by Zen, Raeden
Lady Isabelle strutted across the cavern as if she owned it. She reached Arnao, who lay on the ground with his eyes open, as if he was dead. She closed her eyes, and Hans sensed her in the ZPF. Arnao sat up and groaned.
Connor started, backing into the glass vials behind them. Isabelle turned at the noise, probing. Hans gritted his teeth. His cheeks vibrated as if he held the whole Earth in his arms.
Isabelle took a few steps toward them. Hans felt her mind focus upon the thousands of colorful synism vials behind them. Creating illusions in the ZPF came naturally to him, and doing so in Piscator had been relatively easy, but this was Isabelle Lutetia, Master of the Harpoons, a neural specialist who’d been developed by the elite House Marsellessa nearly two centuries ago. He let her find the vials that had moved, barely having enough focus to keep her mind off them.
She probed again, and he diverted her. Finally, she turned slowly back to Arnao, who blinked and straightened. Blood oozed from his mouth and nose. His shoulder was also dislocated, courtesy of Murray’s boot.
Isabelle waved her head and folded her arms. “This is why you don’t send a man to do a woman’s job.”
Her voice sent a flutter through Hans, who refocused his effort in the ZPF. She cannot see us.
Arnao groaned now and massaged his shoulder. “Polemon—”
Connor coughed. Though Hans immediately attributed the sound to a giant rat rushing across the clay floor, Isabelle turned her head, like a tigress on the prowl.
“Some interest in hallucinogenic synisms, my lady?” Arnao said.
She twisted around to Arnao. Her braided hair was slung around her neck. “You truly are a waste.”
Connor held his hand over his mouth, muffling another cough. Then snot dripped from his nose, over his forefingers. He trembled, violently. His teeth chattered. Hans felt heat escaping his brother’s body in great waves.
Gods, no, no, no, Hans thought, the fever …
Connor looked terrified. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Murray hugged him and peered at Hans, knowingly and angrily.
Hans wanted to punch something. This wasn’t supposed to happen here! Connor should’ve been secured to the new secret room in House Thuddan, on his way to rapid development, on his way to becoming a powerful ally in the war! Hans exhaled, refocusing his mind-body-cosmos connection, both on his little brother, and on Lady Isabelle and Lieutenant Arnao.
The lieutenant smashed his shoulder into the wall, and his bones popped back into joint. He rubbed his neck. “Have you requested reinforcements?”
Isabelle tapped his raw cheek. “I’m the reinforcements.” She sighed and held his hands in hers.
Hans sensed Isabelle was pushing her mind into Arnao’s, much as he had thrust his into theirs. As Isabelle probed Arnao, Hans began to experience his memories. It took all of Hans’s concentration to stay with them …
… He watched Arnao interrogate Murray, before his and Connor’s arrival.
“Where’s the traitorous contingent?” Arnao asked.
Murray didn’t respond. Arnao jabbed him with his baton. Murray rocked and howled a muffled scream. Isabelle shifted forward, skipping through the torture to the moment the Selendias parted the beaded curtain. Then the fight, when Arnao and his three Janzer divisions were knocked out, followed by blinding light.
Isabelle opened her eyes and dropped Arnao’s hands. She turned and pondered the vials, then took a step forward and closed her eyes. She secured visual identifications for the suspects, connected to Marstone, pulled data from the DOC, and rapidly scanned through Ypresia, hopping as if she were a virus from one Gaian to the next, searching the bazaar. Isabelle shifted from face to face, mind to mind, vision to vision, cross-referencing the Gaians with the data in Marstone’s Database. Hans learned how she accessed the database, but began to lose his connection to her thoughts.
Isabelle opened her eyes. She appeared too pleased for Hans’s liking, considering what seemed like her failure to locate them.
Drool dripped down the sides of Connor’s mouth. He broke away from Murray, swaying into the synism vials, knocking them over and shattering them. He puked.
Hans lost his concentration in the ZPF, and Isabelle shattered his illusion. His eyes met hers. He lunged at her. Isabelle screamed as they tumbled into Arnao.
“Get out of here!” Hans yelled. “Go!”
“Hans!” Connor started for the pile of arms and legs and cloth, but Murray clutched him and pulled him away.
… Hans stood upon a trail, the air filled with the aroma of berries, while crimson leaves splayed over the vast forest, each one crackling as if filled with electricity.
Lady Isabelle had drawn him into her mind.
Hans moved through this surreal world, more than a little curious, despite himself.
I know who you are, Polemon. Isabelle’s voice echoed all around him.
Hans dashed along the trail, searching for Isabelle’s neural connections, her mesh and neurochip, the technology that enabled the Homo transition mind-body-cosmos connection.
He needed access to regain control.
Give yourself to me, Polemon.
He couldn’t locate them.
An icy mountain ridge loomed in the distance with Isabelle’s face chiseled into it.
Though her lips didn’t move, Hans heard, You’re Jeremiah’s son, the son he should’ve registered.
Hans stopped. How could Isabelle be privy to such details? Who would help her? A disgruntled BP? Zorian?
No, he decided, for he knew Zorian hated her as much as he did.
Then the answer struck him harder than a fist to his gut. Father could’ve told her himself. If she had broken him.
Time to die, Polemon.
Hans ran closer to the ridge. He folded his hands and bowed his head as if in prayer, gathering his psychic energy into his palms.
Then he separated his hands and clapped them together. A blue pulse rippled out from his body like a supernova.
The foliage around him shuddered. He smashed his fist into a nearby tree. In a flash of light, Isabelle materialized.
She wore a white bodysuit cut at her thighs, white boots, and a white cape. A swift breeze sent her cape aloft, like a blooming flower.
She whirled and kicked at him. He caught her heel in his hands. A blade shot from the tip of her boot.
He dodged it, twisting her to the ground. She rolled and rose, jabbed at him with her fist. Tap, tap, tap. Electricity in the trees surged with each thrust.
She probed his mind. He blocked. She spun. He evaded. Tap, tap, tap. He blocked her, stepped into her body, tumbled over her, and back-flipped.
He found the blade that escaped her boot. Before she could turn, he thrust it into her back and ripped upward through her body, toward her neck.
She disappeared. The sky darkened, and a cool rain sprayed him. Laughter echoed through the trees.
Hans looked up, then wiped his eyes as the rain turned to warm blood.
The tree roots, also crackling with electricity, swung around Hans. He struggled and howled until his voice wasn’t audible. His world darkened …
… And when the light returned, he lay upon his back in the middle of Ypresia Village, in the clearing in the center of the massive market, where thousands of Beimenians separated as if to avoid Reassortment. Lady Isabelle stood over him, Lieutenant Arnao beside her, and eighteen Janzers arced around them.
Hans shivered. He couldn’t move his limbs. Was Isabelle affecting him so? He could hear the crowd’s thoughts as if they were his own—a combination of awe, panic, and outrage—until the Janzers latched the Converse Collar around his neck.
Hans’s mind went eerily quiet. The collar haloed him in green light. Isabelle smiled in a way that could make any unregistered cringe. When she and Arnao parted, Hans saw two Janzers holding Connor and Murray. Connor’s drool mixed with blood leaking down his face from a cut on his forehead. They also wore collars.
Hans lunged forward.
> A Janzer shot a tranquilizer dart into his chest.
Part III:
The Becoming
On the Surface: Spring
In Beimeni: First Trimester
Days 83 – 107
Year 368
After Reassortment (AR)
ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
On the rooftop of the Brezner Building, the fifteen members of the Supreme Scientific Board of Beimeni sat around an elongated pool filled with mercury, sprinkled with red rose petals. Rays from the Granville sun flowed through a skylight, scattering through a carbyne-and-glass trellis, the glass portions alight like embers.
“My fellow scientists,” Chancellor Masimovian began, standing. “Welcome.”
Like the Masimovians before him during the bygone days of the Livelle Laboratory, his presence commanded attention. His face appeared as if sculpted by the gods, his hair set into thin curls around his head and ears, his goatee trimmed, his eyes focused and clear. He folded his arms behind his back. Like all the board, he wore a light blue robe tied at the waist by platinum and gold-linked chains. Silver medallions stenciled with Beimenian glyphs hung from the chains at his waist and jingled as he moved behind the row of board members. His robe dragged along the marble floor behind him.
He stopped and looked at Brody. “I’m excited to announce a Jubilee.” He breathed, awaiting a response from Brody. When Brody sat still, he continued walking and said, “We have a new volunteer eager to commit to a clinical trial of the latest synbio cure.”
Brody activated the recaller in his pocket. He’d obtained it on the black market from a seller who told him it could “recall” transhuman brain impulses and send new ones into the ZPF, tricking Marstone and skilled telepaths like Masimovian with random thoughts of splendid, improved life, thoughts focused on proper and significant conversion to enhance humanity’s standing below as it strived to return above. Brody wasn’t foolish enough to use it all the time, for no supreme scientist or strike team captain would truly have the same thoughts, hour after hour, day after day, but times like now he thanked the gods for its existence.
He glanced at Damy, who sat next to him. She was loosening her scarf, shaped liked phoenix feathers—the mark of Phanes, “the place of youth.” She held it in her lap and pressed her lips together. Her bronze skin pulled taut near her jaw. She knew the results of his latest serum, the hope in a vial that might fail like all the rest.
Brody put his hand on her arm, worried she might speak out of turn. He did before she could. “So soon, Chancellor?” he said with as much respect as he could muster. “It hasn’t been a full trimester since the last one.” All but a few of the board members glared at Brody.
Masimovian swiped his goatee and scowled; all the board knew that when he had the floor, no one else should speak. He swayed back toward his chair, ignoring the People’s Captain. “We’ve been without significant conversion for so long in the RDD, it pains me, truly. It makes me wonder if we should even wear these.” Masimovian tugged on the rim of his black beret. Beige fabric on the front of it formed two human hands over the Earth, covered with continents, oceans, and clouds—the mark of Palaestra, “the place of conversion.”
He turned toward Brody. “We’ve given you unlimited financial backing, Captain. You’ve recruited fine Harpoon performers.” Masimovian waved his forefinger and raised his voice. “There are two conclusions that I imagine …”
The chancellor seemed to lose his thought. He took his seat at the head of the pool and looked up. Artificial cirrus clouds moved gently over the sky, darkening the trellis embers one by one. A keeper bot placed a tray holding several crystal glasses of Loverealan wine in front of Masimovian. He took one and lifted it to his nose, inhaling deeply, then sipped. A shadow fell over the pool and across the board. The bot rounded the horseshoe of scientists and ministers, and they all took a glass.
“Where was I?” Masimovian said. The shadow cleared and sunlight broke through, lighting the mercury pool and the rose petals over it.
Prime Minister Decca raised his bushy eyebrows and pulled a toothpick away from his teeth. “Captain Barão’s Reassortment research team,” he said.
“Ah, yes.” Masimovian sipped loudly. “We may need to reconsider the composition of your team—”
“Chancellor Masimovian,” Damy said. The supreme scientists and ministers on the board turned toward her. Brody moved his head back and forth, slight enough for only his eternal partner to notice. She didn’t listen. “Reassortment’s the most complex organism we’ve ever encountered.” She peered toward all the board members. “Its encryptions become more difficult to decipher by the day, while its concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere and soil are rising. For these reasons, we must support the scientists in the Ventureño Facility,” she said, referring to Brody’s lab.
“Why?” Supreme Scientist Dorian Knox asked. The board turned to him. His arms were folded across his broad chest, just below his deep red beard. “Why should we support someone who isn’t held to the same standard as the rest of us?”
Damy ignored him. “Must I remind you all that Reassortment has mirror proteins, proteins that don’t perform any special action but have the same functionality of their natural counterparts?” When no one responded, and when the chancellor didn’t interfere, she added, “Their slight difference renders common protease and other treatments ineffective,” she raised her voice, “and the code used to make these proteins is always changing. It makes it problematic to determine what protein is doing what and makes learning to defeat this organism extremely difficult!”
“Miss Damosel,” Masimovian said, dipping his head. He folded his fingers over the Pendant of the Chancellor, the technology that secured his control over the Janzers through Marstone. “I understand the great challenge of our time.” He motioned his index finger in the shape of the infinity symbol. “Nothing is forever.” The chancellor often reminded the board that even if they lived forever, they were constantly evolving, changing, improving. Such was the nature of transhumanism; the people who now populated the Earth might find themselves very different in fifty or one hundred years, given the rapid advances in development. Brody mused over how different he’d been a hundred years ago, when he was a strike team captain but not yet a supreme scientist. A meaningful part of him wished he’d never pursued the Reassortment project so stealthily and aggressively. He turned to Damy.
She pressed her lips together. The veins near her throat pulsated. Brody didn’t need to access the ZPF to feel her anger. He’d not seen her like this since they worked on Reassortment together, decades ago. Damy, he thought, stay out of this, stay out of my fight. He could tell she wasn’t about to stop.
“Chancellor—”
“Or shall we discuss the progress of Project Silkscape?”
“The project is on schedule.”
“Is it?”
“My assignment also doesn’t send Beimenians to their deaths.”
“That, fair scientist, is a problem you should discuss with your eternal partner.” Masimovian turned to Brody. “He’s the one we’ve entrusted with Reassortment research.” The chancellor sipped his wine and glared back at Damy. “He’s the one who has failed longer than any supreme scientist in history.”
The comment elicited several smiles.
“Why do we even have these Jubilees?” Damy said.
Some of the board members huffed. The silver medallions on their belts sounded like wind chimes. Minister Volans cringed as if she’d watched someone perish from Reassortment, Minister Charles fiddled with the gemstones hanging from his neck, while Supreme Scientist Cimmeria patted her chest and Supreme Scientist Ele drew back in her chair. Prime Minister Decca choked on his toothpick.
Brody closed his eyes, wishing this wasn’t real, hoping he could stop his eternal partner, somehow. He put his hand on her thigh. Damy intertwined
her fingers with his. “Shouldn’t research this important be kept private?” she said, soft and fearless.
“Would you have me censor the people’s right to know where we stand with Reassortment?” Masimovian said. He pouted and looked appalled, his bronze skin a shade of red. Quiet chatter spread among the board. “Would you have me disallow their right to celebrate our research?”
“We achieved a record survival time with the latest Gemini trial, Chancellor,” Brody said. A swift diversion was usually the best route with Masimovian, particularly after he’d begun his third glass of wine. “I expect continued progress in the days, trimesters, and years ahead with the Gemini trials and look forward to applying our findings to transhumans.”
“Then it’s settled. Your team shall provide the keeper of Reassortment Hall the latest serum, and no more than thirty days hence, the commonwealth shall gather for a Jubilee.”
A quick rebuttal from Brody would not do, for once the supreme chancellor of the Great Commonwealth spoke this way, it took on the weight of a decree. It wasn’t always like this, Brody knew. In the early years of his term on Reassortment, Masimovian always sought consensus for transhuman trials.
Brody felt Damy clasp his hand tighter. He looked at her, then searched Masimovian and all the board for an indication of remorse. Finding none, he shifted his attention to the hands of creation and globes sewed into the men’s berets and pondered the consequences of another failure. Was the goal to destroy Brody, or did Chancellor Masimovian and the board truly hope for a miracle?
Damy’s hand now trembled in Brody’s, and he did something he’d not done in at least fifteen years: he allowed the board’s brain impulses in the ZPF to flow into his mind. He heard their musings, hopes for his success and wishes for his failure, surprise with Damy’s boldness and disgust with Damy’s boldness, goals for their own teams and their own career goals, familial issues, and more. He thought about actively targeting the source, Chancellor Masimovian’s mind. Neither the chancellor nor any Beimenian had known when Brody and his former shadow, former friend, former bane, Antosha Zereoue, used the ZPF intrusively. But that was a long time past, when Brody and Antosha were the commonwealth’s premier telepaths and researchers. Nowadays, with advancements in development, skilled telepaths seemed as plentiful as benari coins.