The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy

by Terra Whiteman

  “Pretend it is and find their squat.”

  “Sir,” another transmission interrupted the first. “We’ve just received a call for noise disturbance by a bartender on Seventh. He said he heard screaming and gunshots from the abandoned grain storehouse across the street.”

  Ara grabbed his coat. “I’m on my way. Get a team down there.”

  I grabbed my coat as well. He paused, questioningly.

  “You might need my help,” I said.

  Ara thought about that, then nodded. We left Roen in the dining room.

  “Shots fired?” he repeated, near tears. “Screaming?”

  “Stay here,” Ara said as we hurried for the door. “I’ll call you the moment we know anything.” Outside, he murmured, “We need to move quickly. I’m sure Sanctum PB has our radio tapped.”

  I nodded, keeping pace. When we reached the port, I climbed into the passenger seat of his craft, and Ara sped out of Eroqam. He looked more worried than I’d ever seen him, which did nothing for my panic.

  “What has he done, Leid?” he whispered. “What has he done now?”

  IX

  LOST

  WE WERE ALONE AGAIN.

  The angels had stepped out of the room for a reason I couldn’t fathom. But I wasn’t trying to figure that out. I didn’t even have enough strength to generate a cohesive thought.

  Tae lay still and silent on the floor—face down, naked and bloody—but her shoulders heaved and I could hear soft, wet gurgles as her failing lungs still fought for breath.

  I never stopped watching, even when it grew unbearable. Closing my eyes or turning my head would have been abandoning her. And so I’d suffered with her, until she’d no longer had the strength to keep her head up. If she was conscious now, I couldn’t tell. I really wanted to believe that she was.

  But a small part of me wished that she was dead, too. I didn’t know if I could watch any more, and the thought of my sister having to endure another minute of this made my eyes wet.

  I couldn’t save her, and she knew that. She’d known that halfway through, when the last remnants of hope had faded from her eyes and she’d stopped fighting. Tae had just laid there and taken it, and I would never forget the way she looked at me.

  Footsteps echoed softly in the darkness, but I kept my eyes ahead, thinking our captors had returned. There was an empty aching in the pit of my stomach, guilt and hopelessness savaging my insides. Surprisingly, there was no anger. There was nothing. Nothing could describe the way I felt as I listened to my sister die a slow, painful death.

  A shadow emerged from behind a pillar, a silhouette of someone tall and lean. It didn’t move for a minute, finally stepping into the light.

  Calenus Karim.

  He looked at me, and then at my sister laying several feet away. He wore an expression of confusion and sadness.

  Passing Tae, he knelt in front of me and I looked him in the eyes, saying nothing. Calenus reached for my serrated restraints, snapping them away like brittle twigs. How he’d just broken metal was beyond me, but I didn’t even question it. All I did was stare.

  “It seems I came at a bad time,” he said, softly. “Our conversation will have to wait.”

  And then he walked away, disappearing through the shadows. His silhouette seemed to disperse and meld with the darkness.

  He’d freed me.

  I was free.

  The door opened with a groan, and the masked savages returned.

  My eyes slid to their corners as they reappeared, one by one, into the flickering light.

  O

  BROKEN

  Leid Koseling—;

  PATROL CRAFTS AND GUARDS HAD THE ABANDONED storehouse surrounded.

  Sanctum PB was already on the scene, but a group of Ara’s men held them back at the parking lot. Sirens flashed through the cold darkness of the city’s evening, and I watched our descent with trepidation. A lump had settled in my throat, persisting even when I swallowed.

  When we landed, Ara pulled the keys from the ignition and looked out at the swarmed storehouse. I could hear his breathing, shallow and rapid.

  “I hope this isn’t him,” he said.

  I murmured a generic line of assurance, knowing that it was. It didn’t take omniscience to gather that kind of intuition. My only hope was that Qaira and Tae were still alive. The lump in my throat was my conscience telling me that only fools hoped for things.

  That thought made my eyes heavy, pressure building in my forehead.

  No, don’t cry. Not here. Can’t scare the locals.

  Together, we stepped out of the craft.

  The crowd was a blur. Armed men stepped aside as we walked through the lot. Cameras flashed from the restricted zone— the media had seen us and were given enough fuel to spin a story—and we ducked, but it was too late.

  A group of soldiers gathered around the sealed iron doors of the storehouse, readying a ram. Unnecessary. “Awaiting orders,” said one, saluting Ara as he stepped into the shadows of the under-hang.

  “Have you heard anything?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  He motioned for them to move away, and then beckoned for me.

  I stepped up to the door and pressed my ear against it. What I heard made my heart flutter.

  Crying. Soft, whispered sobs.

  I stepped back, squinting. “Someone’s in there.”

  “Qaira?”

  “I don’t know. Someone. They’re distressed.” Ara pointed at the ram, but I caught his arm. “No, let me.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, making sure that we were out of public sight. “Go ahead.”

  The soldiers looked at each other, wondering what I was about to do. A moment later they gaped when I snapped the metal bolt that sealed the door and kicked it wide open. The door flew off the frame, adorning an indentation of my foot, and skidded away into the darkness. The air inside was hot, rancid from blood and sweat.

  Ara and his men poured in, guns aimed at the shadows.

  I stepped in after them, but everyone had frozen around the only working source of light. In front, Ara fell to his knees, hands against his head.

  I broke through the crowd, freezing next to him.

  There was Qaira, sitting on the floor cross-legged, surrounded by dead angels. Most of them were decapitated.

  A chair wrapped in barbed wire lay on its side, next to a pillar twined with chains. They led to Tae, naked and lifeless, cradled in her brother’s arms. Her hand was severed, wings ripped—not cut, but ripped—from her back, their loose black feathers floating atop pools of blood across the cement. Not a single patch of her skin was clean. She was a canvas of blue and purple bruises.

  I covered my mouth, unable to stop the tears this time.

  Qaira didn’t even look at us. He stared ahead, vacantly, rocking Tae as tears streamed down his face. He was broken.

  Everything was broken.

  O

  DANGER

  Yahweh Telei—;

  PAWN TO D4.

  Bishop to C5.

  Knight to C3.

  I sighed, watching Lucifer snuff my rook.

  He smiled. “Don’t be so hasty.”

  Pawn to C5.

  Bishop to G4.

  Pawn to C8.

  I took back my queen. “Check.”

  And as quickly as she came, she was murdered by a bishop. I wanted to cry.

  “You’re getting flustered,” said Lucifer. “Take some time to think before you move.”

  It was hard to think because I’d gotten less than four hours of sleep in two days. Reports, tours, presentations… I needed to hire an assistant or twelve.

  It was late in the evening and I should have been in bed, but Lucifer and I had little time to spend with each other during the day. These tiny night time get-togethers were all we could afford. So here we were, seated in his study, battling fatigue for a game of chess. A televised screen flashed current events on loop behind us as we sat at a marble table, framed b
y bookshelves. The scent of wicker hung in the air.

  I had showered twenty minutes ago, towel still around my neck. My hair was damp and this room was cooler than the rest of our estate, making me shiver.

  “You look really tired,” Lucifer noted. “We should stop.”

  “In the middle of a game? That’s sacrilege.”

  “What game?”

  I frowned.

  My ears pricked at the beep of an emergency report from the televised screen. We were watching Heaven’s channel, but Lucifer had programmed our station to stream Sanctum’s news as well, displayed as scrolling headlines in a column at the side. He was mostly interested in their economic news. But then my eyes caught sight of one headline in particular:

  ANGEL TERRORISTS KIDNAP REGENT AND HIS SISTER. TAE ELTRUAN FOUND DEAD AT SCENE.

  “W-What?” I stammered, watching the headline scroll to the top, vanishing. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I had imagined seeing that. Surely that couldn’t have—

  But there it was again.

  TAE ELTRUAN SLAIN IN LOWER SANCTUM AFTER ANGEL TERRORIST ATTACK.

  “Lucifer,” I gasped.

  He glanced at the screen, and then his eyes widened.

  When that headline disappeared, too, Lucifer stood and reached for the remote, honing in on Sanctum PB. The screen switched to a live recording of an anchor in front of an industrial-looking facility, sirens glaring behind her.

  We listened to her story, neither of us uttering a single word. When the live footage ended and a discussion started between two other anchors at Sanctum PB headquarters, Lucifer shut off the television. He sat there, stupefied, staring at the blank screen. So did I.

  Without another word, he left the table and hurried for the door.

  “Where are you going?” I called, starting after him.

  “My office. Go to yours as well and check the status on each of your employees with diplomatic access.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  “I need to identify those brutes before Eroqam shows up on our doorstep.”

  Lucifer was right. It was only a matter of time before grief evanesced to retribution, and we would need answers at the ready.

  But then I realized that Tae was dead, and I froze in the doorway. My legs felt wobbly and a wave of sadness overwhelmed me. Hand to my chest, I looked at the ground, knowing we would never share a laugh or cup of tea again.

  Tae.

  X

  SPIRALING DOWNWARD

  THE SOUND OF OUR ESTATE DOOR CLOSING SHOOK me from a fugue. Murmured voices grew louder as Leid and Yahweh appeared in the dining room, accompanied by several angel guards.

  I sized up the guards, a little surprised that the kid had brought them. Maybe he was afraid of me.

  Yahweh’s eyes lingered on us, sadness etched across his face. I hadn’t slept in three days and looked like complete shit. But sleep was impossible when every dream was a recount of Tae’s death.

  He noticed my stare on the guards icing over, and told them to stand in the hall while we spoke.

  Everyone was a suspect, even the kid. Although I really doubted he had anything to do with this, people always had the tendency to surprise you. The guards, on the other hand, were prime suspects. They had diplomatic access and heard private conversations all the time. Without a doubt the masked murderers had been guards. As for Micah Triev…

  “How are you?” whispered Yahweh, taking a seat across the table.

  I didn’t answer him. He already knew how I was. Instead my gaze lowered to the cup of tea, cold from neglect.

  “Thank you for coming,” said Ara, eyes searching the hall beyond. “Where’s your father?”

  “He… thought it was best not to come,” said Yahweh, shifting nervously. “He assumed no one would want him here.”

  “Absence fortifies guilt.”

  “Absence fortifies self-preservation,” said Yahweh, narrowing his eyes. It was a look I’d never seen, and it didn’t suit him. “I’m here to clear his name.”

  “If Lucifer already thinks we’re going to kill him, then I’d say you’re off to a bad start.”

  Leid handed Yahweh a cup of steaming tea, and he nodded thanks. Ara reclined in his seat, crossing his arms. He waited for me to say something but I didn’t, and so he led, “What do you have?”

  Yahweh set a folder down on the table, pushing it toward Ara. “Take a look. That’s everything we have on Micah Triev.” As we opened it and sifted through its contents, he said, “He was hired at the Plexus seven months ago as a diaphoresis specimen processor. It was a Level One job.”

  “Level Ones have diplomatic statuses?” asked Leid.

  Yahweh shook his head. “Only Level Fours. One of our Toxicologists reported his access badge stolen three days ago, the morning after Micah and his men kidnapped Qaira and Tae.”

  Ara set the folder down. “Where is he now?”

  “We don’t know. The badge was scanned at Heaven’s border that night, and since then he’s disappeared. Hasn’t shown up to work, and his apartment in Crylle is empty. Our agents are hunting for him, though, so it’s only a matter of time before he’s found.”

  “When he is, I want Heaven to hand him over to Sanctum,” said Ara. “He attacked our people, on our ground. We should be given prosecution rights.”

  “That isn’t up to me,” said Yahweh, sipping tea. “I’ll make sure to ask Lucifer when I return to Crylle. But I’m fairly certain he won’t have any problem with that.” He glanced at me. “Do you remember what Micah looked like?”

  “Why?”

  That was the first thing I’d said in eight hours, and the sound of my own voice startled me.

  “The only picture that we have to go on is one taken two hundred years ago when he boarded the Ark. He has no family, obviously, and we don’t know who his contacts are. Level One scientists are not required to have picture-form identities to process specimens, so anything you can remember would be very helpful.”

  “You might want to change that procedure,” said Leid.

  Yahweh nodded. “We will. This won’t ever happen again, I promise.”

  One time was too many.

  But I couldn’t remember Micah’s face. Not entirely. Every time I thought back to that night, tried to recall its events, everything got fuzzy and my chest tightened up. The only thing I still remembered clearly was the way Tae had looked at me. The one thing I wished to forget.

  Yahweh noticed my distress, looking sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you that. We’ll manage.”

  “He had a limp,” I said. “That’s all I can remember.”

  “A limp?”

  “Yeah, he walked funny. One of his feet was messed up—turned in, I think. It looked like a birth defect rather than an injury.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Suddenly, the room got small. Yahweh was still saying something but I couldn’t hear him and my vision tunneled. I sighed, trying to catch my breath, but the harder I tried the less I could breathe.

  Leid sensed my unease and reached for me, but I could barely see her and instead I stood from the table and left the dining room without a word. I heard my name called several times as I hurried down the hall, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t stop.

  I couldn’t stop.

  ***

  Yahweh found me at the port, half an hour later.

  I was seated at a vacant dock, staring at the angel craft on the other side of the hangar. Yahweh’s private vessel was revved and ready, Heaven-bound.

  The guards dispersed and headed for the craft. He sat beside me, and for a while we didn’t say anything—just stared into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Qaira, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Words can’t really express how sorry I am. Tae was a lovely, lovely woman and I’ll miss her dearly.”

  Yahweh’s apologies didn’t move me. “Commander Raith sends his regards.”

  He looked at me. “What?”

  “Micah Triev
said that. His men cut off Tae’s hand, and then he said that.”

  Yahweh only stared.

  “He used that inhibitor dart to subjugate me. He knew enough about my ability to place Tae exactly within range.”

  “Qaira, I don’t—”

  “And Micah is missing without a trace? A nobody lab technician, without any recent photo identification, and none of you know what he looks like. That all sounds very convenient.”

  Yahweh’s face twisted up. “Lucifer had nothing to do with this.”

  “How do you know that? You really think he’d tell you?”

  “We were playing chess when we saw the news! He was just as shocked as me. You really think he would do something like that? Really?”

  I didn’t know. Three days ago, probably not. Brutality wasn’t ever his bag, but all the pieces fit so well together. The only way Micah’s plan had gone so perfectly was because he knew things about me that no one else did. Except for Lucifer and Yahweh. The kid was out, so that left one person.

  “There are plenty of other ways he could have obtained that information.”

  “Oh?”

  “He could have hacked the Plexus’ private database.”

  I bristled. “Why would that information be in your database?”

  Yahweh looked away.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you. Why am I in your database?”

  “Because you are able to explode people’s heads on whim. That information is not public, but we’ve documented it because it’s the most astonishing medical anomaly we’ve ever seen.”

  “And you have that sedative on there, too? What, in case I need to be put down?”

  “Qaira, no. Calm down.”

  “Calm down? You’ve practically written a guide on how to destroy me!”

  “It’s not accessible to anyone.”

  “Except for that vendetta-fueled psycho!”

  Yahweh sighed. “Fine, I concede. It was all my fault. I’ll take down that information as soon as I get back to my office. But please believe that Lucifer had nothing to do with this.”