The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4)

by Zen, Raeden

  He handed a pouch of benari coins to the BP spy. The girl dashed to the other side of the skywalk and up into the bazaar.

  “What’s the meaning?” Connor said.

  “An unfortunate turn of events.”

  Father said no more. He led Connor through the city, up the skywalks and down to the platforms, some as large as villages, others only the size of a single building, to the other side of the city. Along the way, Connor noted something he hadn’t seen or noticed before: Granville day and night blended together intermittently, and taupe patches replaced the atmosphere that covered the massif over the horizon.

  “Father, what’s happened to the sky in this territory?”

  “It isn’t just here.”

  “An oversight?”

  “A lack of benaris.”

  The platform down the next skywalk held the city’s Kungurian Station. Connor and Father waited near a vendor who sold cappuccinos to the morning rush-hour commuters. Connor enjoyed the smells of espresso and hazelnut and the hum from transports after countless hours in the dark.

  Oval transports arrived, one after another. After the last one departed, the crowd dispersed.

  Nero, Verena, and Aera emerged.

  We follow Aera now, Father sent, without Marstone’s interference.

  Yes, Father, Connor replied. He’d learned to communicate like this during the journey through the Polemon passageways.

  They descended several skywalks to a platform with many skyscrapers, cylindrical buildings that leaned to the left or right, lined with spikes, and skywalks that connected the city’s industries.

  They trotted up black marble steps to where a bulky man stood guard outside a skyscraper entrance. Aera gave a BP hand signal, and he let them in. They moved along a dimly lit hallway to an elevator, headed down. The entrance cleared, revealing a sea of tables surrounded by Beimenians who gambled, talked, drank, and danced. Benari coins sailed. Women and men laughed and cheered outside a ring where two men fought, their feet and hands wrapped with bloody bandages.

  Aera ushered them through the throng of stinky Beimenians to a lounge in the back, where they sat at a glass table. A waiter brought over mugs that frothed with beer. After he left, Connor put his hand in the center, connecting to his comrades. The lounge faded …

  … And they now stood upon dark marble under a cloudy sky.

  “This seemed appropriate,” Connor said, “given the circumstances.”

  The side of Father’s mouth curled up slightly. Connor tried to contain his pride.

  “Aera, how goes the evacuation?” Father asked.

  “Pirro and Charlene have it in hand.” Aera adjusted the pulse gun on her belt, then pressed her lips together. “We have a bigger … issue.”

  Father frowned. “We do, it seems.”

  “The Lorum has been moved to Nyx,” Nero said.

  The striker seemed more at peace than he had when last Connor had met with him, even as his voice and his consciousness in the ZPF were filled with annoyance, fear, and anger. “Nyx?” Connor said.

  “To the quarantine sector within the City of Eternal Darkness,” Nero finished. He lowered his head, then looked toward Aera.

  Father glanced to her, too.

  Aera flinched away. Her hands disappeared into her violet and silver hair. Was it fear in her eyes, or disgust? Connor couldn’t tell.

  “We will retrieve the Lorum,” Father said, “wherever in this commonwealth the young Antosha Zereoue thinks he can hide it.” He folded his arms.

  “We can’t all enter that city,” Verena said.

  The strategist also seemed healthier than Connor remembered her, but also uneasy. Though Connor reached for her consciousness through the ZPF, he found she’d shielded access to her neurochip and her mind. Did she still not trust the BP? Was she truly their ally? Or was it a natural defense mechanism following Antosha’s attack on her in the first trimester?

  “It’s too isolated,” Verena continued, “the passages too narrow and monitored, the quarantine laboratory heavily guarded—”

  “I will go,” Connor declared.

  “No,” Nero said, stepping forward. “Your progress with the zeropoint field is impressive, and your skills may prove useful in the city, but this is a striker’s job. I’ll go myself,” he turned, “with mighty Aera at my side.”

  Aera moaned. “You know nothing of Angeles.”

  “Nyx!” Verena said. “No way. We may as well dig your graves right now.”

  “I can do it,” Connor said. “Father, tell them, explain to them how far I’ve advanced, how I now have control—”

  “I’ll go,” Aera said. They all turned to her. She nodded vigorously, defiantly. “I know the way. I’m the only one here familiar with the Western Inaccessible Region’s passages, what’s left of them, should the operation go bad.”

  “Aera, you don’t have to,” Verena said. “We can find another way; we can take out the transport tunnels and supply lines to Nyx. If we can’t obtain the Lorum, no one shall—”

  “I must go! I have to move on! After all these years, I have to see it, I have to find it, end it.”

  “Fine,” Father said. “You will go to Nyx, and you will retrieve the Lorum orb.”

  “Father, where do I fit in this?” Connor said.

  “Verena and I will manage logistics from Hydra Hollow,” Father said, “and you, my brave son,” he put his hand on Connor’s shoulder, “you will go to Antosha’s demonstration in the North and contain his use of the zeropoint field.”

  “Agreed,” Verena said. “We cannot risk his interference with this operation.”

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Nero Silvana

  City in the Vale

  Cineris, Underground Central

  2,500 meters deep

  Nero knew Aera would make him return to Cineris on their way to the West. Jeremiah had split off from the group and suggested they travel along the rivers rather than interterritory lines. Though river travel was slower than a transport, it was faster than expected thanks to Connor’s inventive use of the ZPF to power their boat.

  Nero sat upon a chair in his parent’s Second Ward unit. Or what he’d always assumed was his parent’s unit. Lady Eulalie had told Nero that his parents couldn’t afford to keep him, and rather than see him compete in the Harpoons underdeveloped, they’d left him with the executive of the City in the Vale, hopeful, perhaps, that their baby would be placed within the chancellor’s service in Phanes as a courier. That it would be House Variscan Nero landed was fortunate, he knew, for most orphans in those days were deemed unworthy by the supreme chancellor Atticus Masimovian, sent to the Lower Level, never again to return to the Beimeni zone.

  They left me for dead, and I hate them, Nero thought. He wished he could smoke his synthetic leaves. He damned Aera for breaking his pipe. He waited and waited, and finally when Orsino and Svana entered the kitchen with their keeper bot, he did his best to control his hatred and anger.

  He moved too fast for them to see him, deactivated their bot and latched Converse Collars around their necks. He returned to his chair and reclined a bit.

  “You’re supposed to be in Farino Prison,” Orsino said.

  His father, Nero reflected, looked little like him. His mouth narrowed to pouty lips, which were set into a scowl.

  Svana looked nothing like him at all. Her mouth hung open, but she didn’t shout or speak.

  “You can’t ignore me anymore,” Nero said. “I came here to speak to you. I came here to find out the truth.”

  When Orsino motioned for a lever near the marble cabinetry, Aera grabbed his wrist.

  “Do as he says,” her words repeated, with many whispers, in all their heads, “and we’ll be on our way.”

  She disappeared.

  “Take all the benaris you want,” Svana said, “then get out of our home.”

  “I don’t want money,” Nero said.

  “What do you want?”

  “The truth.”

  “
What truth?” Svana turned to Orsino. “Do you know him?”

  “No—”

  “Like hell you don’t,” Nero said. “You killed my mother—”

  “Your mother was a slut who got what she deserved.” No hesitation or lie in Orsino’s tone. He bared his teeth to Nero, then, oddly, he shook, his eyes filled with tears, and he covered his face.

  Nero wished he’d come here sooner. “Why do you hate me so?”

  “You’re a constant reminder …”

  My gods, Nero thought, Aera didn’t lie. “I’m not your son.”

  “You’re not my son. Now get out of my face. And never come back …”

  Nero didn’t hear him. He killed my mother! He unsheathed his sword and swung it toward Orsino’s neck. He killed my mother!

  Aera blocked Nero’s salvo.

  Svana screamed.

  “Killing him won’t bring her back,” Aera said.

  “No, but it’ll make me—”

  “You kill me and you’ll never know that which you seek—”

  Don’t listen to him, Aera moved her sword up Nero’s, getting a clearer look at him. Let this man disappear from your mind.

  He killed my mother! Nero broke away from Aera and held his sword above his head.

  Enter the subatomic world, manipulate your field the way you did in the Comb Cove, and see this man as he truly exists …

  Nero did as she suggested.

  … and nothing will stop you in battle.

  Nero manipulated his field, similar to the way he had in Aera’s labyrinth.

  “You have it,” she said.

  He didn’t see the man and woman he once thought were his parents, or Aera, in their transhuman forms. He saw them as light and energy, as they appeared in the quantum universe.

  “You have it.”

  Nero closed his eyes. He realized his heart drummed. He disconnected from the ZPF, feeling a sense of peace he’d never known before. He killed my mother … who abandoned me so that I could live …

  For the first time in his developed life, Nero didn’t crave synthetic leaves. And he hated himself a little bit less. Aera put her hand on his shoulder. Now, striker, you are ready for the City of Eternal Darkness.

  “Are you?” Nero said.

  She didn’t answer him.

  Unseen, they left the unit together. They met up with Connor and Verena on their raft upon the Lochkafka River.

  Nero whispered to Verena, telling her what had happened. She grinned and hugged him.

  Gaia City

  Gaia, Underground West

  The next day, when Nero and Verena stepped onto the shores of Gaia Territory, Aera dropped hoods over their heads.

  “You should know by now that you can trust us,” Nero said, his voice muffled.

  “We thought the same of Zorian,” she said, “and look where that left the people of Blackeye Cavern.”

  In shambles, if the whispers were to be believed, as hundreds if not thousands of BP had been apprehended in Navita and Peanowera. But the commonwealth had not attacked directly, not yet. Nero wondered what Lady Isabelle was waiting for.

  Now Connor and Aera led Nero and Verena through the Polemon passageways. Though the ascent was speechless and sightless, Nero knew when they escaped the Beimeni zone by the sweat that poured down his body, and the smell, as dank as tropics.

  When they reached Hydra Hollow, Aera removed their hoods.

  “Welcome to the Crystal Caves,” Connor said.

  Selenite crystals ten to fifteen meters long dwarfed them. Steam simmered off the top of a stream. Ivory bioluminescence showed the way to a wooden bridge, high above an underground river, murky and white water rushing over stone.

  Aera rushed to the other end.

  Nero and Verena gripped strands of rope, which were part of the railing, and picked their way across. Connor brought up the rear.

  “We don’t have all goddamn day,” Aera said. Nero had noticed her patience waning since they’d received intel that the chancellor had ordered two hundred fifty thousand additional Janzers as a result of their raid on the Superstructure. Many of these, they suspected, would be sent to guard the Lorum in the City of Eternal Darkness.

  The bridge swayed.

  “Don’t look down,” Nero said, “whatever you do.”

  “I’m too hot and sweaty and smelly to look anywhere but at that waterfall on the other end,” Verena said. “I think I’ll dip my head under it as soon as we get there.”

  Nero missed her directness, her voice, her smell, her essence in the ZPF, which he’d never felt so connected to in his developed life. He smiled and looked onward to her waterfall, streaming with blue bioluminescence. It was one of many that lined the cavernous cove of Hydra Hollow. Shades of red, green, or yellow lit the others, depending on the marine life the BP used to populate the streams on any given day, he’d learned during the journey here. Down below, water wheels turned beneath the falls, streams flowed beneath the water wheels, and stalagmites reached up from the ground. Towering limestone columns imprinted with prehistoric fossils girded the Hollow. The aroma of burned bacon, cheese, and nuts wafted up from the bazaar, along with the hum of civilization.

  Verena stuck her hands under a bright blue waterfall and threw water over her face. She exhaled. “Now I feel transhuman. Now I can prepare for this operation.”

  “Rest tonight.” Jeremiah emerged from behind one of the limestone columns, giving Nero a start. “Prepare tomorrow, depart the day after that.” Jeremiah nodded to Connor. “My son will show you to the baths. Gather your strength. You’ll need it for the days ahead.”

  Connor took Nero and Verena to a natural underground spa that glowed pure white. “Bathe and rest as you please,” he said. “I’ll be waiting outside the tunnel to escort you to your cove.”

  Nero nodded. He and Verena took off their clothes and dipped into the steaming water. It was good to be with her again, here, naked, even though he felt as if he were being watched.

  He massaged Verena’s shoulders and kissed her neck.

  “Not here,” she said.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled her scent before he peered to the opposite end of the spa, where the moss-covered limestone and fossilized limestone intermingled, and a pair of lilac eyes blinked, surrounded by curly hair. Nero remembered the child, Jocelyn, from when she had led Brody and him into the Polemon passageways near the Spa of Delphi. In a way, the little girl had started his involvement in the BP, he reflected.

  “We have a spy in residence,” Nero said.

  Verena submerged to her chest and turned. Jocelyn disappeared into the darkness. “So we do.” Verena pushed the water away from her chest in gentle strokes. “Doesn’t seem like we have freedom, here or in the commonwealth. Will we ever again?”

  Nero lifted the hot water over Verena’s back and helped her scrub the grime from her shoulders and neck. “Aera and I will find the Lorum orb, and Jeremiah will work his magic, and we’ll free Brody from Farino Prison and prove his innocence and after that, you and I will return to Palaestra—”

  “You have it all figured out then.”

  “You’re skeptical?”

  “Realistic.” She stepped out of the spa. Nero watched the water drip down her body.

  “Gods, I missed you,” he said. “I had no idea what to do.”

  Verena smiled and dried herself with a towel. Nero stepped out, and she threw his towel at him. He protested when she stepped into her bodysuit. They lingered awhile. Finally, Nero relented and let her dress.

  “You all nearly died in Permutation Crypt,” Verena said. “What makes you think the City of Eternal Darkness is easier?”

  “I never said it would be.”

  “You talk as if this is a simple trip to the moon or Mars, but everything’s changed.” Verena sat with Nero and let him wrap his arms around her. “You’ve changed.”

  “For the better, I hope.”

  “You do seem at peace, for the first time since I met you du
ring the Harpoons,” Verena said. “Yet you’ve lost your humor.” Nero kissed her neck, and she closed her eyes. “I’ll help you find your true father, should we survive the war.”

  “We will survive,” Nero said. “Aera’s good, love.” He thought about the battles in Permutation Crypt, the Research Superstructure, Mount Cineris, and the Comb Cove. “She’s better than good. She’s better than me.”

  “Impossible!” Verena said softly and laughed. “I saw what she did in the Research Superstructure, or at least I heard the explosions. But this is different. They’re prepared for us now. And they must be preparing for her. Why else would the chancellor order so many new Janzers? Why else would Antosha send the Lorum to the one place Aera fears?”

  “I won’t let her fail,” Nero said. “I won’t leave Brody to die.”

  Verena stood and dried her hair with the towel. “I hate that I’m going to be useless in this.”

  “Don’t say that.” Nero put on his bodysuit. “Think about the captain. Think about the twins.” He paused. “Think about Beimeni. They’ll all need you should this operation turn bad.”

  “That’s the kind of bull people always say to the keeper bot.”

  Nero turned. He didn’t see the little girl. “Connor’s waiting.”

  Verena stretched out on the bioluminescent limestone. “Maybe we should make him wait a little longer. I’m getting tired of the BP telling me what to do and when to do it.”

  Nero stroked his chin. “You make a strong argument, my lady.”

  He undressed her and did his best to erase the last year from both their minds.

  Time passed without any indication, no Granville day or stars, no news from the Beimeni Press, none of the contact with scientists, Janzers, and ministers that had marked Nero’s daily life for so many decades. Now he stood with his arms extended at his sides as Verena attached a stolen Janzer synsuit.