The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (36 page)

She slammed the gardening shovel—not a knife—in the dirt and pulled at the soil and threw it until she puked.

Gwen wiped her mouth and leaned over the side. Her tears fell like raindrops, which she only wished could heal her Marcel, who lay at the bottom.

Boreas City

Boreas, Underground North

2,500 meters deep

The chants ended, as did the drumbeat in Connor’s head. He stood at the hall’s rim. How he got there, he wasn’t sure.

Easier to block Antosha from here
, he thought. He refocused his energy in the ZPF, pushing through Antosha’s field. He was so strong. Connor didn’t know how long he could hold his position. He found his heart was thundering in his chest. But he couldn’t stand down, not now, not until he knew Aera and Nero had obtained the Lorum from the City of Eternal Darkness. Then he’d help his father end the war and restore power where it belonged—with the people of the underground.

The lights in the hall’s trellis darkened while the stage panels disappeared. Dr. Shrader’s stasis tank rose up on a new platform. Indigo lights shone over the stage, and the applause rumbled like a tide. Antosha scurried around the vertical tank, along with three medical bots.

In the center hung Dr. Shrader, his arms extended and bent upward at the elbows, his body naked but for his white shorts, one leg slightly bent, the other straight. His eyes were closed, his head tilted down. On either side of the stasis tank, two robotic arms mixed synisms on suspended workbenches. They grabbed one vial and dipped it into liquids, twisted on a rubber stopper, shook the vial, and moved on to the next.

Antosha dipped under one of the robotic arms and dashed to a phosphorescent-blue circle, center stage. He turned to the audience and raised his arms, then spun around and guided thirty workstations as if he were an orchestra conductor. The workstations formed an oval around the stasis tank, each topped with helixes, renditions of Dr. Shrader, and synisms labeled by name, size, and function.

The holograms shifted as if timed.

Connor fortified his field in the quantum universe.
Antosha may not enter
—

He felt a sensation, as if electricity ran through his body. After the jolt, Connor found he couldn’t reconnect to the ZPF!

Antosha must’ve been coordinating the awakening of Dr. Shrader and blocking him simultaneously. Connor watched Antosha onstage, his movements effortless, skillful. How could he manage it, when it took all of Connor’s focus to consciously manipulate the quantum waves in the ZPF? What skills did Antosha have that Father did not, that Connor did not? And what knowledge, if any, had Father withheld from him?

Antosha adjusted the data and the streams. The holograms disappeared, replaced by a countdown: five, four, three, two, one …

“Initiate Regenesis!”

The crowd raved. Connor couldn’t hear himself think.

The robotic arms latched their tweezers around the stasis tank’s lid, and the crimson bulb at the top glowed green. The lid jumped with a
pop
and a
snap
. White smoke puffed from the sides and engulfed the top of the tank, yellowing as it rose. The crowd stood. Shouts of “
Bravo!
” and “
Best I’ve ever seen!
” and “
Antosha!
” filled the hall.

Connor still couldn’t access the ZPF, much less disrupt Antosha’s field.

He tried to send a distress signal to Father, Pirro, Verena, Nero, Charlene, and any and all BP who could hear him so they would know he’d lost control in Faraway Hall.

He had no idea if they heard his message.

One of the robotic arms positioned a tube near the top of the stasis tank and prepared the synisms—some microscopic, others as large as stones.

Applause resumed with the light show in the trellis that overhung the hall.

Antosha stood still, head slightly bowed, while the holograms above the workstations transformed and medical bots scurried to and fro, ensuring the correct trays shifted to the correct locations.

The robotic arms craned to the sides of the tank. Lasers shot from their tips, through the membrane, ice, and vacuum that surrounded Dr. Shrader.

Connor’s vision blurred and shifted …

… A woman, dirty and disheveled, ran through cornstalks and screamed and slammed her arms into a keeper bot before she and the cornstalks and the bot disappeared.

Connor turned. He stood upon a gray cement slab, the number thirteen in chalky white beneath his bare, frozen feet. Words from the “Song of the Jubilee” washed through his mind:
Our scientists searching, sealing,
healing Reassortment sorrows.

Within the seven Granville panels that surrounded the seven walls of Reassortment Hall, Chancellor Masimovian raised his arms. The crowd from the Valley of Masimovian sang and cheered:
Giving faith to our tomorrows, when we watch the sun arising.
The glass enclosure rose around him so fast he couldn’t react. It stretched up as far as he could see. He pressed his hands against the glass, pounded at it, kicked it until his blood smeared the enclosure. The platform rose, and all he heard now were the shrieks from the pulley system and the puff from the airlocks that opened above him. He gasped and held his breath as the enclosure shot into the maglev tube, through the earth. He reached the surface.

Sunrise flowed over him upon the Island of Reverie.

This cannot be
, Connor thought. Yet the colorful daybreak swept over his body, along with the cool morning air as the enclosure descended around him.

Leaves and flowers and bushes spread around him. He looked up at the true sky for the first time. He moved his arms and legs, trying not to breathe. He knew Reassortment would consume him, same as it had his older brother Hans.

He let out his breath and took in measured sips, awaiting certain death. But then, this was an illusion, it had to be—the island, his bare feet, his shirtless body, the “Song of the Jubilee,” the trees, the leaves, all projected into his mind.

He fought with his mind, expanding his consciousness in the ZPF.

He gasped …

… And now Connor felt the fabric of his chandler garb, back inside the confines of Faraway Hall, though he stood beneath the chancellor’s booth, on the opposite side from where he’d originally entered. Janzers roamed everywhere. He ignored them and turned to the stage, to Antosha, who still stood in the phosphorescent circle, facing the audience.

Connor tried to access the ZPF and could not. He was still blocked.

The audience went silent and leaned forward. Whispers floated over the hall.

INCISIONS COMPLETE hovered above the workstations. Two alloy rods with heated tips flowed through the newly created holes and curled underneath Dr. Shrader’s extended arms.

INITIATE MELTING SEQUENCE rotated above the workstations, and an X-ray view of Dr. Shrader appeared. The grid above the stasis tank flashed, and a wave of heat swept through the hall, followed by frosty winds.

The frozen matter that surrounded Dr. Shrader melted and circled through the drains beneath him. The rubber simultaneously inflated along the alloy rods and wrapped around his arms as if they were tendrils holding his lifeless body.

The bots eased Dr. Shrader to the ground. Overhead, the stasis tank opened, and synisms swarmed him.

A golden mist surrounded the tank. Blue pulses radiated on the robotic arms that operated overhead as they dipped and flipped and released synisms on Antosha’s command.

Synisms engulfed Dr. Kole Shrader’s body completely.

Antosha raised his arms above his head.

“We’re moving to
full
regeneration!”

The audience stirred again, their voices like a seismic event through the earth.

The synisms that covered Dr. Shrader shifted from indigo to yellow to red, then fell, lifeless, to the tank’s bottom. Robotic arms dropped another batch that spun over him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Antosha said, “Kole Shrader has a
pulse!
”

Connor couldn’t hear anything.

Antosha manipulated the dials above the workstations, and another wave of synisms dropped over Dr. Shrader.

This batch fluttered alloy wings like thousands of butterflies glittering in the bright electric-like hues from the robotic arms.

The golden mist above Dr. Shrader cleared, and the lights over his stasis tank turned white. He lay curled on the ground, his white shorts soaked, one arm over the other, eyes closed, mouth narrow, chest lifting and falling.

Antosha ordered the medical bots to secure Dr. Shrader to a legless suspended gurney. They attached tubes, wires, needles, and straps to his body, and Dr. Shrader’s beating heart overtook the workstations. The crowd’s pitch turned frantic:

Connor found himself mesmerized with the rest of the crowd but snapped out of his malaise, as he knew he’d overstayed his welcome in Boreas. He fled under rainbows of champagne and through a wave of noise. His head throbbed again with a drumbeat pounding through the ZPF …

… And now he dashed over the soil, between pine trees, the roar of the crowd replaced by the serenity of a stream, as smooth as pearls, with rocks that glimmered under the morning sun.

Something pinched in his neck.

A twitch spread from his back to his arms.

Connor ran faster than a hare, feeling relief in movement. The trees passed in his peripheral vision. The drumbeat pounded in his mind.

He arrived at a field full of wildflowers and took high steps through it, then crossed another stream, still sprinting. Figures waited on the field’s far end, distant but moving in, closer and closer.

Janzers.

Connor dashed away from them, but the pain in his neck had moved along his spine like lye dripping through his body. He gasped, wheezed, and coughed. He stopped running and puked.

A full Janzer division surrounded Connor. When he looked up at them, he understood he was still in Boreas City, near Faraway Hall, paralyzed by a Reassortment baton strike, his wrists cuffed, a Converse Collar around his neck.

Inaccessible Region

Underground West

2,500 meters deep

Whether it was fear or courage that drove him through the misty, lightless tunnels outside the City of Eternal Darkness, Nero didn’t know; but he did fear death, and he kept running hour after hour, though he thought he would collapse. Aera prodded him as she had in the Palaestran sewers, through the labyrinth, through the damaged territory with what seemed endless tributaries of hollowed, heated stone.

The Janzers pursued, but Aera seemed to know their movements. She shifted to a new tunnel whenever one emerged. By now, Nero feared the burn in his body more than the Janzers. Lactic acid took hold of his muscles and wouldn’t let go.

He struggled to keep pace.

Aera spun her boot through a Janzer’s visor, and Nero slung a shuriken into another. They shifted to another tunnel. The Janzers couldn’t execute their elliptical attack formations in these narrow passages, which extended for hundreds of kilometers through the Western Inaccessible Region. Aera broke them down easier than she could in either Permutation Crypt or the City of Eternal Darkness. From time to time, Nero heard her flip and scream, along with the sound of her diamond sword swinging.

Now she kicked a Janzer into Nero. He broke its wrist and spun it to the ground, then thrust his sword into its head.

His arms burned from exhaustion.

Another Janzer spun around him.

“Down!” Aera said.

Nero dropped. She cartwheeled over him, roundhouse-kicked the approaching Janzer, and slung three shuriken into the next wave.

They switched tunnels.

On and on they traveled. When Nero couldn’t rise on his own, Aera helped him to his feet. They turned left, and left, and left and climbed a limestone cliff. Nero couldn’t tell how much farther the rock face ascended, but finally he froze, unable to move.

Did she not tire? Nero pondered. Did she not sleep?

Aera injected sustenance synisms and uficilin into the synsuit receiver near his forearm. He felt a surge of energy and hope. He found his way to the crest, where he crawled with Aera through a tunnel as hot as magma, which smelled like burning coal. He crawled and crawled, pushing his diamond-gloved hands to the limestone. They turned right, right, and right again, then dropped into a tunnel, as dark as the rest, but this one smelled of moss and musk.

Aera kicked through an alloy grill that opened to a wider tunnel, where fiery bioluminescence streaked down the walls.

Perspiration condensed on Nero’s visor. The air was suffocating, as hot as the Naturan spas but without the pleasure. Blasts from pulse rifles crisscrossed ahead, and Aera slid against the wall. She guided Nero to a new set of passages, narrower than the rest. They turned and twisted left, right, and up around a spiral limestone cave.

Nero felt dizzy. How did she know the way? How could she remember?

“Nero!”

He had dropped to his knees and smashed into the limestone wall, where he lay shivering. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet.

“You’re exhausted.”

She lifted his visor and forced him to his feet, half-conscious. She seemed like a shadow to him when she injected the sustenance synisms and uficilin into his receiver. He awakened as if from a nightmare. Aera slung his arm over her shoulder and forced him through a limestone tunnel surrounded by silver-blue bioluminescence. She slashed at a set of chains that hung against the rock. An alloy grill broke loose, allowing their passage.

“Where’re you leading us?” Nero said, finding his voice.

The air felt cooler here and smelled like the ocean.

“Here,” she said. “Slide with me.”

A waterfall rolled down the limestone, alive with lavender bioluminescence. Nero lifted his visor, then reached out with his hands and threw the water over his face, savoring the cold. He wished he could drink it, for his mouth was as dry as the Earth’s core.