The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (6 page)

Her father fell to the ground and writhed and gagged. Oriana covered her face with her hands. She wanted to cry; she wanted to scream.

Then she examined the Granville sphere.
He’s a master of deception, and I mustn’t let him get in my head
, she thought
.
She blocked his access to her neurochip the way she would at times block her twin during development. Antosha didn’t react or move. Nor did he alter the world he’d rendered.

Brody kicked and screamed on the ground, while the strange birds, held on carbyne leashes by the Janzers, screeched and plunged forward and chomped their massive beaks.

Oriana shivered. She wouldn’t let herself cry, but the world seemed as if it collapsed around her.

Antosha withdrew the holographic imagery and revolved around Oriana.

“Yes,” he said, “you will help Dr. Shrader recover so that we can learn about his past and the synthesis of the Reassortment Strain. You’ll visit with Captain Holcombe’s team and me and your brother today. If you’re successful, I will lobby the chancellor to allow your father and his striker to keep their lives, a reward for your service.”

He strode back to the suite’s archway entrance upon the terrace, where he turned and said, “Also, my dear,” wagging his forefinger, “you won’t be permitted to see or speak to Nathan Storm until this mission is complete.”

Oriana screamed and rushed up the marble stairs. She spun with her swiftest roundhouse, but he caught her leg and twisted her ankle. She heard it break when he dropped his other elbow into it. She clenched her teeth and grimaced but did not yell and would not cry when he threw her to the ground. She grasped a marble pedestal and limped to him. She spit in his face. “I’ll never serve you!”

“Cross me again, young fool …” Antosha wiped his face and lifted his hand, and the Granville sphere flew to his grasp. He activated a new hologram above it and around them.

Oriana knew the Island of Reverie. Its streams rushed, its weeping willow trees leaned under cover of twilight.

“… and I’ll send all whom you love here. The surface, without any treatment, without any protection, without any hesitation, and they’ll suffer, the way I have suffered, then they’ll die.”

Ventureño Facility

“Preposterous,” Captain Ruiner Holcombe said to Antosha. “What you’re suggesting cannot happen.”

Oriana had suspected the same when Antosha had told her and Pasha on their way to the facility that they would train with Ruiner, an experienced strike team captain. Standard procedure required entry to the training program with consortiums such as Blackstone or Ionian or Floian, and from there, selection as striker or aera, strategist, or captain. As much as Oriana had always wanted to become an aera, this title wasn’t designated. It was earned.

“Oriana and Pasha were made for this mission,” Antosha said.

It was at least the third time he’d said this. Did he think his repetition would weaken Ruiner Holcombe’s resolve?

Ruiner was taller than Antosha, though not as chiseled. His beige bodysuit faded at his elbows and knees, weathered from missions, Oriana figured, though his face appeared as youthful as Pasha’s. He must have visited the Fountain of Youth since his recent return from a years-long deployment to Candor Chasma Central Command on Mars.

“They’re still
neophytes
,” Mintel Hurrows said. He was the team’s strategist. Next to him stood Dahlia Weztna, the aera. Both were lean and as cut as jaguars.

“Heywood’s mission—” Dahlia said.

“
My
mission,” Antosha corrected.

Oriana rubbed her leg. The bone and bruise had all but healed, thanks to uficilin, but the memory was as vivid as daybreak. She didn’t tell Pasha about her fight with Antosha, and she couldn’t reach Nathan.

She focused on the mission, imagined her and Pasha on a space shuttle launching into the void, a ceremony in Artemis Square on their return, their victory, their Marks of Masimovian. Then she’d have the credibility with the chancellor to free her father and Lord Nero Silvana, and keep Nathan safe.

“Did you not review our Harpoon scores?” Oriana said. The Holcombe Strike Team exchanged looks of surprise at her boldness. She turned to Antosha and added, “We’re honored to serve a supreme scientist and the chancellor in a commonwealth mission.”

Ruiner raised his voice. “You may be, but this mission will require a hardened aera and a wise strategist to have any probability for success.”

Dahlia and Mintel nodded sharply. She sensed the Holcombe Strike Team’s distrust went beyond her and Pasha’s selection for the mission. It had to do with Antosha, for which she couldn’t blame them.

Kiss him now
, Oriana thought,
cut him later.

“I’d welcome the opportunity to train in the ways of an aera,” she said. “Supreme Scientist Zereoue is as wise as he is thoughtful.” To Ruiner, she added, “Captain, Pasha and I won’t let you down. My brother is skilled with telepathy, mathematics, and science and can learn the ways of a strike team strategist. And I fought products from House Variscan in the heart of the dwarf planet Ceres—”

“In a simulation,” Mintel said. “Darling, you don’t have real-world experience.”

“I agree,” Dahlia said. “Wherever it is in the galaxy that Supreme Scientist Heywood Querice would send our captain, we should follow.”

“I’m the supreme scientist covering Reassortment,” Antosha said, “and this mission is being run through my facility. That gives me full authority to choose the strike team.”

Ruiner whispered to his team. Oriana looked to Pasha, who looked to Antosha.

“We’ve had no training,” Pasha said, “and while we’d serve you and the chancellor with pride, we’d be at a disadvantage—”

“Don’t you see?” Mintel said. “Even the neophyte can detect your folly.”

The look Antosha gave Mintel silenced him and chilled Oriana’s nerves, but when Antosha turned to Pasha, he smiled. “You’ll shadow with Dahlia and learn the ways of a striker.” He approached Oriana. “And you, diligent and dedicated Madam Champion, will shadow Mintel to learn the ways of a strategist and uncover Dr. Shrader’s secrets.”

“But I was the top overall performer in the Harpoons,” Oriana said, “and I was
made
to be an aera.”

Antosha bowed to her. “You were
made
to run reconnaissance for this mission and to learn all that Dr. Shrader knows.”

“I’m curious,” Mintel said, “for sure you must have a part for Dahlia and me in this mission. You can’t expect us to train our replacements—”

“Oh, but I can, and I do.” Antosha glared at Mintel and Dahlia. To Ruiner, he added, “Oriana and Pasha will shadow your aera and your strategist, and you should sleep easy knowing that their skill in training the neophytes will ensure your survival, Before Reassortment.”

Island of Reverie

Northeast

0 meters deep

Connor’s line shimmied as the trout tugged. The sun’s rays burned the morning dew. He listened to the teal’s tweets. He breathed the pristine air mixed with burning cedar and pine. His older brother Hans dropped another log on the fire and embers sparked. Connor felt the heat. A pinecone shivered and fell into the river.

Ripples in the water rolled from the pinecone. Connor backed away. The water rose and rushed along the shore. It toppled him and Hans and extinguished the fire and uprooted the trees. Connor clung to a branch. The water gushed over and around him and filled his lungs. A wave smashed him and brought with it bubbles and light.

He opened his eyes and gagged. Wherever he was, it was dark. Silence replaced the sounds of crickets and birds and water. He scrabbled around the coarse ground. Something stung his hand, and he clutched his fingers. He licked his forefinger and tasted something bitter, something like metal.

I’m alive
, he thought,
but where? And why can’t I see, why can’t I hear?

He blinked and blinked until his vision improved. He saw splashes of light over water, over stone. A whiff of cool, salty air grazed him. He crawled between the sharpest stone points that had slit his hand.

Leaning against a jagged rim, he saw shadows against the stone and figures in the water far, far below, the heads and bodies and tails of underwater fish. He felt nauseated. He sniffled, rubbed his forehead, and leaned farther over the edge.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Connor flipped over. He sat upon one of millions of islands, as tall as towers, endless rows and rows of them! Bright electric light flashed between the islands, as if timed, or as if part of something alive. Far away to his left, a woman lay curled up, asleep. To his right, a man lay with his hands under his head. The man who spoke knelt on the closest island to him, some twenty meters away.

Lord Nero Silvana.

Bandages covered his cheeks and nose, his left eye was bruised shut, and a chunk of his mohawk was missing.

Connor’s heart thumped in his chest as he looked out and saw Douglas, Marian, Nicolas, Sander, Charlene, and so many other BP residents he knew from Blackeye Cavern—the BP’s eastern stronghold—all in gray tunics that matched his own. They all wore Converse Collars. Connor raised his hand to his neck and found one of his own.

“We’re in Farino Prison,” Nero said, his hands cupped around his mouth to send his voice far.

A gust sailed through Connor’s hair and over his body. He shivered. In the distance, two divisions of Janzers weaved on their rocketcycles from island to island. They split up into pairs. Upon their approach to an island, one dropped a tray and the other held a pulse rifle pointed at the prisoner.

Connor peered over the side again. Halfway down, he spotted curdling movement beneath the murky water before a streak of light passed from its head to its tail. “What’s swimming around down there?”

“Electric eels,” Nero said.

“They’re too big to be eels,” Connor said. They were longer than whales he’d encountered in the Gulf of Yeuron, where Connor caught fish with his brother Hans before he had been killed in a commonwealth Jubilee, volunteered to test the latest serum for Reassortment treatment.

“They’ve been altered with synisms,” Nero said, “and if I were you, I wouldn’t fall down there.”

“No,” Connor said, now noticing the electric currents that flowed from their heads to their tails. “I suppose I won’t.” His breath puffed out in clouds, and he grew gooseflesh. He’d never been so cold, even in Boreas. “What’ll they do to us?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the woman said with a cracked tone.

She uncurled, twisted on her side. The sounds of chains rattled around her. She eased over the stone and out of the darkness into a thin shaft of light spread from glowworms over the stalactites. Connor gasped.

Aera.

Bruises covered her face. Her neck and shoulder were sewed shut with wires.

“What happened?” Connor said.

“We got the Lorum orb,” Nero said, “and we escaped the City of Eternal Darkness. The Janzers chased us. We might have made it, but Antosha has some kind of new Protector Prototype.” He looked down. “We weren’t prepared. They got the orb back.”

“So now we’re here,” Aera said, “and they’ll need new
volunteers
for the Jubilees.” She paused, as if speaking stole all her strength.

“Who will succeed Captain Barão on Reassortment?” Connor closed his eyes, knowing his folly as soon as he spoke.

“Who do you think?” Aera said.

Of course, Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue was the obvious choice to succeed Captain Broden Barão, particularly after his performance in Faraway Hall, reawakening Dr. Kole Shrader, the man frozen near absolute zero who might be immune to Reassortment. Connor had been there, at Faraway Hall, when it happened. He had been supposed to block Antosha while he was distracted, to protect the Lorum operation and prevent just this outcome. He recalled the crowd’s frantic chants, the medical bots, the synisms, Shrader, and the hallucinations Antosha wove around him, his own death on the Island of Reverie.

Connor reached for the ZPF. The collar blocked his access. He concealed his feelings and thoughts the way Father had taught him, closed into a cerebral safe anything that tormented him about the operation and his flaws and the Beimeni Polemon.

I must persevere and make it back to Hydra Hollow,
he thought.
Father must know how far Antosha has advanced with his use of the zeropoint field.
If Antosha’s telepathic reach stretched as far as Boreas to Nyx, what would stop him from finding Hydra Hollow? What would happen if he overcame the safeguards that Father had installed there? Connor remembered the stories he’d heard about Lady Isabelle’s raid beneath Hautervian City in Underground South. That had been decades ago, when she had led a surgical strike into the Polemon’s southern stronghold. Very few had survived.

“What happened in Boreas?” Nero said.

“Antosha’s powerful,” Connor said, “much more so than my father knew. He did something to me, changed the way I perceived the world around me.”

Another man nearby sat up. He hacked and spit over the side. The eels stirred when it hit the water.

“Pirro?” Connor said. “Pirro …”

He knelt and shivered under another gust. He adjusted to the cold, then cringed, for if Pirro, Charlene, and all his BP comrades were here, it meant Lady Isabelle had intercepted their evacuation of Blackeye Cavern. Had she invaded there? Had she killed them all?

It meant, without doubt, that Zorian
was
a traitor to the BP’s cause. Everyone had assured Connor so, but he didn’t want to believe his eldest brother truly had given away their eastern location to Lady Isabelle. Connor couldn’t, for his essence in the ZPF, understand why Zorian would ever collude with her. He shivered at the thought, breathing deeply. He resolved to regain his access to the ZPF, but somehow he’d have to exert more control over his field without losing consciousness, the way he had in Permutation Crypt; without losing sight of reality, the way he had in the Polemon passageways to Volano Territory; without being overwhelmed, the way he had been in Faraway Hall; and without turning into Zorian, the way the BP feared he would since he’d undergone the fever in the first trimester.