by Gorman, K.
“That was in Chaos,” he told her. “But, yes. She can. However, as long as Karin or I remain conscious and capable of our powers, and everyone stays around us, she can’t shut us out.” He gave her a small, grim smile. “As the ‘god’ of this place, I can also find anyone in it.”
Which was how he’d known she was in the temple. And likely how he’d managed to find Karin whenever she wandered into his dimension.
“If this is Tartarus, don’t you also have creations in here?”
“Yes. They are in different parts. I…only have a pocket of myself left. The rest, I have given to my mother.”
‘Given.’ She registered the word, processed it, and let it go.
Tylanus was older now than when she’d last seen him, and she had very little idea of what had transpired in that time, nor how Sasha had raised him. He called her ‘mother,’ and Sasha considered him her son, but when she’d first met him, he’d been in a life pod, undergoing what, in hindsight, had looked like a more intensive, fucked up version of the ‘treatment’ the rest of them had received, and later on, he’d been just as strapped to hospital machines as the rest of them and kept isolated on a ward.
Some childhood.
But Sasha must have taken him with her when she’d moved from the Earth facility. And she must have done it before Karin and Nomiki had smashed their way through the gate.
She let out a breath, took one last look at the top of the mountain, then turned her head to Tillerman. “What do you think? Fly up there and face the fray?”
The commander grunted. “Better than getting ambushed in the forest. We’ll have the ship ammo, too.”
She gave her a nod. “Good. Let’s do it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They lifted off, the Nemina’s bulk shaking and groaning as it buffeted through a crosswind. Karin hung onto a handrail. The strap of the harness pressed into her shoulder as they tilted and turned.
Through the windows, the rush of dark green trees turned to meadow, a fall of scree around a creek, and back again. The camera feeds caught sight of the rest of the mountain as they rose up, overlaying the window view.
Her doubts were wrong. Sasha had modeled it after the real-life Mount Olympus. It had the same general shape that she remembered from studying the photos, with a top that wasn’t so much a peak as a ridge that curved around in a partial circle and veered downward, like the collar of a cardigan made of bare rock and scree. The elevation also put them around two-thousand-five-hundred meters as they climbed, which lined up roughly with where they would have been at this point on the real mountain was with its peak at around two-thousand-nine-hundred meters.
But, instead of a naked slope of bare rock, scree, and a few scraggly plants, a large temple complex molded across the mountain like a small, impeccable, ancient city.
It looked like a piece out of a video game. The buildings were done in an ancient, Greco-Roman style, with columns and balustrades everywhere. Marble gleamed under the sun, some of it almost blinding out parts of the screen. It was a rich display of imagination―what someone might imagine Heaven to be like, if they were really into Greek mythology. Small ponds and pools gathered in and around the buildings, along with water features like rivers and waterfalls, all impeccable and beautiful, the water seeming to come out of nowhere―it shouldn’t be there, not without pumps to get it from the base of the mountain, and no artesian well would reach that high, not without some imaginative ‘help’ from Sasha’s creation powers. Lawns and gardens marked the area. As the camera zoomed in on one of them, she noticed a number of marble statues in and around them.
She had to say—Sasha threw a decent party, in an architectural sense.
And, at the very top, nestled close into the peak of the mountain, sat the main temple.
She could tell because it was the biggest. Roughly the size of the Manila in orbit, which could hold over twenty thousand people, the temple was a glorious complex of high columns and a peaked roofline, with several stories that circled a courtyard below.
She looked to Tylanus. “Any landing suggestions?”
“The courtyard. Easiest place to get to, with multiple entry points.”
“Sounds like a good place for an ambush,” she commented. “Tillerman, thoughts?”
“The roof would be better, or somewhere on the outside. It depends on her surveillance.”
“She’ll know we’re here the second we touch down,” Tylanus said.
Great. She stared at the screen, chewing her tongue. There were a dozen places Reeve could land the Nemina, but all she had in her brain was a pilot’s assessment of them, not a military one.
“Movement.” Marc reached forward on the sensor station and expanded the front camera feed on the main screen.
A second later, it had zoomed onto a spot near the base of one of the courtyard buildings. A dark-haired woman stood in the shadows of the roofline, partially hidden by a column, staring up at the approaching spacecraft.
Karin’s teeth ground as she recognized her.
Genevieve Kapinos, the Program Artemis they’d rescued from Sasha’s pocket dimension.
If she were here, the others were, as well.
“Set us down and tell Freccia to do the same. If anyone knows what’s going on and how to deal with it, it’s her and her sister.”
“Yes, Regent.”
Her lips tightened into a thin line as the Nemina put her nose up and began to descend.
Genevieve vanished as soon as the ships came down. She shouldn’t have been surprised―as Program Artemis, she’d have that instinct.
But, the second Karin stepped off the Nemina’s ramp and into sight, she poked her head back out.
“Karin?”
She re-appeared from behind a pillar farther down, and this time, she wasn’t alone.
When they’d first met, Genevieve had been coming down from a shower, her black hair in a thick frizz around her face, and Karin had mistaken her for Layla, the old Program Athena who had died many years ago, and whose consciousness still occasionally showed up when Karin wandered into Tartarus or the Cradle. With a similar genetic blueprint to the original, both Genevieve and her sister, Toriana, the new Program Athena, looked almost like twins caught at different ages. They had a similar build and facial structure, with sharp, expressive eyes, and thin, lanky bodies, though she suspected the thinness had a bit to do with the Eurynome Project’s gamut of medication.
During her childhood in Macedonia, they had all been sick every month from their ‘treatments.’
The new Eurynome victims from Chamak still wore the clothes Fallon had given them―a basic combo of gray pants and shirts that Nova Kolkata’s base had on hand.
Against the backdrop of the temple and the stone courtyard, it made them look like escapees from a psych ward dropped into an odd, abandoned resort.
She started forward. “Genevieve! Are you okay?”
“Yeah…Sasha grabbed us. Where are we?” Her gaze slid behind her as Tylanus exited the Nemina, and her eyes grew wide. “Oh, holy shit―”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Karin held up her hands, palms out. “He’s with us.”
“Uh huh.” Genevieve chewed on that. “Right. Well. Can you get us out of here? Sasha’s chasing us down, one by one, and hooking us up to some machine. It’s not very fun.”
“Is she, now?” Karin resisted the urge to bare her teeth, the need for violence rising inside her. She tamped it down and turned. She caught Jon’s eye and found a similar urge bottled up inside his expression. “Jon, do you think you can stay behind and guard the kids?”
He would be a good guardian. The kids already knew him. He was one of them.
He nodded once, and she ushered Genevieve and Toriana toward the Nemina’s ramp. “Go. I’ll deal with Sasha.”
Tylanus caught her arm as she was about to go forward.
“I’ll stay behind, too. If she comes, I can warp them back over.” His muscles worked in his cheek. “Besides,
I don’t need to see you hunt down and kill my mom. And I’m not sure what I’d do if I did.”
Fair enough. She could understand that. If she had someone she considered a mother, she probably wouldn’t want to see anyone kill her, either.
“Stay behind, then,” she said. “It’s probably a good idea.”
She moved forward, gesturing to the squad of Centauri.
“New plan. Head out, and round up as many children you can. They may be dangerous, so be careful and don’t startle them. Tell them that you’re here to get them out.” She winced, imagining the group running into a few of the Titan programs she’d seen in cryo. Hopefully, they weren’t too far advanced in their treatments. “Captain, how many can you fit on your ship?”
“Depends on how big they are and how long life support has to run.” She couldn’t see his face through the tinted visor of the helmet, but she could imagine his look of calculation. “We brought a full squad, but the Freccia class can fit more. Twenty, perhaps twenty-five, depending on their sizes. There won’t be enough harnesses, though.”
Which meant, if they needed to fly out at any amount of acceleration or G-force, it would be a problem.
“Let me warp them,” Tylanus said. “I can get them to Earth and come back for more.”
She hesitated.
What choice do we have? Tia pointed out. If he’s lying and ends up hiding them elsewhere―well, he could do that anyway, right?
She had a point.
Then, in a voice that chilled her right to her spine, someone spoke at her side.
“Trust him. He helped us, didn’t he?”
Layla, the original Program Athena, stood next to her, squinting in the sun and looking a near-twin to Toriana, who had paused partway up the ramp.
Karin let out a shaking breath. Dead children…
Of course. They were in Tartarus, and Tylanus had allowed them in.
She’s not really here. She can’t be.
But she was. This wasn’t Earth; this was Tartarus. And Tylanus had linked it with her Cradle.
That’s amazing, Tia said into her mind. How did he manage to do that? The Cradles are supposed to be isolated.
Maybe Sasha’s code isn’t the only thing that is breaking, she remarked back.
She gave a quick nod to Layla. “All right.”
The two girls rushed the rest of the way into the ship, both of them gaping at Layla who watched them go, her eyes serene but sad.
“I’m glad I got to save some people, at least,” she said.
Then, more movement slipped in from the shadows of the courtyard. The Centauri soldiers flinched, some of them lifting their rifles before hastily lowering them.
She didn’t blame them. She had a feeling that the two figures walking from the side of the courtyard hadn’t actually existed a second ago―not on their camera feeds nor their thermographic sensors.
Nomiki sucked in a sharp breath as a teenaged version of herself strode over, trailed by a tall, stocky boy with a mop of brown hair and light-colored eyes.
“Brennan,” her sister breathed, his name like a whisper on the wind.
Brennan had been the catalyst that had spurred their escape. He and Nomiki had grown close in the few years leading up to it, one hardly leaving the side of the other.
When he’d been killed, Nomiki had taken to the forest for months.
Brennan had died during the quaternary stage of his treatment, when the Corringham brothers had stripped parts of his psyche and put it in the Cradle to join the hive mind. Same with Layla.
They were completed Programs, uploaded to the system.
But the Nomiki that followed them, who looked a lot younger and more aggressive than her sister, was not.
No, she was an incomplete Program. Fragments of her sister they had managed to extract before she murdered her way out.
Incomplete, but complete enough to form an actual person.
Looking at her, one could notice the difference. She was sharper, less hesitant, more prone to violence and aggression.
Where her sister could play at being normal, had integrated her behavior and meshed it with society, had grown past her programming and adapted to live with it, this Nomiki was as sharp and fresh as when she’d come out of the box, so to speak―an example of how the Eurynome Project and the Cradle stripped parts of their personality down to an unfiltered version of their programming, without all those pesky hormones and chemicals and body-brain adaptations mixing in and ‘polluting’ the process.
“Hey, ’Miki,” Brennan said. “How’s it going?”
Her sister stood straighter, her eyes fixed on him. Then, she switched her focus to the other version of herself.
The other Nomiki broke from Brennan and walked over. The two gave each other a thorough examine.
“What…?” Nomiki opened her mouth, then closed it.
“I’m the part of you they took into the Cradle,” the other Nomiki said, her eyes sharp. “Stuck in time, a fragment of the you that you were at eighteen.”
Ah. Her sharpness and aggression made more sense. At eighteen, Nomiki had just gone through Brennan’s loss, and all of the anger and grief had melded together. She’d been feral for a few months, quietly calculating a plan and working reconnaissance.
Then, they’d used that anger and grief to slaughter the staff in the compound and escape.
Her sister remained speechless as Brennan stepped closer. A deep pain haunted her eyes as she took him in, along with a grief Karin had only seen around the edges of her anger.
“It’s not your fault, ‘Miki,” he said.
“But you’re―”
“I know,” he said. “I’m dead. This me that is here is only a fragment of what I was.” He stared at his hand. “It’s an odd feeling. Like I’m only half of myself. An incomplete ghost. But she showed up, and that helped.”
Nomiki’s jaw muscles rippled as she took in her odd, younger self again, her sharp eyes threatening tears.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he said. “Even if it’s only temporary.”
“Do you know where Sasha is?” Karin asked.
“Yes. We will take you to her. And we will help gather the rest of the new Eurynome Project subjects who are still alive and take you to them,” Layla said from beside her. The girl looked up at her, her ancient eyes bright and a wry smile pulling her lips. “It’s nice to be able to do something, for once. Not just be.”
Karin let out a breath. “All right. Let’s do it, then.”
“Good,” Layla said. “Leave your group here to guard the courtyard while Tylanus makes his transfers. The rest of us will gather the kids. I will take you to Sasha.”
A smile tugged at Karin’s lips―a smug humor as the analytical war side of her brain recognized a fellow Program in action―before she turned to Tillerman and gave her and the Centauri squad a nod. “Do it.”
Tillerman hesitated, her gaze sliding to Layla, who looked like a child. “Ah, Regent, if I may…”
“She’s modeled after Athena, the goddess of wisdom and military strategy, and she’s a lot older than she looks.”
Tillerman hesitated again, but gave a nod and turned away, addressing the rest.
Karin focused on Layla. “All right. Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty
Eva shut the car door and stepped away, squinting as she looked up at the building. The sun was bright here, different than it had been in Brazil. Dustier, with less humidity. In Brazil, the jungle had pulled her in. Wrapped her in its embrace. She’d spent years of her childhood running through its trees, playing, exploring, slipping in and out of the world with her powers…
Here, it was different.
She couldn’t just disappear into the forest anymore―she had work to do, and a son to take care of.
Funding for the Project had died down, a direct result of Bernard’s refusal to produce more Programs for the war pantheon―a move she approved of.
Eurynome had never been a
bout war. And she hated feeding children to the company’s profit machine.
She squinted until she came under the awning for the lobby and let herself in through the doors.
“Eva! Oh my God, you’re back!” Jessie, the secretary, stood up from her chair and made to come round her desk. “How was Hawai’i? Did you and Tylanus have fun?”
“It was amazing,” she said, beaming. Then she’d gone on to gush about waterfalls, and the jungle, and attempting to surf for the first time, the ancient bunker on top of Diamond Head from when the Americans had had it.
Truth be told, it had been amazing how many tourists were still making the trip there. The world might have fallen into war, but clearly, only some parts of it were being affected.
Sadly, Brazil was one of them.
God, she missed it. If she’d had the chance, she would have taken Tylanus there instead.
Still, though, it was good for him to see his heritage. They were both technically Hawai’ian, after all.
She went into the back, passing one of the first-floor classrooms and the clinic that had turned into a storage area. The hazy light from outside followed her along, lighting her way through the series of wide hallways.
This place had that going for it. With only the slight shadow of a forest impeding it, it managed to get plenty of natural light. And it had been designed to use it.
Sadly, the place she was going to had not been.
She stepped down into the basement, and the air changed immediately. Colder, with a dampness to it.
No light came from under the doors to either Bernard or Elliot’s offices, nor any of the others. She sighed, then hiked her bag over to her own door, fishing out the keys from her pocket.
Less than twenty minutes into her return, loud footsteps sounded up the halls, striding quickly toward her.
Bernard appeared in the door, his gaze unusually alert and focused. “Eva! I heard you were back.”
“Oh―hi―yes,” She held up a finger for him to wait as she swiveled around, diving for a spot on her desk. “And I got something for you. Here.”