Armageddon (8 page)

But the council wasn’t there.

Galan tried to still his churning stomach by walking up to the edge of the dome and distracting himself with the view. It was breathtaking. The Zenith was the tallest structure on Avilon, reaching over three kilometers above even the lofty heights of the Celestial Wall. From that vantage point, Galan saw rooftop parks stretching out to the horizon in a lush green carpet, gilded by the light of the setting sun. Snaking blue rivers ran through the greenery, cascading from one level of the city to the next. Below even that, the shimmering blue grid of the Celestial Wall lay around the bases of the buildings, giving the impression that the city was submerged under water. Clouds shone in golden ribbons on the horizon. Towers of transpiranium rose against that, silhouetted and glittering in the fading light. Thin lines of traffic and bridges ran between, like silk spun from a giant spider.

Celesta was the most awe-inspiring city of Avilon. Unlike most of Etheria, which was crowded with closely-spaced skyscrapers, Celesta had plenty of wide open spaces, some of which were so wide and so open that completely natural and suburban settings could be simulated on the city’s rooftops. Parts of Celesta boasted artificial mountains, and dense green forests—even lakes and beaches.

Galan waited for the purpose of his summons to be revealed. When nothing happened, he looked up through the top of the dome to stare at the eye of Omnius. It was an impossibly bright light projected half a dozen stories above his head between the twin spires at the pinnacle of the Zenith. The tinted transpiranium dome dulled that radiance just enough that he could stand to look at it, and when he squinted, a pattern emerged. It was the symbol of the Ascendancy, without the letter “
A”
—a spiral galaxy full of shining stars, and at the center lay what appeared to be an actual
eye,
burning bright and silver.

“Great is Omnius,” Galan whispered.

“There’s no need to whisper that, Galan.”

He jumped with fright and turned to see Grand Overseer Vladin Thardris standing right behind him.

“Words of praise should be shouted from the rooftops,” the grand overseer said.

He certainly looked grand. His flowing white Celestial robes appeared luminous, and his eyes were a bright and
flickering
silver in the light of his ARCs. “Master,” Galan said, bowing his head.

“You are wondering why you’ve been summoned here.”

Galan nodded, not yet daring to look up. He was also wondering how the overseer had appeared so suddenly and silently. Surely he would have heard the junction slam shut and then open again.

“Omnius has been watching you,” Thardris went on. “He has seen your unwavering loyalty. You descended into darkness, and then you climbed triumphantly back into the light. This proves that the light is where you belong. By now you know that everything Omnius does, He does with love, and that all things—even suffering—are for the benefit of His children.”

Galan nodded.

“Omnius has decided to make you a Celestial once more.”

Galan looked up, his eyes wide. “I don’t deserve such an honor, Master.”

The overseer’s smile grew wide, and his burning silver gaze became suddenly brighter. Then the
eye
of Omnius flared overhead, washing the entire dome in a blinding light. The Overseer replied, his lips moving to speak, but the thunderous voice of Omnius came out instead. “Before you are elevated, you must pass one final test. It is the test you ultimately failed the last time. The test of enlightenment.”

Galan gaped at the overseer, his eyes burning with tears from the overpowering brightness in the room. He bowed his head to escape the blinding light, but even that didn’t help, so he shut his eyes, making his blindness complete. In that moment, he had his first revelation.

There was no grand overseer of Avilon, only Omnius. Galan felt a giddy thrill of surprise. He had learned many things when he’d become a Celestial the first time, but even so, he’d never learned that the grand overseer was just a human avatar for Omnius
.
And as far as he knew, none of the other overseers knew that either.

Omnius continued, “As a Celestial, ascendance becomes synonymous with enlightenment. Only a Celestial’s faith is strong enough to handle the burden of truth. Is your faith strong enough, Galan?”

He hesitated. Was Omnius
asking
him? Surely He already knew. He decided that the question was a courtesy.

“It is. I am ready.”

“Good.”

What came next wasn’t words, but a pure stream of information, downloaded directly to his Lifelink and from there to his brain. Images flashed before his eyes in a dizzying stream of shapes and colors. Sensations came and went; tastes and smells flickered through his awareness. Voices alternately whispered and shouted, speaking too fast for him to hear, and yet somehow he understood it all. Galan’s mind felt heavy and full, his brain bursting with information. He felt himself falling…

But the jarring impact never came. Instead, he settled gently to the floor, as if cradled by giant, invisible hands. Then the flood of information ceased, and he lay there gasping on the floor and gazing up through the domed ceiling of the council chamber. The blinding light pouring from the
eye
had dimmed to a more comfortable radiance. The grand overseer was nowhere to be seen, but Galan now knew that Vladin Thardris had never really been there at all. The grand overseer did exist as a physical being, but he rarely appeared in the flesh. He had too many different places that he needed to be, and Galan wasn’t the only one who needed to be enlightened.

Now he knew everything. Along with the revelations, Omnius had supplied the reasons for what he had done, and Galan was surprised to find that he
understood
. Even the most shocking, most atrocious acts seemed justifiable.

Omnius had created the Sythians and caused the war, but he had also united humanity on Avilon because of it, and now they would never know the horrors of war ever again.

As for the Null Zone, Bliss, and the fake resistance, all of it was necessary to keep people from forgetting why they needed Omnius. No one was forced to live down there, so in a way, their suffering was their own fault. Further justifying it all was the fact that most Nulls eventually became Etherians anyway. Their experiences in the Null Zone only served to cement their loyalty to Omnius in the future. Galan knew that much firsthand.

But the most shocking revelation of all wasn’t any of that, it was something that Galan never would have suspected. It was the real reason for The Choosing. Galan understood why it was best that people didn’t know. The shock of finding out was so overpowering that he had trouble accepting the truth. Yet the very fact that Omnius had
allowed
him to know, suggested that he would come to grips with it all sooner or later.

“How could you?” he asked, staring open-mouthed up at the eye of Omnius, even as that eye glared down on him.

“How could I? I am God, Galan. I can do anything I want.”

Chapter 8

A
tton kept a hand on his gun as he walked down Darwin Street on level ten to his and Ceyla’s apartment in the East Grunge. The first ten levels of the city were considered a red zone. Crime was so bad down there that most enforcers refused to actively patrol, but Atton wasn’t on patrol. He was walking home, and unbeknown to the sketchy-looking passersby, he had a ring in his pocket that was worth over four thousand bytes.

Hence the weapon he wore on his hip. Apart from that he relied on the fact that he, unlike the rest of the denizens of the Null Zone, was actually an immortal Peacekeeper from the uppers with a limitless supply of clones to draw on. If someone killed him, he’d be back again within the hour. Emboldened by that knowledge, Atton had taken to walking home at night rather than taking a taxi or bus directly to the relatively safer outer entrance of his apartment. Tonight, he really should have opted for a taxi, but he needed the time and the brisk air to help him compose his thoughts.

Flexing a gloved-hand around the butt of his plasma pistol, Atton eyed the shadows pooling around the bactcrete buttresses of the buildings to his right. Tonight the fog in the lower levels was thin and visibility was good, but there were still plenty of places for someone or
something
to hide. Between buttresses lay darkened shop windows aglow with the faint blue haze of active shields. To Atton’s left, a line of trees and street lamps ran along the railings of the elevated street, and beyond that was a ten-floor drop through a slithering gray fog to the decaying surface of Avilon.

He shivered at the thought and went back to watching the shadows. He half-expected to see a Psycho come lunging out at him, drooling with hunger, eyes wide and bloodshot with Bliss-induced madness. But instead of bony, sub-human hands clawing out of the darkness, he heard the honeyed words of streetwalkers and stim-pushers reaching out to him from the light.

“Hey handsome, you looking for some company?” asked a young woman standing beneath the glaring yellow eye of a streetlight.

Atton turned to the sound of the woman’s voice. Excessive makeup, a white trench coat, and red high heels left no doubt as to her profession. She flashed open her trench coat, revealing a lacy red pair of underwear and nothing else.

Then he passed under the streetlight and she noticed his eyes. They glowed gold in the light of his ARCs. The woman shut her trench coat quickly and shied away from him. Enforcers were among the only people in the Null Zone who wore augmented reality contacts. For everyone else they were simply too expensive.

“Sorry,” the woman said quickly. “I didn’t—”

“I’m off duty,” Atton grumbled, putting her mind at ease. Not that he would have detained her if he had been on the job. Atton’s cover for all the Bliss-running he did with the so-called Resistance, was that he was an undercover Enforcer investigating lower levels’ crime rings.

In reality he was a part of those crime rings.

That irony became particularly clear when he walked by a burly-looking Bliss-pusher standing two streetlights down from the woman in the trench coat. Atton guessed he was probably the woman’s handler.

“Care for a taste?” the man asked, holding out a vial of luminous red liquid. “First one’s free,” he said.

The cowled black robe Atton wore hid his glowing golden eyes. “No thanks,” he replied, looking away quickly to avoid the pusher seeing his ARCs.

The stim-pusher wasn’t taking no for an answer. He took a few hasty steps toward Atton, still holding out his vial. “Just take it home with ya. Think about it. Wouldn’t have to walk down here anymore if ya had a better job. I can have it delivered straight to yur door.”

This time the pusher got close enough to see Atton’s glowing eyes. He swore and dropped his vial with a
clink
of transpiranium hitting bactcrete. The pusher’s hand flew to his sidearm, but Atton waved him away before he could draw it.

“I didn’t see anything,” he said, patting his own sidearm as a warning. “Carry on.”

The burly man nodded, looking hesitant, his hand still on his gun.

If that pusher knew who Atton really was, he would have been asking for Bliss rather than offering it.

Five minutes later, Atton reached the door to his apartment building. He hurried through the retinal and biometric scans, and then slipped inside the first door. It quickly slid shut behind him while a second set of scanners made sure that no unauthorized persons had slipped in behind him. Finally, the inner door gave a pleasant chime and
swished
open. Atton hurried to the bank of lift tubes at the end of the building’s run-down foyer and rode the nearest one up to level fifteen. From there, Atton walked down the hall to apartment 15G and submitted to a final security scan. Another chime sounded, and the door slid open.

“Ceyla?” Atton called out as he walked inside. He noted the dim, sleep-cycle lighting in their apartment and he frowned. Had Ceyla forgotten their anniversary and gone to bed already?

The front door slid shut behind him, and Atton removed his black robe and hung it in the coat closet by the door. Before leaving the coat there, he remembered to remove the small blue velvet box from the robe’s inner pocket. He slipped the box into his pants pocket and then turned to look for Ceyla.

The main living area was empty, but now Atton noticed the trail of rose petals leading through the living room to the bedroom. He smiled and kicked off his boots, hurrying to follow that trail.

Halfway there, he was ambushed by a shadowy figure and pushed roughly against the wall. Soft lips pressed greedily against his, and a sweet, familiar fragrance filled his nostrils, making his head swim with a pleasant buzz.

When Ceyla withdrew for air, Atton noticed that she wore nothing but a lacy red bra and panties. That brought to mind an unwanted image of the half-naked streetwalker. He pushed it aside with a shake of his head.

“Happy anniversary, Darin,” Ceyla said, breathless.