The Armor of God

by Diego Valenzuela

  Was she already gone?

  “Ezra?” A girl’s voice. He looked up through teary eyes to find Tessa, the tall bespectacled pilot of Isis Nineteen. “Blanchard, are you all right? Is the Director here?”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m sitting outside her office,” he replied.

  Tessa laughed and helped him up. “I feared so, but thought I’d try her anyway. I’ve been looking for a word for days but she’s elusive, the Director. How come you’re crying?”

  “I’m not,” Ezra lied and wiped his eyes.

  “Sure you’re not.” Tessa smiled at him and hugged him. She whispered, arms still around him. “You don’t need to feel bad about missing her. I don’t have a mother, but if I did, and she was here, I’d want to be with her all the time.”

  “Thank you, Tessa,” he said and she finally let go.

  “Dr. Logan says she’s been taking care of some business, but she was supposed to return today to oversee the operation—it’s big, whatever it is. Are you feeling up to it? Come on, walk with me.”

  There was a very gentle, very sweet quality to her way of talking. As much as he liked Erin, he didn’t think she could ever have the comforting tenor that was so natural in Tessa’s voice. Maybe it was the memory of her playing the violin; it had changed the way he looked at her. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about lately,” he said.

  “You’re talented; you just need to hone your Creux’s temperament to be in control more,” she said, and they left the Management wing. “I watched the Titan operation; that was very, very cool; I couldn’t believe you and Vivian were more or less new here; it’s like you’ve been doing it for years.”

  “Thank you, that means a lot,” said Ezra. They came to the dining hall, and he stopped when he saw the picture of Susan, hanging below the picture of Alice.

  . . . we might be close to the end. The end of Zenith, I mean. I don’t think Zenith has a long time left . . .

  “I miss her too,” said Tessa. “I know we don’t talk much, that’s just how I am. But I really did admire Alice a lot. She was on the train that brought me here. She was with me when I synchronized with Isis for the first time. We were good friends. I liked having her in my life.”

  “I know what you mean,” Ezra said.

  “And you too, Ezra. I see in you a lot of what made Alice so great.”

  He looked at her and she leaned in to whisper a word.

  Ю

  Ezra . . . What have you done?

  The equine creature gave its dying breaths as Nandi pounded it with his vast, hard fists.

  “Ezra!” Erin’s voice came through the ragged veil of Besoe Nandi’s rage. She was horrified. “Ezra what have you done!”

  He looked down at Nandi’s bloodied hands and the remains of the creature. Embedded on the back of its shattered head, there was an iron brick—one he had seen before. He had seen it on the back of Subject Edward’s head.

  It’s a tracking implant. We’re releasing it back outside and monitor its behavior.

  Ezra began to hear through Nandi’s ears, suddenly recognizing the sounds he had lived with his entire life before Zenith.

  . . . we had to keep some things from you . . .

  This thing was not a Fleck. It was not a microscopic being; it was Subject Edward.

  He looked up and slowly rose. The inside of the swelling was not a diseased growth, but a vivid landscape of buildings that were as tall as him. A fabricated night sky disguised the top of the dome he had just broken.

  . . . you’re obviously not ready to hear the truth . . .

  People who were so small looked up at him, horrified by the sight of the violent monster, and the enormous creature it had slayed.

  The lies revealed themselves for what they were: this was not a minute swelling in the inner flesh of a cadaver, and he was not a miniature suit of armor. He had never been.

  Ezra knew this place. He knew this domed city.

  This was Roue, spread beneath his colossal self.

  The Labyrinth of Nandi

  Ancient crumbling walls and empty spaces surrounded him. Ezra had ran through these corridors and hallways for what seemed like years, taking turns at its seemingly random twists, only to find himself in yawning darkness, deeper in the bowels of this impossible construct.

  The growls of a monster echoed through the many passageways, and the clicking of heavy hooves was always just around a corner, always behind him and never in sight.

  Sometimes he would think that the light behind a corner meant he was approaching an exit, but it was always a vanishing lie: every apparent exit would twist into more unexplored darkness.

  The world has ended, the monster whispered. He knew it was somewhere near him, hidden.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “It’s ended too many times.”

  Ezra kept going forward, into the darkness, ignoring every new opening in the passageway. He saw Susan. He saw Alice. He saw Jena. He saw Poole. He saw Akiva. He saw Erin. He saw Barnes. He saw his mother. They stood like statues beneath new corridors, mournful eyes following Ezra as he passed them by.

  The monster in the darkness stomped its hooves on the stone floor. Where do you think you are? Where do you think you’re going?

  He didn’t reply. “Let me go.”

  You can’t, it said. Yours isn’t a life; yours is an afterlife. You never met the living world because it was never meant to birth you. Everything about you, and everything you know, is false. You were not a child meant to live, you are not a man meant to leave.

  Ezra stopped at the entrance of a large hall at the heart of the darkness. A circular dais occupied the middle of the massive stone room and a missing piece in the ceiling shed pale moonlight into the labyrinth.

  From the darkness beyond the dais, the creature revealed itself.

  Monster, Ezra thought, eyes for the first time on the creature of myth. The body of a large man, the thick hooved legs and horned head of a bull, and his own eyes looking down at him. From its nose hung a thick iron ring of red and blue.

  Where do you think you are?

  “I’m lost. I see light, but it melts into darkness. Your labyrinth is lying to me.”

  It is easy to lie to you, the creature said, his voice echoing through every chamber of the labyrinth. Your life never extended beyond protective encapsulation. You do not know the ways of the true world because your feet have never treaded its richness.

  “I don’t want to be lied to,” Ezra said. “I just want to find the way out.”

  The creature laughed and bellowed, raising one thick arm towards the weeping moonlight.

  Not every labyrinth has a way out.

  “That can’t be true.”

  The bull’s head looked down at the dais under its hooves, its shadow revealing the hitherto incomprehensible patterns and crude representations carved onto the stone: a suit of armor; a burning sword; two angels’ wings. The countless figures of men and women surrounded these three items in a circle, as if in worship.

  Not every labyrinth has a way out.

  The monster now extended his huge arm towards Ezra, inviting him to join it in the dais. Ezra walked up to the monstrous creature that wore his eyes. He looked up at the fissure in the ceiling through which he could see a starry cosmos: newborn and dying stars intertwined with planets that bent and danced with colorful clouds that were larger than millions of worlds.

  Not every labyrinth has a way out.

  His senses were too involved with the universe outside. So large and so far away it was, entirely unconcerned with Ezra and the monster trapped inside the labyrinth.

  It said: What are one man’s lies before the playground of the divine?

  It whispered: What are one child’s tears in an unfinished world?

  It cried: What is one monster’s pain to the god that failed?

  Sometimes there’s only the way in.

  Ezra opened his eyes again, begging for the monster’s company through his tears.

&nbs
p; Chapter 18

  Tomorrow Comes

  The room was cold, the light bright enough to make a burden out of opening his eyes. There was a pleasant smell that was immediately comforting, unlike the rough fabric on which his head was resting.

  There was also a melody, hummed off-key in his mother’s voice; it made him feel like he had not yet escaped from dreams he had already forgotten.

  “Mom,” Ezra said, but his voice barely made it out of a severely tender throat.

  Tara Blanchard stopped humming her lullaby, and watched as Ezra lifted his head from her lap. They were sitting on the red and blue sheets of his dormitory bed. A camera that hadn’t been there before looked at him from a corner like the eye of a restless sentinel.

  “Mom, what happened?” Ezra asked.

  “How far back do you remember?” she asked.

  He had seen stars weaved from nothingness inside a red world, commanded by the silver hands of Milos Ravana. He remembered running, hunting with a killing intent, remembered the blood of an innocent creature in his hands—

  “I was gone for too long,” she said and hugged him. “You could have died, and I wouldn’t have been here. You went silent, Ezra. Your team thought you had been assimilated into Besoe Nandi. Your Creux was brought back to Zenith, and you were still inside your capsule, alive but in shock.”

  Ezra got up with a start, sweating, trying to get away from his mother. “You lied to me—Mom, you lied to me! How could you do this to me! Tell me Nandi was small, that I killing a damn virus when I was really—” He couldn’t form the words, afraid of making them real. “You turned me into a monster!”

  “Please sit down,” she said, and took a deep and shaky breath. “What happened outside was an accident. No one could have predicted what you would do, how you would react, and no one can blame you. It was Besoe Nandi’s influence on you that caused it.”

  He began to remember his bloodlust. Driven by an arcane affinity with Besoe Nandi, Ezra had lost himself in carnage, seeking to destroy the creatures he had been trained to see as mindless and dangerous. He remembered the broken body of Subject Edward, his thick, brown blood splashing a green area inside of Roue—

  “Roue,” he whispered. “What did I do to the city?”

  “Please sit down,” she said, and it felt like a warning for upsets to come. “You broke a part of the dome, Ezra, but the damage wasn’t as extensive as it could have been under any other circumstance. The creatures—”

  “Don’t call them that.”

  She nodded. “The infected had been wiped out by Milos Ravana, so none was left to enter the city grounds or infect any of the citizens. The part of the dome that was broken can be reconstructed.”

  “Was anyone killed?” he asked, afraid of the answer.

  She shook her head; his trust in her had been greatly diminished, but if she was lying, at least it was a comforting lie.

  “If I had known what it was I would’ve never been there. How was I supposed to know it was so important to protect?” he yelled.

  “You were told it was important, and you were supposed to do as you were ordered.” He said nothing. “I know we seem like your enemies right now, Ezra, but you were lied to in order to make things easier until you grew to accept the nature of this life. You wouldn’t have been the Creux pilot you are if you knew the truth. You have to understand there were things Zenith is trying to protect. Your job here is—”

  “Larger than myself, I know.”

  “Please sit down, sweetheart. I want to talk to you as your mother,” she insisted. He wanted to say no, but despite everything he missed her; he needed her comfort. “The damage to the dome or to the city isn’t a concern; it’s the future of Zenith. Not everyone wants humanity to live on, Ezra. People still take their own lives every day, thinking it’s better to make their death a choice of their own and not some angry god’s. All those years ago we had to lie to them about Zenith and the Creux; they didn’t accept that maybe some of the things that came after the Fall of Terria were sent to us by something trying to help us, not kill us.”

  “And I ruined that,” he said, looking up at the weak light bulb flickering overhead.

  “People saw Besoe Nandi, yes. We can’t hide the existence of Zenith or the Creux anymore. It hurts me to say this, because I know you’re going to blame yourself for it, but I know you don’t want me to lie anymore. The truth is that this could mean the end of Zenith.”

  Ezra looked at her, began to sweat.

  “Zenith is funded and controlled by the army, which is funded and controlled by the government of Roue. Our existence depended on the government’s approval of what we do here, and that was very easily controlled before. Now, people know about it, and there is no way to know if the people in Roue will want Zenith to exist.”

  “I don’t understand; we can still function! We don’t need people’s approval if we’re trying to save our whole damn future!”

  “No. We’ve been living in the dome for so much time because we’ve managed to maintain a very fragile balance. Some of us know that humanity can still take our world back, but many are ready to become another species that just . . . used to be. Some don’t want precious and limited resources used to fight a battle we’re never going to win. Some are rooting for the virus if it means living their last years comfortably. It’s the same reason why the Army has become so weak. This could be all it takes for people to rise and end all of it once and for all.”

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  “The decision will be made in two weeks,” she said. “We will begin a campaign to convince people that the Creux is a force of good, that Zenith represents hope, and that the battle can still be won. This is a campaign you will be an integral part of. In two weeks, the people of Roue are going to vote on what’s being called ‘Proposition Tomorrow’; if the majority votes for the dissolution of Zenith, there will be nothing any of us can do under the eyes of Roue. Zenith will be shut down.”

  Ezra couldn’t say anything; he was too lost in thoughts of guilt, running short of air.

  Had he single-handedly sentenced humanity to extinction?

  Tara looked up at the camera, then turned to Ezra. “But you should know this, Ezra: I am going to do everything I can, and I’m willing to give anything up, to make sure we go on.”

  She gave the camera one last glance, then winked at him, hidden away from its eye.

  Hours after his mother left the room, a sheet of paper was slipped underneath the door. Ezra walked towards the dormitory door and saw the empty room of his crewmembers. Barnes didn’t sleep there, but he wondered where Dr. Mustang was, and to what degree was he being held responsible for Ezra’s actions.

  The door was locked from the outside. “This is a fire hazard!” he yelled to no one.

  Ezra picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it, not knowing what to expect—as the cause of the biggest crisis in Zenith’s history, he was surely not the most popular person within; it could very well be an insult.

  But it was no such thing; just a drawing and a few words:

  There is a plan.

  Your gonna have to be patient.

  Their not gonna win.

  Some of us still like you.

  ‘Some of us,’ Ezra thought. That’s nice.

  He didn’t know a single person in Zenith who would write a note so poorly. The sketch of an isosceles with circles drawn over the angles added mystery to the note. The only people that had seen that drawing, or would find it meaningful, were Poole, Jena, Akiva, Dr. Yuri, and his mother. Had one of them misspelled the words on purpose in an attempt to veil their identity?

  Ezra ripped it apart and threw it in the garbage, sure that the vigilant eye of the camera hadn’t seen it at all.

  A plan, the note had said. Could it be referring to the campaign to save Zenith, and Proposition Tomorrow? No, the note seemed too carefully crafted to convey a secret message; the campaign was no secret, and this appeared to be.

/>   He felt useless; as the cause of all of it, it should be him working to fix the problem. And yet, he was secluded to this dormitory, surrounded by the angry eyes of a red and blue bull that seemed to judge him.

  Trying to escape the Minotaur, at least for a few moments, Ezra took a shower. He immediately saw that there was no working hot water, and commended whomever was responsible for their creative and passive-aggressive punishment.

  He couldn’t escape the Minotaur or its labyrinth; as every drop of cold water washed down his body, he thought about every operation, every meeting and every class. He began to piece together the puzzle behind their lies, how Garros hated to describe the terrain—he was making up lies about being inside a dead body fighting a virus, when in reality they were just outside of Roue, killing monsters that had once been human beings.

  He had never felt more stupid, or angrier.

  It is easy to lie to you . . .

  When he walked out of the shower and dressed in his increasingly tight uniform, he found his nose ring on the nightstand. He took it, feeling its weight: so minute in his palm yet so substantial in his heart. He put it on, and it still hurt.

  A knock on the door startled him, and he hurried to open it. At the other side, he found someone he didn’t expect: Kat. “Blanchard,” she said. “You’ve been summoned.”

  Walking next to Kat made him feel safe; she was not a very big woman, but had such a powerful stance, such perfect posture as she walked, it made her look dangerous, and she probably was. It was a welcome feeling, because it was difficult not to feel vulnerable when every other pair of eyes they saw on their way wanted him dead. “I want you to know, Blanchard; not all of us blame you for what happened.”

  “I know,” he said, and wondered if the note was hers—she worked for Milos Ravana’s crew; she knew of the drawing on its armor. “Thank you, Kat. Where are we going?”