Convictions of the Ascent: Book 2 of the Fallen Series Read online

  ‘What is that?’ I muse uncertainly into Georgie’s mind, marveling at the shimmering force of this instinct of his, as it wars with the reasoning side of his brain. She shrugs into my consciousness.

  ‘I have no idea, but use it,’ she answers urgently. The reasoning side of his mind is winning—I am just a little girl, he reasons, a young, small, weak little girl that has no power—no control. He has no reason to obey me. But he wants to. He wants to speak with me—for no reason other than the fact that I told him to. He wants to obey. But this is not his mission. He has orders to follow. He will follow his orders. His orders are to apprehend the Gallagher girl with the others and transport them to training, and then report on any suspicious activity that he encounters while doing so. Georgie’s mind spits an expletive at this revelation, but I control my expression. So, Georgie has been drafted purposefully—not by chance. But if they know what she is, and what I am, then why would they only send one gen? No, they do not know—this is a test. They are simply testing a theory, and this gen is an expendable tool that they are using to facilitate that test. If I kill him or show my abilities in any way, then it will be confirmation of suspicion. It’s a relief that they are not confident enough in their suspicion to send in the choppers, but at the same time, that means that plan B is dead. There will be no way to use my influence over this gen to have Georgie’s paperwork lost. People are waiting and watching for what will happen when she is drafted. The gen’s glare has softened, but he is still staring right into my eyes as I listen to his orderly thoughts. He wants to speak with me—because I implied that I wanted to speak with him. But he cannot leave Georgie—he has to apprehend her. Those are his orders. Years of following orders have become his routine. He does not question them. It is his purpose. It is who he is. He does not allow himself to want. Wanting is dangerous. Maybe he can have both. He will apprehend her and then talk to me, he reasons. My stomach clenches. I am running out of options. If the Authority is suspicious about who we are already, then our choices are limited. I am panicking as I flip through his mind, frantically. ‘How much does the Authority know about the Gallagher girl?’ I ask his mind in a whisper when I cannot find the information that I need.

  “Are you speaking inside of my head?” he asks me evenly. He has seen crazier things. Perhaps I am some kind of gen, he reasons, but then why am I here and dressed in civilian clothes? Is this why he was sent to transport this girl? Is this some kind of test? He will apprehend me too, he reasons, then he will have plenty of time to talk to me. He will take me back to Rapid Falls after taking his crop of draftees to the south-central territory for training. They will reward him. Maybe they will let him keep me. I should be his, since he found me, he reasons. Pig. I have lost control of the situation, and I begin back-peddling. If he chooses to take me, then I know I could get away from him, but I cannot get away from the knowledge that would be left here at the Authority office—that I have been apprehended and taken with him because of suspicious activity. I need to hide from the Authority, not catch a ride straight to them with a gen. I need to rekindle the doubt that he initially held in his mind. I raise an eyebrow at him.

  “Speaking into your head?” I demand. “No. I’m speaking out loud, are you deaf?” I bark at him. I turn to the receptionist, who is still cowering at the far corner of the desk. “You heard me, right?” I ask cynically, raising my hands to my hips.

  “I heard her,” Georgie offers, as the receptionist slinks toward the door and slides through it. Good. Feed his denial. Let it quench his suspicion. I cannot go to Rapid Falls because that is where Robert Radisson is. Dak told me that I needed to lay low—to stay away from there. He said that if they discovered that I was alive, then it could be dangerous for me—and for Georgie. But the fact that they sent a gen soldier to retrieve Georgie indicates that they may already know. They know something already. I need to foster his denial. I scoff condescendingly.

  “Your noodle has completely slipped right off the plate, gen! If you are hearing voices in your head, then you should probably be evaluated,” I say, chuckling and glancing at Georgie, who stifles a supporting giggle in return and shakes her head theatrically at him. I have said something that agrees with the reasoning side of his brain. ‘It’s not possible to speak inside of someone else’s head,’ his mind reasons. His reasoning and instincts are in alignment. ‘I am hearing voices, I should be evaluated,’ his mind concludes robotically. Georgie’s eyes light, and she turns her shocked expression on me.

  ‘That was too easy,’ she says cynically into my brain, ‘something is wrong here.’ I loosen my grip on his mind and regroup. He will obey me, but due to the reason for his being here, I cannot ask him for what I want—help with Georgie’s liberation. I need to command him to do something that will agree with his reasoning and orders. ‘Incoming,’ Georgie barks into my consciousness as she reads the approaching minds through my senses. There are two Authority officials, coming in hot, and I am out of time. The receptionist went and got them. She told them that I was causing a disturbance. They are coming to make an example of me. I can feel the sick excitement in their heads. This is going to raise red flags for sure. If the Authority doesn’t already know all about me, then it is going to. There is nowhere that we can go. There is nowhere to hide—except maybe—in plain sight. ‘Roe, just stop,’ Georgie says into my mind, defeated hopelessness morphing into reluctant acceptance. ‘There’s nothing you can do. You heard them, I won’t be green-lighted until I finish training. You are just getting yourself into trouble at this point.’

  ‘This is not over,’ I snap into her. I look at Georgie and bite my lip. ‘Plan C?’ I inquire nervously into her mind. Her eyes drop to the burgundy carpet, and she does not respond. Hopelessness surrounds her in a dark fog so completely that it brings tears to my eyes.

  “We are alone now,” says the gen, motioning at the door where the receptionist has just exited with his eyes. “You wanted to talk to me,” he says evenly. The officials are almost at the door. Georgie is as good as theirs. Plan C it is, then.

  “I would like to volunteer for the honor of defending the Requital Republic and fighting for vengeance and prosperity,” I say soberly to him.

  3

  …

  OV3

  THESE MEN HAVEN’T SEEN a volunteer for service since a few months after the draft began—years ago. When everyone discovered that going constituted an imminent death sentence, the volunteering stopped. No one wants to die for a cause that they don’t believe in. As a draftee, Georgie will be given a few weeks of training and a gun, and then she will be marched off to die with no choices about where she is sent. If I can’t prevent them from taking her, then I will go with her and protect her. If she dies, then I don’t want to live anyway.

  “So why does a doctor, fresh out of MEDOC training, want to volunteer?” the official asks me boldly as he processes my paperwork. The fact that he is even asking me this question, knowing that my sister was just drafted, indicates to me that he has never loved another human being in his life. You don’t have to be a mind reader to deduct that.

  “To defend the Requital Republic and fight for vengeance and prosperity,” I say blandly. It’s a bullshit answer, but I say it with a straight face. I know that he is trying to buddy up to me for information that will hurt me. I can read it right out of his head. He is sitting behind his desk with his screen facing away from me. He is fiddling with my contract on his screen, acting like he is working on it. Really, it’s already done. He doesn’t want to print it because he hates me, and the fact that I will outrank him the second that I sign that contract makes him sick with fury. I haven’t given him a reason to hate me, other than earning a medical degree, being a woman, and living in the town where he works and hates everyone. His fellow officials want to hurry and get me into the system so I can leave tonight with the crop of draftees going out. They don’t want to deal with me for a week while we wait for the next crop of draftees. I make them uncomfortable. I am in agreement with getting out of here tonight, and I don’t care about their reasons. I want to ride to South-central with Georgie.

  “Come on,” he says in a snide tone. “You will make more money as a doctor at the hospital in the north-central region,” he chides mockingly as if I am ignorant. I had to give him the details of my MEDOC assignment so that they could release me to the Authority. I’m not in the mood for this.

  “The Authority is in need of doctors, are they not?” I snap. He raises an eyebrow at me. I nod. “Then print the contract.” He wants to smack the assertive glare right off of my face. If the gen wasn’t standing behind me, then he would—and I can read that directly from his thoughts. He prints it, rises from his desk, and leaves the room. I snatch the first few pages off of his printer to begin reading it. The printer continues in a low hum. This contract is a novel of stipulations and information. The printer continues to excrete page after page, and it is unnerving. I exhale and force the sound of it to the back of my mind, focusing on the words in front of me. I will belong to them. I will go where I am told and do what I am told. As a doctor, I am automatically an officer with a one-grade incentive increase. As a volunteer, I am automatically awarded an additional incentive grade increase. When I sign this contract, I will be an ‘OV3,’ and outrank everyone in the building other than the gen—I can hear that directly from the mind of the chubby little official who just left the room. My brows rise, and I lift my eyes to the gen, but he has already been watching my face as I read. He anticipates my question and nods.

  “You may outrank them, but that only means that they are not permitted to behave in an insubordinate or disrespectful manner toward you. You are not permitted to give orders or wear your rank until you graduate from the training program. These incen
tive grade increases are primarily for the purposes of pay determinations.” I nod grimly and return my eyes to the page. Plan D—dead in the water before I even finished developing it.

  The official was right about the pay; the Authority pays peanuts. It is much better than what the MEDOC pays their teaching staff, but still, I will be making about half of what I would as a doctor at the hospital. I sigh and turn to the next page. The gen takes a step closer. His leg is less than an inch from mine, where I sit in the chair. It seems he has the same aversion to personal space as T did, and I bite back on the smile that threatens to rise to my lips. I guess that doesn’t change with age. I look up at him, and he is still watching my face.

  “Your sister,” he says evenly, “going with her will not prevent her death. There is a likeliness that the two of you will be separated after graduation from training. It is not too late for you to change your mind. I am willing to return you to your primary residence on my way out of town,” he offers matter-of-factly. He does not mean this dispassionately, he is merely stating the facts. He doesn’t think that I am making a wise decision. He is cynical about the probability of my survival—and he cares. He feels a strange magnetism toward me that he has never felt before. He is rationalizing that it is simply because I am the first female that he has ever encountered who does not seem afraid or repulsed by him. He is the same person as T, he’s just older, I realize. I feel a swelling in my chest as I stare up into his soft brown eyes. Quit it, I bark at myself—I cannot, will not do this again. I am finished with man-handling. I am taking an official sabbatical from it until I find Dak and figure out what it is that we have. With my hormones thoroughly in check, I force a glare to my face and narrow my eyes at him.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I demand, “you don’t know me.” I am being rude, but I’m right. The draw that I feel toward him is a distraction, and it is frustrating. I need him to go away. “My mind is already made up. I just want to know what it is that I am agreeing to. Please leave me alone and let me read.” I command in a clipped tone, a little sassier than intended, but I don’t care. I turn my face back to my contract expressionlessly.

  “Here’s another factor to consider,” he snaps sharply, “Once you sign that contract, you will no longer be permitted to speak to me in that manner.” He turns to leave the room. Great. I pilfer his rank from his mind. OG9. Well, once I finish the training program, I will only have six ranks to go to catch up. I chuckle and continue flipping through his mind for information. It’s a more time-efficient means of gathering data than reading through this contract. The gen soldiers are all officers, but they are not paid. Everyone else is an enlisted member, other than the non-gens that have a recognized trade from one of the four schools in the territory. I have a degree from MEDOC and am a doctor. I will be a rarity. I shake my head. As if avoiding notice while controlling this wild mane of hair and being an identical twin to another trainee wasn’t going to be a challenge in itself, now I was also going to be a rare non-gen officer. Fantastic. I might as well put a neon sign on my head.

  I shift back to his memories for information. The enlisted members are broken into two categories—ED, enlisted drafted, and EV, enlisted volunteer. Georgie is an ED, the lowest of the low. My stomach turns at the thought. This is not good. Officers are classified as OD, Officer drafted, OV, Officer Volunteer, and OG, Officer Gen. Since tradesmen are not usually drafted, there is often a specific reason that the Authority wants them. They are treated accordingly on a case-by-case basis. Most ODs are only drafted after turning down the Authority’s request that they become OVs. Dak flashes through my mind—that was what happened to him. I can hear Robert Radisson’s words to Dak in my mind clearly: I can make you, he had said, and the thought of it makes me clench my jaw.

  I shake it off and turn back to the information in the gen’s memory. He said that Georgie and I would be separated after training because in filling enlisted member billets, EDs have no choice relative to where they go or what they do. The men in this building are EVs who came from families with Authority connections, and they get preferential treatment because of it. OGs are the highest-ranking officers in that they are given command of the bases. The ranking structure goes by ascending numbers with officers in the same category, and over all enlisted members. So, if I were an OV9, then I would not have to be respectful to this OG9 whose mind I am plundering unless he were my commanding officer. The lowest-ranking officer is higher than the highest-ranking enlisted member—which is why the chubby official was irritated—all of the officials in this building are enlisted volunteers. The gen’s mind reasons that OGs are given command because they have superior instincts and battle expertise. In my opinion, that is his pride reasoning for him, and the Authority probably only gives them that power since they don’t have to pay them.

  I shake my head and snatch the rest of my contract off of the printer as the humming noise from it eases to silence. I skim over page after page—conduct: all the general no-nos are covered, and nearly everything is punishable by death, yada, yada, yada. I expected that. Service length: four years. I narrow my eyes at the page. We only have to survive for four years?! I snap my mind back to the gen and locate him quickly. He is still standing right outside the door. I dig through his mind. Four years is correct. Every contract is a length of four years. Georgie and I only have to survive for four years. I exhale and sign the contract, confident that we can get through this.

  ‘Did you know that Georgie?!’ I say into her brain. ‘Four years! That’s all!’ I rise to my feet, contract in hand, and exit the office. The gen is standing directly outside of the door in a straight-backed holding pattern and flanks my steps as I exit. He is reasoning to himself that he is remaining close to me because I seem dangerous. I smirk up over my shoulder at him. He’s lying to himself. He’s following me around for the same reason that his little clone used to, and inwardly, he knows it.

  ‘The length of time on the contract doesn’t matter, Roe,’ Georgie responds somberly, ‘no one ever comes back.’ I hand over my contract anyway. Her words don’t faze me. I had mentally already signed it the second that I saw the red light on Georgie’s wrist. Besides, the Authority would never expect us to hide in its own ranks. What better way to take it down than from the inside?

  “Congratulations, OV3 Gallagher,” the woman says to me, taking the stack of binding papers from my hand. I scan her mind to see if that is supposed to be some kind of joke, but she is genuine. I nod and smile pleasantly as if I have not just committed four years of my life to an organization that I detest. “You’ll just need to complete your physical, and then you’ll be all set. Go down to the end of the hall and make a right and then follow it around to the end,” she says, returning my smile. Her words are a good analogy for the direction that my life is taking. The gen flanks me again, and I slow to walk beside him. He is disconcerted by this and eyes me. He is analyzing my body posture, anticipating an attack.

  “Relax, I’m not stupid enough to attack a gen in the middle of the Authority office,” I whisper. His glare softens, but his body stance does not. What a strange thing to say, he muses inwardly. My ease with him makes him feel uncomfortable, but his curiosity and excitement are warring with his urge to be cautious. He is anticipating our long drive to the south-central territory with excitement. He is confident that he will get answers about what I am. I find Georgie in the medical room where the physical screenings are completed and stop short as I open the door. They are drawing Georgie’s blood. Realization dawns on her as she senses my reaction.

  ‘Our DNA could give us away. Why is she taking your blood?’ I demand into Georgie’s consciousness as I grasp the blood-drawing woman’s mind and slam through it for information in panic.

  ‘She said it was just a screening, its fine,’ Georgie retorts. I ignore her mental response as I plunder the stranger’s thoughts. The woman isn’t completely sure what it is that she is drawing blood for; she only knows the number of vials she is supposed to draw and the colors of the vile caps that she is supposed to use. Her medical knowledge is limited to giving injections and finding and penetrating veins. And she is a drug addict, whom the Authority officials are taking full advantage of. They turn a blind eye to missing vials of narcotics, and she works for free.