The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (14 page)

“My parents are down there,” Nero pointed his pipe to the grandest structure in the center of the city, “in that building.” He paused and turned to the flowered grass. “The Paradox Building.” He pulled blue velvet leaves from a satchel. “They abandoned me after my birth. I’ve never even met them …”

Aera eyed the leaves with disdain.

Nero lit the pipe, puffed blissfully, and blew out hoops. A blue morpho butterfly flew through them. “For the first two decades after Jeremiah recruited our team, Brody and I would race up this mount every year, and we’d light pipes just like this one.”

The image was so clear to Nero. They’d rushed up the trail in military fatigues and reminisced about missions to the surface, to distant planets. They’d pondered new conversions, the cure for Reassortment, the awakenings of the scientists frozen in space-time—and once Brody had asked why he would come back here. “I want to meet Svana and Orsino,” Nero told him. “I want to see what they look like, ask them why they left me, find out why they won’t speak to me.” Nero’s voice had turned spiteful. “I’d want them to understand what it feels like to be abandoned.” Brody had apologized for broaching the subject and replied: “I know what you’re feeling, and I know there’s nothing I can say to make you feel better.”

Brody’s likeness disappeared from Nero’s sight, replaced by Aera. “All the time,” Nero said to her, “I’d tell him, ‘Captain, we’re so close, the solution to Reassortment is near.’” He blew out a stream of smoke and smiled wistfully. “We were as far as Vigna, and I can’t help but believe what happened was somehow his punishment for our failure—”

“You keep thinking and talking about him, and not even our recallers will block Marstone from finding us.”

“I don’t give a darn about Marstone.” He swigged his canteen. “If I’d stayed at the Bicentennial—”

“You couldn’t have helped him, and if you were there—”

“I would’ve killed Antosha. I would have ended it.”

Aera moved her hands through the powder on the ground, fine crystals layered throughout Cineris Territory’s bedrock, loosened during the terraforming, making it appear as if the place was covered with ash. “No,” she inclined her head, “he would’ve taken you out and you’d be sitting on one of Farino’s prison islands next to your captain.” She cradled a handful of dust and let it blow with the breeze over the mount. She patted her hands, and the specks spilled over the blossom-dotted white grass.

“You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. Things are as they are. I’ll do what I must. And I need your help.”

She laughed. “The prison? Striker, not with a hundred of your kind could you do what you’re thinking.”

“Then I’ll die trying.”

“And what would that accomplish? There’re tens of thousands of Janzers in Farino Prison. You wouldn’t survive an hour with any synsuit technology that now exists.”

“I don’t need a synsuit.”

Aera inspected the blades of her shuriken. “So, striker, tell me what your parents do.” She pointed her weapon toward the Paradox Building.

“You’re deflecting—”

“You misunderstand me.” She flicked her wrist, and the shuriken flew far across the clearing to the center of a white tree trunk. “My mind is clear. Yours is not. Something’s holding you back.”

Nero relented. “They were initially part of the geothermal energy team Masimovian sent here.”

Aera raised her hand, pulled the shuriken back to her grip, and holstered it. “So they’re the ones who nearly destroyed the commonwealth.”

“Not exactly,” Nero said with a hint of a smile. “Lord Rueben Variscan told me they sought to harness a vast reservoir of geothermal energy deep beneath the bedrock in the inaccessible region beside Cineris. They used mineral crushers. During the journey and as the temps and pressure rose, they realized they’d have to dig much, much farther to reach the energy source. They worried about structural integrity. So instead the chancellor ordered the Paradox Building be converted into a Granville sky panel factory.”

Nero sucked on his pipe, and with Aera, looked ponderingly at the building. Slate-gray siding lined the vertical portion. Streaks of neon silver at the corners flowed down to the horizontal portion on the ground, where Janzers and scientists intermingled. Nero followed the building up, diagonal, and down, and up. The horizontal, vertical, and diagonal parts of the building appeared connected, even as he knew they couldn’t be.

“That building holds the engineers who manipulate the commonwealth’s sky, cirrus clouds in Cineris today, sunshine in Vivo tomorrow. They maintain the human circadian rhythm.”

“Here I always assumed the Granville sky was designed to hide the reality of our tomb.”

“That too.”

Aera meandered into the tall grass and lowered the hood of her lab coat from her head. Nero wiped the sweat from his brow and envisioned his parents, top 10 percent Harpoon performers, in their lab coats as they stirred from workstation to workstation and composed the Granville sky illusion. He closed his eyes and let the picture settle in his mind. Why did they lose hope? Why did they give him up? And why did they never answer his calls? One day, he would meet them and ask them this and more.

A blue morpho butterfly landed on the tip of his pipe. Nero grinned and exhaled. It took off again.

“She doesn’t like the smoke either,” Aera said.

“
She
doesn’t know what she’s missing.” Nero stowed his pipe.

Aera drew her diamond sword.

“I don’t think we have time for that,” Nero said. “Where the tenehounds go, Lady Isabelle often follows.”

“Good. Let her come.”

Nero drew his sword, and Cineris’s soft blue-gray sun reflected off its surface. “Mighty Aera,” he said and met her sword with his. Sparks flew, like lightning. “If not her, what could frighten you?”

She swung and spun. Nero blocked her salvos. She pushed under his wrist so fast he couldn’t react and untangled his sword from his fingers. She held both over Nero’s neck like shears.

“The thought of living out the rest of my days in the grip of a system that created me but never gave me a chance to live,” she handed Nero his sword and pointed hers east, toward Beimeni City, “that favors the privileged and forgets the past and forces those of us who have the ability to change the world into a life of servitude, consumed by the fear of mortality.”

She held her sword perpendicular over her head. Nero charged. She swung twice, flipped sideways around him, and rapped him across his back with the bottom of her boot. He fell to the ground, surrounded by a plume of white smoke.

“You carry yourself as if your contemporary striker training should intimidate me,” Aera said, “but until you realize how your adherence to style hinders your element of surprise, you will never defeat me.”

“And you’re a hypocrite,” Nero said.

“I’m a survivalist.”

“You use athanasia!”

He charged her and she stepped back, left, back, right, forward. Their swords sparked. Then she spun under him and, with her left leg wrapped around him, spun him to the ground. She flipped though the air, Nero in her leg grip, landed on her hands, and knelt. Even as he flew, Nero marveled at her defiance of gravity.

He crashed into a tree. A plume of dust shivered from it. The grass fluttered as his sword swooped away, end over end.

“You keep this up,” Nero coughed, “and I might not make it to Palaestra—”

“They’re dispersing.”

He looked down at his belt.
Of course,
he thought. She had shattered his pipe. He threw the pieces in the grass. Down in the vale, where the Janzer divisions had gathered, the Cinerisian workers flowed into transports.

Aera held the blade of his sword, its handle toward him. “Time to go.”

Candidate Beach

Harpoon VR

Oriana stood with Pasha barefoot on warm white sand.

Waves tumbled along a shoreline. In the distance, swirls of galaxies and nebulae dangled amid the stars. A bright blue moon shone nearby. Oriana breathed the smells of seaweed and burning torches, which hung from palm trees. Candidates in illuminated bathing suits strolled along the dunes.

“For certain, the lady and the lord didn’t pick that outfit,” Pasha said.

Oriana looked down at her silk gown with spaghetti straps, which barely covered her two-piece bathing suit. “Don’t you like it?”

“It’s fine, don’t be so pissy.”

Pasha wore a tank top and light blue trunks. His hair was combed upward and ridged atop his head like a striker’s. Oriana scoffed. “Like you weren’t thinking of Desaray when you chose your hairstyle.”

“Shut up, let’s go.”

They searched for Nathan and Desaray. Two candidates emerged from the crowd, holding hands. For a moment, Oriana mistook them for Falcon and Ursula and her pulse quickened. She often dreamed of the Variscan candidates beating her with their fists.

“Ho, Oriana, Pasha!”

The twins stopped and turned. Gaia swayed along the sand, her left arm swinging like a pendulum. She wore a short silk cape over her two-piece bathing suit. She’d filled out since the first day of classes but looked fit. Three men who Oriana didn’t recognize surrounded her.

“Those are my session mates from today’s class,” Pasha said. Lady Isabelle had been separating the class into groups of twenty to twenty-six candidates during specialized neural training sessions. Oriana’s favorites were the martial arts and telepathic tug-of-war.

Gaia grabbed Oriana’s hand and pulled her away from the men. Oriana laughed and ran with her friend in ankle-deep water, away from the crowd.

“Okay,” Gaia breathed, “I can’t run anymore.” She removed her cape in a smooth motion and threw it on a dry stone protruding from a jetty.

Oriana stopped and gasped, resting her hands on her knees. When she caught her breath, she stood tall, searching. “Where’s Nathan?”

“With Duccio.” Gaia waded into the ocean, brushing her forefingers into a rolling wave.

Oriana seethed. Nathan brought Duccio everywhere now, even though he patronized her incessantly. He didn’t treat her as poorly as Falcon and Ursula, but still, she didn’t know why Nathan insisted on keeping him for a friend. She suspected it was because he was from Peanowera and House Rastedes, whose candidates always were bid highly for at the auction. “Why does your brother hate me?”

Gaia ignored her, stepping farther out. When a wave neared, she turned and the water plunged around her. She winced. “It’s
freezing.
”

“You just have to get used to it.” Oriana lifted off her dress, set it on top of Gaia’s, then high-stepped through a rolling wave. When she reached Gaia, the girls dived into the water. They swam out toward a sandbar. Gaia arrived there first. She took determined steps before she grabbed Oriana’s hand and pulled her down with a splash.

“You bitch.” Oriana screamed happily. She and Gaia giggled. They reclined in the shallow water, side by side, looking up to the stars. They lingered for a bit. This was one of the many reasons Oriana liked Gaia so much. They could just be together, say nothing, and Oriana felt comfortable.

“You never answered me before,” Oriana said. When Gaia turned to her and raised her brow, she continued, “Your brother, what’s his situation?”

Gaia lifted her foot out of the water and wiggled her toes. “Single, far as I know.” She examined her toenails, then splashed her foot in the water. “Probably always will be.”

Oriana laughed. “That’s not what I meant.” A gust of wind blew over her, and she felt a chill rush up her spine. She rubbed her arms. “Why doesn’t he like me?”

“He doesn’t like anyone.”

“Please, Gaia.”

“He’s always been a cunt.” Gaia lifted a handful of sand before she let it drop between her fingers, splashing into the water. “But he’s my brother.” She shrugged. “You can’t choose your family, right?”

Right,
Oriana thought. Except for Pasha, she didn’t know her family. She wanted to talk about her lineage. Instead, she said, “What do you want out of this, the Harpoons, the auction, the commonwealth?”

Gaia sprawled in the water and dunked herself, making ocean angels. She lifted her face out and spit out salt water.

“Gaia?”

“Survive.” Gaia wiped her eyes and nose.

“Is that all?”

“What else is there?”

“I don’t know.” Only Oriana did know, at least for her. She wanted to be an aera, achieve conversion, serve the commonwealth, and help humanity find a new home where Reassortment couldn’t consume them, a place where the Earth’s heat couldn’t cook them. She sighed. The Summersets’ warnings about Harpoon candidates rowed through her mind.
Don’t lose control. Don’t trust them.

“There has to be more.” Oriana ran her forefingers through the cool water. “We can’t live underground forever.”

“If I’m with you, I can live anywhere.”

Oriana grinned. She didn’t have to access her friend’s neurochip to know she spoke truly. She decided she
could
trust Gaia. “Have you met your parents, your true parents?”

“Of course, I’ve met them,” Gaia began. She paused when Oriana turned. “Why do you ask?”

Oriana bit back tears not caused by the salty air. Why didn’t her parents visit? What were the Summersets hiding?

Gaia put her hand on Oriana’s shoulder. “You’re my best friend.” Oriana twisted to her. “You know that, don’t you?”

Oriana knew. She felt as if she could tell Gaia anything, but this secret was different. It was hers, and Pasha’s.

“You can tell me.”

Oriana looked down and swallowed her anger and frustration. “I don’t know my parents.” She stared into Gaia’s eyes, and the words tumbled out of her. “I’ve never met them. My developers won’t talk to me about them.” She felt as if the weight of the commonwealth lifted off her. “Do you know who they are?”

“No, no I don’t.” Gaia held Oriana’s hand. “Why would I?”

“Nathan knows.”

Gaia massaged Oriana’s hand. “My friend, you can’t believe anything Nathan tells you—”

“Ho, Oriana!”

The women swiveled toward the shore.

Nathan waved wildly, standing beside Duccio, Pasha, and Desaray near the jetty.