The Ophelia Prophecy

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  His breathing slowed, and his heartbeat, as he continued to talk himself down.

  Iris planned this. And it’s genius. If the priest had threatened him or Iris, his father would have scoured the city. Would have gone door to door until the man was found. Would not have rested until he was publicly tortured and executed.

  But only Pax cared what happened to Asha. He had a motive his father would understand—overpowering desire for a female. If he made mistakes—failed to follow appropriate protocol—it would be soon forgotten.

  Even Asha had figured it out, and hung limp in Carrick’s arms, watching Pax with eyes bright from excitement, but clear of the fear she should have been feeling.

  This is yours to fuck up, bugman.

  The Guard had frozen on the catwalk, weapons aimed at Carrick. “Stand down!” Pax ordered them. “Don’t shoot!”

  Carrick stepped backward, dragging Asha toward the edge of the platform, where there was maybe a four-meter drop to the grass below. He lifted Asha in his arms and jumped.

  “My lord?” called one of the guardsmen.

  “Secure the other passengers and take them to Al Campo for processing. Iris and I will run down the other two.”

  “Yes, my lord,” replied the guardsman. “I’ll call in another detail.”

  “Don’t bother, Captain,” replied Pax, moving toward the platform edge. “We’ll catch him easily enough.”

  Pax jumped, and he watched Carrick and Asha run toward the city while he waited for Iris. Her mostly ornamental wings gave her enough lift to hop lightly to the grass without stumbling as he had.

  They jogged after the others, and he grumbled, “If he hurts her—”

  “You read every book in Father’s library, right? Ever come across the word ‘lummox’?”

  “You could have warned me.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I’d only thought of it thirty seconds before.”

  They reached the Albayzín’s lowest row of houses and slowed their pace. Unless someone had decided to track them—unlikely at this point—they’d be mostly hidden from view by the two-story whitewashed houses and the narrow cobblestone alleys.

  The lamps lining the street began flickering on one by one, low bursts of green luminescence that barely registered in the twilight. But they’d make the medieval streets navigable when darkness fell.

  “Where’s he headed?” asked Pax.

  “Debajo,” replied Iris.

  He turned to stare at her. “Are you crazy? That’s right across from the Gaudí Spike.”

  He used the nickname for the zealots’ temple because it had no other name, and because that’s exactly what it looked like: a single-spired tribute to Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, the epic and never-completed basilica designed by artist Antoni Gaudí. Insect resin farmed and cultivated in the formerly Spanish countryside enabled the construction of towers like these—fanciful, fragile-looking structures that withstood wind, rain, tremor, and presumably time. Gaudí himself would have approved of the way the towers changed color depending on factors like light, temperature, and humidity.

  “We needed someplace the Guard wouldn’t be likely to follow,” protested Iris.

  “Well we got that. If we don’t get knifed the moment we walk in the door I’ll congratulate you on your ingenuity.”

  “We need to disguise, obviously.”

  “As what?”

  “It doesn’t matter. All the customers wear masks in case of a raid. We can pick some up in the market.”

  “How do you know all this, Iris?”

  She gave him a scorching look and kept walking.

  Debajo fronted as a bar, but pretty much everyone in Granada knew they offered something much more interesting than alcohol—an illicit, synthetically produced, highly addictive compound inspired by flowers of the Central American cloud forests. The flowers were basically opium dens for a specific type of insect. They addicted their guests, who remained inside until the flowers withered and dropped. At that point the bugs stumbled out with massive hangovers and immediately went in search of their next fix, pollinating in the process.

  The patrons of Debajo stumbled out and started fanatical religious movements.

  As Pax and Iris wended their way toward the heart of the Albayzín, the activity level in the streets increased. The colorful umbrellas were folding now with dusk coming on, but market day typically wound up rather than down. The street merchants carted off their wares, making way for evening strollers, and shops and restaurants would stay open until the wee hours. When there was mischief in the Albayzín, which was becoming a more frequent occurrence, it typically started the evening of market day.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance as Iris stopped next to a stall with a powder blue umbrella. The vendor—whose clear, silver-veined wings drooped down his back like a cape—was boxing up his selection of masks. Stunted antennae barely protruded above curls the same silver of his wings.

  Most of his masks were ceramic and intricately painted, with multicolored ribbons for hair, but Iris chose simple eye masks, two teal and two purple. She turned out the spiral marking on her wrist, and the man opened a huge paper ledger and copied the mark into it with an artistic flair—quaintly old fashioned, eccentric and possibly subversive, but also a lucky turn. It meant the purchase hadn’t gone immediately into a database, which would call attention to their location if anyone decided to come looking for them.

  Iris handed Pax a teal mask, and he pulled it over his head, waiting while she fidgeted to adjust hers over her broader face and then struggled with the clasp. Finally he reached up and hooked it for her.

  “Let’s go,” he muttered. “I don’t like that you’ve sent Asha off to this den of iniquity.”

  “Relax, Pax. Carrick will watch out for her.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “He’s a priest.”

  “Oh of course. History attests to their saintly qualities.”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Asha’s latest captor said, releasing her arm.

  “This is part of Iris’s plan?” she asked, rubbing the sore spot his fingers had left.

  “Yes.”

  The priest hopped over a low stone wall and she followed. They slipped into a narrow alley between two houses.

  Carrick fished a device from his pocket and held it close to his face, muttering an oath.

  “Are you really a priest?” she asked.

  He gave her a wry smile.

  “I mean … I didn’t know there were priests anymore.” He looked old enough to have been born fifteen years before the holocaust at most. It was possible he was ordained, but only just.

  Ignoring the question as well as the elaboration, he handed her the disk. “Can you read this? My close vision is no good.”

  She examined the small screen. There was a video feed of their position, overlaid with a series of green arrows. “Yes. Where’s it taking us?”

  “A tavern—Debajo. I think it’s Spanish for ‘below’—or more like ‘beneath.’ Iris thinks we’ll be safe there until they can come for us. It’s across from a temple of some kind, with a tall tower. I’ll watch for that; you watch the map.”

  She nodded. “Let’s go.”

  “Keep your head down,” he murmured as they started up a steep, cobbled alley. “Iris said plenty of them look as human as we do, but if we’re staring at everything we’ll stand out. And don’t get too close to anyone—some of them can smell that we’re different.”

  Keeping her head down was not easy, even with Carrick’s warning and the focus required by the job she’d been given. Because of her Archive specialty, she had pretty much memorized the Alhambra’s façade, as well as the most famous aspects of its interior, but she’d not spent much time on the rest of the city. Besides that, there were Manti embellishments. Everywhere she looked—or tried not to look—were whimsical fountains and streetlamps, all with organic lines, detailed mosaics, and morphing colors. There were scu
lptures of birds, flowers, insects, and mythological creatures, and some of them moved—so naturally she thought they were real at first. A peacock perched on the wall of a rooftop garden, its many green-rimmed “eyes” seeming to follow them as they passed.

  She was even more careful about studying the people, but after Iris there was not much to shock her. As they strode through the streets she caught glimpses of wings, spiked appendages, and sharply angled faces. Other times her quick flickers of inspection revealed no Manti characteristics.

  “There,” called Carrick, and she glanced up to see the temple spire, similar to the ones she’d noticed on the grounds of the Alhambra.

  They followed the arrows on the map for the last four blocks, where the direction markers ended with a green X-marks-the-spot over a squat, windowless brick building that looked both older and more primitive than the graceful homes surrounding it. Over the top of the low building she could see the Alhambra on the opposite hill, and at that moment the sun peeked through the clouds, washing the façade with golden light. Incongruously, thunder cracked directly overhead, and raindrops began to splatter her face and arms.

  “That’s it?” Carrick asked, eyeing the structure dubiously.

  She glanced again at the map, nodding. “Debajo, right?”

  As she spoke the word, a lighted sign materialized above a pair of ancient-looking wood shutters: Debajo.

  “I guess that’s it.”

  She turned for a closer look at the spire across the street—and found her jaw dropping in awe. It was like something out of a dream. The central tower was constructed of some kind of seamless, textured material that, like the towers on the grounds of the Alhambra, was constantly shifting color. At least a dozen smaller towers cozied up around the central spike, and each wore a gleaming cap. The caps had soft lines—little whirls and dips and scallops—and were overlaid with bright mosaic patterns. Decorations like flower stamens, each with its own unique mosaic, seemed to have erupted from the caps. This same style of sculpted embellishment had been used to frame the windows and entrance of the central tower.

  “You said that’s a temple?” she murmured.

  “I don’t know how it could be anything else.”

  He had a point. Glancing again at the map she read, “Rebelión Sagrada. You speak Spanish, Father?”

  “I know some Latin and Italian. Pretty sure it means ‘sacred rebellion.’”

  She frowned. “That doesn’t sound very religious.”

  The priest’s frown was deeper. “We disagree about that.”

  As she’d spoken the words from the map, another sign had materialized, this time above the arched double doors of the entrance. She noticed there was a second phrase in smaller lettering beneath the first, this one in English:

  Science will destroy us.

  Her heart stopped. How could this be here?

  Asha had encountered this phrase in the Archive—it was a quote from Stella Engle, the woman they called Ophelia. She had been interviewed by a local news service right before the Bio Holocaust, when tensions between the Manti and their creators had been at their highest. Ophelia had predicted the Manti threat, but up to the time of the article she’d been viewed as an eccentric survivalist. The full text of the quote was, “Science will destroy us. Science will destroy them.” The words had stuck with Asha—especially the calm, knowing way that she had delivered them—and she’d flagged it for her personal Archive log, a digital scrapbook of her most interesting findings.

  Asha and her father had spent hours talking about the Manti. They were a fascinating and conflicted species. There was a vein of superstition, and they had inconsistent notions about religion, with some of them worshiping science and logic and some of them clinging to reverent notions about their human creators. When she met Zee, after her father’s disappearance, her new friend had questioned her about their vulnerabilities, and how those might be exploited. Humanity could never hope to challenge their enemy through open warfare. Would it be possible to bring them down from the inside? Through some type of subversive message spread by the sleeper operatives?

  Though Asha’d had serious doubts something like that would be enough to destabilize their society, it could be a piece of the puzzle, and she’d agreed to do it in exchange for Zee’s help in going after her father. How was it Ophelia’s message had beat her here?

  Carrick turned away from the temple, striding toward the low brick building, and Asha followed, letting go of this new mystery for the moment.

  They studied the nondescript shutters, which appeared to be the only point of entry from the street. The priest reached out and pulled one open with a loud creak. Inside there was a small vestibule, and a stairway leading down. Glowing circles of crimson phosphorescence, imprisoned against the brick interior walls by half-bubbles of glass, lit the way down into the establishment.

  “Come or go.”

  Asha jumped as someone ducked into the opening—someone more mantis than man. The creature’s body rested on four powerful back legs, and his arms terminated in inward-bending claws rather than hands. His insect parts were a mottled gray and white, while his face and chest were black. His eyes were set farther apart than Iris’s, and his wings were smaller and folded close to his body.

  The creature’s claw extended, curling over a knob on the inside of the shutter, and he started to pull it closed. Carrick slid a booted foot out to catch it.

  “We’re coming,” he said, ducking into the low doorway.

  The bugman extended an arm, stopping him. Carrick growled as the claw slid across his midsection, gripping the hilt of his knife.

  “No weapons,” the bugman said firmly.

  After a moment’s consideration Carrick nodded, and the Manti tugged the blade free and stepped aside.

  Asha followed the priest, instinctively squeezing as far away from the bugman as she could. The shutter slammed closed behind them.

  Carrick started down the steps before her eyes had adjusted, and rather than be left in the entryway, she grabbed his arm for support.

  The room at the foot of the stairs had to be below street level, which explained the name. If it had any of the unwholesome smells often associated with underground spaces, you’d never know it for the sweet, floral scent hanging heavy in the air. Far from being damp or chilly, the space was a nest of giant pillows lit by metal lamps wrought in the shapes of flowers ranging along supports that looked like vines. There were half a dozen tables between the cushioned area and the bar along the opposite wall.

  Carrick led her to one of the tables, and they sank down in fat, comfortable chairs.

  A man came from behind the bar to frown down at them. “Sagrada,” he grunted.

  Asha exchanged a nervous glance with Carrick, unsure whether this was a greeting or a question.

  “Yes,” replied the priest.

  The man stumped off on what looked like a cricket leg on one side, and oddly, an artificial limb made to look like a human leg on the other.

  “What did we just agree to?” she asked Carrick.

  “Not sure. I think maybe we’ve ordered something.”

  She made a quick and wary survey of the tavern’s other patrons—a handful seated in the cushioned area and two at the bar. There was music playing, chanting and rhythmic, though not very lively. Still it seemed unlikely they’d be overheard if they kept their voices low.

  “How will we pay?” she asked.

  “Hopefully Iris will be here soon.”

  The statement terminated in a growl, and she returned her gaze to his face. He leaned close to her, allowing his eyes to range over the room from under the hood of his dark brows.

  “I don’t like this place,” he said.

  “I can’t say I do either. Why did Iris send us here?”

  “She said the Guard wouldn’t look for us here. The place has a nasty reputation, and a connection with some kind of religious underground.”

  “The ‘sacred rebellion’?”

>   “Mmm.”

  They sat up as the bartender plunked glasses down in front of them—tall and skinny, about a quarter full of a liquid that looked like water. It was hard to be sure in the strange light. He left again without a word.

  “Did she say why she wanted to help you?” Asha asked, leaning in again.

  He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Only that otherwise I’d be going to some kind of lab, where I might be dissected. I don’t even know if she was telling me the truth.”

  She eyed him, feeling empathy for his situation. It wasn’t so different from her own. “I think she was. I overheard her talking to Pax.”

  He gave her a haunted, hungry look. “It’s true about me…?” He trailed off, swallowing loudly and looking away.

  “The wolf thing?” she said softly.

  He gave a quick nod.

  “That’s what they said.”

  He closed his eyes.

  She reached across the table, covering his hand with hers. “I’m sorry.”

  He flinched and looked down. “You’re not afraid of me?”

  “Why should I be? Are you any different than you were before you knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Maybe.” She ducked down, catching his eye. “But neither of us can go back to what we were before. We have to decide what comes next.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll have much choice about that.” He picked up his glass, sniffing its contents before replacing it on the table.

  “We could leave now.” Her heart picked up speed as she contemplated heading out again into the city. At least in here no one seemed to be paying much attention to them.

  “True.” He studied her as he considered. “Who are you, anyway? How did you end up with them?”

  She gave him an abbreviated version of her story, omitting what she’d remembered upon arriving in Granada. She felt a kinship with him, with both of them being on the run. Strangers to this city and having no one else. But due to recent revelations and events, his loyalties were probably a little up in the air, and she didn’t know if she should trust him.