The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (6 page)

Five …

“I don’t believe it!” Gwen said.

“He used my love for Haleya against me! He knew I would work until I couldn’t breathe if it would save her—”

“No!”

“Yes! See the truth! All Captain Barão cares for is his
own
glory.”

One …

The clear enclosure descended into the earth, and Haleya opened her eyes. She reached for the leaves that dangled from the weeping willow trees, while the chants from the Valley of Masimovian echoed under the dome.

“She loved nature …”

Our partners outpour gratitude.

“She loved me …”

Haleya sprinted west along a deer trail, so quick she appeared as a shade of green upon the workstation.

While we beg the gods for mercy.

“Where’s she going?” Gwen said.

For a volunteer surviving.

Antosha didn’t answer. Tears streamed down his face.

Antosha of the past lunged for Captain Barão, and research bots swarmed them.

For our hopes and dreams reviving.

Haleya dashed to the edge of the island and screamed, loud enough to shatter the universe. Verena declared a new record time of survival during a transhuman trial, and the chants in the Valley of Masimovian reached a crescendo amid falling violet rose petals. Antosha of the past wailed when Haleya dove off a mossy cliff into the river formerly known as the Hudson in the time Before Reassortment.

The drones caught up with Haleya, who floated over the crimson-streaked water. Gwen reached for Antosha’s cheek and brushed his tears with her thumb.

The Reassortment research terradome bubbled and disappeared …

… And the rows of black and dark green marble stones, the neophytes and keeper bots and café reappeared. Gwen’s dampened hand still lay upon Antosha’s cheek. Next to the Looking Ball
,
the snowflakes in his eye appeared scarlet.

He caressed her hand in his. “You remind me so much of her.” Antosha closed his eye, inhaling. “Your intelligence, your exquisiteness, your loyalty to the commonwealth …”

“I believe you,” Gwen said. It occurred to her that this was the first man to love her, not as a Variscan candidate or Madam Champion, but as a woman.

He lowered his voice. “All I ask from you is your help. The world has shimmied off its axis, but you and I can bring it back to equilibrium.”

Gwen wiped her face. It felt as hot as the sun. She’d never felt so connected to another transhuman as she did to Antosha Zereoue.

“What do you need?”

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

Brody neared the Reassortment Research Center checkpoint. He looked up. For a heartbeat, he mistook Gwendolyn Horvearth for Damy. Her body’s voluptuous curves in her bodysuit and the way she let her braid fall over her right shoulder with wisps of hair curling down each side of her face were so similar to the way Damy had looked when he’d first met her decades ago, during a tour. They could have been sisters.

“You made the right decision,” Brody said.

“I’m looking forward to learning from you,” Gwen said, “and aiding the team’s effort to achieve significant conversion, earn my Mark, and lead the people back to the surface.”

Neophytes rarely spoke with such eloquence and determination. Damy had chosen wisely. “So you shall, but first I must address the team.”

“Lead the way.”

Brody’s shadow was entering her Reassortment training at an interesting time in his life. Damy advised he shouldn’t shield Gwen from the political maneuvering he must execute after a demotion, which was necessary to reassure his team of his continued standing within the commonwealth. He mustn’t let anyone misinterpret his acceptance of Chief Justice Carmen’s terms as guilt, for this could lead to his end far sooner than anything Antosha might do; competitor scientists lurked, and board members circled like lions on a hunt.

“Welcome, Captain Barão,” a Janzer said.

Brody nodded to him and entered the center with Gwen. They passed through a tangle of arches shaped like teardrops, thin at the base, bulb-like at the top. Brody explained to her that when he’d taken over the Reassortment project, he’d worked with the team in the legacy center, on the other side of the facility’s front end. In 327 AR, he’d moved the center to the Cryo Room and enlisted the aid of the top architects in Beimeni to redesign a new center there.

“Why?” Gwen asked.

Brody stopped walking, as did Gwen beside him. He thought about the 334 scientists who perished during a Regenesis procedure conducted by his team in the Cryo Room.

“Captain?”

Brody cleared that memory from his mind. He didn’t want to talk about the failed procedure that killed all but one of the scientists who designed the Reassortment Strain. “The work we do here is vital for our ascent to the Earth’s surface.” He stepped forward and so did Gwen. They passed a group examining data streams beneath their workstations. “In the legacy center, the scientists operated in silos, competing with each other, wrangling over resources. This constant conflict interfered with conversion. Without the open architecture I introduced here, battles ensued over prime office locations, benaris, genetic materials, anything and everything.”

They passed beneath one of the teardrops, thinner than a standard Beimenian arch, and Gwen brushed against the pale stucco wall. She recoiled suddenly and bit her lip. Brody looked down and saw blood on her hand. He grabbed a towel from a nearby water fountain, dampened it with uficilin, then held her hand and tenderly dabbed the wound.

Gwen batted her eyelashes. Her face reddened. “What a way to start,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Brody said. He stared at her lips, her neck, her breasts, and finally her hands and fingers.
Her beauty is not for me,
he thought.
I have my eternal partner, I need no other.

“How does that feel now?”

“I’m fine.” Gwen moved her uninjured hand over his. “I’ve been through worse, development, the Harpoons, the auction, I think I can handle a little scratch.” Brody pulled his hand from hers. “Please, continue,” she said.

The hum from the workstations and scientists forced Brody to raise his voice. “So, they set up this weaving design where workstations dangle from the ceiling, and synthetic neural signals of essential oils fill the air.” He inhaled. “Pleasant, isn’t it?”

Gwen agreed. “Where’re your lord and lady?” Two workstations labeled with golden lettering, LORD NERO SILVANA and LADY VERENA IGLEHART, hung above two neophytes who stood chatting without their masters.

“That’s odd,” Brody said.

He connected to Marstone and requested a conference connection with Verena and Nero. They didn’t answer. He left them messages. Under normal circumstances, an unscheduled absence from Verena and Nero wouldn’t faze him. It had happened before, typically when his striker convinced his eternal partner to go to the western spas. But with everything going on these days, he couldn’t help but wonder if their disappearance was owed to new scrutiny from Chief Justice Carmen, a request by the chancellor, a motion from the ministry, or worse.

Brody accessed the RDD database and found no filings from the Office of the Chancellor for his strategist and striker. Where could they be? How could they not support him on such an important day? He reassigned Nero’s and Verena’s shadows and activated his workstation. A hologram formed beneath it, and he requested connection to his research team through the ZPF, relayed by Marstone.

Put aside your work for a moment.

When he sensed the last of his scientists engaged to his conference, Brody decided this talk would require a more personal setting, one no member of his team would forget. He would draw them into a collective mind meld, something only Brody, Chancellor Masimovian, Lady Isabelle, and a handful of other highly skilled telepaths had the ability to accomplish.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said to Gwen. “I’ve done this before.”

Brody raised his arms as if he were the chancellor and accessed the ZPF in a way he knew threw his consciousness directly over the thousands of scientists in his research center. He hadn’t connected this deeply to so many transhumans at once in at least fifteen years, yet they didn’t resist him. They couldn’t.

He looked at Gwen.

Follow me now,
he sent.

He and Gwen now stood upon an obsidian marble dais before his team, set in rows and hills of dark soil. A sinuous river separated Brody and Gwen from the team, a river that stretched to an alien horizon, above which a foreign planet eclipsed a foreign sun and moons. Blackened stones jetted from the sides, mixed with bright greenery. A breeze, musky and fruity, whipped the soil into tiny swirls.

“We live in a time of great opportunity and great sacrifice,” Brody said. He moved his right thumb up and down rhythmically. “We have research installations on twenty celestial bodies in our own solar system. We established an alliance with an intelligent being on an exoplanet thousands of light years from Earth, and we’ve intercepted transmissions with the ansible that suggest more intelligent life exists. We’re at the cusp of discovering the secrets to overcome Reassortment, either in a terradome structure or within our own genes.

“I want to assure you that I remain committed to Project Reassortment, like all of you, like the chancellor and the Beimenian people. I chose this landscape for our meeting to show you that the potential for brightness and darkness lies in all our minds. Look around and see them mix.
See
that opposites can coexist.

“Antosha Zereoue returns to the RDD not as our adversary, but as our partner. The chancellor has forbidden his entry to our facility, and we will respect his secure peace within the RDD, yet we all understand the link between Regenesis and Reassortment. So I expect that should Antosha achieve conversion in his project, he would share it with us, and I expect us to do the same with him.

“I am still your captain, this is still our Reassortment project, and I foresee greatness in the days and years ahead.

“Follow me now.”

The cornucopia of stone and brush and light and dark disappeared, replaced by the teardrop arches in the Reassortment Research Center. The scientists on the floor looked up at him and Gwen. He waved them back to work, and the hum from the workstations and scientists soon resumed. Brody exhaled. The designated intermediaries between the Reassortment and Regenesis projects would suffice for now, but how long could that last? When would Antosha seek more control? Would Brody last another year? These were questions he heard in his team’s minds when he connected to them, and he wished he had the answers.

I must solve the Reassortment enigma. I must lead the people to the surface
, he thought
.
Brody turned to Gwen. “I’ve heard you’re a fast learner, and I’ve heard you were the first candidate purchased in the Harpoon Auction. I’ve heard you won’t be intimidated by Reassortment—”

“I won’t be.” She stepped to Brody’s workstation. “What’s next?”

“Link into the workstation. It’s similar to how you link into the Granville syntech.”

Brody watched her work out the new system. She was quick all right. Cocky, too—a good sign in a neophyte, but she’d need to learn respect for Reassortment. “I want you to activate the file labeled Reassortment Tests and request number five thousand seven hundred eighty-six.”

The name JOHANN OF PISCATOR popped up. She pulled the trial results, and the Reassortment Strain overtook the station. She jolted backward. Brody steadied her with his hand.

“Easy,” he said, “it can’t hurt you, not down here. Just have a look at your enemy. They don’t teach you how it really works in development.”

The organism rotated back and forth; its spears elongated and shortened from the edge of the nucleus. Energy currents pulsed through their needled edges. It shrank to coconut size, joined by a dozen additional Reassortments in a stream of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. They latched on to red blood cells, one organism per cell, surrounding each with a thin metallic coating. The organisms rotated, and their prongs lengthened and shortened so rapidly the movements became an indistinguishable blue pulse.

“Reassortment inserts its genetic material through the cell membrane and into the cytoplasm,” Brody said. “After it takes control of the cell, it secretes an enzyme that signals the heart to pump faster, but it doesn’t reproduce in the blood.”

“So it doesn’t lead to septicemia,” Gwen said.

“That’s right … at first … at first it doesn’t interfere with the red blood cells, and white blood cells can’t recognize it, so there’s no immune response.”

“What cells does it target?”

Brody pulled up a transhuman spinal cord and brain and peripheral nervous system, the neurons sprawled like roots from a tree. Electrical impulses fired between them. The image focused on a single neuron coated in a translucent barrier. As the infected blood cells flowed nearby, the Reassortments dislodged and plunged into the nerve cells.

“My gods,” Gwen said, “it crosses the blood-brain barrier effortlessly.”

“Just watch,” Brody said.

Reassortment attacked and attached and rotated and spun all over the neuron, turning fiery blue in the frenzy. The hologram view zoomed closer, showing a needle as it made its way into the neuron and finally the cell’s nucleus, its helixes spinning, reforming within the cell. The pieces of DNA that Reassortment altered were highlighted by rods of green. When it was done, a pulsating, swirling orange sphere was expelled from the neuron.

“The protective membranes we used in this formulation for the red blood cells and the neural cells failed,” Brody said. “The organism mutated and manipulated the DNA. The blood crystallized. The volunteer perished.”

The hologram view zoomed out, showing Johann begin to succumb. Gwen swallowed. “What does it feel like?”

“The sensation for the victim,” Brody paused, “is … as if the body is being ripped apart. The primary part of the brain affected, the anterior insula, moderates pain sensations throughout the body. We don’t know why it does this, but we do know this is why death by Reassortment is so agonizing.”