The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2)

by Diego Valenzuela

  “The creatures don’t come near Clairvert,” explained Malachi, and the pilots exchanged confused glances. What was hidden inside the city that had that effect, which they had seen in the oases? “Your friend’s Colossus has been there for days.”

  The group walked together closer to the slit in the stone wall, an entryway into the city. He could see the relief and happiness in Jena’s eyes, and a smile.

  “I guess you were right about the girl,” said Garros.

  “Right?” Ezra nodded. It was a long trek by human foot to Kerek, but if there was a colony—Clairvert?—nearby, it would explain her presence in an otherwise devastated land. “I wonder if she’s here.”

  The slit was indeed an entrance. When they left the desert behind them and went inside the mountain, Ezra found himself in a complex labyrinth of smooth walls, eroded into existence, leaving winding hallways as the only way to get inside. Even if they could approach Clairvert, no Fleck could ever fit through these passages.

  “Welcome to Clairvert,” said Malachi.

  At least thirty people appeared from behind the folds of stone that made this maze. All of them looked at the Creuxen with disbelieving eyes, as though they had never seen something quite so big. With the exception of their clothing, most of which was bright shades of blue and yellow, they seemed like entirely ordinary people.

  “Your hand, please,” said a woman. She looked like some kind of doctor, or nurse, someone specialized in medicine. She was wearing gloves made of a thin cloth, and a scarf covered her mouth under thick glasses.

  “What? Why?” asked Ezra.

  “Ezra, just go with it,” ordered Erin. A man dressed like the woman grabbed her hand and pricked it with a needle. She winced.

  The woman caught Ezra off guard and also drew some of his blood before mixing it in a small tube full of yellowish liquid. Ezra drew his arm back, angry, and joined Garros, Erin, and Jena. They were pressing a finger against the spots where they had been stabbed.

  “How is it possible that Director Blanchard didn’t know about this place?” asked Garros.

  “I don’t know,” replied Erin. “No one else knew. I talked with Mizrahi, with Kat, with everyone involved in this mission, and no one ever mentioned this place. It looks like a lot of people live here. Akiva is here. How can it be a secret at all?”

  Suddenly, Ezra felt the entire world spin around him before he felt the earth hit his face hard. His shoulders twisted as his arms were forced back behind him. Then, he couldn’t move them at all. They were tied behind his back.

  He groaned, cursed, still shocked, and looked up.

  Jena, Erin, and even Garros were in similar situations: the military men had taken them by surprise and bound all four of them.

  “What the hell is going on!” snarled Garros. Ezra had never heard him speak so angrily. It looked like he might break through the restraints.

  Someone helped Ezra up, and he tried to force himself free, but it was only straining his shoulders further.

  “I’m sorry,” said Malachi. “I’m really very sorry, but it’s the sickness. I’m afraid you four are infected.”

  ф

  Two hours after the time to vote ended, night was well on its way in the city of Roue, and it stood silent.

  The pilots of Zenith—the few of them left—were given a very pleasant room in the military base. There was food, drink, even entertainment. But the only thing to which they were paying attention was a large television screen, tuned to the newscast covering the end of the voting day.

  It took only those two hours of counting and recounting for the city to know the result, and all of them looked on with horrified eyes as the television displayed their inexorable future.

  Proposition Tomorrow was a go.

  It was the end of Zenith.

  Humanity had just chosen its own extinction.

  Chapter 8

  A Display of Madness

  For one moment, Ezra was sure the bones of his arms had popped off his shoulders—the strain put on by the restraints holding his hands behind him was too much. Rage burned at his stomach, but he kept it inside.

  If I was inside Nandi right now. . .

  Garros, on the other hand, couldn’t keep it in. He was yelling and ranting, even threatening the guards with physical violence, telling them through obscenities that they were mistaken. “Look at us, you idiots!” he yelled. “Do we look like we’re infected? Do we? It’s the goddamn Creux!”

  This was all the more frustrating when they couldn’t see where they were going. As if the restraints weren’t humiliating enough, the very welcoming people of Clairvert had put thick sacks over their heads so they couldn’t see. They itched, and trapped all the heat and smells of his head; he almost threw up.

  Pushed forward by Malachi, who remained silent, only grunting in his struggles to keep Ezra in line every time he futilely attempted to break free, Ezra could imagine the worst. He could hear many voices holler at them—it sounded like there was a large community inside this mountain. It sounded no different to Ronald Heath’s followers back in Roue.

  If they thought they were infected, that they would soon transform into deformed monsters, where were they taking him and the others?

  Execution. It was the first and most obvious answer.

  Ezra panicked, and he could feel Malachi putting both his hands over Ezra’s wrists, holding him closer and more tightly as his fear began to settle into desperate horror. “Where are you taking us!” he yelled, repeating words Garros had been yelling since the bags came on.

  As back then, there was no answer now.

  He almost cried; was this the end for them? Would they die at the hands of stupid, barbaric peasants, who mistook their special blood with that of a doomed infected?

  The thought of actually being infected with the virus—which would later seem very likely to him—didn’t even cross his mind.

  After a long walk, he heard the squeak of metal, like a gate, coming open, and then the restraints of his hands finally released them. He was shoved with significant force, only staying on his feet thanks to a quick reflex—one of the small benefits of a fighting life.

  Garros yelled another profanity and Ezra felt the man’s bulk crashing against him. Both fell over, and when they did, the bag over his head came off.

  Ezra’s shoulders popped when he finally moved his arms to shove Garros off him, and he got a chance to take a glance at the room. The ceiling was carved stone. The walls were carved stone.

  They were in a room naturally carved into the mountain—as the whole city probably was—and kept from the rest of Clairvert by thick metal bars that looked older than any of the cell’s new occupants. The outside was a dark hallway, silent except for their voices, and barely lit by torches placed into the jagged walls.

  It was like something out of an ancient history book—a city displaced from time.

  Jena and Erin were holding on to the bars, looking outside and yelling for help—or at least an explanation for this sudden imprisonment. Jena turned around, and he could see from the redness around her eyes that she had cried under the bag.

  Goddamned animals, Ezra thought, blood boiling.

  And then, Jena looked behind Ezra, and he saw her eyes become big and bright—ready to spill tears. Something was standing behind him.

  “Uh . . . hey guys,” a familiar voice said.

  Ezra turned around.

  “Kiva,” said Jena before jumping at Akiva, who had been sitting in the dark corner behind them. Her arms were already around him when Ezra finally recognized the object of their lengthy quest. Jena’s lips were immediately on his, and then on his cheek, which had grown hairy with an unkempt and poorly grown beard. He looked much thinner, but still towered over Jena and, of course, Ezra.

  Jena suddenly removed her lips from his and looked back at Ezra, as if embarrassed by her reaction.

  “I’m really, really glad to see you,” he said to her, and kissed her forehead before turn
ing towards the others. “—to see you, guys.”

  When Jena let go of him, Akiva walked towards Ezra and grabbed him in a friendly hug that felt genuine. “Man, I’m so glad to see you too. I really need your help. Did your mother send you?”

  Ezra nodded just as Akiva continued hugging people like it was his job. This time it was Erin, who received Akiva’s affection with her arms on her sides, stiff, as though refusing to participate in it but not wanting to be rude.

  “Where’s Poole?”

  “Back in Zenith,” said Jena. “She stayed back there so I could come with Erin’s group.”

  “There must have been some changes in the plan, then. I bet I’m the one to blame, so I apologize.” He moved on to hug Garros, but stopped. He moved his index finger, pointing it at himself, then at Garros, and back. “Should we—?”

  “No, that’s not necessary,” said Garros. “Good to see you made it. Milos looked like it went through hell.”

  “It did. It really did. But you did too. You made it all the way here as well. Not on your own, but you made it,” he said, and looked at Ezra. “Whoa, what the hell happened to your face?”

  Ezra touched his cheekbone; it still hurt. “Oh. Garros.”

  “Really!” Akiva said, and there was amusing smugness in his face when he looked at Garros, wordlessly accusing him of hypocrisy. After all, it had been Garros who once protected Ezra from Akiva’s fists.

  “Yes. Well, Ezra did this,” said Garros, pointing at the purple spot on his own cheek.

  “Really!” exclaimed Akiva, and that time the inflection said he was impressed.

  “Never mind that. Kiv, what happened? Why did you leave?” asked Jena, and she took a deep breath. “How could you leave us like that?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have a good explanation,” he said, and hesitated to continue. “I think.”

  “Did you kill Dr. Yuri?” Erin asked, abruptly, like it was a question that had been lingering in her head for years, begging to be asked.

  “What do you mean?” Akiva asked, and Jena grabbed his hand.

  “I’m asking. We found Dr. Yuri dead, right after you left, just hours after,” she said. “He was shot in the chest. He bled to death on the floor of his own damn office.”

  Akiva shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, no—he was alive when I—goddamn, when I last saw him. He was—he was drunk, very drunk, but he was alive. He’s the one who told me to leave. He would have stuffed me into Milos if he could.”

  “I told you, it was Tessa,” said Ezra, and everyone turned their eyes to him. For the first time, Erin and Garros seemed to believe his story, if just a little. “She didn’t only shoot Dr. Yuri. She also shot Kat, and Barnes.”

  Akiva took a step back and sat down on a stool next to a bed-like structure that was far too small to be used by all of them. He was sweating, hands shaking. His surprise was genuine. “She what . . . ?”

  Ezra nodded. And I saw it happen.

  “I saw Tessa, when I was getting out of Zenith,” he said, and licked his lips, eyes red and dry. “She was in the labs, found me on my way to the bay. She seemed normal, but she begged me to stay. She asked me if I had talked to Dr. Yuri, and then told me not to believe in anything he said, that he had been depressed, that your mother would force him to leave Zenith.”

  “She didn’t want you to go?” asked Garros.

  “She didn’t want me to go either,” Ezra said, finally feeling like his story was getting through to them. “I told you she wanted to sabotage the whole operation. I don’t know why, but she’s not on our side, Garros. She’s not our friend. I don’t think she ever was.”

  “That makes no sense to me,” argued Erin.

  “It doesn’t make sense to me either, but it doesn’t make it any less true! Tessa was actively trying to stop us from getting here. She’s a killer and a traitor, and she’s back home with Poole and the others. With my mother.”

  “Your mother is not in danger,” said Erin, and everyone knew that was a lie. “The real danger is here. The Laani are converging somewhere near this city, Akiva. Do you know anything about that?”

  He nodded. “They’re disappearing into the mountain. The watchman told me, before they threw me in here. For a few weeks they have been walking into a huge gap in the stone walls, and they don’t come out. I think they were stupid enough to send two scouts, but they didn’t return either.”

  Ezra felt chills make a tremor in his spine. It was happening—Lys was putting itself back together, preparing to rise, and they were standing where he soon would.

  “How long have you been here?” asked Jena.

  “Here in this cell? I don’t know. Two days, maybe. It’s hard to tell when you can’t see the sky, without a clock or anything,” he said.

  “Is this a prison?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Akiva. “One of the guards said something about me being lucky I’m not being exiled outside. I think that’s what they do to criminals, kick them out. Same with the infected. This is something else, but this isn’t the only cell—there are others. Hours ago there was something weird. There were screams. I heard a lot of people begin to yell and scream nonsense. There’s also been tremors, the whole place shaking. I’ve felt at least two.”

  Ezra walked over to the bars; he couldn’t see any other cell nearby.

  “You can’t see from here, but there are others down there.”

  “Hello?” yelled Ezra, and his voice went down the hallway, without an answer in return. “We have to get out of here.”

  “We will,” said Akiva. “I feel like they’re keeping us here until they figure out what to do with us. These people aren’t idiots; they saw the Creux outside, they understand we’re valuable in some way. They’ll figure out we’re not actually infected. We just need to explain to them why we’re here—what’s happening with the Laani. And we need to make them believe us.”

  “Do they know? It’s happening just outside their door,” said Jena.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Akiva. “If someone here does, they’re not letting anyone else in the city know. I heard them mention a leader—like, one person who governs this place. I expect we’re going to meet him soon.”

  The hours passed, and no one in the cell knew if it was day or night, but suddenly Ezra discovered that he was the only one who remained awake, as if all of the others decided that night had fallen. Their sleeping schedule had been non-existent during the trip to Kerek—or rather, to Clairvert—as it had been so unpredictable; every time they set off from one of the oases, they couldn’t know how far they would have to go before they could rest again.

  He didn’t know how they could find sleep. Yes, they were in a closed space, safer than the wilderness, and a bit calmer after having found Akiva and Milos Ravana . . . but how could they sleep?

  Ezra found it difficult to believe in Akiva’s hypothesis. The people of this city thought they were infected with the virus; they expected they would transform into monsters. Maybe this was a temporary holding cell before they were executed? Maybe not, but optimistic alternatives were few. Finding Akiva was only the first step towards their goal. How would they find the missing pieces of Milos Ravana and stop Lys if they were stuck in a cell?

  Ezra felt his heart stop for a moment when he turned towards the darkness at the other side of the prison bars to find a shadow standing there.

  “Shhh,” the shadow said, bringing a finger to its lips. It was like a ghost, and he couldn’t see her face, but Ezra could tell she was a girl. “Come here.”

  Ezra looked over at the others. Jena and Erin shared the bed, and slept peacefully over the covers; Akiva and Garros had taken the floor. None of them were awoken by the ghost.

  “Who are you?” he said, coming closer to her. “Can you let us out?”

  A painful moan echoed through the cavernous hallway, coming from another cell. It scared Ezra, chilled his bones like it was foreshadowing his own destiny. It sounded like a man being
tortured, but he couldn’t see, and that’s what made it worse.

  “Don’t talk too loudly,” she said; he liked the purr of her voice—it was comforting enough to make him forget about the cold sweat on the sides of his face.

  She finally came close enough to one of the torches at the sides of the cell, and her face was revealed: it was pretty, with eyes a wonderful hue between blue and purple, with long and wild auburn hair. There was something recognizable about her, a face he recognized from long ago, like a childhood friend.

  But then, he remembered more clearly: this was the girl he saw in Kerek during the fight—the one he was trying hard to protect.

  “I’m not here to let you out—I can’t,” she said. “I just came to thank you. I know you saw me back in the city, and that you were making sure I wasn’t hurt.”

  He was too surprised to reply, had too many questions. He looked back; the others were still asleep. Akiva was snoring. “How the hell did you make it all the way here? You walked from Kerek?”

  She chuckled. “Not everyone needs a Creux to survive.” There was confidence—perhaps cockiness—in her voice.

  “You know about the Creux?” he asked; she was even pronouncing the word right. “What do you know?”

  “I know a lot of things,” she replied. “But, again, I just came here to thank you. You’re a good person. And don’t worry, I don’t think they will harm you. I can tell you’re afraid.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said. “I’m Ezra. I’m from Roue, a city in—”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She smiled, flashing white teeth. Even the harsh light of the open fire of the torch made her look beautiful. “I’m Elena,” she said.

  Ezra frowned, recognizing the name from one of the biggest questions that weren’t answered in Zenith. “I’m sorry. Did you say Helena?”

  “Elena,” she repeated. Suddenly another howl coming from the depths of the cave joined the first. Then another. She looked to her left, afraid, as though something was coming for her from the darkness. “Ezra, I can’t stay here. In fact, if they see me, they’ll hurt me. I have to go, but don’t worry: you’ll see me again.”