The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2)

by Diego Valenzuela

  “Yes,” said Vivian.

  “I’m so sorry, Lance,” she said, and pressed another button on the console.

  There was a bright flash of light inside the tunnel; it turned the entire screen white for a moment. When the image returned, Vivian could see the monster burning.

  “No!” Vivian yelled. The monster, now a giant ball of fire, was writhing on the floor of the tunnel, crashing against its walls in a desperate attempt to escape the pain. Its tortured squeals made their way all the way back to them, amplified by the tunnel.

  Then finally, the creature was still, flames still burning what was left of its carcass.

  “Why did you do that!”

  “I won’t let Lys have Dr. Mustang,” said the director, wiping her tears. “He didn’t deserve any of this, but it’s what he would have wanted. No, don’t you look at me that way—would you want to live like that, if it had happened to you? His suffering is over.”

  Vivian looked away from the director and stepped out of the observation deck; though she understood the choice, it still made her sick, and the revolting stink of the monster’s burnt flesh was beginning to fill the room, making matters worse.

  “How did you get here?” asked Vivian.

  “The train. Ronald asked me to meet him here. He wanted to talk to me privately. I realize I took a risk coming here alone but . . .” She looked down at the pit, at the remains of Heath. She cringed. “So did he.”

  Felix finally reached the catwalk, climbing up series of thick pins that had appeared on the wall of the pit—a hidden ladder

  “Dammit, Mason. Damn you,” he whispered to himself after seeing Tessa’s limp body sprawled on the floor next to the door leading back to the compatibility labs. “What happened to us? Everything seemed to be going right. When did it all go to hell?”

  “Nothing was ever going right,” said Tara, wiping her hands on her pants, as though trying to clean them of Tessa’s blood. “We just thought it was, because we were too stupid, too blind, to see how badly everything was going. This has to end—I won’t be able to do this much longer.”

  “She was not okay, Director,” said Vivian.

  “She deserved better than what happened to her, than all of this. That monster used her—brainwashed her with lies. She’s not one of the children.”

  Vivian looked down at Tessa, who had believed herself immortal. Who, if not her, were the real incarnations of the three original infected?

  “What do we do now?” asked Felix after a short silence.

  “Did you hear what Heath said, Vivian? He said it was his plan, and Mizrahi’s,” said Tara. Vivian had not heard Heath speak those words, and they terrified her. “I’m going to go back to the city and confront Eliza Mizrahi. I need to know what they were trying to do, and what’s her involvement in it. I might save her yet, but you need to go look for my son, for the others. I think I know exactly where they are, and you need to get there as soon as possible.”

  They left the room, never to return.

  Three lives had been lost in less than five minutes.

  It was a thought that would haunt Vivian for the rest of her life: she had never felt death as close as she had that day, and would never again. At least not until the day of her own death.

  ф

  The oasis was just as they had left it: lush, large, and full of life.

  A part of him had feared that a few remaining Laani would have conquered it now that its original guardian had left it. Ezra was glad to see Lazarus’ cradle was still clean.

  If anything, he was catching the presence of even more life—namely birds, who nested on the trees and flew about the area. It was a simple but refreshing sight.

  Yes, this would be an appropriate settlement: the beginning of a new world.

  Ezra looked around for any signs of the Laani, but there was nothing, In fact, there had been no traces of Laani activity, no signs of their presence at all, for a long time. If there were still Laani on the planet, they were not near this oasis.

  He dragged the carts to the grassy area, and even before he brought Nandi down to one knee and prepared to desynchronize, the people of Clairvert began to pour out of the carts, eager to touch this clean patch of land.

  We’re home, he thought, and waited for the Minotaur to agree.

  His agreement didn’t come; Nandi was silent.

  As he usually did, Ezra climbed down Nandi’s shin and fell onto the grassy floor of the island. This had been the exact spot where Erin, Garros, Jena, and himself had found a place to rest. Where he had fought Garros. Where they discovered the Creux’s effect on them.

  He was finally away from those powerful sources of energy that were driving everyone in Clairvert mad, and could almost feel its absence, no longer clawing at the back of his head.

  “What is this place?” said a man approaching Ezra.

  “Home, I hope,” he replied, seeing Jena emerge from Jade Arjuna’s apse.

  “Why is it like this?” he asked. The man could barely believe what he was seeing—it was as though, like Ezra, the people of Clairvert had begun to second-guess everything, always wondering if the Asili’s power had taken ahold of their minds.

  “It’s hard to explain,” said Ezra.

  “No it’s not,” Jena argued. “There was a Creux at the heart of this place; the energy that fuels it drove the sickness back, and allowed the world to grow green again. This isn’t the only one like this—there are hundreds like this. This is what we were trying to tell you back in the city: you didn’t have to live there.”

  “Are we safe here?” the man asked, and they were joined by several others.

  Ezra let Jena make all the introductions and explanations—he didn’t have the energy or will to do it. Instead, he went to look for Elena, as he was eager to show her around, to welcome her back into civilization so she would not be alone again.

  Not ever.

  He pushed his way through the river of people who were gathering around Jena. There were more than he remembered seeing at the gates of Clairvert, and some were still emerging from the carts. Many of them asked the same questions over and over again, and he was forced to redirect them all to Jena. He had more important things to do.

  Finally he reached the second cart, and looked in. It was empty.

  Ezra looked back, feeling a twinge of fear in the pit of his stomach.

  No, he thought. She has to be here.

  She was liable to disappear, he knew, but she wouldn’t leave her one chance at freedom—their one chance to be together, and without the fear of exile, imprisonment, or execution.

  Carrying the improvised stretcher where they brought Farren’s body, he saw Loire. Ezra walked to him. “Sir—Loire. Hello.”

  “You were not lying,” he said. “I’m so sorry I doubted you. This place is beautiful. I didn’t believe something like this existed, but it does. Are you going back for the others? There are still a lot of people in Clairvert.”

  “My friends are bringing them. They’ll be here soon,” he said. “Listen, Loire—the girl I told you about. Elen—I mean, Lara. How is she? Did you see where she went?”

  “Sorry, she was not in the cart when I got there,” he said, setting Farren’s body down and dismissing the man who was helping him carry it. “I boarded first, but she wasn’t there, so she was probably in the other one.”

  Ezra’s heart began to beat faster, like a drum he could feel even in his throat. “No, I left here there, sitting down, ready to go. She had to be there.”

  “Kid, I don’t know what to tell you—”

  “Her name was Elena.”

  “I thought her name was Lara.”

  “I lied. It was Elena. Malachi’s sister. The one Farren was going to marry. You have to know her.”

  Loire frowned, looked down at Farren’s covered body. “Listen, kid, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you need to step down. Ask around, there aren’t that many of us. It was all very frantic—you might
have gotten a bit confused. Are you all right?”

  Ezra began to hyperventilate. Where was she? Had she abandoned him again? He looked around, started pushing people around. He yelled her name and people began to notice his panic. Jena noticed his panic.

  Then, when he felt like he would pass out, his fear disappeared: Elena was standing at the edge of the oasis, staring directly at him. She looked well, with a smile on her face.

  Ezra pushed through the people to reach her.

  But when he emerged, she was farther away. She had walked into the wasteland, beckoning Ezra to follow. He could see the peak of Clairvert far away in the horizon behind her.

  “Elena, wait!” he yelled out. “Don’t leave this place—it’s not safe!”

  “No,” she said.

  He heard her voice behind him, even though she was far away.

  He turned around. Jena was looking at him. “Ezra? Are you all right? Where are you going?”

  “Elena, come back!” Ezra yelled and began to run towards her.

  You fell for her lie.

  “Ezra, where are you going?” Jena yelled.

  Suddenly Elena was standing still in the middle of the wasteland, her naked feet on the cracked floor of the desert. He noticed all the bruises from her arms were gone.

  Elena. Elena? What are you?

  He reached out to touch her.

  But there was nothing to touch.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I am you.

  Where he had seen Elena, he now only saw the serrated horizon, and the tall mountain, the heart of evil, whence this madness was born. Ezra screamed.

  A Minor Fugue

  Exposition: The Hall

  You heard what you wanted to hear, saw what you wanted to see. This was all about you.

  Her voice.

  I told you: they can’t see me.

  You were warned, said the Minotaur.

  Ezra looked up. Had he been sitting on this ancient stone floor? He looked up. Where was he? He looked up. His own eyes stared back at him. He looked up. From behind the bull-man who wore his eyes like bright jewels, the cosmos stared down at him. The labyrinth was open.

  You were warned, growled the beast.

  “It’s not fair.”

  The writing had changed beneath his feet. The carved stone dais which had once shown images and words, beginnings and ends, births and rebirths, was now blank except for one groove: a Y, its two diverging strands reaching out to opposite ends, one falling off into the uncharted darkness, and one leading towards the one shaft of light that fell from the open ceiling, a drip of the blood of the universe outside.

  Everything you need to know has been written on the stone. Everything you need to know is before you. You can go back and look if you want the answers you seek.

  “I don’t want answers,” he said. “I want to get out.”

  There’s no way out, replied the Minotaur. There’s only the way through, and this is not just the point of convergence, but also the moment of divergence. You’re not through yet.

  “It’s not fair,” he said, and the bull man turned away.

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

  “How much longer until I can leave? Please let me go.”

  This is not a cage. You and I are one, said the Minotaur. Wherever you go, I will be there with you. Wherever I go, you’ll be there with me. You are a part of me, and I am a part of you. Through time and through space, we are one.

  The beast bellowed a lonely cry when Ezra turned away and took his first weak steps on the floor outside the dais. There was nothing written for him there, and he could no longer trust the monster.

  Sometimes there’s only the way in.

  So that would have to be his way out.

  Development: The Hallways

  The sound of crush had been deafening, and it was the only thing he could hear. Garros lifted the crystal boulders with inhuman strength and threw them aside to open way. The sound of crashing stone reverberated across the entire structure. If he was not alone, as he suspected, someone would have heard it.

  Walking and walking, there where whispers of beings unseen.

  “I’m not ready for this,” he said when the shadow of a woman materialized next to his own, but its owner was not there standing with him. Her shadow-thing, her ghost, stretched her arm across the stone floor and reached for either wall, growing longer and longer.

  Then, on the walls for which she had reached, there appeared two other shadows, the shadows of two men.

  Brother. Sister. Brother.

  We were taken from the world by the Traveler.

  They vanished, but their message didn’t. He knew their ghosts were haunting the darkness and he had to seek them out if they were to speak their truth.

  Find me in the cage of lights.

  Recapitulation: The Way Out

  At the end of the long and dark hallway, there was light.

  It felt as though she had wandered through this cold and empty space for eons, always finding a new path but never the way out as though it was being created as she roamed.

  It had taken time for her to understand, but the markings were the way: she had but to look closely.

  “Where are my brothers?” she asked the darkness.

  You’ve met us both, hissed a phantom.

  And we’ll be one again, sister, said another, and its voice rang true and familiar; it was the voice of a friend, a brother, a fellow child of the Traveler.

  She looked over to the light. It was not a sun, but something else: something brighter that had always been a part of her. And there, standing at the threshold to the outside, were two shadows blocking the way.

  A fight was coming and an army was needed; she could not do it herself.

  We have a part to play still, but it’s soon to end.

  Chapter 18

  No Goodbyes

  It was a good day.

  Or at least, a good start. Any day when the sunrise could be seen at all would be good; one when it could be seen so spectacularly was one full of promise. One full of life.

  Five mornings Garros had witnessed from the highest point of the city, the watchman’s post, the greatest vantage point of the wasteland and the wreckage of the world. Garros had been standing there for hours, hands on the ledge, eyes constantly on the horizon in a trance.

  In those five days of looking over nothing, this was the first time he had seen any color at all. The clouds were good to him.

  This had been the spot Solis had claimed as his for years: the lonely eye of Clairvert, who always had to be there but rarely for any good reason. It was a depressing thought, but his had been a depressing life.

  To first lose his daughter Annie to madness, and then his son Malachi to a monster like Lazarus. Even as someone who was terrified by the idea of losing a loved one, Solis’ pain was unfathomable to him; his addiction was no mystery. It still smelled of the man’s strange fruity alcoholic beverage. Garros had found two empty bottles under a chair.

  Farren had told him, just days before, that Solis had threatened to jump down the ledge after witnessing his son’s grisly death under the burning power of Lazarus. It was a hundred-and-twenty-foot drop, at least, and it would have still been a better death than what he got: a day of torment and withdrawal in the Caduceus, and then being slaughtered—or worse, infected—by the Laani.

  It had been quite a fight, the one that ended Clairvert’s time as a haven for humanity.

  He was glad his last fight had been a good one.

  The overwhelming fear had sent him to overdrive, turned him into an animal with the powerful instinct to protect. He had seen death inside the hall of Clairvert, the death of man and monster, but in the end he was glad of what they had accomplished as a team: they managed to save many lives. It had been five days with no sign of Blanchard or Crescent; he knew they had made it to their new home.

  A good day.

  Garros stretched both his a
rms over his head and felt his shoulders pop. He hadn’t quite recovered from the pain he felt when Quantum Ares had lost both of its arms. The powerful connection they shared had almost convinced his brain that Ares’ body was his own; the tearing of the Creux’s mechanical muscles, bones, and ligaments transmitted real pain to him.

  But that pain was nothing compared to what he felt when he had finally gathered his thoughts and severed his synchronization with Ares for the last time.

  I will meet you again in the flow, Ares had said in its husky voice. I will be all right.

  And then the creature was silent. The monster who had lived within Garros for so many years, who had transformed his mind and body through their symbiotic bond, who had protected him and helped him protect others, was gone. Garros would never hear his voice again.

  Not his, and not Erin’s.

  Even Lazarus heard his scream when Garros stepped out of the dead Creux’s Apse to see the result of his own weakness: Phoenix Atlas lay on the floor by Ares’ feet—only its head remained intact; the rest of it lost beneath the crush.

  Somewhere in the wreckage were the mangled remains of his wife.

  Too long he had spent terrified by the prospect of losing her, haunted by nightmares and dark daydreams of seeing it happen again and again.

  Everything had become blurry when he saw the remains of Phoenix Atlas. He fell back and slammed the back of his head on Ares’ chest, wishing Lazarus would see him and obliterate him.

  He had lost the one thing he truly cared to shield, and the one resolution keeping him alive; the world could be protected by someone else once he was gone.

  Yet Lazarus had not seen him; the beast was too preoccupied with its attempts to fight Milos Ravana. There was something different in the way the creature fought Milos Ravana, as though its efforts were not to end its enemy’s life but to merely force it to submission, to pin it down. It never used its technomantic power, and Milos’ had no effect on it. Akiva had not been trained to fight other Creuxen; all his techniques were inefficient.