The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (27 page)

But the center of mass
was
unmistakable—a group of parallelogram-shaped rooms situated in a row, larger than the rest.

“Can you transfer the data to your neurochip?” Connor said.

“I can, but another shift will render this information obsolete.”

“The center of mass won’t change,” Connor insisted.

“But the way to reach it will.”

That was true enough, yet they must proceed. Connor wouldn’t leave the maze without his father. “Without the layout, we don’t stand a chance,” he said. “Sooner or later, Janzer reinforcements will arrive from Phanes. Download the data and let’s move.”

Nero tilted his head and raised his brow. “Fair enough.” He moved his eyes rapidly, extending his consciousness. “I have the way.”

They exited into more claustrophobic tunnels, more darkness, more dead ends. Connor felt a growing sense of desperation. Even if they did locate Father, how would they find their way to the pit and escape?

Before too long, the tunnels widened, and as the air loosened and cooled, Nero said, “We’re not far from the COM.” He leaned forward, listening.

“Hold it,” he said. His striker ears had picked up something, it seemed, too faint for Connor’s underdeveloped ears. “Stay close to the wall.”

Connor did as Nero said, his sword in both his hands laid against his body, sweat pouring down his face, condensing against his visor.

He heard something now: the sound of diamond upon alloy, then something like rubber upon alloy, and pulse blasts.

From the near tunnel, a bulging arm covered with diamond reached out and struck Nero’s face. He slammed onto his back, stunned.

Connor attacked with the moves Aera had taught him, inscribed in his muscle memory now. The Janzer stepped forward and drew his sword in an arcing motion. The sword seemed as one with his arm, he moved so fast. Connor blocked, left and right, twisting and turning, until the Janzer herded Connor into the wall, then rolled him off his feet with his blade.

Nero and Connor lay on the ground side by side, disarmed. The Janzer sheathed his sword and drew two pulse guns. He aimed at their faces. “Traitors—”

A blade rapped the side of the Janzer’s helmet, loosening it. It swung across again, and the Janzer’s head landed next to Connor with a thud.

“Stay down!”

Aera spun away from a pulse blast, then slung two shuriken through the narrow tunnel and through the visors of approaching Janzers.

“Where the hell have you two been?” she said.

“Smoking leaves,” Nero said, “interested?”

“What are you, a comedian now?”

Nero shrugged.

“Don’t quit your day job.”

They raced down the tunnels, up a ladder, along an alloy platform, and up another ladder. Aera crashed through a door. The holding cell spread out before them, a single, rusted tub in the center beneath a single bulb of light, hanging from a chain. Darkness beyond.

Connor gasped.

Father hung over Murray like a wet rag, as thin as paper. Not harmed, just malnourished.

Jeremiah opened and closed his eyes, struggling, as if he were lifting and lowering the cosmos. “My son …” He reached, trembling. “You’re … alive …” He coughed.

But when Connor touched his father’s hand, his bony fingers, and the rest of his bony body, disappeared!

Murray looked at his empty arms as if he’d been robbed.

The holding cell’s door slammed shut. The light bulb swung into the ceiling, shattering.

“It’s a trap!” Nero said.

Connor shifted his visor to night vision.

Shadows moved in the corner of the massive cell.

Janzers.

They turned their swords over their heads, perpendicular to their bodies, as they moved into elliptical attack formations.

“Break them!” Aera shouted. She backflipped over the eastern front, then downed a division as easily.

Nero and Murray engaged Janzer after Janzer.

“Get out of here, kid,” Murray said, “save yourself!”

Not this time,
Connor thought. He’d left Murray in House Tremadoci during a Janzer strike.
This time I’m fighting.
Pulse blasts turned the green-hued room into a storm of flashes.

The Janzers streamed in an endless wave, rotating and spinning, never breaking formation no matter how many fell.

Connor took two out with his sword and another by twisting its neck the way Aera had taught him.
They’re adjusting
, he thought. They discovered the attacker’s weaknesses, avoided the strengths.

The team’s greatest weakness, evidently, was its synsuits.

The plate over Nero’s thigh sprang loose first, and as fast as the armor flew, a Janzer rotated a sword into his flesh. Another Janzer kicked Nero across the cell.

They engulfed Aera, whom Connor could no longer see.

Murray crouched beside the tub, taking fire. An onslaught of pulse blasts aimed at his shoulder finally dislodged the armor there.

The Janzers targeted the weak plate behind Connor’s leg, which popped free. They closed in, and before Connor could react, a Janzer’s boot spun into the back of his leg, crushing his newly healed bone.

He dropped to his knees, grimacing and hissing, and another Janzer roundhouse kicked him in his head and sent him flying backward.

Aera broke free and flung a flash grenade in the air. When it ignited, it filled the cell with silver phosphorescent light and revealed swords frozen midswing, pulse blasts frozen midsalvo, shuriken frozen midthrust.

The Janzers swatted at Connor, over and over and over, rotating, providing fresh legs and arms and swords for him to fend off.

He killed as many as he could, until he couldn’t see or move any longer.

A Janzer jump-kicked him, and he spun in midair, crashing into the ground, where he rolled, avoiding sword thrusts, dodging pulse blasts, no longer feeling his broken leg.

I will not let them keep my father!
Connor found his feet beneath him and worked back-to-back with Murray, the way they’d trained.

Nero swung and spun through the Janzers on his good leg, pushing toward Connor and Murray, but there were too many.

A Janzer broke Connor and Murray’s formation, and another ripped the armor from Murray’s forearm, while another swept his legs.

Murray clawed along the ground, reaching for his sword, until a Janzer’s sword tore through the exposed flesh and bone above his wrist.

He screamed loud enough for all the villages in Phanes, all the cities in Piscator, all the facilities in Palaestra to hear.

Aera fought four divisions at once, too far away. The Janzers plucked away her armor the same as Murray’s, their swords and daggers rising, falling, piercing her flesh.

He couldn’t see Nero. Yet Connor slashed and spun, moving and killing as if he were a striker.

More Janzers swooped around Murray. One ripped the rest of the body armor from him, and he again spun to the ground. His face was covered with blood.

“Save yourself!” he shouted. “Connor—”

A Janzer rotated and swung his sword with the grace of a falcon, splitting Murray in half, then kicked him to be sure he broke apart before a healing agent might be used.

A fountain of blood sprayed over Connor, blinding him. He fell to his knees, remembering his nightmare, the one where Janzers killed his mother.

Connor screamed louder than he ever had before.

He felt a connection to the ZPF in a manner he’d only sensed in Zorian’s presence: a powerful telekinetic connection.

He raised his arms and pulled all the zeropoint energy he could summon to the holding cell, focusing it, spreading it, concentrating it upon the Janzers with all his skill, all his emotions, all his intensity and tenacity in the ZPF.

Connor tore hundreds of Janzers apart, severing them the way they had killed his mother and his developer.

Then he collapsed.

Damy stepped onto the teal stone pathway cautiously, then earnestly, like the breeze that hissed through the Dream Forest. She passed several giant sequoias infested with worms that glowed bright lime green. She walked around the pond, inhabited by lotus flowers and black swans.

Music hummed up from beneath the trellis, far, far below.

She passed the marble statues of chancellors and ministers and supreme scientists of the past and present.

The top of the Chalice Archway, a gilded bulb with a chiseled reddish-orange phoenix feather, poked above the trees. As she moved, the rest of the archway came into view.

“Brody?” she said.

No response.

She attempted to link to him through Marstone.

No response.

A shadow sprang up from behind the arch.

“Brody, is that you?”

Damy felt her heart thump. She stepped back.

“Brody?” she said one last time, on the balls of her feet, ready to run.

“Not Brody,” Verne said.

“
No
.” She stepped back. “NOT AGAIN.”

“Damy? It’s me. It’s
Vernon.
” He held his arms out and plucked his bow tie in a way that only Verne ever did.

Her heart calmed. “Where’s Brody?”

“Not sure, but if he’s not with you, then my guess is he’s under the trellis.” Verne kicked the ground and moved toward her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Damy wasn’t glad. She
had
to find Brody and get out of the Bicentennial and find out what happened with Nero and protect her children. She eyed Verne carefully, still seeing no sign of Antosha in him.

Verne reached for her. His fingers touched hers, and she enjoyed their warmth. Something changed inside her, a sensation unlike any she’d ever felt, like something tapped on her neurons, one by one. She troubled to draw breath, then steadied herself.
The negativity is your enemy. The enemy is your negativity. Ignore the negativity and defeat your enemy.

Whether it was discomfiture or pleasure in her heart, Damy did not know. What she knew was that Verne, the child orphan turned Boy Plunger turned developed transhuman-cum-RDD scientist, who shadowed her and answered her and would die for her if she asked him to, had somehow wrangled his way into her life.

And now that they were here together, she was glad for the chance to say goodbye.

Damy peered into his blue-gray eyes and thought,
Verne, Verne, Verne, you are my Verne.
She ran her fingers through the waves of his hair, softer than a desert dune. She squeezed his hand tighter. She felt a bit light-headed. She tried to reach Brody again, to no avail, and decided to stay with Verne in the forest.

They meandered along the path beyond the Chalice Archway, around the sequoias, over an artificial stream, and back again. Along the way, they talked about the twins and Project Silkscape and the commonwealth. Verne apologized for taking her to the gorge. Damy accepted and told him to forget it.

“Brody hasn’t forgotten it, though, has he?” Verne said.

“It wasn’t your fault I wanted to see you.”

Verne stopped and looked at Damy, who looked back at him. She felt heat all over her chest and face now, as if her body burned.

“I’ve wanted to say this for so long but didn’t know how,” Verne said. “I know it’s not appropriate. I know you might slap me. I know you might hate me—”

“I’d never hate you—”

Verne’s face turned as red as Damy’s, and he leaned into her. He swayed with her and the faint chords of music that swelled in the forest, as the wind swirled flower petals around them.

“When I’m with you, Miss Damosel, in this underground labyrinth, this underground inferno, I’m awake, I’m alive …”

Damy felt light-headed. Memories flowed to the surface, like the veins through the nearby lotus leaves: the first day she’d met Verne, fresh off the Harpoons, a trader who believed he’d take over the world, take over her world, and she’d put him in his place and sought his removal from Nicola. As he held her now, beneath the canopy of leaves and the starry night sky, she felt uncontrollably and wildly numb. And she saw this had been the only reasonable physiological response with Brody so far away, the birth of the twins so near; she needed to keep her feelings for Verne tucked in her subconscious where they wouldn’t destroy the life she worked so hard to build, her life with Brody, her life in—

Verne pressed his lips to hers.

She closed her eyes as his essence guided her, made her want him more than she understood she did. She opened her eyes, as if awakening from a dream. She pressed her forefingers to her lips and turned away, as if to holo-capture the moment, keep it forever where only she would ever find it. She closed her eyes, her heart beating so fast she thought it might implode, the heat escaping her body as if she were a star going nova.

“I apologize,” Verne said, breathing hard, his voice cracking.

Damy struggled for air. She felt as if she were suffocating beneath layers and layers of cloth …

The sensation began in her toes and spread to her ankles and moved up her knees, into her pelvis and breasts, around her neck and eyes and head. She coughed and wheezed.

“Damy?” Verne shouted, reaching for her.

She eased to her knees. She clutched her throat and coughed, then dropped backward on the ground.

“Damy!” Verne straddled her.

She barely saw him now. She scraped the skin around her neck, pulling, grasping at the vessels that sent her blood rushing. During her last conscious breath, she felt Verne’s hands touch hers as he pushed with her against the invisible terror—

She lost the strength to keep her eyes open.

Damy felt Verne’s balmy tears drip upon her chest, the last drops of love she would ever know.

Gwen grinned and twirled with her magenta boa. She swirled it over Antosha, spun out of his grasp and back into it. She wished he would play his deodar violin, slip off her clothes, and make love to her for hours and hours as he had in the Spas of Tranquility.

He held her close, and she heard his heart hum as she knew he could hear hers.

Polychromatic rose petals drifted down from the trellis.

She looked up and saw Brody staggering through the crowd of soaked and naked bodies. Antosha twisted Gwen away from him and held her arm to his. They danced, and she breathed in the scents of perfume, sweat, sex, and champagne, her vision obscured by flying hair and boas and foam.