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

by Zen, Raeden

  Ursula’s eyes widened when Oriana lunged, spun, and decapitated her, along with Gaia.

  Kill them.

  Oriana knelt on the ground.

  The bodies smacked near her and disappeared.

  She vaulted for Falcon, who still held his pulse gun to Pasha’s head.

  Falcon and Pasha breathed heavily, and Falcon threw him to the ground. Pasha knelt. “You’re both traitors,” Falcon said, “just like your father.”

  Kill them.

  Oriana’s head throbbed.

  She aimed her pulse gun and took a step forward. Pasha peered up at her, his eyes pleading.

  “One more move, Barão—”

  Let your brother die, the voice said.

  She let Falcon fire his pulse gun into Pasha’s helmet, and when Falcon aimed his second pulse gun at Oriana, she shot him between the eyes. His blood burst into the helmet, and his lifeless body fluttered atop her twin brother before their bodies illuminated and disappeared.

  She felt like someone shot her through her heart.

  I’m a champion, she thought. She steadied herself. She rushed to the riddle, with its colorful geometric shapes. It looked like Archimedes’ Stomachion. This is why they couldn’t solve it. The Variscan candidates and their posse, who from the first day always had the answers in the Harpoon classes, must’ve searched and searched, without truly observing the world they lived in.

  “This is not a stomachion,” Oriana declared, “and there is no solution. Now, release them.”

  The scientists were freed, and the Harpoons ended.

  Harpoon Hamlet

  Palaestra, Underground Northeast

  Oriana brushed her hair, the shades of violet and crimson flowing together. She glanced out the window at the dusty Palaestran hills and the maple trees that shivered with the cool breeze beyond her moonlit balcony. Her lips felt dried and chapped, and she pressed them together. Her heart sang, and the view blurred.

  She closed her eyes, and when she opened them the golden digits on her armlet read 0635. The auction was at 0800.

  Oriana couldn’t focus. What had she done? Had she allowed someone else to influence her reactions during the Harpoons?

  The opaque entrance to her room cleared, filled by Pasha, his dark blue hair parted from the middle and swirled around his ears. He stood with a noticeable droop.

  Oriana didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

  “I came here to tell you that I understand why you did what you did, and I don’t want you to feel pressure about it or think that I’ll hold a grudge against you or hate you.”

  He knew her thoughts the same as she knew his, and so she knew he lied. She turned toward the balcony and imagined herself sprinting over the man-made hills, away from the nightmare of her life, away from her flaws, away from Pasha.

  “Did someone … guide you … did a man speak to you on Ceres?” Oriana said, looking back at him.

  Pasha looked down.

  “He did, didn’t he?” She raised her voice, more than she should, for Marstone was listening. “He spoke to you as well—”

  “O, you spoke to me,” he said. “You were the one who led me to the Amalgam Sector. You told me Falcon Torres held you hostage. You can imagine my surprise when I was ambushed—”

  “No, no. You contacted me, you told me you were outmanned, outgunned, and you gave me instructions to pass through the Aqua Sector, you sent me to the cephalopods.”

  “What cephalopods?” He moved away from her. “O, calm down. Look, I know how you must be feeling right now.”

  She shook her head. “You have to believe me. I tried to contact you, but I couldn’t, I didn’t, not until you told me Falcon’s team had surrounded you—”

  “I was never able to talk to you,” Pasha said. “I was only able to hear you, and you led me to the Variscan candidates.” He lowered his head. “Then you let them kill me so you could win.”

  His words burned worse than any wound. “I’m sorry.” Oriana swallowed; her mouth was so dry. “You have to believe me, I didn’t mean to let it happen, you know I’d never let anyone hurt you here. You know that, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  “I do … believe you.” He still lied, she could see it. “You had no choice. I would’ve done the same … in the end.”

  “We must send a message to the Summersets. They must know someone tampered with the candidates—”

  “And forfeit your victory?” Pasha smiled wanly. “What you’re suggesting won’t nullify the Warning … it would solidify it.”

  She spun around to the windows and studied Pasha’s reflection sagging against the doorway. Her consolation, if one existed, was that even if Lady Isabelle wiped Pasha’s first-half performance, he had made it to the end of the critical-reasoning portion; the traders would see his worth. And Pasha was right; she couldn’t admit to having received outside help. Too much was at stake. While the Warning should disappear with her performance, the wager, the benari tag attached to Nathan that could weigh on him for years, wasn’t decided by the critical-reasoning victory.

  The auction would settle the wager.

  Oriana and Pasha approached the Harpoon Stadium. As far away as they were, Oriana could hear the commentary about the results: the daunting task of completing a million queries in six hours; who missed what query and why; the critical-reasoning portion; the rover weaknesses; the difficulty in entering, much less navigating, the water mine; who deserved the first bid; who deserved exile to the Lower Level; who deserved Palaestra; who deserved Vivo.

  When they settled at the end of the line, the hoard of candidates stopped talking. Oriana sensed their envy, watched their eyes narrow, their arms fold, bodies turn. The chatting gradually returned, and the millions of candidates in their buff pants and matching turtleneck shirts and white foam shoes moved along the dirt path that connected Harpoon Hamlet to Harpoon Stadium.

  At the base of the stadium, where it opened like a horseshoe next to Archimedes River, Oriana told Pasha to look up. Rectangular holograms hung scattered in the sky over the stadium, containing images of candidates and obstacles and queries. They watched the final confrontation, she standing by and Pasha’s head exploding.

  The stadium was about a quarter full when a Janzer signaled Oriana.

  She and Pasha checked in with the registration desk along a golden half pipe near the water. They made their way across a bench, and again all the candidates in the area turned to her and stared. She didn’t speak to anyone. She didn’t know what to say. She knew nearly half the Harpoon candidates wouldn’t receive a bid; more than six million of her peers would live the rest of their days in the Lower Level rather than in the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni.

  Would Pasha be one of the unbid? Would he live a mortal life in the Lower Level?

  In the arena, Lady Isabelle stood on a golden pentagonal dais, a Janzer at each corner.

  “Congratulations to the Second Trimester Class of 368,” Isabelle began. Though her lips lifted in a grin, her somber tone belied her displeasure, with what, Oriana couldn’t even begin to guess. “No matter what happens today, all of you should be proud. You have taken the most rigorous tests of intelligence, strength, and skill humanity has ever known. And no matter where all of you end up, you’ll contribute to the greatness of Beimeni.

  “Without further delay, it’s my honor to begin the Harpoon Auction. Please maintain decorum during the process. You can imagine that with more than thirteen million candidates in one arena, even a whisper by a tenth of you would be distracting to the bidders.”

  Several holographic, rectangular carbyne plates shifted above the stage. They spun side to side and stopped. The bids rolled in so fast Oriana could hardly keep up, as the numbers appeared and disappeared, higher, higher.

  B 5,000, B 15,000, B 25,000.

  Oriana held her breathe, peering to Pasha beside her. She sensed his unease in the ZPF but not his thoughts. He hid himself from her, the way he had prior to the Harpoons. He didn’t look like the
boy she once knew, so kind, confident, and durable. This man was a stranger to her, as foreign as the Earth’s surface.

  B 75,000, B 100,000, B 125,000.

  The candidates gasped as the bids surpassed seventy-five thousand benaris, the prior Harpoon Auction record. Oriana could barely breathe. She felt so hot, as if she bathed in fire. She pondered the candlestick puzzle, as she had so many times since Pasha fell into the flames, screaming and writhing on his way down. Would Lady Isabelle dare nullify his first-half score? Could she?

  Oriana cleared her mind of the images and emotions, hiding her fears and regrets and her waking nightmare: the idea that her twin might not join her in the commonwealth.

  B 200,000, B 300,000, B 400,000.

  Oriana shivered. Only a Variscan candidate could garner a price so high. She’d lost the wager. Nathan would have to work for years to pay Falcon Torres. She found Falcon in the crowd near Ursula, whispering in her ear. They looked like a god and goddess among men and women, those Variscan candidates.

  My father was one of them. So was Vernon. Oriana pondered whether her father had acted the way these Variscan candidates did; if he and Verne had scored consistently in the top one hundred during Harpoon simulations; if they knew, without a doubt, they’d receive a bid, serve the commonwealth, and live forever. Or were they different? Did their humble beginnings, orphans to an orphan commonwealth, make them better? She hoped one day to meet her father, in this life or the next, and find out.

  B 500,000, B 600,000, B 700,000.

  “Pasha,” Oriana said softly. “Pasha?” He ignored her, even as the murmurs roared around them. “Pasha, there hasn’t ever been a bidding war like this.”

  He turned to her.

  “You made it to the end.” Oriana put her hand on his shoulder. “The traders must bid on you as well.”

  “Not if they think I cheated.” He broke away from her and looked down. “Not if they don’t know I completed the first-half queries.”

  Fear suddenly gripped Oriana like a snake. Lady Isabelle was nothing if not honest with the candidates. What would Oriana do if she kept her twin’s score from the Navitan traders? What could she do to the Master of the Harpoons?

  She diverted her mind, thinking about Nathan and Desaray, Gaia and Duccio, Ursula and Falcon, candidates near and far whom she’d competed with, knowingly and unknowingly, in Harpoon classes and simulations, in the first-half queries and second-half maze, for the first thirty days of what she hoped would be her eternal life.

  Her brother was smarter and more talented with the ZPF than any one of them!

  Finally, a rectangular plate lowered itself into the light and turned sideways with the first commonwealth code.

  367-22-0400

  Oriana fell to her knees and gasped.

  When the bid value materialized, the Second Trimester Class of 368 AR gasped too.

  B 1,000,000

  Oriana’s face felt so hot she wondered whether she’d turned purple. The bid was a new record, and it must’ve been entered by the government-run research consortiums in Palaestra. No private consortium could bid that high.

  Pasha kneeled and hugged her.

  She would’ve fallen to the ground if he hadn’t.

  Nearby, candidates snickered and laughed, and she heard their whispers. They called her less than transhuman, the worst champion in history. She blocked them out.

  Janzers arrived at Oriana and Pasha’s row. Candidates cleared the way for them.

  More bids followed, but none with Pasha’s commonwealth code, and none even close to Oriana’s valuation.

  He deserved the second bid, Oriana thought.

  The Janzers pulled her away, even as she fought them.

  “I can’t leave him!”

  “Madam Champion, you’ve been purchased and are due at the RDD’s neophyte dormitories,” the Janzer said to her.

  Madam Champion. The words sent a chill through her body, until she looked at Pasha. “What about my brother?”

  They clutched her, but she shook free.

  More bids were released, none of them for Pasha.

  “I won’t let them take you to the Lower Level,” she said.

  He didn’t react.

  Thirty more bids.

  The Janzers nudged her. Oriana screamed.

  “I won’t!”

  The Janzers pointed tranquilizer guns at her. “Madam Champion, you will come with us, by your own legs or in our arms.”

  “Go,” Pasha said, his eyes red. “Go.”

  Thousands more bids flipped above Lady Isabelle, none, of course, as high as Oriana’s, these in the tens of thousands of benaris.

  None bid for her brother.

  Oriana lowered her head and followed the Janzers down the stands into a tunnel at the rounded end of the stadium labeled NEOPHYTE ROW. Hundreds of thousands of transports stood waiting.

  A Janzer pair and a keeper bot escorted her toward a transport labeled HARPOON CHAMPION.

  “Aha, Madam Champion,” the bot said, “can I be of service?”

  “Who bid that high for me?” she said.

  The bot didn’t respond.

  “I’m a Harpoon Champion,” Oriana said, “you must tell me.”

  “The supreme scientist Antosha Zereoue.”

  The Janzers forced Oriana into the transport and sealed the door.

  Epilogue

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão

  Farino City

  Farino, Underground North

  2,500 meters deep

  Brody had smelled the stench of death upon his arrival at Farino Prison, burning flesh unmistakable in the darkness. Day and night, chains rattled between his ankles and wrists, while the Janzer rocketcycles and prisoners’ screams echoed around him. He had felt the clamps dig into his skin the first few days, but now they could saw off his limbs and he wouldn’t know. He no longer smelled the stench. The dark wool hood took his vision. He’d lost his telepathy first to the Converse Collar, then to the cosmos after they’d removed his neurochip. He didn’t need taste, for they injected him with sustenance synisms and fluids that kept him alive.

  They took him to an elevator, which descended, deliberately at first, then far and fast, diagonal and down for what seemed like years. The doors opened. A Janzer forced him out and led him forward. They bolted a synsuit to him. They removed his hood and sight returned. He was in some kind of containment area. Prisoners were attached to him by chains, front and back. They latched a transparent helmet to his head, like the one he’d worn during the Mission to Vigna.

  The Janzers marched them forward. A burnt-fish smell filtered into his helmet, along with sounds of something boiling.

  “This isn’t possible,” Brody said.

  The crack from a telekinetic whip struck around his neck, unseen but not unfelt. It choked him, and he fell backward and pulled down the prisoners latched closest to him. The chains jangled.

  “No noise!” the Janzer said, and cracked the whip again. The exiles moaned and cowered and marched on.

  They came to a stop along a stone path that led to an alloy dock and a carbyne vessel. Leafless alloyed branches formed the masts upon this ship that seesawed in the legendary Infernus Sea. Magma curdled up the sides of the vessel, radiating heat and light.

  The Janzers marched them aboard.

  The Lower Level of the Earth burned as hot as Mercury, powered by the Earth’s core. The crimson lashes amid the darkness above seemed placed by the Devil himself.

  Thousands of exiles lined the massive deck. The Janzers streamed between them and instructed them to hold the poles.

  The Janzer nearest the bow whirled his hand high, the latches detached, and the ship rumbled through the magma.

  Brody’s stomach churned, overcome by what he could only compare to space sickness. The Lower Level was a place he’d heard, and indeed, believed, was vital for humanity’s survival, for if Reassortment seeped into the Beimeni zone, civilization required a deeper refuge to avert extincti
on. That it had transformed into the final destination for unbid Harpoon candidates and criminals hadn’t bothered Brody—not all transhumans were fit for the Great Commonwealth. Yet here and there he’d heard whispers of starvation, cannibalism, harsh labor conditions, and a poisonous atmosphere. He’d dismissed them as rumors.

  When the vessel docked, the Janzers scanned the exiles and brought them to a dozen tracks, where transports lay in wait.

  The ground beneath Brody’s feet was soft. He tried not to tangle the chains or crash into the man in front whose trembling gait yanked him forward, or trip up the woman who staggered behind him. A Janzer freed Brody from the links and led him to track 7. He was latched inside the transport with at least a hundred other exiles.

  The transport glided up a ramp and over an elevated monorail to the landing structure. Red and orange bioluminescence flowed next to dripping magma vents. A Janzer led the exiles out. Another grabbed Brody’s arm, scanned his eyes, and ordered him to continue through the entrance labeled REGISTRATION. Brody stared back at the drawn faces, faces of despair, disdain, disappointment, of lost dreams, lost causes, and lost conversion. How many Beimenians had he sent to this despondency? Did he unwittingly usher them all to their deaths?

  A Janzer stripped Brody’s synsuit, leaving him in his bodysuit, drenched with sweat. A holographic fiery salamander sizzled upon the ceiling. Brody heard a shrieking, “NEXT!” through a speaker, and a Janzer escorted him to a dilapidated wooden table under a maroon spotlight. The woman on the other side had burnt hair, chipped nails, blistered lips, and sunken skin around her eyes.

  “Name?”

  He tried to remember.

  “Broden … Barão.” His voice rasped in his throat.