by Zen, Raeden
Hans rushed to the crossing. The warm wood soothed his blistery feet. Beimeni River rushed below him.
The hounds emerged from either side of the river, appearing as if from out of the sand. Several silhouettes moved with them: Lady Isabelle, flanked by two Janzers.
She blocked his access to the ZPF. The fake Connor and Murray disappeared. “Find the others!”
A dart shot into Hans’s neck and he collapsed.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Cornelius Selendia
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
The dunes rose and fell in a manner that reminded Connor of his trips in his submarine through Piscator Reef. At times it felt as if he’d rush so deep as to never return before he climbed back up. Elevated, he could see all, the phosphorescent spires upon trading ships in Beimeni River, the Granville moon, the swirls of sand on either side of the tumbling river. With each step he heard the tenehounds howl, and he thought about Hans. Why did he keep so many secrets? Why would he force him to drink something that made him sick? Would Hans escape the pursuit? Connor hoped so.
His bodysuit clung to him, drenched with sweat. He felt so hot. He didn’t know how much farther he could go when they arrived at white lithified dunes, made of ribbed stone with petrified veins running through them. The rock popped the blisters on Connor’s feet, and though the sting was like a thousand shards of glass sliding in and out and between his toes, the pain distracted him from the aches in his muscles and bones. He continued with Murray’s support, down, around, up, around, down, around, up, around, until he smelled the river, a smell so distinct it sent him back to the Block, the gulf, the reef, and all he’d left behind.
Perhaps this was a dream and he’d awaken, any second now, safe in Arturo’s apartment unit in Piscator City. He almost laughed at this thought, for he’d left one prison and entered another.
“We’re here,” Murray said. Connor couldn’t hear the tenehounds any longer. They hid behind ferns. Murray was so sweaty, his mustache and beard looked soaked, and his animated tattoos showed through his bodysuit. Connor pushed aside the ferns. Golden bioluminescence filled the shoreline below.
Murray lowered his head and closed his eyes. He looked as exhausted as Connor felt. They caught their breath.
Murray opened his eyes. “This way.”
He helped Connor through tamarisk thickets to a group of bamboo coracles, some of which contained fishing gear. Connor didn’t know fishermen existed outside Haurachesa and Piscator, and he couldn’t see any fish in the illuminated river. The coracles swayed gently, tethered to boulders with hemp lines. They smelled like coconuts. Murray untied one and overturned it. He and Connor waded out. The water felt like ice on Connor’s skin. He shook violently, feeling nauseous.
“Breathe,” Murray said.
Connor soon found himself neck deep in the water beneath an overturned coracle with Murray. His face felt on fire, but he no longer trembled. His nausea eased.
“Breathe,” Murray repeated.
Connor breathed. They’d taken a few steps when the water beneath them took on a maroon hue.
A Janzer spotlight.
Connor heard Murray’s voice in his head. We must swim now.
He nodded but his breath came short and shallow. He swam whenever he could in the Archimedes River down in Piscator, but never while this scared, and never at night, and never with the fever. He unbuttoned his pockets and slipped his hands inside. On his left side, he felt his artistic Granville sphere, which held his mother’s hologram. He had been surprised when Lady Isabelle gave it back to him after the interrogation. He truly didn’t know anything, and she seemed to accept that. Then out of nowhere, she telekinetically sent the sphere between the teal beams ahead of his cell and said: “Your mother didn’t have to die,” and when Connor looked up toward her, “nor do you.” Connor hated her a bit less in that instant, though he’d never admit so. In his other pocket, he felt Hans’s z-disk, and exhaled.
He closed the pockets, then followed Murray beneath the water. His legs and arms felt the way a jellyfish looked when it bobbed beneath the sea.
Suddenly the river bubbled around them and formed a cocoon. Connor pushed out his arms, trying to quell his rising discomfort. Was it an alteration of gravity? An act of the gods? Lady Isabelle? Janzers? The water rushed away from Connor, and he stood with Murray’s support, his feet on the bottom of the river and water all around them, glowing less golden than it did near the surface. Shadows passed overhead. Connor stared, too shocked to be afraid.
“Janzer gunboats,” Murray said.
He and Connor moved along the river floor. The soft, soaked seaweed and sand soothed Connor’s feet with each step. The light faded. Murray guided him onward. More gunboats passed overhead.
When the vibrations outside the cocoon ceased, Connor found his voice. “How … how did you do this?”
“I was starting to worry about you,” Murray said. Connor couldn’t see him, or anything. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
Connor stopped and Murray with him. He found that he didn’t feel as ill as he had in the holding cell or on the dunes. Was it his anger that provided his strength, or was he truly recovering from the fever? He didn’t know, yet he broke away from Murray’s hold, standing on his own two feet.
“When I last awoke in Piscator, I assumed I’d catch five hundred kilograms of meat and go to a pub with you, Hans, and Arty, and maybe even Zorian and Father. Instead, I didn’t see Zorian, I left Piscator during the peak without saying goodbye to Arty, I’ve been infected by something called E. evolution, one of my brothers might’ve been arrested, my father was arrested, Lady Isabelle and Lieutenant Arnao and their tenehounds and Janzers are hunting us,” Connor coughed and caught his breath, “and you’ve somehow created an underwater submarine bubble in Beimeni River … so if you were me, how would you feel right about now?” Connor now felt a little dizzy; he rested his hand on Murray’s shoulder.
“A bit confused, maybe.” Murray helped Connor forward along the bed of flattened seaweed.
“You can start with the fever.”
Murray sighed. “Your DNA is being altered, allowing further advancement into transhumanism.”
“I thought I was transhuman.”
“The Homo transition species encompasses a spectrum. Some of the genome is inherited, passed down generation to generation. Some is synthetic. Your brother infected you with E. evolution, a synism designed hundreds of years ago to enhance the human genome. It hasn’t been used by developers in a long, long time. It should be administered to a transhuman adult.”
“But I’m an adolescent. Why would Hans infect me with it, why didn’t he tell me what would happen, and why have you all kept so many secrets—”
“The Lady Isabelle captured your father, this you learned. What you don’t know is that she’s accelerated her hunt of the unregistered. I suppose your brother felt he had no choice but to administer the accelerant to you. Now, we must—”
“Tell me about Blackeye Cavern.”
“I’m your developer, not your father.”
“Lady Isabelle told me that my father was a traitor to the commonwealth!” Connor coughed and spit out phlegm. It tasted like blood. “She said if I expected him to live, I’d have to tell her where she could find Blackeye Cavern! I’ve never heard of it!”
“And we can thank the gods for that.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it—” Connor lost his balance and fell out of Murray’s grip. He bounced off the side of the cocoon and fell on the ground. Murray helped him up. Connor coughed violently and sneezed, then steadied and turned to face Murray in the darkness. “I want to know everything,” Connor said. “I want to know about the Cavern, the Beimeni Polemon, the fever, everything.”
“I’ll tell you, sure, but first we need sustenance. Come.”
Connor again felt that out-of-body sensation, as if gravity reversed and he levitated up to the surf
ace, where he and Murray stood upon the river as if it were solid granite. The Granville night wasn’t decorated with as many stars here. Murray helped Connor to the shore and uphill to the cliffs and into a cave.
“Welcome to the Polemon passageways,” Murray said.
Polemon passageways, Connor thought. He didn’t even ask. He suddenly felt shaky again and couldn’t find the strength to talk. Murray guided him through the dark, dank, sultry caves that opened into caverns with limestone pillars, stalactites, stalagmites, and bioluminescent glowworms. Connor couldn’t tell if it was the fever or the passageways that made him feel so hot. He assumed it was a bit of both.
Murray pushed down a stalagmite, and the cave’s interior parted. Inside, an alloy box lay upon a limestone pedestal. Murray tapped its surface and it opened. White bioluminescence poured out, paining Connor’s eyes. The light dimmed, revealing syringes and canteens.
“Sustenance synisms, purified water, and uficilin,” Murray said, “delivered to us by the synbio thief.” He spoke as if Connor should know what this meant.
“The synbio …”
“Thief.”
“Who is?”
“Someone important to your family.”
When Connor prodded Murray, he refused to tell him more. “When will you all trust me?”
Murray didn’t respond. He injected Connor with a syringe labeled ESCHERICHIA SUSTENANCE, then handed him a canteen to drink. Connor smelled it first, half expecting it to be like the one Hans had given him. It smelled like minerals and the sea, and he thanked the gods that it tasted like water. In fact, it tasted better than anything he’d eaten or drank in days.
After he finished, he took one step forward before his nose dripped again, and the urge to puke stole his energy. He leaned over and heaved, then collapsed, shaking. The last thing he remembered was Murray’s sweaty face, his slicked mustache, the feel of Murray’s hands, slapping his cheek, and the sound of his voice, repeating his name …
… Connor awoke. He stood in a limestone tunnel. Yellow bioluminescence and cool water flowed down the walls near him. Not far ahead, the tunnel looked dark. He spun around. He was alone. Though he didn’t feel ill any longer, he felt as uncomfortable as he had the first time he telepathically operated his family’s submarine in the Gulf of Yeuron.
“Hello?” he said. No one responded. “Murray?”
Connor moved toward the darkness. The tunnel felt hotter. He looked behind him. A wall blocked his way. He twisted back to the darkness. He traversed the tunnel, feeling along the prickly, warm walls to steady his movements. His courage willed him onward, but uncertainty was creeping up in him. He heard nothing but his footsteps. He perspired profusely.
He couldn’t have told anyone how far he traveled, turning around corners, moving left or right, though there came a point in the labyrinth where he troubled to breathe, the air so hot and humid it felt like he swam along a tropical reef.
“Murray,” Connor said, more than once, sure if he didn’t escape at once he’d drop dead. The only response was his heartbeat, thrumming in his head. He kept moving. Sweat poured down his face. He felt a connection to the ZPF, a tingling that spread from his fingers to his chest and down his legs, and sensations like vibrations in his neurons and bones: a mind-body-cosmos connection more intense than anything he’d ever felt during sessions with Murray.
Suddenly his developer’s likeness appeared, haloed with green bioluminescence not unlike the type in Connor’s secret room in Arturo’s Third Ward unit. Connor wondered if he was there, in his bed, dreaming.
Communication within the universe occurs in the subatomic world.
Murray’s voice, in Connor’s head.
The brain perceives the cosmos and records reality of the world we live in through pulsating waves throughout the zeropoint field. The substructure that underpins the cosmos allows us all to connect to it, and each other, and any other living being instantaneously. The neurochip and mesh installed in your brain allows your transhuman connection to that substructure.
“Why are you teaching me about the field again?” Connor said. “Why don’t you just show me how to survive?” Connor wiped his drenched face and dashed through Murray’s likeness, then turned. Murray reformed behind him.
“Am I dead?” Connor asked him.
Murray ignored him. The consciousness of the transhuman mind is possessed with incredible power, Connor. Use that power now, Connor. Don’t give up, Connor. Come back to me, Connor.
Connor connected to the ZPF the way Murray taught him in the past and the present, feeling the pulsating waves as they moved up and down, left and right, swaying like a school of fish. He pushed his mind outward into the labyrinth and sensed a transhuman presence moving away from him. His heart raced. He followed. He felt the sweat roll down his spine. He smelled worse than the fishermen’s Block. He was drawn to the transhuman presence in the ZPF. He ran, slid, turned, climbed, and rose, like the heat from inside the Earth’s core, through the seafloor, into the ocean, pumping his legs, swimming faster than ever he did in the Archimedes. A hand breached the surface above him, under the water, surrounded by shards of sunlight. Connor pumped his legs, faster, faster, and reached for the hand …
… He felt as cool as he had below the sea, but Connor wasn’t swimming, he realized, coming to.
“A fever dream,” Murray said, patting Connor’s forehead with a damp towel. “How do you feel?”
“Normal,” Connor said, “perfectly normal.” He turned. They were still in the Polemon passageways. “How long was I out?”
“Four days, fifteen hours, twenty minutes, and thirty-four seconds.”
Connor couldn’t help but laugh. So did Murray. He injected Connor with uficilin.
A flash of relief spread through Connor. He sat up against the wall and accepted a canteen from Murray. They rested awhile.
Finally, Connor turned to his developer. “Why does Lady Isabelle claim to be a protector of the people on the one hand,” he brushed his forefingers over the swaying seaweed that decorated his forearm, “and hunt and kill the unregistered on the other?”
“I can’t pretend to understand Isabelle Lutetia.” Murray sipped loudly from a canteen. He handed it to Connor. “She’s Masimovian’s eternal partner and he hates your father.”
“Why?” Connor gulped the water.
Murray didn’t respond.
Connor sighed. He capped the canteen and set it beside him. “Isabelle accused me of being part of the Liberation Front and a Beimeni Polemon in the war against Chancellor Masimovian.” He remembered conversations with Jeremiah. “Father wouldn’t speak about the guerilla war,” Connor continued, “he just told me, ‘All the Polemon are unregistered, but not all the unregistered are Polemon,’ and ‘You are an illegal in the eyes of the government, Allesandro, since you’re not registered in Marstone’s Database, but you’re not a Polemon.’ He never called me by my true name.”
“The BP life is a difficult one,” Murray said. He rapped the limestone lightly with his fist. “You can’t escape this, and you can’t escape the commonwealth.” He looked down. “They killed those people beneath Hautervian City—”
“Father lied,” Connor said.
Murray ignored him. “They collapsed their home and flooded it, and two hundred seventy thousand BP suffocated or drowned—”
“You all lied to me!”
“That’s why your father didn’t want you near the Front.”
It made sense now, for the first time in Connor’s life: the arguments, the disappearances, the insistence that he remain in Arty’s unit all those years. Connor couldn’t help but think that if he’d been wiser, none of this would have happened. Father wouldn’t have been captured. Zorian wouldn’t have left them. Hans wouldn’t be running for his life.
“You should’ve exposed me to E. evolution sooner,” Connor said. He did feel a stronger connection with the ZPF, though he didn’t know if he could control it. “You should’ve turned me into a
skilled telepath like my mother! Then I could’ve helped Hans or—”
“You might’ve acted like Zorian, who abandoned us in Beimeni City.”
Connor drew back at Murray’s accusation. “Zorian would never—”
“Hans didn’t want to say, but I saw it in his mind, through the field. That’s how he escaped in the DOP. Zorian broke into the department the way he’d done before, but he didn’t help us. He’s unreliable and emotionally unstable. You know that.”
Connor knew it. He’d seen Zorian fight with Hans or other fishermen at the bars near the Shore, and sometimes even on the Block. The way Zorian moved anything with his mind terrified yet intrigued him. “He hates me as much as he hates Piscator,” Connor said.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s just confused.” Murray lifted Connor’s chin. “Your potential is limitless … but only if we survive this, only if we make it into the citadel.”
“Is it far from here?”
“It’s right next to us.”
This was a slight exaggeration, Connor soon learned. He questioned his sanity more than once as they moved through narrow, lightless tunnels. They stopped and slept, more than once, upon what Connor could only guess was moss. Whatever it was gave this part of the tunnel an oceanic smell that reminded him of Piscator Shore. He longed to go back there, to be in his submarine again, a hunter amid the reef. He even dreamed of Piscator Reef. When he awoke, Murray injected him with more sustenance synisms and offered him a canteen.
They moved through the deep dark for what Connor assumed was fifteen days, or more, until finally they arrived at a pond filled with emerald bioluminescence, sitting at the base of a spiral limestone staircase. After the first thirty steps, the burn from lactic acid in his legs stalled him; after a hundred twenty more he felt like he couldn’t walk.