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

by Zen, Raeden

  Now Gwen, Marcel, and Juvelle ambled along the city island’s pedestrian paths, surrounded by an assortment of aromatic herbs, spices, and flowers that reminded Gwen of the grounds at House Variscan. They arrived at a building with a holographic sign, 55-VIVO-AURORO, and Gwen pulled a chain that released a birdsong chime. The door opened. A keeper bot labeled MAGGIE queried their purpose, and Marcel stepped forward.

  “Good evening, Maggie. Though we’re not acquainted, my name is Marcel Auroro and this is my family farm. My guest, Gwendolyn Horvearth, and I seek aid and comfort from the lady and lord of the farm.” Maggie scanned Gwen and Marcel and allowed them entry. “Are my parents here?” Marcel said.

  “Aha, they traveled with their neophytes to Catnip Cavern,” Maggie said, the bot’s eye slit glowing, then dimming, “and I’m unsure if they’ve returned. They haven’t been as open to guests recently. This unannounced visit may be unwise.”

  “Nonsense, my parents will be thrilled that their son has returned with a Harpoon Champion.”

  Gwen wasn’t as confident. Marcel hadn’t spoken to his parents since early last trimester, and now he’d arrived without warning to ask their advice on a delicate political matter. Could this worsen her predicament? She hadn’t heard Antosha’s voice in her head since Marcel had activated his recaller. He’d be wondering where she was, why he couldn’t reach her. She only hoped he would be distracted tonight, with Dr. Shrader’s awakening.

  They took an elevator up to the fiftieth floor and meandered between thousands of peach trees in bloom, the air sweet with the smell of fruits, the stars in the Granville dusk as enchanting as Gwen remembered from her last visit to the city. They passed through an enclosed glass corridor, and a grower bot labeled REGINALD, complete with overalls that smelled like soft leather, approached.

  “Aha, I’ve sent messages to other bots in the farm. None have seen or heard from Eirenne or Dion,” Reginald said.

  “They must still be at the cavern,” Maggie said.

  “I’m getting no response through Marstone,” Marcel said. “We’ll wait in the farm for them. Please prepare the guest rooms.”

  Gwen, Marcel, and Juvelle crossed rows of corn, pear trees, raspberry bushes, vineyards, tomatoes, broccoli, and other synthetic fruits and vegetables, all surrounded by green lighting. Gwen took it all in, the textured ground beneath her feet, the fragrant breeze, and she pondered a future in Vivo.

  “Would you stay here with me?” she said. “Hidden away, if you had to?”

  “Sweet sister, we won’t have to hide,” Marcel said. “We’ll work this out with the ministry, and afterward you and I can return to Palaestra, where a champion belongs, where I belong …”

  Gwen nodded and peered up to the stars as twilight turned to night. She shivered. A voice whispered in her mind.

  You’ve been a bad little violin.

  Gwen staggered.

  Wasn’t Antosha in Faraway Hall? Wasn’t he in the middle of the Regenesis procedure?

  “What’s wrong?” Marcel said.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ve been staring at the crops and the sky, not answering me or Juvelle, and you look like you did in Luxor, white as the sands.”

  “I’m sorry, Marcel, I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I dragged you on this trip, especially—”

  “You can’t keep beating yourself up.”

  “Is your recaller working?” She spied it in a slit on his utility belt.

  “Never fails.” Marcel lifted it. She put her hand on her chest and exhaled. “Come, sweet sister, join me in the observatory.”

  They crossed a path between corn rows, and Gwen squeezed Marcel’s hand. She looked up, and the blue moon seemed as if it washed down the corn rows, drooping to a face, to Antosha’s face, his obsidian snowflake eyes and a grin she knew well.

  She breathed deeply and shut her eyes.

  Go away, go away, go away, go away.

  When she opened them, she found herself walking not with Marcel, but Antosha.

  “Get your fucking hand off me,” Gwen said. “You’re a liar, you’re a killer.”

  Antosha stepped back, his hands up as if to guard himself. His mouth formed words she couldn’t hear, but his voice in her mind said, You told him! You sniveling, worthless traitor!

  “You can’t hurt him!” Gwen said. “You can’t! Marcel? Where are you? Marcel!”

  The whites of Antosha’s eyes widened. His mouth moved, but all Gwen heard was, What did I tell you would happen if you talked about the Bicentennial?

  “I don’t work with you anymore,” Gwen said.

  Antosha disappeared.

  And Marcel said, “You leave her alone!” He turned and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Do you hear me, you sonofabitch? You get out of her head!”

  A flash of white phosphorescent light overtook Gwen’s vision. When it cleared, Marcel and Juvelle were gone, and she fell into an ocean so distant and empty only sky lay upon the horizon. She thrashed her arms until the water descended into a maelstrom, carrying her down and around, around and down into the Earth, back to Marcel’s family farm. Between the rows and rows of corn, she saw Antosha.

  He moved closer and closer, his hand extended, eyes narrowed.

  Gwen heard shouts. She sprinted.

  She pushed through the cornstalks, still soaked with salt water. The stalks attacked her. She screamed and tripped in the dirt. Clay stuck to her hands.

  Antosha pushed his way through the stalks. He held a knife that reflected the moonlight.

  Gwen scrabbled along the ground. She dashed through the corn, crying and gasping. When she arrived at the clearing near the ledge of the skyscraper farm, she turned.

  Antosha drew closer. He orbited her and called to her and told her something she couldn’t decipher, as if in another language, a message she didn’t want to hear.

  Don’t think like this, Gwen told herself. I was a Harpoon Champion, he can’t hurt me, none of this is real—

  You’re still my violin.

  A fire raged inside Gwen that she hadn’t felt since the exams. She sprinted to Antosha. He swiped her with the knife and slit her arm. She rolled next to him, near the alloy rim. The wind gusted through her gown and hair and cleared the dried the mud upon her skin. She twisted around and searched for Antosha, finally spotting him. She lunged. He swiped at her with the knife, but she grabbed his wrist and twisted it from his grasp. He took her down to the ground, and they rolled over the soil.

  Antosha clutched the knife, rolled atop her, and brought it down like an anvil. She caught him at his wrist. She could smell his reeking breath.

  She spit in his face and flipped him over. The knife flew. She spun and kicked him. Antosha stumbled, lost his balance, and crashed over the side of the photosynthesizing skyscraper, landing at the base over one hundred meters below.

  Gwen crawled near the ledge. Blood streamed down her arm, and the tears mixed with mud on her face and matted hair. She screamed loud enough to wake every grower in Vivo, and indeed, thousands, then millions of lights in the farmhouses upon Vivo’s mountainous farms illuminated.

  She slammed the gardening shovel—not a knife—in the dirt and pulled at the soil and threw it until she puked.

  Gwen wiped her mouth and leaned over the side. Her tears fell like raindrops, which she only wished could heal her Marcel, who lay at the bottom.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Cornelius Selendia

  Boreas City

  Boreas, Underground North

  2,500 meters deep

  The chants ended, as did the drumbeat in Connor’s head. He stood at the hall’s rim. How he got there, he wasn’t sure.

  Easier to block Antosha from here, he thought. He refocused his energy in the ZPF, pushing through Antosha’s field. He was so strong. Connor didn’t know how long he could hold his position. He found his heart was thundering in his chest. But he couldn’t stand down, not now, not until he knew Aera and Nero had obtained the Lorum from the City of Etern
al Darkness. Then he’d help his father end the war and restore power where it belonged—with the people of the underground.

  The lights in the hall’s trellis darkened while the stage panels disappeared. Dr. Shrader’s stasis tank rose up on a new platform. Indigo lights shone over the stage, and the applause rumbled like a tide. Antosha scurried around the vertical tank, along with three medical bots.

  In the center hung Dr. Shrader, his arms extended and bent upward at the elbows, his body naked but for his white shorts, one leg slightly bent, the other straight. His eyes were closed, his head tilted down. On either side of the stasis tank, two robotic arms mixed synisms on suspended workbenches. They grabbed one vial and dipped it into liquids, twisted on a rubber stopper, shook the vial, and moved on to the next.

  Antosha dipped under one of the robotic arms and dashed to a phosphorescent-blue circle, center stage. He turned to the audience and raised his arms, then spun around and guided thirty workstations as if he were an orchestra conductor. The workstations formed an oval around the stasis tank, each topped with helixes, renditions of Dr. Shrader, and synisms labeled by name, size, and function.

  The holograms shifted as if timed.

  Connor fortified his field in the quantum universe. Antosha may not enter—

  He felt a sensation, as if electricity ran through his body. After the jolt, Connor found he couldn’t reconnect to the ZPF!

  Antosha must’ve been coordinating the awakening of Dr. Shrader and blocking him simultaneously. Connor watched Antosha onstage, his movements effortless, skillful. How could he manage it, when it took all of Connor’s focus to consciously manipulate the quantum waves in the ZPF? What skills did Antosha have that Father did not, that Connor did not? And what knowledge, if any, had Father withheld from him?

  Antosha adjusted the data and the streams. The holograms disappeared, replaced by a countdown: five, four, three, two, one …

  “Initiate Regenesis!”

  The crowd raved. Connor couldn’t hear himself think.

  The robotic arms latched their tweezers around the stasis tank’s lid, and the crimson bulb at the top glowed green. The lid jumped with a pop and a snap. White smoke puffed from the sides and engulfed the top of the tank, yellowing as it rose. The crowd stood. Shouts of “Bravo!” and “Best I’ve ever seen!” and “Antosha!” filled the hall.

  Connor still couldn’t access the ZPF, much less disrupt Antosha’s field.

  He tried to send a distress signal to Father, Pirro, Verena, Nero, Charlene, and any and all BP who could hear him so they would know he’d lost control in Faraway Hall.

  He had no idea if they heard his message.

  One of the robotic arms positioned a tube near the top of the stasis tank and prepared the synisms—some microscopic, others as large as stones.

  Applause resumed with the light show in the trellis that overhung the hall.

  Antosha stood still, head slightly bowed, while the holograms above the workstations transformed and medical bots scurried to and fro, ensuring the correct trays shifted to the correct locations.

  The robotic arms craned to the sides of the tank. Lasers shot from their tips, through the membrane, ice, and vacuum that surrounded Dr. Shrader.

  Connor’s vision blurred and shifted …

  … A woman, dirty and disheveled, ran through cornstalks and screamed and slammed her arms into a keeper bot before she and the cornstalks and the bot disappeared.

  Connor turned. He stood upon a gray cement slab, the number thirteen in chalky white beneath his bare, frozen feet. Words from the “Song of the Jubilee” washed through his mind: Our scientists searching, sealing, healing Reassortment sorrows.

  Within the seven Granville panels that surrounded the seven walls of Reassortment Hall, Chancellor Masimovian raised his arms. The crowd from the Valley of Masimovian sang and cheered: Giving faith to our tomorrows, when we watch the sun arising. The glass enclosure rose around him so fast he couldn’t react. It stretched up as far as he could see. He pressed his hands against the glass, pounded at it, kicked it until his blood smeared the enclosure. The platform rose, and all he heard now were the shrieks from the pulley system and the puff from the airlocks that opened above him. He gasped and held his breath as the enclosure shot into the maglev tube, through the earth. He reached the surface.

  Sunrise flowed over him upon the Island of Reverie.

  This cannot be, Connor thought. Yet the colorful daybreak swept over his body, along with the cool morning air as the enclosure descended around him.

  Leaves and flowers and bushes spread around him. He looked up at the true sky for the first time. He moved his arms and legs, trying not to breathe. He knew Reassortment would consume him, same as it had his older brother Hans.

  He let out his breath and took in measured sips, awaiting certain death. But then, this was an illusion, it had to be—the island, his bare feet, his shirtless body, the “Song of the Jubilee,” the trees, the leaves, all projected into his mind.

  He fought with his mind, expanding his consciousness in the ZPF.

  He gasped …

  … And now Connor felt the fabric of his chandler garb, back inside the confines of Faraway Hall, though he stood beneath the chancellor’s booth, on the opposite side from where he’d originally entered. Janzers roamed everywhere. He ignored them and turned to the stage, to Antosha, who still stood in the phosphorescent circle, facing the audience.

  Connor tried to access the ZPF and could not. He was still blocked.

  The audience went silent and leaned forward. Whispers floated over the hall.

  INCISIONS COMPLETE hovered above the workstations. Two alloy rods with heated tips flowed through the newly created holes and curled underneath Dr. Shrader’s extended arms.

  INITIATE MELTING SEQUENCE rotated above the workstations, and an X-ray view of Dr. Shrader appeared. The grid above the stasis tank flashed, and a wave of heat swept through the hall, followed by frosty winds.

  The frozen matter that surrounded Dr. Shrader melted and circled through the drains beneath him. The rubber simultaneously inflated along the alloy rods and wrapped around his arms as if they were tendrils holding his lifeless body.

  The bots eased Dr. Shrader to the ground. Overhead, the stasis tank opened, and synisms swarmed him.

  A golden mist surrounded the tank. Blue pulses radiated on the robotic arms that operated overhead as they dipped and flipped and released synisms on Antosha’s command.

  Synisms engulfed Dr. Kole Shrader’s body completely.

  Antosha raised his arms above his head.

  “We’re moving to full regeneration!”

  The audience stirred again, their voices like a seismic event through the earth.

  The synisms that covered Dr. Shrader shifted from indigo to yellow to red, then fell, lifeless, to the tank’s bottom. Robotic arms dropped another batch that spun over him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Antosha said, “Kole Shrader has a pulse!”

  Connor couldn’t hear anything.

  Antosha manipulated the dials above the workstations, and another wave of synisms dropped over Dr. Shrader.

  This batch fluttered alloy wings like thousands of butterflies glittering in the bright electric-like hues from the robotic arms.

  The golden mist above Dr. Shrader cleared, and the lights over his stasis tank turned white. He lay curled on the ground, his white shorts soaked, one arm over the other, eyes closed, mouth narrow, chest lifting and falling.

  Antosha ordered the medical bots to secure Dr. Shrader to a legless suspended gurney. They attached tubes, wires, needles, and straps to his body, and Dr. Shrader’s beating heart overtook the workstations. The crowd’s pitch turned frantic:

  ANTOSHA! ANTOSHA! ANTOSHA!

  Connor found himself mesmerized with the rest of the crowd but snapped out of his malaise, as he knew he’d overstayed his welcome in Boreas. He fled under rainbows of champagne and through a wave of noise. His head throbbed again
with a drumbeat pounding through the ZPF …

  … And now he dashed over the soil, between pine trees, the roar of the crowd replaced by the serenity of a stream, as smooth as pearls, with rocks that glimmered under the morning sun.

  Something pinched in his neck.

  A twitch spread from his back to his arms.

  Connor ran faster than a hare, feeling relief in movement. The trees passed in his peripheral vision. The drumbeat pounded in his mind.

  He arrived at a field full of wildflowers and took high steps through it, then crossed another stream, still sprinting. Figures waited on the field’s far end, distant but moving in, closer and closer.

  Janzers.

  Connor dashed away from them, but the pain in his neck had moved along his spine like lye dripping through his body. He gasped, wheezed, and coughed. He stopped running and puked.

  A full Janzer division surrounded Connor. When he looked up at them, he understood he was still in Boreas City, near Faraway Hall, paralyzed by a Reassortment baton strike, his wrists cuffed, a Converse Collar around his neck.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Nero Silvana

  Inaccessible Region

  Underground West

  2,500 meters deep

  Whether it was fear or courage that drove him through the misty, lightless tunnels outside the City of Eternal Darkness, Nero didn’t know; but he did fear death, and he kept running hour after hour, though he thought he would collapse. Aera prodded him as she had in the Palaestran sewers, through the labyrinth, through the damaged territory with what seemed endless tributaries of hollowed, heated stone.

  The Janzers pursued, but Aera seemed to know their movements. She shifted to a new tunnel whenever one emerged. By now, Nero feared the burn in his body more than the Janzers. Lactic acid took hold of his muscles and wouldn’t let go.