Erin and Garros were all smiles, a thin silver ring on their fingers, as they ate their breakfast and commented on the party.
“I’m glad you had fun,” said Jena. “I had never been in a party that big.”
“Neither had I,” said Erin and squeezed Garros’ hand.
“I had,” Garros said. “How’d you sleep, Blanchard?”
“Fine, thank you. I could barely talk to you last night, Erin, so congratulations. I’m really happy for you. I bet these people really appreciated the celebration.”
As Ezra helped himself to some eggs he wasn’t sure his stomach would appreciate, the clanking sound of armor made him turn. Malachi and Farren stood by the entrance to the kitchen.
“Congratulations to the newlyweds,” said Farren, looking formidable in clean armor. Ezra caught a hint of melancholy when he spoke of the wedding, and once again thought of Elena. “I trust you got enough sleep. Mr. Heath is waiting for you in the chapel.”
“Got it,” said Erin and wiped her mouth. “Let’s go then. Blanchard, either pack that in quickly or eat after the meeting. We need to get moving.”
Ezra had chosen to eat the eggs as quickly as he could, and it almost made him choke. When he followed Erin, Garros, and Jena out of Malachi’s home and were escorted back to the chapel, he regretted his decision. He didn’t drink too much at the wedding, but what little he had was potent, and his stomach still resented it.
The city was mostly empty, and he imagined the wedding had something to do with that, but the few people they walked past greeted Garros and Erin with big smiles and hopeful wishes. It filled his heart to hear people say that they were “sure their marriage would last many decades, if the world allowed it.”
Still escorted by Malachi and Farren, the group walked into the strange and anachronistic tunnel that would take them to the chapel. Once inside the massive and dark hall, the guards stayed behind to give them privacy.
They found William in the middle of a conversation with Akiva, and it stopped the moment they noticed their company. “Good morning. How are you two feeling? Happy?”
“Very much,” said Garros. “Thank you again for the ceremony.”
“And the party,” Erin added.
“It’s a pleasure—as I said, and part of our agreement. Just so we don’t waste any more time, we should go in. I should warn you, however, that what you see in there will frighten you.”
“I understand, you said so,” said Erin.
“Not to us,” Jena argued. “What exactly is in there?”
“The closest we can get to the Asili. And what Dr. Mizrahi recognized as Lys itself,” William said. “Or the closest thing to Lys that currently exists. Before you ask: No, she can’t be destroyed, or torn down. She can’t hurt you, and you can’t hurt her. Not yet.”
She?
Ezra’s smile had disappeared minutes earlier, and now his expression was one of fear. He had known that what they would meet that day would be their enemy, but suddenly the prospect became less abstract, more real, and far more dangerous.
“We’re ready, sir. Please take us,” Erin said, confident, and unafraid.
Behind the tall, beautiful drapes at the dark end of the chapel, there was a door. Behind that door, to which only William possessed a key, there was a long, dark tunnel that had to be lit with a torch. They walked for what felt like miles, first upwards, then downwards, took a few turns, and eventually the tunnel opened up to another large chamber.
Everything was blue and green, illuminated by light that flooded from a hole on the ground several yards away from the entrance. There was a waist-high railing around the pit’s perimeter.
Inside the pit, liquid light.
It was the Asili: the heart of the mountain, the source of the Creux energy, and of humanity’s doom.
“What . . . is that?” Jena asked, and Ezra turned around.
“Oh my god,” Erin said and covered her mouth, looking up, behind him.
What they were looking at was too big to even notice at first. Behind the pit there was a gap on the floor, a crevice of broken stone leading down to a deadly fall. And behind that gap, almost fixed onto the wall, there was a body.
It was a male body, like a gigantic statue, and as such, it seemed to be made of stone—it was cold, and unmoving, skin cracked. The statue was of a man caught in the moment of death. Its legs, which stretched down the massive crevice, were crossed one before the other. Its arms made an X before his chest at eye level. Its face was covered by a large tarp, as if it was too grotesque to display.
“Who are you?” a voice came and it boomed across the hall.
It wasn’t the loud volume, or the surprise of its words, that made Ezra’s heart stop for a split second. It was the fact that the voice was familiar, and impossible.
When he saw Erin fall to her knees, hands still on her mouth, he saw the reactions of everyone else in the room matching hers. Garros’ mouth was wide open when he wasn’t whispering profanities. Jena turned away and hid her face in Garros’ shoulder.
“Who are you?” the voice repeated, angry this time, and it was then that Ezra finally saw that it wasn’t the enormous stone man talking, but someone else—someone who was of their size, and only a few feet away, held between the giant’s hands and its chest.
It was a woman. She was naked. Tendrils of stone, like wires and cables, connected her flesh to the giant’s.
Ezra vomited when he recognized Alice Nolan the stone giant’s embrace.
Chapter 13
Heart of Evil
The door Tara took was itself as much of a secret as that which lay behind it; Vivian had to go through the master bedroom to find it. What she found was a new hallway, completely hidden behind shelves of books and framed pictures of the Blanchard family which shed a little more light on Ezra’s life before Zenith.
“Where’s your husband, ma’am?” asked Vivian when Tara opened the door, realizing she hadn’t seen the man in days.
“Helping with some other matters; don’t worry about Patrich,” she replied. “Come on in.”
They had to climb a narrow flight of stairs to reach the study, and she could hear voices pouring downward. Whatever meeting was going on in there, she was one of the last to be invited. Among those who made it there before her, Vivian found Felix Goodwin crossing angry words with Jed—though really it was only the tall pilot of Iron Seraphim who actually seemed angry. She couldn’t hear the details of their fight, but it had something to do with the plan in question.
Also there were Lara Blanchard, holding Jed’s hand, Dr. Mustang, General Adams, and Tessa. She didn’t like seeing Tessa in there, and Vivian was still not sure why.
“Are we ready then?” asked Felix, eyes on Vivian.
“Is there anyone else, Mother?” asked Lara, grabbing Jed’s hand.
“No, not since—well, not for now.”
“Since Rebecca died, you can say it, ma’am,” said Felix, and Vivian could immediately feel Tessa’s eyes on her.
“Vivian is the last one, at least at this point of the plan,” said Tara. “Jed, you’re going to be leading this mission, so please do the honors of telling us all about it.”
“Yes, ma’am. Hey, Viv—good to see you here,” said Jed, smiling with the healthy side of his face. “Like you knew from the start, Zenith is not dead. We might have been shut down by Heath, torn away from it by law, but it’s very well not goddamn dead as long as we and our Creuxen are still alive and willing to protect them. For those of you who are a little behind, yesterday we received a message from Dr. Mizrahi in Zenith, so it’s about time we get the show moving.”
“Dr. Mizrahi is still there?”
“Yes, she never left. Heath asked for her to stay behind to work on repurposing Zenith as an extension of Roue, some luxury complex, or something, and not a military cell. She’s been under constant surveillance by Heath’s men, but she’s making sure the Creuxen are still operational; for some reason Heath hasn’t trie
d to destroy them yet,” explained Jed. “We have reasons to believe that Mizrahi came in contact with the others—with Erin’s party. I think they’re all right.”
“To focus on the plan ahead: the soldiers guarding Zenith stay in there for a week and then rotate,” General Adams added. “In less than six hours, there will be a rotation in the military personnel protecting the facility, and ten of my men are going in. They’re on our side, and Heath has no idea. They’ll let you in through an entrance below the train tracks. Getting them all lined up for this rotation was some great trouble, so we might not have another chance to go in unnoticed for weeks.”
“That’s right, but we only need a few minutes to go in, get in the Creux, and get out of here,” said Jed, looking down at Lara, who seemed sad and afraid. “We’re all joining the Kerek party. There have been no Flecks seen around here in weeks, and that can only mean one thing: they’re not here anymore, they’re all back there, joining the source.”
“Lys,” whispered Vivian, and Tessa nodded. “What happens to the rest of you? Once the pilots leave?”
“We’ll do what we can from here, but I’m afraid the real battle is out there, Vivian,” Tara said. “The only thing that matters is that you either stop Lys from coming back, or help find the missing pieces of Milos Ravana to fight if he does.”
“What have you heard of the others?”
Tara shook her head. Her daughter was clenching her jaw, ready to cry. Though she had yet to express it, maybe she did care about her little brother.
“We have to do this now, because the only way to get there will be through the train tracks, and by foot. We’ll leave in two teams: first, Felix and Tessa. Half an hour later, myself, Vivian, and Dr. Mustang. When we leave, Dr. Mustang will erase all data of us ever being there and make his way back to Roue alone.”
Dr. Mustang nodded, but he couldn’t hide the fear that was obvious in his face.
“Why can’t Mizrahi do that herself?”
“Because Mizrahi won’t be there; she’ll be here in the city, playing her own game with me during one of Heath’s conferences. She’ll convince the rest of the people who need convincing that Zenith is gone for good. The less scrutiny the facility gets for now, the better, even if it won’t matter after today,” Tara explained. “The first team will be leaving in forty-five minutes. Any questions?”
ф
“Why have you come here?” Alice said, her voice not quite hers, booming in the hall of the Asili like a doom preacher’s sermon, and chilling him to the marrow.
“What is this?” Garros roared, looking straight at William. “How are you doing this?”
William seemed confused, but it was hard for someone in Ezra’s state to truly appreciate anything that was happening. He was dazed, cross-eyed, and trying hard to understand if what he was seeing was actually real, and not just a drunken dream.
“You were warned about this place,” said William, taking a step back from Garros, as if looking at a dangerous animal. “Don’t take another step.”
“What did you do with Alice, you son of a bitch?” Erin growled.
“Alice?” replied the man. “Do you recognize her?”
When Ezra summoned the strength to look at Alice again, Garros was already reaching out to tear her down, his feet dangerously close to the deadly fall, entirely unafraid of both the dark crevice and the stone giant.
“Garros, stop!” yelled Erin.
Garros ignored his wife, and one long arm reached for Alice’s right leg. He pulled at it, hoping to bring her down from the painful-looking prison of Lys’ grip.
The tendrils connecting the limb to the giant snapped off with electrical sounds. Garros fell to his knees with a horrified bark as he drew his arm back and with it brought most of Alice’s leg. She didn’t cry out in pain—in fact, she didn’t even seem to notice anything that was happening before her.
Had Ezra not vomited already, he would’ve done it at the sight of Garros holding Alice’s leg. He dropped it as though it were poisonous, and the disembodied appendage crumbled into a fine gray sand.
There was no blood, no smell—nothing. It was not human, and that concept didn’t make it any easier to watch.
Garros was still on his knees, unblinking. Ezra had never seen him look so horrified. And he couldn’t be blamed.
“She was our friend,” Erin whispered. “She died months ago, what . . . why is she here?”
“She’s not,” replied Alice in that voice that sounded like the dissonant harmony of two or three people speaking at once. It made him shiver. “I found her in the flow, and she’s mine to wield.”
“My word,” Jena whispered.
Were they truly talking to Lys—the alien being behind the Fall of Terria, behind humanity’s extinction?
Was it using Alice as a puppet?
“That’s not your friend,” said Heath. “She wasn’t always there—not long ago, it was someone else giving it its voice. An entirely different woman. Smaller, and blonde. What it says, it doesn’t always make sense, but this is who you’re looking for.”
“Lys?” said Akiva. “This is Lys?”
“Brother. Sister,” it purred. “Is it time to be joined again?”
They all looked at each other. The words were nonsensical, but any meaning they attempted to give them felt powerful and evil.
“Where are the missing pieces of Milos Ravana?” Erin had the nerve to ask, approaching Alice and the giant who held her. “Where are they? What are they?”
To this Lys didn’t reply.
Looking at Alice’s legless, pale, reanimated corpse looking so different from his warm leader and friend proved too much for him. Even if he could believe that it wasn’t truly Alice, but Lys’ cruel trick, his brain was not entirely convinced, and it played tricks on him. He turned away, shaking his head, and joined Jena and Akiva near the pit—that strange pool of energy at the heart of the chamber.
The Asili.
He heard the sound of a tremor, like monsters banging at the door.
“We—we can’t do this,” he said, barely able to give wind to words, and Jena grabbed him by the shoulder in a comforting gesture that would be effective if not for the crawling sensation in his skin. Ezra hadn’t noticed how often he grabbed his own hair until it was all gone. “This is becoming too much. What are we even doing?”
“What we were sent to do,” Akiva said, looking directly at Alice, who remained silent at Erin’s insistent questions. “Look, look at it—it won’t tell us how to fight him. It knows we can beat it if we figure it out. Ezra? Don’t be too afraid of it—we’re not unarmed, and we’re not alone.”
Ezra took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, he quivered.
William approached them, drawn by the conversation.
“What is this?” asked Jena, hand on the railing circling the pit. “Is this the Asili itself—what’s causing all those problems with the people outside?”
“This is the Asili. The energy in there came with the creature, gives it power,” William said. “It’s been here for hundreds of years, but I don’t think it feels the passage of time—time doesn’t exist in there. It created this mountain, the tunnels and chambers. It powers your Creuxen. It keeps the creature alive.”
“We need to destroy it,” said Jena, looking down at the Asili over the railing.
“This isn’t earthly power, soldier. It’s not something we can understand or measure. Let alone destroy.”
“Someone could,” Akiva argued. “Whoever built the Creux harnessed it and created the cores, created technomancy. The cores are connected to this source, so someone out there knows what it is and how to use it against the Laani.”
“What’s down there, beyond the light?”
“There’s no way to know,” William replied. “All we know is that it’s deadly. More than one has met their death in this light. It’s a fall, but its touch burns.”
I know that burn, he thought, and rubbed his bald head.
When Erin joined them by the Asili, she was pale, scared, and most of all, frustrated. Ezra still couldn’t look back at Lys to see Alice in its grasp, and she had challenged the creature openly.
“I won’t let it do this. Not to Alice,” she said, speaking through a tight throat, and looked back at Lys, who had remained silent since she spoke Milos Ravana’s name. The shifting blue light of the Asili made Erin’s features stand out fiercely. She looked down at it, immediately drawn to its light.
The monsters banged at the walls, and the city trembled.
“Jena, your plan just became our plan. We’ll get everyone out of here, because even if I have to bring down the whole mountain, I’m bringing this thing down.”
ф
It was cold and dark inside the tunnels leading to Zenith. The world around Vivian had become a tapestry of plots, and with every new turn she discovered a new layer to the design. Her nearest discovery was the large network of tunnels buried beneath Roue. As explained by Tara herself, and supported by Dr. Mustang, the tunnels began with the excavation of the Creux leaving large gaps of earth beneath the city. Eventually, these were connected to each other and repurposed to create production facilities and houses for the provisions these created.
The Blanchard home, as it appeared, was built above the excavation site of a retired Creux called Nisi Nirvana, which once belonged to the CDSL before Alice, who, like her successor, was assimilated into her Creux. Through an entrance in her basement, Tara had access to the network, and one particularly complicated route through the labyrinth dropped them inside the underground tunnel that housed the train tracks leading to Zenith.
And to think Ezra Blanchard grew up in that house, never knowing everything that was happening below and around him. It couldn’t have been easy for his mother.
“Can you imagine what would happen if Tunnelers tore through here?” Jed said as a joke, but neither she nor Dr. Mustang laughed.
“The tunnel’s protected rather well,” said Mustang. “They couldn’t even if they knew it was here.”
The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) Page 19
