The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) (17 page)

The train stopped, and everything left behind disappeared with great finality.

Vivian stepped out of the station, dragging the bag behind her, finding herself in the army base where she had met Susan, Alice, Akiva, and all the others. Soldiers looked at her with pity in her eyes, some shook their heads, one placed his hand on her shoulder, maybe understanding the plight of the former Creux pilots. At least in the army she was pitied, and insulated from the idiots living outside.

Maybe she could do that. She had spent time living and training as a soldier before Zenith; maybe that could be a new, alternative future.

When she walked past the training field and stepped into the main building, she found the tall figure of General Adams, who immediately walked towards her. The general saluted her; it almost made her feel like an equal.

“You’re the last one, Poole,” she said. “Come with me. We’ll take you to your temporary house, while our little problem is fixed.”

She wondered what the general meant by that. “Uh, General Adams,” she said. “I was thinking—I don’t want to be a civilian; I thought maybe I could enlist here and—”

“We’ll see. We can talk soon, Poole,” the woman said, uninterested in Vivian’s proposal. “Follow Private Jenkins. He’ll take you in one of our cars. Jenkins? You know the place. Poole—Vivian. Keep your amazing strength. For Roue. For all of us. Just a little longer.”

Vivian nodded, suddenly feeling more proud than confused, and looked over to Private Jenkins. He was a short, stocky soldier, dressed in uniform. He wore a ring on his nose. Just like Ezra Blanchard. Just like—

“Sergeant Barnes was my CO, ma’am,” the man said, noticing Vivian’s eyes on the ring. He took the bag from Vivian’s hand and walked out the main door, to the street. “He’s been missing ever since he last left for Zenith. This is just my tribute. Others are doing it too.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she could tell him the truth of what had happened: Barnes wasn’t just missing; Barnes was dead.

“I know something’s happened in there,” he said, opening the car door for her before getting on the driver’s seat. “I understand, but it was difficult enough to lose Corporal Higgins. I just wish we knew where he is. Where Covington is.”

She cringed and he noticed.

“If it’s worth anything, ma’am: despite all this crap, I believed in you guys. The sarge believed in you, so did Covington and of course so did Higgins. I know you were doing the right thing, and what happened with the red one, the Minotaur, it was just an accident . . .”

She wished he would stop talking, so she tried to ignore him by looking out the tinted windows of the car. The city was still dirty with political propaganda, and it was all Heath’s.

“Whatever happens, happens. We did our part, right?” he said.

She didn’t answer, only sighed, hoping the soldier would understand her total disinterest in conversation.

Luckily, he did, and didn’t speak again until they reached their destination.

The car came to a stop in a neighborhood she had never visited before. Vivian could tell by the huge houses that it was the slice of the wealthy. She wondered what kind of house the Army had set up for her and the other pilots, and how long would she be staying there.

“This is it, ma’am. Number nine,” the soldier said, and opened the door for her, holding the bag for her to take.

Vivian thanked him and stepped out of the car. She hung the bag from her shoulder and approached the door, but it was opened before she could knock.

“Vivian, I’m glad you’re finally here. You’re the last one,” said Director Blanchard. She was dressed in elegant clothing, but it was definitely the clothing of a civilian.

Vivian’s first reaction was to put her arms around the director. She had seen this powerful woman fight until she could fight no more, and now she stood tall and strong before her, even smiling, not letting her defeat weigh her down. The woman hugged her back like the mother Vivian never knew. She felt safe for the first time in weeks.

“It’s all right, Vivian, it’s all right. Come on in. Welcome to my home.”

After releasing her, the director opened the door further to reveal the last thing Vivan expected to see:

Inside this enormous, luxurious home, Vivian recognized personnel from Zenith: soldiers, scientists, even the cook from the dining hall. She saw Jed and Felix. Everyone looked busy and full of energy, as though their lives hadn’t ended one day before.

“What’s—ma’am, what’s happening here?”

When Vivian was finally inside the house, Director Blanchard closed the door behind her. “You didn’t think I would just let Zenith die, did you?”

Chapter 9

Communication Breakdown

Hours after waking
, Ezra and the others were escorted by Malachi and Farren out of their cell and the prison. The two guards didn’t bind their hands or cover their eyes this time, so they finally had a chance to more closely inspect the Caduceus. He caught quick glimpses of some of the other prisoners—none of them looked dangerous or menacing, but they definitely looked insane in a terribly off-putting way. It was pitiful and sad.

Then they finally got a good eye on Clairvert.

As he suspected, the city existed inside the mountain in a giant cavern. It had been carved into the beautiful, glossy stone by erosion and not man—that much he could tell.

People were going about their business, something more primitive but otherwise not so different from Roue. The citizens of Clairvert would look their way as they passed, recognizing them as an intriguing object; something told him that they hadn’t seen outsiders in years, maybe decades. These people lived modest lives, and seemed richer for it. The houses were basically huts, and it made him think of how obscenely huge his family’s home in Roue was in comparison. Their clothing was also primitive, and looked far too thick, like they were living in a cold environment, even if they weren’t (in fact, it was humid and warm).

They descended a huge slope that curved down the edge of the hall and landed on the base of Clairvert. There didn’t seem to be much planning done to the city’s layout, but it was a product of forced exodus from Kerek, and not of careful design. The huts were scattered almost haphazardly in clusters of six or seven, all in different elevations, on whatever flat surfaces nature had provided for them. In more ways than one, this was a miraculous alternative to the dome of Kerek. He only wondered what they ate and drank.

Ezra saw the atrium leading outside, and the surreal labyrinth of folding stone walls that made the city impregnable to the monsters of the wasteland. On the other side, there was some sort of plaza—a circular dais, carved with symbols he thought he recognized from old memories, all encircling a great monument: a pillar stretching at least twenty feet up, tipped with a bright-looking crystal, like the hilt of a sword.

“I wonder for how long that can protect this place,” Garros mused. He was looking at the atrium. “If it comes back, those walls are not going to stop it.”

“Yeah, if it comes back, nothing is going to stop it,” said Akiva. He didn’t sound quite as bleak as the words should.

Ezra noticed Erin was a few feet ahead of the others, talking with Farren in a conversation he couldn’t overhear. Every few sentences she’d look back at the others, more often at Akiva, and then return to Farren, whose cape hung behind him like a folk hero’s.

He tried to fight his instincts—something was being kept from him—but it was difficult. Ezra had to remind himself it was all in his mind, either a result of his own anxieties, or the Creux, or both. It was difficult, but he was used to biting his tongue.

Something particular caught the corner of his eye, and Ezra turned around to see someone he had been thinking of: Elena. She was standing in the atrium, hiding from sight, and looking straight at the group—at Ezra in particular.

Ezra didn’t even think about the implications of his decision and took a sharp turn towards her, ignoring the fact that he was being escorted. He needed to know what Elena was hiding from him, because he immediately recognized her as a key player in their quest. She knew secrets that could save the world, and he needed to hear them.

When Ezra was closer to her, he saw her eyes widen in fear before she disappeared behind the folding stones. It was that instant when he felt a strong hand grip his arm and yank it back. “Where the hell d’you think you’re going, little man?” said Farren.

Ezra turned around, angry, and broke his arm free from the armored man’s grasp. “Call me
little man
again,” he said and finished in his head:
I’ve killed things that could wipe their ass with you
.

Farren didn’t say anything else, but still pushed Ezra back with the others. When he looked back, he confirmed that Farren had scared Elena away.

It was then that an obvious truth finally clicked in his head: Elena was an exile. She was one of the citizens of Clairvert who had fallen to the Asili’s madness, and decided to take her chances out in the wasteland instead of being jailed in the Caduceus.

Even if he hadn’t caught any evidence of the madness in her, Ezra would’ve done the same in her position. Maybe that didn’t speak well of his own sanity.

Now, more than ever, he wanted to talk to her. She knew things she had no business knowing; Ezra wondered if they had confused her knowledge with madness.

“What are you doing?” Erin said, stern.

“Nothing,” he replied. If one of the guards overheard the truth, they’d look for her and throw her out for good. “I, uh, wanted to check on the Creuxen.”

“Don’t do that again,” she scolded him when they began walking again. “We need to be on these people’s good side if we want to investigate this place. Nandi’s a big boy. It’ll be all right.”

He had lied about his concern about the Creux, but suddenly the feeling was real. Nandi always felt indestructible to him, but not by itself. What would he do if he returned outside, only to find his Creux in pieces? He had seen it destroyed once—

No, of course that couldn’t happen.

Maybe it can
.

Ezra wanted to ignore the Minotaur’s words, but he couldn’t.

Farren and Malachi led them to another tunnel at the opposite end of the city, one that was heavily guarded and monitored—a restricted area they would have never visited if not for Farren’s company, protected by a large iron door.

Inside was a very different place. The walls were a stronger shade of aqua and particularly smooth and slick. He saw Jena put her hand on the wall and slide her finger down as if to test its composition; it looked cold to the touch.

More importantly, this new area was several years—maybe centuries—ahead in time. Opposed to Clairvert, this space was closer to the life he knew in Roue—the light here was artificial and very powerful, shed by hexagonal panels stuck to the walls every few dozen feet. They passed by two closed doors that might have been automatic; it almost reminded him of Zenith.

The smell was there too—that strange scent he had experienced again when they unearthed Lazarus.

“Farren says this area is off-limits to civilians; only the people in charge can be here,” said Erin to the others after letting their escorts walk ahead of them. The more advanced technology in the area made their uniform particularly strange to look at. “I’m not sure I fully understand their system.”

“I don’t care about the system,” said Akiva. “I just want to talk to them and make them listen. I have a really bad feeling. Like I
know
something bad will happen soon, in here.”

“That’s an odd thing to say,” said Jena, concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just . . . I’m all right,” he said; though everyone could hear them—even Farren and Malachi—Ezra knew he was more directly talking to Jena. “I guess I’m—I don’t want to—dammit. I don’t know. I don’t want to say the wrong thing here. I’m sorry.”

Jena was frowning, worried. Ezra shared the feeling; like Garros, an invisible evil seemed to be riding on Akiva’s back, dictating his emotions, even his actions.

“We’re here,” said Farren, and his voice was carried down the hallway. He opened the door and it contracted into itself in the same way the doors did in his house when he was younger—this was technology that had been common in Roue before becoming obsolete decades before.

Time really did seem to flow strangely in Clairvert, keeping up with the outside world in some places, and not moving at all in others.

Ezra was the first to reach the newly open door, and the inside was another anachronistic, confusing sight. Though the walls in this chamber were made of the same natural material as the rest of the city, the furnishings were almost identical to the offices back in the military base of Zenith, where he had met Jena and Akiva. And Dr. Mizrahi.

Scribbling onto pieces of paper with an ink pen, there was an old man who reminded him of someone he hated. He looked like Governor Heath, though some of his features, like the wrinkles on his skin, made his age apparent. He looked up at the visitors, and it was as though he was seeing a vision in flesh. The man got up and walked around his desk to shake their hands, starting with Akiva.

“It’s you,” he said, moving from one of them to the next, lingering for a bit longer on Jena, whose hand he shook last. “Welcome to our settlement, soldiers. Welcome to Clairvert.”