The Song of the Jubilee (The Phantom of the Earth Book 1) (13 page)

Triangular Granville panels emerged from the ground in front of Hans. Murray hung, beaten and bruised, in a chamber much like Connor’s.

The panels went dark and retracted.

The glass wall that held the hounds descended a few meters.

Barks and howls rushed out like the Homeria Sea.

Hans shivered and Connor jerked his head back and forth blindly.

“Who’s there?” Connor screamed.

“What say you, Polemon?” Lady Isabelle said.

“I won’t,” Hans said.

The glass wall descended farther. The hounds sniffed and lunged when they picked up Connor’s scent in the ZPF. Their paws came within a meter of the glass ledge above.

Hans had never seen a hound jump so high.

In the melee, one of them attacked another, snapping its neck in its jaws. The hounds chewed and ripped its fur and skin apart. The bones were soon plucked clean, and the tenehounds sifted out the remaining entrails, their fur splattered crimson.

Hans felt as if he might pass out.

“What do you think it feels like to be eaten alive?”

The glass wall dropped another meter, and the hounds refocused on Connor’s presence in the ZPF. Their paws scraped the top of the glass ledge when they leapt. Connor reeled back, catching sight of their snouts.

The room darkened, and the maroon spotlight over Connor grew bright.

“Let’s find out—”

“Wait!”

Slowly, the glass wall descended another half meter, and stopped. One hound got its shoulders nearly all the way over the wall, then slipped down into the roiling pack. It was in these movements that something struck Hans as odd. Tenehounds were nothing if not organized, deliberate in their actions, and highly intelligent.

They would have already found a way inside,
Hans thought.

Lady Isabelle awaited Hans’s response.

He remained silent.

The glass walls dropped to the floor. The tenehounds rushed forward like an angry tide.

Hans closed his eyes and tried not to hear Connor’s screams. He hoped beyond the cosmos that his intuition proved accurate. When he opened his eyes, the chains dangled, holding bits of bones and pieces of skin and muscle, dripping blood.

“You’ve been developed well, Polemon.” Isabelle emerged in front of Hans again.

The hounds, blood, guts, and chains disappeared. Hans blinked, exhaled, and dropped his head.

“You exposed your brother to
Escherichia evolution
, and you didn’t even tell him what it would do.” She folded her arms. “Who’s more cruel, you or I?”

Hans raised his eyes to her but didn’t answer.

“You suspect his response to the fever and his ancestry suggests I won’t kill—”

“Connor presents a unique opportunity for you,” Hans said.

Isabelle raised her brow and leaned on her front foot. She seemed surprised by his tone, though Hans sensed intrigue more than anger in her. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “You of all people should understand that if you kill me, Murray, or my father, no matter what you do to Connor’s mind, he’ll discover the truth. The zeropoint field holds the past, present, and future. The field doesn’t lie. My brother will turn on you … the same way you’ve turned on Chancellor Masimovian.”

Isabelle started.

Jeremiah, Zorian, and other BP informants had told him about the chancellor’s indiscretions, his obsession with his maidens and parties. They’d not revealed any dishonor by Lady Isabelle. Hans had only been fishing.

He didn’t know what drove her emotions but was grateful he unleashed a flurry of them inside her, for he found an opening to her neurochip, and her mind. He closed his eyes.

“Yes,” Hans said, “there it is.” He opened his eyes slowly. “Let your fury go, my lady. The chancellor doesn’t own you anymore. You don’t have to serve—”

She swung the inactive baton into his face.

He lost his connection to the ZPF, and to her, spitting out blood and a tooth.

Isabelle raised her leg, as gracefully as a dancer, holding her boot upon Hans’s neck and jaw, choking him with his own blood. She released him and he gagged.

He spit out bloody saliva, then swiveled his head to her. “Here’s your answer, my lady—”

Hans grimaced at the pain shooting down his jaw and neck. Blood streaked between his teeth over his lower lip. He steadied himself.

“—I serve the Beimeni Polemon.”

Isabelle cleared the illusion …

… She stood on the other side of eight teal laser beams that secured Hans in a holding cell.

Green phosphorescent light emitting from a Converse Collar obscured his view. She must have deactivated the collar for the interrogation.

Hans looked down. His spit scattered on the ground, not blood, vomit, or a tooth. He wasn’t chained to a seat, but rather sat upon a hard stone slab protruding from a moonstone wall. He felt his jaw, suddenly not in pain. In fact, he’d not been beaten or bruised at all.

Wide-eyed and not a little awed, he pondered Lady Isabelle. He’d never encountered talent with the ZPF such as this, not even with Zorian. Was he truly sitting on a stone slab? Hans wondered. Had he unwittingly given her more intel?

Lady Isabelle moved her chin up and to the side. She looked enchanting in her golden gown with a golden phoenix hanging from a chain around her neck. “Enjoy your stay in the Department of Peace, Mr. President.”

Hans didn’t react, even as his heart sang.

She gave him a long look with her lavender eyes, then strutted down the corridor.

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

Over time, Hans decided his surroundings were, in fact, real. He lay across the stone slab in his holding cell, his hands folded over his chest, his eyes closed. Lady Isabelle’s words flooded his mind:
Enjoy your stay in the Department of Peace, Mr. President.
How could she know? Had he given his inauguration away, somehow? Or was she just fishing, the same way Hans had with his comment about Masimovian? He’d not seen Isabelle since then and figured a hearing with Chief Justice Carmen awaited him. Many of his comrades were held in the DOP prior to their hearings, if they even received one.

Now a prisoner screamed as if he was being murdered. This happened from time to time. Once Hans discerned the voice differed from Connor’s, he ignored it.

He rolled, facing the moonstone wall. He meditated and slept as often as he could. Now and then a keeper bot would visit with food and drink, a slice of stale bread, discolored water and a biscuit, maybe some beans if he was lucky. The tiny hole in the ground smelled of feces even though Hans rarely used it. The cell block quieted. He closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep, sickened by the smell, plagued by his fear for Connor. A holding cell would be a terrible place to undergo the fever, and if Lady Isabelle didn’t allow for medical assistance, plenty of fluids, and sustenance …

Sometime later, shards of light reflected upon the ceiling. Hans leaned on his elbow and forearm. He furrowed his brow. Sixteen garnet gemstones levitated in a line between two of the beams, spreading into his cell. Was this another of Isabelle’s tricks? He sat up, letting his legs dangle from the slab. The gemstones spun like twisters, quickly, quickly, they snaked in front of him, rising, orbiting.

A part of Hans wanted to scream. Another part wanted to cry. Why didn’t Zorian help him from the beginning? Why did he have to be such a bastard?

The gemstones formed a line in front of Hans, spinning fast. Then the rotations ceased and the gems spread out, like feelers from a cephalopod, to the sources of the teal beams at the front of the cell. The gemstones sparked, blocking the beams.

Hans looked down. The collar around his neck still glowed green. Without the ZPF, he’d be as defenseless as Connor in the DOP. Carefully, silently, he stepped forward, toward the cell’s entrance. The floor felt cold on his bare feet.

He lunged—and survived. He looked both ways. The white light from bulbs in the corridor’s ceiling hurt his eyes. Hans looked at the ground. A key lay on the floor.

The collar,
he thought. He picked up the key and inserted it. The green light disappeared, the collar unlatched, and Hans felt his connection with the ZPF restored.

He heard the
erk, erk, erk, erk
of boots upon alloy, rather than the alloy-upon-alloy footsteps of bots.

You think you’re as advanced as me with the zeropoint field, brother?

Zorian’s voice, in Hans’s head.

Please, Zorian—

Prove it.

The teal beams cut through the gemstones, splitting them apart, and the barrier reconnected behind Hans.

Zorian?
Hans sent.
Zorian?

No response.

You selfish bastard! If you would just do your part, we could’ve already won this war!

A Janzer pair rounded the corner.

Hans focused a telekinetic burst upon them, snapping their heads back. Unlike in Ypresia Village, he killed these Janzers.

No,
Hans thought, biting his fist,
no, no, no.
He knew the Janzers continuously connected to the ZPF and to Marstone, and from Marstone they could connect to the chancellor. While Marstone might detect these deaths, it wasn’t clear whether the chancellor would. If the rumors of his debauchery were true, he might be too distracted to notice. Hans didn’t plan to wait to find out.

He dashed between the dead Janzers. The cells in this detention block were placed every ten meters or so.

He searched for Murray and Connor, ignoring the other inmates’ pleading cries. The BP’s war with Masimovian’s Administration was their best hope in the long run, and time was against him.

Connor and Murray were not in the cell block. Neither was Zorian.

Hans activated a Granville sphere, displaying a map. He couldn’t find Connor and Murray, but he did find potential escape routes and the control area.

When he arrived at the control area’s entrance, he pushed outward through the ZPF, connecting his mind to an access dock. He broke the cipher and entered the code. The opaque entrance cleared. There stood two DOP scientists, a man and a woman, in bodysuits and transparent lab coats. They inclined their heads, for rather than seeing Hans, they saw Corvin Norrod, Supreme General and Director of Peace, in military fatigues that matched the white corridor.

“I’ve been looking for you two for hours,” Hans said, “didn’t you get the message?” The scientists turned to each other and shrugged. “Come with me!”

They entered the control area, a triangular room in an open environment where thousands of scientists operated their workstations.

Hans would have loved to learn what they were doing, but there wasn’t time for a tour. All eyes in the room turned to the likeness of General Norrod and the two scientists.

“Activate a workstation,” Hans ordered them, “the traitors in the detention blocks. I need their locations.”

He sent images of Murray and Connor into the workstation, and they were rendered as holograms above it. The scientists went to work.

They found the cells for Murray and Connor. They weren’t far from the control area.

“Excellent, leave me.”

The scientists shrugged again and scurried through the maze of workstations. They chatted and looked back, their brows narrowed. Hans probed them to see if they would sound the alarm and found they were more terrified about having overlogged their hours worked than concerned about General Norrod’s request.

Hans conducted his search for Jeremiah Selendia. He flipped through millions of files before he found the one he believed held the key to his father’s survival.
We had it all wrong
…

An image of a prison with parallelogram-shaped rooms repeated and repeated, extending over the workstation like an endless labyrinth, with tunnels and chains and coils humming with electricity. “What
is
this?” Hans said, distracted.

He copied the contents to a commonwealth z-disk.

The workstation powered down. All eyes in the room glared at him.

Hans hadn’t kept up his conscious presence in the ZPF, and his illusion had given way.

He reasserted himself into the scientists’ visual cortexes but lost his concentration again when an alarm blared and dark red light drenched the room.

Janzers streamed into the control area.

Hans secured the z-disk in a pocket and scanned the room. He dashed for the side exit.

The Janzers ordered the scientists to drop and aimed their pulse guns, but Hans slipped out and rushed down the hallway.

The
wreeer, wreeer, wreeer
of the alarm pinged the walls, throwing him off balance. After he adjusted, he ran to Connor’s cell, guarded by an entire Janzer division. Hans stunned them with a telekinetic burst and they collapsed. His brother lay on his stone slab, his hands over his ears. Sweat slicked his hair, face, and neck, and he was shivering, but he’d been given fluids and sustenance, clearly. Hans entered a Janzer’s code on the digital display, and the teal lasers cleared. Connor lunged out and hugged him. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in years.

“What’s happening, brother?” Connor asked. “The Janzers told me I’m sick. I didn’t know what that meant. Why am I like this? Why is the alarm blaring? Why did Lady Isabelle—”

“I’ll explain everything when we get out of here,” Hans said. He swiped Connor’s wet hair from his face. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to hold yourself together just a little while longer. Can you do that for me?”

Connor nodded wanly. A Janzer division ran past them. The leader looked their way, then signaled his team onward. Connor shuddered. Perspiration flew off his hair.

I’m in control now,
Hans sent to him.
They can’t see us, they can’t stop us.

He slung Connor’s arm along his back over his left shoulder and carried him on their way to Murray’s cell, two floors up. Their developer leaned against the wall and peered between the teal beams when they arrived.

“About time,” he said. Hans released him and unlatched his Converse Collar. “Do you know the way?”