Legacy Of Ashes Read online

  Miles kicked the snake in the head and called it a mother fucker. Then he grabbed the gel off the wall and stretched it with both hands until the light started to fade. While it faded, he rolled it back into a little ball and stuck it in his pocket. Then he pulled out his Tab, tapped it so it emitted his guiding light, and started limping down the tunnel. The solar cell would recharge itself once he was outside; the gel wouldn’t.

  Five minutes later as he came into sight of daylight at the end of the tunnel, his Tab beeped. Through the muck, he read:

  Out of Range.

  He took three steps backward and waited until the screen displayed:

  Armed.

  As if somehow predicting the future through some advanced evolutionary instinct, a train of rats scurried past him, heading for the exit. He tapped the screen and continued his limp down the tunnel, hoping the seal on that airtight door really was airtight, because wouldn’t that just be the perfect end to his day?

  Even from within the tunnel and at this distance, Miles heard the explosions and subsequent rumbling as the building he’d called home for six years tumbled into its footprint.

  Part Two

  Lexi Shaw

  Triangle City

  Chapter Six

  Probably the Usual

  Day 1

  Tuesday, Mar 19, 2137

  Lexi juggled her gym bag over one shoulder and her work satchel over the other as she waved her left arm across the glowing red sensor panel outside her apartment. After two attempts, the panel turned green and the latch clicked. Lexi slid the door open with her shoulder, stepped inside, and dropped her bags.

  Darkness.

  Where are the lights?

  “Lights,” she said.

  Nothing happened.

  A shiver against the cool air inside meant the environmental controls were offline. She sniffed. That explained the dank scent of uncirculated air. Lexi bent her knees and lowered her fingertips to the floor. The wood planks were cool to the touch. They should have been heated.

  She rested her elbows on her knees as she crouched and stared into the dark hallway. A storm the previous fall had killed the power and the main hallway lights had gone dark with her own, but those lights were on tonight and she hadn’t received any text alerts about a power problem. Lexi fumbled around in her work satchel, retrieved a pair of SmartGlasses and slipped them on. Forgoing verbal commands so as not to draw attention to herself, she tapped a sequence on their frames. NV mode kicked in and the apartment became visible, as if someone flipped a switch.

  Lexi stayed low as she slipped off her shoes and prowled on the pads of her feet to the edge of the hallway. Layers of color were created by the contrasting maroon curtains and peach walls. Withering stalks of dead plants twisted over the sides of their pots. In spite of the tension, she made a mental note to stop trying and just buy fake ones.

  Peeking through the curtains, she saw random lights beyond the falling snow, illuminating apartments on the first three floors of the building across the street. The higher floors were undeveloped, so there was nothing unusual there. The street lights’ halos glowed in the snowy downpour. She pushed a stray lock of red hair behind her ear as she turned from the window.

  A memory crept into her mind of watching horror movies as a child, leaning close to her mother on the sofa as hapless girls on screen stood in dark places asking, ‘Is anyone there?’ Those scenes almost never ended well for the girls, unless the director was projecting a comedic moment where an immature boy jumped out and screamed. Since Lexi’s life hadn’t exactly been filled with comedic moments, she kept her lips zipped as she tiptoed on her bare feet to the enviro-system control panel on the hallway wall near the kitchen. She gently pressed the bottom of the panel until it clicked, and the spring released the catch on the panel door. The cover clicked into place as she raised it and she squinted in spite of the night vision. Her fingers crept around inside the panel until they tapped the main switch, but it was already in the ‘on’ position. For good measure, she gave the wires a good tug to ensure solid connections.

  Patting her jacket and feeling only her ribs, Lexi sighed, remembering she’d left her pulse weapon at the front desk in compliance with the lease terms. Sans firearm, she took out her Tab and tapped into the city’s UltraMesh network.

  No power alerts.

  She snapped the Tab back into her thigh holster and swept her gaze around the kitchen, simultaneously musing that none of the stupid girls in those stupid horror films had a pair of SmartGlasses. Though Lexi could function well in the dark, the night vision feature was still quite the equalizer if someone was lurking around her apartment.

  Except that they would probably be wearing them, too.

  She jerked at a thumping sound from down the hall.

  Someone bumping into the nightstand? She sighed. Those assholes aren’t supposed to be here until next week. Must’ve figured out I was accessing their calendar.

  Slipping the Tab from her holster and flipping it around in her hand, she tapped the screen and ensured the speaker function was disabled.

  “SecServ,” she whispered into the device.

  The Tab trilled twice in her ear.

  “Sector 4 Safety and Security,” a male voice on the other end said. “Is your call an emergency?”

  She was almost amused as she tried to think of the appropriate reply.

  “Treat as such,” she whispered. “Environmentals are offline. Lights out. Rest of the building has power, and I heard a sound from my bedroom.”

  “Understood,” the concerned voice replied. “Is this Miss Shaw?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m starting to learn the sound of your voice. Transferring you to controller’s office, Miss Shaw.”

  Lexi smirked.

  “Hey, Lexi. It’s Pittman. You’re in good hands.”

  “Hey ya, Pitt. That makes me feel better.”

  “I doubt it. You’re only calling to follow your new protocols.”

  “We all have our processes.”

  “I’ll run a scan.” Pittman paused for a heartbeat. “I forget. Is your bedroom number three on the floor plan or number four? And, where are you now?”

  “I don’t know the numbers on your floor plan. It’s the one in the southwest corner. I’m in the kitchen.”

  She backed into a corner and pushed herself onto the counter to prepare for the scan. Her legs dangled loosely.

  “Forgive me, but my processes require me to ask, is this real world or exercise?”

  “Probably the usual. But I have to play it out.”

  “Okay, with your authorization, I’ll start the scan in that room.”

  “Fine. Yes. Authorized.”

  “Stay where you are.” Lexi disabled her night vision and waited. She could see the ghost of a green glow reflecting on the dusty wood floor from down the hallway as Security Services ran the scan on her bedroom.

  “Lexi. I count one armed intruder in your bedroom. He’s near the door. I’m doing a full sweep of the unit. Protocol dictates that I tell you to exit the unit.”

  “Could you elaborate as to ‘armed’?” she asked.

  She could just make out the grid as it swept across the living room from down the hall. For good measure, it swept through the kitchen. She stilled her legs, though Pittman would know the motion detected by the scan was her.

  “Do you have any idea what each of these little events cost your company?”

  “Considering the CEO orders them, I don’t concern myself with it. Budget isn’t my department.”

  Pittman chuckled. “Got ya.” The green light faded. “Okay, since you’re not leaving the apartment, I need—”

  “Override, Secure ID 1268524,” Lexi quipped at the phone. “You never told me what you meant by armed?’”

  “Override accepted,” Pitt answered after a short pause. “He has a stunner in his left hand.”

  “Confirmed. Now stay quiet.”

  “Before you go…”r />
  “Yes,” Lexi said, frustration growing in her voice.

  “Try not to kill him, Lexi?”

  Lexi smiled in spite of herself.

  “Not very likely,” she replied. “Now shush.”

  “Roger.”

  Lexi dropped to the floor, shrugged out of her jacket, and dropped it on the counter. Cocking her head to the side until she heard her neck crack, she bent at her waist, grabbed her ankles, and stretched her quads until her chest touched legs.

  Lexi’s feet pitter-pattered across the floor and traced along the wall as she eased down the hallway. When she reached her bedroom doorway, she pulled earbuds from her SmartGlasses’ frames and inserted them. Rapid, nervous breathing originated from around the corner of the doorjamb. She reminded herself that laughter would be unprofessional.

  Swiping quick, practiced motions on the Tab’s surface, she wrapped her arm around the corner and tossed the Tab across the room, where it bounced and settled on her bed. On the first bounce, the tab emitted an ear-shattering trill and flashed a white, pulsating strobe. She sensed movement in response to the noise.

  Lexi grabbed the door jamb with her hands, cocked one foot behind her and swung her body in a tight arc around the corner and through the door. The momentum sped the delivery of her bare foot into the side of the intruder’s neck. She shuffled her stance to gain her balance and began to bounce on the balls of her feet.

  The man’s body went lax as the sudden loss of blood flow through his jugular disoriented him. His eyes rattled comically in his head, his body thudded to the floor, and his right shoulder began to twitch.

  Lexi eyed the man as he twitched.

  The dark clothing isn’t much in the way of camouflage with a flashing light in the room.

  His bulging muscles gave the impression they were threatening to tear the fabric of his black t-shirt. Tendons punched out of his neck and up into the bottom of a black mask covering his head except for eyeholes.

  Lexi suspended the alarm on her Tab. The earbuds retracted into the SmartGlasses’ frames as she popped them out of her ears.

  When the man’s shoulder stopped twitching, Lexi tapped his ribs with her toes and smirked down at him.

  “Nice.”

  She peeled the mask off his face.

  “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt your nap, but are you from Central Power Services, sir? Someone seems to have cut off my electricity.”

  Lexi’s ear perked up at a rustle behind her, but she didn’t turn. Waiting a beat, she looked over her shoulder and swung her leg in a back kick as a second man charged into the room wielding a black rod over his head. Her foot found purchase beneath his chest, and the man swung sideways to accommodate. Lexi spun and used his momentum to carry him over her back to drop him flat on the floor. A harsh gasp escaped the assailant’s mouth as his wind left him upon impact. The stunner rolled under her bed.

  “I swear, it’s like I never taught you donks a thing!” she said.

  The first man groaned as he rolled over and flashed a look of either embarrassment or irritation. He reached into his coat and withdrew a Tab. When he tapped, the lights flickered on. Lexi’s SmartGlasses disabled Night Vision mode.

  “Thanks.”

  Lexi offered her hand to the muscle man. He waved her off and rolled onto his knees, choosing to stand under his own power.

  “Suit yourself, Dale.” She turned her head. “You okay, Arch?” He was holding his arm under his back. “Break anything?”

  She heard a sound from the Tab on her bed.

  “Lexi?”

  “We’re all good here. But your scan missed somebody. Might want to run an analysis.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “I was on the bed,” Arch grunted.

  “He says he was on the bed.”

  “I heard. I’ll check it out. Might be a circuit out of whack in the other bedroom. You might want to warn me next time you plan on using the panic alert on your Tab while I’m on the other end of the line.”

  “Oops.”

  “Want to grab a beer later this week?”

  “Sure, Pitt. Talk to you soon.” She tapped the surface and ended the connection before turning her attention to the two men lying on the floor. “Hey. You guys are early. You were supposed to come next week.”

  “Mister Jensen wanted us to surprise you,” Dale said. “He knows you check the calendar. He got ya, right?”

  Lexi raised an eyebrow at Dale, peered over at Archie, and then smirked.

  “Ya think?”

  Chapter Seven

  Do Not Engage

  “The Black is survival,” she chanted.

  “The Black is our shroud.”

  “The Black is camouflage at night.”

  “Like us, all colors of the spectrum merge into black.”

  “One cannot take lightly the power or the responsibility of The Black.”

  “We are The Black.”

  The woman raised her hands from her lap and shifted from her knees to sit on the short black stool next to the window.

  Women passed on the street below, red blouses the color of roses beneath yellow trench coats like lemons, orange handbags the like sunsets, all enhanced by the street light halos projected from above. Their purple skirts expressed the vibrancy of life itself as they flowed from work to home, home to restaurants, restaurants to clothing stores. They seemed oblivious to the snow falling around them, trotting along as if it made them happy.

  The woman looked down at herself.

  I’m so tired of black.

  Black leather pants, a black pullover, and black boots with fifteen eyes on each side for laces to pass through, also painted black. Even her chin-length hair was dyed black.

  One day the boss will make me paint my face black, too.

  Tonight, she was hunkered down in an apartment in the most technologically advanced city on the continent. The empty space was chilly; the spicy scent of aged wood rose from its ancient floors. The irony wasn’t lost on her that three blocks away, in the Triangle City Shopping District, she could buy a space heater, warming rocks, and any other number of solutions for the chill. But she didn’t have one of those fancy wrist chips with credits to spend.

  The building itself was a repurposed relic born of what the people in this city called the ‘Oil Age.’ The previous mayor intended to use the space for people whose only income was the monthly government stipend aimed at sustaining those unable to contribute to the economy. The physically disabled, the substance addicted, and the unemployed filled the apartments on the first three floors. But not up here because the renovation efforts died when their current mayor, Vaughn, took office. Empty flats equaled people camping out in the streets. It irked her. The constant trickle of citizens losing their manufacturing jobs because the current mayor changed the Expeditionary Forces’ missions meant it wouldn’t be long before the old world sectors of Triangle City were brimming with people. The woman in black had to constantly remind herself that this wasn’t her city, it wasn’t her business, and it certainly had no bearing on her mission.

  Staring out this window and down, into the building across the street, she could see the assignment had returned to her room. The two men were gone now, and the woman who’d dispatched them with efficiency that rivaled her own, sat alone—back straight, legs folded tightly in front of her—in the dark. Through a pair of SmartGlasses given her by her partner, who was now out west in the middle of nowhere, the woman in black could zoom in and watch Lexi Shaw meditate as clear as day.

  Gone was the green tint to which she was accustomed as she scoped out the space across the way. The streamlined technology of Triangle City, the way military and private uses mingled together to create dual-purposed revenue streams was the basis for a thriving economy, even in light of a lack of external trading partners. But if the interstate was cleared and the badlander threat to that process removed, Oklahoma City would become a trading partner. There was real hope that humanity would rise from
the legacy of ashes left behind over 110 years ago by a greedy world that fed on finite resources as if they’d last forever. But Oklahoma City was a different place, born of different needs, resulting in different technologies.

  The threat presented to OKC, the million-man army of The Horde out West, necessitated a militaristic drive to develop technology that represented function before form. In contrast, the SmartGlasses resting on the platform that slid out of the wall next to Lexi Shaw’s bed were even slimmer than her own—and hers were only two years old. Goggles purposed for military use in Oklahoma City were powerful devices, but they were bulky, heavy, and puke green. Besides, only OKC soldiers wore them, while the citizens who worked in the factories producing helium and hydrogen for their hellfire-spewing sky fortresses stumbled around in the dark. SmartGlasses were handed out to poor school children in Triangle City as part of corporate charity drives. The contrasts didn’t end there.

  Oklahoma City employed thousands of armed police in their inappropriately named Defense Forces. Triangle City had motion-activated surveillance cameras with facial recognition parked on every corner of the city proper. Those cameras were supported by bots that hovered around the city with shock weapons and highly functional arms capable of intricate maneuvers focused at rescuing citizens from perilous situations ranging from house fires to collapsed buildings. The contrasting styles of the two cities could also be seen in their vehicles, their waste disposal systems, and their water systems.

  But Triangle City had its dark secrets as—

  Her mind snapped back into the present as she saw Lexi Shaw begin to quiver. Her shoulders trembled, but she remained in the same position, back straight.

  “Zoom four times,” the woman in black said.

  Tears rolled down from the crystal blue eyes of the red-haired woman’s face, eliciting a hollow feeling in the woman in black’s chest.