The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (26 page)

“Do you even know anymore?” Decca was saying. Though his tone suggested he hated her, he looked at her as if he cared for her as a father. “Do you hear Antosha’s voice imploring to you the goodness of your mission, of his role, of the benefits you’ll receive as part of the Reassortment research team and liaison between the RDD and ministry?”

He knows everything,
Gwen thought.
His manner reflects his hatred for Antosha, not me, but can I trust him? Can I trust anyone?

She stood before the prime minister, who toyed with the iridescent Polaris Pyramid that hung from his golden necklace and eyed her with some curiosity.

Gwen couldn’t block Antosha from her mind, and she’d put no one else at risk. “I’ve seen more than you know,” she said. “Territories in this Great Commonwealth all but forgotten by Phanes and Luxor, an economy that languishes while the aristocracy hosts orgies and feasts with entertainment the likes of which most Beimenians will never know, a Reassortment research team in disarray, a Beimenian people who’ve lost hope, who turn increasingly toward a terrorist movement that threatens us all—”

“You think you’re wise for your travels, like a little bird. Don’t you see?” Decca leaned toward her. His voice cracked. “Antosha’s a
villain
.”

“You’re wrong about him.”

Gwen wished she could dissolve through the floor.

Oh gods
, she thought,
what
am
I doing?

“I can feel the doubt in you.” Decca spoke gentler now. “Take my hands.”

Her hands trembled, but she reached forward.

“Allow me to present to you the Antosha
I
remember …”

Gwen’s consciousness combined with the prime minister’s until the world spun into nothingness around her …

… And when reality reformed, Gwen saw and heard and felt the world through Decca’s eyes and ears and skin. She moved swiftly through the underground from Luxor to Phanes to Palaestra. She followed Decca through his investigation of Antosha’s methodologies, which led him to thousands of current and former RDD scientists and their families.

Gwen could feel their horror as they told of the changes Antosha sought to make to their genes, alterations designed, he assured, to enhance their mind-body-cosmos interface to make it more similar to the Lorum’s connection to the quantum universe—to move their genome closer to
Homo evolutis
. Those who resisted him perished in agony according to loved ones of the deceased; for one scientist, the changes to her DNA led her flesh to eat her muscle and bones; in another case, an RDD scientist clawed her own eyes out, thinking they were trying to eat her; one after another, scientists who refused to work with Antosha deceived or killed each other, while others who underwent his experiments perished owing to the changes in their DNA, which didn’t work as he’d believed—

Gwen troubled to breathe, her vision blurred, her connection to Decca faltered. He pulled her back into his sphere of influence.

“Please, let me go,” Gwen pleaded. “He’ll see, he’ll
know.
” She shuddered.

What would happen then? Who else might Antosha kill?

Decca didn’t respond to her, but rather pulled her deeper, and though part of her wanted to fight him, another part didn’t fear him. His telepathic touch wasn’t as consuming or as transforming as Antosha’s.

Visions surrounded her, flashing on and off, of people she didn’t know, z-file after z-file, of deceased or deranged scientists, procured, she assumed, from Marstone’s Database. After countless files opened and closed, a woman materialized before her. Haleya Decca. She darted along the palace’s marble floor, silk streamers from her gown flickering behind her. The prime minister cried out for her, but she ignored him. Gwen felt Haleya’s dread as her father had, the panic within his daughter, the belief that the world, indeed her very existence, was coming undone.

Gwen had often felt that way during the campaign, a thought that outraged her.

She watched the prime minister telekinetically close the massive glass doors to the palace, which were surrounded by alloy and more glass, just as Haleya arrived there. She halted and pounded on the doors, shouting loud enough to shatter all the pyramids in Luxor. She soon gave up and turned. Her hair looked like a spider’s web, and the small mole next to her lips quivered with her cheeks.

“You can’t keep me here!” Haleya yelled.

“What did Antosha do to you?” Decca said.

“I have to warn him about your
illegal
investigation, I have to save him—”

“I won’t let him hurt you any longer—”

“I’ll kill her—” Haleya stopped herself, turning away from her father. She again punched the doors until she bloodied her knuckles. “I know he still loves me!” She connected to the ZPF and with all her strength in the physical and metaphysical realms, sent a telekinetic burst into the glass with her fist. She crouched and protected her head as the shattered bits of glass from the tall entryway rained down upon her and the palace’s floor.

Now the world turned bright white, and when the light cleared, Gwen stood upon the Island of Reverie.

The scene before her looked familiar, the Barão Strike Team, the Reassortment research team, all dressed in biomats beneath the Reassortment research terradome. “Why did you bring me here?” Gwen said.

Decca didn’t respond to her. Nor did he alter his stoic expression, but Gwen sensed the sorrow inside him. The Jubilee commenced on Verena’s countdown. Haleya emerged upon the surface, protecting her eyes from the brightness of day. Gwen turned left and right and back again, searching. Antosha wasn’t there! And rather than continue as planned, Captain Barão ordered his team to abort the clinical trial, but Haleya broke through the glass enclosure before it could bring her back underground. The captain grabbed a biomat from a research bot and rushed outside after Haleya, following her to the cliff where she dove into the river.

The captain lowered his head.

He, Haleya’s dead body, and the river blurred, and now Gwen stood with Prime Minister Carillon Decca on the terrace at the Palace of Luxor. He looked like an empty man, now that she’d seen him from the inside out. A million questions rowed through her mind. Who was Haleya going to kill? What happened when she met with Antosha? Why was she on the island? Whose version of Haleya’s Jubilee should she believe?

Gwen heard a sound in her head, a drumming that shook her concentration. She looked toward the open archway leading inside. Marcel stood in the shadows with his arms folded. She smiled to him, her sweet brother-in-development, but when she turned back to Decca, she looked upon Antosha’s likeness. Though his lips didn’t move, she heard,
Decca is a lying coward—

“
No!
” Gwen said.

She dashed inside, across the marble floor, ignoring the voices crying out behind her. She slammed through the antique doors and down the stairs to the atrium in the palace. Antosha’s likeness appeared ahead of her. She tried to stop but lost her footing. She slid across the ground, kicking her legs. “No, no, no, no—”

You can’t hide from me.
Again, Antosha’s lips didn’t move, but she heard his voice in her mind.
You’re
my
violin—

Gwen stood and spun. She gasped. A new likeness of Antosha blocked her. She swiveled again on the balls of her feet, but again, Antosha appeared. She twisted and turned, her dirty gown spinning around her. Antosha was everywhere!

She threw her head back and screamed.

“Gwendolyn! Sweet sister!”

Gwen turned. Marcel and Juvelle dashed toward her. Antosha’s repeated likeness had disappeared.

She held her face in her hands.
Am I going insane?
she thought.

Marcel held her. “I’ve got you,” he said. “I won’t let anyone hurt—”

“Marcel,” Gwen said, breathing hard, “Nexirenna …”

The palace spun around her. She passed out.

Comb Cove

Gallia, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

“You lied to me,” Nero said.

He stared at the z-disk in the palm of his hand. It was the one Aera had handed him after they’d rescued Verena. He’d given in to temptation and
tried
to view its contents.

Aera sharpened her diamond sword with a whetstone that looked like a spoonful of magma, glowing yellow-orange. “I advised you.” She didn’t return his stare, instead examining her sword’s edge, then sheathing it across her back. “I told you that you might not want to see what’s in there—”

“I think I found it,” Verena said. She examined the wall, searching for the entrance to the nearly forgotten cavern used by the strike teams, many decades ago.

Nero closed his fist over the z-disk. “I can’t even access it.”

Aera didn’t respond. She had told him he’d have to learn to access it himself before he would be able to learn its secrets (or contents). Nero had no idea what that meant.

“I found it,” Verena said. She swiped a fossilized fish bone from the center to the edge and pushed her foot to a stone lever. The doorway opened to a blue-green bioluminescent cavern.

They entered. Ponds weaved around granite and compressed diamond pillars, the latter constructed by transhumans. In the water, the gelatinous comb jellies glowed with bioluminescent shades of green and blue as they bobbed. Farther in, the water in the cave looked light green, color spread by glowworms slithering up and down the stalactites above.

They crossed a carbyne bridge over a dark pit. Here the cave turned a light violet-blue hue and contained a waterfall in the center. The sounds of flowing water covered their footsteps. Nero’s heartbeat accelerated. They ambled around the falls and neared a crumbling archway, above which lay the remnants of a stone striker, aera, strategist, and captain holding hands, looking down upon Livelle city-state: the mark of the strike teams. Nero looked at the synthetic animated tattoo on his own forearm to get a clearer view of it.

“What’s wrong?” Verena said.

“Nothing,” Nero said. “I’m just thinking … about the first time we were here, together.”

He saw the archway as it was then, polished and pure, with many strike teams beneath it, in 262 AR. Nero remembered when he’d walked through the archway to a golden pedestal where Chancellor Masimovian, General Norrod, and Commander Alalia awaited the newly minted Barão Strike Team to recite their oaths.

“That was a very long time ago,” Verena said, breaking Nero’s trance.

“Ages ago,” he agreed.

“It was an ideal place for me to hide from Lady Isabelle,” Aera put in.

Of course, it was
, Nero thought, turning to her. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? The teams with knowledge of her stay would not have given away the first woman striker—the First Aera—to the commonwealth for all the benaris in Phanes, Luxor, and Palaestra combined.

“For how long?” Verena said. She sounded as surprised as she looked.

“As long as I could.” Aera paused. “Until the end …”

“You were here when the chancellor forced its closure,” Nero said.

“Yes.”

Chancellor Masimovian had decommissioned the commander rank after Vastar Alalia had perished during a surface excursion in 273 AR to the Island of Reverie. The teams suspected sabotage by Jeremiah Selendia, but Chief Justice Carmen had ruled the death an accident. After the hearing, General Norrod had shut down the cave, and since then the teams were trained, minted, and sworn to service in the RDD, under the general’s direction.

“Where did you go?” Nero said.

“I hid in the lesser territories, where Lady Isabelle’s surveillance has always been weaker. I sought out Jeremiah after he left the Masimovian Administration. He … helped me to recover …”

“From what?” Verena said.

Aera didn’t respond.

“What did they do to you in Nyx?” Nero said.

He’d heard so many rumors over the decades that he didn’t know truth from myth—that the First Aera lived seemed miracle enough.

Aera whipped away from them silently, entering one of the once fabled, now crumbling simulation rooms.

Verena looked at Nero. He shrugged.

Aera activated bioluminescent lighting and unfurled her pack. It held a Harpoon harness and a simulator used by developers. “If we are to enter Area 55 and take the Lorum,” Aera turned to Nero, “I will need a master striker at my side, a striker who could defeat even
me
in battle.”

We have to tell her,
Nero thought, looking at Verena.
Aera deserves to know the location of the Lorum.
Neither he nor Verena trusted Aera or the BP, so they hadn’t yet disclosed the Lorum’s changed location. All they had told the BP was that Minister Charles supported them, which, in a way, was true. Verena preferred to wait until they met with Jeremiah to fully leverage their knowledge and positioning. Nero wondered if he should disclose it now. The look on Verena’s face, cautious and knowing, suggested he should not.

“We were summoned by the Front to Volano City,” Verena said, “and you want to train, here, now? We’ll never make it on—”

“My lady, you’re skilled in the ways of contemporary strategists.” Aera tested her sword’s edge, drawing blood from her finger, then stared at Verena. “You’re not a warrior,” Aera turned to Nero, “and neither are you, my lord.”

Verena bit her lip and angled toward Nero.

Nero recalled their duel upon Mount Cineris, how Aera had used the ZPF to move in ways he couldn’t. “I’m not like you.”

“Zeropoint energy is stronger, purer in the Comb Cove,” Aera said to Verena, “that’s why Vastar built the strike team training center here.” Aera telekinetically hung the Harpoon harness to the limestone roof. Bits of stone rained down upon them. “That’s why the chancellor shut it down.” She helped Nero into the harness. “That’s why I brought you here.”

Nero lifted off the ground …

… His world turned white, and when sight and sound returned, he found himself standing upon a wooden canoe with a wooden ore in hand. The water broke in murky waves.