by S. S. Segran
When she awoke next, she was in a wheelchair, placed in a semi-circle with Mariah and Aari to her left, Kody to her right. They all had silver bands around their heads that extended down the backs of their necks and locked around their throats. The space around them vaguely resembled a reception area.
Tegan tried to reach for her abilities again but the wall remained. No matter how hard she launched herself at it, it stood rigidly in place. Panic crept up her spine.
“Teegs?” Mariah’s voice was quiet with unease. “Thank goodness, you’re finally awake!”
Tegan noticed her hands and legs were bound to the chair. Knowing it would be futile, she strained against them anyway. “Yeah, but I can’t access my abilities.”
“Neither can we,” Aari said. He sounded fatigued, as though he’d just been roused.
“Where are we? What happened?”
Footsteps approached from behind, solid and steady, the walk of someone who owned the place and had nothing to fear. Tegan braced herself, but nothing prepared her to see Jag come around to stand in front of them. He was dressed militaristically, with dark steel-gray pants bloused over polished obsidian boots that gleamed under the light. His black tactical top, form-fitting to his broad shoulders and trim torso but slightly looser around the arms, was tucked in. On his right shoulder, a circular golden emblem of a screaming phoenix rising from flames was stitched into the fabric.
“Dude,” Kody breathed. “What the hell?”
Tegan’s stomach curdled. “They repurposed him.”
Jag gave them a lopsided grin. “Sorry about the way we got you guys here. I tried to do it nicely, but you weren’t listening to reason.”
The friends were aghast. When they’d imagined being reunited with him, this was not what they had hoped for.
Jag tilted his chin and warmth lit his expression. “It’ll be okay. We’re together again, and we’re finally on the right path.”
“What are you talking about?” Aari exploded.
“Relax, Barnes. It took a while for me to see it too. The Elders only showed us their interpretation of the prophecy, never giving us any other point of view. So Reyor had no choice but to fix my head, and that finally opened my eyes. You ever wonder why we kept failing every time we tried to stop her?”
“We don’t fail!” Mariah said hotly. “We figured out how to stop the nanomites. We got the seeds to the Tree of Life. We don’t fail.”
“If that was true, why are so many people dead?”
“Because of Phoenix!”
“They’re trying to fix what people have done, abusing each other and the planet. And guess what? Everything’s working in their favor. Yeah, maybe we managed to slow things down a bit, but have we actually stopped anything? It’s like we’re going against the current when we should be going with it.”
A soft chuckle reached Tegan’s ears. “Well put, Mr. Sanchez.”
A tall figure strode into view, coming to a halt beside Jag. Tegan would have recognized the gold hood of the knee-length coat anywhere. The last time she had seen it, it had been pulled up, concealing the face of the person beneath. Now the cowl was down and the woman before her stood in full view. Her burgundy locks were mostly tucked into the high collar of her coat, with a streak of wavy white hair falling over one eye.
Her eyes.
Mauve irises of immeasurable depth sharply regarded the friends trapped in their chairs. One corner of the full mouth slanted upward in a smile, but it was murderous, without an iota of humor. “It took a while for all of you to awaken.”
“What did you knock us out with?” Aari asked. “My mind’s still hazy.”
“With your abilities, we had to be extra cautious and play around with the dosage of our tranquilizers and suppressants—enough that you would stay down for a while but not enough to kill you.”
“Why wouldn’t you just kill us?” Mariah demanded.
“Believe me, you would have all been dead before you got close to shutting down my North American nanomite pods if I’d allowed it. But you were wanted alive.”
Tegan’s nostrils flared. “Is it your mentor that we were told about? Or was that all just a lie to get us here, Jag?”
He didn’t answer.
Reyor cast a cold eye over Tegan. “Our most resistant Stewards took only ten hours at most to submit to our reprogramming. It took Mr. Sanchez nearly three full days. He fought hard. Every figurative inch was a battle and I don’t expect that it will be easier with any of you.”
Kody spat. “What are you gonna use us for, lady?”
“In truth, I wanted to get rid of you. Even up until the point you were brought here, I still thought I should. But a realization occurred to me. Perhaps you are the ones from the prophecy after all, and what you are really meant to do is help me usher in a new world. But if you are not, then I would at least have some powerful freaks in my arsenal.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I can assure you that I am not, though I care nothing of convincing you otherwise. Soon enough, we will be on the same side. The fact of the matter is, we have been fighting each other when we should have been working together. We were both wrong. And now, with you here, we can finally step over the finish line as one, with you behind me leading my echelons.”
Tegan didn’t like anything she was hearing. “Your what?”
“You will find out soon enough. It wouldn’t do to tell you everything when you’re still fighting me.”
“Jag, this is crazy!” Aari cried. “Get a grip on yourself! Snap out of it!”
Jag gave him a pitying look. “Guess I was like this too, huh?” he asked Reyor.
“You were far more volatile,” she answered. “A danger, even. You resisted harder than anyone before you.”
“And so will we,” Tegan promised icily. “You’re a lunatic, no matter what your intentions are.”
Mariah, though Tegan noticed her fingers trembled, glared. “The Sentries and the Elders will never let you finish your plans.”
Reyor languidly closed the distance between them, taking out a violet sphere from inside her coat and rolling it skillfully over elegant fingers. “Unfortunately for them, they can’t do much with the lathe’ad biologically linked to me, not unless they want to plunge the earth into more misery than I have and turn it into a barren wasteland. I own every card in this deck, Ms. Ashton, Ms. Ryder. Including the five of you.”
Tegan was vaguely aware of Aari and Kody desperately pleading with Jag, begging him to come back to his senses, but they seemed so far away. Her attention drifted to the sphere suspended before her. That thing was the only reason no one else had been able to stop Reyor, to bring her to her knees. One small device of unknown origin.
She hated it with every bone in her body.
Reyor stepped back, pocketing the lathe’ad. “I think that is enough discussion for now. It’s more than what I wanted to grant you to begin with.” She raised her voice. “Take them away.”
More footsteps. Someone released the brakes on Tegan’s wheelchair. The next thing she knew, she was being wheeled toward a hallway with the others. She bellowed as they passed Jag. “Jag! Jag! Help us! Don’t do this!”
He looked at her for a moment, then gave an encouraging nod. “Don’t fight it. The sooner you get it over with, the better. I promise, once you come out, we’ll finally be able to fulfill the prophecy the way we should have from the beginning.” He pressed his fingers to his lips before raising his hand in farewell. “See you soon, guys.”
Tegan screamed, swearing at Reyor and the Stewards as Aari, Mariah and Kody were each steered into sperate rooms. As the door to her own chamber closed behind her, the last thing she heard was her friends howling in grief and rage.
Mokun’s archive, though still a work in progress, was a magnificent part of the executive complex below the Heart, as grand as any ancient library. Two antique globes flanked the wide entrance, guarded by tall ferns of deep green. From somewhere in the chamber�
��s depths came the gentle trickling of a water fountain and the soft whirr of diffusers that emitted the mildest incense. The space, awash with bright, warm light, could dissolve the stress from the shoulders of all who entered. It always reminded Reyor of the library within Dema-Ki’s temple, and sometimes—sometimes—she wished she could be sitting in one of its chairs, leafing through the many texts to be found inside as the sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The archive was divided by four long walkways, allowing breaks for intersections, lined on either side by row after row of polished redwood shelves. The middlemost aisle boasted a wide circular space at the center of the chamber with potted shrubs around it. The racks were still mostly empty, with much of Mokun’s collection yet to be unloaded from the crates and boxes he kept in a locked vault at the end of the chamber. Even so, the historic weight of the few objects on display was not lost on Reyor, and she wished to one day see everything Mokun had accumulated during his extended lifetime.
Carefully placed upon the shelves were two gold scepters and the silken garbs of ancient rulers; a sundial from a Japanese dynasty with a compass built in; original tomes, scrolls, and clay tablets from great thinkers both known and unknown; correspondence between Mokun and men and women of power; fossils of creatures long gone; and one of the blades that had siphoned away Giuliano de’ Medici’s life.
In the center of her mentor’s archive, Reyor gazed at Mokun’s face on the other side of the glass where he rested, upright, in a cryogenic pod. Death had not robbed him of his dignified stature, nor the regal bearing of his presence.
“This is what happens,” she murmured, “when you become the apostate of your own cause. Well is it that I am strong enough for the both of us to see this through.”
It had been upsetting that she’d lost enough trust in Mokun to bug his private office, but when she’d run the playback of his meeting with Jag, it had hurt more that her suspicions were proven true. To ensure the integrity of their operations, she’d taken action that very night during their first dinner together in weeks.
The sound of hard soles against the marble floor drew closer until the steps came to a halt behind her. She didn’t take her eyes off Mokun. “How goes it, Mr. Sanchez?”
“They’re resisting, as you predicted they would.”
“Unfortunate, but not surprising.”
Jag took another step to stand by her side and peered into the pod. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. It was strange to have him shoulder-to-shoulder with her. For months he and his friends had locked horns with her projects and operatives, trying to thwart her plans like rabid dogs—dogs that she had been instructed not to put down. Now that she had the opportunity to do so, she’d spared their lives in order to have them by the leash. Jag was hers, and soon the others would be too. It was not a decision she had made lightly, and the only reason she went through with it was due to her singular trust in Dr. Nate’s track record of repurposing.
Still, the cautious side of her that had kept Phoenix above water all these years wasn’t entirely settled. It was as if she was carrying around fine china that, though glued to her hand, she felt might fall and shatter. It was an unnecessary burden.
Is this worth being constantly on edge? she wondered. It’s not too late; I could still be rid of him. At this point he would willingly ready his neck for an axe if I asked. The others are strapped down and drugged, utterly helpless. It would be so easy, so quick . . .
Jag must have sensed her gaze on him. He turned his head toward her, and the smallest jolt shot through her. His amber eyes were near exact replicas of Mokun’s own. If her scientists hadn’t run tests to determine that he did not have Dema-Ki ancestry, she would have thought him a relative of her late mentor.
“May I ask you something?” Jag asked, indicating the pod.
“I suppose.”
“If Mokun betrayed you, why are you keeping his body here?”
Reyor slowly traced a fingernail under her bottom lip. Why, indeed? She was hardly sentimental, and she was furious that Mokun had chosen to veer off the path just as everything they had worked for was coming to fruition. But something had stopped her from disposing of him once he’d exhaled his last breath.
“Respect,” she said finally. “He was the one who lived for centuries, who saw more of the world and of history than any other person ever has. It was he who laid the foundation of this vision for a better future. None of this would have been possible without his mind and determination. Years and years of hard work erased by a creeping deviance at the last stretch seemed unfair. In the decades to come, many will visit this place in pilgrimage, to remember him as a man of integrity and action, as the Architect—not as the recreant he became.”
“A big portrait probably would have worked just fine, wouldn’t it?”
“It could have. But leaving his remains buried somewhere in the darkness of the earth didn’t seem fitting for a man who was on par with legends.”
Jag leaned forward, lightly tapping his knuckles on the side paneling. “Why cryogenics, though? Plan on bringing him back to life sometime?”
“Even if I wanted to—and I do not—that would be impossible. Why cryogenics? Embalming was the only other option, but that is too crude and invasive. This way, he remains intact.”
“For respect.”
“For respect.” She jerked her chin at him. “Was there something you wanted?”
He stretched his arms over his head, pivoting leisurely on one foot as he scoped the archive. “No. Just experiencing the place. Thank you for giving me free roam, by the way. I know I’m the newest SONE here, so your trust means a lot to me. I doubt I deserve it but if you think this is what’s best, then I’ll do everything I can to not let you down.”
Reyor, surprised at herself for being unsure how to respond, simply hummed cautiously in answer.
“I’ve been wondering,” he continued, “about the state of the world.”
“What of it?”
“Governments would definitely have emergency measures in place, wouldn’t they? I remember seeing articles and stuff on social media about the U.S. looking into ways to protect the power grid from an EMP attack, or even just creating policies to make sure we’d continue having working branches of government if something big happened.”
“A number of them do have such measures, yes, which is why we’ve installed our loyalists within. Some were groomed specifically to earn good rapport within the political arena, while others were bought. It’s quite incredible how quickly those in power are willing to burn the oaths they’ve taken to further their own material gain.”
Jag regarded her in astonishment. She shrugged. “Is it really a surprise? The predators that reside among the elite feed on the goodwill of their constituents and admirers. In the end, they’re all the same. They’ll take their riches however they can. We dangle the meat in front of them and, as long as we’re the highest bidder, they will carry out their assigned tasks. We’ve been in this game a very long time, Mr. Sanchez. While others create puppets in global governments for the sake of the advancement of their own nations, we do it for the greater good. It’s been years in the making, decades of carefully thought-out strategies and investments.”
Jag rubbed his forehead. “That’s incredible. Tegan would appreciate that, I think. She’s got a knack for seeing the bigger picture and strategizing.”
Reyor made a mental note. The Administrative echelon would be a good fit for her, then.
Beside her, Jag stood at rapt attention, as if waiting for her to continue. She shot him a look and he cracked a grin. “Do I have something in my teeth, Boss?”
“It’s strange to be speaking with you like this. I half expect another high-horse speech about how the ends shouldn’t justify the means.”
“If I were the old me, I probably would’ve given one. But I know better now because sometimes ends really do have to justify the means, especially when no one else is willing to make the
hard decisions.”
“Indeed. Believe it or not, the Elders and I have similar beliefs about the detrimental path humanity as a whole has taken. They hold an optimistic view that eventually things will be sorted out.”
“But not you.”
“Mokun and I wanted to be proactive. Why wait for humanity to completely self-destruct? That could take ages still, and aside from the damage it would cause future generations, the Earth herself would suffer.”
“Not all people are self-destructive, though. Right?”
“No. And it truly is a shame, the amount of potential out there that must be sacrificed for this cause. But when the cancer has grown as substantially as it has, attempting to do away with just the deadly cells would be ineffective. Assisting the demise of something that was headed to its end—that is mercy.” Reyor tipped her chin back, a smile teasing the side of her mouth before she clamped it down. “I can hear Nageau arguing in my ears. He was always too soft, too hopeful. Too naïve. The fact of the matter is, mercy is neither good nor bad. It simply is. It does not take morality into account—and whose morality should it resemble even if it did? Much of the arguments around it are subjective and nuanced and, truthfully, not worth my time.”
“That’s true. So you and Nageau were close, then?”
The Elder’s beaming brown face and dancing blue eyes surfaced in her mind. She bit the tip of her tongue. “He was family to me, much like how it is with you and your friends, I suspect.”
“It must be hard for you, going up against someone you loved, and the entire village you used to call home.”
“If I were weak-willed, perhaps. I don’t much care what Dema-Ki thinks of me anymore—a renegade, a Judas, someone who lost her way. While they hide in the safety of their valley, I am out here making strides to lead our species into a new era of evolution and betterment.”
Something on Jag’s person chimed. He pulled up his sleeve, scanning the display on a matte screen bound around his wrist, then flicked a finger sideways across it. “Phoenix has hands-down the coolest tech,” he said. “I can’t wait to check the rest out.”
