Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (52 page)

The pattern in the smog had shifted; the light felt as if it was weakening. She was not sure how long she had been sitting there, but her legs had gone numb and her breaths came in the short, spasmodic bursts that followed a hard cry. Almost a week had passed since she last saw her family, and defeat took a seat beside her. The thought her home was lost forever stole away the energy it would take to stand. She felt her sorrow leaking out and reined it in. Despite their heartlessness, these people did not deserve that.

Faces slid through her memories, some smiling and some bloody. All the people she could remember helping appeared and faded. She shivered. It did not matter how the world treated her; she was the Prophet, and she still had a job to do. Somewhere, someone could be hurt, and she could not turn a blind eye to them. She smiled as one more tear came forth. What did it matter if the world was cruel? The fleeting moments of intense love and gratitude whenever she helped someone made it worth all the misery.

A tenor voice fell over her from behind. “You all right, girl?”

She lifted her red-ringed eyes at a black man in his later fifties. He was as skinny as she, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit, with highlights of white in his hair and beard. A word upon a white patch at his breast had been drawn to resemble a speeding boxy vehicle.

“Don’t look like you’re doin’ too well there. You need any help?”

There
was
someone in this place with a heart. She jumped into him and cried from joy. He did not even cringe away from her smell.

The sound of his voice made her feel better. “Hey now. What’s your story?”

She wiped her face with both hands, but could not talk right away. After a few tries, she swallowed the lump. “I was kidnapped and I’m trying to go home.”

“Oh my.” He took her hand. “Did they make you take some kinda drug?”

“No.” She thought for a moment. “Are you asking because of my eyes?”

He nodded.

“Please don’t be afraid of me… I’m sigh-onic.”

“Oh, I see.” He patted the back of her hand. “Well, even psionics need to be wit’ their folks. Come on now… let’s get you to the police then. They’ll be able to help you.”

She bounced. Holding hands, she walked with him for a little more than a block when he stumbled to a halt. When she looked up, his face had frozen in a mask of shock and he clutched his chest.

“Sit,” she whispered, searching his life-shapes for what was wrong.

He complied; she felt his pulse racing faster and faster out of control. Something reached into him from outside, making his brain overwork the heart.

It was easy for her to set it right, but the man had passed out. Althea gave him a mental poke to wake him. When she stood, six young men appeared out of the crowd walking towards her, one of whom stared with intense concentration on the older man.

“Okay,
Prophet
, this is getting tiresome.” A man with a vest full of guns tossed a fluff of cobalt hair to the side.

She did not want to risk harm to the nice man. Without hesitation, she bolted into the nearest alley. The clamor of their pursuit echoed off the walls. She paid no attention to their orders to stop, and did not believe their promises not to harm her. An involuntary yelp came from her as her next step missed the ground. Flailing, she looked down at the metal tiles falling away as she rose into the air. No single point of contact touched her. An overall sense of pressure enveloped her as she ceased moving forward and hovered towards a building.

“Nice catch, Donnie. Can you hold her still? I don’t wanna take that bony little foot in the nuts.”

Althea craned her neck enough to look behind her. A man in a light grey suit held his arms out at her. Ripples in the strange force holding her still matched subtle changes in his facial expression. Others rushed over as the force pressed her into the wall. The sensation changed from lifting to crushing and it held her arms and legs still. Not even her finger was able to move. She screamed for help and begged them to let her go. A telempathic emanation of pity caused the force to weaken, and the metal wall slid against her cheek as she slipped an inch toward the ground. A hand went over her mouth and a familiar, high-pitched whine started up.

She tensed just before the rain of fire swam across her back. Hundreds of tiny needles pierced her skin. This time, she felt them dissolving. This time, she knew what it was and refused to let it work on her. None of the men noticed the luminous chemical running down her leg, forced out of her body. Or, if they saw it, mistook it for a sign of terror.

She closed her eyes and went limp.

That’s better. I’m being taken. Things are back to normal.

The strange force lowered her to the ground, and she let her body go where gravity took it. Hands rolled her onto her stomach and gathered her arms behind her back.

No. No. Please…
She did not realize she radiated her dread of being bound.

“You sure you wanna do that?” A voice from the left.

Someone standing by her head answered. “Ark will get pissed, wants us to be super nice to this one. She’s some kind of key to his master plan.”

“You wanna explain to him why we lost her?” The voice came from right above her.

“Dude… I shot a half-stick of sleepy time into her. What is she, seventy pounds? She’ll be out for two days.”

“Yeah, man, come on. It feels wrong tyin’ a kid. Sides, you know how Ark gets when us peons disrespect the Awakened.”

“Okay, fine, but if we lose her, I’m going to set your ball hairs on fire.” The man holding her arms let go.

Another man spat. “Just get her in the damn van.”

“Damn, this little bitch is fuckin’ rank. Where the fuck has she been sleeping?”

“From the smell, I’d say your sister’s pants.”

A hollow bell-like noise followed; she imagined someone’s face bouncing off a metal post.

“Fuck you.”

A kissing noise, lips smacked on empty air several times. “Your sister would.”

Someone growled. Boots scuffed around for a moment.

“Knock it the fuck off,” said a girl, who didn’t sound much older than Karina.

“Yeah man, stinks.” The deep voice quieted them. “Put her in the back of the van. The
very
back.”

An arm slid around her and one through her knees; she hung limp as someone picked her up. Her face slid against an armored vest, and she acted unconscious as they carried her. The heavy sound of a sliding metal door preceded the scratchy touch of automotive carpet. When the man who carried her moved away, she risked a peek at the inside of a van. Two voices outside on the left continued to argue about how to contain her in a way that would not make Archon upset with them.

The man who made her float tapped at the controls from the driver’s seat, making lights come on. Taking a silent breath, she thought about how much she missed Karina and Father. She fixated on how sad she felt on the street corner. Her face contorted with emotion; she sat up and opened the floodgates, letting every ounce of her sorrow slam into him.

He collapsed over the wheel and sobbed as if his entire family had died in front of him.

She sat up on her knees and slapped at the glowing buttons by the door. Slapping became pounding; she shot brief glances over her shoulder at the men outside, and pounding became kicking. A chance swipe of her hand hit the right thing somewhere, and it slid open. A radiant telempathic burst of confusion left the others holding their heads and staring into space for a moment, and she took off. By the time they chased her again, she had gotten a two-block lead. Althea turned at random until the sight of a shimmering pink light beckoned her toward a way to solve two problems at once.

Pausing long enough to be seen, she zipped around a corner and boosted her adrenaline as well as the muscles in her legs. Superhuman speed, no shoes, and steel sidewalk made her feet ache after four strides. She zoomed past the hologram to the top of a sunken stairway. Althea clung to the railing, half kneeling while she stole a few breaths and shuddered through the pain of overstressed muscles. As soon as they came into view, she waited for them to spot her and ducked into the dark, careful to avoid the strange line of light on her way down.

A passage led from the stairs into a black and white maze of tubes and girders. She ran through an open corridor for a short distance before squeezing under a low-hanging tangle of pipes. Pulling herself along the ground, she belly-crawled under the mass of plumbing to the far end of the room and scooted deep in places where only she could fit until she found a hiding place against the wall with enough room to sit up.

Motionless, she stared at the foreboding chair with the evil straps.

Althea still had an awful feeling.

uddled in the dark, Althea gathered her knees under her chin and glanced up at an evil silver sphere that swelled from the ceiling above the demonic chair. A dozen metal arms, studded with an assortment of horrible-looking sharp things sat poised to inflict death. The bloodstained implements seemed to look right back at her, like a hungry animal appraising its meal. Cold concrete touched her back. She shivered, wondering how many died there.

The raiders who had kept her ankles handcuffed together for fear she would run had a “doctor” with a similar machine. More than half the time he used it, it tore the patient to bits. While the senile old fool had not intended to hurt anyone, watching him laugh at explosions of blood and gore was too much to bear. By her memory, she would have been about eight or nine then. Her own voice echoed in her mind, yelling “
go away
.” He had gotten up from his desk and walked out. She never saw him again. This metal-armed horror seemed to be in better repair than the one at the raider camp, it had no visible rust, and at least four more arms. Still, such a device had no place attempting to help people. It looked
sinister.

Archon’s lackeys stumbled down the stairs. The area flooded with blinking lights and a loud blaring noise. They shouted, but she could not make out what they said over the clamor. Men came from deeper within and ran past her hiding spot, oblivious to the little figure covered by pipe-shadows drawn in flashing red.

Gunfire erupted, interspersed with angry yelling. She trembled with each rapport, hating the violence. Two evils collided here; distasteful as it was, she tried to tell herself only good could come from this. When the sound of fighting reached full swing, she crawled out from under the pipes and slipped around a plastisteel wall to look for a rear exit.

The inner hallway had rough metal gridding for a floor, too painful to run on. Holding her arms up in an effort to lessen her weight, she gingerly stepped to the first available turn. A splash of color on the wall offered the promise of daylight.

When she rounded the corner, she froze at the sight of a massive shirtless man with two thick arms made of glinting metal. Black leather pants with armored plates on the thighs strained to contain his muscles. Tall plate-clad boots that seemed as if they would weigh as much as she did clanked to a halt. Metal covered the entire right half of his face, the eye on that side, an extending lens, glowed scarlet with mechanical light. His arms, proportionate to his size, gleamed; the image of a bodybuilder sculpted in charcoal-colored plastisteel.