Морган Райс: Ascent

She tried to count the minutes that passed, tried to keep some track of the time that was ebbing away, but there was no easy way to do it. Her body kept her eyes on the work, not on the progress of the sun, and if she got hungry or tired, she didn’t feel it. In the deepest recesses of her mind, Luna understood now how the controlled were so fast and strong: they didn’t care about the pain or the tiredness that would have stopped most ordinary people; where most people stopped well short of the limits of what their bodies could do, the controlled were pushed to those limits all the time by the aliens who commanded them.

Who command us, Luna corrected herself.

She didn’t want to think of herself as one of them, but Luna wasn’t sure how to distract herself from any of it. She couldn’t shut her eyes to block it out. She couldn’t stop herself from doing any of this. The most that she could do was try to grasp for memories of her life before this: sitting with Kevin on the shore of the lake when he’d told her about his illness, going to school and… and…

She latched onto a memory, thinking about one day when she’d been due to meet up with Kevin after school. They’d planned to go down to a pizza place on the corner not far from their houses. She could remember the feeling, what it had been like walking through their town, heading for a spot that had been just theirs, that no one else had known about, behind one of the wooden fences that surrounded an old house a little way along that no one had lived in for years.

Getting there meant clambering through the fork in the old tree that kept a gap clear among a stack of old junk, then running along the boards of a low roof in just the right pattern that her feet wouldn’t fall through, all the while making sure that no one who might shout at her for being somewhere she shouldn’t be saw her.

In other words, it was exactly the kind of route that Luna loved to run along. She made her way along it with the kind of speed and willingness to get muddy that would probably have made her parents sigh if they saw it. While she ran, she found herself thinking about Kevin, wondering if today would be the day when he got around to asking if he could kiss her.

Maybe he wouldn’t; he could be pretty oblivious about things sometimes.

She made her way through the gardens, over toward the spot where she and Kevin were due to meet. She heard a noise from beyond the fence, and saw Kevin and a couple of other boys she hadn’t seen before.

“What are you doing back here?” one asked. “Hiding away so no one can find you?”

“I’m not hiding,” Kevin insisted, which Luna guessed was just about the worst thing he could have done.

“Are you saying that I’m a liar?” the boy demanded. He pushed Kevin, so that Kevin scraped back against the wall. “Are you calling me a liar?”

Luna slipped through the gap in the fence. “I am,” she declared. “I’m saying that you’re a liar, and a bully, and if you give me a couple of seconds, I’ll probably think of plenty of other nasty things to call you too.”

He spun toward her. “You’d better run. This is between me and him.”

“And your friend, let’s not forget that,” Luna said.

“You’re being smart because you think I won’t hit a girl! Well—”

Luna punched him in the nose, as much because she was getting bored waiting for him to actually do something as anything else. He roared and set off running after her as Luna sprinted away.

She didn’t lead him back the way she’d come, because that was her route, but she knew plenty of others. Just for fun, she cut across the garden where they always had their pool filled, hearing a splash as one of the boys missed his turn. From there, she scrambled up onto one of the nearby roofs, then over through the park, then across into the garden where the big, angry dog lived, taking care to only step in the spaces out of range of its chain. A snarl and a shriek of anger behind Luna told her that the second of the boys had fallen behind.

“I’ll get you for this!” he yelled out.

Luna laughed. “Not unless you want to have to explain to people how I managed to punch you and get away with it.”

She ran back in the direction of Kevin, who was waiting there with the confidence of someone who’d seen this game before.

“You know, I could have taken him,” he said, trying to look tough.

Luna managed not to laugh. “But it’s more fun this way. Come on, you can buy me pizza for rescuing you.”

“But you didn’t rescue me. I could have taken him…”

Luna smiled at the memory, or would have if she’d been able to move her face. She tried to think of the bully’s name, because she was sure that she’d known it once. What bully though? What had she been thinking about? The fact that she couldn’t remember made Luna pause in terror. She’d been thinking about it just a moment ago, and now it was gone, like… like…

Luna tried to grasp the memories, she really did. She knew that she had memories; a whole lifetime’s worth. She had friends, and a life, and parents… she definitely had parents, so why couldn’t she remember their faces ? Maybe she didn’t have parents. Maybe all of this was just some sick joke. Maybe she’d always been like this, and she was just defective somehow, feeling that she was different as a distraction from the work that the aliens needed her to…

No , Luna thought fiercely, I’m me. I’m Luna. They transformed me, and I have real memories… somewhere .

She wasn’t sure where, though. Every time she tried to grab for what felt like the beginnings of a memory, it slipped away into a great fog of thoughts that felt as though it was consuming every part of her. Luna tried to drag herself away from that fog, but it was creeping in more and more around the edges of who she was, seeming to fill everything, carrying away small pieces of memories, of words, of personality.

Suddenly, she saw something. It was just different enough to snap her out of it, even if just for a second.

There was a man approaching. Moving forward without fear. A real man. Not controlled.

How could that be?

Where Luna and the others moved with an almost mechanical synchronization, he moved forward in furtive little darts and stutters, with what looked like some kind of gun cradled in his arms.

He didn’t look like a soldier, though. He looked more like a pirate, crossed with a professor. His hair was wild and spiked, while half a dozen earrings dotted one ear, and he had the beginnings of an unkempt beard. He was wearing a tweed jacket and button-down shirt over jeans and hiking boots. He wasn’t wearing a mask, which made no sense at all.

Luna moved to meet him, her hands coming up to grab for him fast enough that he couldn’t even begin to jump back, or maybe he just didn’t want to try. Even though he was a grown-up and she was just a kid, she had enough strength to hold him in place while her mouth opened wide and then wider still, a great cloud of vapor seeming to boil up in her throat as if waiting to be released. Feeling almost guilty, she breathed it out toward the man, enfolding him in a cloud of vapor thick enough to leave him coughing.

Luna stepped back, the aliens who controlled her obviously waiting for him to transform. He stood there, though, lifting the gun he held, and Luna felt a rush of fear. She might not feel pain, but she was pretty sure that if someone did enough damage to her, she would still be able to die. For a moment, she found herself hoping that the vapor she’d breathed out would take hold before he got a chance to fire. She didn’t want to die. Then she felt guilty for even thinking that. She shouldn’t wish this on anyone.