by J. Stone
“Why didn’t I see this coming?” Fiona demanded. “You’ve never been able to hide your visions from me!”
“You’re right,” Newton said. “That’s why I allowed you to infect more and more and encouraged you to go to the archives. You flooded yourself with thousands of disparate and screaming minds, allowing Francesca and I to go unnoticed. All I had left to do was move both you and the cure into the same place. I left a note for Crowley that you would be at the oasis, and when you absorbed him, you went straight for Ryn who held the syringe. You didn’t even know what I had planned, until mere seconds before she attempted to inject you.”
The little Fiona began to look sullen and tired. The dream was nearly over, and the outside world was calling for her. “Why?” she asked. “Why couldn’t I have played a little longer? I’m not ready.”
“I know, little one,” Newton said, kneeling down and putting a hand to Fiona’s cheek. “You stay here. I’ll go.”
The unusual but familiar scenery rapidly faded, as Newton’s mind awoke, placing her strapped in a chair at the base of the Sovereign Tower. She was in the center of the stage, as Viola prepared to make an announcement. A row of corpsmen lined the stage, protecting the regent-empress from the feral infected that still roamed the city attacking at will.
Viola took a sharp dagger and approached Newton. She slid the dagger across her left palm and then did the same to Newton’s remaining hand. Viola then pressed together their hands, merging the blood and fusing them together. The young woman slowly backed away from Newton, closing her eyes, and muttering a series of words under her breath.
A horrible and immediate silence spread throughout the city, as every feral infected stopped what they were doing. They seemed to be waiting patiently for her to issue them some command, and she didn’t disappoint them. Through a vague but not quite dead connection, Newton could feel Viola order the infected to cease living. A blood-red lightning bolt erupted above Cultwick, shattering the sky. One by one, the deceased bodies of the infected fell throughout the city, a bolt of the red lightning passing through each of their bodies, until none of them were left standing.
Viola fell to her knees, splattering some of her blood on the stage floor. After a series of deep breaths, however, she stood and stared out at her empire, which looked back in awe at her. A handmaiden brought her a bandage, which she used to cover her bleeding hand, while another attendant approached her, carrying a microphone and set it up in front of Viola.
As they cleared the stage, she stepped forward to the microphone and addressed her city, “Citizens of Cultwick, the threat of the carrier plague is at an end. I have personally seen to it, and I did so not through the tainted science of biosynthesis, but through the cleansing power of Vaseevoo! I know most of you have been brought up to believe in only one religion, but I promise that during my reign, I will ensure the Cultwick Empire becomes a more enlightened and inclusive place to live.”
She paused briefly before continuing, “In that vein, I’m afraid I have a sad announcement to make. My mother has succumbed to her wounds and passed. As such, I must take up her mantle, and subsequently, I have a series of proclamations to make in regards to her reign and what will become mine.
“The horrors of the sweeper bot plague and now the carrier plague have ravaged this empire for too long. Going forward, the Church of Biosynthesis and its members will have less say in the way our government is run. I hereby announce that henceforth, the lottery has ended and all lottery winners will be freed. I will not have another Fiona Newton created on my watch.
“I also hereby issue a formal pardon to Erynn Clover, the woman who will no longer be known as a heretic. I believe her rights were monstrously violated when she was collected for the lottery and vilified by a government that had lost sight of its intentions. Her pardon shall serve as the symbolic end of the control the Church of Biosynthesis has over Cultwick.
“Separately, but perhaps related, the Chromework Confederacy’s rebellion has come to an end. Through negotiations, I have reached an arrangement with their leader, Reginald Maynard. In the coming weeks, you will begin to see changes being instituted to reflect this arrangement. The war is officially over.”
The crowd surrounding the base of the stage had grown exponentially in a matter of minutes. Newton could see the people all coming together to see this new empress and what was to come. They had lived under the rule of Viola’s mother, Mary Elizabeth, for many years, and change wasn’t a common occurrence.
“Lastly, the final act to end the atrocity of this night - Fiona Newton must be executed. I ask for no executioner, as this has become my problem to correct. I take no pleasure in this act, but she has become too infectious and dangerous to keep alive.”
Viola picked up the same dagger she had used to open her palm and slunk around behind Newton. She held the blade up for her audience to clearly see and then lowered it, placing it at Newton’s throat. Viola scraped it across Newton’s neck, severing skin, and causing blood to bubble and flow out over the white dress and lab coat.
Newton gasped for air, as she choked on her own blood, and her eyes dimmed. As the sun began to rise over the tall buildings in the east, her head slumped forward and her thoughts went to her time with Duncan. Before darkness crept fully over her, however, she heard Fiona’s childish voice echo within her mind, “You can’t kill me that easily, Newton!”
Epilogue
Following her sudden and very public execution, Fiona’s body was secreted away to a hidden cache under Viola Arkmast’s command. Viola’s first act as empress had been to rid the entire city from the feral infected remaining after Francesca had separated Fiona from her pets and sisters with the concoction that Councilor Crowley’s scientists had developed. The citizens of the empire saw the new empress as a savior, and they quickly grew enamored of her.
Viola came to prove that she was a far different ruler than her mother, distancing herself from both the Church of Biosynthesis and the science that the religion had built itself upon. She openly expressed that the science had become twisted and malevolent, leading to abominations like Fiona. Instead of relying on the religion as her predecessors had, the new empress began to limit the church’s control over the political landscape by first dismantling the lottery process and freeing the remaining lottery subjects. There were, of course, some subjects like the clairvoyant, Simon, that she deemed too dangerous to go free, and they were kept hidden behind locked doors in the Center for Empirical Research. The scientific center itself was forced to make necessary financial cutbacks, as Viola limited their funding, effectively crippling their workforce and the goals they had been working toward.
Within the whole of the empire, the people were given a much greater level of personal freedoms, as Viola ensured that many of her mother’s restrictive laws were repealed. Slavery was abolished within the empire including the cities of the western frontier, the Ankalaran people were given rights to govern themselves, and she established a greater freedom of religion as Viola allowed the Targeaux practice of Vaseevoo to take root and spread within Cultwick. Within the empire’s living memory, there had never been a people so jubilant about where they were or where they were headed.
Meanwhile, Germ’s body had vanished, displaced into a world under strange and outlandish laws of physics. One of Rowland’s own creations, it had become a repository of failed and dangerous experiments that he found need to dispose of. Though he had never attempted to retrieve something from this hidden world, he was certain it could be accomplished with the proper incentive. While Germ was trapped, it also gave the professor time to find and develop the serum that had created the genetically engineered rat in the first place, thus extending his life. The fear within him was that Germ could prove to be in danger from the other experiments he had trapped the rat with, so he worked feverishly to correct his mistakes.
Receiving her official pardon from the empress, Erynn, along with Rowland and Pearl, moved back into the mansion
in Cultwick, thinking that the rebellion had ended. While the professor attempted to recover and cure Germ, Erynn and Pearl tried to return to a somewhat normal life. Erynn returned to her work as a freelance chromesmith, while Pearl soon started focusing on her art. It was the first time since they had found each other that they had any semblance of a normal life together, and in spite of their personal tragedies, the couple managed to overcome their shared grief and grow closer together.
They had all assumed that the rebellion had ended amicably, expecting that Viola had met with the Chromework Confederacy’s leader, Reginald Maynard and come to a middle ground. Only Vincent and Cassie, however, knew the truth about what the confederacy had been and how Maynard had used them. Trapped in the abandoned mine, Cassie was forced to dig her way out not only to get to freedom but also to save Vincent’s life, as he bled out on the exploded debris of the chromite mine. She thought of nothing but her revenge on both Graham and Maynard for her enslavement and the death of her husband, as she clawed her way out of the dark tunnels.
In the wake of Fiona’s death, many of Cultwick’s citizens were left irrevocably changed. Hazel Weaver and Gretchen Reynolds, the only living sisters, were immediately reacquired by the corps and taken into custody. There, they were both examined in an effort to determine if they would pose any lasting threat. Under heavy sedation and the watch of armed guards, both women awaited the final decision about their future.
Additionally, and though it had certainly not been her intention, when she drank the blood stored in the archives, Fiona awoke someone that she herself had killed not long before. The operative, Alice Page, had been stitched back together by the scientists of the center in preparation for a proper Church of Biosynthesis burial, but she was instead resurrected within the dark confines of the morgue chamber she had been stored inside of when Fiona imbibed the blood. Unlike the other dead bodies that Fiona had controlled, Alice didn’t become feral after their separation. She proved herself different, thanks to the regenerative serum in her veins, and she was reborn anew. Alice immediately began to scheme on how to remove Viola from power, who she perceived as an usurper to the throne, despite the fact that Viola had positioned the empire to enter what appeared to be a golden age.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1. Fiona and the Madhouse
Chapter 2. Ryn and the Rebels
Chapter 3. Crowley and the Council
Chapter 4. Germ and the Smuggler
Chapter 5. Vincent and the Bounty
Chapter 6. Rowland and the Genotoxin
Chapter 7. Ryn and the Turret
Chapter 8. Pearl and the Mercenary
Chapter 9. Fiona and the Slaughter
Chapter 10. Rowland and the Corpse
Chapter 11. Crowley and the Empress
Chapter 12. Germ and the Pirates
Chapter 13. Isabelle and the Aristocrat
Chapter 14. Fiona and the Assassination
Chapter 15. Vincent and the Slave
Chapter 16. Rowland and the Reformed
Chapter 17. Crowley and the Clairvoyant
Chapter 18. Ryn and the Junkyard
Chapter 19. Isabelle and the Stables
Chapter 20. Fiona and the Experiment
Chapter 21. Germ and the Sample
Chapter 22. Rowland and the Biojunk
Chapter 23. Isabelle and the Ball
Chapter 24. Vincent and the Sheriff
Chapter 25. Ryn and the Investigator
Chapter 26. Fiona and the Collection
Chapter 27. Crowley and the Deal
Chapter 28. Isabelle and the Machine
Chapter 29. Rowland and the Cure
Chapter 30. Vincent and the Bar
Chapter 31. Fiona and the Archives
Chapter 32. Ryn and the Garden
Chapter 33. Germ and the Treatment
Chapter 34. Vincent and the Mine
Chapter 35. Pearl and the Escape
Chapter 36. Fiona and the Isolation
Epilogue
