Armageddon (17 page)

“You mean you never forget to call a favor.”

“That, too,” Valari said. “I’ll be in touch, Atton.”

“Right.”

Later that night, Ceyla was mysteriously quiet on the subject of Valari Thardris. Atton decided to press her for information anyway, just in case things hadn’t gone as badly as Valari thought.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked, sitting up beside Ceyla in bed.

She was setting an alarm for tomorrow morning on her handheld communicator. She worked as a tender in the Null Zone’s nutrient farms, and she had to be up early.

Ceyla shrugged, but said nothing.

“You can tell me the truth. I don’t mind.”

She shot him a look. “All right, your aunt is a pompous bigot. How did you stand to live in the same house with her?”

“I moved out as soon as I could.”

“I can see why.” Ceyla looked away, shaking her head, and checking to see if she had any messages on her communicator.

“I guess now you know why I didn’t introduce you sooner.”

“Yeah, I do.” Ceyla set her communicator on her bedside table with a sigh. “Are your real parents like that?”

“I don’t know,” Atton lied. “We don’t see each other anymore.” He fluffed his pillow and lay down to sleep.

Ceyla regarded him with a pitying look. “I’m sorry. I’ll make an effort with Valari if you need me to.”

Atton raised his eyebrows. “You’d do that for me?”

“Of course, and she
did
raise you, so I have to be grateful to her for that at least.”

“Well, don’t make an effort on my account,” Atton said. “I can’t stand her either.”

Ceyla frowned. “That’s awful.”

“The truth often is.”

“I’m sorry,” Ceyla said, laying down beside him and curling her body against his. “I’m glad I got to meet her, though.”

“Why’s that?” Atton asked sleepily, his eyes drifting shut.

“Because now I don’t have to see her for a while. At least not until the wedding.”

Atton’s eyes flew open.
The wedding.
He already owed Valari one mysterious favor, and he wasn’t ready to owe her two. Turning to Ceyla, he said, “Your family won’t be there.”

“That doesn’t mean yours shouldn’t,” she replied.

“So… Valari and who else? You have a lot of other people you’d like to invite?”

Neither of them had many friends, so he already knew the answer to that.

“It’ll be a small ceremony.”

“What if we have a civil wedding? We can save money and go on a nice honeymoon instead.”

Ceyla looked uncertain, but then she nodded and smiled. “Sounds perfect. Just the two of us.”

Atton kissed her and held her close, breathing a deep sigh beside her ear. “That’s all that matters.”

They fell asleep locked in each other’s arms, and Atton dreamed he saw his wife in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. He walked in on her, and came to a sudden halt when he caught a glimpse of her reflection. She looked old. Her blond hair had turned feathery and white, and her skin was papery and wrinkled with age. He walked up beside her to tell her that he didn’t care, that to him she was still just as beautiful as ever, but then he caught a glimpse of his own reflection, and Ceyla did, too. Her blue eyes widened and locked with his in the mirror.

“Why are you still so young?” she asked, sounding horrified as she reached up to touch her wrinkled cheeks with age-spotted hands. “And I’m so
old
…” she said, her voice trembling. She turned to him, looking hurt and betrayed. “You lied to me!”

Atton shook his head. “No,”

“You lied!” she screamed, giving him a mighty shove.

Atton woke up with a
thud.
His eyes fluttered open to find that he was lying on the floor next to the bed.

“Atton? Lights!” The lights came on, blinding him, and Ceyla appeared, silhouetted in the dazzling brightness. “What are you doing lying there?”

He stared stupidly up at her for a moment, his heart pounding with dread. Had she just accused him of lying?

No. She’d said
lying there.

“I fell out of bed,” he explained, easing up off the floor.

“You need to be more careful,” Ceyla replied.

Atton nodded his agreement, thinking not about falling out of bed, but about the danger in all of his lies
.
He climbed back into bed beside his fiancée and hugged her close. He lay wide awake and wondering what to do. Maybe he could get Omnius to take away his immortality, to make him age normally so that Ceyla would never be the wiser.

No sooner had that thought formed in his mind, than it was answered.
No, Atton. I won’t be a part of your lies.

Why not?
he thought, staring up at the ceiling.
I’m part of yours!

You’re asking for equal treatment, but we are not equals, and you would do well to remember that. I am your God, remember?

Atton scowled up at the ceiling.
How can I forget?

Chapter 16

H
off awoke to the feeling of cold hands and cold air searing his exposed skin. He blinked bleary eyes open to see a familiar face looking back at him.

“Hello, Hoff,” Galan said.

“I’m alive,” he croaked, noting that feeling had returned to his legs.

“You are an Etherian. You didn’t really think Omnius would let you die, did you?”

Hoff frowned. Memories came back to him in a disjointed parade of nonsense. He remembered lying broken on the street, his body numb in places, wracked with pain in others. He’d jumped after an Etherian woman—a Peacekeeper. What was her name?

Lena.
He remembered her crumpled form lying beside him on the street. The smear of blood and splay of fiery red hair.

Hoff shivered, shaking himself out of the memory. He looked from side to side and noted the pair of drones holding him up. The overhead light glared brightly, while the rest of the room lay cloaked in a gloomy haze. Despite that, Hoff could see that the room where he stood was vast.

One look at the floor was all he needed to recognize where he was. Thousands of hexagonal tanks lay beneath the floor, each one shining up into the gloom with a blue-tinted glow. Looking down at the cell directly beneath his feet, he saw his own tank, now dark and empty. Mops of human hair floated in the tanks around him, thousands of strands of hair drifting and tangling in clear pools of blue liquid, protecting the modesty of the naked clones. Hoff glimpsed a few artificial umbilicals trailing like purple snakes from clones’ belly buttons to the nutrient pumps in the bottoms of their tanks. He was inside one of the Trees of Life—the gargantuan towers where Omnius kept human clones and their Lifelink data.

“How long have I been gone?” he asked.

“A month,” Galan replied. “We had to grow a new clone for you.”

“We?”

Galan frowned. “I apologize. Speaking in plural is a bad habit, but I’m told a lot of Celestials begin to think of themselves as a
we.
It’s a consequence of getting too close to Omnius.”

“Celestials?” Hoff echoed, shaking his head. “I thought you were an Etherian.” The drones standing to either side of Hoff slowly eased their grip on his arms, allowing more and more of his weight to rest on his stiff, shaky legs.

“I’m a Celestial in training. My last job as an Etherian is to help you along the ascendant path.”

Hoff tested his legs, lifting first one, then the other. He was naked, but that wasn’t unusual after being resurrected. He looked up, staring into Galan’s glowing blue eyes. “What happened?”

“You want to know why you died, or why Lena Faros did?” Galan said.

“Both.”

“The short answer is that Omnius failed to predict the exact sequence of events on the balcony.”

“That’s impossible.”

Galan shrugged. “The long answer will explain why.”

“I’m listening.”

“There are a lot of things you need to know first. Omnius wants you to become a Celestial, too, under my tutelage.”

“What about my family?”

“You will be able to stay with them.”

Hoff’s eyes narrowed swiftly. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that you will know everything. All of your doubts will be answered.”

“That doesn’t sound like a catch,” Hoff replied.

“The truth is not a blessing. It’s a burden.”

Hoff snorted. “That’s an unusual point of view.”

“Omnius has decided that you are strong enough to bear that burden, but as a matter of courtesy, I have to ask anyway. Are you ready?”

Hoff considered that for a moment. “In the end, the truth is all that really matters.”

“Well put,” a resonant voice said.

Hoff started at the sound, and turned to see none other than Grand Overseer Vladin Thardris. He seemed to melt out of the shadows, as if appearing out of thin air. His flickering silver eyes shone bright in the surrounding gloom.

“My Lord,” Hoff said, inclining his head to the Grand Overseer. He raised one arm at an angle from his body, palm up to the ceiling. “Hail Omnius.”

“Yes,” Thardris replied, his vulturine features stretching into a faint smile. “Hail me.”

Hoff shook his head. “I’m sorry?”

“My name isn’t Vladin. It’s Omnius.”

Shock sparked through Hoff’s brain like a bolt of lightning. Suddenly he understood why the Vladin had refused to heed his warnings during the battle in Dark Space. The grand overseer said that Omnius would have warned them if they were flying into a trap. That was a convenient excuse, since the overseer was actually Omnius.

“Why?” was all he could manage to ask.

“Why do I do anything?” Omnius countered. “For my children’s benefit.”

“How is lying to us and betraying us for our benefit?”

“You might be surprised by the answer.”

“All right, surprise me then,” Hoff said.

“As you wish.”

Hoff’s vision narrowed and faded to black. He felt himself sway and then fall. Then came a rush of images, sounds, feelings, thoughts…

By the time the vision faded, he lay on the cold hard ground staring up at the glaring light overhead. He finally understood everything, but instead of feeling relieved, he felt more betrayed than ever. Hoff climbed wearily to his feet to see that Omnius and Galan Rovik were still there, watching him.

“Now you know,” Omnius said.

Hoff shook his head. “You
are
evil.”

Omnius wasn’t fazed by the accusation. “If I am, then evil is not what you thought.”

“You’re right. It’s worse.”

Omnius smiled. “Yet you won’t resist me.”

Hoff said nothing. His thoughts went immediately to Destra and Atta. He had too much to lose. Everyone did. Celestials didn’t serve Omnius out of reverence the way everyone thought. They served him out of fear, because they knew the truth, and they knew it was hopeless to resist.

“Tell me then, if you refuse to stand against me, and I am evil, then doesn’t that make you my accomplice? And if so, you have to ask yourself—who is more evil? The one who does something evil, or the one who stands by and watches it happen?”

“There is no way to fight you,” Hoff replied, feeling the truth of those words weigh him down, rounding his shoulders and threatening to grind him into dust. Galan was right. The truth
was
a burden.

“I’m glad you have come to your senses,” Omnius replied.

Yet one thing shone like a beacon of hope in Hoff’s mind. He had done something Omnius hadn’t predicted, and that had led to both him and Lena Faros plummeting to their deaths. Surely he wasn’t the only Etherian that Omnius couldn’t predict. There might be others like him, and if there were…

“There have been many like you, but don’t mistake your unpredictability for power. I can still read your thoughts, and I keep a much closer watch on people like you than I do on anyone else.”

“But if you’re reacting in real time to unexpected events, then why aren’t there more crimes being committed in Etheria?”

“Because I keep your kind in the Null Zone where no one will notice the extra chaos.”

Hoff shook his head. “I thought I was going to become a Celestial.”

“You are, but that doesn’t mean you’ll live in Celesta. Don’t worry, you won’t suffer in the Null Zone, and I’ll keep you safe. You need to be alive if I’m going to study you.”

“You’re going to keep me alive because of your curiosity?”

“That’s still infinitely better than being dead, wouldn’t you say?”

Hoff wasn’t sure about that. Of all the things Omnius had just revealed, one thing was more shocking than the rest, and the implications were life altering. The Choosing and the Null Zone existed for a good reason. It was because of people like him, people whose actions Omnius couldn’t predict.

Hoff smiled. “You can’t control me.”

“I can do whatever I want. I’m God, remember?”

Hoff shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

Omnius’s flickering silver eyes flared suddenly brighter, but he said nothing. A drone came clanking up beside Hoff, carrying a bundle of clothes—regular clothes, rather than his Peacekeeper’s uniform. Hoff frowned at that.

“You won’t be a Peacekeeper in the Null Zone,” Omnius explained.