The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (19 page)

Antosha lifted her chin with his forefingers. “You must continue your work with Captain Barão.” He leaned closer to her. “The captain must trust you completely.”

“I understand.” Gwen closed her eyes, hoping Antosha would kiss her and sweep her off her feet and carry her to her bedroom and pleasure her all night—

“I want you to slap me as hard as you can.”

Gwen’s eyes opened swiftly. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “What?”

“Slap me and tell me to leave and when you do it, I want you to mean it—”

“I can’t—”

“My violin, you can do anything. Dig deep, find that most haunting secret, pretend I shared it with the world, and slap me, scream at me, hate me,” and when Gwen hesitated, “your parents conceived you in an alley and when your mother discovered her pregnancy, she left you to die on those steps in Transport City, she didn’t want you, she still doesn’t—”

Gwen punched Antosha so hard he flew, and when he landed, he tumbled down the marble stairs, crashed into neophytes, and they all splashed into the hot tub. All eyes at the party turned toward her.

Gwen felt tears burn her eyes. “Don’t ever come back here!”

Vanya helped Antosha out of the tub. He held his nose. Blood gushed down his face. Gwen caught his nod to her before he and Vanya disappeared inside the suite.

Gwen held her chest. She felt like someone had stabbed her lungs. What had she done to her lover? And what had he done to her?

No one knew details about her parents except Caterina, Roger, Markus, and Minister Kurt Kaspasparon. To her knowledge, none of these people had spoken to Antosha. How could he know? Could he see her consciousness? Or did he view her file in the RDD’s database and make assumptions?

She rested her hand on Juvelle’s arm.

“Aha, mademoiselle,” Juvelle said, dabbing uficilin onto Gwen’s bloody knuckles, “should I ask the guests to leave?”

“No, let them—”

“Gwenny!” Caterina said. She arrived with Roger beside her. “What happened?”

“He’s
still
trying to recruit me to his team,” Gwen lied, examining her cleaned and healed fist.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Roger said, “or invite you to join my team in the Taos Facility.”

Gwen laughed, then frowned. “He bought up my parents …”

Caterina rubbed Gwen’s arm. “I knew he was a dick.”

She coaxed Gwen into joining their friends from development for a drinking game called Guess the Synism. The Jurinarian migrant workers cleaned the hot tub, which bubbled with blood-stained water. The guests drank and chatted as if nothing had happened.

But Gwen knew word would spread quickly of what she’d done. She danced with her friends from development, pondering Antosha’s next move, and hers.

Spa of Delphi

Gaia, Underground West

2,500 meters deep

“What are we going to say?” Nero said. “Great Lady of Lux, Delphi, have you seen our terrorist friends lately?”

“Just follow my lead,” Brody said. “We’ll see where it goes.”

Delphi wasn’t known to give straight answers to simple questions. Brody assumed the meaning of the BP’s note would become clear when they got there. When it did, he wanted his striker with him, more so after his arrest in the First Ward.

The Lady Isabelle had overestimated her authority, as Brody assumed she did, when she took him from his apartment in the middle of the night. The chancellor had gone to Brody’s holding cell in the Department of Peace himself and powered down the teal laser beams that secured him. “I’ve been set up,” Brody assured the chancellor, who nodded. “You’ve ever been my friend, ally, and confidant in strike team and commonwealth affairs,” Masimovian offered, kissing Brody on both his cheeks, “and I would ask your forgiveness in this most unfortunate misunderstanding.” He hadn’t seemed as distraught as Brody would have thought. Was he not directing policy to the director of communications and commonwealth relations? Were he and Lady Isabelle not coordinating Janzer search and seizures with the ministry, as required by Beimeni law?

So much still didn’t make sense to Brody, and he hoped Delphi might provide the answers—and that the BP would make contact, as they had offered in their cryptor.

Now he and Nero neared the Protector Prototypes, alloyed bots covered with golden chains. Black orbs the size of oranges, tipped with diamond spikes, floated around the Protectors. Then the spiked orbs surrounded Brody and Nero, and they heard the gruff voices of the Protectors in their minds.

Captain Barão, what business do you have with Her Lady of Lux?

We seek wisdom from Delphi.

You shall be granted access to Her Lady of Lux for one hundred benaris.

Brody paid with coin, and the Protectors withdrew the spiked orbs closer to their bodies. They collected Nero’s shuriken and pulse guns. A keeper bot escorted them to the dressing area, where they changed into maroon robes—the traditional Beimeni resting garb—and galoshes.

They scurried through the Corridor of Delphi. Water flowed down ruby walls. Soft apricot bioluminescence emanated from the pools below. In the main atrium, the falls transformed from clear and clean to milky and as dark as oil until they parted in the middle. When last Brody had visited the spa, the falls had been golden.

Delphi emerged, burning in the flaming tar and dust and muck as she tiptoed over the bubbling pond. Her once silky obsidian hair was charred. He might not have known her at all if not for her iridescent almond eyes, which seemed to hold the cosmos within.

Brody stepped back. “What’s happened here? What’s happened to you?”

“My appearance does not concern a change in my being but in yours, for the Great Falls of Delphi reveal your consciousnesses, as experienced by the Twin Gods.”

“Lady of Lux, we require your foresight,” Brody said. He pulled Nero’s arm down, and they knelt before her. “We believe we have discovered a traitorous act from among the commonwealth’s highest officials.”

“Freely speak your minds here. No chancellor, not even Mr. Masimovian, holds sway over the gods.”

Traitorous words for traitorous times
, Brody thought.

“Forgive us for bringing evil here, but we’ve seen proof that our chancellor, he who allows the people an opportunity for endless life, he who allows for equality in development and infinite underground expansion, he who has maintained peace and prosperity for so long … we believe he has committed an act unworthy of a supreme chancellor of Beimeni.”

“You are a sworn captain of the underground and you know that I will not interfere in transhuman affairs. You will uphold your world’s rules and its traditions and its integrity at the expense of all else. This is your destiny. This is your purpose.”

“Lady of Lux,” Nero began, “if I may speak on this.” She nodded. “We cannot cross the chancellor and have any hope those we care about will survive. Our lives may be lost, but more innocents shouldn’t suffer for our perceived treachery. We ask that you impart your wisdom of the multiverse to us and guide us in this monumental challenge.”

You must see the darkness in your hearts that fills my spa, darkness that now spreads throughout the Beimeni zone.

Delphi’s lips did not move, yet Brody and Nero heard her voice as clearly in their minds as if she spoke them aloud.

“Do you speak of the BP or of the commonwealth, and how do you recommend we respond?” Nero said. “What do you see in our timescape?”

You must see into yourselves, and you will know how to react.
She turned and tiptoed over the curdling black water.

Brody connected to the ZPF and, without Marstone’s interference, sent,
Wait, Delphi, you once told me of a choice of destiny.

She disappeared through the oily waterfall.

You will know, Captain Barão.

Should I help the BP? Should I bring forward the information to the ministry?

You will know …

Her Lady of Lux disappeared behind the falls.

Brody and Nero dressed in their fatigues. They ambled past the Protector Prototypes, whose spiked orbs simmered gently around their bodies.

Once they were clear, Nero said, “What was that?”

“That was actually quite a direct conversation, for her.”

“Are you kidding? Look into your heart? What total bullshit, I want my hundred benaris back.”

“I paid, Nero, and besides that’s not why we’re—”

The song echoed from a secondary tunnel perpendicular to the Corridor of Delphi. The
rat-a-tat
of footsteps pressed closer and closer, and a little girl,
a child
, stopped to face them.

Brody and Nero dashed toward her and into a tunnel lined with petrified wood and polished stone. The girl disappeared. Brody turned. Behind them, aristocratic Beimenians dressed in tunics checked in with the Protector Prototypes. None noticed the ruckus, or if they did, they didn’t react. Nero grasped the handles of his shuriken when the giggles and the tapping of the girl’s feet resumed. She flashed into and out of sight in the opposite direction.

“Hey,” Brody shouted. “Are you all right?”

Silence.

He peered toward the girl and heard the scuffle of pebbles and earth as she dashed across the tunnel, far ahead again. Her curly auburn hair trailed behind her like a river. Brody and Nero jogged to the next fork. In the distance, where the tan light turned saffron, they caught a glimpse of the child before she raced off, giggling as she went.

The men sprinted.

The smell of the tunnel turned from lavender to cinnamon. The girl whisked from right to left, then stopped and danced and spun. Nero grasped her. “Gotcha—”

Hoods dropped over his and Brody’s heads.

Hydra Hollow

300 meters deep

Connor and Murray took Captain Barão and his striker to the Hollow. Connor was hopeful that the captain’s presence at the designated meeting location meant he’d support their cause. Murray said he wouldn’t bet on it.

“Glad you decided to join us,” Connor said.

Captain Barão shook his head. His eyes appeared as if he was drugged, and his face had turned green from a Converse Collar. Nero also wore a collar and squinted as Connor unlatched his and Captain Barão’s cuffs. They both sat against a limestone boulder near a blue bioluminescent wall where cold water trickled down the stone to a gutter along the base.

Little Jocelyn burst through the curtain at the front of the cove and orbited Murray. He’d trimmed his beard, artfully forming sharp angles over his face that Connor remembered from their time on the Block. That felt like a lifetime ago.

Jocelyn tugged on Murray’s tunic. “I think you owe
me
something …”

She tapped her left toe, while her silk shirt, torn and discolored and three sizes too large, slipped over her shoulder. The sausage curls in her hair dangled loosely past her ears.

“Hmm, not sure what that is,” Murray said.

Jocelyn put her hands on her hips. “You told me if I tricked the grown-ups, I’d earn enough benaris to buy new grow lights for my garden, so how about it?” She stuck out her hand.

Arty grinned. He folded his arms, and the bracelets, stenciled with the BP’s regalia, rubbed against his tunic. He pressed his lips together and nodded when Jocelyn peered up to him.

Murray knelt and fixed Jocelyn’s shirt, then gently swiped dirt from her chin. “Oh no, I don’t think I remember that accord? You, Connor?”

Connor shook his head no. He admired Murray’s devotion to the children in Hydra Hollow, though he disagreed with allowing Jocelyn, whom Arty had described as a “daughter of the BP,” so close to the Protectors near the spa and the commonwealth. The girl stood no taller than Connor’s waist. Jocelyn’s parents, he’d learned, had been arrested in Gaia City after she was born illegally, and her brothers took her and escaped with BP sympathizers along the Underground Passage to Hydra Hollow.

“Uh-huh,” Jocelyn put in, “you said so. You
promised.
” She folded her arms and looked toward Arty, knowing he agreed with her. “See,” she said, pointing, “Arturo heard,
everyone
heard you say so.”

“Silly me,
now
I remember, so here you go.” Murray handed her a ten-benari coin. “That should do it.”

Jocelyn flew between the curtains and disappeared.

“Nice,” Nero said, “so the rumors of child labor in the BP are true.” He wiped the grime from his mouth, where drool mixed with the cotton from the hood Connor had placed over his head.

“As true as the commonwealth’s incineration of children in the Lower Level,” Murray countered. He chucked a ring full of keys between the captain and the striker. “A Lower Level that shouldn’t exist—”

Captain Barão groaned as he leaned over to grasp the keys. He inserted one, then another into Nero’s cuffs, saying, “The Lower Level is meant to provide safety to the transhuman race should Reassortment seep into the Beimeni zone. It’s reserved for those who cannot live among developed transhumans.” He tried a few more keys. “Anyone there could never compete in our marketplace, not as a—”

“Is it willful ignorance or are you just that dumb?”

Arty put his hand on Murray’s shoulder. “Pirro’s expecting us.”

Captain Barão and Nero shared a glance, then stood. “A little help,” the captain said to Connor, holding out the key ring between his cuffed wrists.

Connor found the right keys and unlatched the cuffs. The captain and his striker rubbed their wrists, which looked bruised from where the alloy had dug into their skin.

“Follow me.” Connor led them through the corridors of Hydra Hollow, narrow walks where natural streams flowed, and bacteria, which excreted peaceful pheromones, spread hues of green, yellow, and blue.

They arrived at the main cavern, where Beimeni Polemon lined up for various goods and services, from fruits and vegetables, to meats, to beer, to herbs to tunics and slippers and massages and palm readings. The bazaar smelled of perfumes and coffee beans and geraniums and jasmine. Vibrant bioluminescence in shades of violet covered the tents and limestone pillars. Stalactites jutted from the ceiling, bright with glowworms; stalagmites sprang like a thicket along the cavern’s rim. The scenery from the streams and waterfalls gave the impression of dusk upon the surface of the Earth.