The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (9 page)

The third wore a tinted visor. Whether it was a man or woman’s face, Isabelle couldn’t tell, but this Polemon moved differently than the rest, faster than the Janzers, with a destructive acumen she’d last witnessed in the attack on the Port of Life. The only explanation was an ancient use of the ZPF in combat, outlawed by Chancellor Masimovian. Was this the BP leader who had taken Jeremiah and Johann’s place? The Polemon flipped the Janzer, slashed a shuriken into his visor, and spun him into his division, disrupting its timing.

Then the Janzers had discerned the BP’s weakness: they hadn’t secured the synsuits properly. The second and third wave of Janzers swarmed the invaders.

A fourth fighter’s wrist turned into a geyser of blood and bone. Murray Olyorna, banished from the RDD, a traitor to his people.
He received what he deserved
, she thought as a Janzer sliced his body in half.

The BP’s defeat seemed at hand, for after the Janzers killed Murray, they’d surrounded the other three. Not even the fastest Polemon could elude so many blows.

Isabelle’s mouth opened wide. A burst of telekinetic energy had escaped from the whelp. He’d slaughtered most of the Janzers, and those he didn’t lay in pools of blood, barely alive. The view darkened now, and while the Janzer host to whom she connected had lost his legs and arms, he had heard all in the cell. Zorian entered with Jeremiah. An argument, then a fight ensued.

Zorian admitted he’d deceived her. “I sent that bitch Lutetia right into the trap beneath Navita, and you guys couldn’t even finish her off.”

She thought on this. Though Zorian deftly shielded his thoughts from her, she didn’t have a reason to distrust him: he
did
poison his father with
E. barrier
, which had blocked Jeremiah’s connection with the ZPF and enabled her to apprehend him. Part of her agreement with Zorian included full immunity for him, though he broke the accord when he disappeared. He resurfaced later on at the Block during Isabelle’s surgical search in Piscator. He had led her to Hans’s clandestine unit where she found Maribel, Hans’s illegal eternal partner, hanging dead from a ceiling fan. After that, interrogations with him had led her to Navita, but Arnao and the Janzers had gathered intel independent of him. The invasion failed, she assumed, because she waited too long, giving the BP a chance to escape.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

What she did know was that Zorian could not be allowed to roam freely with the intel he’d accessed working with her. She would take steps to locate him.

The speech muffled when the Janzer began to lose consciousness. An explosion sent flames over his body, protected by his synsuit.

Isabelle withdrew. The fire and smoke and shrapnel disappeared and gave way to the white phosphorescent light and chlorine stench of the infirmary. “I’m finished.” The Janzer nodded and sank back onto his bed.

Isabelle and Lieutenant Arnao exited the infirmary and walked through the Crypt’s tunnels.

“Did you ID the traitors?” Arnao said.

“Three out of four of them.”

“No way did
four
Polemon wrest Jeremiah Selendia from the Crypt. The Janzer’s mind must’ve fogged or you didn’t connect—”

Isabelle stopped and turned. “I don’t err in my searches, Lieutenant. I blame you for this as much as these incompetent soldiers. Don’t mistake my mercy for forgiveness. It’s only your long years of servitude to me that have saved you.” Arnao had, in fact, served Isabelle mostly well, first as a Courier of the Chancellor, then in the Department of Communications in various roles. His loyalty to her was undeniable.

Arnao raised his head. “You told me to secure Hammerton Hall. I
secured
Hammerton Hall—”

“Fine job, Arnao, I guess you missed the part when the captain destroyed the chancellor’s evening.”

“The Phanes Beltway—”

“You shouldn’t have pulled the Janzers from the hall.”

“The city would’ve been defenseless, and we didn’t know the breadth or length of the attack.”

“It is unwise to question one’s superiors, Lieutenant.”

Arnao’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Yes, my lady.”

Isabelle spun and entered a capsule in a maglev tube, one which led to Masimovian Tower.

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

“How goes the investigation?” Atticus said from the terrace that overlooked Masimovian Center, facing North Archway and Artemis Square.

Lady Isabelle crossed the Grand Salon and approached him, observing the crowd of Phaneans that moved about in the Granville day. “The attack was the work of four Polemon,” she said. “The first I can’t identify, the second, Cornelius Selendia, son of Jeremiah Selendia—”

He whipped his head around to her. “A Polemon you lost—”

“Whom you wouldn’t allow me to kill.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “Murray Olyorna, a former RDD scientist on Captain Barão’s team in Palaestra.”

“Another Polemon you lost, and I didn’t give a shit what you did with Olyorna.” Atticus lifted a golden carafe and poured a glass of wine, which he offered her. She refused. He raised an eyebrow.

“And Lord Nero Silvana, Captain Barão’s—”

“
Striker?
”

Isabelle nodded.

“What evidence do you have?” Atticus sipped the wine.

Isabelle moved closer to the balustrade and put her hands upon the railing. She looked out on the city. She’d not allow the BP, or Atticus, to destroy it all. She turned to the chancellor. “I connected to a Janzer survivor. I saw all four of them. And I just connected to a Janzer post in the RDD. Nero scheduled a visit with his eternal partner in the RDD infirmary the evening of the Bicentennial, but never arrived—”

“Apprehend him, immediately.” Atticus lit a cigar.

Isabelle adjusted two of her rings and observed her nails, colored lavender by synisms to match her eyes. A touch too dark. “He’s disappeared from Marstone’s sight, likely as not with the BP as we speak—”

Atticus wiped away a bit of synthetic leaf stuck to his lip. He puffed on his cigar. “The strategist, Lady Verena—”

“Iglehart, yes, she remains in a medically induced coma, guarded by Janzers.” Isabelle poured her own glass of liqueur. “When she awakens, I recommend we send her to Farino Prison.”

“Agreed,” Atticus said. “What of Zorian Selendia, has he made contact?”

“No.” She’d not reveal his potential betrayal of her. The chancellor had told her not to trust him. She’d not give him this victory of her humiliation.

“How will you secure him?”

Isabelle pushed her forefingers through her lavender hair, setting it on her right shoulder, wishing she stood upon this terrace with Antosha at her side. One day, it would be so. Antosha had executed his plan during the Bicentennial as masterfully as he’d assured her he would, and their catspaw Gwendolyn Horvearth had played her part well. Isabelle wouldn’t doubt Antosha again. He’d see to it she and he rose, first in Beimeni, then to the surface of the Earth. The thought lifted her lips as she turned to Atticus. “I’ve supplied his genome to the tenehounds and sent them out with ten Janzer divisions to track him down.”

“You seem pleased with yourself.” Atticus pressed his lips together and seethed. “I’m taking an awfully big risk on your gamble—”

“No more than we took on your call with Captain Barão.”

She turned away from him.
He
risked the ruin of his grand evening the night of the Bicentennial, not her. She’d arrested the traitorous captain prior to the celebration, securing him to a holding cell in the Department of Peace. She’d requested a judicial and ministerial hearing, but the chancellor had denied her and let him leave.

She’d also tracked the captain to Silkscape City after he dared access records in Marstone’s Database. Isabelle implanted the
T
, a burn mark that replaced his strike team tattoo upon his forearm, which would forever designate him a traitor to the commonwealth. She would’ve seen Captain Barão escorted to Farino Prison. Yet the chancellor had let him leave Lovereal Territory and return to Phanes for the Bicentennial.

“I’ve taken more than Brody’s life—” Atticus said.

“He knows about the Crypt! He knows about Jeremiah! We should’ve ended him with the majority on our side.”

“Who will believe a murderer?”

Atticus turned again to the center, and Isabelle turned with him. Steam rose up from the fountains below, and the Granville sun cast a summer glow over North Archway and the tall white palm trees in Artemis Square as it dipped below the horizon. Beimenians laughed and chatted, moving here and there in Masimovian Center below them, neophytes shadowing masters, eternal partners arm in arm on the marble paths.

“Come here,” Atticus said, not unkindly.

She angled toward him, leaning over the balustrade.

“Do you see the ecstasy I’ve brought to this underground paradise?”

Isabelle tried her best not to roll her eyes.

“A world that at one time was so filled with violence and hatred that the scholars placed our probability of extinction at ninety-five percent. And now,” he swept his arm toward Masimovian Center Building #7, “we’re overseers of the greatest society in the history of mankind.”

“Now we wage a forever war,” Isabelle said. “We’re stretched too far, too thin, with too few Janzers to secure this Great Commonwealth.”

“My lady, see my eyes.”

She looked into the maroon of his eyes, so familiar after one hundred seventy years of shared service, and willed him to let down his guard.

“When great men age,” he said, and seeing her expression added, “oh yes, we still age, not visibly, but emotionally, metaphysically, and when we do there comes a time when we desire more of our being.” He leaned against the balustrade. “What will the people speak if I die? Will they remember the Magnificent Masimovian or the Masimovian turned soft? The Masimovian who, in his early eternal life, was weakened by a group of terrorists who knew not what they opposed or what they believed?”

He stroked his goatee. “I have no doubt you will lay waste to the terrorists.” He leaned closer toward her. “You will find their enclaves and destroy them, and Captain Barão will serve out the rest of his life in the Lower Level, no longer a threat to our commonwealth.”

He kissed her neck. “What strikes me odd is this. Barão is nothing if not noble … noble to the end. I couldn’t risk exposing his involvement with the BP, so great was his reputation with the people and the teams.” Atticus paused. “He chooses the evening of our greatest celebration to assault his eternal partner’s lover?”

Atticus puffed on his cigar and blew out smoke rings. He tried to pretend he didn’t seek entry to Isabelle’s consciousness, but she could sense him sneaking around in the ZPF. She thought only of Brody’s hearing after the Bicentennial, the z-disk she prepared, the courier she assigned, her pleasure at his exile, though she would have preferred an execution.

“These events have left their mark in the people’s psyche, most indelibly, I’m afraid,” he said.

She turned to him. “It’s interesting how often nobility and insanity cross paths, isn’t it?”

“Is that all you have to add?”

“What more could there be?”

Atticus narrowed his eyes. “No matter, I suppose. Captain Broden Barão shattered his reputation, and Chief Justice Carmen assured us no one will ever pick up the pieces. It’s not how I would have preferred we deal with him, but it is done, and thoroughly.”

“The Lower Level is just punishment for his treachery against you,” Isabelle agreed.

Atticus extended his arm, and Isabelle eased under it. They embraced near the balustrade. She clutched her glass as if it were the last one she would ever hold. For a heartbeat she enjoyed the chancellor’s warmth, reminded of why she had once loved him. She sipped the liqueur and set the glass on a marble pedestal, then placed a finger under Atticus’s chin and pulled him to her. She kissed him, sensually, and snuggled her cheek to his.

“Of course,” she said with a smile, “should his heirs perform in the exams, we can still claim them for our own.”

Harpoon VR

Candidate Café

“In there?” Pasha lifted his left eyebrow. His lower lip quivered. “You want to hang out
in there?
”

The flashing lights and thumping music in the virtual corridor intimidated Oriana as much as Pasha, though she would never admit it. She turned and glanced back at the exit, an electric-appearing door that hung between four neon blue fractal trees. She stared for what seemed an eternity, then turned to Pasha. “We have to go. We should meet candidates, make friends—”

“You mean you want to hang out with Nathan Storm,” Pasha said. He fidgeted the way he did when he didn’t know the answer to one of the Harpoon queries, and a strange sense of triumph took Oriana by surprise.

“C’mon,” she said. She strutted down the corridor.

“O?”

She kept walking.

“O, wait for me!”

They crossed under an archway labeled CANDIDATE CAFÉ and stepped into a massive spherical hall filled with hundreds of thousands, even millions of candidates. They were everywhere: carrying glasses, climbing staircases, sipping drinks, conversing, and activating Granville spheres and panels. Oriana tuned out the music. She thought about asking Pasha if he still wanted to turn back.

She felt more comfortable when she spied Gaia. The House Rastedes candidate didn’t walk so much as sway. Her long, thick curly hair looped down her back and up over her right shoulder, tied at the bottom with a satin sash. Her cheeks looked full, almost chubby, around her small nose and lips. She whispered in one boy’s ear, grabbed another’s crotch, giggled, then spun out of their orbit, her floral gown floating around her.

Gaia kissed Oriana on each cheek. “I’m so glad your developers let you come.”

Oriana had explained to her after the last class how stern the Summersets could be with their endless list of rules, particularly on engaging with Harpoon candidates. Don’t insult anyone. Don’t lose control. Don’t be snotty. Don’t share stories. Don’t trust them. Don’t help them. If she listened to the Summersets, she’d have no friends at all!