The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (5 page)

Verena’s bronze face turned as pale as an eggshell.

Antosha’s whispers raced through the chamber.

“Get away from the tank,” Nero said.

Verena didn’t move. Breathing heavily, she unbuttoned her lab coat and staggered.

Nero rushed to her side and steadied her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing here, nothing gone, nothing out here, and nothing there,” Verena said, slurring. She grabbed her head. “Migraines … and I think it’s time … to time, I think I leave …”

Ter-krink.

Verena blinked and recovered. “Where am I?” she said. “Where are we?”

“He’s here,” Nero said.

“Who’s here?”

Ter-krink.

Verena and Nero turned to the center of the chamber, where Dr. Kole Shrader hung in a stasis tank quadruple the size of the rest, suspended in misty ice, sprayed by green bioluminescence. Nero rushed around the doctor’s tank while Verena peered to the corridor beyond the glass.

“A pair of traitors in my midst,” Antosha said. “Who’s to say I shouldn’t blitz?”

Verena slid in front of Nero, her left arm protective against his chest, her right hand on her pulse gun. Nero clutched the side of his shuriken, its diamond blades sharp enough to split alloys.

Antosha emerged from behind one of the bird tanks into the pale-green light.

Nero drew his shuriken, widened his stance, and bent his knees, his body tense.

“No, striker, that would not be wise,” Antosha said, “you won’t make it—”

“We’re gone,” Verena said. She stepped and fell against Shrader’s tank. Her body shook.

“Verena?” Nero said.

Perspiration poured down her reddened face. Antosha bowed and smiled.
I haven’t lost my touch
, he thought. He pumped Verena’s heart even faster. She slid down the glass enclosure, into Nero’s arms, and convulsed, the artery in her neck pulsing.

“What have you done to her?” Nero shouted.

Verena calmed, and Nero set her quivering body on the ground. He lunged and grasped Antosha by his lab coat, pulling him close. “You fix her or I’ll rip out your functioning eye!”

Verena’s tremors worsened. She screamed.

“I’ve done nothing!” Antosha spat upon Nero’s brow. “Look at yourself! You’re a pathetic maggot! The gods have spoken! She is going to
suffer
, as you all shall
suffer
—”

Nero threw Antosha across the chamber. He crashed into an alloy shelf that collapsed on him. Thanking the gods for the protection of his synsuit, Antosha heaved the shelf from his body.

The alarm blared. Nero must have triggered an emergency lever.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Nero said. He held Verena and rubbed the sweaty strands of hair from her face. “Stay with me, stay with me, keep breathing, help’s on the way, on the way …”

Her eyes opened and closed, and she pressed her face to his hands. Her skin was red as if burnt. She moved her lips, but no noise escaped. Nero checked her pulse.

They deserve this
, Antosha thought
. They deserve to know what Haleya felt, what I felt, and by the grace of the gods, they will
suffer …

Spots of blood lifted around her neck, the blots popping up as if spray-painted. Nero used his shuriken to cut the top of her bodysuit. His hands trembled.

“Oh, gods, oh, no, no, no, no …”

He rubbed her throat and caressed her face, holding her hair against her cheeks. He put his ear to her chest.

Medical bots and Janzers streamed into the chamber. Verena lost consciousness and sank over Nero’s arms. A Janzer grabbed her, but Nero wouldn’t give her up. He shouted.

“Do you see?” Antosha rose from the floor. “These traitors were in my chamber. Look at what they’ve done, how dangerous they are.”

Nero lunged for Antosha, but the Janzers pounced on him and held him down. One shot a tranquilizer dart into his neck and he collapsed.

“I want them out of here,” Antosha said.

The Janzers and medical bots strapped Verena and Nero to levitating gurneys and rushed for the exit.

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

A Marstone summons awakened Gwen.

Are you on schedule?

On my way now,
Gwen transmitted. The truth, actually, was that she lay in bed, in her Champion’s Suite of the Neophyte Dormitories. She’d overslept.

As am I.

Antosha disconnected from her.

What to do?
Gwen thought. She threw the fur blanket from her body.
What’s best for me?

She tiptoed nude across the suite so as not to awaken her guests, Caterina, who she sometimes called Cat, and Roger. Her dresser, made of white marble, felt cool to the touch. On top of it Gwen had placed three tall, golden bioluminescent candles, gifts from the Lady Eulalie after Gwen had received the first bid in the Harpoon Auction. She thought about using the ZPF to activate one of them, then heard Roger snore and decided not to. She silently, telekinetically opened her dresser drawer and sifted through her undergarments. She slipped into them and into her violet bodysuit. She braided her hair in the dark.

Yesterday, she’d learned that the DOC had overturned her registration to Reassortment, sending her instead to the Tomahawk Facility, where she’d shadow Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue. When she’d called Captain Barão through Marstone, he had told her he wasn’t aware of the change and that she should report to him, not Antosha. She’d told Antosha as much yesterday, but he’d demanded she meet him in the Chinook Facility to finalize their plans. She wondered what plans he referred to. Her assignment? Something else? Should she speak with Captain Barão?

No, she decided, for she understood Beimenian courtesies, and a part of her desired to meet this Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue, who pursued her so … thoughtfully.

“Gwenny?” Caterina said, looking here and there through bloodshot eyes. “Is that you?” She turned on a deep-pink bioluminescent lava lamp filled with molten drops from the Infernus Sea. Her hair looked tousled, her face a touch red. “What the heck … what’re you doing up so
early?
” Roger, next to her on the couch, mumbled and pulled the fur blanket over his head.

“Today’s the first day we shadow, and I want to prepare,” Gwen said. She pulled her transparent lab coat over her body, slid open the frosted-glass entryway, and slipped out.

In the Chinook Facility’s square, Gwen strode toward the Looking Ball—a gigantic mirrored sphere that glimmered like a polished gemstone—where it levitated and bobbed, reflecting the rows of black and dark green marble stones that paved the square. She found herself thinking about Marcel, her brother-in-development, about his dreamy smile and their time together in House Variscan, and the auction where she had been purchased first and he had been purchased with 77 percent of the candidates remaining. A top 25 percent performance, an embarrassment, Lord Rueben had said. Now Marcel was a holographic artist in Marshlands, and he never replied to her requests for connection through Marstone. She tried to contact him, and again, no response. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her.

She moved closer to the Looking Ball. Her body flitted over it and expanded and lifted in the mirrors. She turned away as her eyes strained. Neophytes and scientists dressed in colorful lab coats streamed back and forth through a tunnel on the other side of the square. Above the arced entrance to the tunnel hung signage in bright blue lettering, REGISTRATION CENTER, and to the left of the sign, a pyramidal café. Her coffee addiction drew her toward it, but when she rounded the ball, she sensed a presence and heard a whisper, then a voice.

“Gwendolyn,” Antosha said from behind her, startling her. “Gorgeous Gwendolyn.”

It was the first time she’d heard his voice aloud, not initiated by Marstone, not in her mind as if part of her own monologue. Was this the voice of the man she had heard during the Harpoons, the voice in her head that had helped her gain advantage and enabled her to leave the auction a Harpoon Champion?

She turned, and a man she did not expect stood before her. He had long black and silver hair, a silver eye, and a silver synsuit that gripped his muscular body. The snowflakes in his obsidian eye looked like evening stars. They sent her heart aflutter.

“Gwen-do-lyn, Gwen-do-lyn,” Antosha sang, “idol for the neophytes, violin of my life.”

He extended his hand for hers and she accepted. She knew proper courtesies. He kissed her hand, and his lips felt surprisingly cool upon her skin. Gwen felt the stares from neophytes and scientists who strolled in the square, catching their reflections in the Looking Ball from the corner of her eye. She sipped the vanilla air, concerned about her attire, her hair, her face. Had she not completed her braids, or was there something on her transparent lab coat, or a slit in her bodysuit? Had she forgotten some aspect of proper behavior in the presence of a supreme scientist?

Aside from rumors spilled by neophytes less fortunate than she, Gwen knew nothing of this man who offered his aid and kind words and lips. She looked deeper into the snowflakes of his eye and felt a soothing sensation in her body, a gentleness and comfort she did not experience with Marcel, Markus Venatici, her ex-boyfriend, Lord Rueben or any other man she’d met.
How could Antosha have hurt anyone?
she thought. The rumors about his dangerous side intrigued her, though, in hindsight seemed silly now that she finally met him.

“Let me take you elsewhere,” Antosha said. He leaned closer, as if to kiss her. She didn’t recoil, even as her blood quickened. He spoke softer now. “Don’t be afraid.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, his skin now warm. The snowflakes in his eye extended and flooded the facility; the marble flashed as if shattered by lightning, the cavern whitened, and the scientists, the ball, the café, and the neon signage disappeared …

… Gwen stood upon the Earth on a marble floor beneath an invisible terradome. The lab beneath the dome purred with the sounds of conversation and scurrying feet. A natural breeze sent the aromas of pine, oak, and cedar wafting over her, not synthetic, but
real
. Antosha stood beside her, looking on.

Gwen recognized Captain Broden Barão, Lord Nero Silvana, and Lady Verena Iglehart, who were dressed in biomats and mingled between hundreds of scientists and workstations. She couldn’t place the strangely familiar man who stood among them, at first. He had black and silver hair that parted at the center, a slim build, and two snowflake-obsidian eyes. She gasped and looked up at Antosha beside her, with his mismatched eyes. He directed her to view a nearby workstation, above which a rendition of a woman with silver beads threaded through silver-blue hair hung, her arms crossed over a silver bodysuit, her eyes closed, feet bare.

“Where have you brought me?” Gwen said.

“Not where,” Antosha said, “but when. Seventeen years ago. In my memory. In my mind. On the Island of Reverie. Under the Reassortment research terradome.”

“The laboratory on the Earth’s surface?”

“I’ve brought you into my being, into my consciousness, into my soul. Now you will see. Now you will know—”

“Who is she?” Gwen said.

“Her name was Haleya, my … former eternal partner.”

Platform 130’s activated,
Verena yelled.
The trial shall commence in sixty seconds.

“We met during Harpoon classes—”

“What are they doing to her?” Gwen said.

Fifty-five seconds!

“Captain Barão prepped her for the surface. He will test a serum we called Agent Reznez, named after the scientist who helped me develop it. Pity that this scientist met his maker before his prime.”

“What did the serum do?”

Forty-five seconds,
Verena said.

“It coated transhuman cells with a protective membrane,” Antosha’s voice was cracking, his good eye glassy, “composed of synthetic and organic genetic materials designed to prevent Reassortment from entering transhuman neural cells and blood cells and provide—”

“An enhancement to the blood-brain barrier,” Gwen said.

Antosha nodded. “It was to be an unprecedented significant conversion, the conversion to allow humanity’s return to the surface.” He breathed as if he’d run a marathon.

“My gods,” Gwen said, her lips shaking, “why would you let her do this? Why did Captain Barão agree?”

Thirty seconds.

“The captain insisted we use a transhuman for this Jubilee.”

Gwen looked in different directions, then into Antosha’s mismatched silver and snowflake-obsidian eyes. “Jubilee …”

“Ah, I sometimes forget not everything is taught to Harpoon candidates. A Jubilee is a public demonstration of the latest synbio research into Reassortment,” and when Gwen crumpled her brow, “a clinical trial to test a treatment against the strain.”

Ten …

Gwen gasped. She turned and opened her mouth as if to scream, as if she could stop them.

Antosha pulled her chin back to him, gently. “The captain had been using protohumans called Gemini,” he continued, “man’s ancestors from thirty thousand years ago, recreated to walk the Earth today, similar enough to modern transhumans to test serums and vaccines against Reassortment. For this clinical trial, the scientific board agreed with Captain Barão’s assessment—”