The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (9 page)

She stood before the Legend—the man who was frozen near absolute zero, who could be immune to Reassortment.

But was he, truly? Whatever he knew, she aimed to find out. Antosha had sent her here to gather intel for the mission.

Medical bots removed the wires, tubes, and the cloth that concealed his face. They adjusted the knobs and levers over several workstations. Dr. Shrader stirred. His heart rate accelerated and calmed. Silver wool concealed his pelvis. The rest of his skin was pale but not sickly, and his head was shaved. His eyes, crusted at the corners, shivered open.

This is historic
, Oriana thought.
I’m about to meet the man frozen in time; I’m about to meet the Legend.

He closed his eyes and writhed as if in agony. The holographic numbers displayed his heart rate: eighty accelerated to ninety beats, then one hundred, one hundred ten …

“What’s happening?” Oriana said.

Dr. Shrader’s face contorted with pain. Then his eyelids trembled, lifted and fell. He blinked again. He turned from the bots to Oriana. His blue eyes looked upon her suspiciously.

“Doctor,” she said. He squinted and moved his head side to side along the pillow. Oriana smiled. “Welcome back.”

He mumbled.

“What was that?” Oriana said.

“Where … am … I?”

“You’re—”

He closed his eyes, eased into the pillow, and fell asleep, snoring loudly. Oriana turned to Maria. “Was that normal?”

“Aha, who is to say what is normal in such an unprecedented situation?” The bot’s eye slit glowed, then dimmed. “He will awaken again, I’m sure, much as you do each day.”

“I haven’t been asleep for three hundred sixty-eight years, and I haven’t been held in suspended animation.”

“Aha, no, but for him, the world is new, his sight, his hearing, his touch, his memories. He is reborn, from a distant time, from when they froze him.”

“Who froze him?”

Oriana had learned from Ruiner that her father’s team had failed to reanimate the 335 scientists frozen near absolute zero, killing all of them except for Dr. Shrader. The failed Regenesis procedure had happened in 327 AR, after an apparent assassin had nearly killed Antosha. Eventually, her father had moved Shrader from the Cryo Room in the Ventureño Facility to a newly created Regenesis Chamber in the Tomahawk Facility. The supreme scientist Minta Pollopa hated her father for doing so. That was all Ruiner told her.

“The researchers, Before Reassortment—” Maria said.

“Where have you been?” Mintel said loudly. “We were supposed to begin hours ago.” He turned to Shrader. “Why isn’t he awake?”

“Aha, he opened his eyes for but a minute, then fell back to sleep,” Maria said. “Perhaps now’s not the best time.”

“We’re out of time. Antosha expects us to have the mission protocols complete within days, something I normally take twenty or more days to prepare.” To Oriana, he said, “But you know all about mission protocols, don’t you? You’ve been on, what, a hundred missions, so you know exactly how they work—”

“Do you think I want this?”

“I don’t care what you want.” Mintel retrieved a syringe from the medical cart and flicked the top. “He’s waking, and he
will
talk.”

He injected the syringe into the vial near Shrader. A glowing green fluid dripped into the tube on his arm, a stimulant, Oriana assumed.

Pasha should be here,
she thought.
He’d know how to search the doctor’s mind.

Shrader opened his eyes.

“Can you hear me?” Mintel said.

The doctor nodded.

“How many fingers do you see?”

“Two.”

Mintel adjusted the gurney into a chair. “Do you know who you are?”

Shrader waved his head back and forth. “I don’t know … who are you?”

“Damn it,” Mintel said. He moved closer. “We’re scientists, like you, and we want to help you.” He smiled, kindly yet mischievously. “Doctor, tell us everything you remember about your life before you arrived here.”

Shrader’s heart rate elevated again, and a beeping sound coincided with a flashing yellow light.

“Aha, this is too soon,” Maria said.

“Tell us what you remember,” Mintel said.

“What I remember?”

“What happened to the Reassortment Strain? How did it escape containment? What do you know about Hengill Laboratory and Hengill Power Plant? What happened during the war—”

The beeping changed to a siren. Three bots encircled Dr. Shrader, who thrashed side to side.

“Mintel, this is too much for him,” Oriana said. “Don’t—”

“Not a word from you.”

“If we don’t work together, your captain and my brother aren’t going to make it.”

“You shouldn’t be on this mission.”

Shrader puked, and the medical bots injected him with fluids.

“Aha, please, you’ll have to take this discussion outside,” Maria said.

“What do you remember?” Mintel said.

“I … don’t … I … don’t know what you want … where … where am I?”

“The Reassortment Strain.” Mintel raised his voice. “Tell me everything—”

“I don’t know what that is, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know—”

“You were there, they froze you. Why’d they freeze you?”

“Mintel!” Oriana said. “You’re going about this wrong—”

“Don’t know about a freeze, don’t know who you are, where am … I … I … don’t remember—” Shrader’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he passed out.

The Janzers burst into the infirmary, their pulse rifles pointed at Oriana and Mintel, who were forced to leave.

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

“We’ll begin with a twenty-kilometer jog,” Dahlia said, “then you’ll face the Graka training bot.”

“The Graka …” Pasha said.

“Training bot,” Dahlia said, as if he should know. “Standard rules, you jog, enter the arena, pin the Graka or it pins you. This is my first evaluation, so I don’t expect any heroics.”

Wonderful
, Pasha thought.
O should be here, not me.

Dahlia led him through the narrow hallways of the Montauk Facility, a maze as complex as any he had encountered during development, through an archway entrance with a golden sign reading MALCOMBE MINZIER TRAINING CENTER.

“This is the striker-aera training facility,” Dahlia said, “but most of us call it the Hive.”

She checked Pasha in with the Janzer guards as her shadow. The training center was shaped like a honeycomb. The trainees ran on crystalline treadmills that extended from and moved along the comb’s sea-green walls. The oval-shaped arena was at the base, where a Graka training bot, sculpted like a transhuman with a thin torso, wearing arm guards and carbyne shielding beneath, held a long alloy spike.

Falcon Torres, Oriana’s bane during development, jogged on a nearby treadmill. It descended to the wall’s base.

He burst off it.

The Graka swung the spike across its body and crouched. Its eye slit shone crimson.

Falcon orbited the bot and blocked its first and second strikes. On the third, the bot spun the spike through his legs, flipped him, and pinned him.

“All right, Barão,” Dahlia said, “get moving.” She tapped her foot.

Pasha climbed a ladder to a vacant treadmill facing the center of the room. Dahlia activated it and he sprinted. His and the other treadmills moved up the comb. One kilometer in, he felt the sweat drip down his face. He extended his consciousness and reviewed all hand-to-hand combat training he’d received in House Summerset. He watched the Graka. Five kilometers later, it had pinned twenty more neophytes, and Pasha couldn’t identify a weakness in the bot’s movements or design.

Fifteen kilometers and forty candidates later, no one had dented the Graka. It moved so quickly and swung the spike so rhythmically that Pasha wondered how anyone could beat it. His dark mesh shorts now dripped with sweat, as did his tank top. The Graka swept its spike around another neophyte and through her arms and spun her to the ground. Her sweat and blood splashed on the mat. Medical bots moved in to remove the neophyte and wipe the mat clean.

Less than a hundred meters left.

Pasha felt the burn in his arms and legs, a good feeling, one that reminded him of his days of development when he’d race his sister through forest, jungle, water, or frozen worlds, mazes created by the Summersets.

She’d know what to do if she was here
, he thought.
She’d beat this bot.

His treadmill locked in the LAUNCH position, and his holographic image appeared over the arena. The treadmill slowed, and Pasha soared into battle.

He slid to take out the Graka’s legs, but the bot flipped forward. When Pasha popped up, a carbyne foot was thrust into his chest in a roundhouse kick harder and faster than his sister’s. He flew backward and wheezed.

He recovered and vaulted to his feet, arms open, fists clenched. The Graka spun the spike and Pasha hopped.

The Graka twisted and shot the spike for Pasha’s legs. He dodged, grabbed it, and tumbled to the mat with the bot. The spike flew to the side.

Pasha sensed victory; his enemy was disarmed. He grabbed the bot’s wrist and twisted it, taking the Graka to the ground, but it slipped from under him, spun over him, and jabbed him in his face. Pasha couldn’t block all the strikes. He fell to the mat, bleeding from his mouth. The bot pinned him.

Dahlia called the match.

“No, wait!” Pasha said. “I almost had him!”

“You’re done, Barão. You did all right, now get off the mat.”

Medical bots moved in to clean Pasha’s blood from the mat. Perspiration mixed with blood upon his face, and Dahlia handed him a towel. She led him to the recovery area and sat next to him on a bench.

“Rest for a bit,” she said, “then go again, another twenty kilometers and another round with the bot.”

Gods
, he thought,
I can’t run another twenty meters, much less twenty thousand
.

Pasha heaved and wiped his mouth. “Uficilin, please—”

“Not until tomorrow,” Dahlia said. He looked wide-eyed at her, sweat dripping from his chin. “To be a striker is to be strong in body and mind,” she continued. “When you’re on this Timescape Mission, the Western Hegemony Guard isn’t going to care if you’re sore.”

“How many missions have you been on?”

Dahlia pushed her fingers, uncovered by her dark glove at the tips, through her light violet-colored mohawk and exhaled. “Too many to talk about.” She twisted her lips and rubbed her neck. “And the one that matters, what do they say? They say, ‘No, we’re sending neophytes.’ What’s this world coming to?”

“Why does Antosha insist Oriana and I accompany your captain, do you think?”

“I ask myself that all the time, and I can’t figure it out, but it doesn’t matter what an aera thinks or what a strategist thinks, or even what a captain thinks, here.”

“Did you know my father?”

“The People’s Captain.” Dahlia grinned and tightened her gloves. “Sure did.” She laughed. “Now
he
was a captain who got what he wanted.” She narrowed her eyes. “Your papa was a good man who spoke up for the teams when we were wronged or when he felt the balance of power shifted too far to the Janzers or the chancellor or the scientists. He didn’t deserve what he got, but that’s the way life goes in the commonwealth now.”

“What’d he get?” Pasha said.

Dahlia froze as if she’d done something catastrophic. “You don’t know, do ya?”

“I know he was exiled from the commonwealth. My sister told me he murdered a man.”

“That’s what they say.” Dahlia narrowed her eyes. “But that’s not what the teams here think. They say he was set up ’cause the chancellor feared what he was becoming, what with the way the people and the teams took to him. Most of us would die for your papa.”

“What do you think?”

She perused the neon blue timer in the corner of the rest area. “I think it’s time for the next round, Barão. Nine more to go.”

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

“He’s using us,” Oriana said.

She grabbed Pasha’s wrist, and they stopped beneath one of the Research Superstructure’s marble archways.

“Either we die,” she said, “and he wins, or … we get him the data … and he
wins
.”

“We’ve been chosen for this task—”

“And what’s worse is that Mintel doesn’t know what he’s doing. My gods, Pasha, you should’ve seen him in the infirmary with Dr. Shrader. Three hundred sixty-eight years in stasis and hundreds of failed awakenings, and our father’s failed research, and Mintel nearly forces him into cardiac arrest!”

“We must serve the chancellor,” Pasha said. He slanted his head and looked to the sky, to the eye in the sky, to Marstone.

“You can’t be serious—” Oriana grew silent as scientists in lab coats passed nearby. She pulled Pasha closer to the marble arch and lowered her voice. “We’re talking about the man responsible for our mother’s death and father’s exile—”

“We don’t know that.”

“Nathan told me.”

“Nathan could be mistaken. Conspiracy theory should never be confused with conspiracy fact.” Pasha turned with Oriana as more scientists strolled nearby.

“I also conducted my own research.” Oriana paused, eyeing a Janzer division that marched past her and Pasha. When no one except Marstone might hear her, she continued, “Our father helped the commonwealth capture Antosha after the chancellor issued a Warning. Father defeated him in Palaestra Square, and afterward, at Antosha’s hearings with Chief Justice Carmen, Prime Minister Decca presented proof Antosha killed—”

“We don’t have a choice, O. We’re not in House Summerset anymore. You push this like you did our lineage during development, and it isn’t going to be a Warning next time, it’s going to be Lady Isabelle, tenehounds, Janzers—it’s going to be a trip to Farino Prison.”

Oriana pressed her lips together. She glimpsed the Holcombe Strike Team headed toward them. Pasha saw them too.