LEGACY CHILD

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gris felt sick, like he'd contracted some debilitating illness non-Progeny sometimes got. Even as he and Montaro left Shamir behind, he still felt nauseated. It was the boy. He'd killed people before, guilty and innocent alike, and all but one on Danais's whim. But never like the boy. Never someone who's doubts and fears so mirrored his own, and yet was so unlike him. It was as if in silencing the boy, he'd silenced himself. Which was ridiculous. He was too jaded to relate to anyone, certainly not someone non-Progeny.

            Or maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit.

            The trip back to Hope City was uneventful. They'd lost all trace of the Director. Wherever he was, the satellites couldn't pick him up. Intriguing, but Gris found he didn't care. All he wanted was to get back to the Progeny compound and wash away the contagion he felt eating him from within.

            They reached Hope City in the last hours of Nehara's light—second twilight. On the horizon, the city sparkled like a gemstone, gorgeous and bright with the Progeny compound's triple towers—Reason, Harmony, and Joy—standing as gleaming sentries. Reason housed administration and government. Harmony was where Progeny resided and raised their families. And Joy was for pure entertainment—the perfect balance between Reason and Harmony. In them, the Progeny kept themselves separate from the rest of the population. The city reflected its own brilliance back at itself where it hugged the harbor on the edge of the Aylesian Bay. On the outside, Hope City was a beautiful thing. From the right vantage point, one could watch its outline for hours at a time. Inside however...

            "Drop yourself off first," Gris said, not bothering to look from his notes.

            "Right boss," Montaro answered, for once smart enough not to ask questions.

            Taking the next off-ramp, the lowboy headed west towards the lower Lusk warrens outside the city center. Upper warrens for the rich, lower for the rest. Montaro was a lower Lusk commodity, proved by the shoddy, ramshackle squat of concrete they stopped in front of. Gris almost felt bad as he watched Montaro enter the building; Danais would never grant him Progeny status.

            With Montaro gone, Gris slipped behind the steering column, drumming it with his fingers as he let the lowboy's engine idle. He looked at the dashboard readout. Nine in the evening. Still early—few people turned in before second twilight during summer—but too late for house-calls. Then again, Danais kept odd hours.

            Decision made, he put the lowboy in gear and revved the engine loud enough to rattle the windows of the nearby buildings. Then he was off, maneuvering the lower warren's maze of badly lit streets and blind alleys. Moments later, he cruised through the unmanned checkpoint between lower and upper Lusk. There, the buildings were cleaner, the streets in better repair, the garbage less obvious, the lights brighter. He passed stores, restaurants, homes. Saw people out on the streets—couples walking hand in hand, friends clustered in groups, laughing and living their lives.

            A few kilometers more and the street curved—all the streets curved—around the Progeny compound. He selected his exit and hit the checkpoint, also unmanned. Except there, he knew his lowboy was scanned. Its plates were read, compared against all the others in the city center database, identified as his and noted as Progeny, and he was allowed to continue. Otherwise, the engine would have seized and shut down.

            At last, he reached the underground parking at Harmony Tower, and dropped the lowboy off in Visitor parking. Grabbing everything, he got out and headed to the elevator. More ID scans before he could push a single button to summon the lift, then it was open, he was in, and rising to the penthouse. Of course it was the penthouse. Where else would Danais live?