LEGACY BETRAYED (17 page)

              “Are you implying that there is enough here to support a second populace?” Dyna sneered, raising one perfect eyebrow.

              Legacy opened her mouth to respond when a button on her vest vibrated.
“Incoming message from home. Incoming message from home.”

              “It’s ludicrous to suggest that these monstrous creatures are actually connected to the market of Icarus,” Dyna went on, smug when uncontested. “I believe our society is sophisticated enough to not employ mutants! Nor stupid enough to harvest materials from a dead planet!” She scoffed.

              Meanwhile, the speaker-button of Legacy’s gold vest was sobbing uncontrollably.

             
“Exa,”
her mother’s voice came across.
“I never knew . . . but I saw one . . . of those people . . . in the street.”
She sucked in a breath and a fresh wave of sobs came pealing.
“It said N.E.E.R. The uniforms . . . I never knew . . . They shave all their heads! I thought the children were just sent to . . . to couples who couldn’t . . . b-b-but . . . They look so hungry . . .”
After this, her mother’s voice became unintelligible, and her father cropped onto the line. He, too, sounded downtrodden, however composed.

             
“Exa, your mother and I need to see you. We’re aware that movement might be difficult for you right now, but come home when you can.”

              “A riot at the police department broke out less than half an hour ago, unleashing over one hundred criminals back into the streets of Icarus,” Dyna droned on over her microphone. “Emergency workers, already swamped with activity following the tragedy at the coronation only one week ago, have been dispatched to the area in as many as can be spared.” As the anchorwoman spoke, Legacy moved across the room and to the door, wrenching it open with such force that it clattered from its tenuous hinges yet again. Dyna followed her motion with a smoldering frown as Legacy strode from the room, but her voice carried on in the smooth dialect of reportage. “The condition of the constable is undisclosed at this time, but the state of mayhem which seems to reign at the police department only blocks from here would suggest that his wounds are of a serious nature.”

              She made it inside the lift.
“Fl-fl-floor, please,”
the mechanized porter greeted.

Legacy turned to see Kaizen lunging for the porter’s lever, wrenching it in the opposite direction and folding the grate back again. He climbed aboard with a sobriety to his features, striding to where Legacy stood and gripping her arms just above the elbows. He held her so closely and peered at her so intently that she suspected he would kiss her soon.

But he only glared down at her with a heat that was not really fueled by anger. “There aren’t enough sentries to hold the palace,” he explained rapidly. “I have to get back there right now, and secure all the gates of the drawbridge.”

              Duke Lovelace approached at a slower pace, their retinue of guards flanking along his side, the nervous steward bringing up the rear. Legacy expected that Kaizen might not hold her with such desperation or intimacy, not in front of witnesses, but he didn’t let go. If anything, he pulled her closer and the sense of connection between them intensified.

              “Come with me,” he pleaded. “It’s not safe in those streets.”

              The rest of the crew crowded around them, into the lift, and only then did Kaizen become cognizant of their presence and relax his grip, allowing her the room to breathe.

              “I can’t,” Legacy replied.

              “Ground floor, please,” Duke Lovelace addressed the porter. The paternoster lurched and descended. “I’m sure it would have been a rousing debate, my dear,” he said to Legacy, completely ignoring the scene that Kaizen was making. From his expression, one would conclude that the day outside was peaceful and sunny. “It seems that Icarus has become quite the hotbed of upheaval and unrest in these most recent days,” he concluded thoughtfully. “I can assure you that the township of Celestine is a much more hospitable environment to the ideals of your people.”

              Legacy was staring at him in disbelief as the paternoster lurched again.

             
“Ground fl-fl-floor, thank you, have a good day.”

             
“Consider it, won’t you?” the Duke of Celestine said, stepping from the lift. Security flooded out around him like a shell, then the steward, all at a swift pace toward their vehicles.

             
Did that really just happen?

             
Legacy stepped from the lift and Kaizen, as if he were her security detail, hugged close behind her as she walked.

              “Don’t ignore me,” he said. “The offer stands.”

              “What, the offer to abandon the city when it needs us most?” she asked, pushing through the foyer and spilling out onto the street. It was quiet, compared to the uproar emanating from farther west. However, even on this street, there was a man running with a firearm drawn and ready. He ran toward the noise, not from it. “Dyna was right; this is total mayhem, Kaizen.”

              “We won’t abandon them,” he insisted. “We must wait for the right time, though! Let the police do their work to–”

              “You heard what Dyna said! There aren’t enough police right now! Even the damn jail is open!” Legacy replied. “This fire isn’t going to be extinguished. It’s just going to burn itself out. And how many will be left standing at its end?”

              “Just come,” Kaizen begged, and again he took her arm in his hand. “Just come until–”

              “I can’t,” Legacy snapped. “I told you. I can’t.”

              Pulling free, she raced toward Heroes Park, battling through the anarchy in the streets, and then through the industrial territory, and finally home, up the stairs (
Rrrah! Rrrah!
) and onto the porch of Unit #4, banging the familiar brass knocker she hadn’t touched in days.

              Her father opened the door and, as had become customary since her turn to a life of crime, wrapped her in a back-breaking embrace. “Exa,” he greeted, stepping away and loosening his grip. A spark flew from his mechanical arm and sizzled into Legacy’s shirt, causing a cringe. “Been worried sick,” he continued, “but . . . so glad to see you’re all right. I knew you were. But your mother–”

              Legacy stepped inside.

              Her mother, a woman of petite structure much like her own and silver braids much like her own, was otherwise the complete opposite of Exa Legacy just now. While the twenty-year-old metalsmith-turned-speechwriter-turned-leader had only truly allowed herself the luxury of a few tears in this life, her mother was a wailing mess in the corner. She was almost rendered unrecognizable by the puffiness of her puddly features. “Exa,” she moaned, gesturing for her daughter to come closer. “I’m so sorry. I’m so . . . so . . .”

             
Mom was always just as tough as I was, though,
Legacy thought as she stepped closer, slowly, staring, as if the crying woman might do something rash and insane, like explode.
Something terrible must have happened. Is it –Was it –Dax? Is Dax all right?
She could think of no one else whom her parents treated as family, and his health was so precarious . . .

              “What’s going on?” she whispered, suddenly dizzy at the thought of losing him. For all the times she’d admonished him for taking off his mask, she also never truly thought there would come a day in her life when he’d be gone. She prayed to go first if the morbid fantasy ever crossed her mind.

              “It’s . . . the refugees,” Mrs. Legacy explained. “It’s . . . they’re . . . N-n-new Earth Ext-t-traneous Relocation.” She pursed her lips together and still, a choked sob leaked out. “I . . . You . . .”

              “Yes?” Legacy prompted.

              “You were a twin,” her mother blurted. “You were a twin and we couldn’t help it!” Her voice suddenly became savage, her eyes sharp with a very old, and yet still fresh, welt of anger. “We couldn’t help it and we begged them to make an exception for an innocent child! A baby! What could we have done! It was an accident! You were both . . . b-b-both so beautiful . . . and healthy . . . identical . . .” The sobs rose again, and her voice took on its fluctuating, blubbery quality. “And we . . . Th-they t-told us she w-w-went to another c-c-city . . .” Mrs. Legacy cringed and gasped. “But she was right below us all these years!”

              She dissolved into tears again, and Mr. Legacy went to her, but she was inconsolable. She hardly seemed aware of his touch, even when the robot arm sent off a spark. “Exa!” she suddenly belted, eyes snapping open again and focusing for the first time. She lunged for her daughter and grabbed her just above her elbows, as Kaizen had done only moments ago. “Exa, you have to go and find her. She m-must be in the city. Just go for us? Will you? J-just go and l-l-look . . . The radio . . . The radio said the jails were open, and they’re all free.”

              Mr. Legacy intervened. “No, Furnice,” he disagreed. “It’s madness out there. Exa, don’t go. I’m sorry, but stay. Stay here.”

              “Patch!” her mother gasped.

              “I mean it!” he yelled.

              As they squabbled over which daughter they wanted most to save, Legacy’s mind was elsewhere entirely.

              It was back on Old Earth, recalling the girl with the cropped head of silver hair, the slight frame, the large, golden eyes.

             
The girl who had looked exactly like her.

              Her sister.

              Legacy gulped and made for the door again. This caught her father’s attention and pulled it from the argument with her mother. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

              “I’m going to go look for her,” Legacy replied simplistically. “What’s her name?”

             
Coal,
she realized, remembering the DNA grip lock which had scanned her skin cells and called her
Coal 106.

              “Radia,” her mother replied. Fresh tears shimmered in her eyes, but didn’t fall. “I was going to name her Radia Legacy.”

              After a crushing round of hugs with her mother and father, Legacy darted out the door and thundered again down the stairs, landing on the first porch with both feet.
Rrrah! Rrrah!
came the ferocious, tinny bark of Widow Coldermolly’s robotic pooch. The gray shutters on the tiny window swept open.

              “Exa,” the old woman hissed, glaring out to the world beyond. “Is it true? Are those Old Earth refugees from the N.E.E.R.?”

              Legacy stared into the Widow’s big eyes. Suddenly, she seemed very young.

“Yes,” Legacy answered. “They are.”

“You’re going back to the city,” the Widow deduced hopefully.

“Yes,” Legacy said again, nodding.

The Widow hesitated, and then said: “If you see a man there . . . with a withered arm . . . he would be forty-four. Tell him that I . . . that his mother . . . she’s sorry. Tell him that she loves him?”

Legacy only nodded. How many children had they taken? How many children, around the world, had endured unending servitude and chemical suppression from the surface of the dead planet?

              As far as Liam was concerned, this was all Chance for Choice’s fault.

              If they hadn’t caused that massacre at the castle, the guard staff wouldn’t have become completely crippled. If the castle guard staff weren’t completely crippled, they wouldn’t have needed to call in auxiliary defences from the police and other local establishments. And if they hadn’t called in the auxiliary defences from police and local establishments, there would’ve been enough manpower to house these supposed Old Earth refugees until what could or should be done with them was calmly, logically decided by the duke and his court, if not the monarch himself. For that matter, if Legacy hadn’t whipped the working class into a frenzy only days ago by comparing their living conditions and rights to those of the aristocracy, the jails wouldn’t have been bursting at the seams, either.

              But still, for some crazy reason, he cared what happened to her. Inexplicably, he had this burr in his brain, insisting that Exa Legacy was a good woman, even after she dumped him in no uncertain terms. Well. If they’d been together, it would’ve been a break-up, but he supposed it was just a rejection. In any case, when she went flying from
CIN-3
with that seasick look on her face, the two dukes and a retinue of sentries following after her, Liam had ignored his more practical instincts and gone too. By the time he reached the paternoster, however, it had already reached maximum capacity and was descending. By the time he reached the ground floor, she was gone.

             
Good, she’ll be fine, she can take care of herself,
Liam thought. He thought this thought very hard, and it still didn’t stick.
She’s no fairy tale princess, you know,
he went on forcefully.
She’s as tough as you are, you know. She doesn’t need you to make sure she’s okay, you know!

              And still, he had this haunting notion that she was out there, somewhere, in this madness. Probably directly in the middle of it, knowing her. How much luck could one woman expect?

              But he fought through the throngs in the center of the city, scanning every scuffle, ducking at every shot, mind boggling at the combination of fear and rage these foreigners had inspired in the townsfolk . . . and nowhere was her mane of silver braids. Liam ignored the frantic vibration of his automaton assistant, a simple cylinder of brass he kept concealed in his pocket, knowing that it was an infuriated Dyna, who would never understand why someone would abandon their post. For her, that broadcast station was a battleground of sorts, and she was fighting a great war, though over or for what, Liam couldn’t be sure. Sometimes, albeit rarely, there was something else worth fighting for.

              There! In those glasses and suspenders, it was . . . Victor? Some friend of Dax’s, he knew, staggering out of the police station with a coat full of stolen devices. Of course. He was probably with the damn CC.

              “Oi! Victor!” Liam called.

              The boy swung to glare and huffed a black, dreadlocked tendril from his face. “It’s Vector,” he snapped. “Who are you?”

              “I’m trying to find Exa, I’m her Companion,” he explained loudly. Only hearing it in the air always made him realize how untrue it really was. “I mean, her ex-Companion,” he added. “I’m trying to find her. It’s –I’m worried, you know? Shit’s really going around here.”

              “Yeah, tell me about it,” Vector replied. “Well, I know where she is, but you’ll have to go there without me, mate. I’ve got more stuff to liberate.”

             
Liberate?
Liam was incredulous at this, but now was not the time.

              “Where is she?” he yelled over the din behind them. Vector advanced on an automaton rickshaw – its key had been removed, he noticed with a grimace of annoyance –
It’s illegal to tamper with the public transit system,
he wanted to say, but again, it was not the time – and dumped his booty into the back.

              Vector regarded him shrewdly for a moment. “Who do you work for?” he asked.

              Liam scoffed. He didn’t need this kind of crap from a damn rebel. “I’ve got a mighty respectable position, if you must know,” he snapped. “I work as the head of a prep team for
CIN-3.
”

              “Huh. I see why you and Leg never worked out,” he noted, leaning to root through the vehicle, brimming in unfamiliar gadgetry. He extracted one which resembled a titanium spider, its center a milky, shifting orb.

              “And you just want to see her for personal reasons, yeah?” Vector pressed. “You’re not going to pass along her location to your boss or the police or the duke, then?”

              “Of course n–Hey!” he shouted, tempted to punch this kid. Vector set his creation right on the crown of Liam’s head, its spindly legs pinching into his scalp, its processing unit bleeping steadily as it measured his heart rate, oxygen level, perspiration. “Of course not!” he repeated. “Get this piece of shit off me before I take the key out of your back!”

              The spidery device’s orb flared emerald and it made a proper
ding!

             
“Fantastic,” Vector chirped. “It all checks out. You’re telling the complete and honest truth, even about wanting to kill me.”

              “What the hell, man–” Liam swore as the robotic thing crawled down from his head and leapt from his shoulder to Vector’s hands.

              “It’s quite simple, really,” the other boy replied. “This one’s called a Mental Meter. Hey, baby.” He gave his creation a queer little kiss and toggled its center, rendering the color again milky and idle. “Gauges the common bodily symptoms of a lie, calculates, and reports. I’ve got to get the rest of it back . . . before someone really gets hurt.” He suddenly became less boastful, and more furtive. “There’s some pretty dangerous stuff in there. Anyway! Legacy? You might find her at the aerial docks. Just because you don’t see it at first doesn’t mean it won’t show itself, so just walk to the very end, and you’ll see what I mean.”

              The young inventor saluted Liam and darted back into the fray.

              Liam forged through the throng and ducked down a narrow alleyway, sprinting toward the aerial docks.

              As he ran, the radio waves of
CIN-3
trembled overhead. Dyna Logan, even after losing her sentries to the state of emergency, remained in her tower. “Although Chance for Choice leader Exa Legacy defines these intruders as refugees, arguing that the city of Icarus has resources enough to accommodate the inflation to our populace. Of course, Exa Legacy is also a notorious proponent of the abolishment of the Companion Laws, which sustain our limited environment by prohibiting superfluous or inefficient procreation. Similarly, New Earth Extraneous Relocation serves us through the displacement of unproductive elements to environments which provide them the opportunity to continue servicing the whole of our society while not burdening it.”

              Only a few blocks away, Neon Trimpot heaved a damaged automaton through the glass display window of a five-story finery boutique. An opportunist of the highest order, he could recognize the perfect moment to loot when it presented itself. Many people, prodded to panic by the state of emergency, the occasional blast echoing outside, and the sight of running pedestrians and scuffles in the street, had closed up their shops. Even if they hadn’t, any sentries appointed to private businesses had been diverted to stem the uproar at the police station.

              Farther still down the street, Legacy’s old boss, Ferguson Cook, hunkered just behind his office door, an unregistered musket trained on the front of the store. Pierot, his office automaton, stared emptily ahead, his key removed. All lights had been doused.

              The Widow Coldermolly hobbled past Cook’s Glass & Metal Fusion, her brass cocker spaniel clinking and yipping as it trundled alongside her. The Widow squinted at each gray-garbed fugitive who raced by. No, not him. No, not him. They’d been separated from each other for forty-four years. The last time she’d seen him – Hubert, named after his father, the man she’d loved so long ago – he’d been only a newborn infant, torn from his incubator and spirited away by N.E.E.R. due to being “unverified” or “unapproved” or some other complete bullshit. If there was truly a day that she’d lost her mind, it’d been that one. What would he look like now? Was he even still alive?

              Constable Wesley lay amid utter anarchy, head lulled to the side, crumbled at the reception desk of the police department and dead to the machinations of the rebels, the refugees, or the mobs of citizens. People stepped on him in their fever to come or go from the place.

              The mass production units of the industrial territory continued sweating, wheezing, and churning their cranks, Dyna Logan’s frantic reportage rattling through overhead speakers. Occasionally, a worker would pause, gulp, and stare off into the distance. A supervisor might snap at them to move along, everything was fine, keep working, but . . . neither of the two would believe it. They were merely puppeteering out their roles in this society. The worker and the boss.

              Behind the factories, Groundtown struggled toward a drowsy state of semi-alertness. Glitch, chugging down his third Connect the Dots in the back office of his House of Oil, had an uneasy crawling in the pit of his stomach, even with the Calm in his system. It wasn’t enough Calm. This couldn’t bode well, though a glance out the window made the day seem an average Saturday. A glance out his office door revealed the typical oil den, its patrons strewn, blissfully mired in chemical torpor. Still . . . still . . . this couldn’t bode well. The rage of the people, the imbalance added by the fugitives, the inexperienced duke, the reduced manpower of the city. He’d heard that the jails had lost their prisoners.

             
Then again,
he thought, cheering,
those prisoners will need places to stay, won’t they? Perhaps they would pay dearly for the discretion of their keeper.

              Across from the business district and aerial docks, which cut between Groundtown and Lion’s Head like a fence, Abner was mirroring Glitch so precisely that it would dishearten him to become aware of it. He, too, was locked in a room as if it were a safe and he the riches. He drank a tall, cool glass of mossy green, and he drank it quickly, urging it to work. His greatest fears had been realized. In truth, this was likely Malthus’ greatest fear as well. Not Chance for Choice, as some may have thought; not the upset of the Companion system, or even of the whole monarchical constitution; not even this madness in the streets, perpetrated by his own people. The rise of N.E.E.R. was what he had likely treasured, in his heart of hearts, as his greatest fear. This was why the deliveries of Calm and Curiosity had always taken precedence. If there were ever a revolt on Old Earth, the manufacturing and even operational capacities of Icarus would grind to a halt, never mind the moral dilemma a spotlight on these orphan slaves would conjure, and the small matter of lying to so many citizens who had lost children over the years.

              Abner strode to the bay window, which peered out onto the courtyard of Lion’s Head, tugging his silk drapes to the side.
Thank god for high walls,
he thought. By surveying the eerily still cobblestones and limp flag of Icarus, the sheen of fog precipitating, he would never have known of the riots centered in the business district, so nearby.

              Perhaps, even if he strode outside, he would not hear it?

              Abner edged toward the front door of his home, grasped the knob, and twisted.

              A low, gray sky huddled near the glass panels of the dome, the gentle roar of rain outside their microenvironment, a light drizzle precipitating within.

             
If only Malthus were here,
Abner thought.
And not that damn boy . . . It will be okay. It will . . . will . . .
He lost his train of thought, staring after the specter of total destruction still looming at the back of his mind.

Vector had rescued almost all his inventions from the evidence locker of the Icarus City Police Department, beginning with the very smallest (the eyeball for the ocular bot, which hadn’t been his, he knew, but Legacy’s) and advancing toward the absolute largest, which would never fit into that damn rickshaw and he knew it. The electric cannon. Its function was quite simple, really: it collected the ambient electricity in the air and culminated those molecules into the glass chamber. The project was unfinished and highly volatile. He had yet to design parameters which would mitigate the collection of the electricity, and so the likelihood of creating an incidental ball of lightning was . . . far too high. In truth, it only worked theoretically, and he considered abandoning it altogether. He’d never even tried to use the thing himself.

But when he returned to the police station for the last time, he was halfway down to the evidence locker before seeing the electric cannon. Two deranged blokes had already liberated it for him, and were jostling it with the delirium of mob mentality, up the steps and back into the main room, back toward the street, as if this were nothing but some really big gun to wave.