The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (35 page)

Within seconds, they both opened their eyes and groaned.

“What happened?” Nathan said. The life in his reddish-green eyes brought a smile to Oriana’s face. She leaned against his chair and pressed her helmet to his. “My head feels … awful …”

“You’ve been inverted for too long,” she said. “I’ll unlatch you. Hang on.”

“We rolled,” Duccio said. “I remember …” He choked. “I remember the moment … the rover slammed into us … I told your princess she should accelerate to six hundred kilometers per hour and turn ninety degrees north—”

“No you didn’t!” Oriana said.

“This isn’t helping,” Nathan said. “We’ll have to go on foot.” Still upside down, Nathan activated his armlet. “Damn,” he said, “the other teams have a four-hour start on us.” He peered toward the rolling dust balls. “What chance do we have now?”

“It’s all her fault!” Duccio said.

“We couldn’t see anything,” Oriana said, “and we don’t know what’s in there, we don’t know how extensively the mine was damaged. All we know is that the scientists are trapped—”

“And we
are
still here,” Nathan said. “The second half hasn’t ended.”

The men snapped out of their belts and swung down. Oriana opened another supply trunk surrounded by emergency red light. The contents crashed down on the roof—pulse guns, rifles, and grenades, as well as rope, first aid kits, canteens with IVs, diamond swords, and utility belts. Oriana slipped the belt around her waist. She threw the weapons and first aid kits to the Cererian surface, fell forward, and rolled along the ground. She slung a sword and pulse rifle across her back and hung a first aid kit and a canteen on her belt.

The men fell next to her. Duccio grabbed a sword and a pulse gun. Nathan picked up a sword, a pulse rifle, and a pulse handgun.

The surface had settled, now relatively free of blowing dust. Jupiter loomed above them. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of overturned and twisted rovers pocked the landscape.

Oriana darted up a jagged hill. “We’ll get a better view from up here.”

While wider and longer, the view was not better, for she’d never seen so many dead bodies. Arms and legs jutted from the rubble every which way. Not candidates, who returned to the halls when they perished in the Harpoons, but soldiers. It was no wonder none of the space explorers and fighters survived after the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly struck the Earth, Oriana reflected.

She manipulated her quantum field, projecting herself as far as she could in this virtual world.

Pasha, can you hear me?

No response.

“What do you see?” Nathan yelled from the base of the hill. “Do you see an entrance to the mine?”

“I know where we have to go,” Oriana said. “Come up here.”

Nathan and Duccio trudged up the hill.

“There.” Oriana pointed. The only structure still intact was a grand tower ribbed with windows and carbyne, surrounded by eight secondary towers—all of them bright white. Six enclosed cylindrical bridges connected the central tower to the outer ring. Bulbous piping descended from two disks at the top of the central tower.

“How do you know that’s a mining pit?” Duccio said. He turned. “What is that … sound?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Oriana said. To Nathan, she added, “Whoever’s in there would’ve had time to establish a position—”

“I know I heard something,” Duccio said.

“We shouldn’t follow the crowd,” Nathan said. “What if there’s a more efficient way? What if—”

“Look out!” Oriana said.

She pushed the men and backflipped over the rover that barreled over the hill. When she landed in the dust, she searched for Nathan and Duccio. They’d flown a lot farther than she expected. “You guys all right?”

Nathan winced and gave a weak thumbs-up, while Duccio brushed the dust from his helmet. Oriana hustled back to the top of the hill. A wake of powder rose behind the rover as it drove. When it finally arrived at one of the distant towers, ten kilometers away, the team exited, and pulse blasts took them down.

Shadows in the towers
, Oriana thought.

Just like her training.

She focused on the windows. When Nathan and Duccio arrived she said, “Shadows just took them out. Why would there be shadows if those towers weren’t an important aspect of the maze?”

“All right, sweet princess,” Duccio said, “maybe that’s so, but then how do you propose we get past them?”

Oriana’s head ached. A memory surged through her. Duccio’s last comment, before he’d dropped her:
Good night, sweet princess.
She sneered to him, then descended the hill.

“Hey,” Duccio said, “where do you think you’re going?”

Oriana didn’t respond. She retrieved her pulse rifle and set herself in a groove. She used the rocky soil as a makeshift tripod, squeezed her right eye into the scope, and scanned the towers.

Too many shadows to count.

Duccio pressed the nub of his rifle into her chest.

“You’re not the team captain, sweet muffin,” he said. She looked at him, and he added, “Why don’t you let me take this shot?”

She kicked the rifle from him, mounted him, and pushed her forearm over the weak part of the synsuit, near his neck, choking him—

“What … you’ll … kill …” Duccio said, “… like your
father—”

“Admit that you dropped me during the Trek!”

Duccio laughed at her. She screamed and unsheathed a diamond dagger from her thigh plate. She was about to bring it down upon his helmet when Nathan grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t.”

She let him take the dagger. Nathan glared at her. She released Duccio, who coughed violently on the ground. “Why would you pick him?” she said to Nathan. “Of all the millions of candidates, you chose the one who tried to kill me—”

“He’s my friend, like you, please, Oriana, I can’t do this without you.”

Oriana didn’t know what to say. She went back to the groove on the hill where her pulse rifle lay on its side. She again pushed her right eye into the scope. She took a deep breath, held the air in, then exhaled deeply.
Accurate as the First Aera.
She squeezed the trigger, and a shadow in one of the west towers fell. A plume of smoke rose from the ground where it struck. She panned to the other windows.

Shadows disappeared, one by one.

“Let’s go,” Oriana said, and she slung the pulse rifle over her back.

She wasn’t sure what she enjoyed more, that she was as good a shot as the Summersets told her, or the expression upon Duccio’s face.

Vivo City

Vivo, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

The transport, transparent and filled with growers, hummed along the maglev track toward the Archimedes River bridge, which led to Vivo City. The water was so clear Gwen could see schools of colorful fish swimming in synchronized movements below. The Granville sun’s twilight rays stretched over the photosynthesizing skyscrapers, which angled to geometric peaks, rising and falling, the exposed portions brimming with wildlife. Down below, near the opposite shore, red bioluminescence scattered throughout the shrubs.

Now Gwen, Marcel, and Juvelle ambled along the city island’s pedestrian paths, surrounded by an assortment of aromatic herbs, spices, and flowers that reminded Gwen of the grounds at House Variscan. They arrived at a building with a holographic sign, 55-VIVO-AURORO, and Gwen pulled a chain that released a birdsong chime. The door opened. A keeper bot labeled MAGGIE queried their purpose, and Marcel stepped forward.

“Good evening, Maggie. Though we’re not acquainted, my name is Marcel Auroro and this is my family farm. My guest, Gwendolyn Horvearth, and I seek aid and comfort from the lady and lord of the farm.” Maggie scanned Gwen and Marcel and allowed them entry. “Are my parents here?” Marcel said.

“Aha, they traveled with their neophytes to Catnip Cavern,” Maggie said, the bot’s eye slit glowing, then dimming, “and I’m unsure if they’ve returned. They haven’t been as open to guests recently. This unannounced visit may be unwise.”

“Nonsense, my parents will be thrilled that their son has returned with a Harpoon Champion.”

Gwen wasn’t as confident. Marcel hadn’t spoken to his parents since early last trimester, and now he’d arrived without warning to ask their advice on a delicate political matter. Could this worsen her predicament? She hadn’t heard Antosha’s voice in her head since Marcel had activated his recaller. He’d be wondering where she was, why he couldn’t reach her. She only hoped he would be distracted tonight, with Dr. Shrader’s awakening.

They took an elevator up to the fiftieth floor and meandered between thousands of peach trees in bloom, the air sweet with the smell of fruits, the stars in the Granville dusk as enchanting as Gwen remembered from her last visit to the city. They passed through an enclosed glass corridor, and a grower bot labeled REGINALD, complete with overalls that smelled like soft leather, approached.

“Aha, I’ve sent messages to other bots in the farm. None have seen or heard from Eirenne or Dion,” Reginald said.

“They must still be at the cavern,” Maggie said.

“I’m getting no response through Marstone,” Marcel said. “We’ll wait in the farm for them. Please prepare the guest rooms.”

Gwen, Marcel, and Juvelle crossed rows of corn, pear trees, raspberry bushes, vineyards, tomatoes, broccoli, and other synthetic fruits and vegetables, all surrounded by green lighting. Gwen took it all in, the textured ground beneath her feet, the fragrant breeze, and she pondered a future in Vivo.

“Would you stay here with me?” she said. “Hidden away, if you had to?”

“Sweet sister, we won’t have to hide,” Marcel said. “We’ll work this out with the ministry, and afterward you and I can return to Palaestra, where a champion belongs, where
I
belong …”

Gwen nodded and peered up to the stars as twilight turned to night. She shivered. A voice whispered in her mind.

You’ve been a bad little violin.

Gwen staggered.

Wasn’t Antosha in Faraway Hall? Wasn’t he in the middle of the Regenesis procedure?

“What’s wrong?” Marcel said.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been staring at the crops and the sky, not answering me or Juvelle, and you look like you did in Luxor, white as the sands.”

“I’m sorry, Marcel, I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I dragged you on this trip, especially—”

“You can’t keep beating yourself up.”

“Is your recaller working?” She spied it in a slit on his utility belt.

“Never fails.” Marcel lifted it. She put her hand on her chest and exhaled. “Come, sweet sister, join me in the observatory.”

They crossed a path between corn rows, and Gwen squeezed Marcel’s hand. She looked up, and the blue moon seemed as if it washed down the corn rows, drooping to a face, to Antosha’s face, his obsidian snowflake eyes and a grin she knew well.

She breathed deeply and shut her eyes.

Go away, go away, go away, go away.

When she opened them, she found herself walking not with Marcel, but Antosha.

“Get your fucking hand off me,” Gwen said. “You’re a liar, you’re a killer.”

Antosha stepped back, his hands up as if to guard himself. His mouth formed words she couldn’t hear, but his voice in her mind said,
You told him! You sniveling, worthless traitor!

“You can’t hurt him!” Gwen said. “You can’t! Marcel? Where are you? Marcel!”

The whites of Antosha’s eyes widened. His mouth moved, but all Gwen heard was,
What did I tell you would happen if you talked about the Bicentennial?

“I don’t work with you anymore,” Gwen said.

Antosha disappeared.

And Marcel said, “You leave her alone!” He turned and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Do you hear me, you sonofabitch? You get out of her head!”

A flash of white phosphorescent light overtook Gwen’s vision. When it cleared, Marcel and Juvelle were gone, and she fell into an ocean so distant and empty only sky lay upon the horizon. She thrashed her arms until the water descended into a maelstrom, carrying her down and around, around and down into the Earth, back to Marcel’s family farm. Between the rows and rows of corn, she saw Antosha.

He moved closer and closer, his hand extended, eyes narrowed.

Gwen heard shouts. She sprinted.

She pushed through the cornstalks, still soaked with salt water. The stalks attacked her. She screamed and tripped in the dirt. Clay stuck to her hands.

Antosha pushed his way through the stalks. He held a knife that reflected the moonlight.

Gwen scrabbled along the ground. She dashed through the corn, crying and gasping. When she arrived at the clearing near the ledge of the skyscraper farm, she turned.

Antosha drew closer. He orbited her and called to her and told her something she couldn’t decipher, as if in another language, a message she didn’t want to hear.

Don’t think like this
, Gwen told herself.
I was a Harpoon Champion, he can’t hurt me, none of this is real—

You’re still my violin.

A fire raged inside Gwen that she hadn’t felt since the exams. She sprinted to Antosha. He swiped her with the knife and slit her arm. She rolled next to him, near the alloy rim. The wind gusted through her gown and hair and cleared the dried the mud upon her skin. She twisted around and searched for Antosha, finally spotting him. She lunged. He swiped at her with the knife, but she grabbed his wrist and twisted it from his grasp. He took her down to the ground, and they rolled over the soil.

Antosha clutched the knife, rolled atop her, and brought it down like an anvil. She caught him at his wrist. She could smell his reeking breath.

She spit in his face and flipped him over. The knife flew. She spun and kicked him. Antosha stumbled, lost his balance, and crashed over the side of the photosynthesizing skyscraper, landing at the base over one hundred meters below.

Gwen crawled near the ledge. Blood streamed down her arm, and the tears mixed with mud on her face and matted hair. She screamed loud enough to wake every grower in Vivo, and indeed, thousands, then millions of lights in the farmhouses upon Vivo’s mountainous farms illuminated.