but the synthetic woman wouldn’t let go of her.
“Kid, calm down. It can’t shoot us when we’re right next to it. It’s not even flying.”
She clung, whimpering.
Lieutenant Raines gestured as if shooing a bird into the air. “Get on it. Fly out. You don’t have much time.”
“Umm. This thing doesn’t have a seat or controls.” Teal looked around, hunting for the ghost. “Way too dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid of falling,” said Althea.
“I can take control of it and fly you out…” Lieutenant Raines pointed toward the subway tunnel. “But I figured you might want me to go mess with the army of androids that will be here in a few seconds. If they all start shooting at you, you’re not gonna make it.”
“Okay, okay.” Teal swung Althea around by the arm, pulling her on like a human backpack. “Hang on, kid.”
The ghost vanished.
Althea reached her arms around Teal’s neck, grabbed her wrist, and clung as tight as she could.
Teal draped herself over the flyer. “Okay, it’s got a signal. Trying to hack it. Maybe I can override this sucker and take control. I think… yes… the flying ones aren’t self-aware. Remote operated.”
“What does that—?” Althea’s question melted into a scream as the large flyer’s thruster gave off a deafening roar and kicked up a blast of dust.
It lurched straight up, wobbling and swaying. The left wingtip bumped the wall, causing it to tilt down on that side. Teal slipped a few inches before the machine rotated the other way, leveling off. A dozen digitized voices all said, “Contaminant detected” at the same time inside the subway tunnel.
Althea screamed, “Go!” but couldn’t even hear herself over the roaring flyer.
The wing glided back from the wall, then shot straight up. Acceleration squeezed her down against Teal. Althea gurgled, unable to breathe in from the force compressing her. As soon as they cleared the top of the pit, a hail of green plasma globs shot by from behind. The flyer’s thruster let off a loud bang in time with sudden, sharp acceleration that catapulted them up into the sky. The ground fell away so fast below that her stomach twisted around in a knot. Her body draped like a cloak, fluttering, her wrists digging into Teal’s throat the only thing keeping the windblast from tearing her away.
A plasma bolt careened off the right wing, scorching a burn mark into the silver. Another passed by Althea close enough for the brief heat blast to be painful. The flyer banked to the left, gaining more speed and altitude. The ruins below shrank from buildings to a pattern of boxy shapes and lines etched into the ground. Far too close for comfort behind them on the right, the red-glowing cavern of the Great Forge yawned, a vast swath of water stretching off beyond it to the northeast. They swayed side to side, barely clinging to the machine while Teal flew as evasively as possible, dodging the endless stream of plasma bolts racing up from the ground.
Four seconds that felt like an eternity later, the incoming fire stopped.
Althea peered back at the big square hole, quite a long way down. They had gone far enough away that the robots, twenty feet below the surface, couldn’t see them anymore.
“Shit!” yelled Teal. “Kid, jump. Go. Now!”
“But you—?”
Teal pulled her legs up, planted her boots against the flyer, then kicked off, propelling them clear of the machine. A blast of blue energy shot out from the thruster, launching the aerial robot forward much faster than it had been going. Althea didn’t even have time to ask why Teal made the machine zoom off like that before a streak of smoke shot past them and hit the big flying wing, consuming it in a huge ball of fire and black soot. A loud cracka-boom reached her ears two seconds later.
Althea wrapped her arms and legs around Teal, pouring every ounce of willpower she had into not wanting to fall. Scintillating blue-white energy ribbons stretched out, her wings flaring wide to catch the air. She growled, straining with all her power to hold on and slow them down. Still, they hurtled toward the ground at a frightening speed.
She refused to let go, struggling to channel as much energy into slowing their descent as she could. The energy ribbons burned like ten searing hot knives stuck in her back. Still, she fought harder, her mind locked singularly on the desire to catch the air and glide.
Teal grabbed Althea’s wrist, pulled her hands apart, and threw her aside.
Her intense focus on slowing down jerked her to a near stop in midair once her wings only had her weight to support. Teal shot away from her like an arrow, careening into the ground four seconds later. She crashed in a rolling tangle of flailing limbs that bounced over and over before sliding to a stop on her back.
Unsurprisingly, no icy scratch of a departing life prickled at Althea’s heart.
She hung there, too shocked to even cry, unable to believe the woman had thrown her off.
The black scar of the Great Forge marked the earth a good distance away, but remained threatening in its proximity. Teal’s original flying machine had been much farther away and higher up when the giant exploding arrows hit it. Would they fire one of those things at Althea alone, or did they only use them on big machines?
Not waiting to find out, she pitched forward into a headfirst dive, swooping down to land beside Teal’s body. Blood leaked from the woman’s mouth, nose, ears, and even eyes. Her face had frozen in an expression of ‘aww shit.’ She no longer appeared to be breathing—or simulating breathing.
Althea knelt by her side, brushing a hand over her head. Tears came unbidden.
“Why did you make me let go of you? We maybe would have lived…”
32
Faceplant From Fifteen-Hundred Feet
The clanks and thumps of debris raining to the ground over distant ruins intruded upon the still silence. A gentle breeze fluttered a few wisps of hair over Teal’s face. Death, in its peace, lent a note of innocence to the woman’s features that hadn’t been there before. She didn’t look at all like the same woman who had forced Althea to sleep while tied. This person crumpled on the ground was someone who had loving parents and a home, not the sort of woman who would steal an eleven-year-old from her family.
Althea slid a hand under Teal’s shirt, pressing her palm flat over the heart-shape, or where an ordinary person’s heart-shape would be. The skin hadn’t yet cooled, still warm enough to make her seem alive. Whatever it had been made from felt so real, she wouldn’t have been able to recognize this woman as a ‘syn-fet-ic’ by touch alone, only the lack of sensing any life essence, thoughts, or emotions. Despite that, Althea attempted to link her power to Teal’s body.
It worked about as well as trying to heal a crashed raider buggy.
She looked up, slow, incessant tears still flowing from her eyes. No ghost appeared. Neither Lieutenant Raines nor Teal’s. Perhaps this woman didn’t have a spirit the same way humans did. Could The Many have been right when he called her a fancy doll? Little children in villages would sometimes cry over a lost toy or spear or bit of clothing someone had given them, as sad as if a person they liked had died. Had this woman tricked Althea into believing her a genuine person? Could she really have become nothing more than a little girl upset over a fancy toy that broke?
No. She wanted to save me. We were going too fast. Teal threw me off because she didn’t want me to die, too. Althea wiped her face dry and let a long sigh out her nose. She was a person.
Sorrow made room for anger. She suspected The Many had done this, teasing her by letting her ‘save’ Teal only to have her die before they even completely escaped the Great Forge. She huffed, blowing hair out of her eyes. She didn’t know that. He didn’t control every little thing. He couldn’t. Sometimes bad people—or evil machines—did bad things all on their own.
“I can’t blame him for everything bad that happens.”
She gently grasped Teal’s arms one after the next, straightening them out at her sides, then arranged her legs so she lay flat. That done, she sat back on her heels and looked toward the Great Forge. Lieutenant Raines hadn’t caught up to them. He’d gone to slow down the army of robots coming after them. The number of green plasma bolts chasing them into the sky certainly did feel low, only a handful of robots able to fire at them due to whatever the ghost did. Without his interference, both she and Teal would have undoubtedly died in midair. But where had he gone now? It didn’t seem possible the machine men could hurt an Ancestor. An odd sense of feeling unworthy came over her. An Ancestor had appeared in person and directly helped her. Scrags often spoke of them watching over people, but few ever claimed to see them, only suspected some small things that happened had been done by their hands. But Althea had not only seen—and spent hours with—him, he had done so much to help her. She bowed her head in shame. She had powers. The Badlands had so many other people, settlers, villagers, Scrags, who needed the Ancestors’ help. That she received so much of it made her feel like she had taken too much.
In whispery tones, she meditated, talking to the Ancestors, thanking them for all their assistance, and apologizing for… needing it. True, she never would have been able to go into the Great Forge and find Teal without Lieutenant Raines. Guilt lessened to a tremendous sense of gratitude and humbleness. The Ancestors knew she needed help, and they provided. She looked up at the sun, a sad almost-smile on her lips.
“Please let Teal become an Ancestor, even if she’s a different kind of person.”
Almost an hour passed in silent meditation, a constant, gentle wind tousling her hair. She made no effort to pull it out of her face or otherwise move at all out of respect for the Ancestors. Would Lieutenant Raines return to her? She had promised to help him, but had no idea where he’d gone. It struck her as odd for an Ancestor to need her help to go somewhere. But, if he wanted her to help him, how could she not? However, he hadn’t returned. Trying to go back for him did feel stupid. He couldn’t die again. The machines wouldn’t even know he existed.
He had helped her save Teal from being ‘disassembled.’
That she still wound up dead hurt. Could this be fate punishing the woman for what she did? If Teal had been willing to kidnap Althea for pay-things, how much other bad stuff must she have done? Certainly, merely abducting the Prophet didn’t warrant death. Then again, almost every raider group that had ever taken her had been attacked by other raider groups, with many ending up dead.
That’s not punishment. That’s people being stupid. She sniffled. That was me being stupid for letting it happen. She wiped blood from Teal’s chin. Perhaps, somehow, having to save this woman only to watch her die anyway was Althea’s punishment for being so stupid for so long.
She bowed her head. “It’s not fair.”
Leaving the body here didn’t seem like the right thing to do, but Althea didn’t have the wherewithal to try dragging her yet. Physically and emotionally exhausted, she could only kneel there. Maybe someone would find them? She still had the backpack with the food bars and the magic canteen. Waiting here for a few days would make Karina and Father worry more, but abandoning her dead friend had to be wrong.
Althea pulled the backpack off, set it on the ground beside her, and pulled the blanket out.
I’m being stupid again. We shouldn’t stay in the open. A robot will find us.
Still, she couldn’t find the energy to even sit up, much less drag a grown woman’s body around. She wrapped herself in the blanket and lay curled up in a ball with her head on Teal’s shoulder, staring out over the ruins, drowning in grief.
Althea found herself awake.
The sun had jumped a good ways across the sky. It would be dark in about two hours, and by some miracle, no CRP androids had found them. She reluctantly pushed herself up to sit.
“Guess I should find a hiding place.”
“Oh, damn,” croaked Teal in a barely recognizable rasp of a voice. “Thought I was screwed.”
Althea sprang to her feet and backed off a few steps, wide-eyed, staring at the body. The woman’s face had no expression, the eyes unfocused. “Leave her alone.”
