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

by Zen, Raeden

  You two never listen, but here you are, Lord Thaddeus’s voice boomed.

  Oriana swore. Pasha had tricked her, made her think he trailed her when he’d instead discovered an alternate route!

  The winds and snowfall quickened. She wiped the melted flakes from her goggles.

  A swirl of neon silver dust formed into Janzers, one next to Oriana and one next to Pasha. The goal of this exercise, Lord Thaddeus said, is for each of you to reach the other end without being apprehended by your opponent’s Janzer teammate. Your movement is limited to a neighboring point on the grid, up or down, or left or right. No skipping platforms! No diagonal moves either!

  The fences cleared, and Oriana and her Janzer and Pasha and his Janzer stepped cautiously to the corner that led to the first platform. Oriana determined the correct algorithm for her movement. Her calculations showed that if she moved before her Janzer, her capture would be made more difficult, while if her Janzer moved before Pasha, he would be at a disadvantage. She gave orders to her Janzer accordingly.

  She moved swiftly to the right, her Janzer to the left, mirroring Pasha’s and his Janzer’s movements, entering the platform grid the way she planned. The Janzer that pursued her took a path she didn’t expect, and as she moved up and left, left and up, she felt a burning, ripping sensation in her calves. Her muscles cramped. She fell and rolled over the side of a platform and hung on long enough to see Pasha storm the other end of the grid, retrieving the final flag. Then she lost her grip and fell so far and fast that she could barely breathe in the thin, freezing air.

  A rush of icy water engulfed her. She screamed …

  “Oriana,” Lord Thaddeus said, “you’re okay. Do you hear me? Oriana?”

  She hung in the Harpoon harness, her bodysuit soaked. She shivered. Her mind adjusted.

  Lord Thaddeus lowered her. “You must listen! A champion listens. A champion makes wise decisions. A champion stays focused on the goal at hand. You each have the talent to receive the first bid at the Harpoon Auction, but if you don’t start obeying us, you won’t last during the critical-reasoning session.” He peered toward Lady Parthenia. “Hon, have you ever seen candidates behave like this?”

  The lady shook her head back and forth and lowered and unlatched Pasha, who wore that smile he always did when he won. He always won!

  Oriana sensed his thoughts were focused on the Harpoon leaderboard. She turned. The holographic ticker scrolled along the simulation room’s rim. The Summersets only allowed the twins to see the top one hundred nine-digit ID numbers, forever reminding them that with their genes and development they should be scoring within this elite group of candidates during Harpoon simulations.

  Oriana had dreamed of seeing her number on the ticker. Not Pasha’s.

  She threw her head back and closed her eyes. When she touched the ground, she fell to her knees and grasped her chest. “That … was … so … real,” she gasped. “More than … any other simulation …” She coughed. “Will the … Harpoons be this … way?”

  “The exams will be as real as the walls and furniture in our home,” Lady Parthenia said, “but as we’ve told you many times—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, the exams are more about cognitive and learning ability,” Pasha said, “not strength and aggressiveness.” He swiped his long, sweaty hair over his forehead and wiped his nose. “Intelligence, confidence, and moral flexibility are what the Navitan traders want to see, blah, blah, blah—”

  Lady Parthenia slapped him. “Don’t catch that tone with me, young man. You’ll do better to keep to our advice next time you’re in the simulator. You weren’t able to calculate the sequencing query. Nor did you properly navigate the woodlands. And who told you taming western wolves was permitted?”

  “No one, but—”

  “Break the rules on Harpoon day—”

  “I used the ZPF! I’m allowed to use the ZPF—”

  “To solve riddles, yes, that you may do.” Parthenia waved her forefinger. “You may not use it to influence other fauna. I’ve told you that before.” The lady put her hands on her hips. “If you disobey me on the day of the Harpoons, you’ll be disqualified. Is that clear enough for you?”

  Pasha frowned, nodded, and rubbed his raw cheek. He stole a sideways glance at his ID number on the leaderboard and bit back a grin as he helped Oriana off the ground. “You all right? I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He didn’t sound sincere.

  Oriana didn’t respond. She shivered and limped to the golden bench near the wall.

  The Summersets, on their way to the exit, hand-signaled the medical bots, who injected the twins with uficilin.

  Oriana sighed at the sweet, instant relief. Newfound energy flowed from her toes to her head. She giggled. Part of it indeed was owed to the medication, while another part was owed to her very first … victory.

  For the first time, she solved a riddle during a Harpoon simulation that Pasha could not.

  “Forgive me, O.” Pasha bit his lower lip. “You’ll get your number on the leaderboard too. You will.”

  “You don’t believe that.” She sensed his consciousness the same way he surely sensed hers. “You think you’ll get the first bid over me.” She pressed her finger to Pasha’s lips before he could speak, smiled, and cleared her mind, the way the lady taught her.

  Oriana gave her twin a sisterly kiss, then pressed her lips to his ear. “Ask not for my forgiveness, dear brother, but for my mercy.”

  Pasha pulled away from her. His lips looked pouty, his dimples deep. He stood speechless.

  Oriana raised her brow. “When I get there, not even you’ll be able to beat me.”

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Isabelle Lutetia

  Permutation Crypt

  2,750 meters deep

  “How is it still this disgusting down here?” Lady Isabelle said to Lieutenant Arnao, her voice muffled by a strapless face mask.

  She wiped a hand back and forth to clear the soot that permeated the air, then pushed ahead of Arnao through one of the research rooms, shaped like a parallelogram. Janzers roamed everywhere, like platelets, doing what they could to stop the hemorrhaging. They used blowtorches and drills on the plating, pulled singed wires and coils from the floor, and hauled supplies—synism drums, tool chests, water.

  “We’re making progress in our repairs, I assure you,” Arnao said. His chameleon military fatigues had turned a mixture of smoky black and gray to match the room. “They used an EMP to disable the coils and disrupt the transformations. Much damage was done, but it can be undone.” He adjusted his face mask. “The survivor awaits you in the infirmary.”

  Isabelle nodded and ambled beside her former courier, thinking about the BP. While she had anticipated a Polemon strike on the Crypt, she’d not expected it on the evening of the Bicentennial. With so many aristocrats and high-ranking consortium officers gathered in one place and the immediate gratification of ruining the chancellor’s prime event within reach, it seemed a fruit too juicy to ignore. The chatter in Marstone’s Database suggested Hammerton Hall was a top priority. One decoy among several, Isabelle reflected, for the BP attack on the Phanes Beltway had drawn Arnao’s forces to the eastern side of the territory, away from Permutation Crypt, which suggested a diversionary tactic. It had been executed well but was obvious enough in context. The chancellor, who could connect to his Janzer protectors as easily as he could move his own limbs, had been so soused and entranced by the Bicentennial that he didn’t even recall receiving a distress signal.

  Isabelle remembered, for while she sought to send reinforcements to the Crypt on the night of the raid, Arnao had sent too many of the capital’s Janzer divisions to the ruckus on the beltway. She should have punished Arnao after he failed to capture the whelp in Mantlestone Village. If he didn’t start performing, she’d be forced to send him to the Lower Level and promote another of her former couriers to take his place. She sighed.

  They passed the holding cell where the battle with the BP occurred and a whiff of blood and
death made Isabelle shiver. She slowed and turned. Some Janzers wrapped their fallen comrades in body bags, while others scrubbed the ground. Isabelle suspected Jeremiah’s old holding cell may have been revealed to the BP in the information Hans had procured from the DOP prior to his escape and her reacquisition of him on Masimovian Crossing. That he hadn’t had the z-disk on him made her suspect he’d given it to the whelp, Cornelius Selendia. Prior to the Bicentennial, she had left a Granville sphere that projected Jeremiah’s essence in the ZPF. The Janzers who guarded the Crypt knew what to do in the event of an attack. It should’ve been enough. She wanted to know why it wasn’t.

  They arrived at the infirmary, where a Janzer survivor lay across a hovering gurney. He grimaced when he sat up. He was a typical Janzer with bronze skin, dark brownish-red eyes, curly hair, and pouty lips—a soldier synthesized, in part, from the supreme chancellor Atticus Masimovian’s DNA, designed for the commonwealth’s, and his, protection. Untypically, he’d lost his limbs, and rather than saluting the supreme director of the Department of Communications and Commonwealth Relations, he nodded to her.

  Isabelle stepped to the side of his bed and placed her palm upon his shoulder. They connected, and the scene of the battle in the cell block unfolded before her. She extended her consciousness and searched Marstone’s Database, finding a match: the whelp, Cornelius Selendia, Jeremiah’s youngest son, whom she’d captured in Ypresia Village but lost in Beimeni City after Hans broke them out of the Department of Peace.

  She homed in on another BP fighter in a striker synsuit, swinging a diamond sword. She spied the striker’s face beneath his clouded visor. No need to search for Lord Nero Silvana’s likeness, for she knew it well. It came as little surprise that Captain Barão’s striker had turned traitor, though she wouldn’t have anticipated such boldness from him, particularly when his eternal partner lay unconscious in the RDD infirmary. The thought made her smile.

  The third wore a tinted visor. Whether it was a man or woman’s face, Isabelle couldn’t tell, but this Polemon moved differently than the rest, faster than the Janzers, with a destructive acumen she’d last witnessed in the attack on the Port of Life. The only explanation was an ancient use of the ZPF in combat, outlawed by Chancellor Masimovian. Was this the BP leader who had taken Jeremiah and Johann’s place? The Polemon flipped the Janzer, slashed a shuriken into his visor, and spun him into his division, disrupting its timing.

  Then the Janzers had discerned the BP’s weakness: they hadn’t secured the synsuits properly. The second and third wave of Janzers swarmed the invaders.

  A fourth fighter’s wrist turned into a geyser of blood and bone. Murray Olyorna, banished from the RDD, a traitor to his people. He received what he deserved, she thought as a Janzer sliced his body in half.

  The BP’s defeat seemed at hand, for after the Janzers killed Murray, they’d surrounded the other three. Not even the fastest Polemon could elude so many blows.

  Isabelle’s mouth opened wide. A burst of telekinetic energy had escaped from the whelp. He’d slaughtered most of the Janzers, and those he didn’t lay in pools of blood, barely alive. The view darkened now, and while the Janzer host to whom she connected had lost his legs and arms, he had heard all in the cell. Zorian entered with Jeremiah. An argument, then a fight ensued.

  Zorian admitted he’d deceived her. “I sent that bitch Lutetia right into the trap beneath Navita, and you guys couldn’t even finish her off.”

  She thought on this. Though Zorian deftly shielded his thoughts from her, she didn’t have a reason to distrust him: he did poison his father with E. barrier, which had blocked Jeremiah’s connection with the ZPF and enabled her to apprehend him. Part of her agreement with Zorian included full immunity for him, though he broke the accord when he disappeared. He resurfaced later on at the Block during Isabelle’s surgical search in Piscator. He had led her to Hans’s clandestine unit where she found Maribel, Hans’s illegal eternal partner, hanging dead from a ceiling fan. After that, interrogations with him had led her to Navita, but Arnao and the Janzers had gathered intel independent of him. The invasion failed, she assumed, because she waited too long, giving the BP a chance to escape.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  What she did know was that Zorian could not be allowed to roam freely with the intel he’d accessed working with her. She would take steps to locate him.

  The speech muffled when the Janzer began to lose consciousness. An explosion sent flames over his body, protected by his synsuit.

  Isabelle withdrew. The fire and smoke and shrapnel disappeared and gave way to the white phosphorescent light and chlorine stench of the infirmary. “I’m finished.” The Janzer nodded and sank back onto his bed.

  Isabelle and Lieutenant Arnao exited the infirmary and walked through the Crypt’s tunnels.

  “Did you ID the traitors?” Arnao said.

  “Three out of four of them.”

  “No way did four Polemon wrest Jeremiah Selendia from the Crypt. The Janzer’s mind must’ve fogged or you didn’t connect—”

  Isabelle stopped and turned. “I don’t err in my searches, Lieutenant. I blame you for this as much as these incompetent soldiers. Don’t mistake my mercy for forgiveness. It’s only your long years of servitude to me that have saved you.” Arnao had, in fact, served Isabelle mostly well, first as a Courier of the Chancellor, then in the Department of Communications in various roles. His loyalty to her was undeniable.

  Arnao raised his head. “You told me to secure Hammerton Hall. I secured Hammerton Hall—”

  “Fine job, Arnao, I guess you missed the part when the captain destroyed the chancellor’s evening.”

  “The Phanes Beltway—”

  “You shouldn’t have pulled the Janzers from the hall.”

  “The city would’ve been defenseless, and we didn’t know the breadth or length of the attack.”

  “It is unwise to question one’s superiors, Lieutenant.”

  Arnao’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Yes, my lady.”

  Isabelle spun and entered a capsule in a maglev tube, one which led to Masimovian Tower.

  Beimeni City

  Phanes, Underground Central

  “How goes the investigation?” Atticus said from the terrace that overlooked Masimovian Center, facing North Archway and Artemis Square.

  Lady Isabelle crossed the Grand Salon and approached him, observing the crowd of Phaneans that moved about in the Granville day. “The attack was the work of four Polemon,” she said. “The first I can’t identify, the second, Cornelius Selendia, son of Jeremiah Selendia—”

  He whipped his head around to her. “A Polemon you lost—”

  “Whom you wouldn’t allow me to kill.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “Murray Olyorna, a former RDD scientist on Captain Barão’s team in Palaestra.”

  “Another Polemon you lost, and I didn’t give a shit what you did with Olyorna.” Atticus lifted a golden carafe and poured a glass of wine, which he offered her. She refused. He raised an eyebrow.

  “And Lord Nero Silvana, Captain Barão’s—”

  “Striker?”

  Isabelle nodded.

  “What evidence do you have?” Atticus sipped the wine.

  Isabelle moved closer to the balustrade and put her hands upon the railing. She looked out on the city. She’d not allow the BP, or Atticus, to destroy it all. She turned to the chancellor. “I connected to a Janzer survivor. I saw all four of them. And I just connected to a Janzer post in the RDD. Nero scheduled a visit with his eternal partner in the RDD infirmary the evening of the Bicentennial, but never arrived—”

  “Apprehend him, immediately.” Atticus lit a cigar.

  Isabelle adjusted two of her rings and observed her nails, colored lavender by synisms to match her eyes. A touch too dark. “He’s disappeared from Marstone’s sight, likely as not with the BP as we speak—”

  Atticus wiped away a bit of synthetic leaf stuck to his lip. He puffed on his cigar. “The strategis
t, Lady Verena—”

  “Iglehart, yes, she remains in a medically induced coma, guarded by Janzers.” Isabelle poured her own glass of liqueur. “When she awakens, I recommend we send her to Farino Prison.”

  “Agreed,” Atticus said. “What of Zorian Selendia, has he made contact?”

  “No.” She’d not reveal his potential betrayal of her. The chancellor had told her not to trust him. She’d not give him this victory of her humiliation.

  “How will you secure him?”

  Isabelle pushed her forefingers through her lavender hair, setting it on her right shoulder, wishing she stood upon this terrace with Antosha at her side. One day, it would be so. Antosha had executed his plan during the Bicentennial as masterfully as he’d assured her he would, and their catspaw Gwendolyn Horvearth had played her part well. Isabelle wouldn’t doubt Antosha again. He’d see to it she and he rose, first in Beimeni, then to the surface of the Earth. The thought lifted her lips as she turned to Atticus. “I’ve supplied his genome to the tenehounds and sent them out with ten Janzer divisions to track him down.”

  “You seem pleased with yourself.” Atticus pressed his lips together and seethed. “I’m taking an awfully big risk on your gamble—”

  “No more than we took on your call with Captain Barão.”

  She turned away from him. He risked the ruin of his grand evening the night of the Bicentennial, not her. She’d arrested the traitorous captain prior to the celebration, securing him to a holding cell in the Department of Peace. She’d requested a judicial and ministerial hearing, but the chancellor had denied her and let him leave.