Static Ruin Read online

  Pale grabs my hand and tugs at it. I pull my eyes away from the statue’s face slowly, my other senses returning as a distant part of my mind screams for attention. I hear the noises then, the clunks and clanks of armed people approaching—a sound I know too well, a sound that woke me every morning as a child, and many mornings since.

  They stream out of the tunnels like ants; fifteen or so women, a few men, and some others. Most have guns—ballistics, lasers, and wavers—the random assortment of a militia, rather than an army.

  I raise my hands slowly and hold them up, mind tingling with readiness, the statue in my likeness forgotten for the moment.

  The leader removes her rebreather, revealing a thick-featured face, olive skin, and deep-set eyes. “Get down here,” she says, voice resounding from the dome walls. “Slowly.”

  I chuckle quietly and the noise vibrates in my rebreather. I lower a hand glacier-slow to take hold of Pale. “It’ll be alright.”

  “I know,” he says brightly. He lifts his free hand to his mouth to whisper conspiratorially: “Should we kill them?”

  I crouch and hold his gaze. “No, Pale. Never unless we need to, alright?” Apparently I’ve been skipping the ethics part of our telekinetic lessons.

  “I said ‘slowly,’ not ‘ignore me,’” the woman calls out.

  Pale and I walk down the polished wooden steps, tracked by suspicious eyes and all those weapons. We stop when we reach the bottom; behind the gathered crowd, dimly lit tunnels curve off into darkness.

  “Who sent you?” the leader demands. She doesn’t wait for an answer before barking, “Check them for weapons.”

  Three women peel away from the group and step forward. Two are armed and they stay back, one gun aimed at me, the other aimed at Pale, while the third approaches to frisk us. She’s pure genefreak, a mass of muscles rippling beneath heavy overalls, gills neatly lining both sides of her neck.

  “Be gentle with him,” I say, noticing the rapid rise and fall of Pale’s chest.

  The woman checks under Pale’s arms and down his sides, her massive paws large enough to wrap around his whole torso. Pale scrunches his eyes closed and breathes loudly, trying to push the woman from his mind—a technique I taught him to help him disassociate.

  “What’s in here?” the genefreak asks, reaching for Ocho’s satchel. I was so worried about Pale, I forgot about that little terror.

  “I’d leave it if I were you.”

  The woman looks at me with open disdain and reaches for the clasps.

  The instant the bag opens, Ocho flashes out with a rawr. Claws extended, she latches onto the woman’s arm, biting and scratching viciously. The genefreak screams and stumbles back, her two guards bringing their guns up.

  “No!” Pale yells. Ocho leaps free just as Pale’s psychic blast tosses the women aside. Ocho lands on all fours with her hackles up, the tiny beast puffed out fiercely.

  There’s a clatter of guns being cocked, loaded, and charged as the rest of the militia reacts. I inhale deep and throw my arms out; each person a grain of sand, lifted up and tossed aside. Some crash into the statue, others strike the dome hard, impacts leaving cracks in the glass.

  I grab Pale by the shoulder and spin him toward me, press his face into my stomach. “It’s alright,” I say, then I pull the rebreather from my face because it’s hard to be comforting through a mask. “It’s alright. No one’s going to hurt us.”

  There’s a loose chorus of groans as people push themselves up from the ground.

  “Just leave the guns where they are,” I say, “and no one has to get hurt. I am a tired, irritated fucking space witch, and right now I’ve got some questions that need answers. Like, why the fuck do you have a giant statue of me in here?”

  Used to be a time when I hated labels like “space witch,” but honestly, it’s better than “mass murderer.”

  The leader brushes at her clothes and walks over, stopping close. Her eyes are soft now, but intense, darting within their sockets as she studies my face. Behind her the others peer at me with jaws slack, glancing to the statue for proof or guidance. One of the men starts crying, hands clasped and pressed against his lips; others whisper quiet prayers.

  Ever since Seward—since the authorities condemned my actions and the media plastered my face on every screen across the galaxy—I’ve gotten strange looks. The few people who have recognized me have fallen silent, turned pale, run, or some combination thereof. But this? This is different.

  “Stand down,” the leader says firmly; “she’s one of us.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I don’t believe it.” The woman extends a hand to touch my face, but stops short and lets it drop to her side. “Sorry, how rude; I’m Dima,” she says.

  “Mars.”

  “Oh, we know who you are now. With the mask . . . we couldn’t tell. You’ll want to see him right away.”

  I swallow hard and a blunt ache travels down my throat. I’m not ready. “Sure,” I say, the single word strangled from my vocal cords.

  Dima turns and dismisses the group. They linger and continue to stare, then collect their weapons and slowly pull away one at a time. They wander down the corridors beneath the dome and disappear into the shadows.

  “What did you mean when you said I’m one of you?” I ask Dima. She’s older than I am, by ten years at least—older than any of the girls in MEPHISTO’s facility when I was a child.

  “Marius began his experiments here. Many of us are Teo’s Sons and Daughters.” My shock must be obvious, because Dima shakes her head. “Not like that . . . there were only the two of you. It’s simply what we call ourselves.”

  “Teo’s heirs,” I say under my breath.

  “And what a grand inheritance he gave us,” Dima says.

  I nearly laugh, but stop myself when I see her severe sincerity.

  “Come; let’s go.” Dima rounds the statue, brushing the wood with her fingertips. She stops and waits in the mouth of a tunnel.

  I rub my hand over Pale’s head, short blond hairs pushing back against my skin. “You feel okay?”

  His brow furrows and his eyes scrunch in thought. He shrugs.

  “If you feel like you’re going to pass out, let me know. Where’s Ocho?”

  Pale points to Ocho digging in the loose dirt at the base of the statue, covering her shit so it won’t give her away to predator or prey.

  “You couldn’t have done that outside?”

  She glances up at me, paws still busily working in the dirt. When Ocho’s done I put her and her filthy paws back into the satchel before she can desecrate anything else.

  We join Dima in the tunnel, now lit warm yellow from tiny bulbs embedded in the polycrete walls. Dima walks slowly, hands clasped behind her back, her eyes black pits in the dim light.

  “The boy is . . . like us,” Dima says. When she’s not barking orders her voice is caramel smooth, flow unsteady, overlong gaps between some words.

  “Pale. I mean, that’s his name. I brought him here to try and get help. He has seizures when he pushes himself too hard.”

  Dima hums. “We don’t have that problem with our boys. I don’t know . . . that we’ll be able to help.”

  “But Teo might.”

  “Marius might,” she agrees.

  It’s strange to hear his name spoken with such awe. To me it’s just another name. I never had a “mom” or “dad,” no one to wear those hallowed titles.

  The tunnel winds and splits, branching in various directions, each intersection marked with signs like you’d find in any city.

  “You built a whole city underground?”

  “Not exactly,” Dima says. “We buried it.”

  She pauses in a cavernous space. Here, polycrete gives way to soil, walls lined with tree roots like knotted lengths of hair. The chamber is roofed in hardened x-glass—drifts of ash roll across the curved surface and starlight shines through, silhouettes of trees swaying in a breeze we can’t feel here under the earth.
r />   “The wildfires,” I say.

  She nods. “We couldn’t fight them . . . and we couldn’t afford to rebuild every time one came through. Simpler to reinforce where needed, build tunnels, and bury the rest.”

  “Smart,” I say.

  “It was his idea, of course.”

  “Is there a dock someplace I can store my ship?”

  “There’s a hangar beside the Governor’s Residence. But surely it can wait ’til morning . . . it’s a long walk back.”

  “I’ve got a chauffeur,” I say with a smirk.

  “In that case.”

  Dima bursts me the dock coordinates and I pass them on to Waren with a note telling him to be careful. Statue or no, Marius or no, I don’t trust these people.

  * * *

  The tunnel slants downward, taking us deeper underground until we reach a set of wide stairs. At their base we come to a huge courtyard outside the Governor’s Residence.

  A building as large and important as this would normally use height to impose on the landscape, but in the buried city of Sommer they had to take a different approach. The mansion’s dark façade is hewn from stone and veined with constellations glittering in shades of silver, blue, gold, and brass. Set deep into the cavern, it looks like an ancient tomb uncovered by archeologists rather than a building recently interred. Pyrite columns support the roof of the world, shimmering orange-red-yellow with reflected fire from burning pillars around the courtyard. The sharp smell of kerosene lingers despite the constant hum of air filters, audible over the flickering of the flames.

  The doors to the mansion are huge slabs of white timber, polished to a molten sheen and etched with intricate geometric patterns, bordered with words in a language I don’t recognize.

  “He’s expecting us,” Dima says. She extends a hand, offering for me to go first.

  I nod her forward instead. “I insist,” I say, smile stretched across my face like a death mask.

  “Very well.”

  Dima walks ahead, seeming to grow as we approach the door—her back somehow straighter, chin raised.

  I follow her inside, holding Pale’s hand firmly when he clutches at mine. We could be inside a lavish house on any world in the imperium: large and well lit, decorated in a way that speaks to wealth but not necessarily taste. Walls adorned with abstract art, boring as it is inoffensive.

  Behind me, Dima says, “He has asked for a few more minutes. While we wait, perhaps you would like to see her.”

  “Her?”

  “Your mother.”

  My heart sinks and swells, rattles my rib cage with jackhammer pounding. “I—I don’t—”

  “She’s through here.”

  Dima walks deeper into the house and I wait in the foyer—not so much hesitating as stuck in place. Pale pulls at my hand and I let the momentum move me. We trail Dima down a long corridor, walls glinting with gold damask. She opens a heavy translucent door and a heady floral fragrance wafts from within.

  The room is a cube of white, containing a smaller glass cube in the center of the space. Terran flowers surround it on all sides—lilacs, tulips, frangipanis—every petal white. I drop Pale’s hand and walk in slowly, legs struggling to carry me closer to her.

  It all makes sense now, the statue, the looks of awe. My mother sits preserved behind the glass, dead. Except she’s not my mother, she’s me. I could be looking into a dirty mirror. Her hair is black, with gray streaking from her temples, collected in a bun like the one I’m still wearing. Fine wrinkles scatter from her eyes and mouth, only visible when I stand right at the glass, pressing my palm against the cool surface, my breath gathering as condensation.

  She’s sitting in an ornate wooden chair with hands clasped in her lap. There’s no tattoo on the back of her right hand, no brand to delineate her within an experimental program, but otherwise we look . . . exactly . . . the same.

  I’m a clone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I drop to the floor and sit cross-legged, flattening a stand of tulips, eyes still stuck on my mother.

  Ocho climbs out of the satchel and into my lap. I don’t even stop her kneading my flesh with her claws, too struck by what’s before me. When Ocho stops and settles, I rest a hand on her back and absently stroke her long gray fur. “I guess we’re both clones of our mother.”

  “You didn’t know?” Dima asks from the doorway.

  I shake my head.

  “You were always more than just a clone,” Dima says. “You . . . were the culmination of all Marius’s work.”

  Pale knocks on the glass, as if testing that the woman is really dead. He looks from her to me, not scared or confused, but curious. “Mars?” he says softly. “Is there another one of me somewhere?”

  “I don’t think so, little man.”

  He considers this for a moment with his lips pursed.

  “What was her name?” I ask Dima.

  “Cilla Jiang.”

  I sigh. “She’s not really my mother.”

  “She carried you; she died giving birth to you. She was . . . as much a mother as any could be.”

  No one should die in childbirth, not today, not with access to even the most rudimentary medical facilities. I lean my forehead against the glass and let my eyes land on Ocho, pushing her head into my hand so I can scratch her chin.

  “If I’m her clone then my father’s not my father.”

  “You were a daughter to him; he loved you, you and Sera both.”

  “Don’t you dare say her name,” I spit, my face twisted in rage and anguish, vision blurred by tears.

  “Forgive me,” Dima says. “I remember her. I was maybe nine when she left, and she was a toddler . . . but I remember her. Not you though. I don’t know why.”

  “Because Teo discarded me the moment I was born. But sure, he loved us so fucking much.”

  I smack the glass with the base of my fist. I’m not trying to break it—for that I’d use my mind—but I need to hit something, and the slow thudding beat gives structure to the maelstrom of thoughts roiling through my head.

  What little I knew about my past is a lie.

  “What was she like?” I ask. “Sera?”

  “She was kept away from the rest of us because she was special, but she’d break out of your father’s lab when she wanted someone to play with.”

  I give a wry smile. “Breaking out was one thing she was good at. What about my mother?”

  Dima hesitates. “It’s not my place to say.”

  Sealed under glass like a fucking butterfly on display. Whatever she was like, I’m sure she deserved better than that.

  “Do you have any video, audio; anything that might help me get to know her?”

  “Of course,” Dima says. “I’ll see what I can gather.”

  “I was hoping to find you here.”

  I spin at the man’s voice—low-pitched, oozing smug condescension. It suits his face perfectly: hooded eyes, small nose, thin lips pulled back in a certain smile—a face you want to punch. He wears a white robe hemmed in mud and stitched in gold thread. I grab Ocho and put her on my shoulder. She climbs into the hood of my cloak as I push up from the flower bed.

  “Who are you meant to be?” I ask, brushing dirt from my ass.

  He presses his hands together and bows; I barely stop my eyes from rolling.

  “Neer Dehner, acting planetary governor and assistant to your father. I took on the affairs of Sanderak so that he could focus on his work.” He places an odd significance on “he” and “his,” as though the words were naming some god.

  “How noble of you,” I say deadpan. He reacts as though I were sincere, nodding his head to one side.

  “The people here view him as a father figure and more. He would get little done without an intermediary.”

  Intermediary or high priest? I think, eyes scanning his lavish robes once more.

  “Before I take you to see your father, shall the four of us share a meal? We have a variety of unique fowl here on Sander
ak, and my personal chef has recipes grand enough for the emperor themself.”

  Pale looks at me expectantly. I’m as hungry as you are, buddy, and I’ve had nothing but prison slop and travel food for months, but . . . “We’ll take a rain check; I’ve travelled too far and been through too much shit to wait any longer.”

  He bows again, his eyes distant when he straightens. Moments later, four guards appear in the hallway, carrying ballistic pistols and wearing body armor beneath cloaks fashioned like Dehner’s robes—white with gold filigree suggesting the soft curves of a moth’s wing.

  “Would you like me to take her?” Dima asks.

  “No, thank you, Dima; I’ll take Mars to see him.”

  “She should know the truth.”

  He quiets her with a glance. If I didn’t dislike this guy already, the harshness of that look would have done it.

  “The truth will be made apparent in time. Come, he is ready for us now.”

  I turn back to Cilla Jiang, take in my dead and future self once more, then leave the floral mausoleum with Pale by my side and Ocho weighing heavy in my hood.

  Dima closes the door after us; it seals with a beep and the clank of a locking mechanism. She stays behind as Pale and I follow Neer and his guard to the rear of the Residence. We exit through a door leading outside—if an underground cavern can be called “outside.”

  “Marius spends very little time within the Residence,” Dehner says. “He has an affinity for nature and the natural. He says he feels connected to the heart of Sanderak when he has his hands in the dirt.”

  It’s dark here, darker than the front courtyard, lit only by fireflies massed on the high curved walls. Tree roots fall from the ceiling to form thick columns, lining a path further into darkness. Underfoot, polycrete gives way to packed dirt, and Neer stops, flanked by his soldiers.

  “His sanctuary is just ahead. I’ll wait here with the boy.” Dehner holds a hand out toward Pale, but he puts an arm around my waist and squeezes.

  “No,” I say, “he’ll stay with me.”

  “Very well. I’ll warn you now,” Dehner continued: “he won’t be what you expect.”