The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (8 page)

“The third layer is the Metamorphosis Program, which you just witnessed. The ramps are suspended by a complex set of pulleys, lifts, and supports. The entire lab can alter itself. It was, in fact, the first and only alterable laboratory Before Reassortment.

“The final layer is the Myst, a failsafe to guard against contamination. It is invisible and virtually undetectable. The synthetic organisms developed within the facility included a weakness to the Myst. For transhumans, we think the effect of the Myst would be hallucinations. Anyone inside the facility wore protective masks to filter the air.”

“We can’t approach Hengill Power Plant’s primary entrance,” Oriana said, “and their radar would find us in the sky, so how do you propose we enter?”

Ruiner stole a sideways glance at Oriana. Pasha held his head up and puffed out his chest.

Heywood adjusted the holograms, and Dr. Shrader’s likeness appeared. “Our records from the chaotic transition at the end of the Quaternary are sparse, but we know that Dr. Shrader was of extreme importance to the development of the Reassortment Strain.”

A woman’s and a man’s likenesses appeared, neither familiar to Oriana. “Dr. Kole Shrader you know. Dr. Luella Shrader and Dr. Ivo Ludlow you do not. They perished during an earlier Regenesis procedure … gone wrong. We’ve developed metamorphic synsuits that will disguise you as these scientists. The primary entrance inspectors won’t know you’re imposters until it’s too late.”

“And if they do?”

The hologram shifted to an island of glaciers, mountains, and volcanoes. The view plunged to the body of water labeled THINGVALLAVATN. On the island in the lake’s center, the portal through space-time remained. On one of the smaller islands near the lake’s edge, a green beacon moved to the cove labeled TRIPLE DROP CAVE.

Heywood pointed. “An alternative entry point, on the far end of the facility. The ramps will on occasion line up near this cave to allow for small engineering crews to enter. Our schematics suggest the cave is narrow, dangerous, with deep pits. Whether from the primary entrance or Triple Drop Cave, your mission is to descend to the Hexagon, connect to the primitive mainframe through the zeropoint field, retrieve the synthesis for the Reassortment Strain, and escape as fast as possible.”

“To what time in the past do you send us?” Oriana said.

Heywood looked at Ruiner. “With your skill in the zeropoint field, Captain, I expect you to manipulate the quantum numbers of the dense exotic matter, allowing for entry to Iceland in the year 2, Before Reassortment.”

Ruiner seemed to ponder this comment. He held both his hands at the collar of his bodysuit and squeezed, looking up, then to Heywood, he said, “Don’t you think that’s too close to the Death Wave? Don’t you think 10 BR or 15 BR would be safer?”

Heywood pushed his disheveled hair away from his forehead. “Captain, you must be precise, you must take your team to the year 2 BR, for this is when we believe the final iterations of the Reassortment Strain were synthesized, and it is the data from these final iterations that Antosha seeks.”

Ruiner hesitated. “Fine.”

“If your surveillance bots obtained this much information,” Pasha said, “why not program them to traverse the facility or download the data externally?”

“The z-wall and defenses are too powerful,” Heywood countered, “and Antosha will not place the fate of this mission in the hands of bots.”

“But he’d trust it in the hands of inexperienced, ineffectual neophytes,” Mintel said. He laughed. “Apologies, Supreme Scientist Querice, submit my insubordination if you will, but what you speak is such folly I cannot sit here in silence.”

He stood up and swayed through the holograms to the twins. “I have no doubt you two are skilled. A top performance in the Harpoons among thirteen-million-plus transhumans is admirable, but this isn’t a simulation. This isn’t a game or an exam. The battles waged upon the Earth were unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed, and the Western Hegemony Guard will kill you. They’ll kill our captain—”

“I won’t allow that,” Pasha said.

“We’ll prepare them,” Dahlia said. “We’ll—”

“No,” Mintel said, pointing at her, “don’t you give in to this travesty.”

“Please, end this,” Ruiner said. Toward Mintel, he gently raised and lowered his hand. “These are the parameters set forth by the commonwealth, and we must execute the mission the way the chancellor expects.”

Mintel sat down and crossed his arms with a scowl.

“Antosha mentioned that I’d be … enhanced,” Pasha said. “What did he mean?”

Oriana turned to him, eyebrows raised.

“Yes!” Heywood said. “You shall be fused with a prototype synsuit, which I understand is the most powerful we’ve ever created, forged from the alien species known as the Lorum.”

Hydra Hollow

300 meters deep

Verena looked upon the long and weary faces of the BP spread about the bazaar. They all sensed an inevitable end. She inhaled the earthen air mixed with smells of coffee, grilled sausage, and baked bread and cakes. Somewhere nearby, she heard children singing. Their voices commanded her attention and dissolved her waking fright: the thought that Nero would perish in Farino Prison.

Oh Nero …

She walked beyond a tented booth in search of the songs. She spotted the group, a unique and inspiring sight, for Verena rarely saw children in the commonwealth. A girl, in late childhood by Verena’s estimation, lunged toward her. She landed at Verena’s feet and scrabbled after a spiked cube that Verena had not seen. The child’s matted hair bounced as she scooped up her toy. “It’s
mine!
” she said, then spun and returned to her friends.

Verena smiled toward the children, then continued on to the meeting area and sat beside Jeremiah Selendia, leader of the Liberation Front. She contemplated her options. She couldn’t return to Beimeni, for Lady Isabelle would be monitoring her likely stops—Minister Charles’s citadel in Palaestra, her former gallery in Palaestra Hall, her former office in the Ventureño Facility. Where else had she to go?

How quickly it all came undone.

Not long ago, she’d returned from Vigna a hero with Brody and Nero. Now she sat at a table with strangers, terrorists she once reviled.

Green glowworms cast light into the cavern. The Leadership’s shadows danced over the limestone table and walls. Jeremiah rubbed a piece of parchment on the table. “I’ve called this meeting at our desperate hour,” he said.

He moved out of his seat, and the silence that descended over his council felt appropriate to Verena, for the hour was later than desperate. At any time, Lady Isabelle, General Norrod, or Lieutenant Arnao and a phalanx of Janzers might pour through their tunnels and take them all away, while Reassortment might seep from above, eat their nervous systems, and crystallize their blood. And without Aera, who’d procured resources for the BP from the RDD, they’d soon starve.

Jeremiah put his palms on the table, looking upon his council with those reddish-orange eyes of his that always made Verena uncomfortable. “We have but one choice.”

Verena sensed defeat in the Leadership’s faces, despair in their lethargic postures, much like the merchants and shoppers in the bazaar. Those who remained of Jeremiah Selendia’s elite couldn’t compare to Aera or Pirro or Nero or even Connor. From the snippets Verena knew of him, Connor seemed feisty, crafty, innovative, much like his father, but unlike his father, utterly unable to understand when he was in over his head. Why hadn’t he retreated from Faraway Hall? Why had Jeremiah pitted him against Antosha in the first place?

A girl emerged from behind a stone pillar and stared at Verena with lilac eyes. As soon as Verena returned her gaze, the girl disappeared.

Was that the same girl who spied on Nero and me before the doomed operation?
Verena thought.

“Lady Verena,” Jeremiah said, “does something interest you more right now than our next operation?”

Verena turned from the pillars near the garden to Jeremiah. “I was just admiring your grower.”

Jeremiah glanced toward the herbs that lined the limestone, and so did the Leadership. There were plants and bioluminescence, but no grower. Chatter rose around the table, and Jeremiah called for decorum.

“What I know is that we’re all sitting here,” Verena said, “comfortable around this table, when men and women and children who’ve given this movement their souls are either dying or dead.” Around the table, heads turned toward her. “How could whatever operation you’re about to tell us about possibly matter at a time like this?” She threw her arms upward. “Will this operation bring them back? Will it reverse the chaos we’ve wrought on each other, the scientists who we’ve lost, the people from Blackeye Cavern scattering like rodents, will anything you say now fix all of that?”

“No, but what I have to say will be a start. You forget that my son is among those captured, along with Nero, still alive we hope, in Farino Prison under Lady Isabelle’s iron grip. And you forget that I, too, was in that grasp, not long ago, and look at me.” Jeremiah lifted his sleeve and displayed the
T
burned so deep by penetrative synisms that even his black-market reconstructive treatments couldn’t undo it. “I’ll forever carry the traitor’s mark.”

Verena nodded and folded her arms. “Carry on then.”

“Antosha’s been manipulating the Lorum’s and Marstone’s capabilities,” Jeremiah said, “enhancing his telepathic reach, and if we don’t act soon, he may be able to find us and attack us telepathically, wherever we are.”

Jeremiah brought up a rendition of Beimeni City on a Granville panel. The view zoomed out to a black-and-white map of the North American continent, including Beimeni, the thirty territories, and the spider web of transport and supply tunnels.

“We don’t have the Lorum, but we still have our network. Our field managers report to me that recruitment hit an all-time high in the last trimester after the recession deepened, and after penalties for underperformance and underconsumption increased.”

Now the safe houses—Beimenians allied clandestinely with the Liberation Front—were illuminated with white dots throughout the commonwealth.

“The final evacuees from Blackeye Cavern will join the rest of our forces scattered in the Great Commonwealth in what must be a simultaneous strike, one so overwhelming and pervasive that we can give our commandos a chance.”

“To what end?” Verena said.

“To carry out the assassination—”

“Of
Chancellor Masimovian?
”

“Of Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue.”

Verena thought on this. Antosha led the research into Reassortment, but did he act on orders from the chancellor or on his own? The answer could determine their survival. “What about the prisoners? What about Brody?”

“We’ll free them when we’ve taken the city.”

“They could be dead well before then, and regardless, your courier network will be overwhelmed before you set them in place.”

“We will neutralize Antosha first—”

“He’s not the present chancellor! And your theories on his advancement and on his desire to be so aren’t consistent with Chancellor Masimovian’s protection, with Lady Isabelle, General Norrod, Lieutenant Arnao, or the Janzers, none of whom would allow the whiff of a pulse blast to touch him—”

“Let us hope you are correct, my lady, because I believe that if Antosha moves in, and I suspect he will, the ongoing war with the Liberation Front will escalate—and it will be total.”

“You already face total war,” Verena said.

Jeremiah sighed and rubbed his temples.

“What’s your time frame?” she said.

“Chancellor Masimovian will announce a new expansion and economic plan at the Autumn Gala in Luxor this year,” Jeremiah said, “and this will present an ideal opportunity for us. The Janzers will focus their protection on Beimeni City and Luxor City. Their divisions are thinly spread as it is, and our people will be better positioned to strike.”

“A strike that Masimovian would anticipate,” Verena said.

“So he shall.” Jeremiah now peered to his leaders. “Get your commandos in order. Coordinate with your contacts in the territories. Assign the couriers. We move to take out
all
supply and electric lines in the Great Commonwealth and end Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue’s life.”

The chairs rustled and feet hustled. On the way out, Jeremiah pulled Verena aside. In her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of the girl grower hovering in the shadows near a limestone pillar.

“We’re not alone,” Verena said.

Jeremiah glanced to the child. “Go along now, Jocelyn, join your friends. You’ve spied on the grown-ups long enough.” He squeezed his forehead and lowered his voice. “Little Jocelyn is a natural, itching to get into the field like her brothers, but far too young biologically, not even in adolescence yet.”

Verena agreed.

Jocelyn flew past them into the limestone tunnels.

“Do not take my harshness as a sign I don’t understand the challenge,” Jeremiah said. “I do. You’re now the most experienced strategist I have—”

“I’m your
only
strategist.”

“That’s true, and so I’ll lean on you more so than anyone in my senior Leadership.”

“I understand.” Verena leaned on her back foot and tilted her head. “Have you given second thought to the idea of securing Brody from the Lower Level? As sure as the Granville sun rises, the people would rally behind their captain at this darkest of times.”

Jeremiah exposed the hint of a smile.

“You’ve … already acted … haven’t you?”

“Let’s just say I’m not as foolish as your tone earlier suggested.”

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

“Aha, Miss Oriana, welcome to the RDD infirmary,” the medical bot labeled MARIA said.

“Where is he?” Oriana said.

“This way.”

Dr. Shrader lay across a levitating gurney, enclosed by needles, tubes, and wires, his face hidden by a cloth.