The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2)

by Zen, Raeden

  “Don’t say that. Listen, whatever happens on this mission will not stop us from moving forward. You once worked with me on Reassortment and Regenesis. You may be the one to lead—”

  “I wouldn’t want those projects, not if you’re gone.”

  “Point is, my love, we’ve survived countless challenges. We’ll resolve Reassortment one day too. We’ll return to the surface.”

  Damy sent a telepathic command, and their Granville panel, which stretched along the curved wall in the great room, extended over the opening to their terrace. She emptied her mind and filled it with the panel’s inner workings. The illusion surrounded them. Brody joined her and held her hand amid the appearance of a balcony in an old-world city, a city Before Reassortment (and the Second Hundred Years’ War), a city of skyscrapers, clear skies, and rolling crests of ocean over the horizon. Seagulls glided overhead, and far below, people and trams rustled over cobblestone roads. The aroma of the salt water mixed with cheeses and desserts.

  “It’s supposed to be daytime,” Damy said, “it’s supposed to be spring … so, let’s suppose …”

  Brody put his fingers on her lips. He accessed the panel, and the illusion shifted. Now they were at the edge of a reflective obsidian surface. In the distance, shadowed mountains sandwiched by a bright blue hue, and beyond the mountains, a crescent moon inside a crescent moon inside a crescent moon. They heard songs from a flock of nightingales, smelled burning wooden torches. Moon and shadow and bird and fire all created by Brody’s mind.

  “What if I instead dreamed of night,” Brody said, “and you with me and no one else in the world?”

  He pulled her close and caressed her neck with his lips. She wrapped her hand around his arm and enjoyed his musky scent. She felt Brody’s hair skim her chin and his breath on her skin. She closed her eyes when he kissed her.

  And there was no one else in Damy’s world except him. The Warning disappeared. The failed Jubilees disappeared. Project Silkscape and Vernon Lebrizzi and Clara and the Courier of the Chancellor and Chancellor Masimovian himself, even the troubling thought of welcoming a child into this underground world, disappeared …

  Damy lay nude with Brody on the fur rug in their great room. He pulled a silk sheet, drenched with moonlight, over them. A new illusion engulfed them. Torches formed an arch, and plumes of smoke fluttered from the wicks, transmitting the neurosignal congruent with the smell of burning embers.

  “We don’t have much time,” Brody said.

  “What do you mean?” Damy said.

  “I must go to the Fountain Temple.”

  She knew he would prepare with his team, and she was due in Silkscape City for another review. She hoped Verne wouldn’t be there.

  Brody pulled her close and pressed his forehead to hers. “What can I do for you?”

  “Go to Vigna,” she said. “Give the chancellor his significant conversion … and come back …” Damy’s voice escaped her. Please gods, she thought, keep him safe, bring him home, let him lift the Warning when he returns, let the board approve a conclave.

  “Come back to me,” she said.

  “I’ll never leave you.”

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Cornelius Selendia

  Portage City

  Portage, Underground Central

  2,500 meters deep

  Connor stood upon a glass skywalk just outside a ministerial building. It was morning rush hour in Portage, and all he could think about was how much he hated this place—the Portagens, Lady Isabelle, the commonwealth, and, most of all, himself. If he weren’t so undeveloped and inexperienced with the ZPF, his older brother might still be alive.

  “Why can’t we go after him?” he’d asked after Hans’s capture, during a meeting with Minister Kaspasparon and the Beimeni Polemon. Connor had only just learned about the BP, and that his father was its founder, and that its goal was to overthrow the central government in Beimeni City. “Why are we sitting here like starfish when we could be blacktips?” When the minister twisted his brow, Connor said, “Sharks! Blacktips are sharks! Minister, why will we allow my brother to die?”

  Minister Kaspasparon had put his hand on Connor’s shoulder and said, “Reassortment Hall is beyond our ability to penetrate, and Chancellor Masimovian has spoken.”

  And Connor had let them override him, then stood silent in the Gallery of the Minister when they’d watched the Jubilee, Hans upon the Earth’s surface, the celebrations in the Valley of Masimovian and Wuchiaping Square. He’d expected the aristocrats in Phanes to enjoy the show but had been aghast to see the Portagens dance till they could dance no more, even after Hans screamed louder than anyone Connor had ever heard, after blood dripped down his brother’s face and neck, crystallizing, and he lay curled in the fetal position, dead, surrounded by animals that sought to feed off his carcass.

  He was sick of crying, sick of hiding. Every day he vowed revenge, and every day his comrades urged him to be patient, wait a little more.

  He heard a shout in the distance. Janzers. He darted to the other end of the skywalk and swung through a ministerial building onto another skywalk that led to Portage Citadel. No more tears, he thought, no more hiding.

  He strolled inside the citadel and gasped, taking in the scene below. A hand covered his mouth, and an arm lifted and spun him around. Murray, his developer and a member of the BP, placed his finger over Connor’s lips. Quiet, he mouthed, his eyes as fearful as a cat’s. He pointed down. See.

  “Up there,” a Janzer said.

  “What’re you talking about?” Minister Kaspasparon said. “I see nothing. What’s the meaning of this intrusion?”

  Murray secured Connor along the narrow skywalk in the citadel, near half-moon windows framed by Phanean curtains, which waved slightly as the synisms inside them absorbed Granville sunlight and emitted heliox, a breathable combination of oxygen and helium, as well as neon, which replaced nitrogen as the dominant gas in the Beimeni zone. Piping from the commonwealth’s cooling system also weaved into and out of the walls around the windows, absorbing the Earth’s heat and Connor’s energy.

  Murray had slipped away to another recess near Connor, where he stood like a wraith behind the behemoth curtain, his heels near the skywalk’s edge, which hung less than twenty meters above the marble ground, held by carbyne cables.

  “I don’t appreciate your lack of courtesy,” Lieutenant Arnao said. “Marstone has logged evidence of treachery within this city.” A Janzer division curled around him, their pulse guns ignited, glowing blue. “Marstone indicated that traitors to the commonwealth floated downstream from the capital. They would’ve arrived by now, and I’m interested in what you’ve heard from your people.”

  “I serve Chancellor Masimovian,” Kaspasparon said, “not Marstone.”

  His emerald cape glistened in the sunshine streaming through the citadel’s many windows. From the day they’d met, the minister had struck Connor as different than his fellow Southerners, hardened in a way the hot and humid Piscator clime didn’t allow. The citadel, like Portage City, had a more robust coolant system than the one Connor knew in Piscator.

  He rubbed his arms and breathed through his mouth, lest his chattering teeth give away his location. Suddenly, he missed the warm, dark, claustrophobic Polemon passageways alongside Beimeni River.

  “I’m a senior member of the Great Ministry,” Kaspasparon said, “and if Chancellor Masimovian is allowing unapproved searches and seizures, I’m unaware of it.”

  Arnao’s flat features didn’t alter. “For the last time, Minister, does your territory harbor enemies of the state?”

  “For the last time, Lieutenant, I serve Beimeni. I serve Chancellor Masimovian. Now my guardsmen shall see you to the exit. Enter my citadel again without a communiqué and I’ll see you warned by the ministry.”

  Kaspasparon turned, and his cape floated behind him. Four of his guardsmen, clad in body armor, strolled at his sides. The Janzers moved forward, Reassortment batons raised, but Arnao hand-signaled t
hem and they deactivated their weaponry. Another three guardsmen escorted Arnao and his division toward the exit. Doors slammed. Connor didn’t move. He couldn’t.

  He crouched and shivered. The coolant pipes continued absorbing the heat from his legs and arms. Memories of the day the lieutenant and Lady Isabelle had captured him, his brother, and Murray in Ypresia Village rushed forward like a tsunami. I’ll kill her for what she did to Hans—

  Murray whipped the curtain from him, and the citadel’s natural heat engulfed him.

  “Are you crazy!”

  Murray didn’t wait for an answer. He clenched Connor by the back of his cape and pulled him along the skywalk. Connor didn’t object.

  The lieutenant’s information was accurate. They’d arrived in Portage soon after escaping the DOP. Connor had allowed himself to feel a little bit safe here, under the BP’s protection. He hadn’t really believed Lady Isabelle would find him. Perhaps a part of him still thought he was home in Piscator City’s Third Ward, safe in his secret room. And his grief for Hans had made him rash. He saw that now. How could he hope to take on the commonwealth alone?

  Murray released Connor’s cape and struck a casual pace along the skywalk to the open rotunda that offered a panoramic view of Portage City. Beimeni River, tinged with green bioluminescent bacteria, curled to the north; an evergreen massif, a Granville illusion, hemmed them in to the east; an estuary, lined with silver bioluminescence, lay to the west; transport docks holding new oval transports from Transport City stood to the south; and through it all, a maze of skywalks linked the territorial capital’s limestone buildings.

  Now they descended the stairwell that spiraled past the dining entrance, past the ministerial offices, art collages, and museums, down to the entrance labeled MEDICAL AREA. Murray led Connor through a labyrinth of granite walls that didn’t touch the crystalline ceiling. Whispers reached them from the other side.

  “Where the lieutenant goes, his lady follows.”

  “We must remove the boy’s neurochip.”

  “The boy can’t stay here. Look at his behavior this morning, roaming the skywalks as if he was legal, he’ll lead to our end—”

  “This boy is Jeremiah Selendia and Solstice Rupel’s son,” Murray interrupted, “and on their names I’ll forget what you just said.”

  They emerged in a small room. Minister Kaspasparon, accompanied by Xylia and Breccan of the BP, turned. Xylia seemed to Connor like a woman sculpted from the earth, with burning hair and a face full of life, though touched by sadness. Breccan was shorter than she, his voice as hard as granite, his physique toned and muscled, more consistent with a Yeuronian fighter than a Portagen engineer.

  That ruggedness appeared in Breccan’s face now, his nose crinkled, his lips narrowed. Minister Kaspasparon stepped between him and Murray.

  “We don’t fight our own,” Kaspasparon said. To Connor, he added, “I fear Xylia and Breccan tell it true, you cannot stay here, you cannot keep your neurochip.”

  “You can’t do that!” Connor said.

  He wouldn’t be able to access the ZPF without his neurochip. Or travel on his own, or save his father, or kill Lady Isabelle. Or activate his Granville sphere, technology that looked like a polished gemstone, which projected the hologram of his mother. Connor feared he’d lost it when Lady Isabelle captured him in Ypresia Village and the Janzers took all of his belongings—only to be shocked later on when Isabelle gave it back to him herself.

  “You feel the zeropoint field, but you aren’t trained,” Kaspasparon said.

  “Only because you all held me back,” Connor said.

  He’d only left Piscator once before, traveling to the Phanes Beltway and back to Piscator City. He never told anyone he’d left the territory. Arturo, his foster father, Murray, his developer, and Hans wouldn’t allow it. Then out of nowhere Hans had plucked him out of the South, during the peak fishing season! He’d administered a synism called E. evolution to Connor, which Murray told him altered his DNA, pushing him further along the evolutionary arc, closer to Homo evolutis. It was an archaic method, Connor learned, and one fraught with risks. To be sure, after he’d recovered from the fever induced by E. evolution, he did feel a stronger connection to the ZPF. But Kaspasparon was right; Connor knew he couldn’t yet control this connection.

  “For your own protection,” Kaspasparon was saying, waving his head and wagging his forefinger as if Connor were a child in development. “Lady Isabelle has recorded your neurological makeup. Have no doubt, she will hunt you. She and Lieutenant Arnao will use the field and Marstone and Janzers and tenehounds, and they’ll find you, they’ll capture you … and then only the gods know what they’ll do. I can’t hold them off forever. When they take you, what good will you be to your father, wherever he is?”

  Murray had explained to Kaspasparon that Hans had secured data to a commonwealth z-disk that suggested Jeremiah wasn’t being held in Farino Prison, as the Leadership had believed. And before Hans had disappeared in the Dunes of Phanes, he told Connor that he shouldn’t access the disk’s contents within the Beimeni zone, lest he give up his location to the commonwealth’s agents.

  Connor opened his mouth to speak but stopped. He stepped forward. “Then guide me. Teach me to be a skilled telepath so I can free Father and fight Lady Isabelle.” And so that I can still see my mother, he thought. He always carried her with him, and he looked upon her each day, vowing he’d be as strong as she once was with the ZPF. If only the Janzers hadn’t killed her before she could train him …

  “You sound so much like Jeremiah did at your age,” Kaspasparon said, shaking his head, “and you will play a part in this. The Underground Passage is prepared.”

  Connor had learned that the passage wasn’t only caves and tunnels along the rivers and in the territories. It also included the BP’s courier network, safe houses in the territories, and allies throughout the commonwealth. He’d learned the synbio thief provided the BP with the life-preserving synisms stored along the passageways, though Connor didn’t know who the thief was or why the thief helped them.

  Connor thought about Hans’s z-disk. See it to the Leadership in Blackeye Cavern, Hans had said. “You will send me to the Cavern with Hans’s z-disk,” Connor said.

  Kaspasparon nodded. “But first we must remove your neurochip.”

  “Then I won’t be able to access the zeropoint field!”

  “Keep it installed, and your thoughts, words, memories, and soul will be Marstone’s fodder.”

  Connor’s eyes burned. No more tears, he thought. “The recaller—”

  “Cannot save you. Don’t think you may rely on such trinkets. That is a fool’s game. You’re not skilled with the field, and now you’re registered in Marstone’s Database.” Kaspasparon put his hands on Connor’s shoulders. “You must see it true … you’re the plankton, surrounded by whales.”

  Connor swallowed. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”

  “None of us do,” Kaspasparon said, “but we must wait and move together.”

  “This won’t hurt,” Murray said. He was dressed in a holey and mucked-up shirt that revealed specks of his orange-and-blue seashell tattoos, brought to life by synisms within his skin.

  Connor roused. His vision trailed as if he’d eaten the magic mushrooms from Vivo that Hans once described. He assumed it was caused by the medication Murray made him drink. He could feel his arms and legs but hardly lift them. He lay on a soft white pad set across an alloy gurney, his wrists and ankles shackled. A chill sent gooseflesh over his shaved head. He swiveled. The medical bot labeled JONES moved its six pairs of arms and sixty fingers over a cart with a cornucopia of alloy and plastic devices. Connor had never seen such tools—some curved and sharp, others blunt and wide—not even when Murray had first implanted his neurochip and mesh last year.

  His heart rate slowed, and his mouth dried.

  “Will you be able to reinstall my neurochip?” Connor said with a slur.

  “When it’s safe,”
Murray said. “Now be quiet—”

  “It’ll never be safe for us—”

  “Shush. I’m going to inject this into you, so stay still.”

  The seashells in Murray’s skin moved faster around his arm when he depressed the syringe. The fluid shot into Connor’s arm. His vision blurred as Jones moved forward.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão

  Beimeni City

  Phanes, Underground Central

  2,500 meters deep

  The crowd waiting for entry to Fountain Square spread from South Archway, along the cobblestones around the semicircular Masimovian Center buildings #2, #3, and #4, and the spire of Masimovian Tower in the middle, all the way to North Archway and into Artemis Square. Brody assumed they all had visited the Janzer checkpoints, obtaining a cryptor, a diamond shard filled with a bacterium. The bacterium was programmed to “infect” the transhuman neurochip, and would send its DNA code to the transhuman visual cortex, coloring one’s vision with light gold, illuminating the approved time for entry to Fountain Square.

  Tradesmen, sellers of goods that ranged from leather purses to cinnamon rolls to artistic Granville spheres, moved throughout, shouting their prices and wares. The cost for a Beimeni City permit ranged from five thousand to ten thousand benaris a day, a cost that matched many Beimenians’ annual salaries in some of the lesser territories, Piscator, Haurachesa, and Gaia among them. Brody assumed these merchants could make their permit fee and more, for along his walk he counted at least fifty thousand Beimenians outside Masimovian Center alone; inside the buildings, gamblers could easily exceed a million.

  On the south side, it was much the same, the crowd weaving from Athanasia Way past the Goldstone, Swann, and Beimeni Towers through the Dunes of Phanes to the Valley of Masimovian. Hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of Beimenians arrived daily for athanasia, the gene therapy treatments that enabled what RDD scientists called the theoretically infinite Homo transition lifespan.