Devana Files: Chapter 33
Ascendancy, Part 1
Note: This is a long chapter. I considered breaking it. Instead, I put a scene break halfway through. I don’t know how Substack will react to long chapters, so if you run into technical difficulties (e.g. cannot see the end because its cut off) let me know.
This is the Thirty-Third chapter. We are in the home stretch, with about forty chapters in all!
You may find earlier chapters here:
Space 2074: The lunar colony is the new Wild West. Sheriff Kate Devana goes off-colony to wrangle a fugitive con artist who bilked retirees for billions and is trying to escape to Mars on a deep space supply shuttle. But back home, robots are glitching, killing people, and she is the target of a corrupt Federal Agent looking to avenge the death of his former partner. Bodies are piling up faster than she can get home.
On the moon, Kate Devana is the law.
While this is the 3rd novel in the series, each is designed to be read independently.
For accessibility, there is a voiceover for each chapter.
Ascendancy, Part 1
APRIL 12, 2074
PROCELLARIUM IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT, LUNAR COLONY, U.S.A.
When Rae stepped out of the freezer into the morgue, her emotional force field went up. Somewhere deep, the anxiety and rage about Axio’s kidnapping were stewing, but she didn’t show it. The android guarding them silently strolled around the metal cadaver tables. Kate aimed for the morgue double doors, hoping to get a step ahead of the android.
Axio wouldn’t be held on the colony if the Feds were smart about it. But space was vast, empty, and everything left a trace, especially the Feds, who clumsily stomped around space like Godzilla through Tokyo. She had an idea where to start.
The android got to the morgue’s wide windowless doors, pivoted on its heels, and then side-stepped into a space on the wall between the morgue’s wash station and the exit. It wore the disgusting blood spatter she’d tossed at it like an iron-red ribbon of humiliation across its face. Android eyes were generally expressionless, but this one displayed vengeance. Its dry black eyes practically dared her to leave. Or maybe she was projecting Agent Anders inside the android. He was in there, somewhere, maybe in a control room, maybe watching her right now.
Eric stood at a long metal counter along the far wall, watching the action sideways through a face shield and blue surgical mask that covered his long ginger beard. He was wrists-deep in something chunky, red, and soupy inside a square metal bin.
The android ahead wasn’t blocking her. Not directly. But it was positioned so it could quickly slide one step right, barring her exit. Or wait for her to get within its long reach and then shove her to the ground.
Kate was working the angles, calculating how many broken bones it would cost her to try to slip past, when Rae stepped in her path. She held a gray-green cylindrical tool in her outstretched hand and was using it to point to the dead woman under a green sheet.
“What’s this?” Kate asked, although she knew what the tool was, and she knew what she was being asked to do.
“You do the woman,” Rae said, handing her the pathology saw. “I’ll do the man. Eric will bag and tag. We’ll get out of here quicker.”
The first time Kate held the pathology saw, she thought it was a horror movie prop. It was long and heavy and capped with a blade like a single-headed battleaxe or maybe a throwing axe, except with lots of tiny teeth. It was a twenty-amp, shark-tooth, rotary saw that looked and felt lopsided in her hand. She’d never used it. She expected seventeen stitches to the face when she flipped it on.
“I’ve never done an autopsy.”
A metal scalpel materialized in Rae’s other hand. Kate blinked, not knowing where it came from. At the feet of the dead woman, there were freshly sanitized metal bins. Rae clinked the bins with the scalpel. It sounded like a magic wand clinking a goblet.
“Eric will show you. This part is easy. Lift and cut. Put the organs in here. He’ll measure and tag.”
Rae could produce knives the way a magician could produce coins out of thin air. In the morgue especially, but it could happen anywhere. They’d be in the kitchen cooking, and suddenly Rae had materialized a knife and a cutting board, saying, Chop these. Sometimes Kate wondered if Rae had knives up her sleeves. Or scalpels surgically implanted in the palms of her hand that sprang out with the flick of her wrist.
What Kate knew of anatomy, the military taught her using a shooting target with neon-colored organs and point values. Rae grew up on a Wisconsin farm. She’d skinned a deer before she wore a bra, and gutted a pig before she got her period. Ligaments, cartilage, bone, organs. She knew them all before she knew their formal names. Rae could dissect animals blindfolded and name parts by feel, the way Kate could disassemble and reassemble a rifle with her eyes closed.
Kate wasn’t a complainer, but if she did, Rae’s pithy comeback would be something like, Everything is where you think it should be. As long as the lungs were neon yellow and the brains were neon orange, she’d probably be okay.
There was also something in Rae’s eyes. Don’t leave me alone with that thing.
The android watched them as Kate stalled. It blended into the cabinetry. The pizza box from Playground was still on an empty cadaver table, unopened. The pistol Greg lent her for Rae was inside, a subcompact antique that would fit well in Rae’s small hands and do a fine job stopping humans, but was useless on an android. The wash station to its left was a much bigger danger zone. The deep double-basin sink had a faucet that came out of the wall and threaded through a spring to a flat high-pressure nozzle. A faucet so long it could reach all the way into the android’s mouth, where its electrodes were exposed. Androids had eight-hundred-kilowatt-hour battery packs. Add a little water to that much juice, and you've made the world’s tallest 4th of July Sparkler.
The pathology saw had finger grooves and a thumb switch selector and a dial with numbers from one to ten. She guessed those were power settings. The current power setting was two. Safe enough. Rae wasn’t going to hand her a tool that would kill her. Not right away.
Kate thumbed it on. It vibrated and hummed. It didn’t immediately disintegrate or explode. It seemed safe, so she turned the power up to five. The vibrations made her arm buzz all the way up to her elbow. Forceful, energetic vibrations that would definitely rip through bone.
“Five is as high as you’ll need on that,” Rae said.
Kate turned the power up to ten. It was barely controllable. The squealing was ear-splitting. Tremors went all the way to her shoulder.
She thumbed it off. “What’s ten for?”
“With a different blade, just about anything.”
“What’s anything?”
“If the woman turns out to have metal plates in her skull. Or a titanium knee.”
She’d seen deep gashes on the cadaver tables and wondered what had caused them. Maybe an intern had the saw at full power and slipped, ripping cuts across the metal. She held the saw in her hand like an awkward dagger and imagined pressing it into the metal spinal column of the android at the door, decapitating it. Or cutting open the memory core in its torso after she’d shorted it out.
“Good to know. Let’s get to it.”
“Wear a face shield.”
No shit.
She and Eric worked on the woman for two hours after that. There was an engagement ring and wedding ring on her hand, which they had to remove, and makeup under blood spatter, which they also had to remove. In the end, it didn’t matter that Kate didn’t know a whole lot about anatomy. Eric covered the woman’s face out of respect and then drew a Y-line with a marker from the dead woman’s shoulders, around the woman’s breasts, coming to a junction below the two gunshot wounds to the sternum, and then down to her navel. When they opened the woman’s chest, the first thing that was apparent was that everything was where she expected it to be based on the military’s neon target. Score one for military training. The second thing that was apparent was that the chest cavity looked exactly the way she thought it would if two closely spaced coilgun slugs fragmented and exploded around the heart. There was not much lifting or cutting in the chest, just a lot of scooping and suctioning. The woman’s lungs and heart were pulpified. The slugs had shattered her spinal column and rear ribs. Mercifully, the woman was dead before she hit the floor.
Eric made notes. Near the end, he reached under the woman’s intestines and removed a glob of connected organs. All he said aloud was that there were irregularities.
It felt like they’d barely begun when Rae tossed the green sheet over her body and snapped her gloves off. She moved to the foot of their cadaver table and stood there, shaking her head, disappointed about something. Like she was about to fire them because they were too slow and not even qualified enough to screw up her coffee order. It was a look Kate had seen, but it was usually directed at interns.
“We have enough.”
Eric put his tools down. “I guess we do.”
“Conclusions?” Rae asked.
Kate looked at the woman’s bloody chest cavity. “I think I’ll pass on chili for a while.”
“I meant about the cause of death.”
Was this a trick question? “Malfunctioning machines, for sure.”
Eric and Rae exchanged some sort of glance. A code passed between them, and then he said, “Same as the others.”
His tone confused her. Same as what others? At first, it sounded like Eric agreed, malfunctioning machines, same as the others, but it also sounded like he was talking about more than just the three bodies in the morgue right now.
She opened her mouth to ask. Then she remembered their silicone babysitter recording every word.
Rae nodded. Whatever code passed between them, she agreed. “So let’s get these two into the freezer and clean up.” To the android, she said, “Tell your boss we are done here. We are locking up and going for some dinner. I want to see Axio, and then get sleep.”
The android didn’t move. Its eyes didn’t blink. Its pupils didn’t dilate. It stood, five heartbeats, a tower of metal and silicone rubber. The only sound in the room was the fans sucking the stench into the ceiling vents. Kate thought about rushing the droid and decapitating it with the pathology saw. Or shoving the faucet at the wash station into its mouth. Four steps, a twist of the cold nozzle, and there’d be heroic fireworks.
She didn’t get a chance. The android’s servos spun up and it disappeared into the hallway, the morgue doors slamming closed behind it.
Wordlessly, the three of them stowed the bodies in the freezer and moved to the wash station to clean up. At the sink, Kate splashed cold water on her face to wake herself up. The coppery stench of blood had seeped under her protective gear and into her clothes and hair. She needed a shower and coffee.
“Eric, what did you mean, like the others?” She asked the wash station wall, scrubbing her hands.
No one answered. Rae’s forehead folded up as she scoured the tips of her fingers and cuticles under the water. She looked like she was going to say something, but then didn’t.
Eric looked into the wash basin with an expression like a doctor standing over a patient, telegraphing, The patient isn’t going to make it.
He said, “You want me to double-check?”
“No need,” Rae said. “The simplest explanation is the most likely. Feds killed these three. Case closed.”
The bullet holes to the head and chest had convinced Kate, except Rae’s voice had a lot of doubt.
“But?”
“These three all had terminal diseases,” Eric said. “Like the others.”
“Terminal?”
“The first three we connected to the artifact,” Rae said, “we dismissed as suicides. All three had terminal cancer. The fourth was killed by an android at Vapor Trail—but Leyna was thinking someone programmed the mermaid to do it. She was looking into it but didn’t get far before the Feds took over.”
The Feds took her over, she wanted to add. Took her over with the artifact. She stayed silent.
“Finn, the man we were autopsying when you came in,” Eric added. “His liver was necrotic and well past the time when he could have grown a transplant. I think the woman had ovarian cancer, but I need to do a biopsy.”
Space was full of radiation, and radiation was bad for humans, generally causing all sorts of cancer. The radiation vaccine wasn’t really a cure, it just delayed the inevitable.
“Bullets killed those three,” Kate said. “Occam’s razor says excessive force by overzealous Feds.”
“I agree,” Rae said skeptically.
“The alternative is what, exactly?” Kate asked.
“We are seeing what they want us to see and writing it up the way they want us to write it up,” Rae said. “What are the odds the first four had access to highly classified top-secret projects?”
Kate didn’t need to think about it. “Zero.”
“Exactly.” Rae dropped the scrub brush in the sink, turned off the tap, and started shaking the water off her hands. “It could just be a coincidence that every single victim had some sort of terminal disease.” Rae paused to dry her hands on a towel. “You said they were using the artifact to control Leyna like a puppet?”
Kate thought back to the skybridge, picturing Leyna’s face but hearing Agent Anders’ vindictiveness. “It seemed like it. But she could have been telling me what I wanted to hear. How would I really know?”
Rae spun and walked around the other side of an empty cadaver table, the one with the brown pizza box. Hot from Playground and a black metallic cage logo was printed on the lid. Inside was the gun. Rae pulled the box to her and leaned on the table with her hands like she was going to faint.
“The simple explanation is the Feds are nasty and kill people,” Rae said.
“So what’s the complicated one?” Kate shook her hands dry and toweled them.
“The artifact kills people. Maybe it gives off some abnormal radiation dose and the Feds are ordering people to kill themselves to cover it up.” Rae opened the pizza box halfway and reached in. “Or to cover up whatever they are doing. Has anyone ever survived this artifact?”
The answer was no. Not to Kate’s knowledge. All the Defense Department experiments she knew about were failures. In those cases, brains boiled. No one lived long enough to get cancer.
Leyna was already exposed. She had a feeling they planned to use it on Axio, too, but she wasn’t going to say so with Rae standing over a gun and stewing with rage and grief.
At that moment, Agent Lindsay barged through the morgue doors, trailed by an android.
********* *********
This droid was different. Same dark suit, same wooden black eyes, but no face mark. Agent Lindsay wore an identical suit and scowl, except miniaturized, like a pint-size fashion clone. Her blond ponytail flagged. Her blue eyes swept the room and lasered on Rae. There were pistols under their jackets, carelessly concealed as usual, but no dart gun or stun gun this time. Agent Lindsay hadn’t brought her cane with her, either. She’d dropped that charade, at least.
“Your leg is looking healed,” Kate said.
“A modern miracle called lunar gravity. How’s my report coming?”
“Writing it as we speak,” Rae said, putting a slice of cold pizza to her mouth. Kate was more than a little relieved to see the pizza materialize and not the gun.
“Good.” Agent Lindsay turned and waved the android out the door. Some kind of silent exchange happened between them, and then the android spun and left.
Agent Lindsay misunderstood Rae’s sarcasm. Rae didn’t use AI or a neuroface. She preferred to type. She said the clicking helped her think. So there was, in fact, no report writing happening, but Agent Lindsay thought there was. Kate only smiled.
“You shouldn’t antagonize Agent Anders,” Agent Lindsay said to Kate. “His circuits still haven’t cooled.”
“Some people are so hard to please.”
“I am personally not interested in the paperwork. I am doing all I can to keep him from killing you. You have to help me, help you.”
“Reassuring. All that’s between me and a sociopathic Federal agent is form FU-one-two-three.”
“Nobody wants trouble, least of all me. I can offer you a deal. What if I could see to it that you are safely on a shuttle to Mars, where you can retire?”
Kate looked at Rae to gauge her reaction. Strange as it may be, the offer was tempting. Trying to get rid of Feds was like trying to get rid of a rat infestation. You could control the population, but they were never going away. The artifact would be in the wild soon. It would set off a chain reaction race for control. Maybe the race was already on, and that’s why they were here.
They were using it to control people. Like a neuroface, except in reverse. The fact that someone built it forty thousand years ago was only mildly relevant. Maybe forty thousand years ago, humans built it and then wiped themselves out. Or maybe an alien race built it to control us, and we turned on them, wiping them out instead. Who built it was an academic question for the historians who survived the coming chaos. Either way, the results weren’t promising. So far, everyone was dead, including the civilization that built it and first deployed it. Extinct. She guessed Agent Lindsay and Anders were here to learn how to mass-produce it. Maybe they already could. Every politician would want one of these hanging around their voters’ necks, and the death toll wouldn’t matter. People would go to war over it.
So yes, a trip to Mars was extremely tempting. She wanted to be two hundred million kilometers from Earth when they unleashed it. Maybe aliens made the same wise decision, forty thousand years ago.
“Retire?” Rae asked.
“When we are done here, your services will no longer be needed.”
“You can’t fire me.”
“No one is firing you. You will be…outmoded. We will arrange for you to ascend.”
“I want to see my son.”
“Get me my report, and then you will see him.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You aren’t hurting me. It’s for the families. They won’t get their insurance payments.”
“So that’s what this is? Insurance fraud?”
Eric had wisely stepped out of the verbal sparring match. He was off in the corner at a metal countertop, a knife in one hand and an organ in the other, slicing thin sections and putting them on slides.
She still didn’t think she was grasping the whole puzzle. Feds coming here to mass-produce the artifact made sense, but the abductions didn’t fit in. Why abduct Jin? Did they really abduct Axio for leverage over Rae? Or was there something else? Abductions were a lot more work than just shooting people. Captives needed to be fed and watered and supervised. They needed to go to the bathroom and show up for proof-of-life videos. A lot of work, but for what?
They hinted they were using the artifact on Axio. If they had other plans for him, the offer of a safe passage to Mars was a bluff. Some kind of a delay tactic.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Mars,” Kate said to Rae, interrupting. “Maybe it’s time we moved on from here.”
Rae looked around the morgue like she was being asked to leave her childhood home. “I don’t know.”
“This place will be crawling with Feds. Will we ever really feel safe here?”
Rae didn’t say anything. To Agent Lindsay, Kate said, “Guarantee the three of us safe passage, and we won’t stir up trouble. Me, Rae, and Axio. I’ll even stop antagonizing Anders.”
She felt bad about leaving out Jin and Leyna, but she was sure there wouldn’t be one ticket to Mars, let alone five.
Kate looked at Rae. Rae said, “Fine. Mars. If that’s what it takes to get Axio back. I am willing to start over.”
Kate fake-smiled at Agent Lindsay. Agent Lindsay fake-smiled back. Just two poker players smiling at each other.
“When can Axio be released?” Kate asked.
“A few days. We want to be sure you cooperate.”
“Makes sense. That would be my move.” Kate fake-smiled again.
Agent Lindsay fake-smiled back again.
“What exactly do you have him doing?” Rae asked.
“He is very smart. Think of it like boarding school. He is learning from the best minds now.”
Ooof. A slap in the face to Rae.
“Axio is homeschooled,” Kate said. “He was learning from the best mind before.”
Agent Lindsay’s mouth opened. A weak little bird sound came out.
It was time to show her hand. “But I do have one more question about the Mars offer.”
“What’s that?”
“A detail, really. The shuttle schedules. I noticed all the arriving trips were delayed.”
“We arranged that. Safer that way.”
“Totally agree.” Kate smiled. “But you see, the lunar colony is a layover and refuel spot. No arriving shuttles mean no passengers for the shuttles departing for Mars.”
Agent Lindsay winced like she’d eaten a frog.
“So naturally, all the Mars shuttles were canceled.”
“I guess you caught me.” Agent Lindsay spread her hands wide, palms out.
“No trip to Mars. You don’t plan to hand Axio back, either.”
Agent Lindsay looked away, deciding something. When she looked back at Kate, she almost looked relieved. Like she was glad the charade was over. “We could make this very difficult. Dredge up the accusations by Rae’s ex-husband, or file charges that Axio’s education hasn’t met Federal requirements. As I said when I came in, we don’t want this to be ugly. We want a peaceful transition. But yes, the bottom line is, no matter what, Axio stays with us. He's happy now, and he’s made his choice.”
Rae’s face was red with anger, and her whole body shook. “What choice? He’s thirteen. You have no right.”
The two gunshots were so loud inside the morgue that Kate couldn’t tell the difference between the ringing in her ears and the metal bins rattling on the shelves. The blasts blew the lid of the pizza box flat, revealing Rae holding the pistol Greg lent them. An acrid blue-black cloud of burnt gunpowder drifted towards the ceiling, and then its wisps were suctioned by the ceiling vent fans.
Agent Lindsay flopped forward, gripping her chest, landing face-first on the floor. Blood started pooling around her.
Rae dropped the pistol and covered her face, sobbing.
Kate spun and grabbed the faucet, twisting it on, and moved to the door, prepared to shove it in an android’s mouth if it came in. Nothing entered. She heard no footfalls. She peered outside. The hall was empty.
A lucky break, but the hospital walls were thin, so she figured someone would have heard the shots and be searching for the source. They didn’t have a lot of time.
She looked over to Eric. He was pushing buttons on a display next to a door on the wall set waist high and about a meter square. Like a freezer drawer they put bodies in, except this morgue didn’t have freezers for individual bodies.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked.
“Aquamation chamber.” He jammed a red mushroom button on the right side of the chamber door and pulled a handle down to open it. A metal gurney slid out. It looked like a cold silver tongue. “Bring her over.”
Rae was bawling and muttering for Axio. The red pool around Agent Lindsay was becoming a lake. If someone revived her, they’d be dead. If someone found the body, they’d also be dead.
“Clothes and all?”
“Clothes and all.” Eric said, “In six hours, all that will be left of her is her earrings and phone.”
Her phone. Kate kneeled down and turned Agent Lindsay over. Her eyes were glassy, and her pupils were dilated. She didn’t check for a pulse. She reached inside Agent Lindsay’s jacket and pulled out her phone, shoving them in her pocket, and then took her gun, badge, and spare ammo.
Rae had collapsed to the ground and was sitting with her head between her knees. Kate was relieved to see that the gun was still on the table, and not in her hand.
She motioned for Eric to come and help. He kneeled, putting his arms through Agent Lindsay’s armpits, and then lifted her. Kate grabbed the ankles. Together, they heaved Agent Lindsay’s body onto the aquamation table and then slid her down the chamber’s gullet.
Eric started to lift the door closed.
“Wait.”
Kate retrieved the Agent’s phone from her pocket. The screen was smeared with blood. She wiped it on her uniform until it was as clean as it was going to get, and then pressed Agent Lindsay’s dead thumb to it. The phone unlocked.
“Ok. go.”
Eric pulled the door closed and latched it. He hit a green mushroom button. There was a whirring of motors and then a grinding noise.
“What’s that noise?”
“Shredder. We shred the bodies before aquamation because little chunks hydrolyze faster.” The grinding grew louder until it sounded like a side of beef going through a paper shredder.
Eric was a head taller than her, twice as wide, with a thick ginger beard and brown eyes. There was no glimmer of sweat on his brow or glint of panic in his eyes. No surprise either. She figured he’d seen it coming. He was standing on the other side of the pizza box and had seen Rae holding the pistol.
The shredding noise quickly died down to a gurgling.
“Rinse cycle,” he said apologetically.
Kate looked over at the pool of blood on the floor, and then at Rae, curled up and crying. “We need to get out of here yesterday. We also need to clean up.”
Eric was already moving towards a mop. “I’ll get the blood, you get the boss.”
Kate looked at the bloodstains on her clothes. “We also need to get rid of these clothes.”
Eric pointed across the room. “New scrubs in that drawer over there. And that—” He thumb-pointed to the aquamator. “That eats everything organic.”
Rae had her face in her palms, sobbing. Kate sat down beside her, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her in. “We’ll get Axio back.”
“We need to put blond bitch in the aquamator.”
“Consider it done.”
“And tell Eric to make sure to use the high-pressure setting.”
“Check. Do you think you can stand?”
“I’m not sorry I killed her.”
“No need to be.” Kate wasn’t sorry that the agent was dead. She regretted the timing. She would have rather tied Agent Lindsay up and interrogated her first. “We do need to go, though, sweetie. Someone might have heard the shots. This place will be swarming with spider drones soon.”
“Give me a minute.” Rae started wiping her face on her sleeves, like a cat.
Kate reached into her pocket for the agent’s phone. She swiped through apps and found notes on The Ascendancy Project and a list of people divided into three columns. There were too many names to count, so she just scrolled and scrolled until her thumb stopped on ones she recognized. She was on the list. Under the first column, titled Unsuitable for Ascension, along with about a thousand other people. She found Axio, Jin, Leyna, and Rae in the second column, Candidates. Rae had a question mark by her name. Agent Anders and Agent Lindsay were in the third column, a much shorter list, Ascended. Most of the people in that column had skull emojis after their names, including the morgue victims and Agent Anders.
It looked like a naughty and nice list. She was naughty, Unsuitable, and happy to be. The names she recognized in the Candidates column had been abducted. Except for Rae. Candidates were kidnapped and then what...? Tested? Interviewed?
She couldn’t reconcile the skull emojis. It couldn’t mean the people on that list were dead. Not possible. Agent Anders had a skull, but he was very much alive. Kate had spoken to him, through Leyna and through the android, she was sure of it. Agent Lindsay had spoken about him in the present tense. I am doing all I can to keep him from killing you.
The skull meant something else. Maybe it marked people who’d been exposed to the artifact. But then Leyna was exposed, and she didn’t have a skull next to her name.
She was still missing a piece. She put the phone back in her pocket.
Freeing Leyna was still her best hope of finding Axio. She might get some answers, too. But now she had to do it as a fugitive from the Feds, who’d have shoot-on-sight orders for an Unsuitable like her, once they realized who’d killed Agent Lindsay.
Eric was standing over them with a pile of neatly folded clean scrubs. He had changed already, and dumped his dirty scrubs in a pile below the aquamator door. The pizza box was in the pile, too. He must clean up a lot of spills in the morgue, because the floor was already spotless. The mop and bucket were upside down in the wash basin.
Kate heard scratching in the vents and helped Rae to her feet. “We have to go.”
