The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (31 page)

Oriana bit back tears. She peered back over what was left of Hengill. Thick smoke billowed up and snaked over the ridge. A black rain began to fall, mixing with the fog, covering Oriana with sooty drops.

She swam to the island. Though it wasn’t far, the strokes felt as if they drained all her energy. She was without the Reassortment Strain, stuck in the past at the time of the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly, and only the gods knew what Shrader planned next.

Oriana knelt near the icy, fiery portal, its bluish tentacles swirling here and there in the mist.

Shrader thought he could alter the timescape. Where, or when, might he go?

Oriana pushed her hand into the feelers. She connected to the ZPF and the exotic matter.

He’s gone back to Beimeni
.

Her eyes widened when she ascertained the potential point the particles opened in the timescape: 327 AR.

Of course. The year when Shrader’s wife died in stasis—on her father’s watch.

She used the ZPF to manipulate the exotic matter, similar to the way Ruiner and Shrader had. She slipped into the portal, following Shrader through space and time …

… and when she exited, the portal illuminated a hallway in the Ventureño Facility. Oriana rushed through the labyrinth, turning right, left, right, left, right, left, left, right, to what she assumed was the Janzer checkpoint at the Reassortment Research Center, but which was instead labeled CRYO ROOM.

She rounded the desk. The Janzer division that should’ve been standing guard lay upon the ground in pools of blood, their visors gashed.

Oriana shifted her likeness into that of a Janzer.

At the sound of screams, she hid beside an archway. Scientists in biomat suits rushed past her.

When the way was clear again, she entered the Cryo Room, which was more the size of a great hall, lined with 335 stasis tanks, each resembling the one Dr. Shrader had emerged from in Faraway Hall. She stood on a skywalk, overlooking the many rows.

The overhead lighting had malfunctioned. Green emergency lights still illuminated the stasis tanks.

Oriana sensed Shrader in the ZPF, and, more troubling, she also sensed Antosha. Had she leapt forward to 368 AR by mistake? Was this new Cryo Room Antosha’s doing? Did he alter the Ventureño Facility when she left?

A scream echoed through the Cryo Room. Oriana rushed around the skywalk and down the stairs to the room’s base level, searching. She weaved between the stasis tanks, drawn to the scream and the sounds of diamond upon metal.

At the stasis tank that held Shrader, Oriana stopped. He looked so much the way she remembered him, lanky and peaceful, not the menace he’d become. So this
was
327 AR, then. And somewhere in this room, Luella Shrader was still alive. But why had she sensed Antosha? Where was he? What was he doing here, in this time?

She heard a man speaking. She was too far away to make out the words, but his voice sounded familiar from her development in House Summerset.

Lord Nero Silvana
, she thought.

This spurred her to move faster. She weaved around the stasis tanks, looking for nooks or adjoining rooms. Where were they? She could only see twenty meters ahead in the dim green light.

Oriana heard a woman’s voice, also familiar, the same one she’d heard sing to Antosha:
Haleya Decca
.

“Antosha,” she screamed, “help us!”

When Oriana rounded the next stasis tank, she found four Janzers lying upon the ground, their visors shattered, blood streaming.

Antosha, in a biomat, stood between her father and Shrader, defending Broden.

Father …

Oriana had dreamed of meeting her parents in House Summerset. Not like this.

She took controlled breaths, calming her emotions the way Lady Parthenia had taught her and turned to Antosha. Although she recognized his energy signature, he looked nothing like the man she knew. The scowl that seemed built into his face was absent, and he had a clear bronze complexion; somehow, even with the present circumstance, he looked less stressed than she’d ever seen him in the future. Nor was he acting like himself, risking his life for her father’s.

Who was this man?

And what did Dr. Shrader plan to do here in 327? Did he really think he could change the future, save his wife, and go back to a time any one of them would recognize?

Part of her hoped Shrader would kill Antosha, save her the effort. Then another thought struck her. Shrader wasn’t here to kill Antosha. He’d arrived to kill her father, thinking that would save Luella.

The doctor charged Antosha and her father. Why didn’t Antosha stop him, she wondered, through the ZPF? Was he not yet powerful?

Luckily, I am,
Oriana thought. She connected to the ZPF, just as Antosha would, seeing Shrader not as a man covered with the Lorum synsuit in a shade of pure silver, but as his pure energy in the universe.

She took control of Shrader’s mind and body. He halted and twisted his neck at an odd angle, then collapsed to the ground.

Gods, oh gods, what have I done?
Oriana tried to connect to Shrader through the ZPF, but there was no bridge to cross, no signals to be found. She’d killed the Legend—and lost the data he’d stolen from her.

Part of her wanted to cry out louder than the Lorum, but there wasn’t time. The exotic matter in the portal would soon dissipate, and the connection between past and present would disappear.

“Well done,” her father said.

“I didn’t do this,” Antosha said. He furrowed his brow and stepped forward, as if to examine the silver assassin, who lay on the ground.

“I will handle the traitor,” Oriana said. She sounded like a Janzer. The real ones would arrive soon, she knew.

Antosha turned, and Oriana saw her chance. His loyalty toward her father did give her pause, but then she remembered what Antosha would do later on and steadied herself. Here stood the man who’d tricked her parents and murdered her mother, more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him. Whether or not she could change the future, justice was hers to deliver if she acted now.

She approached him, slyly grasping her diamond dagger, inching it out of her belt. A woman cut in front of her.

Haleya Decca hugged Oriana. “We thank you for your service.” She looked stunning, even in a biomat, a small mole next to her lips, colorful mascara upon her lashes, the curves to her body that would make her fit to be one of Masimovian’s maidens. She smiled in a way that made Oriana despise her, for the joy in it was something she’d not known since her early days of development. And surely, this woman who still, even after her death, could stir Antosha’s heart, must not have understood then what he’d later become.

As fast as the impulse to cut Antosha came to Oriana, it escaped. Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them away and sheathed the dagger, all the while shielding her mind from the ZPF and Marstone. Oddly, she didn’t feel Antosha, or her father, try to breach her field in the quantum universe. Perhaps they didn’t notice her drawing the dagger or her other strange behavior. Janzers usually traveled in groups, or pairs, though Shrader killed many of them; it provided her cover, for now. But her moment had passed in any case. She’d do well now to escape with her life, her trespass in this time unnoticed.

Oriana bowed to Haleya. She made eye contact with Antosha, Heywood, her father, his striker, and his strategist. Then Damy stepped forward. She smiled and held out her hand. Oriana averted her gaze. It was too much to take in, meeting her mother here, for the first time. More than anything she wanted to run to her and hug her, despite Damy’s many mistakes and flaws which Noria had described. Here stood her mother, alive, beautiful, and clearly in love with her father, by the way she twined her left hand with his.

What could she do? Might she warn Damy and save her in the future? As much as Oriana desired this, she wondered whether her actions might harm her loved ones later on in ways she couldn’t fathom. Might she save her mother from the events of the Bicentennial only to witness Antosha kill her in some other way? And if the portal closed before Oriana could escape, would she trigger some unknown paradox that might destroy them all? Had she already broken the rules?

No, she concluded, for she still stood here, and Shrader, it seemed, still lay dead. Her attempt on Antosha’s life had been easily thwarted. So many scientists in the Huelel Facility insisted that they couldn’t change the past, and maybe they were right.

Oriana shook her mother’s hand.

“Please remove the traitor,” Damy said. She spoke with the authority of a supreme scientist, though she wasn’t one yet. “We have important work to finish today.”

The failed Regenesis procedure
, Oriana thought. She
had
to warn them, at least about this. Or did she?

The Timescape will be unaltered
, Mariner had assured them, and Heywood had agreed.

Oriana found her voice. “Yes, ma’am.” She knelt and lifted Shrader in her arms, then left the Cryo Room, traversing the labyrinth.

Minutes later, Oriana sat near the portal, its bluish tentacles swirling here and there in the darkness. She pressed her helmet to Shrader’s chest, just to be sure. There was no breath, no pulse, no neural activity. He was gone, and the data with him. She bit her lip. She wouldn’t cry, not now, at the end.

Oriana let her likeness shift back into her own and wrapped a loop of rappelling wire from her synsuit around her and Shrader.

“Dr. Shrader, if you can hear me,” she said, “I don’t know what Antosha did to you, but I won’t allow your death to go unpunished, or be forgotten …”

She manipulated the portal with the ZPF, closed her eyes and fell backward, forward through space and time.

Portage City

Portage, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

Brody screamed for his twins and thrashed and threw the sheets. He pulled them over his body and sent the holographic vitals next to his gurney into a frenzied spin. Red lights flashed, and warnings blared.

“Stop this,” a woman said, “you’re safe.”

Was she real? Her tone wasn’t Damy’s but it was familiar, so familiar …

She pulled the sheet from his face.

Brody breathed heavily. “Get away from me.”

She reached for him. He pulled back and turned away, and saw long sprawling drapes, wooden chandeliers, and silver sconces upon the walls around him. Granville holographic artwork showed a Portagen scene with transports stopped along the city’s clay trenches. There was a rug ringed with dragon’s tails, an oak table and chairs. It smelled of orchards in autumn. What was this place? Was he late for his shift?

“You’re in Portage Citadel,” the woman said, “in the medical quarters of Minister Kaspasparon.”

She wore a loose-fitting head wrap and cape, dark yellow with a black-and-white border, like a butterfly. Brody looked around the room. He began to remember: the trip through the tunnels, his escape, and Luke, poor Luke. Was he really in Portage? He had visited the citadel before the Bicentennial and learned then that the minister was allied with the Liberation Front. But where
was
the minister? Where was Xylia?

The woman pulled the head scarf down.

“
Gwendolyn
,” Brody said.

She nodded. She didn’t appear at all how he remembered. Her eyes were violet instead of vermillion and silver, her hair golden, her formerly voluptuous figure replaced by one lean and chiseled, yet she reminded him even more of Damy than when he’d met Gwen in the RDD. He remembered his time with her, their visits to the cafés, their discussions about the commonwealth and Reassortment and man’s place in the world, her dreams and her desire to help him find a cure.

All lies.
He gritted his teeth. Then he felt a sensation he hadn’t known in a long time, a tingle, like insects stepping down his spine, a burst of electromagnetic energy, a connection with the ZPF.

They had reinstalled his neurochip.

The gods brought you to me
, Brody thought.
Praise them, I will see justice done, beginning with you.

He grabbed her throat and squeezed. When the color drained from her cheeks and her eyes turned glossy, he smiled.

“I’m … no … threat …” she choked. She grasped his forearm. “See my … mind.”

She guided him in her consciousness to the day in the RDD when Antosha had laid the foundation for their plans, when he had seduced her and used stories about Haleya to trick her. She showed him the plan to humiliate Brody at the Bicentennial.

Gwen wasn’t aware of the murders to follow.

Brody found the morning of the Bicentennial. Antosha sat upon an amber stool and played his deodar violin. When he finished, he set her foot across his naked thighs, massaged her toes, and said, “You’re the love of my life, my violin, and together we shall give the commonwealth a show they’ve never seen before.”

Gwen mourned the deaths, cried and considered ending her own life, and though she didn’t cut open her wrists in her shower or eat a lethal dosage of synism pills, her life transformed. Brody saw the campaign, the fights with Ministers Charles, Kaspasparon, and Decca. He saw Marcel, sweet and mischievous Marcel whom Gwen had thrown over the ledge of his family’s farm in Vivo because Antosha had interfered with her mind.

Gwen’s tears streamed over his forearm. They felt warm and less welcome than they might have minutes ago. He released his grip. His hands shook, and he swiped tears that flowed through him from Gwen, from his cheeks.

“I’m a fool,” he said. “I should’ve known a neophyte’s not capable of what you did …”

Brody peered back into Gwen’s soul, flipping back its pages, for he still didn’t understand why Chancellor Masimovian would’ve brought Antosha back from the Lower Level. Why would he allow a master of telepathy and mayhem, and one with ambition, anywhere near his power? And why did the chancellor grow distrustful of Brody, a strike team captain who had pledged his loyalty to the commonwealth and proved it over and over?