by Zen, Raeden
The BP roared and raised their fists and mugs and pulse weapons and diamond swords high above their heads.
“We’ve experienced birth and death together,” Jeremiah added. “We’ve experienced sadness and joy together. We’ve experienced hope and fear together. Hope that our tomorrows will bring sustenance and clean air and peace, fear that our government will exterminate us—but we have something that our kin below cannot claim.
“We have our dignity and honor, our flaws, the wrinkles on our skin, the missing limbs, the gray hair, broken bones, tears and sweat and arched backs that strengthen us and bind us and guide us and allow us to live the way mankind was designed to: with family, and one with the Earth.
“Believe me when I tell you, I know life in the Hollow and along the Underground Passage hasn’t been perfect.” He waved his thumb up and down with each phrase. “But I appreciate your sacrifices, your pledges. You’ve pledged your immortality, you’ve pledged your children, you’ve pledged your souls to a cause beyond any one of us, and so I want to assure you this isn’t goodbye.” The BP applauded and cheered, waving their pulse guns and swords. “This isn’t the end.” More applause. “This is the new beginning.”
Jeremiah waited for silence. “Go forth now over the Underground Passage and be free!” He raised his arms and smiled.
The BP rumbled and dispersed.
Thanks the gods, Verena thought, we’re free. We’re free. Verena had wanted to lead the rest of the BP out days ago. She darted up the steps to Jeremiah, Jocelyn at her side.
“Won’t you come with us?” she said.
“I’ll remain here with a group of commandos to ensure the assault arrives,” Jeremiah said, “draw them in to give the offensive and your escape the time required.” He paused and bobbed his head while his people filed though caves and crystals. “Thank you for your faith in me, and this cause.”
“I must do what feels right in my heart.”
For so long, what felt right to Verena was a return to the teams’ prominence in the commonwealth, a time when they were the true protectors of peace. Now, she wasn’t sure what to think, but she knew these people who she broke bread with daily didn’t deserve to die.
“As do I, my lady, now get out of here and rendezvous with the command in Portage Cit—”
The wall in the main cavern disappeared.
Reddish light intermingled with the gentle, colorful bioluminescent waterfalls.
Shrieks followed, shrieks that could break bones and stop the heart—from the commonwealth’s terror birds.
“To arms!” Verena said. “Take cover in the—”
“Not you, my lady, you’re too important, your captain will need you in Portage.” He pushed her back. She looked upon him with a furrowed brow, unsure if she heard him right.
Did he mean she should expect a reunion with Captain Broden Barão?
“Take the girl and go!”
Verena grabbed Jocelyn’s hand, but before they could descend into the caves, Janzers burst through the colorful waterfalls, and pulse blasts dispersed throughout the Hollow.
“Stay behind me!” Verena said.
She threw Jocelyn against a limestone nook and aimed her pulse gun.
The first line of birds stretched their necks and beaks, as dark as night, their wings outspread. They shrieked and Jocelyn fell into Verena, covering her ears. The BP scattered behind the limestone pillars and in hidden enclosures near the waterfalls and cliffs.
Jeremiah dashed to the precipice and hand-signaled to his commandos, who took positions along the walls, hidden, isolated.
Pulse blasts shattered the stone near him, and he waved to Verena. She heard his voice in her head. Get out! Go to Portage Citadel!
Hundreds of terror birds burst through the opening, and the hall filled with crossfire.
The commandos took down bird after bird, Janzer after Janzer, though the Janzers returned fire, and the birds lunged and ripped apart the BP.
Verena and Jocelyn backed into a nook along the sill. Verena knelt and fired upon the birds until a Janzer division turned with their pulse rifles and fired at her. She drew back with Jocelyn, who huddled between stalagmites.
“Lutetia!”
Jeremiah emerged from behind a limestone pillar atop the precipice, flanked by two of his commandos. Lady Isabelle Lutetia rode through a waterfall upon a terror bird painted with phoenix feathers, its saddle lined with rubies. She wore a bodysuit and chameleon cape. Her wet lavender hair twisted down her left shoulder.
“Hold fire!” she said.
The rain of pulse blasts from the Janzers and the cries from the birds ceased, while the BP took cover around the Hollow. The Janzers and birds outnumbered the Polemon five to one by Verena’s count. Janzers still rotated in their attack formations, elliptical movements designed to assess and, in time, wear down the enemy.
The terror birds clacked their beaks and clicked their tongues.
Isabelle dismounted in one swift movement, and a Janzer division surrounded her. She strutted up the stairs to where Jeremiah and his commandos stood. The muffled moans and groans of the wounded echoed through the Hollow.
Jocelyn poked her head from behind the stalagmite jungle. She raised a pulse gun and took aim at Isabelle, way out of range.
Verena tugged the girl to safety and put her finger over her mouth. “A Polemon spy knows when she has the advantage,” she said softly, “and right now we don’t.”
“But can’t we—”
Verena put her finger over Jocelyn’s mouth and shook her head. “Silence is our best weapon.”
Isabelle now stood with Jeremiah.
A Polemon pulled the trigger on her pulse rifle, and the blast raced for Isabelle, but a Janzer lunged in front of her. His chest burst open.
The Janzers in the cavern turned in unison and fired upon the Polemon. She fell over the stone ledge and crashed to the ground. The birds lunged for the corpse and fought over her skin and entrails.
Isabelle tossed her hair and smirked.
“My lady,” Jeremiah said, “you’ve lost.” He nodded toward the Hollow. “What you see here are the last remnants of our society, and you may strike it down, you may strike me down, but the cause shall survive. I as martyr, you as pathetic servant to a dying commonwealth, and the Front will thrive under your fist, and when—”
“No.” Isabelle unsheathed her baton. One of the BP commandos grabbed her wrist, but a Janzer cut off the commando’s arm with his sword. Another Janzer decapitated the other commando.
Isabelle telekinetically removed the dead arm and fingers from her wrist.
The BP fired their pulse weapons and flashed their swords, meeting the Janzers in battle. The birds screeched and charged with their beaks and moved from body to body.
Isabelle spun and slammed her baton into Jeremiah. He collapsed. He held his ribs and breathed heavily but didn’t utter a sound.
Verena heard his voice in her mind: Leave! Now!
Isabelle knelt over Jeremiah.
“All the games …”
She paused.
She turned to the chaos in the Hollow, smiled, then faced Jeremiah.
“All the riddles …”
She knelt and jabbed Jeremiah with the baton. He flipped to his other side as if struck with an electric shock. Verena could see the pain in the bloody whites of his eyes.
“What it comes down to is information, knowledge from the enemy.” She held Jeremiah’s long hair and pulled him close. “Betrayed by your own son.”
Isabelle stood and turned to where the Janzers held a group of BP hostage.
“Destroy Hydra Hollow!”
The Janzers activated flamethrowers. The BP screamed, while the terror birds gashed bodies and limbs and sucked out innards.
Isabelle hand-signaled one of her Janzers, who lifted Jeremiah’s limp body. “Join your brother in the afterlife.” She unsheathed her sword and thrust it into Jeremiah’s gut, then turned her sword up into his body, and his
ribs cracked. Blood oozed from his mouth, and his eyes dulled.
Verena reached to cover Jocelyn’s eyes.
Her hand slapped the rough limestone wall. She looked down.
Jocelyn was gone.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão
Region 7
Lower Level
4,000 meters deep
Brody lay naked beneath the sheets upon his cot, his body sticky and sooty from the day’s labor, from the clearance of a new Impossible Stairs he’d have to ascend again tomorrow. He estimated millions of exiles had perished since he’d arrived in the Lower Level.
His mind focused on the escape, his doubts, his fears, his failures.
My darling, you shouldn’t think this way. Damy’s voice.
Luke might have the right of it, but I can’t ignore this, not anymore.
I don’t trust Luke.
He’s all I have down here, but I’m too starved to fight the Janzers, and he couldn’t fight them on his best day.
He may not be what he seems.
He’s no warrior, and I’m near the end of the Vitex supply. Luke doesn’t have more.
You’ve traveled to the surfaces of Earth, Mars, Venus, across the galaxy to Vigna. The journey to Beimeni from here shouldn’t seem so daunting. One thousand five hundred meters to the Middle zone elevators.
Right, through an inferno with heat too severe for even a transhuman to survive for long.
Only you can lead the teams and the people. That’s why you’re here.
Brody spun his bony legs over the side of his cot and touched his toes to the hard, cool floor. He slipped into his gray bodysuit and pulled the chain that dangled from his lamp. He sat on his cot with his head in his hands.
Knowing what I need to do doesn’t make it any easier. It’s been so long … what if I make it? And what if I fail?
Your doubt is in your mind, your mind controls your destiny, your destiny is in the commonwealth and the commonwealth needs its captain.
Damy’s silhouette formed against the wall, a shadow that transformed into a body. She stepped out, in a white halter gown, with golden bands around her wrists. She held Brody’s hands.
You can choose to stay here. You can focus on the mistakes and ignore the good you’ve done for the last hundred years. You can choose to abandon your people to their fate. She knelt in front of him, and her gown spilled around his feet. Or you can take the road that requires you to rise higher and further than the Jovian moons, the road you were meant to travel but could not see. Until now.
There was a surge and a wisp sound. Damy disappeared. The lamp’s bulb brightened and exploded. The unit’s door flew open. Brody turned. It was after lockdown.
Dim red emergency lighting leaked into his room from the hall.
He heard footsteps, and the clanking sound of alloy on alloy.
Tyler’s head rolled across the floor.
Luke stepped into the doorway, as swiftly as a striker. “It’s now or never.”
Brody stared. Damy? Is this real?
“You hear me, Captain? Let’s move!”
Brody heard Damy’s voice in his head. This is your moment of destiny, the moment Delphi assured you would arrive …
“You’re Palaestran, aren’t you?” Brody said. “An RDD exile, or are you a Beimeni Polemon—”
“No time, bub.” Luke threw Brody a new Vitex dropper, a dropper he’d claimed he didn’t have. “Take a hit before we leave. I’ve got to get you to Portage, Captain.”
Brody dabbed the dropper in his eyes.
Thousands of exiles, some of whom hadn’t yet fallen to the Lower Level’s spell, sailed through the hallway, followed closely by a division of bots and Janzers, more than enough under normal circumstances after lockdown. The Janzers’ batons hummed. The exiles wailed.
A Janzer entered Brody’s unit, baton drawn.
Luke grabbed the Janzer by its arm and flipped it to the ground. He lifted the Janzer’s visor and pushed something on his wrist, from which smoke splayed over the Janzer’s face. The Janzer passed out, or died, Brody didn’t know. Luke flipped a heart-shaped box on his wrist down over his hand—a drill—and he undid the Janzer’s armor faster than any striker or aera Brody had witnessed in the commonwealth.
He grabbed Brody’s arm, twisted him around, and affixed the Janzer synsuit to him. Luke latched himself into cuffs. They weaved through a corridor full of bots, exiles and, now and then, a Janzer, running in both directions.
“We must get them all out of here,” Brody said.
Luke didn’t respond.
In the hall, a Janzer lay on the ground, his neck snapped.
“What’re you doing?” Brody said.
Luke unlatched his cuffs and used his drill to undo the Janzer’s synsuit. He sliced off the Janzer’s hand at the wrist and put it in the Janzer’s pack along with the synsuit. Blood pooled around Luke’s boots.
Brody stepped back. “You’ve been lying from the start, from your origin to the Vitex supply to—”
“I have enough for our escape, bub, and that was difficult enough.”
“We can’t leave them here,” Brody said. “I can’t leave them here.”
“There will be a time to rescue the exiles. Here and now isn’t it. Look around.”
Brody looked. Nonfunctioning bots and dead or dying exiles lay trampled, blood smeared over the walls and pillars. Illusory, burning salamanders scurried up and down the walls. The smell of sweat and burning alloy mixed together.
“We lack the tools to secure passage across the sea, but there’s another way. You and I can escape, but a larger group would suffocate and die. With your strength and telepathy restored in Portage, you will return by way of the Infernus Sea to free them all.”
More exiles rushed past Brody and Luke toward the elevators that led to the transports, the registration area, the Infernus Sea, and the commonwealth.
“Wait!” Brody yelled. “Don’t go that way! Come with us! We know the way out!”
None listened. If only he had his neurochip, he could get their attention, draw them into his mind, calm them. How many would die, how many could endure this oxygen-depleted atmosphere long enough for his return?
“I’ll come back for you,” Brody said. “I will return!”
“Captain,” Luke said, “this way.”
They rode the elevator toward the Impossible Stairs, where no exile would ever choose to go.
The doors opened.
There were no stalactites, no Lady Liberty, no buzz from conveyor belts, no terror birds, no exiles cornered like animals—only darkness. Luke lit a flare that sizzled. He set the Janzer’s pack upon the ground and removed the armor plates and helmet. He instructed Brody how to use the drill.
When Brody was finished, all he saw of Luke was his face beneath the Janzer visor, his bushy eyebrows, aquiline nose, pale skin, long beard, and thin lips.
They darted across the gravel, past the belts and turbines to a limestone wall where Luke pressed the dead Janzer’s hand.
There was a grinding noise of stone on stone. The secret entrance opened. Armed only with synsuits and shuriken, Brody and Luke entered the unknown.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Oriana Barão
Before Reassortment
Lake Thingvallavatn
Hengill, Iceland
Twilight fog descended over Lake Thingvallavatn. Across from where Oriana lay, the time portal leaked through the mist. How did she get here? Where was Dr. Shrader?
Markings and cuts pocked the ground where Oriana had rolled along the mossy hill. Her head still throbbed from whatever the doctor had done in the shuttle, she assumed, or was it the fall? She requested uficilin from her synsuit and gulped the filtered air inside her helmet. When she stood, she felt dizzy and fell.
She took more breaths and rose again, more slowly. Once she regained her balance, she stepped into a valley of volcanic stone and evergreen moss. Here and there, geothermal vents released air in loud bursts and scrapes.
Here she stood, upon the surface, Before Reassortment. The place wasn’t beautiful, not the way it had looked when Heywood showed it to her. What a different world the two times were, the before, the after.
I’ll do this on my own, Oriana thought, for Pasha, for Father, for Nathan and Nero, for Beimeni.
She trudged for a few kilometers along the valley floor, hopped over shallow streams, wobbled over igneous rock. She requested her synsuit to adjust her appearance to recreate the illusion of the oxblood-colored biomats the scientists wore in Hengill, Before Reassortment, and to synthesize her genetic signature in the ZPF into Dr. Shrader’s. She extended her consciousness and activated ultraviolet vision. The Hengill Power Plant, primary entrance to the laboratory, lay five kilometers due south.
Oriana scurried to the ridge and entered the mist. She’d need to act as captain, aera, and strategist for this mission, a difficult assignment, but not impossible. It had happened to her father, Oriana knew, when he went to Vigna and discovered the Lorum. His strategist and striker had disappeared, yet Father had found his way to Vigna’s core and secured the Lorum that gave him his Mark of Masimovian.
She heard a sound, like that of tumbling stone. She turned and saw only mist and moss behind her.
Where was Shrader?
She dashed along a foggy trail lined by a piping stream, colored by moonlight. The mountains and clouds and the feel of moss beneath her boots reminded her of development in House Summerset, when she and Pasha had explored virtual landscapes, raced downstairs to breakfast, and ate enough food for an elephant.
She slipped over a slick stone and almost lost her footing, then balanced on a mossy hump of ground. Ahead, the fog grew thinner. She wiped off her synsuit, then pulled a Granville scroll from a compartment in her synsuit beneath her left arm and unrolled it.
