The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (27 page)

Light yellow bioluminescence broke through a hole in the stalactites, where bats flapped their wings and hung from the limestone. He rowed beneath the bats, which took off flying through the light. He landed the canoe at a misty shoreline where magma snaked into the steaming water. He hopped over the liquid rock and dashed up a limestone ramp, then turned. A jungle before him brought forth memories of Vigna. While here the vines were thin enough to grasp in his hands, on Vigna, where the oxygen level was closer to 40 percent of the atmosphere, the vines were as wide as transhumans. Nero looked the other way, which contained icy stalactites and icy cliffs where white bioluminescence broke through openings in the wall. Nero felt like he was back in the Harpoons.

To move like me in the ZPF, you must learn to truly control your own quantum field within it.
Aera’s voice.

Nero had never been as skilled as Brody with the ZPF. He was good enough with telepathy and telekinesis to make the strike teams, but never used it the way Aera suggested. “I can’t manipulate my field like that.”

You can.

He took the way of the jungle, rushing beyond the vines and through blooming brush to a stream. “Why don’t you show me?”

You must find it for yourself.

He weaved between the ferns and trees and vines, which started moving, waving as if synchronized, wrapping around him.

Use the ZPF the way I did in Cineris Territory.

Nero drew his sword and cut through the vines, breaking free. He smelled dank water and heard a river. Dragonflies spiraled like a helix over the water. Bubbles rose from the middle of the river.

Now the water rose, forming a humanoid that looked like him. It drew a sword and threw it end over end toward Nero. He dodged it, and the sword crashed into a tree nearby, turning into a swarm of bees. In Cineris, Aera had moved too fast at times for Nero’s enhanced sight; if he did the same here, he might escape the bees and the humanoid, he assumed.

His movements weren’t unseen, however, and the bees began to sting him. On his arm, his shin, his neck, his ear—he swiped uncontrollably and desperately until the swarm released him. He fell into the water, free at last, and swam below the surface, as far as he could, toward the other end.

When he emerged, he turned, grimacing from the stings. He steeled himself. The bees swirled around the humanoid, which scowled at him. Then they rushed forward, and Nero ran, farther, faster. He reached for the ZPF and into his quantum field in its rawest form, the way Aera had on the mount.

He found his strides slowed, yet he moved farther. The world around him seemed simpler and more complicated, rain falling in lines rather than drops, the ground reaching up for him, rather than him down to it.

Nero ran for what felt like the distance of the Hillenthara River, part of a continent. He couldn’t hear the bees or see the humanoid. He ran up the damp trail. It smelled like Vigna. He passed mossy stone and eventually reached the mountaintop. Below lay clouds, and beneath and through the clouds, a city; in the center, the tallest skyscrapers broke through the clouds.

Nero descended the foggy mountainside along a sinuous trail until he arrived at the city’s border. He ran through the streets and to the building in the center. It looked like the Paradox Building. He entered. He rushed down the stairs, down, down, down, to the room labeled GRANVILLE SKY OPERATIONS where a z-disk awaited him on a glowing golden pedestal.

He reached for it, cautiously. Then it disappeared. He turned and peered up. A Granville sky shifted from blue to dark gray with cirrus clouds. He manipulated his field, the way Aera had suggested.

The ground shook beneath him with the sound of thunder. Lightning struck. Nero dodged it. More strikes fell around him, and he dodged those. He now ran along what looked like an infinite void.

Nero stopped and turned. “No more.”

Lighting fell over him, scattering around his field. He’d only ever seen Brody scatter energy this way. Time slowed, as did the strikes. Nero moved too fast for light, it seemed, until he spied the z-disk upon a pedestal, it too moving faster than light.

He grasped it and rolled on the ground, the lightning striking around him. The ground vibrated. He accessed the z-disk.

And the world darkened …

… Nero hung from the harness, drenched in sweat, the z-disk in his hand.

Aera lowered him. “You’re getting there.” She handed him a canteen and Nero drank.

“Sometimes the past is best left forgotten,” Verena said, reaching for the z-disk.

Nero closed his fist, twisting. “How do you know what’s in it, love?”

Verena looked to Aera and back to Nero.

“Now you’re both keeping secrets from me?” he said. “No more, I will see what’s inside.”

He extended his consciousness and let the details flow before him. File after file rotated around a sphere, stopped and rotated, rotated and stopped. Nero read through thousands of documents about his parents, about his birth … and his mother’s murder, by his father, acquitted by Chief Justice Carmen.

“This is … all wrong,” he said, facing Aera. “Why would you lie to me still?”

“Unlike your captain, you never accepted your abandonment,” Aera said. “It’s what holds you back in the ZPF. To truly connect with your field, to become as skilled as me, as fast as me, you must overcome this. If you don’t, we won’t succeed in Area 55 or in Farino Prison.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Your captain will die.”

Nero looked to Verena, then to Aera, and back to Verena, who lowered her head and said, “I agree with you, but there’s one problem with all that.”

“Which is?”

Verena looked up, then to Aera. “The Lorum has been moved to the City of Eternal Darkness.”

For the first time since Nero met Aera, her face turned as pale as Cinerisian ash.

Halcyon Village

Dunamis, Underground West

2,500 meters deep

It happened one time.

Who else have you lain with?

It was only virtual—

Is that what we are, virtual?

I broke into the Ectasian archive to get you information! I risked discipline, or worse, for you—

Goodbye, Nathan.

Oriana, please don’t—

Oriana disconnected from him. The truth was that Nathan
had
risked much for her. She tried not to think about him. His voice. His touch. She sighed. She still cared very much for him, despite herself.

Nathan attempted to reach her again, but Oriana denied the connection. She’d speak with him when she devised her strategy; the longer he stewed in his guilt, the more use he’d be to her in the Harpoons. No other candidate wanted to know her, certainly not Gaia. She’d been hanging out with the Variscan candidates during free time, and while Nathan begged her forgiveness day and night, he maintained his friendship with Duccio, and Pasha seemed more distant by the day. She couldn’t speak about her troubles with the Summersets.

Oriana rubbed her arms. She felt utterly alone.

If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
If she was going to receive the first and highest bid, negate the Warning, become an aera, and lead the people out of the Earth, her actions here and now would make the difference. She checked the time. She and Pasha were due in the simulation room in five minutes. She cracked her knuckles and neck, then rushed downstairs.

Pasha was already in his harness when she arrived. He didn’t greet her.

Oriana spied the Harpoon leaderboard. Pasha’s ID number scrolled across at the eighth slot on the Summersets’ ticker. Her number wasn’t there, but she suspected she was close to breaking through.

Lady Parthenia strapped Oriana into her harness. “Let’s begin,” she said.

The golden phosphorescent light around them dimmed. Parthenia activated her workstation and initiated the program …

… Oriana and Pasha stood in an alloyed room. Millions of orbs hung suspended in midair.

We’ll start with the precepts,
Parthenia sent.

One by one, the orbs broke off and orbited Oriana and Pasha. The first orb rotated and requested the First Precept.

Serve Beimeni. Live forever.
Oriana repeated the precept in her mind. The orb emitted a green light and returned.

The second orb requested the Sixth Precept.

Excursions to the surface of the Earth are forbidden unless sanctioned by the Office of the Chancellor.

Oriana knew this one too, for it was designed to prevent citizens from illegally digging to the surface, and so risking an event never spoken—a Reassortment scare, something which hadn’t happened since the Dark Age.

More requests for precepts, more glowing orbs, then Parthenia moved on to mathematical calculations, scientific facts, historical puzzles, Beimenian society, and on and on. Sometimes the orbs glowed green, and sometimes they spun red. By the twenty thousandth orb, Oriana’s head swayed, her eyelids heavy. A new query emerged:

Oriana knew that Pasha answered correctly when the orb turned green. Although she knew the solution, she couldn’t bring herself to respond. A few hundred thousand queries later, the simulation ended. The twins exited the VR and dangled in midair. Lady Parthenia wasn’t there; she or the lord didn’t always remain in the simulator room for the entire session.

Pasha looked over at Oriana. “Why would Father kill Mother’s lover the night of the Bicentennial?”

“What do you mean?” Oriana asked. He’d barely spoken to her since the Trek, and never to talk about their parents.

Pasha unlatched himself from his harness and helped Oriana out of hers. “I mean, if I were a Beimeni captain like Father was—”

“
Is
,” Oriana said, “he’s in Farino Prison. Only Mother died.”

“Right,” Pasha said. He lowered his head. “I would’ve killed him myself, I think, but I wouldn’t have done it on camera.”

“You think Father’s innocent then?”

“No … I don’t know …”

They headed down the corridor together. “What do you think’s worse,” Oriana said, “to serve as a strike team captain only to end your life in the Lower Level, or never to have served at all?”

Pasha thought about it. He looked up, and at the same time they said: “Never at all.”

They ate lunch, four chickens slathered with macadamia oil, twenty-six eggs mixed with feta cheese and olive oil, a tub of pureed vegetables, and two liters of orange juice mixed with coconut.

Then back into the harnesses.

No correct door exists, but in order to choose you must solve a problem.
Lord Thaddeus’s voice surrounded Oriana in a darkened room.
I will present each of you with the same problem. Provide your answer, then choose. Abstain from using your extended consciousness.

Oriana couldn’t focus. Why
had
Father killed Mother’s lover so brutally and publicly? And was this why the Summersets lied to her, because they feared what these feelings might do to her before the exams?

No
, she thought,
don’t make excuses for them. They lied to me and Noria, and the lady slapped us!

The room brightened when slits opened in the atmosphere, emitting white light. Then a puzzle appeared.

Oriana Barão,
the voice began, neither the lord’s nor the lady’s, but Marstone’s, to simulate exam day,
can you transform Table A into Table B by exchanging only its rows and columns? If so, describe your procedure. If not, explain why.

Oriana studied the tables. She transmitted,
How am I supposed to solve this without extending my consciousness?

No response.

Oriana felt a surge of resentment. These enigmas favored Pasha’s skill set. She was his superior with palindromic puzzles, pulse guns,
sai
, nunchacku, shuriken, diamond swords—she outdueled him on her worst day. Why didn’t they ever train on Harpoon simulations that favored her strengths? It was no wonder he always won!

She steadied, answered yes, and pushed the rows and columns in Table A the way she suspected they might fit into Table B. The tables lit up red again and again as she rearranged them. They reset over and over and over until Oriana communicated,
No! It isn’t possible! Now let me pass!

The tables still glowed and prevented her advancement.

Upon further examination, she deduced a more logical, reasonable solution.

Row exchanges preserve the numbers in rows, and column exchanges preserve the numbers in columns, but this isn’t the case in the choices you provided to me. The five box and the six box are in the same row in Table A but in different rows in Table B, so it isn’t possible to rearrange them by exchanging only rows and columns.

The room illuminated, and three manual doors with golden handles appeared within golden outlines. Oriana stepped through the middle one into blinding brightness. The door slammed behind her and disappeared. She started. When she turned around, a new scene formed her reality.

She walked along a rooftop looking down on a river below. Steep mountains stood across from her, layered, looking like stony steps. Water cascaded down from the mountain peaks, fifteen falls in all, into the river. To either side, rows and rows of buildings arched around the river and mountains, growing taller the farther back she peered. She moved into the open area on the roof.