LEGACY BETRAYED (11 page)

Constable Wesley’s automobile was jangling and bouncing over the cobblestones of the Eastern business district when his personal automaton, a trim, gleaming copper falcon whose talons merged with the dashboard, began to caw and vibrate, flapping its clanking wings.
“Incoming alert from
CIN-3.
Breaking and entering. Sighting of wanted conspirator, Exa Legacy. Abuse of equipment. Unlicensed broadcast. In progress.”

Wesley and Kaizen bumped hands going for the radio dial, and Kaizen flashed him an antsy look, relenting. Wesley flipped the knob and the news station flared to life through its speakers, filling the car with Exa Legacy’s resonant alto.
“We are not children! We are working class men and women who deserve freedom from tyranny!”

“Looks like we found Exa Legacy after all,” Constable Wesley commented dryly. “Still want those men en route to Ghrenadel’s unit?”

“Yes,” Kaizen commanded. “But we should reroute to that station as soon as–”

The constable wrenched the wheel and sent them flying down an alley and onto another street.

“–possible,” he finished.

“I’ve dealt with this woman twice before, myself,” Wesley confessed. “At the centennial, I directed some men to take her to the holding cell in the back tower, and then, on the night of that vandalism at the news station, I apprehended her personally. Of course, she was quite dazed at the time. Musket dazzler.” He nodded to himself. “She tried to kick one of my guys in the face at the centennial. Pretty tough broad, seems.”

“I think I can handle her,” Kaizen replied.

Wesley nodded again. “I’ve heard that,” he said. “I’ve heard that you’ve dealt with her several times yourself.”

Kaizen glared suspiciously, but he let that comment stand. “You should let me try to get her first,” he finally agreed. “In all honesty, I think that would involve much less of a struggle on all our parts. Yours. Hers. And mine.”

Legacy elated in the duration of time her speech was able to last before law enforcement arrived.

“We don’t want to overthrow the monarchy, per se,” Legacy explained, almost calming as she was able to go on unobstructed.

“The police are on their way, you little bitch!” Dyna hollered through the small window in the door.

“We desire a fair restructuring of the constitution, and a transparency of the market,” Legacy went on, ignoring her.

“They’re going to fry you!”

“We have reason to suspect that the aristocratic class is allotted the majority of physical space, as well as fine materials, food, medical devices, and of course, state-of-the-art technology. But what do they do? What do they do while we slave away in mass production units until dark?”

“Sing while you can, little bird! Here the cats come!”

“They attend court! They supervise boutiques! They sleep! They’re able to circumvent placement testing, common schooling, and Companion selection! Kaizen is unmatched by the difference engine, but do they–”

Legacy froze mid-stride, sentence flying from her head.

Kaizen had cropped up in the window, replacing Dyna, and was staring at her with such broken hearted eyes. As if he should’ve known she’d turn and bite the hand that so faithfully attempted to free her from her cage. As if she would be better off put down.

Legacy blinked, the world rushing back, and continued on. She cleared her throat. “Do they widen the parameters, as mandated by law for an eligible bachelor? No, they don’t.” Still, those obsidian eyes, so strangely kind, bored into her. “They don’t, because the elite can ignore and abide by whatever laws they choose.”

The door trembled with Kaizen’s weight as he thrust his shoulder into it. “Legacy!” he called. “You’ve got to let me in! The constable is here!”

“Icarus, my city, my love,” Legacy said, “it’s time for me to run, quite literally. Please, think about what I’ve said.”

She cast her eyes around with a hint of desperation as she spoke. She didn’t know how the hell to get out of this room.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she explained. “The assassination attempt at the coronation was perpetrated by a rogue member of the group and not the group itself. We only want to make life better for the citizens of this city.”

Her eyes fell across Liam, who was gesturing up.

Legacy followed the trajectory of his hand: a vent.

“The real workers, who are its lifeblood,” she added, shoving Dyna’s chair against the wall beneath the vent. “Thanks for listening!” She slammed the mic back onto the studio counter and left the station ON AIR.

The door banged and dented.

Legacy glanced over her shoulder. Kaizen was backing up to go again.

Springing onto the chair’s cushion, Legacy hooked her fingers through the slats of the vent and jiggled until its hooked ledges came loose. It dropped with a resounding clang as the door exploded inward.

Legacy leapt, gripped the narrow corridor of the shaft, and hauled herself upward with thrashing legs.

“She’s going up the ventilation shaft!” an unfamiliar voice called.

“I’ve got her! Don’t worry!” Kaizen.

“It goes to the roof!” Dyna. “Get up to the roof!”

Legacy’s elbows and knees banged through the metallic tunnel, hyper-focused on the wedge of open sky – relatively speaking – which was directly ahead. She scrambled the incline, her own haggard breath echoing from every angle, and was then against the next grate, which took a firm elbow to its center and popped and ricocheted. Legacy wriggled onto the roof of
CIN-3,
gulping in the fresh air – relatively speaking – and frantically searching for her next path to exit the building. This was one of the tallest on this street. She was going to have to jump. But to where? From where?

The front of the building was clearly not an option, so she didn’t even glance in that direction. Skipping onto some flat, elevated surface, a filter or fan of some sort, she scanned her surroundings. On the left was a small structure with a door set into it, likely the roof access, and likely on the verge of expelling a dozen police. On the right was an automata outlet of almost equal height and lined in balconies, but the jump was a horizontal one. She didn’t think she’d make it; she’d only make the street below. A rather long fall. And the backside of
CIN-3
was a garage house of various mobiles. It was much closer. And much lower.

The door on the left burst open, Kaizen Taliko emerging. His eyes locked on her and he advanced at a bolt, then drew up short as Legacy hopped from the surface and skipped backward, evidently desperate. He held up his hands in the stance of peace. “Come with me, Leg,” he coaxed. “It’ll be easier this way. I’ll try to help you as much as I can. You know I will. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Why not just let me go, then?” she asked, edging along the roof. One glance over her shoulder revealed the churning street far below, and a growing throng of onlookers struggling to catch a glimpse of the action.
CIN-3
cameras, though incapable of intervening, clustered and craned for a better view themselves, shuddering manically.

“I can’t let you go,” Kaizen told her. With his hands up in that gesture of peace, he still subtly advanced. One step. “There are too many witnesses now. I’m the duke. You just –Legacy –you just hijacked a broadcast network!” Another step. “You’ve tied my hands! And –the constable –I told him I could bring you down. That’s the only reason it’s me up here and not him,” another step, another, “and he wouldn’t be nearly so kind–”

“Stay back!” Legacy cried, brandishing her blunderbuss. Her mind pumped and ticked through scenarios. She couldn’t make the building on the right. It was too far of a horizontal leap. But maybe, if she pulled her frock coat off and used it to catch wind resistance, she could break her fall onto the deck of that garage on the other side. Maybe.

Maybe she could outsmart him.

Kaizen froze and winced. “You wouldn’t,” he said.

I just have to shrug this coat off my shoulders and run past him, then jump.

“I’m just doing what I have to do,” Legacy quoted back at him. “You’re the one who showed up with a death ray, Kaizen!”

“It wasn’t for you,” Kaizen replied. He took another step forward, his hands coming down. “How could you ever think–”

Legacy took advantage of this moment in which he was distracted to bolt past, but the roof rushed up to her as she ran, her body slamming down. He’d tackled her legs, and now was scrambling up her trunk, binding her wrists.

Legacy thrashed, writhing to face him. “You said I could trust you!” she yelled.

“I said it was for your own good!”

Legacy fired the blunderbuss at Kaizen, the intelligent glue gravitating toward his most active points and adhering. His arms were sucked and pinned to his side. She shoved him off and scrambled to her feet.

“Legacy,” Kaizen called. But then the glue was attracted to his mouth, and sealed his lips shut. “Mm-mm-mm,” he called again. Legacy turned to look, and only allowed herself a single second of pity, of regret. Then she shrugged the frock coat from off her shoulders and lunged for the low deck of the garage house, puffing the coat overhead.

Of course, it didn’t work. It never would’ve worked. She sank, screaming, like a stone, and was doomed to break both legs from this angle.

The golden vest then, as if sensing her downward trajectory, tensed the bones of its two gleaming wings, lightweight, jointed, and angular. They flapped and flapped and Legacy found herself curiously airborne. She wasn’t able to fly, but she was able to land softly on two feet and race across the deck of glass domes, chauffeurs, and slender, wide wheels, toward the next storefront: a hat and glove emporium. She leapt again, and again, the wings sensed the gravity and sprang forth, flapping.

Legacy ran this way, from roof to roof, across the entirety of the business district, until finally able to leap once more: onto the pier of the aerial dock, a layered, rigid structure which lined the outer north side of the dome, on the interior and the exterior, and to which rows of airships were tethered. It was not without its own guards, who ensured that those along its planks had the proper documentation, ensuring that they were either licensed to own and operate an airship, or card-carrying members of the repairs industry.

The pier was broad, the color of slate, and spattered in rust. Half of it ran along the interior of the dome, and the other, along the exterior, where the airships were anchored. There were barricades at both ends and, normally, there would also be several guards up and down the interior walk. Many seemed to have been diverted as of late. Legacy spotted only two in her immediate vicinity, and of course, one directly approaching.

The only small favor to her name was this scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth.

The sentry made a beeline; he’d probably been put on high alert. At least he was a young thing, acne-spattered and lazy-eyed. Legacy was able to relax a bit as she realized that this inattentive chap was probably a new hire, fresh from a common secondary school.

“Excuse me, miss,” he accosted her. “Are you needing onto the docks today?”

“Yes, sir,” Legacy replied. “If it won’t be too much trouble.”

“Uh-huh, no trouble at all. Have you got your license on you, though?”

“Well, no,” she answered, thinking. “No, I –I’m not an airship captain. I work for Cook’s Glass & Metal Fusion, you see. We were –I was dispatched out here for a repair. You’ve got a cracked triangle on the east side.”

“Ohhh,” the boy said. “Okay, then. Can I see your work order?”

Legacy made a show of patting herself down. “Oh, man, I’m sorry, I left it back at the shop . . . and if I go back for it by now, you know, it’s not going to be able to get done today. So look. I’ve got my card. My work card for Cook’s with my name and everything? But I don’t have the work order on me.”

The guard thought about it.

“Like I said, I could come back tomorrow,” Legacy pressed. “But we got this call from the duke himself, you know, so I wouldn’t want any complaints coming down on my head or yours. The monarch’s going to be coming in soon, and he wants Icarus really perfect, you know?”

Now he was nervous. “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he said, nodding rapidly. “I get it. Okay, okay, can I see your work card, then?”

Legacy went to flourish the golden leaf engraved with Cook’s, her name (“LEG”), and birth date. As she rummaged in her pocket, though, he noticed the glass blunderbuss tucked into her belt, from which he could not tear his eyes until she handed him her work card.

“Uh, thanks,” he said, hardly flicking a look at it. “That a weapon or something?”

Legacy showed him the gun, focusing on its chamber of glue. “New equipment for patching cracks in the glass,” she boasted. “This one in particular is called an intelligent epoxy, which is a specialized formula meant to seek locomotion, cracks, and general–”

“Ohhh,” the boy said again. “Neat. All right, here, let me show you through, because I don’t want you to have to be late or anything.”

Legacy smiled. “I’m sure the duke appreciates it.”

The exterior dock was breathtaking – literally. The north end of Icarus was buffeted by intense winds that seemed frigid at this height, and brought into relief just how stifling the temperature of the dome truly was. Legacy’s hair whipped, her clothing fretted and clung, and she was grateful again for the scarf around her face.