The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (4 page)

Nero and Verena joined him, their blood spurting out from where the needles once pierced.

Two Janzer divisions emerged from behind the dais and held Brody and his team back.

“You can give
him
Regenesis!” Brody said, spittle flying from his mouth. “You can give
him
the Tomahawk Facility, but Antosha Zereoue will NOT take Project Reassortment.”

“Captain, you will restrain yourself,” Norrod said.

The general waved off the Janzers, who let Brody and his team go and accompanied the Lady Isabelle. She pranced beside the judges as they made their way out, her gown sweeping the marble floor behind her.

“General, you have to—”

Norrod put up his hand. “Broden, I don’t care. Let me tell you something. There’s a bigger mission. It’s in the works. I’m lobbying for you. These outbursts won’t help. Go home. Relax. Spend time with your woman. Got it?”

“What could be bigger than Reassortment?” Brody spoke above Norrod. “You listen to me, General, I won’t let Antosha take Reassortment from my team—”

“Who said anything about Antosha?” The general sighed. He squeezed Brody’s shoulders. “For all your many years since the team-training days, you’ve been loyal and productive, a true strike team captain. Vastar Alalia would’ve been proud of you.”

Vastar was the last commander of the strike teams, killed in 273 AR, the teams were told, by the Reassortment Strain during a surface excursion gone wrong. Brody didn’t think a commander of the strike teams would’ve allowed his demotion. In fact, Brody thought it might’ve led to a civil war.

He forced Norrod’s hands away from him. “Vastar Alalia would’ve upheld strike team autonomy,” Brody said. While the commander avoided open conflict with the chancellor, he wasn’t afraid, at times, to push back against commonwealth overreach. It had led to an uneasy alliance between him and Masimovian. “Vastar wouldn’t have even allowed a hearing—”

“He would’ve wanted peace,” Norrod interrupted, “don’t forget that. Don’t let that change. Keep the commonwealth and teams united.” He ducked his head toward Verena and Nero, who stood obediently, arms folded, sweat and blood leaking through their tanned bodysuits. “Get your team together. Celebrate. You’ve earned it.”

Celebrate a demotion?
Brody was livid, but he nodded, put his arms around Verena and Nero, and led them away.

“And, Captain,” Norrod said.

Brody turned.

The general held his right hand over his heart. “Serve Beimeni …”

“Live forever.” Brody mirrored the general’s pose and smiled wanly.

When the general departed, Brody lifted his lips in a half grin. “We earned those Marks. We earned the chancellor’s pass on that precept. He thinks Antosha can succeed on Regenesis where we failed. Antosha can have Dr. Kole Shrader, but as long as I breathe, he won’t work on Reassortment—”

“Captain, Regenesis wasn’t what this was about,” Verena said. She paused. “They spit on the memory of Vastar Alalia and our ancestors.” She seemed to search for her voice. Brody looked up to the eye in the sky. Verena’s face twisted into a scowl. “Captain, the evisceration of the teams’ autonomy is now complete.”

Though he didn’t want to admit it, Brody knew she spoke true. For if the chancellor could use the judiciary to demote the People’s Captain, what couldn’t he do to any strike team? What would the other captains think? How would their strategists, strikers, and aeras react? Would they rally to him if he needed them? Or would they defect against him?

Brody pondered what he could’ve done differently, but no solution arose.

“This isn’t about politics,” he said, “it’s about leading the people back to the surface. It’s about fulfilling our oaths—”

“For the next few hours, I don’t give a darn about the surface.” To Nero, Verena added, “I don’t want Antosha to use our work for his benefit. You must come with me to stop him—”

“Stay out of the Tomahawk and Taos Facilities,” Brody said. “Don’t give the chancellor or Antosha a reason for discipline. The way we beat them is to beat Reassortment. That’s how we win this war.”

And it
was
now a war.

Before Brody had left for Vigna, he’d assumed the chancellor would use the commonwealth mission as cover for Antosha’s return. Now Brody wasn’t as sure, for it didn’t seem to be the Lorum the chancellor sought with the Warning Communiqué to Brody’s team. It had been designed for this end, for this demotion. He’d been publicly Marked, privately vilified. But Brody still didn’t understand how the Lorum and Vigna and Antosha’s reinstatement fit into the chancellor’s plans, or if a link even existed.

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

“Aha, you’re free to leave,” said the medical bot.

Antosha sat upon a levitated gurney in Medical Center One. He wore a dark bodysuit. The alloy tips in his boots clanked against the ground, and the bot helped him into his transparent lab coat. Antosha slung his violin case and supply pack over his shoulder.

The snowflakes in his obsidian eye quickened when he exited toward North Boardwalk. He breathed the musky air, air so different than the Lower Level hell he’d left so recently. In the last hours of morning, the Granville moon reflected off Phanes Lake and filled Antosha’s liquid-silver eye, destroyed by magma after an explosion in the Lower Level’s Infernus Sea had nearly killed him. At Tortonia Station, the few sheep awake this early gawked at him, at his flaw.
Let the sheep stare
, Antosha thought,
let them weep
. He stowed his pack and violin, inserted his commonwealth card, and telepathically sent his nine-digit commonwealth security number.

What’s your destination?
Marstone’s voice.

Antosha had forgotten what it meant to travel in the Great Commonwealth but wondered why the transport didn’t already know his destination. Why did he have to provide all this bullshit? Why had the incompetent scientists who worked for the consortiums not achieved significant conversion in the transport system since his exile?

Antosha swore.

He transmitted,
Palaestra City, then on to the RDD’s Taos Facility.

This is a restricted location. State your name, rank, and priority code.

My name is Antosha Zereoue. My rank is Supreme Scientist of Regenesis. Priority code 3-6-2-7-2-4-5-8-0-7-8-9.

Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue accepted. Time to your initial destination is estimated at fifty-one minutes. Thank you for traveling on the Beimeni Interterritory Transportation System.

Thank yourself
, he thought.

Now he’d have to wait for the fourteen other sheep to finish their part in the process. What a waste. What had happened to the days when a supreme scientist had unlimited access to luxury transports with unlimited Loverealan wine and unlimited feeds to the live entertainment in Hammerton Hall in Beimeni City, or the illicit pleasures from Sepricola Hall near the Great Falls of Navita? Travel used to include a feast, a plump turkey slathered with gravy or sizzling steak that melted in your mouth, and cheeses and desserts that dripped with caramel and honey. He gasped violently. How far the commonwealth had fallen in his absence!

Now he’d have to sit, unproductive, for minutes while the woman with the frizzed golden hair and massive breasts next to him searched the bag she should have stowed for her ID card that she’d never find beneath the kilos of makeup she didn’t need.

And the tourist so obviously from Gaia he might as well not open his mouth—his crooked teeth, his pants cut off at his ankles, and his skin as rough as limestone gave him away on their own. Putrid. Vile.

Then Antosha realized the unfathomable: the chancellor sent him back to Palaestra during an open house.

He swore.

Finally, he trudged into his new office, same as his old office, in the Taos Facility, “the facility in the clouds,” led by Supreme Scientist Nasha Ele.

Antosha dropped his bag to the ground, rested his violin case beside it, and exhaled. They hadn’t lied to him. Nothing had changed, not in here. The Granville syntech lining the walls and floor
did
make it seem like he stood in the clouds—a silver desk, wastebasket, and closet in the corner the only proof otherwise. He chuckled. The stench of chlorine was overwhelming, just like he remembered. The Yeuronian cleaners had scrubbed the floor and walls and ceiling but left the desk untouched. He wiped his forefinger along a layer of dust and tarnish that had built to a mound.

Antosha flung open the closet doors. His antiquated lab gear sat where he’d left it. He pushed the garments to the right, and a pendant attached to a chain dropped and clanked. He furrowed his brow and pressed his lips together. He picked it up. A gift from Captain Barão, he recalled. He ripped the pendant from the chain and chucked it into the wastebasket.

He unzipped a compartment in his bag and removed his Harpoon Auction medallion.
Never let that medallion out of your sight
, Lord Pierre had said
. That’s your middle finger to anyone who says you can’t make it in the commonwealth
. Antosha strung the chain through a loop at the top of the medallion and hung it in the closet.

He slung his transparent lab coat on a hook and lifted his synsuit, a tough, supple body armor constructed by synisms from his bag. He bowed his head and held the liquid silver synsuit close to his chest.
Cover me
, he sent. The synsuit expanded over his midsection, covering his porous bodysuit. It drew energy from his body and moved down his legs in rows and lines, over his chest and neck, leaving him as cool as a Jovian moon. The only pink skin visible now was on his face and hands. He put on his lab coat.

He strutted through the Research Superstructure, the massive transport station RDD scientists used to travel between Beimeni’s eight research facilities. A Granville sun and sky provided light here. Tens of thousands of scientists, clad in different-colored lab coats to denote rank and facility, roamed beneath the Superstructure’s olive marble archways, engravings, and statues, the largest being a sculpture of Chancellor Masimovian.

Antosha felt all their eyes on him but didn’t acknowledge their presence. He boarded a transport headed south.

On his way to the Tomahawk Facility, he extended his consciousness. He reviewed the research results published by his predecessor, Captain Barão, and his team. He mouthed,
Fools
,
you fools
, as he flipped through the millions of pages on Project Regenesis. Their methods lacked any hint of imagination or intelligence. Could the chancellor truly
not
understand why Captain Barão had failed?

Antosha left the transport and passed the garnet sculptures in Masimovian Square. He looked out on the synism silos that stretched across the Granville horizon. These silos provided the commonwealth with most of its raw materials, he knew. He went through several checkpoints and arrived at the final one, where Marstone transmitted,
Verbal confirmation required.

Antosha Zereoue, Supreme Scientist of Regenesis, reporting for duty.

Antosha weaved through the labyrinthine tunnels and provided a DNA scan to the Janzer checkpoint outside the Regenesis Chamber. “Your team is here,” a Janzer said.

“That so,” Antosha said, “and who might be on this team?” He hadn’t selected his yet and didn’t plan to until he knew his research center was secured.

“Lord Nero Silvana and Lady Verena Iglehart.”

Antosha grinned. The gods did favor him this day. He entered the Regenesis Chamber, taking delicate strides along the ground. He slipped between the stasis tanks that held the animal specimens. A black and brown bear hung on either side of him, fur smoothed, claws outstretched.

“We must hurry,” Nero said.

The traitor spoke softly, but Antosha’s enhanced senses heard and saw all in his Regenesis Chamber. Verena and Nero were searching the workstations for z-disks and gear, Antosha assumed.

“This is the last one,” Nero said.

Verena perused the stasis tanks while he pried open the final workstation and sifted through z-disks. Nero swiped sweat from his face and put something in his bag.

Antosha slid behind another stasis tank and noted that neither Nero nor Verena were wearing biomats. He accessed Verena’s neurochip, delicately and diligently, and used the CRISPR system to manipulate her DNA.

Verena pressed her hand to the outside of one of the tanks, which contained a beaver frozen near absolute zero, its brown fur lifted, eyes open and empty. She didn’t see Antosha, who blended with the cylindrical tanks. She wasn’t aware of his presence in her mind, not consciously, not yet.

“Do you think Antosha will succeed where we failed?” Verena said.

“I don’t care what he does,” Nero said. “Neither should you.”

“I can’t believe the chancellor—”

Ter-krink.

“Did you hear that?” Verena said.

Antosha had swiped the tip of his boot against the alloy base of a stasis tank. Sometimes the sheep needed prodding.

Nero turned side to side. Antosha didn’t access his neurochip but felt his unease in the ZPF.

Antosha sent a message to them both.

Traitor, traitor, traitor, in my midst …

Nero dropped the duffel bag. He turned from stasis tank to stasis tank.

Traitor, traitor, traitor, why shouldn’t I blitz …

Nero dashed from tank to tank, past a moose, its antlers curled, legs bowed; a black-footed ferret with a scraggly, twisted body; a ruby-throated hummingbird, green and black polka-dotted sheathes near its wings; past apes, monkeys, and protohumans.

Ter-krink.

What’re you doing here, traitor?

“Who’s there?” Verena said. She stumbled.

Are you going to die, traitor?

Nero rushed around a moose’s tank and an ape’s tank.

You will
suffer.
She will
suffer.

“Show yourself!” Nero said.