The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (3 page)

He awoke, confused and sore, sitting in a chair. A mahogany desk sat near, a Granville view on the far wall. He stared longingly at the mountains and silver trees with silver leaves. A tangerine sunrise. A flock of robins flew beneath a looming eagle, leading it away from their young.

A slender man in a silver tank top sat across the desk, his legs crossed at the knee. He yawned and glanced at his armlet, then poured orange juice into a silver cup. “Here, take this. You look like you need it.”

Brody blinked and downed the juice. He stared at the opposite wall where a map of the Lower Level hung suspended beneath a Granville sphere. A radial design, Regions 1 through 7, units around the central octagon labeled HIGH CASTLE OF THE CONTROLLER, and floors beneath, beginning with a 1 and ending with a 250. Brody noted that Region 7 occupied most of the Lower Level.

Soothing piano music echoed through the room. Brody turned back and forth as if to find the source.

“Frédéric Chopin,” the man said, adjusting his silver fedora, “
Preludes for Piano
, a melody that skips the ears and penetrates the body.

“I assume you’re interested in hearing what I have to say.”

I suppose you’re the Controller of the Lower Level
, Brody mouthed. He still couldn’t speak.

“At your service, Captain.”

How the Controller could hear him, Brody didn’t know. Maybe he was a lip-reader or a skilled telepath who could discern thoughts in transhumans without neurochips. The Controller smiled, revealing perfect teeth.

The Lower Level is meant for Beimenians who cannot handle life in the commonwealth, to provide a transition to a new life for those who didn’t garner a bid in the Harpoons, to punish lawbreakers and heathens, not this, this— “Yes, this. The Harpoons are man-made natural selection and though our judicial system rewards the loyal and skilled and removes the traitorous, ultimately the Lower Level is all about …”

Attrition
.
Population control.

The Controller stood, plucked a moonstone pipe from a box, and lit it. Smoke puffed from his mouth. “Part of you has known this, part of you never wanted to believe it, and another part of you believes, stupidly, that a new option will emerge for you and the rest.”

He puffed his pipe again. “You’re in Region 7 of the Lower Level, where exiles go to die.” He sat down again and crossed his legs. “You’ll serve before your death. No doubt about that, you’ll clear out the … stairwell, sort the minerals.”

My mind isn’t lost, not yet.

“Just your voice?” The Controller grinned.

I was a supreme scientist in Palaestra
.

“I don’t care what you were, exile. Down here you’re no higher than the rodents that scatter the ashes of the dead. You’re a traitor, a disease to our modern civilization. There’s no reeducation in Region 7.”

The Controller swallowed his drink and removed his fedora.

I’ve been wrongfully accused of a crime I didn’t commit by a system I didn’t create, by a chancellor who betrayed me. I can speak these traitorous ideas to you, Controller, because if he wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be here. I can speak freely because you’re here in the Lower Level, and that means somewhere along the way he decided you didn’t belong in the commonwealth, and I know you want to go back.
Brody smiled wanly.
I can see it in your eyes, you want more, you need more, deserve more—
“You will remember your place, exile.” The Controller’s lips curled back over his teeth. “You can’t speak because your brain is already rotting. You and your exiled brethren are shells in a poisonous sea, and you, like they, will learn why you never should have failed the Great Commonwealth.”

Brody lunged out of his chair and swiped a crystal paperweight chiseled in Chancellor Masimovian’s likeness. He heaved it into the Granville panel. The graphene split, shattering the sunlight, revealing bare rock.

I’ll free them all.

“Not if you die first.” The Controller waved to his Janzers. “Escort the exile to his tomb.”

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

Oriana’s private transport decelerated, and the holographic view of colorful swirling clouds, dark trees, and bushes in the surrounding walls disappeared.

Since her birth thirty days ago and her development in House Summerset, she’d prepared herself to be Champion of the Harpoon Exams, the primary arbiter of commonwealth function, divider of the doers and innovators from the dependent and underdeveloped. Now she’d received not only the first but also the highest bid in Harpoon Auction history from Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue. She could not, for her soul, imagine what came next. She would serve the commonwealth, that much was certain. But in which facility did Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue reside, and in which projects did he specialize?

She connected to the ZPF and transmitted to her twin brother, Pasha, through Marstone:
Are you okay? Did you receive a bid in the top one percent?

No response.

Please, answer me.

No response.

Oriana frowned. She and her twin brother had been censured by the government during development. Because of that, if bids for him hadn’t been high enough, he might have been sent to the Lower Level and had his neurochip removed, and she’d never see or speak with him again.

Her eyes welled up, but she pushed her illegal emotions aside. She closed her eyes.

Sometimes, when Oriana and Pasha had been in Harpoon classes or House Summerset, he would hear her thoughts and reply in her mind, without interference from Marstone.

Pasha, where are you?

All she heard was her heartbeat.

“Madam Champion,” one of her Janzer escorts said, “we’ve arrived at the RDD dormitories.”

Oriana stepped out onto white marble pavement. The dorms stretched around her—white onyx buildings with sharp peaks studded with gemstones, connected by skywalks. Hundreds of Janzers knelt on either side of a staircase, their diamond swords angled to the Granville sky. Torches lined a massive glass archway labeled NEOPHYTE DORMITORIES, and in between each torch the flags of the thirty territories hung with the Great Commonwealth’s flag—wine-red and painted with a flock of doves, wings spread along a triplet of crescent moons—above them all.

Oriana turned. The line of transports behind hers looked like pearls beneath Palaestra’s orange Granville sunlight.

Was Pasha in one of them?

“Come, Madam Champion,” a Janzer said, “the rest of the commonwealth’s neophytes may not depart until you walk.” He offered his elbow.

The Walk of the Champion.
Oriana had imagined herself here from the first day her developers, Lady Parthenia and Lord Thaddeus of House Summerset, had taught her about the Harpoons. Yet now, as she pushed her right foot to the first step, she couldn’t move. It was like when Lady Isabelle had called her up in front of the group the first day of Harpoon classes. She stood, her body paralyzed, her mind asunder.

I’m Champion of the Harpoons
, she thought.
These steps should be the easiest part of my ride.

She lifted her right foot, then her left. With each step, though, her legs seemed heavier. She gripped the Janzer’s elbow tighter.

Did Pasha watch her upon a transport’s walls? Did he wait outside a dormitory in a lesser territory? Had his bid been high enough to negate their Warning from the Office of the Chancellor?

Twenty more steps.

I am a Harpoon Champion
, she thought,
and I will demand to see my brother.

Ten more steps.

Again, she accessed the ZPF, called Pasha through Marstone, and was notified he wasn’t available. She tried to contact her friend Nathan Storm, the candidate who had helped her win the second half of the Harpoon Exams inside Ceres.

No response.

Three more steps.

She arrived at the summit. Behind her, oval transports snaked for kilometer after kilometer.

Her Janzer escort shot a flare into the sky. It erupted into a flock of crackling doves that flew through the air and spiraled over her, then down the stairs until they arrived near the base and spun up in a tornado of sparks. When the bird-flares extinguished, the first hundred entryways to the first hundred transports opened, and the newly minted RDD neophytes stepped out.

Oriana activated her extended consciousness and scanned them all.

She didn’t find Pasha.

He must’ve received a bid
, Oriana thought,
must have!

She felt a burning sensation in her eyes but wouldn’t let herself cry.

“Madam Champion,” the Janzer said, “your new life awaits you.”

They took an elevator up to the Champion’s Suite at the top floor, and the Janzer taught her the code to activate her doorway. When the frosted-glass entryway slid open, indigo light enveloped her.

“See the instructions in a z-disk on your counter.” He nodded to the z-disk surrounded by golden light, then bowed to her. “May your research lead to many proper and significant conversions and an eternal life.”

“Thank you,” she said and bowed courteously in return.

Her suite smelled like cinnamon and cloves. Garnet gravel lined narrow streams topped by water lilies near the walls. Golden plants squiggled up and around thin carbyne support poles. Indigo phosphorescent beams glistened along the black marble floor. The couches were plump, the kitchenette complete with any and every cooking utensil she’d ever need. She looked around, not a little in awe. Her whole life, she’d always shared a suite with Pasha.

The entryway to her unit slid open. Oriana started.

A keeper bot curtsied smoothly. “Aha, madam, apologies for startling you. I’m Ramona. I’m yours to command.”

“I’m … okay for now … thank you, Ramona.”

Oriana stepped out onto her terrace. To her right lay a hot tub shaped like an amoeba, to her left an archway with dangling grape vines. She moved down the marble steps ahead of her and leaned on the crystalline balustrade, closing her eyes to enjoy Palaestra’s vanilla air. She opened her eyes and roamed beneath the grape vines to an opening where a ladder led to the rooftop deck. She climbed the ladder. From her perch atop the Champion’s Suite in the RDD, she could see the Gorges of Hillenthara in the northeast and to Palaestra City in the southwest and all the compressed diamond pillars that supported the Beimeni zone in between. That was hundreds of kilometers in either direction. Far beneath her, candidates streamed into the courtyard. She searched for Pasha. How could he have been a second-half captain in the Harpoons and make it so far to the end and not be bid on by an RDD consortium?

She descended down the ladder, back onto her terrace, and strolled to the opening leading back into her suite. She looked out upon the RDD facilities, carbyne and glass palaces in the distance, surrounding the Research Superstructure transport station. An artificial gust whipped her hair around her face. She heard a doorbell ring and turned toward her suite. Her doorway opened again revealing two silhouettes, speaking, it seemed, to Ramona. Oriana recognized Pasha’s voice.

He ambled over the tile to her terrace. His escort hung back behind him. She had the impulse to sprint to him and hug him like she had during development but checked it.

“Is this real?” she heard herself say.

“I’m so glad you did it, O,” Pasha said. His voice caught.

And wasn’t this the ending assured, even in their fiercest battles, by the Summersets, that they would both be purchased if one excelled? A part of Oriana hated that they were right.

A man stepped out onto the terrace, a
beautiful
man with a sharp nose, wavy hair, and eyes of flecked obsidian. She bowed. “Welcome to my suite. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“O, this is Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue,” Pasha said. “He traveled all the way here from Boreas to greet us.”

Oh gods, a
supreme scientist
, and the one who had purchased her, in her suite! She hoped Antosha didn’t notice her blush. “Forgive me,” Oriana said. He stood silently. “I should’ve known, I should’ve inquired, I should’ve—”

“No, no, my dear, it is I who should apologize,” he said, his voice soft and kind. “I wish I was here in time to greet your arrival for the Walk but,” he sighed, “circumstances as they were, I was forced to complete other business.” He kissed her hand, as tenderly as a lover. “I was the supreme scientist covering Regenesis, soon to be the supreme scientist of the Ventureño Facility, covering Reassortment.”

Oriana felt light-headed.

“The specifics for our first meeting with the Holcombe Strike Team are contained within your z-disk. I hope I don’t have to tell you to keep this information in strictest confidence.”

“You don’t,” Pasha said, “we understand.”

“Then I will take my leave and allow you and your sister time alone, but be sure to check your z-disk and prepare.”

Oriana bowed again. “You have my eternal gratitude.”

Antosha nodded and left.

Oriana hugged her Pasha. “I thought I ruined you, that they sent you to the Lower Level—”

“You did what I would’ve done, what any candidate would have done to win. It wasn’t the end that mattered, O, it was the journey, it was our development, it was the time we spent with the Summersets. They prepared us well, and you delivered them a champion. I’m so proud of you, so glad you’re my sister.”

She squeezed him tight, then released him. She nodded toward the glowing golden z-disk on her crystal counter. “Shall we find out what happens next—”

Oriana? Are you there?

It was Nathan Storm, via Marstone.

Yes, where’re you?
she sent.

Look in the courtyard.

She dashed to the edge of the terrace.

Nathan waved up at her.
We have the rest of the day off, and I’d like to take you away from here.

I’ll meet you in the lobby soon.
She disconnected from him.