The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (4 page)

Pasha sauntered out to the terrace and stood next to her. She turned to him. He had none of the boy she knew from the early days of development in his face, but he also didn’t look as stressed or angered as he had prior to the Harpoons, after their … argument. His dark blue hair flowed over his forehead in a gust, his bronze skin looked vibrant and young, and his eyes didn’t have dark rings.

When he didn’t speak, she couldn’t help but wonder: Was he truly no longer upset with her for saving Nathan rather than him during Isabelle’s candlestick puzzle?

She pushed his hair away from his eyes. “Pash, why didn’t you answer me?”

“What’d you mean?” Pasha crumpled his brow, and his dimples pocked his cheeks.

“I’ve been trying to call you the entire way here from the stadium. They didn’t let me watch the rest of the auction, no matter what I said, and I was so—”

Pasha put his finger on her lips. “O, no candidate can communicate after the auction.” He laughed, and Oriana laughed with him. It was just like the early days of development, when they had so much fun together. She felt lighter than a dove. “You weren’t listening to Lady Isabelle before the auction, were you?”

The auction was a blur to her. The whispers, the crowd, the perfect sky, Lady Isabelle, and the bid, the bid, the bid! She shook her head. “I suppose not.” She watched the candidates frolicking far below in the courtyard. “Our path is different from theirs, isn’t it?” She looked at Pasha.

“Only Antosha knows what lies ahead for us.” He and Oriana turned toward the suite, where the z-disk was still glowing gold. “Come, O, let us find out.”

Starmine Village

Gallia, Underground Northeast

“This is
exactly
what I needed,” Oriana said.

She and Nathan navigated the green bioluminescent limestone path, and she massaged the angel necklace he’d given her during the Harpoons. The sounds of streams and waterfalls grew louder as the stone turned to sand and Granville day turned to night. Starlight reflected off the waterfalls, which rolled over boulders rounded from erosion and gushed to the spindly streams below. Oriana breathed in the misty air.

Nathan set down a silk blanket near the falls. Beimenians meandered around them. The scent of vetiver oil wafted through the air. Nathan unlocked an alloy bin, and up popped mugs brimming with cappuccino. He handed one to Oriana, and she eased into the nook near his chest. She followed the trail of a comet across the sky through the constellations. A sense of peace overtook her.

“Do you think they’d let us be on the same team?” Nathan said. The Blackstone Consortium, known to train the strikers, aeras, strategists, and captains for the strike teams, had bid for Nathan, who had been in the top quarter percent of all candidates. “Or are we to be separated forever?”

“You know I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to.”

The z-disk that Antosha had left for her, which she’d scanned before she went down to Nathan, indicated he’d secured her and Pasha to a special assignment with the Holcombe Strike Team, one that would exclude them from the normal RDD processes. They would not take the tour with the other RDD neophytes, and no other supreme scientist could claim them. Oriana was excited at the thought of working with Antosha, Pasha, and the Holcombe Strike Team, though she would miss Nathan.

She inhaled the steam from the cappuccino and sipped. “Thanks for bringing me here,” she said.

“You’re working with Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue, aren’t you?”

Oriana didn’t respond.

“Oriana?”

“How’d you know?”

“I heard he bid first for you.”

She exhaled. “No one was supposed to know that.” She pushed away from him and planted her hand in the sand. “You didn’t ask me to the edge of the commonwealth to listen to the pearl falls or see the stars, did you?”

Nathan gritted his teeth. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just wanted to
see
you. I didn’t see or hear from you after the Walk, and I didn’t know if it was because—”

“I received the first bid and you didn’t,” she said.

“Because I couldn’t protect you when it mattered most—”

“I don’t need anyone’s protection.” Oriana gestured and flung the sand off the back of her hand.

“You’re in danger,” Nathan said. “That’s why I asked you to come with me here, before it starts.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Antosha has a history.” Nathan peered across the rounded falls at the Beimenians, who all seemed mesmerized by the starlight illusion. Even so, Nathan turned back to her and lowered his voice. “He has a violent history, and I thought that—”

“If we were further from Marstone, it wouldn’t hear your traitorous accusation.”

“It’s still a risk, but I had to warn you, and I remembered your love for the stars.”

“Antosha’s … otherworldly.” She sipped from her mug, stared into the waterfalls, and pondered the man who had bid the highest in Harpoon history for her. “He’s a supreme scientist. He brought Pasha to me. I’d never … expect he’d be violent.”

“That’s part of the problem, I think. No one ever has irrefutable evidence against him, but all around him scientists die or disappear or deceive each other, or, in the case of your parents …”

“What?”

Nathan turned from her.

“Look at me.” She pulled his chin to her. “What did you find?”

“I heard things during my development … knowledge that I wanted to share …”

“What kind of things?”

“Evil things, about Antosha, about your father, and your mother …”

“What did you hear?”

“The rumors are that Antosha may have had something to do with your parents’ downfall, that … that your mother’s death …”

“Tell me, Nathan!”

“That she wasn’t strangled by Vernon Lebrizzi.”

Oriana’s breath gave out. “They think Antosha killed her?”

“The scientists in the RDD knew your father and Antosha had a … complicated relationship, but in the end, though the details are all mixed up, your father didn’t allow Antosha’s entry to the board, and the rumor goes, he convinced the chancellor to exile Antosha to the Lower Level. And there’s this other idea, not spoken about much, that …”

“That what, Nathan? Finish it!”

Nathan swallowed and looked away from Oriana. “That your mother was genetically poisoned.”

“You tell this me now?” She threw her mug over the side of the falls and it shattered. The water took what remained of the steaming cappuccino over the stone. “You could have mentioned it in the VR, at the Trimester Trek. I asked you what you knew, and you didn’t tell me!”

“Lady Parthenia contacted Lady California, told her we shouldn’t see each other any longer. She said I was dangerous for your survival in the commonwealth. After their contact, my developers talked about you and your developers and your parents and Antosha. They didn’t know I overheard their conversation, and I didn’t say anything before the exams because I didn’t know how you’d react and I didn’t know if you’d be able to handle it. I couldn’t live with myself if you failed the exams because of me—”

Oriana crossed her arms over her chest. “You knew more than you told me, even before that.”

He rested his face in his hands. “I didn’t know when would be right to tell you what I knew, or how much. Is there such a thing as a right time for news like this? But now that you’re working with him … I
had
to.”

Oriana pushed her hands through her hair and held her neck, the visions of Antosha attacking her parents as out of place as the underground waterfalls she sat near. Could she confront a supreme scientist? Could she demand Antosha tell her the truth? During her development, her illegal searches for information about her parents had nearly destroyed her, Pasha, and House Summerset. The stakes were higher now. Even this conversation with Nathan could result in a Warning, even a trip to Farino Prison, if Lady Isabelle picked it up.

“I can’t work with him,” she said. “I can’t work with—”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know.” She leaned over to Nathan and kissed him. “I’ll think of something.”

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

“I want him dead,” Antosha said.

Lady Isabelle strutted to the bar and poured Loverealan wine into a glass. “Who, my love? We have so many on our list.”

He signaled a keeper bot for his robe. Isabelle watched the steam rise off his body as he stood and pressed his feet to the thick layer of orchid rose petals on the ground of Phanes Spa. “Prime Minister Decca writes to me on behalf of the Office of the Chancellor, the Supreme Ministry of Beimeni, and the Council of Economic Advisors.” Antosha laughed wanly.

Isabelle knew Masimovian would defer to his prime minister only in times of distress, while Swarro Gallegos, the perpetually sweaty, shaky chairman of the council of economic advisors, likely as not had been forced to sign this communiqué.

“Decca calls into question the legality of the ministry vote and the ‘unprecedented use of commonwealth assets at a time when the commonwealth bleeds jobs.’” Antosha smashed the z-disk against the marble wall. Its pieces scattered into a nearby pond. “He has also disallowed a conclave to officially recognize my significant conversion.”

Antosha threw a white silk robe around his body and turned to her. He ran his hands through his long, wet hair.

“Decca will whine and opine as he does,” Isabelle said, “but he cannot undo the ministry’s vote, and he cannot fight the will of the people. Or reverse your significant conversion. You’ve earned the Mark of Masimovian and the right to lead Reassortment research. Decca can’t change that for all the benaris in Luxor.” She twisted her hair down her left shoulder and sighed. “Alas, like the rest of your species, you think first with your cock—”

“You haven’t complained before.”

She smiled. “I could’ve sent one of my couriers to deliver this z-disk but didn’t, and now my suspicions have been confirmed. Did you spot what went unsaid in that message?”

“I spotted the need to kill that fool Decca.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “The chancellor fears you, he fears what you may become. He witnessed the birth of something in Faraway Hall he hasn’t seen in decades and knows he may have another Broden Barão—”

Antosha laughed.

“No?” She put down her wineglass, then handed him a package wrapped with a golden ribbon. “Like him, you will be the supreme scientist of the Ventureño Facility covering Reassortment. Time you dressed the part and prepared for the final stage and iterations.”

“Yes, my lady, and I trust you’ll handle the chancellor.”

“This is a delicate time,” she said, wringing her hands together. She balled her right hand into a fist and shook it in rhythm with her voice. “You must speak with Atticus and assure him you’re his most loyal supreme scientist.”

“After the board meeting?” Antosha said. Isabelle nodded. “Will this impact the new Janzer army?”

“No,” she said. “The consortiums tell me it will be ready in less than thirty days, and General Norrod is prepared to lead it into the BP’s eastern enclave.” Jeremiah had built Blackeye Cavern in a part of the Earth’s crust as yet unaffected by Reassortment seepage. But Isabelle had seen the latest diagnostic data, which suggested the Cavern would soon be engulfed by the strain. She debated whether she should let the traitors die from exposure, but decided against it given the risk to the commonwealth, should the plague somehow find its way into the Beimeni zone. The BP’s end
was
near, one way or the other. She raised and lowered her chin, then sipped her wine. It tasted more bitter than sweet. She sighed. “Alas, the battle with the BP may be the least of our problems.”

Antosha took the glass from her and set it upon a pedestal. Facing her, he massaged her shoulders beneath her robe. “You’re so tense, my lady. What else troubles you?”

“If you had just sent more than six million transhumans to their maker, you’d be somewhat distraught, would you not?” She pushed his arms away from her and spun, her hair twisting around her. She pressed her forefingers against her throat, tight with anger and guilt. “Do you know how many we’ve killed under Masimovian’s developmental system?” She rubbed the golden phoenix that adorned her chest, then faced her sweet Antosha with glossy eyes. She still remembered the faces of all her Harpoon candidates, all her children. “Do you understand the cost of immortality under Masimovian’s rule?”

Antosha tilted his head, shaking it no.

“More than one hundred eighty million transhumans.” She swallowed, now breathing rapidly and deeply.
My poor children.
She looked down, then into Antosha’s snowflake obsidian eyes. “He tells me we’re speeding evolution with more births, keeping only the elite, driving scientific advances unknown in the history of the Earth, but he doesn’t have to look at them, ever.” Her voice turned vindictive. “He doesn’t have to watch them leave the Harpoon Auction, knowing their lives are over, ever.” Isabelle performed the population growth calculations in her head, as she often did. “Do you know how many more will die if we don’t do something?”

“I don’t, my lady.”

“From this year to the year 400, if I’m to keep the annual population growth rate at eight percent compared to an accelerating birthrate above fifteen percent, I’d have to send another three-
billion-plus
of my children into the Lower Level. And even with that,” she raised her voice, “the population of the Great Commonwealth will swell to more than three billion!”

“Then you’d best expand the Lower Level, my lady. It wasn’t designed—”

She slapped him. “You’d best keep the chancellor’s trust! It’s the only way we’ll end it. Institute strict population controls and develop each child to their full potential.” She tossed her hair, already feeling better, until she thought of Reassortment. “We have another problem.” She fetched her glass of wine and a Beimeni beret.

“Of course, my dove, you’re always a bearer of good news,” Antosha said with a resigned grin.