The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (26 page)

A line of Protectors fit into the wall with their dark orbs tipped by diamond spikes at the ready. Hoses and wires attached to their helmets, chest plates, arms, and legs. An alloy chassis shielded their bodies. They were much taller and wider than the Janzers.

“Stay down,” Nero said. “Stay still.”

Connor laughed at the admonition, then wept reflexively, for his leg burned as if covered with lye.

“What’s wrong with you?” Nero said.

“I think my leg’s broken,” Connor said. He groaned and slid along the ground, reaching for his vials of uficilin and finding they’d shattered during the shift.

Pairs and pairs of deep red eyes now glowed on the other side of the darkened room.

Janzer eyes.

Two pulse blasts flew above Connor.

A Janzer division charged.

Nero flipped over one of the Janzers, lifted its shuriken, broke off its visor, then sliced through its chin and skull.

Connor felt as useless as a pup, his pulse gun deactivated by the EMP, his movements limited by his shattered leg. He rose, driven by adrenaline and will, determined to attack, though what, he could not see.

Nero yelled, “Connor, down!”

He dropped.

The striker flung a shuriken through the visor of a Janzer about to thrust his sword into Connor’s helmet.

He saved my life
, Connor thought. He winced from the pain in his leg.
After all this effort, I’m not going to be the cause of the operation’s failure! I won’t leave without my father!

Nero swung his sword nearly as fast as Aera. Sparks burst in the Crypt like a galaxy in the pale hue of Connor’s night vision as Nero dismantled the Janzers, focusing on their visors or twisting their necks. Connor was surprised to observe Nero moving as effectively and efficiently as the enemy.

“Come on, big fella,” Nero said after he finished the last one, “on your feet.”

Connor moaned.

The striker plucked a vial of uficilin from his pack and attached it to a syringe.

“Hold out your arm—”

Nero turned.

An electric-appearing pulse swam through the corner of the room, like a tropical fish lighting and dimming in the Gulf of Yeuron.

Nero injected the uficilin into Connor’s receiver on his arm. The relief was immediate, as if his leg were sewing itself back together, cell by cell. He grabbed the plating that had dislodged from his synsuit. Nero helped him reattach it behind his knee and calf.

The alloy chassis glowed dark blue and lifted with the sound of cracking alloy.

Connor unsheathed his sword as he limped and healed.

“Not a wise move,” Nero said. Connor glanced at him. “We cannot hope to engage the Protectors and succeed …”

The spiked orbs glided out of their cages, hovering.

“… but they are slow to activation.” Nero lifted a handful of pulse grenades—apparently still functional—from the dead Janzers. He activated them and telekinetically sent them toward the Protectors.

He and Connor slipped through the exit—

The tunnel burst with fire. The explosion reached all around them, flying, engulfing, but not harming them, for Nero made sure he ran behind Connor, shielding his damaged synsuit from the inferno.

Electric currents in the tunnel’s corners ignited as the Crypt transformed. This time, Connor and Nero lacked the alloy that stuck them to the ceiling, though the movement’s momentum sent them into the abyss.

Brody turned to the clouds of fire and dust that settled far from the hall to the east, near the Phanes Beltway.

The raid had begun.

The Beimeni City Orchestra rose from a pit below the third platform, shining with hues of green, gold, and dark red. The tune they played was familiar to Beimenians, the sounds of woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings mixed with electronic timbres, followed by chants from the crowd of “
Serve Beimeni! Live forever!
”

Time to leave
, Brody thought.

Damy said something, but he could only hear the orchestra.
We must leave,
she sent through Marstone, as if she knew his thoughts.

They weaved through the crowd, away from the dancers, away from the spray of champagne, the heat, and the orgy. Brody had just spied the fountains near the marble stairwell when Verne emerged. He approached them.

Something about him seemed … different. He peered into Brody’s eyes and smiled as he whispered into Damy’s ear. Brody tried to pull her away from him, but the crowd pushed against him. A hand wrapped around his biceps, slender, with a strong grip.

Gwen wrested him from Damy and Verne.

She drew him close. Her tender fingers crawled over his arms and down his back as her eyes caressed and undressed him. She thrust him into the scrambled center, full of dancers and lovers.

Like an organism, the orgy engulfed him.

He escaped Gwen’s sensual touch, but she spun around him and tugged him back in. Amid the falling rose petals and spiraling, colorful blends of silk and cotton and cashmere clothing coming undone, Brody lost his view of Damy.

“Please, Captain,” Gwen said, pressing herself to Brody’s chest, her voice seductive and insincere, so unlike the voice he knew, “if you don’t hold on to me now, Antosha will take me away from you, take me away from Reassortment.”

In fact, Gwen sounded drunk. Brody held her arms and pushed her away. “Gwendolyn, this isn’t you, this isn’t—”

She squeezed a jasmine flower that hung from her ear, and something, a powder of some kind, puffed into Brody’s face.

He choked.

He felt a rush throughout his body, followed by a sense of peace, as if he were being dipped into a Loverealan spa. He forgot what he’d been saying.

Gwen teased with her magenta boa and spun, her dress lifting and falling, falling and lifting, slowly and quickly, all at once in Brody’s altered vision.

She spun and spun and spun into his welcoming grip.

“What do you see now, Captain?” she said.

“I … don’t know.” His voice wobbled with his legs, his beret fell, and his hair trailed around his sweaty face.

Gwen ripped him out of his dark jacket, revealing his sky-blue vest and silk shirt beneath, unbuttoned at the top. Brody perspired so much now that the hair on his chest clung to his shirt, and he lost his thoughts, lulled by her voice, her radiant lips, her flowing hair, her bronze skin and taut body, hopelessly and helplessly intoxicated with desire and lust.

She waved her arms and hands in front of Brody’s face, and when his view of her cleared, her hair turned dark blue, her eyes turned red-pink, and her cheeks and bones and body looked just like Damy’s.

He kissed her chest, and she pressed against his forehead with her wrist; he kissed her arm and her shoulder and neck and smelled Damy’s lily scent, nibbled on her ear and tasted her jasmine lips. She caressed his shoulders and squeezed him and moved her boa around the back of his neck, feathery and tantalizing; she held him, kissed him, and, as suddenly as she’d seduced him, released him, grinned, and swung away. Her face shifted back to Gwen’s, with her magenta boa, and she melted into the crowd.

Brody turned, free of Gwen’s gravity.

He blinked.

Where am I?
he thought. Recollection returned.
Where’s Damy?

He searched, but Gwen had led him to the other side of the third platform.

Everywhere, couples frolicked, fingers tapped, wigs lifted, clothes were sprung open and undone, oily breasts and pectorals were bared.

Damy, where are you?

He tried to reach her through Marstone, again and again and again. Then he tried to call out to her through the ZPF, without Marstone’s interference.

No response.

He swam through the arms and scarves and boas and gowns and naked bodies and slung his mind out among the masses.

Damy! Damy! Damy! Damy! Damy!

He ducked under arms, twisted between dancers, moved between champagne glasses, and avoided waiter bots balancing trays. Golden rose petals obscured his view, and champagne splashed out of bottles.

“Damy, where are you?” he screamed.

He dodged the limbs and noise and spray, desperate and deranged, saliva dripping from his mouth.

“Damy!”

He bellowed her name, like a lion searching for his lost cub.

“Damy!”

He pushed a man out of his way.

“Damy!”

A woman’s arm slammed into Brody’s back, and he fell forward.

“Damy!”

A man bumped into him, shoved him, sneered at him. Brody scurried through a lane. The buttons to his vest came undone.

“SOMEONE HELP ME FIND HER!”

His vision blurred. Was he ill? No, it was the sweat that poured down his face. He wiped his eyes. He blinked and groped as if in the dark, and now the couples who rotated around him, who drank and lip-synced and dipped and copulated, looked on him as if he were an alien, as if he didn’t belong.

And Brody understood that he didn’t any longer.

Verne enveloped Damy, like a wet leaf over a twig, and she moved here and there, bounced off Beimenians, unable to escape.
Let me go! Let me go!
His touch wasn’t as gentle as the Verne she knew, his look not as peaceful, his scent not as desirable. Even his bow tie wasn’t the right size or color. As quick as Damy escaped his grasp, Verne folded her back, he like the Earth, she the moon.

Damy slapped him, angrily and unapologetically, but Verne didn’t react.

Oh Verne … what’s come over you? Is it this orgy?

He threw her from his grip, never letting go of her hand, and swung her back into his arms. When she looked up, she didn’t see Verne.

She saw Antosha.

Antosha held her, his liquid-silver eye mismatched with his snowflake-obsidian eye, his long salt-and-pepper hair waving over his ears. He wore a shirt lined many shades of gray beneath a long white coat, with two red roses in his vest pocket.

Damy spit at him. “Don’t touch me!” She screamed, though her voice was barely a whisper in the binge. “Don’t
ever
touch me.”

Antosha laughed. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket beneath his roses and rubbed it near her nose.

It felt moist and numbed her face with the smell of eucalyptus.

“No!”

She lunged for him.

“You stay away from us!”

He dodged her and stuffed the cloth back into his pocket. He spun to Gwen, who danced solo amid the crowd, her magenta boa a streamer around her.

What has he done?
Damy thought. She inhaled and gagged on the eucalyptus vapors that escaped her cheek. She darted to the balustrade outside the third platform, then to the fountains near a chiseled marble bust of Chancellor Masimovian. A raven landed and cooed,
Love, love, love.
Damy ignored the bird and splashed her face with the cool water from the fountain.

Marstone pinged her.

Damy?

Brody?

Yes, my love.

Where are you!?

I’m beneath the Chalice Archway on the roof.

What?

In the Dream Forest.

Why?

Come up here—

Let’s just GO.

Come up to the Chalice.

No, Brody, let’s leave!

Marstone interfered to let her know that Brody was disconnected.

She tried to reconnect but couldn’t.

She threw more water on her face, dismayed the stench wouldn’t ease, annoyed Brody had gone up to the Dream Forest when all she wanted to do was get out of here. Whatever ill-advised plan he’d concocted with Nero would go along now, her wishes be damned, and no one should suspect him. His alibi was laid clear. Nero’s less so, but his absence would be considered understandable with Verena’s coma. He would take his chances with the ministry, and she would disappear with the children in the North.

Oh Brody, why in this good commonwealth would you go to the roof?

Damy weaved through the orgy to the elevator. A pop sounded nearby and champagne flowed over her and the crowd’s pitch rose to a frenzy.

At least she couldn’t smell the eucalyptus anymore.

She protected her eyes from the shower, found the elevator, and entered alone. She slammed the button labeled DREAM FOREST.

When the shift in the Crypt ended, Connor rose, sore but mostly healed. He felt a tug on his elbow and started. “Follow me,” Nero said.

Without GPR, Connor and Nero wandered the dark tunnels.

They traversed many kilometers of granite and alloy, this Connor knew for sure.

The unevenness of the tremors beneath suggested the Crypt might’ve been attempting to shift, but couldn’t. Perhaps it was the first sign the Polemon operation was turning in their favor.

In Connor’s training with Aera and Murray, he’d experienced this scenario often: lost in the endless labyrinth, blind but for the green hue of his synsuit’s night vision.

They reached a fork.

“Which way do you think?” Nero said.

“We go left.”

Nero slapped Connor’s helmet. They took the left corridor.

They moved in a box pattern as the passageways angled up or down, moving left, left, and left through tunnels now barely wide and tall enough for one transhuman to proceed. The air smelled of burnt leaves, heated as if by the sun.

An incalculable length of time passed. Connor saw movements in the distant void that he presumed were Janzers, but when he arrived all he found was more granite and another fork.

Finally, the tunnel widened.

Nero unsheathed his shuriken, and they entered the new parallelogram-shaped room, pervasive with the scent of burning minerals. Transparent silos filled with curdling synisms intermingled with workstations throughout the room. Nero activated one of the workstations, and a hologram formed above it.

Connor flitted from side to side, a sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. There was nothing to hear except for the
spher, spher, spher
of the synisms that fermented within the silos. Nero brought up FACILITY DIAGRAM, and the hologram formed the Crypt’s map with its interlacing tunnels and rooms, much more complex than even Brody’s intel had suggested.