Divinity Circuit (Senyaza Series Book 5)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  Everything went still and empty for a heartbeat. Branwyn was thrust back into the darkness and noise of the ballroom lobby, where people raised their voices as if that could make up for the lack of light. But then her eyes adjusted and to the light from the windows.

  “I think there’s time now,” muttered Branwyn. “Even for the database. The power went too.”

  “What’s going on, Branwyn?” asked Mr. Black sharply. He was standing right beside her, and she wondered how long he’d been there.

  “Nakotus got infected. It was spreading to Titanone. I need to go in and…” she passed her hand over her face. “Where’s Skadi?”

  “Skadi!” Mr. Black roared, in a voice loud enough to silence the babble and shock the tiredness away from Branwyn. “She will be here shortly,” he continued, and his words were calm but hurried. “You must bring Titan One back online immediately. There are things…”

  “You called?” said Skadi, appearing behind him. Her blond hair glowed in the city light from the window. She wore a dark blue dress, and one of her legs shimmered white with a colored inlay.

  Branwyn stretched her fingers and winced as the tiny abrasions on one of them burned. “I need to cure a virus, Skadi. Tell me how. Quickly.”

  Skadi hesitated, glancing at Mr. Black, who nodded impatiently. Slowly she said, “I’ve never managed to teach another how to do it in the practical but the theory is—”

  “Quickly,” repeated Mr. Black.

  “Still the virus,” said Skadi. Branwyn shook her head in incomprehension and Skadi added, “Bring it to stillness. The creature cannot abide stillness. You must gather it to you and then still it, lull it, freeze it: whatever you can do. Once it is still, it cracks apart, and the fragments are easy for all but the weakest immune system to destroy.”

  “I’m not sure Titanone has an immune system,” muttered Branwyn. So many mistakes, so little time to analyze them.

  “You will have to suffice,” said Mr. Black. There was a crack from the wall with the window, and the building trembled. “Skadi, stay with her. Advise her if she needs it. Protect her when the time comes.”

  “What was that?” asked Branwyn.

  “Hadraniel, I imagine,” said Skadi, calmly.

  “Oh. Wasn’t Hadraniel absolutely totally not going to be dumb enough to come because you all could kick his ass?”

  “It would be very helpful if you would repair Titanone,” said Skadi, with a friendly smile.

  “Working on that.” Branwyn plunged her consciousness back into the spiritual framework of Titanone. It was like stepping into a sealed room: completely dark except for the thin strands of ambient Geometry. But when she concentrated she could see the core nodes of her creation. Nothing ought to be that dark and hard to see; even ordinary objects were connected to the rest of the world by various strands.

  She lifted the pressure she’d been maintaining on the connection node and the network flickered back into a natural life: what she could see in any building in the city, save for the big nodes. The red limned a handful of lines, creeping along them.

  The floor trembled again and Branwyn felt a groaning vibration through the pillar she leaned against. Two of the lines snapped out of existence and a new one shimmered to life. Then golden light flared around one of the nodes. Hadraniel was trying to place its magic inside Titanone, as it might bless or curse a mortal.

  The nodes were already occupied by Geometric charms placed by Branwyn and Mr. Black: protective wards all. And usually that was enough to protect an entity from invasive magic. But Branwyn had seen a Queen of Faerie strip protective charms in a few heartbeats. She concentrated on the node under attack, reinforcing it, tracing a web of strength to swallow the golden light uselessly.

  It would have been easier if she’d had her hammer. This was why she wanted to bring her hammer. But Penny was right; the Senyaza Repository was right there, and if she had a moment it might be worth running down there for the expanded options that would unlock. Then she’d really be able to fight back, against both the virus and whatever Hadraniel was trying to do.

  Three more Geometric strands snapped out of existence and five appeared replacing it, growing in brightness.

  “Get back!” shouted Mr. Black. “Away from the door!”

  Branwyn opened her eyes. The five new strands overlaid the entrance to the ballroom lobby, partially blocked by Mr. Black. An incandescent figure floated just beyond them, an array of celestial wheels painted on the air behind it. At first it seemed to be moving backward but then Branwyn realized that the entrance to the lobby was shrinking. The doors bent, bulged and then shattered. No longer restrained by the frame, the walls sealed over. Glass shattered and the light from the windows vanished as there too the walls merged into smoothness, hiding Hadraniel on the other side. Now they were caged, while the angel had access to the rest of the building.

  The room was now lit entirely by small flashlights and various magical effects. Mr. Black turned around, blood a gleam on his face. “Tend the wounded,” he commanded the crowd. “Suppress any attacks. They will be coming. Reinforce the walls, if that is where your talents lie.”

  “How is it doing that?” demanded Branwyn, outraged. “I kept the bastard out of Titanone’s nodes.”

  “They have resources beyond Geometric magic, child,” said Skadi, leaning against the other side of the pillar as if she wasn’t very worried. “Especially that one, with what you made.”

  Branwyn gave Skadi a baleful glare, but restrained herself to only saying, “I don’t care. I can get the wall open again.”

  Mr. Black joined them, saying sharply, “No! You will restore Titanone, and then you will guide him in stopping Hadraniel from making its way to floor B13. That is your only priority.” He wiped some blood from his face with two fingers.

  Branwyn’s natural inclination was to argue, but something in Mr. Black’s glinting dark eyes made her hesitate. “Fine,” she muttered, and dove back into the sleeping skyscraper’s Geometric network.

  The virus had oozed along some since she looked away. It wasn’t fast, but it was moving and it was going to get somewhere dangerous eventually.

  Skadi had told her to stop the virus, literally: to freeze it or otherwise make it impossible for it to move. But she wasn’t Ice with his temperature powers. She had to use the building itself, and the strands of Geometry that contained it.

  She mentally twanged the bright lines that reflected what Hadraniel had done in sealing the ballroom off. Two of the strands were developing branches. Shouting rose around her, and Mr. Black said, “Ignore the noise, Branwyn. Focus on waking Titanone.”

  Helplessly, Branwyn reinforced the two nodes that hadn’t been contaminated by the virus again. She should have gone to the Repository before. Not that there had been time. Everything had happened so fast, and how could any of them have predicted that the angel would have sealed them into the room?

  If she had to she could wake up Titanone still infected, but that might be worse. Maybe with her reinforcement Titanone could re-emerge from under the virus—but maybe not.

  The virus oozed along one of its carrier lines and frustrated, Branwyn leaned her entire psychic weight on it. She could snap it, she could snap all of the connections, isolate the contaminated node, but that would make the entire remaining structure unstable. That was no good either.

  The ballroom lobby stank of blood and she almost opened her eyes to find out why. But Skadi put her hand on Branwyn’s arm and said softly, “You are safe yet.”

  “I don’t know how to freeze it,” confessed Branwyn, keeping her eyes closed tightly so she didn’t lose her focus on the virus’s growth. “If I had a machine Fragment, I know what I could do but I don’t.”

  From Branwyn’s other side, Penny said, “You have me.”

  Branwyn’s breath caught in her throat. “I don’t want to use you like that. And even if it wasn’t wrong, it’s dangerous for you in so many ways.”

  Penny took Bran
wyn’s hand. “Taking me to meet some monsters wasn’t? Branwyn, do what you have to, but the walls are bleeding right now and I think that angel is trying to drown us, too.” She added. “And I feel like Titanone is family now. I’m family with a skyscraper.”

  Branwyn’s hand tightened on Penny’s involuntarily. “Bleeding? I don’t— All right.”

  Through the flesh-to-flesh contact, she felt the thrum of Penny’s prosthetic soul. When she called on it, it responded, moving partially out of Penny and into Branwyn. Branwyn’s breath hitched in her throat. She’d been this close to Penny when she wove the Machine soul into place originally. She’d never thought she’d be here again.

  The virus flashed red and green, and she was there, too. She didn’t want to bring Penny into proximity with the virus but in a way Penny and Titanone were siblings now and sometimes you volunteered for stupid things to save a sibling.

  Branwyn reached out to a network of lines and started collecting them together, pouring her will into them to make a new node. She hadn’t been able to do a fourth before, hadn’t been able to manage the complexity. She hadn’t had the motivation then, either, though.

  She concentrated on her feelings toward the virus: the way it slid insidiously along the network. How dangerous it was. She had to work fast, but she couldn’t afford to be sloppy. The effort required to do both of those at the same time was exhausting. But she couldn’t even falter, couldn’t take a breath. Her hands twitched and moved and she muttered under her breath, encouraging the network to become a node.

  Then the emergent node and the Machine met within the forge of her soul and a spark of awareness leapt from one to another. The fire defense system glowed slowly to life: a new node in the Titanone entity.

  Branwyn clenched her fists and then took the rest of her weight off the connection keeping Titanone asleep. “Go,” she whispered. “Defend yourself. Shut that bastard down.”

  The skyscraper woke up. All four nodes flickered asynchronously until two, then three of them caught the same pattern. The fourth one was the one contaminated by the virus. The new node flared white, sending that whiteness through the rest of the network. When the white touched the strands claimed by the red and green, the red and green stilled and the white crossed over it, surging into the infected node.

  Branwyn let out her breath and realized she was still holding onto Penny’s hand and also her soul. Hastily she turned her attention to her friend and pushed the Machine soul back through their connection. No, she told the soul. You did well but let’s never do this again.

  “Branwyn!” said Mr. Black sharply, anguish in his voice. “Please tell me—Control, begin emergency evacuations. Branwyn, this will hurt Titanone.”

  “No,” Branwyn snapped, watching the whiteness fade from the network, leaving tiny fragments of green and red that faded away. “Titanone is back, although cut off from Nakotus, so he won’t have the vocabulary he’s had recently.”

  “Why is the power still out?”

  “Keeping Nakotus down. The virus was inside it, old man.”

  Mr. Black swore. “Corbin did this. Bring up what you can, carefully.”

  Branwyn whispered to Titanone and Titanone said, All right… in a faint, unexpected voice. Here and there lights came up in the tower. Branwyn could now see and feel some of what was happening within Titanone. “Why are Corbin and Marley running down a stairwell? And what exactly does Hadraniel want with the elevators?” The angel was melting through an elevator from the shaft above and Titanone’s anxiety levels were rising.

  “Close off access to the basement levels. There are super-secure doors on B6 and B8, close them. Deploy the hyperdiamond barrier between floors B9 and B10.” He paused, listening to his headset. “Allow Marley and Corbin through the doors as they arrive. Do not let anybody else down.”

  “How are you feeling, Titanone?” Branwyn whispered. The fire defense system squirted something onto the fiery angel and the pod that did so was incinerated in response.

  Strange. Dying?

  “I hope not, kid. If you do, I think we’ll go out together.”

  Deploying hyperdiamond nanorod barrier. A shimmering veil slid between the floors, including the elevator shaft. While it was there, the bottom three floors were utterly isolated from the world above ground. Branwyn wondered if Senyaza had expected an angel to drill down like this, or if the barrier was there to stop something from coming up.

  Hard to see down there. Harder, now.

  Branwyn thought about ways she could fix that, then stopped because there wasn’t time. Instead she focused on Corbin and Marley, until she could sense them just as clearly as Titanone could, through her connection with the building. They were running down the stairs, three floors below and only two floors behind the burning angel. Neath was picking her way down after them, blinking ahead every few steps.

  Corbin said, “—Won’t destroy the building yet because it doesn’t want to destroy what it’s looking for. If we can catch it—”

  Marley asked, aghast, “Can it destroy the building?”

  “They have before,” said Corbin. “The Tower of Babel, to start with.”

  “And how are we supposed to stop it?” demanded Marley.

  “I had a plan,” Corbin said. “There are special cells at the bottom. It wasn’t a good plan for my own survival but it would have given me a chance to take Hadraniel out with me. Just like my family wanted.” He stopped running to listen, and Branwyn wished she could tell him that he was still behind the angel.

  “What’s in the basement?” she asked aloud.

  “Secrets,” said Mr. Black. “You haven’t discovered them via Titanone yet?”

  “He can’t see down there very well. I have no idea how you managed it.”

  “Oh? Ah, well. The bottommost levels were constructed separately and moved into place as—”

  No said Titanone faintly, instantly pulling Branwyn’s attention away from the non-answer. The burning angel reached the hyperdiamond barrier and stopped. It looked around, then plunged a hand through the wall and into the Geometry beyond, transcending the boundary between material space and spiritual space with horrifying ease.

  “Such an abomination,” Hadraniel whispered. “You were never meant to be conscious, abomination.” The angel’s hand moved among the network, touching strands, testing them. For a moment Branwyn couldn’t grasp how it was even possible. Then she stopped caring and simply threw herself at the hand.

  “Get out,” she growled. “‘Never meant’ my ass.” The hand seemed invulnerable to her assaults, but she did get the angel’s attention.

  “You,” it whispered and pulled away from her. Branwyn realized that it was wearing the divinity circuit—of course it was wearing the divinity circuit—and that it thought she could steal it once again. If only she could reach out through another wall and snatch it from its neck, totally destroying spatial geometry—but she had no idea how to even approach that.

  Still. Hadraniel apparently didn’t know that. “Yeah, me. You’d better get out of here before I take your toy away from you again.”

  “Better that I destroy you first,” whispered Hadraniel. “You, and this created sentience, and then I’ll take what I came for—” The hand representing the angel in the network opened and fire danced between the long marble fingers.

  Marley, help, Branwyn thought, but there was no way for Marley to hear her and they were probably too far apart for Marley’s protective magic to work anyhow.

  The floor trembled and Titanone said in a strange voice, No. If you destroy me, you destroy the structure and it all falls on your head, destroying what you seek.

  The hand clenched into a fist. Then, back in the material world, Marley and Corbin burst out of a stairwell and a flock of ravens burst out of Corbin’s shadow. The fire defense system once again took a shot at the burning angel. With its attention split, the red-hot flames around the angel’s wings cooled and the ravens mobbed the floating figure.

&n
bsp; Hadraniel withdrew from the network. The crimson wings reignited, the ravens returning to shadow in the blast of red light. The angel curled its lip at Corbin. “Have you changed your mind?”

  “Yes,” said Corbin. “If you’re smart, you will too.”

  “Pah! I have heard that too many times. Others can be smart and safe; I will fix what they allowed to be broken.” The angel swept its wings and the sheet of hyperdiamond disintegrated. Plunging downward after the glittering shards, it called, “Flee like rats, mortal children. The piper comes, no matter what.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Branwyn

  Uh oh, said Titanone. Corbin swore and dived, actually dived for the angel, as if he could catch the burning-winged creature in arms and restrain it. He vanished over the edge of the elevator shaft, a cloak of blackness flaring around him. Neath peered over the lip of the hole, pawing at the edge fretfully, then backing away.

  Marley didn’t move, except to put her hand to the earpiece she still wore. “I need to talk to Branwyn.”

  “Somebody give Branwyn a microphone,” commanded Mr. Black, not offering up his. Penny put something over Branwyn’s ear almost immediately.

  “I heard, Marley,” said Branwyn. Through her connection with Titanone, she watched Corbin fall down the shaft, into a blurring haze.

  “It’s going to take what it came for. We can’t stop it,” said Marley urgently.

  “It mustn’t!” said Mr. Black sharply. “We absolutely must not allow that to happen.”

  “What’s down there?” repeated Branwyn, irritated.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Marley. “It’s going to destroy the building once it has what it’s come for.”

  “It can’t do that,” said Mr. Black scornfully. “Not this building.”

  “Tell him it can, Branwyn,” commanded Marley.

  “It just effortlessly destroyed your hyperdiamond barrier. I think it could destroy the building whenever it wanted,” said Branwyn. She thought about Titanone’s odd speech. But it didn’t a moment ago. Because it wants something. Titanone had said something about what was in the basement, when they’d been texting each other. What had it been? A cage? Books?