Subterfuge: A Cultivation Academy Series (Bastion Academy Book 3)

by J D Astra

  “My son, the fool.” He sipped his tea.

  I leaned forward, trying to look intimidating. “If it’s true, and you’ve loved the family all along, why tell me this and compromise Minjee’s safety? My jang-ryzo is strong, but it is not impenetrable. If Dokun wanted this information from me, he could get it, and then she’d really be in danger.”

  “I told you because you’re not going back to Kokyu. I said I would bring you to a safe port, I never said which. You’re going into hiding to train with me—to learn to protect Minjee.”

  “Reservoir disabled!” Mae reported with excitement. “By my estimate, his control over the ship will be weak enough to overtake in sixty seconds.”

  I blinked, trying to remember what Hiro had just said. “But the exchange.”

  “Your mission, you mean?”

  “Not only that. If I don’t return to school, my disappearance could spark unrest between Kokyu and Busa-nan.”

  He waved me off. “It will be explained away easily. Domestic terrorism, a foreign kidnapping; a host of horrible calamities have taken hold in Kokyu to allow Dokun to flood the streets with his Enjiho. Someone will take the blame, or perhaps you’ll be a runaway.” He paused, sighing. “Don’t think yourself so important that a war would be started over your disappearance. And as for your mission, your friends and mentor will be fine without you. Who do you think helped me get you down here in the first place?”

  I resisted the urge to jump across the table in a fury. I needed to keep my hands connected with the ship. “Why must you always lie? My friends wouldn’t ever help you.”

  He raised a brow. “Why did they keep luring you into the water? What was Yuri doing when she made that wide sweep around you?”

  My stomach dropped. How did he know Yuri by name?

  Ko-nah... That snake!

  “You’re confused, so let me explain. Dokun is moving into the final stages of his coup, and a fair majority of Ribatasan have allied themselves with him. A small number of the resistance factions have allied with me—and Ko-nah—to stop him. Dokun is hoping to pin these attacks in the city on us when he’s assumed power, then wash his hands of everything he’s done. Your presence is dangerous in other ways. He would use you, just as he would use Minjee. You can’t stay, and neither can I.”

  “Why, when you were so close to curing Mother, are you interested in stopping Dokun now? Why hadn’t you tried to hide Minjee away or kill her if she’s as dangerous as you say she is?” I asked, stunned by the audacity of his blatant trickery.

  The vein running across Hiro’s temple pumped visibly, and he breathed slow, deep breaths. “I never said I was perfect. I did something I didn’t think I could and have regretted it ever since,” he said through gritted teeth. “It took me far too long to see, but now I know what Dokun’s true aim is. He doesn’t just seek to overthrow the king, take Kokyu as his own, and rampage around the globe as supreme ruler. He would take munje control away from everyone but himself.”

  “Five bands is powerful—those people can cause a lot of damage. If these extreme users go unregulated, we’ll continue to cower under the threat of terrorism. Munje must be controlled.” Dokun’s voice swam through my thoughts again, and my headache intensified.

  Then, the little ma I had deployed came to life in my vision as the skeleton of the ship. The overwhelming sense of too much was dizzying. Forgetting Dokun and plots, I focused on the ma munje. I had to escape this ship, this liar, and get back to my mission.

  “I know it’s a lot to process,” Hiro said with empathy. He must’ve assumed my wooziness was from the news, and not noticed my hostile takeover. Good, I wanted to keep it that way.

  “And how would he do it?” I asked, pushing past the nausea of bodily overload. I had too many moving parts, too many systems, too much!

  Hiro’s mouth moved, but the words going in my ears didn’t make any sense, as if he were speaking a foreign language. I knew from the sounds of the words, the inflections, he was speaking Busaneo, but I couldn’t understand him.

  The crushing weight of my giant metal body, every piece screaming at me for commands, was too much. My vision blackened at the edges, but I swallowed hard and looked past my father to the water tank and spigot. I had to block out all other operations and focus only on what I needed. The parts of the water tank glowed faintly in my vision, and the nausea subsided.

  As I listened to just those parts, the rest faded into background noise. I could see three functions; extend, retract, and turn the retention valve. Above it was the pressure release valve to let off steam. This wouldn’t be the most elegant escape, but survival was survival, after all.

  “Jiyong, haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?” Hiro asked, confusion and worry wrinkling his aged forehead.

  I dropped the spigot forty degrees, then clamped the pressure release shut. “I haven’t, but I’m sure my ghost will translate for me later.”

  I turned the retention valve and hoped I wasn’t the idiot he thought me to be.

  Chapter 24

  BOILING WATER SPRAYED in a violent, whistling mist. Hiro turned to see what had caused the noise, getting a face full of hot steam. He growled in pain, but I didn’t wait to see what he did next. I jumped from my cross-legged position on the floor only to find my right leg was still too numb to use.

  “Jiyong, stop!” Hiro yelled, his voice pained.

  ‘Do you know where we are? Can you turn us back toward land?’

  “I don’t have enough processing power to take control like you, but I can highlight the systems you’ll need to use,” Mae said.

  I dropped to all fours, scrambling across the deck and up the stairs, dragging my leg like a wounded animal. I’d planned on saving my infused zo for the journey back to land, but if I didn’t use it now, I might not even make it to the hatch.

  With a thought, I cracked open the reserve of infused munje in my muscle, and leapt like a grenifrog. With a single push of my good leg, I rocketed forward three meters, clearing the distance to the first door. I slammed it shut behind me and twisted the lever to lock it.

  “I thought you could use my mental signature or whatever. Can’t you control it?” I asked aloud as I galloped like a disoriented hound.

  Mae growled. “Yes, I can command your munje, but processing power isn’t the same. I’m not integrated into the submarine, and I’m not familiar with language or the GUI—oh, it’s too complicated to explain quickly! Just run and I’ll lead.”

  Bang! The door behind us shuddered and whined, but I didn’t look back. I knew what was happening. I turned for the side hatch Hiro had pulled me in, while my frantic thoughts searched through the skeleton of the monstrous submarine.

  Highways of light appeared in my mind’s eye as Mae guided my willing thoughts to where they needed to go. I barreled through the narrow halls one second, then roads of brilliant neon, then metal grates were under my hands, then flashing lights, then pain in my head.

  “Here,” Mae said, and my vision was overtaken with the images of my mind’s eye.

  I skidded to a stop and felt my way to a corner behind a jutting pipe system. It was dark in the halls, and if I could hide for just a second while I operated the controls, that was all I needed.

  The system Mae had led me to was complex, modular in its existence. The information flowed in and out from a fractal sphere like bees from a hive, flying on Hiro’s munje, with no apparent order I could discern. Well, it was time to kick the nest. I burrowed my way through. I rotated the outer shield of munje like a tiny storm to protect the central, weaponized ma.

  “You never learned your limits!” Hiro’s voice echoed through the tiny chamber and reverberated through my consciousness. I could hear him through my munje in the walls!

  I pressed through the weaving highways of functions, Mae guiding my spear and Hiro’s munje attacking along the way. At last, she turned the deteriorating spear toward a glowing epicenter nestled in twisting green ribbons of data.

&n
bsp; The spear sliced into the cloud-like hub, populating my vision with an interface similar to—yet deeply more complex than—what Mae used to show my munje reserves. Hiro’s footsteps echoed down the hall and into my ears. He was close, and there wasn’t enough time.

  In quick succession, information I could read filled up the rows and shapes that made up the submarine controls. Depth was forty meters, and the function to ascend flashed below the readout. I held my breath and activated the button.

  ‘What are my chances of surviving manual ascent from this depth?’

  “Low. You simply can’t swim fast enough with so little munje left. But if you can get to fifteen meters, much higher.”

  Hands gripped my wetsuit, and the controls flickered in my vision, then popped out of existence as my eyes focused on Hiro. A yellow boil swelled above his left eye from the burning water, and the surrounding tissue was seared red.

  “You think you know everything! If you’d just listen to me instead of pretending to be the smartest boy in your class just because you have an AI imbedded in your consciousness, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten your schoolmates killed!”

  Dread reached its icy tendrils out from the pit of my stomach. “Hana?”

  “No, the boys at the farm. If you had just come with me, no one would’ve gotten hurt.”

  “You’re lying!” I reached out for what little ma I had left in the submarine. I needed to get this door open, no matter the depth.

  “We would’ve escaped Wong’s men at the compound, and once I’d secured the Valeria, we could’ve disabled all the signals in a safer manner—one that could’ve undone the lasting damage. But you had to trust your idiot instinct.”

  “You had a knife to my mother’s throat! You had my family captive! You didn’t promise their safety!” The skeleton of the outer hull pulled into view, and I focused on the thick bolts securing the door.

  “How could I? The Wong assassins had my children! I wanted to end it with as little death as possible.” Tears welled in his eyes.

  I fought the disgusting feeling of sympathy and found the automated door lock on the wall. Engage and Disengage appeared clearly in my vision.

  “Jiyong, are you sure you want to do this?” Mae warned.

  “Please,” Hiro begged through gritted teeth. “For once, son, just listen to me.”

  A hundred thoughts blazed through my mind. One of them slowed and took hold. Trust him. Back down. Let him explain. Hana and the others would carry out the mission without me, somehow. Hiro would take me to another safe harbor away from Dokun, who would use Mae like a weapon. Hiro would train me to protect my family and keep Minjee a secret until Dokun could be defeated.

  Another lightning-fast thought blasted all others from my mind. He ran away to work with Dokun. Then he lied and cheated his way back into my homeland and poisoned its people. He had abandoned his family in our time of greatest need because it was too much to deal with. He was a liar and a coward to the core, tricking me into the very outcome I wanted to avoid.

  I looked back to him, my heart hammering with fear. I let en trickle down the pathways to my palms, then gripped the pipes behind me. Hiro’s eyes widened, and he followed the angle of my flickering gaze to the hatch behind him.

  “Jiyong, don’t,” he whispered. “You’ll die. Think of your family.”

  My family... Minjee. They needed me to do this. They needed me to drown Hiro and end Dokun’s threat. They needed me to figure out how to keep the dangers of the world from their doorstep. And if I died doing it, then I would have died as the brother I had always tried to be.

  Hiro’s ma was swarming around mine at the lock, trying to pick it apart. “I won’t save you from this,” he growled.

  “I’ve never needed your saving.” I disengaged the lock and bashed my head into Hiro’s.

  A wall of water burst open the door and pulled the bloody-nosed Hiro away. The hall filled with water and carried him along, battering me as I held on to the pipes for just another second. I swirled my arm overhead, trapping one of the last bubbles of air, and forced my way out into the crushing black.

  “Depth, twenty meters. You can do this Jiyong!” Mae reported as the swirling water tried to suck me back into the ship. I sliced through the gushing force with my en and pushed forward, toward the fading light in the golden clouds.

  I kicked hard and my aching muscles replied with pain. The left leg was near exhaustion and the right was just coming back under my control. I swooped my arms through the air, mimicking the rowing gesture, and I rocketed upwards.

  “Fifteen meters!” Mae said, and a depth counter appeared in the corner of my vision next to my en levels; only enough left for two more row movements.

  I pulled myself through the water once more, jumping another three meters in toward the surface. The air I’d trapped was heavy and hot, leaving my lungs aching for oxygen. The bubble was a drag I had to lose, and it wasn’t doing me any more good. I made a hole in the en barrier around the air over my head and bubbles rippled out of the side, shrinking the sphere by the second. When the water closed in around my face, I propelled myself with the en row again.

  “Just four meters. Come on, Jiyong!”

  The sky darkened, and I let the last of the air from my burning lungs. I swooped my hands forward, draining all my en into the last push. The pressure of my ascent forced my head down as I breached the surface like a whale. Wind ruffled my soaking hair and I gasped deeply, then plummeted back into the sea.

  I paddled chaotically as air bubbles and waves rocked me on the open water. The shore was a good two kilometers behind me. I could see frantic figures of the students climbing aboard departing trains.

  The sea trembled more violently as a dark shadow moved up toward me from the deep. The submarine blasted through the horizon five meters away, creating a tidal wave half that size. I dove under to avoid the slapping water and rode the undertow until I could surface again.

  The ship hung in midair as if possessed with the essence of anti-gravity. The monstrosity was at least sixty meters long, pitch black, with silver letters reading Valeria. Water gushed from each side of the massive vessel, and above it levitated my father. He sat cross-legged, glowing vibrant blue with air rushing over his body and into the top hatch.

  How was my father doing that?

  I stared in wonder at the thing that could not possibly be.

  “He’s rewriting the nanite code around him on a massive scale—just like you did when we killed the shūspekta,” Mae replied, breathless.

  When the water surging from the vessel slowed to a trickle, my father’s eyes opened. His gaze narrowed on me.

  It was loud, the water from the submarine slapping all around me, but I heard him clearly when he spoke. “Don’t choose the wrong side, son.”

  He dropped into the ship, and all the hatches closed at once. The hanging submarine dropped into the water, and I dove again. Waves rocked overhead and bubbles turned me over and over. My legs and arms gave out, unable to keep fighting against the turbulence. I drifted on the waves, keeping my eyes shut tight... waiting for it to end.

  Chapter 25

  I FLOATED ON MY BACK, paddling every few seconds between looking at the horizon and firing a little ry flare of green into the sky. A boat was on its way, but being out over open water was too uncomfortable. I had to keep moving. Mae was watching for disturbances in the water below us and alerting me to anything that might be dangerous—which she’d been silent about for too many minutes.

  “Still nothing. Just fish,” she said with a bored tone, but my anxiety didn’t cease.

  I knew what kinds of monsters lurked in the deep, and not just my former father. Creatures that would wrap me up in hundreds of meters of tentacles and drag me into the depths to feast on me alive. Things that could bite me in half with a single chomp. Some that could shock me to death, deal lethal dosages of toxin into my system, or net me up and drag me back to the dark, and more. Nalkas—the god essence of the se
a and eternal enemy of Jigu—was dangerous. We all knew it.

  “Stop it!” Mae yelled, breaking into my thoughts. “You’ll worry us both to death. Just look at the sky and paddle.”

  I took a deep breath and did as she ordered. The clouds had parted to reveal a sparkling starlit array I wanted so much to share with Hana. This was just the thing we’d been missing out on for months. Training, day in and day out—then the constant worry about whether we’d be discovered—this trip was supposed to be fun.

  We were supposed to learn about another culture and help mend the bonds broken by war. What would’ve, could’ve, and should’ve been was not. We were here to spy on a powerful man—one I wasn’t so certain was in the wrong anymore.

  Dokun claimed he wanted to limit fifth-level munje and above only, not wipe it out entirely. He said he wanted to make sure that dangerous people didn’t flood the streets with mayhem and destruction. It seemed he wanted to protect people from danger and register those who’d exceeded the limit.

  I could understand that. I wanted to protect my family, Hana, and my friends. I wanted to protect my town, my country, and everyone who had ever wished for a better life. There were so many strong people who would do harm for their own selfish desires, never thinking of the damage they could be doing to real people who breathed and suffered.

  Images of my father played in my mind’s eye in rapid succession. What felt like a hundred years ago, he handed me Mae’s disc—the one imbedded in my chest—then he kissed me on the head as he said goodbye. Hiro in the garden, holding a knife to my mother’s throat, then gripping me by the neck. Then in the hull of the Valeria as water swept him away and above the craft as water poured out its sides.

  I shut my eyes against the barrage of memories and paddled. The sounds of shouting and water splashing against the sides of boats grew louder in my ears as I went, but they felt painfully far away with my burning muscles.