The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (25 page)

Pirro grinned and released Connor’s arm.

Connor turned and made his way to the water. He tapped his toe to the river, cautiously yet confidently. Beimeni River felt as solid and sturdy as granite.

He took more steps and, without looking back, hand-signaled his army. Fifty thousand BP flooded out of the earth, trudged through the white sands, and marched over the wooden wharf and solidified river top behind Cornelius Selendia to war.

Hydra Hollow

300 meters deep

Foolish child, brave child
, Verena thought. Her heart thumped faster than it had during the attack.

Jocelyn slithered up a trench in the Hollow’s cliffs, less than a meter wide and lined with jagged limestone. Verena stealthily moved out of their nook and crawled through the trench with her. She could hear the terror birds chewing bodies, and every time they shrieked she thought she might go mad. She used her forefingers to clog her ears and peeked through a slit in the trench. Some Janzers stormed the Hollow’s tunnels, while others returned with commonwealth weapons and sacks full of BP benaris, goods, and supplies, all strewn along the limestone ground for Lady Isabelle’s review.

Verena debated her next move. Her and Jocelyn’s time was limited. She’d never taken the trench where Jocelyn had escaped. She didn’t know the way. She shook when the terror birds screamed, but it was when their screams subsided she knew the end would arrive—the Janzers would destroy the BP stronghold—and she and Jocelyn would be entombed forever, along with any other survivors, though Verena saw none.

She squeezed through the trench and slipped, and her hand pushed into a sharp limestone spike. Its bloodied tip poked through her hand. She bit her other fist. Her heart raced, and sweat poured down her face. She felt light-headed. She grasped her wounded hand and removed it from the stone, wincing, then leaned against the limestone wall and breathed heavily.

Her blood streamed down a slit in the trench.

Reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Verena ripped off a piece of her military fatigues and wrapped her hand.

Reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

The terror bird’s cry felled Verena, forcing her to cover her ears, and her blood rushed down her hair, face, and neck.

Reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

The prehistoric bird found a drop of blood on the stone below. Its comrades joined it in the search for the source. The birds pecked here and there and looked up and at each other. They wailed and squealed, that sound that vibrated Verena’s bones. She wanted to scream. Tears streaked down her face, the pain from her hand presently replaced by a severe headache.

Verena glimpsed Jocelyn’s lilac eyes, so full of innocence and bravery and brilliance, eyes that gave Verena strength. She mouthed,
Get down.

Jocelyn crouched.

A Janzer division moved in their attack formation, rotating with their backs toward each other to where the birds had swarmed. The terror birds fled and returned to the transhuman carcasses they’d been enjoying.

Verena squirmed along the trench.

A pulse blast shattered the rock. Shards of stone fell upon her. She covered her head and scrabbled faster.

“I have movement,” she heard a Janzer say, “and I have a visual.”

“Kill them,” Lady Isabelle said.

Verena hunched and crawled up the trench to where Jocelyn hid. Pulse blasts landed all around her, and the terror birds howled. She threw herself over Jocelyn, into the dark limestone nook. When Verena raised her head, she realized the dark nook wasn’t an enclosure at all, but a passageway, one unfamiliar to her.

“Take them down!” Isabelle said.

Verena peeked through a slit in the cliffs. The Janzers were arranging a pulse launcher on a tripod. She grabbed Jocelyn’s hand and pulled her into the passageway.

The wires fired into the limestone. The pulse blast struck the stalactites, and the passageway collapsed.

Verena and Jocelyn choked from the dust.

Darkness consumed them.

“We have to keep moving,” Verena said. “They’ll conduct a search, then collapse Hydra Hollow.”

Jocelyn sobbed. “Hey,” Verena said, “hey, all will be right.” She hugged the poor child, who held her so tightly Verena had trouble breathing. “I told you I’d never let anything happen to you.”

Jocelyn pushed her away. “It’s … not … that.” She hiccupped and her breath gave out between sobs. “What that … lady … did to Jerry … what those … things … did … to … the Polemon … they’re gone, aren’t they? Gone to the gods?”

“Yes, they’re with the gods, and I’m sorry about Jeremiah, and I’m sorry about your family and the commandos. I’m so sorry you had to witness all of that, and I’m sorry we didn’t protect you—”

“I don’t blame you.” Jocelyn sniffled and wiped her nose. “What’s going to happen to us?”

“I don’t know … but I’ll take care of you.” Verena felt along the wall for the indentations that would let her know how to traverse the passageway, but she didn’t feel them. The wall was smooth and dry, the air stale.

“Sweet pie, do you know this passage?” Verena said.

“Does a Polemon kill Janzers?”

They moved without light, Verena holding Jocelyn’s hand, Jocelyn feeling her way through the passageways, tunnels darker than the void. A decay tinged the air that Verena had last smelled in Portage City, distinguishable for the bitter taste it triggered upon her tongue, though not as bitter as Verena’s mood, for she couldn’t stop thinking how she could’ve led the remaining commandos out of the Hollow days ago. She could’ve saved thousands more lives.

Why oh why wouldn’t Jeremiah just leave and allow the remaining Polemon to exit?
she thought.

The cloth over Verena’s injured hand was drenched with her blood, and though she held it across her chest, the current roped down her arm. She needed a cache and she needed it soon, for uficilin could heal, but it couldn’t revive.

Jocelyn told her when to turn.

Verena felt a swell of resentment for Jeremiah, stealing this child’s, and many others’, innocence in the name of survival, in the name of a war they couldn’t understand. And here she was, using the child the way Jeremiah did, for her selfish purpose, for her escape, for her survival.

The thought made her cry, sounds that shattered the silence in the tunnel.

“What’s wrong?” Jocelyn said. “Is it your hand?”

“No, sweet pie, it’s not my hand.”

“Is it the dark? I was afraid of the dark once. Not anymore.”

“No, it’s not the dark.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s nothing, sweet pie, I’m okay. Let’s keep moving.”

Verena knew that word of Jeremiah’s death would travel far and quickly. She assumed Chancellor Masimovian, while not eager to trumpet the death of his brother-in-development, who was already officially deceased, would seek swift justice upon BP loyalists, including herself and Jocelyn.

Jeremiah had never mentioned a command in Portage to her, certainly not at the citadel, though that didn’t mean anything. Often she would find out about BP sympathizers, such as Minister Nex of Natura or Minister Portia of Gaia—ministers she believed were
most
supportive of Chancellor Masimovian—through Beimenians along her travels, not Jeremiah. Why he had trusted her to lead his people throughout the commonwealth but not with tactical strategy and other information remained an enigma to Verena. But when she searched her heart, she found she did trust Jeremiah. So she would take Jocelyn to the rendezvous point.

They traveled through the passageways for hours, at least, though it was easy to lose track. She could feel her body’s struggle. A spell of vertigo shook her. She kept thinking about Jocelyn.

Can’t fall
, Verena thought,
must stay awake.

She questioned why they hadn’t found a cache, for this was the longest (or it felt like the longest) time she’d ever traveled through the passageways to find one. The most likely scenario was the worst, and the one she knew was possible the entire trip: that Jocelyn, though confident and practiced in the Polemon passageways, was in fact looping through the same tunnels.

The urges for Verena to feed her gut and heal her wound were also having an impact.

Soon her light-headedness grew so bad it nearly prevented her movement. “Jocelyn,” she said, “are we close to a cache or the end of this passageway?”

Jocelyn didn’t respond.

Verena ripped a new piece of her fatigues and wrapped the cloth around her hand. She bit her other hand and concealed her agony.

“Not far now,” Jocelyn said. “There’s a secret wall on the other end of this tunnel.”

A few kilometers more, and Jocelyn and Verena found the cache. Verena injected Jocelyn and herself with uficilin. They emptied their bladders in the lavatory tanks and drank a few canteens filled with water. They chewed bars infused with sustenance synisms, all the supplies provided by Polemon spies, compliments of the RDD and Polemon scientists.

Their strength rejuvenated and Verena’s hand healed, they continued on for kilometer after kilometer in the darkness, where Verena, who continuously felt the wall for indentations and was continuously annoyed at the lack of them, believed more and more that she and Jocelyn
were
entombed.

She felt nauseated. The air thinned and she slowed.

“Almost there,” Jocelyn said.

Verena squeezed Jocelyn’s hand and marveled at how the child could so easily push aside her fear. She thought about where
she
had been at the biological equivalent to Jocelyn—in House Adao, safe, under development and enhanced, training, reaching for the precipice of transhuman capabilities—not participating in a guerilla war, not leading adults and children and elderly through a coffin labyrinth to safe houses.

When next they turned, a waterfall ahead of them streamed down the limestone, colored in hues of red and yellow intermixed. It looked like lava. “Here’s the slide,” Jocelyn said excitedly. She pulled Verena.

The strategist held the child in her arms as they plunged down and around, around and down, down, down, more than two thousand meters to the Beimeni zone. At last, they splashed in murky water that smelled like sulfur, then swam to the shore. They continued through sightless and soundless tunnels, on and on, turning left or right. Jocelyn moved assuredly through these Polemon passageways, also unfamiliar to Verena.

Verena didn’t know how long they’d traveled in the Beimeni zone when Jocelyn stopped.

“We’re here!” Jocelyn said softly.

Shards of light broke through the limestone.

“Where?”

“Gaia City, in Gaia Hills to be precise, near the ministry buildings—”

“I know where the hills are,” Verena said, exasperated. She couldn’t believe they’d traveled so far. She wondered whether Lady Isabelle’s forces could’ve traveled as quickly, or if they took a longer route.

Verena and Jocelyn crawled through a gash in the limestone that led to bushes on the side of a trail in the hills. The sight of a Granville morning sky—broken with night by nonfunctioning panels—had never warmed Verena’s heart as it did now. They slunk around the bushes. Verena peered back and forth, then dashed across the trail and spied the city.

In Earth Square, pocked with pits that curdled and fizzed, overlaid with mist from a massive geothermal vent, Janzers and terror birds marched in rows led by Lady Isabelle. Minister Portia awaited them with her Citadel Guardsmen, violet and aquamarine beads and jasmine flowers around her neck. The minister’s eyes seemed as if they were filled with earth and steam, but they didn’t reveal emotion. Her Citadel Guardsmen wore dark bodysuits and silk capes with diamond daggers and pulse guns holstered at their sides.

A Janzer division turned to the hills and Verena ducked.

“What is it?” Jocelyn said.

“Down,” Verena said softly. She waited. Did the Janzers scan the hills, or were they focused upon the nearby ministry building, searching for snipers?

Can’t back down now
, Verena thought. She turned her head and, more stealthily, gazed upon the square, upon the Gaians (many of whom Verena knew were BP sympathizers) dressed in silk tunics and wooden slippers, who ambled here and there between the buildings and the shops and the merchants, all with eyes fixed to the square, on Isabelle and her raiders.

“What’s happening?” Jocelyn said. “I can’t see.”

“Shush,” Verena said.

Minister Portia bowed to Lady Isabelle, and they exchanged words. Isabelle hand-signaled a Janzer, who brought over a dead body—Jeremiah Selendia’s bloodied body—and dropped it like a sack in front of Portia. The minister covered her mouth. Gasps echoed. Isabelle and Portia exchanged more words, until the minister bowed again and handed her a pouch that Verena assumed was filled with benaris. Isabelle hand-signaled the Janzers again and blew a whistle, silent to transhuman ears. The terror birds stood erect. They all followed Isabelle. The invader force moved in sync, flowing around the minister, her guards, and Jeremiah’s dead body. The Janzers raised their knees high when they strutted out of the square.