When we requested more information regarding how the anomaly field might have ‘accidentally’ been created, we were given dated electronic journals of acausal system theories and similarly transcribed discussions, led by directors of an organization known as the Committee of Esotericism. How pretentious.
Attempts to contact the committee went unanswered. We were then informed that their headquarters was inside the anomaly field.
The only reason we didn’t leave them to their own undoing was a) the potentiality for the field to expand beyond their colonies, taking other systems with it, and b) the energy-flux pattern was recognized by attica as an athanasian-activity event. Thanks to Zira and his last contract, we were able to recognize the fluctuations in the basewave algorithms whenever the shards were active. They did something to reality; changed the variables.
Zira had said he saw Cassima and that we needed to find Sarine. There was something malicious in this ‘other realm’ that both Zira and the girl he’d looked after had visited. None of us had a single theory behind how Cassima ended up there. He’d hinted that Sarine would know more about this. The only place we could start was by getting into this other realm ourselves and collecting some data. At least that was what I presumed Leid was seconds away from proposing. I knew that look anywhere.
“This is going to take a team effort,” she said then, looking to me as I hid my smirk.
“How many?”
“Three, at minimum. If it rattled Zira, there’s a manpower need.”
I flicked my eyes toward the upper field of my vision. Doing so brought the request from TriColony Sigma to my conscious stream. I studied it, unmoved by their plea. Leid waited for my response, her form illuminated in euxodia’s podium light. I didn’t really have an opinion, lounging on one of the seats behind her. “Whatever you want.”
At my lack of enthusiasm, she raised a brow. “I suppose you’re exempting yourself?”
“No, I’m just being agreeable.”
Leid scoffed quietly, looking away.
“Of course I’m going,” I said. “I better be your first pick, too.”
“My first pick is Zira,” she said. “He’s been there.”
“Then count me out.”
“Qaira.”
“What?”
Leid gave me a scolding look.
I sighed. “He’ll refuse to go, anyway.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” she said. “Zira knows the stakes.”
“He’s still in therapy from the last trip.”
“I’ll talk to Adrial.”
We didn’t need Zira, but Leid was stubborn and there was no changing her mind. I said nothing else of it, rising from my seat. “Who else?”
Leid deactivated the podium and the room briefly went dark. Then, the lights came on. I squinted. “Me,” she said.
“You,” I repeated, incredulous.
She shot me a sideways look, one that said, ‘Don’t you dare.’
Leid misread me; I was the last person to question her ability, obviously. But she was too important for something like this. Our entire operation depended on her, the Proxy Ascendant. Now she wanted to piss on the wall with some contract. Not to mention Adrial had just gone off-duty. He wouldn’t be pleased about being called back early.
“You think I’m too important for this?” demanded Leid.
I started, shocked. Had she read my mind? “No, I just—”
“I’m still one of you. Don’t hold me on some sort of pedestal. Apparently you don’t understand the threat, here.”
I held up my hands, conceding. “Do what you want, but if something happens to you, know that we’ll be left without our balls.”
Leid blinked. “I’m the Court of Enigmus’s balls.”
“Yes. The most important part, in my opinion.”
She stared at me for a second, then turned to leave. “Let Zira know that he needs to prepare. I’ll notify Adrial.”
“Me?” I shouted, appalled. But Leid had already disappeared.
My wife had some fucking nerve.
*
Zira took a minute to find. There was a setting on our visors that masked our resonance if needed, and he’d taken to using it often around Enigmus.
Usually he wasn’t too far from Yahweh, but when I found the white at his lab in RQ1, working on formulating a new and improved drug that I probably wasn’t allowed to try (per Adrial, fuck him), he told me he hadn’t seen Zira since morning meal. I tried a few other places, but no luck. I was about to give up when I caught a glimpse of him in the courtyard near the field, just a hill or so away from Khel’hanna’s Scar. He was playing a solitary game of toh, half-heartedly rolling a ball. I couldn’t see his expression but from his body language it was clear he wasn’t in the best mood. Then again, he was never in a good mood; whenever I was concerned, at least.
After a second Zira sensed he was being watched. He froze, head craning upward slowly until our eyes met. We stayed like this for a few seconds, until I gazed away and headed for the courtyard entrance.
Zira had gone back to his game by the time I stepped outside. Once I was in earshot he said, “Don’t suppose you want to join?”
“I don’t know how to play.”
“It’s easier than chess,” he said.
I didn’t respond, studying him. Zira had returned from his contract, changed. There was a visible wound to his demeanor; a slight hunch in his posture, the lightlessness in his gaze, the brooding having turned to less anger, more indifference—I had to admit I felt a little bad for him, but also envious because clearly he’d never had to face an ethical crisis until now. Must be nice.
“So, what do you want?” he demanded, once the silence had grown awkward.
“There’s an advisory request from TriColony Sigma.”
Zira rolled his eyes. “Have they nearly extincted themselves again? Just let it happen.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Occasionally he and I shared similar opinions. “Yes, but there’s more to it. Read the thread.”
He flicked his eyes with a reluctant sigh and went silent for a moment. I watched his expression change from irritation to concern, and then to anger. “No.”
“Not an ask. Leid’s orders. We need a guide.”
“There isn’t a guide for that place. It doesn’t work like that. It’s as vast as a universe, except without logic.”
“The fact that you even know that makes you invaluable,” I said. “Leid’s going herself. Don’t you want to make sure she’s kept safe?”
“I thought that was your job,” he muttered, tossing another ball.
“So, one bad experience and you’re bitching out? Not quite how I pegged you, but whatever.” Zira’s eyes narrowed. I saw his right hand curl into a fist. He could’ve laid me out if he really wanted to, but he wouldn’t, because he knew I was right. “I torched an entire island for you, then ate Adrial’s shit for it.”
“I was right there with you, remember?”
“The least you could do is tag along willingly. Because either way you’re coming, or you’ll have to turn Leid down yourself.”
Zira looked away, frowning. “And why does she want to go?”
“Research. It might lead us to Sarine.”
“Sarine isn’t there. Cassima said she wasn’t.”
“Then we’ll find Cassima and make him clarify. I don’t fucking know. It isn’t my plan.”
“Hardly a plan,” he said, crouching to grab one of the knocked over toh rings. “We’ll be a sorry form of protection, too. I was lesser there.”
“We’ll still have our best trait.”
“No scythes.”
I balked. “No scythes?”
Zira shook his head.
I was beginning to understand his reluctance. “That doesn’t make any sense. Our scythes are an organic part of us.”
“It doesn’t make sense. I already said that.”
“Then come with me and talk to Leid,” I said. “Maybe we ca
n get her to revise the plan.”
Zira murmured something in agreement. “Let me clean up. I’ll be there in a second.”
I hurried off, hoping to intercept Leid before she started briefing Adrial. I felt Zira’s eyes burn on my back all the way to Enigmus’s courtyard doors. For a moment I thought he decided against following me, but halfway up the main floor stairs I heard the courtyard door open again. I slowed until he sided with me. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
Leid was in RQ1 with Yahweh, and they both turned to watch us enter. On the analytical bench behind them, a plasma mass spectrometer alarmed angrily. Yahweh appeared flustered, always a tell that his experiment had gone awry. Another tell was that he’d actually sought Leid for help.
I waited for him to mute the alarm, muttering to himself, before declaring, “There are some kinks to your plan.”
Leid stared at us, expectant.
“We can’t use our powers, or our scythes in the other-place,” said Zira. “If you want us to go in, we’ll be lesser.”
“Are you certain?” she asked.
“Well,” he shrugged, “not about you, since you always prove to be an exception, but I didn’t have anything. I’m willing to bet Qaira won’t either.”
Yahweh’s aggravation had melted. He’d realized what we were talking about and now stood by stoically, observing our conversation.
Leid nodded, accepting the glaring deficiency. “Nothing’s stopping us from going to TriColony Sigma and getting a closer look. Measurements should be taken. Data needs to be collected.” She turned to Yahweh. “Have you done any analyses on the shard samples that Qaira collected from Svissa?”
“No, it’s only been two weeks,” he said, a frown of irritation thinning his lips. “I ran a query through attica in search of historical and environmental activities of the region, that’s all. I didn’t realize it was priority.”
“Neither did I, but apparently these shards are becoming a serious problem,” muttered Leid. She waved a hand at the malfunctioning instrument. “This can wait. I want a composition analysis of the shards brought to me by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” said Yahweh, unenthused. However he said nothing else and trotted off; Zira and I watched him go. We then shared a quizzical look.
“So what’s the verdict on Adrial?” I asked. “Should we tell him?”
“Not yet,” said Leid, turning to the defunct instrument. She shut it down and unloaded the sample cartridge from the piston. It glowed amber through the capsule, and she held it out to us with a mischievous smile. “I dare someone to drink this.”
“Nope,” said Zira.
“Oh come on; it can’t kill you,” I chided.
“Then you drink it.”
“Fine,” I said and reached for it, but Leid suddenly vaporized the sample with an enclosed fist.
“I was kidding, you maniac,” she said. “We won’t inform Adrial until we gather some data. I’d much prefer him being the Halon IV show pony for a change. He seems to be enjoying it more than I ever did, anyway.”
There was more to it than that, I knew. With the Framers gone, the other superclusters were left abandoned as attica had not found any tears in them yet. Leid had focused all of her energy into mending the crumbling social structures of the midcivvers across Halon IV, all the while placing the Court of Enigmus in a favorable light. We were the closest things to Framers they had left, and while we couldn’t frame, we offered knowledge and solutions that permeated the doubt that any cosmo-system might feel when their literal pantheon suddenly vanished. She did an excellent job, but wasn’t a social creature. It drained her. She’d spent most of her free time hidden in our room or combing euxodia. Adrial, on the other hand, lived for this kind of thing. He was definitely more of a mascot than she could ever hope to be.
I understood my wife perfectly. I’d lived that life, once upon a time, and was even less socially-inclined than her. Hard to be a sympathetic leader when you hated everyone. Fuck that. I was in a much more comfortable place now.
“Aela and Pariah are due back from their contracts in several days,” said Leid. “Between them and Yahweh, I think the fort can stay well-manned in my absence.”
Zira seemed skeptical. “We’ve never been without leadership in Enigmus before—”
“Seventy-five percent of Enigmus’s current members have had years of leadership experience in some form or another,” Leid interjected. “You don’t think the former Emissary of the Chorus and the Commander of the Argent Forces are capable of babysitting a chunk of rock on an abandoned planet for a week or two?”
Zira opened his mouth, but then closed it a moment later.
Leid smiled, squeezed between us, and then vacated RQ1 without any word of where she was going. That was how she did things. When she was gone, I glanced back at the spectrometer. “I’m going to help the kid. He seems overwhelmed.”
“I’m going to go back to playing toh,” said Zira, turning to leave. An unlit malay cigarette dangled from his lips.
“How useful.”
“You know me,” he muttered, disappearing through the swirling, luminescent door.
*
Yahweh, albeit initially surprised, accepted my offer to help with a curt nod. He stood at the euxodia podium, an immersion visor concealing the upper half of his face. Though we could always access attica through our personalized conscious streams, immersion took away all the distractions of our immediate surroundings. With immersion, we were attica.
I wasn’t a fan. Coming out of it made me feel drunk. They even called it the ‘attica nod’. I surveyed his work from the comfort of my personalized stream instead. He was reassessing the query results. After another minute or so Yahweh broadened the query to surrounding systems within a billion light years diameter. That barely covered a third of the galaxy’s span, yet would take possibly months to finish.
When he came out of succumbence, grabbing the podium for leverage to keep from careening sideways, I asked, “Do you need me to send another?”
“No,” he said. “Nothing we send will give us useable results for this contract. I’m just getting a head start on whatever may come next.”
I’d taken notice of his short, mono-tonal response. “Everything alright?”
Yahweh looked toward the ground, hesitant. “I’m just…coming to terms with things.”
I lifted a brow. “What things?”
“How absolutely average I am here.”
“Come again?”
“Nothing,” he murmured, moving past me.
I grabbed his shoulder and he stopped, giving euxodia’s door a one thousand yard stare.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Seriously.”
The lights returned and that seemed to snap Yahweh out of it. He looked up at me, conflicted. “I’m not as useful here as I hoped to be.”
I squinted, opening my mouth to speak, but he went on. “I understood the angel’s universal laws and was able to contribute to their advancements. I felt like there was a purpose to my work. Here, I can’t do anything correctly without help. I’m not the smartest, I’m not the strongest, I’m just…”
“Welcome to master rank,” I said. “Doing things alone isn’t the way here. We’re all little cogs in the ingenuity engine. Whatever work you did for The Atrium is meaningless from so high up.”
“Yes, I see that now.”
And it damaged his pride, though he wouldn’t ever outwardly admit that. “You’re a prodigy in a group of prodigies, which negates the term entirely. What we’re doing here means more than anything.”
“What does it mean?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but hesitated, careful with the response. “Everything. Everything we do affects the balance of the Multiverse. We are the Multiverse. We are its sentient form—the way in which it tries to know itself.”
Yahweh blinked. “Well, that was surprisingly profound of you.”
“Without you we would have never found a way to by
pass expiration. You’ve contributed to the single most important moment of Vel’Haru history, and you think you’re average?”
“That was an accident.”
“Accidents are what usually lead to breakthroughs.”
He looked away, uncomfortable. “I’m just sick of my experiments failing. I’m sick of not knowing enough and miscalculating everything.”
“I think you’ve been pushing yourself too hard. You should rest.”
“Rest? You heard Leid, she—”
“I’ll take over. Leid will understand. Just tell me what you need done and I’ll do it.”
Yahweh’s expression wavered with relief. “I was about to compare ours and the Framer fragments against the shards you recovered from Ophal.”
“Refractive indices?”
He nodded. “Mm. I was then going to test vibrational patterns of the shard against the basewave pattern through sonography.”
“Will do.”
Yahweh sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “See? I’m completely replaceable.”
Crestfallen, he disappeared from the room.
Poor kid. He’d snap out of it eventually. Any pity-party Yahweh threw usually meant he was overworked and felt unappreciated. And every time I had to give a sappy, morale-boosting talk to him, another little piece of my soul died.
An hour later, and halfway into matrix testing, Leid invaded my mind.
—I’m heading to Ground Zero on Poekka.
What for?
—A TCS government team was assembled and has set up base just outside the anomaly field. I’d like to survey it and ask a few more questions. They’re still waiting for our response, too.
Alright, have fun.
—I need a partner.
Can’t. I’m helping Yahweh with his work since you’ve been dumping too much on him lately.
Leid was silent for a few moments, absorbing that tiny blow. Then she said, I didn’t realize.
Take Zira, I said. Last I checked he needed something to do.
She didn’t respond, and I returned to my work.
II
Covenants: Anodize (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 9) Page 2