The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (23 page)

Later on, Brody couldn’t say what happened first or last. He connected to the ZPF with the intent to shield them, but before he could secure Damy, before he could protect her and his twins, the courier telekinetically latched Converse Collars around their necks, then stepped aside. The tenehounds moved in sync with the Janzers, weaving hypnotically, positioning for the strike. Damy screamed.

The hounds lunged.

Brody moved as swiftly as he once had in the Harpoons, smashing one hound into the other, snapping one of their necks. The Janzers moved in with their swords raised. Then Lady Isabelle raised her fist, emitting blinding white light.

When his vision returned, Brody found himself paralyzed, by what, he didn’t know. Lady Isabelle was upon him, holding his forearm, injecting a needle into his strike team tattoo.

It felt as if she were burning him, igniting a fire beneath his blood, melting his bone. He was sweating profusely. He wanted to scream and beg for his and Damy’s lives, for the lives of their children. But he took regular breaths instead, allowing his body to quiver as the pain coursed through. He would not give Isabelle Lutetia the pleasure of his sorrow.

For my twins
, he thought,
I must survive this.

There was a final blast of hot liquid pain. Then Lady Isabelle drew back. When the Janzers backed away with her, Brody exhaled, assuming the assault had ended. Damy embraced him.

The surviving tenehound rose. It looked back at him, baring its teeth, growling.

Isabelle smiled in a way that Brody would never forget, her head slightly tilted, her face a formula of perfection that belied her soul.

The tenehound ripped at his uninjured arm, tearing out a piece of flesh and muscle. Brody reeled. The hound swallowed, then bit into his shoulder and whipped him around like small prey.

His vision tunneled. He heard laughter, Lady Isabelle’s no doubt, and the Janzers chanting
Serve Beimeni, live forever,
and Damy, poor Damy, who cried out loudly enough to wake the cosmos. He reached for her, still at the edge of consciousness as Lady Isabelle slammed a Reassortment baton against her skull.

Piscator City

Piscator, Underground South

2,500 meters deep

Piscatorian palm trees divided the city’s alloy buildings, cutouts that weaved and elevated, as if built into a cliff’s side upon the Earth’s surface. At the precipice stood Piscator Citadel, its sparkling convex spires and wintergreen glass lofted to the twilit sky. In a building not far from the citadel, through the walls and windows, a BP commando helped Connor clamp the boots at the base of his stolen Janzer synsuit. A cornucopia of weaponry lined the walls—shuriken, pulse guns, Reassortment batons, diamond daggers, and an array of synbio poisons. Murray, Aera, and Arty also bolted into Janzer synsuits. Pirro, draped in a fur cape, observed from the corner.

“We’ll burrow down to the southwestern Phanean supply lines,” Aera said to Connor and Murray. To Arty, she said, “Meet us there with a transport,” and to Pirro, “Have our backup transport ready, old man.” Pirro smiled. Aera looked past him. “Where’s the striker?”

A pop and snap noise from the far wall drew Connor’s attention. The entryway cleared.

Everyone turned. Lord Nero Silvana stood silhouetted in moonlight, his mohawk trimmed, his eyes narrowed to slits. A fur cape concealed his synsuit. A Reassortment baton hung holstered at his left side, a diamond sword at his right.

“You’re late,” Murray said.

“Lady Isabelle sent the Janzers and tenehounds after Brody and Damy in Silkscape City,” Nero said. He took determined strides forward.

“Were they captured?” Connor said, feeling a chill run through him at the thought of the tenehounds. He’d last seen them during his escape from Mantlestone Village. He hoped never to see them again. Then another thought bothered him. “Did she send them to Farino Prison?” The BP had at one time thought Lady Isabelle sent his father to this prison, a fortress from which no transhuman had ever escaped, though escape wasn’t as much Connor’s concern as it was the captain’s role in the raid. How could he participate if he’d been arrested? When Nero didn’t respond, Connor prodded, “Is he dead, Lord Nero?”

“No.”

“Permutation Crypt?” If so, Connor feared this may complicate the operation. Security would be higher with the Janzers guarding
three
prisoners rather than one. New intel suggested Zorian was now also held captive in the Crypt.

“No.”

“What happened?” Aera said.

Nero seemed reluctant to speak.

“Please, my lord,” Connor said, “you can tell us, you can trust us, what did the Lady Isabelle do to your captain and his eternal partner?”

Nero let out a deep breath. “Vernon Lebrizzi, a researcher on Damy’s team, found them unconscious and covered in blood at the base of the Harsaille Menagerie. He called for medical attention. Minister Avalonia was more upset with the Lady Isabelle over the stained marble than the attack.” Nero looked and sounded disgusted. “They survived, and Avalonia ordered they be healed—”

“That’s strange,” Aera said. “Isabelle is risking open war with the teams.”

“As far as I’ve heard, the teams remain independent of the struggle—”

“For now.” Aera lifted six shuriken and hooked them down the side of her leg.

“What will Brody and Damy do?” Connor said. He holstered a pulse gun on his belt.

“Their duty,” Nero said. “They’ll attend the Bicentennial in Phanes, providing us the cover we need, then flee when they can.”

“Isabelle won’t like their attendance,” Murray put in. He tested the sharpness of a diamond dagger, then sheathed it to his hip.

“She doesn’t have a choice and neither does Brody. The chancellor expects the People’s Captain to greet his people at their great celebration.” Nero unlatched the chain that held the cape draped around him. “Masimovian apologized to them personally and promised to discipline Isabelle.” Nero spat. “Small chance of that, but I won’t let her escape justice.” He moved closer to the BP, into the light. He leaned back and let his cape fall, revealing not a Janzer synsuit, but one typically worn by the strike team strikers. Though it was made of synthetic diamond, it looked like polished obsidian. The mark of the strike teams was painted on his chest and atop the dark helmet that dangled from a chain beneath his arm.

“You can’t wear that, my boy,” Pirro said.

“I can wear whatever I want.” Nero turned to Aera. “So, Brody didn’t imagine you after all.” He examined her as if to determine whether she was a hologram. “They said you died—”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Aera said. She grinned. “I was a striker once, like you—”

“You served Chancellor Masimovian,” Nero said. He’d clearly not worn this striker synsuit in a while, for he tested his movements, twisting side to side, pushing out his elbows, stretching to his toes.

“So did you.”

Nero put his hands at the base of his back and leaned. His back cracked. “I serve him still.”

“Do you, now?”

Nero narrowed his eyes. “The stories … they say you’re one with the ghosts in Nyx … they say—”

“I only know the Western territory as Angeles. Now shut up and prepare for the raid.”

Piscator Shore

Piscator, Underground South

Their transport arrived at the deserted Shore Station, patrolled by a single Janzer division. Everyone would be in Piscator Square in the territorial capital, or at home, preparing for and partying during the Bicentennial.

This is it
, Connor thought.
We’re on our way, Father, and I’ll see you to safety. Dead or alive, you’re coming home.

The transport entrance cleared, and Murray moved his hand to the opening. “Aera, if you would be so kind …”

Pirro smiled.

Aera flew out faster than Connor had ever seen her move, even during their training sessions. She tumbled to the center of the Janzer division, which spread apart like a school of fish. She rose and spun, and in movement unseen, the six shuriken she’d attached along her leg flew, as fast and opaque as hail, through the Janzers’ visors. They all collapsed around her.

Her amethyst eyes flashed when she bowed.

“Bravo, my girl!” Pirro said. He tapped his cane against the transport and repeated, “Bravo.”

“She’s okay,” Nero said.

“You haven’t seen anything,” Murray said.

“Let’s clear them out,” Connor said.

He and Arty lifted their weapons and piled the Janzers in an alleyway. Murray took out the cameras with blasts from his pulse gun. Pirro moved across the limestone methodically with his cane. Murray, Connor, Aera, and Nero, bound for Draco Village in Phanes, split from Pirro, who split from Arturo, each destined for the supply lines in his own transport.

Draco Village

Phanes, Underground Central

Connor hopped out at an abandoned warehouse. The transport eased over the maglev track slowly, then rapidly took off to return to Beimeni City, as Murray programmed it to do. Even from here, Connor could glimpse the lights from Hammerton Hall.

Closer to him, the walkway was falling apart, and next to it pieces of the maglev track were torn at points. Connor was surprised transports functioned in the village at all. He stood among dying saplings, broken concrete, construction vehicles, feral cats, and heaps of trash that danced in the sooty air. The warehouse stood half-built, half-open to the night, and the rest of the village’s structures were even less complete, the decay apparent in their flaked stones. Even the sky was in ill repair, lacking the stars so essential to the Beimeni illusion.

At the warehouse door, a hole opened, filled by a wrinkled Draco-gray eye that appeared the size of a pecan when it blinked. The alloy doorway, manually operated, slid and screamed, revealing an elderly woman on the other side. The hum of a factory reached Connor’s ears. He smelled molten alloy, burned wood, and chemicals. BP workers strode about in biomats, constructing what, Connor did not know, for he wasn’t privy to this aspect of the operation. They established an assembly line to load up ten transports that hummed in wait. In the center of the warehouse lay an ebony tarp beside a wooden table.

“Murray’s with me,” Aera said to Nero, “Connor with you.” Murray unrolled a massive scroll over the wooden table, schematics, an archaic rendition with lines, arrows, times, compass, and a list of weapons. “We’ll avoid Janzers at all stages.” Nero agreed and Aera added, “Your captain’s intel suggests an S-shape, X-shape, and pinwheel are the common iterations of Permutation Crypt, but we’re ready for anything.”

The diagram featured a mapping of each with tunnels denoted by black cylinders drawn on the left and right sides. “We’ll locate ground zero and the center of mass during the descent.” She pointed to the letters
C-O-M
splayed above red dots at the middle of each formation. “Expect the core to be better fortified than the perimeter.”

Nero nodded, but something about his shifting stance and snake-slit eyes made Connor uncomfortable. Was the striker wary of this plan? Was he truly on their side?

“We’ll dig down directly from here—” Aera said.

“Hold up,” Nero said. He threw his pack of gear next to the table. “This isn’t how I conduct missions, learn as we go, no prep, ad hoc—”

“I’ve fully vetted this operation,” Aera said. “You’re new here—”

“I’ve seen half the planets in the solar system and most of the Earth’s surface, orbited the sun at close proximity, and traveled to the center of an exoplanet on the other side of the galaxy.”

Aera spoke in a language known only to the strike teams. “Maybe so, but you’ve never conducted operations against the Janzers. You don’t know how they operate. You have skill, sure as all strikers do, but you rely on your strategist in planning.” Then, in Beimenian, she said, “Trust in my judgment as I know you trust in Lady Verena’s, and we’ll win.”

Nero put his fist beneath his chin, his eyes scanning the blueprints and plan designed by Aera.

She has him
, Connor thought.

Nero turned to Aera. “Are you waiting for an invite?”

Aera let herself smile, something Connor didn’t see often. “We’ll use the mineral crushers to penetrate to the supply shaft and descend to the southern tip of the Crypt.” She pushed her forefinger along the blueprint, from the Beimeni zone to the Middle zone. She tapped the parallelogram labeled PERMUTATION CRYPT. “We’ll use ground-penetrating radar to obtain real-time maps and determine the center of mass.”

“What about the transformations?” Nero said.

Aera tapped an alloy box attached to her hip. “We’ll use a low-frequency EMP to destroy the mechanism.”

“What about our electronics? Won’t they be disabled too?”

“It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s the best plan we have. Better to go in there with Janzer synsuits and with shuriken and our fists than to be drawn into a never-ending labyrinthine hell.”

“Fair enough,” Nero said. He tested the edges of his shuriken
.

Aera snatched one from him and held it over her chest. “Fidelity and honor.”

“Loyalty and protection.” Nero mirrored her with a shuriken of his own.

She handed him the shuriken, and he attached it to his synsuit. “Now you’ll find out what it truly means to be a strike team striker,” she said. She lifted the tarp. Beneath it lay the Draco Village bedrock.

The BP removed their biomats and outfitted themselves in military fatigues, then formed ranks near the transports. “What’ll happen to the people here?” Connor said.

“Them?” Murray smirked as he splashed camouflage synisms over his face, “they’re about to blow up Phanes.”