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

by Zen, Raeden

  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.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Nero Silvana

  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.

  Light yellow bioluminescence broke through a hole in the stalactites, where bats flapped their wings and hung from the limestone. He rowed beneath the bats, which took off flying through the light. He landed the canoe at a misty shoreline where magma snaked into the steaming water. He hopped over the liquid rock and dashed up a limestone ramp, then turned. A jungle before him brought forth memories of Vigna. While here the vines were thin enough to grasp in his hands, on Vigna, where the oxygen level was closer to 40 percent of the atmosphere, the vines were as wide as transhumans. Nero looked the other way, which contained icy stalactites and icy cliffs where white bioluminescence broke through openings in the wall. Nero felt like he was back in the Harpoons.

  To move like me in the ZPF, you must learn to truly control your own quantum field within it. Aera’s voice.

  Nero had never been as skilled as Brody with the ZPF. He was good enough with telepathy and telekinesis to make the strike teams, but never used it the way Aera suggested. “I can’t manipulate my field like that.”

  You can.

  He took the way of the jungle, rushing beyond the vines and through blooming brush to a stream. “Why don’t you show me?”

  You must find it for yourself.

  He weaved between the ferns and trees and vines, which started moving, waving as if synchronized, wrapping around him.

  Use the ZPF the way I did in Cineris Territory.

  Nero drew his sword and cut through the vines, breaking free. He smelled dank water and heard a river. Dragonflies spiraled like a helix over the water. Bubbles rose from the middle of the river.

  Now the water rose, forming a humanoid that looked like him. It drew a sword and threw it end over end toward Nero. He dodged it, and the sword crashed into a tree nearby, turning into a swarm of bees. In Cineris, Aera had moved too fast at times for Nero’s enhanced sight; if he did the same here, he might escape the bees and the humanoid, he assumed.

  His movements weren’t unseen, however, and the bees began to sting him. On his arm, his shin, his neck, his ear—he swiped uncontrollably and desperately until the swarm released him. He fell into the water, free at last, and swam below the surface, as far as he could, toward the other end.

  When he emerged, he turned, grimacing from the stings. He steeled himself. The bees swirled around the humanoid, which scowled at him. Then they rushed forward, and Nero ran, farther, faster. He reached for the ZPF and into his quantum field in its rawest form, the way Aera had on the mount.

  He found his strides slowed, yet he moved farther. The world around him seemed simpler and more complicated, rain falling in lines rather than drops, the ground reaching up for him, rather than him down to it.

  Nero ran for what felt like the distance of the Hillenthara River, part of a continent. He couldn’t hear the bees or see the humanoid. He ran up the damp trail. It smelled like Vigna. He passed mossy stone and eventually reached the mountaintop. Below lay clouds, and beneath and through the clouds, a city; in the center, the tallest skyscrapers broke through the clouds.

  Nero descended the foggy mountainside along a sinuous trail until he arrived at the city’s border. He ran through the streets and to the building in the center. It looked like the Paradox Building. He entered. He rushed down the stairs, down, down, down, to the room labeled GRANVILLE SKY OPERATIONS where a z-disk awaited him on a glowing golden pedestal.

  He reached for it, cautiously. Then it disappeared. He turned and peered up. A Granville sky shifted from blue to dark gray with cirrus clouds. He manipulated his field, the way Aera had suggested.

  The ground shook beneath him with the sound of thunder. Lightning struck. Nero dodged it. More strikes fell around him, and he dodged those. He now ran along what looked like an infinite void.

  Nero stopped and turned. “No more.”

  Lighting fell over him, scattering around his field. He’d only ever seen Brody scatter energy this way. Time slowed, as did the strikes. Nero moved too fast for light, it seemed, until he spied the z-disk upon a pedestal, it too moving faster than light.

  He grasped it and rolled on the ground, the lightning striking around him. The ground vibrated. He accessed the z-disk.

  And the world darkened …

  … Nero hung from the harness, drenched in sweat, the z-disk in his hand.

  Aera lowered him. “You’re getting there.” She handed him a canteen and Nero drank.

  “Sometimes the past is best left forgotten,” Verena said, reaching for the z-disk.

  Nero closed his fist, twisting. “How do you know what’s in it, love?”

  Verena looked to Aera and back to Nero.

  “Now you’re both keeping secrets from me?” he said. “No more, I will see what’s inside.”

  He extended his consciousness and let the details flow before him. File after file rotated around a sphere, stopped and rotated, rotated and stopped. Nero read through thousands of documents about his parents, about his birth … and his mother’s murder, by his father, acquitted by Chief Justice Carmen.

  “This is … all wrong,” he said, facing Aera. “Why would you lie to me still?”

  “Unlike your captain, you never accepted your abandonment,” Aera said. “It’s what holds you back in the ZPF. To truly connect with your field, to become as skilled as me, as fast as me, you must overcome this. If you don’t, we won’t succeed in Area 55 or in Farino Prison.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Your captain will die.”

  Nero looked to Verena, then to Aera, and back to Verena, who lowered her head and said, “I agree with you, but there’s one problem with all that.”

  “Which is?”

  Verena looked up, then to Aera. “The Lorum has been moved to the City of Eternal Darkness.”

  For the first time since Nero met Aera, her face turned as pale as Cinerisian ash.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Oriana Barão

  Halcyon Village

  Dunamis, Underground West

  2,500 meters deep

  It happened one time.

  Who else have you lain with?

  It was only virtual—

  Is that what we are, virtual?

  I broke into the Ectasian archive to get you information! I risked discipline, or worse, for you—

  Goodbye, Nathan.

  Oriana, please don’t—

  Oriana disconnected from him. The truth was that Nathan had risked much for her. She tried not to think about him. His voice. His touch. She sighed. She still cared very much for him, despite herself.

  Nathan attempted to reach her again, but Oriana denied the connection. She’d speak with him when she devised her strategy; the longer he stewed in his guilt, the more use he’d be to her in the Harpoons. No other candidate wanted to know her, certainly not Gaia. She’d been hanging out with the Variscan candidates during free time, and while Nathan begged her forgiveness day and night, he maintained his friendship with Duccio, and Pasha
seemed more distant by the day. She couldn’t speak about her troubles with the Summersets.

  Oriana rubbed her arms. She felt utterly alone.

  If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. If she was going to receive the first and highest bid, negate the Warning, become an aera, and lead the people out of the Earth, her actions here and now would make the difference. She checked the time. She and Pasha were due in the simulation room in five minutes. She cracked her knuckles and neck, then rushed downstairs.

  Pasha was already in his harness when she arrived. He didn’t greet her.

  Oriana spied the Harpoon leaderboard. Pasha’s ID number scrolled across at the eighth slot on the Summersets’ ticker. Her number wasn’t there, but she suspected she was close to breaking through.

  Lady Parthenia strapped Oriana into her harness. “Let’s begin,” she said.

  The golden phosphorescent light around them dimmed. Parthenia activated her workstation and initiated the program …

  … Oriana and Pasha stood in an alloyed room. Millions of orbs hung suspended in midair.

  We’ll start with the precepts, Parthenia sent.

  One by one, the orbs broke off and orbited Oriana and Pasha. The first orb rotated and requested the First Precept.

  Serve Beimeni. Live forever. Oriana repeated the precept in her mind. The orb emitted a green light and returned.

  The second orb requested the Sixth Precept.

  Excursions to the surface of the Earth are forbidden unless sanctioned by the Office of the Chancellor.

  Oriana knew this one too, for it was designed to prevent citizens from illegally digging to the surface, and so risking an event never spoken—a Reassortment scare, something which hadn’t happened since the Dark Age.