The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (15 page)

And Connor
was
still alive. It was best not to dwell on things out of his control, he was learning.

He left the weight room and went to the lake, alone. He lifted his Granville sphere from his pocket and held it. It looked like a polished gemstone the size of a walnut. It had been so long since he’d last activated it. The BP had removed his neurochip prior to his departure from Portage Citadel, for his, and the BP’s safety. Here in Blackeye Cavern, his father had installed protections from Marstone, so Murray had reinserted it. Connor would need it to train with Aera, Murray had assured him. Of course, there was another reason Connor missed his connection to the ZPF.

He activated the sphere, and his mother’s likeness appeared before him, her reddish-gold and brown hair curling inside and outside her hooded sapphire cape, her white gown flowing over her bare feet. Sometimes when he looked at her, he’d see the Janzer’s sword that had killed her flash through her gut and across her head.
Save yourself, Connor.
When he’d lived in Piscator Territory, he sometimes heard her voice in his head, the way she’d sounded in the ZPF.
Save yourself.
He neither saw her murder, nor heard her voice today, for he wouldn’t again allow that vision of the past to burst into his mind, through the ZPF. He had better control than he did before he left Piscator.

“You saved me, Mother,” he said. “And now I’ve got to save Father, for you and for us all.” He paused as if he searched for the right words. “I’m going to become a skilled telepath, just like you, and Hans, and Zorian. And the Janzers won’t be able to hurt me then. And I’ll help the Front. I’ll end the war, just like you wanted.” His mother’s smile seemed to brighten. Connor deactivated the sphere, swiped his eyes, and placed the sphere on his towel on the ground.

He swam fifty-five laps in the lake. After he finished, he sat half in the water, half out, upon the gravely shoreline. Sometimes, like now, he found himself longing for his older brother Hans, for their expeditions in the Gulf of Yeuron, their chats about life in Underground South, and their trips to Piscator Square. Though he’d never admit it to Murray or Arty, a part of him also missed Zorian. His eldest brother would, at times, secretly and egregiously show Connor how he moved things with his mind. Connor couldn’t figure it out. He wondered what else Zorian might be able to teach him about the ZPF, were he with the Front.

Connor wiped his face, clearing his head. He closed his eyes and took steady breaths. When he opened his eyes, he connected to the ZPF, seeing the energy within the universe’s substructure. He tried to disturb the water, the stones, and the sand below. He couldn’t. He exhaled, then lifted himself out of the lake, patted the gravel off his hands, dried himself, and put on a fresh bodysuit.

Soon he would have his father back, and all the answers he sought about the ZPF, his family’s legacy, his mother, Zorian, Hans, and the Liberation Front.

They lacked but one critical piece of the intelligence required to execute the raid and free his father—the schematics of Permutation Crypt. Aera’s abilities meant nothing if she didn’t understand its structure and function. Pirro was offering thousands of benaris to any man or woman who brought forward information on the Crypt’s layout. When Connor had asked why they didn’t have Captain Barão get it for them, Pirro had laughed and said the captain was the kind of man who needed to reach his own conclusions.

Connor made his way to the simulation room, where Aera worked him almost daily. When she wasn’t around, he trained in there with Murray. Presently, she hung from the ceiling in a Harpoon harness, head bowed, eyes closed. She looked the way a spider might while hanging from a string of its web. Her lips moved, but no noise escaped, as if she whispered to the gods. Bioluminescent water trickled down the granite walls around them. The water, pumped up from the commonwealth’s coolant system, provided some temperature control for what would otherwise be a place hotter and more humid than the tropics upon the surface. Even so, Connor always left the room drenched in sweat.

Murray activated a workstation. “Up you go, kid.” He strapped Connor into a harness. Connor’s world blurred …

… When it reformed, he stood in a Janzer synsuit in a shallow stream that flowed over his boots. Alloy walls surrounded him. He passed dimmed lightbulbs every few meters. The air smelled of burnt hair and sewage.

Connor lowered the visor and filtered the air. “What is this?”

Our best simulation of Permutation Crypt
,
based on Hans’s z-disk and what little information our spies have brought forward.
Aera’s voice in Connor’s head, without Marstone’s interference.

“The water?”

To slow you down.

Connor heard splashes behind him. He activated his night vision, and a green hue overtook the corridor. Murray rushed forward in a Janzer synsuit. The corridor blackened. A maroon light flickered.
Sker, sker, sker.
The sounds of an unwinding chain echoed through the corridor.

“Down!” Connor said.

An arched blade swung over them, and they rolled.

“What was that?” Connor said. It looked like a pendulum, but it was too dark to be sure.

Murray scrabbled through the murky water. “Don’t know. Our information is limited.”

Focus on what we do know. Uploading layout.

An intricately woven labyrinth spread out before them. Connor extended his consciousness and examined pathways leading into and out of forks and alleys. In some ways, it was similar to the Polemon passageways.

The outlines are an accurate representation of the Crypt, from Hans’s z-disk. Most internal walls are simulated, based on probability algorithms.

“Which way do I go?” Connor said.

When in doubt, turn left.

“Why left?”

It may lead to a solution.

“Why not right?”

An ancient writer once assured this, and you shouldn’t question his wisdom. Shut up now, please.

Connor and Murray moved back-to-back, pulse guns in hands. They dipped through the putrid water, left, left, left, over and over and over, for hours, it seemed, but with no end to the darkness. A flash of maroon, and the blade returned. It whizzed between them, and they dived into the water toward the walls. Connor reacted almost as fast as Murray nowadays, a significant change from when Murray had first rescued him in Beimeni River.

A Janzer’s foot smashed into Connor’s chest. He splashed backward. By the time Murray dispatched the Janzer with one clean shot, Connor was back on his feet.

The Janzers are efficient killers because in battle they can act with a single consciousness, with the speed of many strikers and aeras, the minds of many strategists.

A full division emerged out of the void and rotated into attack formation. They discharged their pulse guns, lighting up the corridor. Connor and Murray fell back around the corner.

To hunt the Janzers, you must think like them
.

The Janzers turned the corner. Murray whipped around, and Connor spun him by the arm into the Janzer formation. Connor fell back.

To defeat the Janzers, you must operate in tandem.

Streaks of pulse-gun fire seared his night vision.

Connor drew his diamond sword and brought it forward as a Janzer’s sword came down upon Murray.

Murray swung out of the way, jumped at the wall, spun off, and shattered a Janzer’s visor with his foot, while Connor cleaved another’s neck.

To kill the Janzers, you must disrupt their rhythm.

Two Janzers closed in on Connor, and he slung his sword forward. One of them grabbed his wrist and twisted him down in the water. The other brought down a perfectly coordinated killing stroke, blocked by Murray.

Connor broke away, spinning. He grabbed a Janzer’s arm, and swung him around for Murray’s sword. Then he shot the other with his pulse gun.

Anticipate Janzer movements and you will conquer them.

They moved back-to-back as quickly as cats through the tunnel and entered an arced cavern with fifteen tunnels. Connor created an algorithm to determine the surest route, but his solution conflicted with Murray’s.
Sker, sker, sker.
Connor looked up.

Three blades swung for him and Murray. They dodged, as agile as dancers.
Sker, sker, sker.
Six blades now, swinging like pendulums, edged with maroon light.

The blades swung one after another,
sker, sker, sker.
Connor rolled, targeted their bases in his extended consciousness, and fired.

The two he hit came undone with an explosive crash. Sparks filled his night vision.

Murray took out another.
Sker, sker, sker.
The pendulums swung so rapidly and frequently that they looked like shooting stars. Connor moved along the wall. He ducked, slid, and skimmed the sludgy water.

He turned.

Murray grabbed him and threw him into a side tunnel just before a pair of blades sliced the spot where he’d just stood.

“Looks like you owe me one, kid,” Murray said. He lifted his visor and smiled.

They rushed down the tunnel. At the end they turned left, left, left, and arrived finally in a darkened room.

“
Father?
” Connor said.

He dropped his sword and ran to his father, who lay on the ground. He was starved, his bones poking through his skin.

Aera swung from the darkness and kicked Connor so hard he flew into Murray all the way on the other side of the room.

Connor rolled over Murray and drew his shuriken.

Aera killed Jeremiah with one swift stroke and charged. She swiped Connor’s legs, breaking them as easily as she might a child’s. When Murray moved in, she rolled him over her back. Connor could only scream and reach for Murray when Aera dug her sword through his visor, the weakest part of a Janzer synsuit. She pulled it out and spun, faster than a tempest, then slung her sword between Connor’s eyes.

The simulation ended …

… And Connor hung from the harness in the simulation area, his bodysuit drenched with sweat and lime light. Aera lowered him and Murray to the ground. She held the flat side of her sword under Connor’s chin.

His legs felt as weak as water.

“Your lesson today …”

She stabbed her sword into the limestone.

She knelt to him.

“… is to never,
never
allow your emotions to dictate your actions with comrades in battle.”

Palaestra City

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

Brody boarded a transport that carried him to the Valanginian River, up the long, elevated maglev track, over the Two Rivers Basin, and through the city proper. He tapped the alloy latches over his shoulders. He found it curious the BP had included the place but not the time to meet in their cryptor. Did they expect him to drop all his responsibilities and raise the alarm at the ministry, based on the word of a terrorist group?

That they chose the Spa of Delphi did not surprise Brody, for the commonwealth, aside from requiring payment to visit her Lady of Lux, the Delphi, didn’t patrol the area in force. The commonwealth taught its people that before time existed, the Twin Gods of the Cosmos initiated the Big Bang from which an infinite number of universes emerged, with the transhumans of the Earth in one of them. Places in the universe where the transhuman connection to the ZPF is strongest are where, purportedly, the Twin Gods manifest in physical form. Brody didn’t know if Delphi truly offered a connection to the gods. He’d visited her prior to the Harpoons and the Mission to Vigna, and all he’d heard from her was that she foresaw greatness in him and that he’d face a choice of destiny, words she could’ve shared with all her visitors, for all Brody knew.

He had considered visiting Delphi the night he’d met with Nero but returned home instead. His insomnia worsened by the hour, it seemed. He had lain next to Damy and listened to the thrum of her heartbeat as he pushed strands of hair away from her nose. He could ignore the BP, to her peril; he could act with them, to her peril; or he could act against them, to her peril. He had contacted Palaestra Citadel’s administrators and requested an appointment with Minister Charles.

The connection, if any existed, between the Warning Communiqué, the Lorum, Antosha’s attack, and Jeremiah Selendia still eluded him. This much Brody knew: his oath as a strike team captain required that he uphold the Formation of the Underground, the constitution that ensured supreme scientists, former or not, due process when accused of crimes.

He neared Palaestra Citadel, the largest of a group of five alloy buildings that twisted and turned, like candles, to narrow tips, separated from the city’s geometric ivory-onyx buildings. Down below, the moat shimmered with golden bioluminescence. To Brody’s left, the steam from hundreds of fountains sprayed rainbows over the garnet promenade. He exited the transport and blended in with the Palaestrans, dressed casually in a bodysuit, leather boots, and a transparent cape.

Above the citadel, the glass skywalks weaved a web of crystal through the buildings. Inside, two marble stairwells curved upward, surrounding a massive ball that glowed with blue phosphorescent light. A Citadel guardsman led Brody through a hallway. Though the air chilled him, it smelled of palm trees and roses, reminding Brody of Beimeni City. The guardsman placed his hand on what looked like a massive gemstone wall. Bright blue lines formed in the wall.

The wall opened to the minister’s study.

Tethys Charles sat upon a dais surrounded by crystal glasses, golden candles, and Granville spheres projecting data streams. “Enter, my friend,” Tethys said. He deactivated the holograms and swiveled on his chair. “For what reason would you request an appointment in the middle of the night?”

Brody bowed, then spied the guardsmen. “I wished to speak with you in confidence, Minister.”

“My guard cannot leak information from these halls.”

“It’s not your guardsmen who concern me.”

“So be it.” Tethys Charles seemed as if he understood Brody’s meaning. “Come, let us walk. The morning is beautiful.”