by Eden Wolfe
Dread. I deserve this. I didn’t know he would jump.
She passed that door by.
There are others, let this one stay closed.
Roman’s most sensitive material won’t be here.
The Central Tower assembly hadn't yet begun, though the staff had already filed into the auditorium. Aria had most of the Tower to herself. Two voices asking questions in quiet tones reached Aria’s hearing as she touched the seventeenth floor's main office door handle.
"This cannot be because of us." The voice stood out because of its panic, the heartbeat of the speaker stopping Aria dead in her tracks. Someone was very afraid.
A traitor? A scout?
Surely whoever she was speaking to couldn’t also be a scout; they would not be so reckless as to congregate together.
"Just wait. Be normal."
She recognized the voices. It was they who had birthed the infant. Two of them, the third was absent.
"This is anything but normal."
Aria forced open the locked handle of an abandoned office down the hall as the conversation came to an abrupt stop. The heartbeats continued in her ears. She waited for their next words.
"What do we do about Adam?"
"Shut up," the man hissed. "That has nothing to do with this. We won't know anything for days yet."
A sharp exhale came from the woman and the beating hearts continued.
Aria scanned the office, seeking broken patterns, anything out of place. Any hints.
The neat pile of folders on the desk.
The voices silenced as heels clicked on a wood platform in the Auditorium one floor below. A voice began on the microphone.
"You will have noticed the presence of the Guard." A voice of authority. A man’s voice. The Primary Overseer, Roman.
Aria picked up the pile of folders. Varying colors, same ink across them all.
"This is not standard, as you know,” the voice continued, “Nor is their mission."
One folder was worn on the corner. The others were pristine. Aria let the others drop back on the desk and opened the worn green folder.
The voice on the microphone carried on about creating new practice, seeking out from within, no cause for alarm unless you knew there was cause, but Aria only half listened. The code on the page had her transfixed.
It was the basic code of men.
In it she could see, clear as day, how it had all gone wrong. There was something unnatural planted in this sequence. A voice inside her screamed it out, a voice of an old generation and one of the first.
The voice explained why it had been done and what it had been intended to do.
Come.
Ariane heard it somewhere and couldn’t identify the direction, but knew the sound and, above all, her own voice, from afar.
Her feet lifted her directly. She swept the city through alleys and shadows, heading to the place from where it came. Heading to Central Tower.
The flurries of people were speeding up. She turned her head left and right but no eyes fell on her. They were in their parallel world with the guards moving them indoors, removing them from the streets. Sellers and children and walkers-by; inside, the guards asked questions, unending questions. Ariane listened as she went.
"And you were born here, in the capital?"
"You are of which Willing Woman?"
"And you attended which academy?"
"When did you leave the Lakes Region?"
"And you harvested in the East Fields when?"
And, and, and - the questions were incessant to those being interrogated.
The guards are gentle enough of tone but unrelenting in manner. They are seeking, but it isn't me they seek.
It isn't us.
So the Queen knows the dead women were scouts.
Five dead so far, if they had, in fact, found all five, had somehow already been identified by the fortress. She weaved through the questions-asked, the eyes-demanding and the eyes-fearful, none of which had any interest in her.
Ariane turned a corner and caught the edge of a block, tearing the flesh off her shoulder because of her speed. She paused just long enough to close the wound. She watched the skin come back together, the blood, hot, underneath the surface, heal and bind, as it always did. When she lifted her eyes, there was a child before her, mouth, and eyes wide.
Ariane smiled quickly, but it faded. She did not know what to say.
Find your voice, Future Queen, this girl is one of your people.
"Are they looking for you?" the child whispered before Ariane could find the right words. The girl tilted her head toward the guards whose voices preceded them.
“They might be, child."
"Then you should run."
Ariane smiled and touched the girl's shoulder, before crossing the block in three steps to the east.
"Wow," she heard the girl whisper in her wake.
They found each other on the roof of the Tower. Aria to Ariane, they walked to the center, grasped each other by the back of the neck, and spoke with only the quietest air.
"The regulatory signals in the basic male code," Aria started, holding a printout of the DNA sequence between them.
Ariane looked at it, searching through training and data. "A single point mutation."
"The response is to die."
Ariane nodded, the meaning too clear. "It consumes itself."
"Hence the obesity."
"At just the right age."
"Yes."
"It's an old mistake in the code, or else an old objective."
"A bioinformatician likely from the early generations."
"On royal command, likely."
"After the Betrayer King, we can expect."
Ariane nodded.
There are many betrayers in our midst.
Perhaps the men are not the only ones designed to die out.
The data will support it when I take the fortress.
When we take the fortress.
When we take the fortress.
How will it be as 'we'?
Training insufficient.
We must remain we.
We must defy their history.
We are the ones to do it.
Yes, we are.
They nodded and turned their heads to the west, evening sun rising like a beacon to their destination. The fortress awaited them. They knew the Queen was within.
It is time, they each thought to the other.
60
Aria
Even before they walked through the door, they felt what was on the other side of it. The air held a different quality. They both knew it immediately.
It reeked of danger.
She is there, no doubt that she is there.
"What are you waiting for," they heard from the other side. That familiar voice, ever unreadable.
Did she know we were coming?
Minds rushed to find answers in the Queen's tone.
"Don't keep me waiting."
It was decided.
Without hesitation, together they pushed the door and found the Queen seated, facing the window, her back to them. Her straight spine gave no answer to the questions flying about in the room like guillotine blades. "My dear Ariane,” she stood and turned to face them. “And Ariane. Understand, I didn’t intend to put you in this position. I was equally shocked that you were two. Indeed it had never been my intention.” She looked at Aria, “Ariane.” She looked to the other. “And Ariane. What a debacle. What a mockery.” She inhaled deeply. “I had to make the most of the situation. View it as an opportunity. Determine which course would best prepare a Queen. She looked at Ariane of the Strangelands, “Solitary and severe?” She turned to Aria, “Or connected isolation?” She turned away from them both. “But I needed some kind of insurance. You must understand at least that much. You were both too unpredictable at the time. I didn’t know how deep the sequence ran between you. I had to take precautions.”
Looking at each other, they affirmed
their course. Ariane spoke, "You must have known we would figure it out."
“Figure what out?"
They looked at each other again, the Queen seemingly asking an authentic question. They moved their eyes to the Queen, knowing they had to keep their attention on her.
She is the outlier.
She is the danger.
Upper Earth remains a distant enemy - the Queen is flesh and blood.
Aria approached the Queen.
“You have changed the course of Lower Earth, Mother. We will be taking the decision away from you.”
The Queen gave no response.
Ariane spoke, “We will be making the decisions from now on.”
The Queen laughed.
She dares to laugh at us?
The two felt their hearts quickening. Their breathing deepened. They both recognized the anger boiling up inside themselves.
Like insulted warriors.
Like incensed royalty.
“Respond to us, Mother,” Ariane spat out.
The Queen smiled.
Aria stepped beside Ariane, “Do you think this is a game?"
The Queen looked them over, her lips pursed, bemused.
"We have never asked for anything from you. Yet you sit like a statue, a mute, blind and-"
The Queen simply raised her hand, but the energy charged within it stopped the two silent. A mother’s demand and a Queen’s command. Something was seething from her, up her spine, out her arm into her fingers. They saw her lip curl.
The Queen spoke, barely above a whisper. "You are taking liberties."
Their hearts quickened again.
Ariane burst, "You have taken too many!"
The Queen laughed, deep and hearty, almost jovial, almost sinister.
"You are both girls. Still just girls. I had wanted so much more from you. So, so much more for you." She stood and turned as slow as the earth moved. "I always loved you, as much as could be expected from a Queen to her offspring. But listen now, this isn't personal. Look at you both,” she sauntered to Aria, putting her fingertips under Aria’s chin, lifting it, “So close to perfection and yet,” she released Aria’s chin and walked to her bureau. “You couldn't be what you needed to be. It is you who left me with no choice. I saw it ever since you were children."
The Queen sat on her chair, turning her eyes toward the files on her bureau.
"What is that supposed to mean? You intend to reign forever? Go against the royal policy? Abandon your own principles?"
"Is it greed, Mother? Or did our greatness put you to shame?"
"I feel no shame," her eyes lit. "There could only ever be one queen. I ordered you dead, and I felt no shame. My calling is greater than that. So was yours, such hopes were on you. Believe me, I was sad to see you had failed. Mortally failed."
The two instinctively moved into a crouch. The sense of danger they had felt was not, and maybe never had been, Upper Earth.
It is our own mother.
How we respond now will define the coming generations.
The Queen read their movement.
"Girls, there can only be one. They're always could only be one. Do you think this touching homecoming will last? You know as well as I do that your communion will be short-lived. Try to reign together and you will be the undoing of Lower Earth. End of everything the generations have worked for. Don't think our little family reunion will last beyond these walls. Your time here is nearly over." Her eyes glowed green in the sunlight streaming through the window.
It will not last longer than a minute.
For Lower Earth, Ariane, for Lower Earth!
They all together broke into a leap, hurtling themselves into the air. They met the Queen in the rafters, her velvet gown streaming to the floor below. They were three arms' lengths away from each other, squatted on the rafters, when time stopped. Mother looked at daughters, daughters looked at mother.
Between them, collectively, came a fleeting stroke of regret.
The Queen mouthed words. Silent words, inaudible to the two. It was as though the Queen was looking at and through them, speaking to an unseen presence. They strained to listen but could hear nothing.
The Queen inhaled, words still on her lips as she grasped either side of her draping velvet gown. With muddled words she tore it off her body, spinning, falling into the rafters and righting herself as Aria and Ariane watched, confused, unprepared for the sight of their nude, muttering mother.
She's gone mad.
The Queen righted herself on the floor. Long scars of decades of self-mutilation throbbed in pink against her olive skin. “Come, Aria, come.”
Aria looked to her other self, her sister self, the human form of her own code. Ariane nodded.
Adjusting her stance, Aria jumped down to the floor. She approached her mother with careful, deliberate steps.
The Queen held her arms out.
“Aria, my daughter. Come.”
Her naked body rippled with muscle despite her age, her abdominals expanding with her lungs, her tight breasts showing no evidence of the births she gave. Only the scars gave any sign of weakness.
A voice alit in Aria’s gut. The voice of her childhood who had begged for her mother’s embrace. Aria sought to read the Queen’s heartbeat. It was slowed, calm, contained. A complete change from moments before.
She is torn between us.
“Please, my Aria, come.”
Aria looked up to Ariane in the rafters, who was observing with hawk eyes. Ariane gave no sign of thought.
I will not betray you, Aria thought to Ariane, hoping she heard. Hoping she understood.
Aria let the Queen’s hands grasp her shoulders, pull her in closer.
The Queen embraced Aria, her naked body clenching her with such fervor, such intensity. Such love. Aria closed her eyes for a moment and begged her mind to stay sharp and focused. She felt her vulnerability, the rawness of an emotion she had felt for as long as she could remember.
Connected isolation. It had been torture. Her desire for love, raised in her by the priestesses, and yet explicitly denied as part of her preparation.
"Close your eyes, Aria, picture the future. Tell me, what do you see?"
Aria closed her eyes and felt her other-self move away.
Is she gone? Because our Mother called upon me to come close?
"Tell me, Aria. Pay the other one no mind, not now. We are here and we are together. This is what counts. What do you see, my daughter."
Aria could tell that Ariane was gone. Something inside her that had been full was emptying. She tried to stay focused on the moment.
“I see Lower Earth." Aria squeezed her eyes tighter. "I see the men and I see the civil war. Violence. I see what we must do. I see Lower Earth’s eventual prosperity, the strength of a common people rallying behind one cry for justice, equality, and commitment to our world.”
Recognize her bias. Run the scenarios, she has other agendas. Give assurance.
“I see us ruling together, Mother. I see it all.”
“Oh, Aria.” The Queen pulled her even tighter. Aria felt lost in the sensation. “I know you felt this so deeply. I know this is what you always wanted from me. I never could give it. Aria, I tried.” Her mother breathed the words, “But I couldn’t love you knowing one day I’d have to kill you.”
Run! Aria thought at her other self, only hoping the message reached her in time. We are more deceived than we thought.
Then her thoughts vacated.
Everything turned red.
The Queen released her from the embrace and Aria looked down at her chest.
A dagger point burst through her chest from behind.
The dagger twisted.
Shredding her.
Slashing into her heart.
Aria of East Gana froze in open-mouthed dying. She looked up to the rafters, but Ariane was nowhere she could.
“You see nothing, Aria. Your conspirator, betraying two-faced double self, has fled and left you to
die. She won’t be back. She was raised for solitude. It was an experiment that failed. She thinks only of herself. It’s why she could never be Queen. Now turn. Look upon Lower Earth’s future. Lay your eyes on your assailant and at last, you will understand.”
Aria’s brain demanded regeneration, but her heart pumped mad blood in all directions. It poured down her chest.
But she had to turn. She had to see. She rallied every cell of energy to remain standing as her feet slid, slipping on her blood as she turned.
Another version of herself stood before her. She had Aria’s face, her shoulders, her stance. But the eyes were wrong. They gleamed green. Something in her was angular. Stark.
The self across from her stepped back, Aria’s blood oozing down her hands and arms. She watched Aria with cold amusement, watched her dying.
The Queen whispered from behind. "Your mutual brilliance was a stroke too imprudent, reckless, too emotionally driven to be Queen. But never doubt that I loved you. Ariane shall reign, yes. Ariane shall reign, and you shall die for your country."
Aria's blood flowed in furious chaos, cells colliding and exploding, dying as the oxygen decayed, such crushing inside her. She couldn’t move, it took all she had just to stand; she could only stare herself in the eye.
"Who are you?" Aria’s eye twitched as she fought to focus. A small flash of recognition crossed the killer’s face.
"I am Ariane." The other one paused, searching Aria’s eyes. "You must know me, you must have felt me, just as I felt you." Aria's face was dying but she asked the question with her eyes. "Oh, so perhaps you didn't. And perhaps that's why I can do what you never could. We may have been three, but there could only ever be one Queen.”
Blood-covered, this unknown Ariane leaned in to Aria's ear and spoke without hate and without love.
"Be proud, Ariane, you are dying for Lower Earth to live."
61
Rose
A cry pierced the air. A heartbroken sob from the flurry of red hair, and Rose ran, full of grief from behind the Cork Town pub.
She felt it. She knew.
