The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (11 page)

Area 55

Boreas, Underground North

A Janzer halted them ahead of an entryway labeled SILOS 1–50, and Ruiner requested entry. The Janzer cleared them, and they moved through a long corridor. They entered a silo, and there hung
The Odyssey,
an oblong-shaped shuttle, with a phoenix painted on its underside.

Ruiner and Mintel assumed the pilot and copilot positions. Dahlia accompanied Oriana and Pasha in the main hull, where they latched to three carbyne columns placed in a triangle formation. The lighting in the silo shifted from lime to a blue-silver phosphorescent light, indicating the gamma ray shielding was being withdrawn. Bulbs that spiraled to the hatch above glowed maroon. Ruiner requested approval to depart.

“Holcombe Strike Team cleared for departure,” a Janzer’s voice replied over the loudspeaker.

The shuttle jiggled with the platform as it moved up the silo shaft toward the surface. A hatch opened and closed beneath them, and after several more, the surface airlock opened. Oriana experienced her first genuine daybreak as the sun spilled its rays over the platform and
The Odyssey.

“Welcome to the Earth’s surface,” Ruiner said.

The Granville panels on the shuttle’s walls rendered the view of the outside world, of a low-lying tundra, wetlands, and evergreen trees with snow-capped mountains far in the horizon. The rockets roared, and the shuttle lifted. They traveled south beyond the tundra and passed over summer greenery. A flock of sheep huddled on a nearby plain. Two horses galloped through the grass by a lake. Oriana imagined herself and Pasha, with Nathan and Desaray, jumping off the rocks into the water.

“Why d’you think it ended?” Oriana said.

“Why what ended?” Pasha said.

“Our time on the surface, man’s domination of the surface—”

“It’s human nature,” Dahlia said. Though she cut in to their conversation, her tone wasn’t as hateful as Mintel’s, and a part of Oriana wished she could shadow her, learn the ways of an aera. It made her hate Antosha even more that he’d not allowed it to be so. “It’s what makes us unique on this planet,” Dahlia continued, “the one species cognizant of our own mortality and extinction. Did that make the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly more likely? Who knows. I’m not a scientist. What I do know is that you throw in one part finite resources and two parts war, the result is Beimeni.”

“Or was the result the Earth’s rebirth?” Pasha said, looking at the greenery beneath them. “Depends on your point of view.”

“Doesn’t matter whose view you take, Barão, we fucked up,” Dahlia said. “But we’ve learned from our mistakes. Now quiet, focus on the drop.”

Oriana wasn’t so confident transhumans had learned from the past. What would happen if the synisms malfunctioned? Where would Beimeni find natural resources with the Earth’s readily accessible resources depleted? She looked down again and envisioned life on the surface with Nathan and Pasha and Desaray, where they’d explore forests, rivers, mountains, and meadows and hunt and gather as humans had so long ago. She thought about Reassortment and the commonwealth mission’s intriguing possibilities, and whether Antosha might conjure a cure. He did awaken Dr. Shrader, an impossible notion not long ago.

The Odyssey
approached its apex, and the Earth’s features blurred.

Okay.
She heard Ruiner’s voice, delivered by Marstone.
We’re nearing the drop point.

The floor’s lighting flashed as the middle carbyne layer slid beneath their feet.

Whoosh.

They flew through the upper atmosphere and fell. The air rushed around Oriana, and she struggled to maintain her balance. Her synsuit corrected her arms and legs so that the wind moved evenly over her.

Pasha and Dahlia fell with her, flowing evenly, but none of them were out of danger.

Dahlia and Oriana’s chutes extended. The Lorum synsuit flung a needle from Pasha’s back that spun and formed the top of a mushroom.

When they landed on a beach, Dahlia and Oriana unclipped their parachutes, while the Lorum synsuit eased the mushroom back over Pasha’s body. She couldn’t hear his thoughts.

Something was wrong.

Pasha stumbled through the sand and held his throat.

She sprinted to him and disturbed hundreds of seagulls that swarmed and ascended.

“Pasha?”

She fought her way through the waves of feathers.

“Pasha?”

He collapsed.

“Pasha!”

Region 7

Lower Level

4,000 meters deep

Brody dreamed about marble stairs amid lavender-scented streams. He studied the labyrinth, familiar, ambiguous, towering stairwells with reflections that made them appear interconnected. He roamed through stairwells and back into streams, out of the streams and into the walls. He heard a screech, an echo, like a child crying. The water level in a nearby stream elevated to Brody’s ankles. He trudged through it and trotted up steps lined with marble pillars. Above him, silver phosphorescent light streaked through stone archways, lighting his way.

The babies cried louder.

Brody hopped to the adjacent stairwell, and the scene flipped. He ran down (or was it up?), as the water level was lower (or was it higher?) in this part of the labyrinth. The babies silenced. Brody stopped. Where to go? Without the sounds, he was lost.

He lunged across a stream to a set of upside-down stairs and rolled and pushed his hands down and stood in a handstand. The sobs returned. Relief returned, for now he would find them, now he would save them. The water level rose faster than he expected, and he couldn’t outrun it. He heard its roar, as if its mouth opened to engulf him, to enshrine him, to enrich him with all the knowledge of the lives it had taken in the past.

Now he heard his babies’ chatter, their coos and clucks. He believed if he could mount the highest summit, he would find them in this labyrinth. His breath vaporized in the cool, musky air. The water engulfed his waist and chest and pushed him under. He swam.

No choice. Can’t stop.

He searched for stairwells, but none were near. He kicked with all his might and stroked with his arms. The structure spun around again. He burst through the top of the water and gasped. He backstroked. Above him, endless stairs moved into and out of each other and the water, and in the middle of it all, Pasha and Oriana, each sprawled upon marble slabs, surrounded, not by his enemies in the commonwealth, but by swirling pools of the Lorum …

… Silver phosphorescent light overtook him, and he awakened in his Region 7 unit, upon his cot, soaked.

Only you can save them.
Damy’s voice.

Brody wiped his crusted eyes. The blue neon digits on his wall read 0543. He scrambled for the identification chain that dangled from the lamp and clipped it around his neck. He rolled off the cot and crashed to the floor, searching for the itinerary he’d placed beneath his cot after his argument with the Controller.

You folded it and put it under your pillow.

Brody pushed his hands beneath the pillow. There it was.

For the twins
,
I must survive,
Brody thought.
I must adhere to the Controller’s rules
. He staggered to his dresser, pulled the drawer open, and put on his gray bodysuit, then his boots. He tried the door. It was unlatched, which surprised him, and he pushed through it. Tyler waited for him. Didn’t speak. With the bot at his side, Brody ambled past his muted brethren into a corridor.
Strange,
he thought, for this group didn’t have bot escorts, yet they moved methodically, obediently. Had their minds deteriorated?

This corridor was different from the rest. Bloodred roses bloomed along olive-green vines that climbed the dirty marble walls and damp limestone. Ivory bioluminescence shone through hollowed blocks, chiseled with inscriptions:

Brody eased his fingers over Cecilia’s name, unfamiliar to him, a strategist before his time, from a time early in Masimovian’s rule when the teams were true protectors of the commonwealth, rather than the Janzers. He pondered how many missions she had executed for Chancellor Masimovian, how many Beimenians she had forced into the Lower Level only to follow them here, just like him.

Brody remembered how Verena and Nero, eternal partners who had formerly been his strategist and striker, used to argue. He’d thought they might jeopardize the Vigna mission, it had gotten so bad, but once the mission was complete they were in love again. Nero had a smile that could lift Brody’s mood no matter how dire the world seemed. Had Verena recovered from Antosha’s attack? Had Nero succeeded in his raid into Permutation Crypt? What had happened to Jeremiah Selendia and Brody’s twins?

That world seemed an eternity away.

Tyler forced Brody to move on. He ignored the engravings. He assumed he’d inadvertently killed some of these people, though he still wondered
how
Beimenians perished in the Lower Level. Was it the air? What caused the hallucinations?

He neared an elevator. Janzers stood guard, stiff and poised, left hands curled over their shuriken. Next to two bots, a woman and man waited, emotionless, eyes bloodshot, skin rough and pale. They seemed different from other exiles Brody had encountered.

Hello
, he wanted to say, but no sound escaped his lips.

The elevator opened, and the group inside exited, sweaty and sooty, smelling of burnt alloy and minerals—and death. Brody held his breath and eased his way past them. A Janzer told them to latch in and hold on. The doors closed. When the elevator stopped and Brody exited, he coughed from the stench of burnt hair and sulfur mixed with dung. The man and woman exited faster than Brody, though he noted their bots remained in the elevator. Brody looked to Tyler.

“Go to the check-in area,” the bot said.

Tyler’s eye slit dimmed, then relit. Then it walked backward into the elevator. When the doors closed, Brody turned.

There were stalactites, glowing dark green, along with smokestacks, balls of billowing soot, elevators moving up and down carbyne scaffolding, and exiles on assembly lines, doing what, Brody couldn’t tell. All the way in the distance, the terror birds patrolled, some ridden by Janzers. Damy’s research team had created the birds on a direct request from Lady Isabelle—though Damy hadn’t known they’d be used, apparently, in the Lower Level. One of the birds had broken free during Brody’s entry to the Lower Level and nearly killed him. Brody tensed at the thought.

He turned. In a pond, six rusted spikes protruded from a sculpture of a human head.

“Lady Liberty.” It was a man’s voice this time, not Damy’s, not Tyler’s. Brody ignored it and walked toward the line labeled CHECK-IN. “A fossil o’ the
old
world.”

Who are you?
Brody thought.

“Hey, bub, I’m talking to you.”

Brody glanced to his side. The man was real. His face, arms, and hands were a pasty hue that matched his spiked hair. He was ghostlike, but real, definitely real.

“I get it,” the man said, “you on mute like all the rest.” He leaned closer. Brody stepped away. “I’m not one of those birds, bub, I’m not going to bite you.” He held a dropper, thinner than a benari coin, filled with a violet fluid, in his palm. “One drop in each eye will do.”

What is it?
Brody tried to ask.

It seemed the man read his lips, or his expression. “It’s called Vitamin X, Vitex for short, good for the brain, bad for the soul, so they say. Down here, it ain’t the air that’ll kill you, it’s a
lack
o’ air. You follow me? Them hallucinations you been having.”

Brody narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you been having them, bub. They’re caused by lack of oxygen, not poison, like they say.”

Brody reached for the eyedropper, but the man closed his fist.

“Not here! They’ll cut your hands off, for sure. You think you the first to get your fix o’ Vitex in the slaughterhouse seven?”

Slaughterhouse seven?
Brody thought. Was that what Beimenians from the lesser territories called Region 7?

The man silenced when a Janzer neared.

“Today your first check in?” the Janzer said.

The man nodded with Brody.

Is that true?
Brody thought.
If so, how could he understand so much about the Lower Level, and its Region 7? Is he a commonwealth agent? Is he lying to me?

“All right, we don’t have all gods damn day. Get over there.” The Janzer pointed toward a rink outlined with chains and a dirt pit arranged as if they were animals being cordoned. Upon closer inspection of the man with the violet fluid, Brody assumed he must’ve visited the Fountain of Youth recently. Or did he find black market athanasia the same as the Vitex?

When Brody and the man were clear from the Janzers and other exiles, the man said, “I’m Luke, Luke Locke, of Gaia.”

A Janzer neared, and they fell silent. He moved a crescent-shaped device over their bodies, and a hologram danced over it with symbols Brody didn’t recognize. The hologram disappeared, and the Janzer hand-signaled with his partner. He ordered Brody and Luke to follow.