Ashes of the Fall Read online

  I take the letter out of my back pocket—yeah, a paper one—and slide it out of the envelope, careful not to crease it more. Even after a decade and a half, my brother’s penmanship is unmistakable, the giant, rolling “M” in his signature resembling a mountain cascade.

  Luke,

  I need to see you by tomorrow. Come to 1611 Park Boulevard. Enclosed is something to help you. You’ll have to figure your way through customs on your own, though. I have an urgent project that requires your skills.

  Matt

  For a first correspondence, it’s remarkably light on details or hidden meanings. Efficient. But the HoloBand he included was registered to Mr. Reynolds—good enough to buy a ticket without much incident, not good enough to get through customs without a little ingenuity. After all, our faces don’t quite match.

  But I guess Matt trusted that Pops passed down the old family secrets. And he wouldn’t be wrong.

  I take a deep breath and walk towards the seamless glass doors. A buzzer sounds, as a friendly voice says, “Welcome to the Park Estate Residences. Please stand still and wait for a HoloBand scan.”

  I consider running, but if Matt didn’t clear my fake identity on the list, then his little project is already doomed.

  The doors open, confirming that my genius brother didn’t suddenly become stupid in the last decade and a half. “Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. You are pre-approved for entry to Apartment 3121B on the three hundredth floor. Please proceed to the designated elevator and have a wonderful day.”

  I walk through the lobby, noting the empty reception desk. Either the greeter’s job has been outsourced to the automated scanner, or someone’s on their lunch break. I smell what I think is tuna, and decide on the latter.

  A potential obstacle to consider later—especially depending on the particulars. Whatever Matt has to say, the fewer lies and scams I have to run on the denizens of this fine city, the better. Overexposure would result in what the corporate folks have dubbed career suicide—except, in this case, the death analogy is actually apt.

  I catch a glimpse of a wall screen. Old Silver Fox is at it again, talking up the impending official announcement. Rumor has it, the Inner Circle’s been planning something big down South. A solution to the comparatively rampant lawlessness in the West—and maybe even the Lost Plains. New Manhattan and its surrounding areas are largely spared the scourge of our criminal presence by stringent security measures.

  To the right of the desk is a wide, welcoming hallway lined with dozens of elevators. Mine is already open, a golden-railed carriage inviting me inside.

  “Welcome, Mr. Reynolds,” a different voice says as I enter the carriage—still robotic, but this one female.

  I could lie and say I’d get used to it, but all the surveillance and eyes aren’t worth any amount of luxury. A little television screen above the ornamental buttons plays a news scroll. This building, though not quite as tall as some of the others in the city, stands over three thousand feet tall, and Matt—impresario that he is—has apparently secured a spot near the top.

  Which means I’m in for a two or three minute ride.

  “Allies of the Circle put down a group of rebels on the edges of the Lost Plains today,” Old Silver Fox announces with faux-gravitas, “ten rebels were killed, and another twenty-two were arrested for attempting to steal state property in the aftermath of what officials have dubbed a minor volcanic eruption.”

  It cuts to footage of the area—asphalt cracked, a liquor store burning, cars overturned. I wonder who the Circle sent out there to capture the video. The fringe between the West and the Lost Plains is a place I wouldn’t ever go on foot.

  The camera zooms in on two handcuffed men being led away by uniformed Circle officers. A couple of assholes who figured that, maybe, the borders would be vulnerable because Mother Nature crept in.

  Well, they were wrong. Even in the Wild West, as I heard a couple of lawyers in the New Manhattan customs lines call it, there are still eyes.

  “Experts have also been monitoring minor tremors and small quakes indicative of tectonic plate shifts along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. There is some worry amongst citizens that a quake of extreme magnitude could trigger effects beyond the immediate area. Circle officials have indicated that such worries are unwarranted, and have presented their own studies confirming that such claims are dangerous and irresponsible.”

  I swear I can see the gray-haired newscaster wince when he says confirming—mourning the death of his own journalistic integrity. When he started out, sometime around the twenties, there might have been a shred of honor in the profession. Now, he might as well be the mouthpiece of the Chancellor himself.

  What are the chances of a massive volcanic eruption and quake within a few hours? Apparently none, according to the Circle’s reports. But all that exhaust, shifting soil and human wear and tear over the past century adds up.

  Still, from the footage, it seems like it’s just a warning shot. Nothing to be worried about.

  “In tech news,” the newsman says, his voice growing appropriately lighter, “the manufacturer of the popular Golden Nectar HoloBand 5 has announced that HoloBand 6 will soon be available. The upgrade, as with the last edition, is free for all current HoloBand owners with a ten-year subscription to the company’s HoloNet networking service. A reminder to those east of the Great Lakes yet to undergo HoloBand installation: it will be mandatory to receive and send payment, traverse state lines and vote for local elections by the end of the year. Those who refuse installation will be subject to sanction.”

  Local elections. What a sham. I touch the back of my neck, where the fresh incision still stings.

  The elevator dings and the doors open to reveal a red-carpeted hallway. The news shuts off, with the words Have a Lovely Day written in a romantic script on the screen above the insignia of the Circle-owned real estate holding company. When I step out, the elevator doors snap shut.

  An electronic arrow appears behind the pastel yellow wallpaper, flashing green to my right before disappearing in a soft, effusive glow. I follow its instructions, formulating an introduction as I go along the same-looking rows of doors.

  This should be easy.

  It’s what I do: manufacture trust, belief and friendship out of nothing. But what if something really matters, where the cost of failure or saying the wrong thing is high? You could argue that I was always playing with fire—con the wrong person, end up with a noose around my neck, swaying from a well-buffed light post.

  But that’s never been a particular concern of mine.

  This, though—it’s a feeling I can’t quite describe, or handle, because it’s so damn unfamiliar. My stomach turns over with dread as I continue past the endless rows of doors. I listen for sounds of life within, but they’re either soundproofed or the occupants browbeaten into silence.

  There are many things I could say to Matt, but one sticks in my mind.

  Why the hell did you leave?

  It’s an accusation, the wrong play, immediately sets the frame wrong. But it’s also the truth, and I can’t actually think of anything else, so I try to push everything from my mind as the hallway numbers tick down, the moment of truth growing closer with each step.

  Then, like I’ve been transported here by magic, I’m in front of Apartment 3121B, still with nothing good to say, no angle. I run my hands through my dark, neat hair, consider turning around, heading back to the far-safer and more predictable expanses of the Wild West, when I hear something.

  It sounds like a refrigerator.

  This shouldn’t be odd, but in the anti-septic, funereal silence of the endless hallway, it’s like the finale to a fireworks display. And when I get the courage to look up past my shoes, take in the actual door to 3121B in all its glory, I see that it’s already ajar.

  I look for a light, try to think for a chime I missed amidst a never-endin
g symphony of them. But no, unlike everything else in this technological haven, the doors are the type you open with lock and key—a quaint throwback to a time when a deadbolt was your best line of defense against thieves.

  With a cautious nudge from my knuckles, I push against the heavy wood. The hinges squeak. The hum—definitely a fridge—grows louder as the door swings open a little less than halfway, and I peek inside. Bright light from an uncovered window filters into the hall, and I squint as my eyes adjust.

  “Matt,” I say, my voice a couple levels up from a whisper, “you there?” Not wanting to be attacked by some sort of electronic guard-dog technology that I’m unaware of, I hang in the hallway, looking through the three-foot crack, taking in the apartment.

  Pretty standard, albeit nice—a kitchen island with granite countertops, chrome fixtures. Floor to ceiling windows that show a view of the river, almost all of New Manhattan—at least, the buildings that are shorter. Some of them mar the view, altering the landscape like pixels on a bum streaming feed. National Hall stands smack in the middle of it all, its white finish gleaming.

  Cherry floors, mahogany furniture that I can smell the age and expense of. On a wall, near a door that must lead to the bedroom, is a screen. I shouldn’t say it’s on the wall. The thing is the entire damn wall.

  Another door opens, and I jump high enough to almost hit my head on the frame. I turn around to see a long-haired woman hunched over, locking her door in a hurry.

  “Hey,” I call down, my voice loud despite only three or four doors separating us, “you know Matt?”

  “I don’t know anything,” she says, her eyes concentrated on the lock.

  “I’m, uh, I’m an old friend of his, and his door was open,” I say.

  She fumbles with her key, dropping it on the floor. I walk over, and she gives me a look like I might be a lion. Even my best at-ease smile and loosest posture do nothing. Her eyes narrow into gunner’s slits, staring out from behind a tousled mass of hair.

  “Don’t ask me questions,” she says, her eyes caught between me, her door, and the key, her body frozen by indecision.

  “Let me help with that,” I say, crouching down.

  “No,” she says, grabbing the key before I can get it. Then she jams it into the lock, almost wrenching off the brass knob in her haste to leave. “He was a good man. No trouble at all.”

  “Trouble,” I say, to her now retreating back, “why would he be trouble, ma’am?”

  The Hail Mary injection of down-home, aww shucks doesn’t do anything to stop her speedy getaway. I couldn’t have pushed her away faster if I had threatened to shoot her in the head.

  Which is when it occurs to me that, just maybe, New Manhattan and my home aren’t different at all. Keep your head down, avoid the cameras, never hear anything. Be more forgetful than an amnesiac, more courteous and pandering than a sixteen-year-old boy wanting to get in a girl’s pants.

  The beep at the base of my skull—the one that has, ever since the HoloBand was installed yesterday, given me a pre-programmed hourly countdown to this moment—announces that I’m ready for my appointment. I watch as the door to Matt’s apartment, already ajar, opens on its own, pushed by a phantom motorized hand.

  I find that I’m not immune to fear, my own heart now powering up into an eight-cylinder runaway beast fueled by what-ifs and I should not haves. But I’m here now, and I take long strides through the door, even though my body screams at me to run.

  “Matt, it’s Luke. I’m—” Which is when I see him.

  Matt, the edge of his golden hair visible, tangled with blood, behind the open door of the refrigerator.

  The wall television springs on, drawing my attention away from the grim scene. The same gray-haired newscaster announces, over a red-banded graphic declaring a National State of Emergency, that due to a massive eruption at the Yellowstone Volcano, all transcontinental travel will be indefinitely discontinued—with an official statement from the Chancellor to come.

  I see my face in the stainless steel reflection of the fridge, and it about sums everything up.

  There’s no grief.

  No fear, even.

  More the realization that, from here on, there’s no going back.

  Because the life I had once known had crumbled into dust.

  There is no such thing as fate. What people often mistake for divine intervention—or even the Machiavellian puppeteering of men—is often just coincidence, the product of pure chance. The grifter knows that with any game comes a dice roll.

  And mine just came up snake eyes.

  I must’ve known something like this would happen. Maybe that’s narcissism, or arrogance—but why else bother packing everything I own into a twenty pound pack that digs into my shoulder blades? If I was ever gonna go back to Seattle, then I would have left something behind.

  At least I’m prepared.

  The first thing I do, after shutting the door and throwing the deadbolt, is turn off the giant screen and put my pack down. I don’t need the newsman blaring in my ears about low visibility and atmospheric choking hazards. Visibility is clear enough on my end, and the outlook says I’m royally fucked.

  Running my hands through my hair like a hopeless girl before a first date, I edge back to the front of the apartment. Peek over the counter. Matt’s eye is staring back at me, lifeless, like a fish at the market.

  I retch and spray vomit into the pristine sink. An unfamiliar feeling takes hold of my throat. I try to talk myself down, use every trick I know. He was gone already. Dead for years. The end already happened. This person on the floor is a stranger.

  But I can’t lie to myself. It hurts, and I slide down the slick granite block, all the way to the floor. Breathing is a chore, and I’m trying to keep myself from crying.

  “Come on, come on,” I whisper through clenched teeth, “pull it together.” I force air in between the slits in my incisors, almost choking from the dryness that has overtaken my mouth.

  I always wondered why people cried when their heroes died. I get it now. It’s less about the person than the death of an ideal. You realize that, even if you get what you want—whatever it is that your hero has—it all ends the same for all of us.

  Ashes to ashes.

  Dust to dust.

  “All right, you pussy,” I say to myself, dragging my elbows up the kitchen island, “think.”

  The television screen flashes on again—I can’t control it. It does its own controlling. Surveillance feed footage, from outside. Two Circle Agents—Special Committee. I watch as the doors to the building open, the resolution so crisp that it’s like they’re right next to me.

  And it hits me, the reason I’m seeing this: they’re responding to a crime right here. A murder. Matt’s murder. And I’m the only one here.

  No amount of slick talking will get me out of this one. When you’re caught next to a dead body ten minutes after shots are fired, everyone assumes it’s you. And that’s good enough for the SC agents. If the soldiers at the Hyperloop station were assholes with delusions of grandeur, these guys are megalomaniacs with some semblance of actual grandeur.

  The feed snaps off, leaving me staring at a blank screen. Sunlight glints off the top right corner, from where the sun managed to sneak around some of the taller buildings.

  I have maybe five minutes, if I’m lucky, before they’re knocking down the door.

  My mind kicks into overdrive. This is what I’m good at—improvising, working on my feet. My revulsion dissipates. I walk around the island, recoil slightly at the sight of Matt, then close his eyes.

  Gunshot wound to the temple. Powder burns on the skin. Close proximity—that means he knew his killer. Body still warm. Not stiff. How soon could he have died before I got here? Shit—maybe only minutes. The murderer, riding one of the other three dozen elevators, could have passed me on the way down. I b
rush the hair out of his face. Nothing else out of the ordinary. His khakis and button-up shirt are both freshly pressed.

  Guess he was excited to see me.

  I check his pockets, finding a wad of cash, a keycard and a balled up note. The cash could do me some good, although I have to wonder what he’s doing with it. Paper money can’t be all that useful in New Manhattan, any more, with this being the first HoloBand required city.

  I stuff the note in my pocket without unraveling it, then look at the keycard. It’s clear, the golden chips at its bottom gleaming. No explanation, but it has the Circle’s insignia on it—a circle that’s not quite closed at the top. Like an upside down pair of headphones. In the gap, there’s a tiny star.

  What the hell is Matt doing with this? Could have something to do with the project. With a slight wince, I roll his head back and check the nape of his neck. No fresh incision or anything to indicate that his HoloBand has been tampered with.

  My internal clock indicates that I need to get moving. But fleeing isn’t an option. With all the cameras, facial recognition in the city, checkpoints—I’d never make it out of New Manhattan. My fingerprints are all over the place and my face would have a primetime spot on Old Silver Fox’s newsfeed until they hunted me down.

  I glance up in the corner, where I’m greeted by the eye of a camera.

  No light is on.

  Maybe if I check his internal security logs from his workstation—if he has one—I can solve this thing, clear my name. Matt has to have one. When we were kids, I’d always go into his bedroom, lit by the diffuse halo glow of his two monitors and the massive custom-built tower. The tap-tap of his keys was my bedtime story and lullaby, an assurance that everything was okay.

  I rush back around the island, towards the bedroom. Flinging the doors open, I find spartan furnishings—bed, nightstand, hallway to a bathroom. His closet has about thirty of the same colored shirts, along with matching khakis. Everything clean, well-ordered.

  No sign of a workstation.

  That’s not right at all. I rip open the door to the master closet, almost tearing it from the hinges, but there’s nothing here beyond a sea of same-colored pants. The bathroom yields a similarly fruitless result. I walk out, hands on my head, heartbeat rising, and sit down on the bed.