The Ophelia Prophecy

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  She rubbed her lips together, thinking over that last statement. “Are you saying it was true about the virus? The design was stolen from his lab?”

  “There’s no question. Careful records were kept. It was the beginning of a revolution, after all.”

  “Was Rebelión Sagrada opposed to the destruction of humanity?”

  “Rebelión didn’t exist back then, but yes, we believe it was wrong. But as I said before, humanity’s offenses were grave. Relocating the transgenics like that…” He broke off, shaking his head. “Dropping them off in the most war-torn spot on the planet and leaving them to kill or be killed—that was a crime against nature if ever there was one.”

  Asha shuddered. She knew all this, but the ugly part humanity had played had been downplayed throughout her education. Throughout her life. No one talked about the forced migration. The Trail of Terror, her father had called it, referencing the forced migration of native peoples from the southern to the central United States.

  “It’s ironic we owe our triumph to that genetic marker,” he said.

  She frowned, remembering Pax had mentioned this once. “Why is the genetic marker significant?”

  Micah’s brows lifted. “Do you know why it was used?”

  She shook her head. “I know it was required for all transgenics.”

  “Yes, all the ones in the licensed labs, anyway. It was meant to be a safeguard.”

  “From what?”

  “The governments believed they could use it to wipe out the scientists’ creations if necessary. Instead, Gregoire used it to target humanity.”

  The silence of the underground pressed in around them as she absorbed this. Humanity engineered its own downfall. Her father had said it many times. She wondered if he’d known how true it was.

  As they walked through the passage that led to Debajo, she asked, “What is it Rebelión wants?”

  “In the beginning it was about opening people’s eyes in hopes our next leader wouldn’t be so tight with DAB-lab. But Emile Paxton and his family are here to stay. Democratic elections were voted down.” Micah shook his head. “More irony.”

  But Asha had snagged on another point, something else Pax had mentioned but never explained. “What is DAB-lab?”

  “Sustainable Transgenics. Unauthorized reproduction is forbidden for us. DAB-lab—the ‘design a baby’ lab—looks at the parents and calculates how insect or how human their offspring will be. Matches that might result in loss of higher brain function, for example, or an excess of insect-like characteristics, are rejected.”

  “I can see how that sort of constraint would be … troubling. But Pax—the amir’s son, I mean—he told me without continuing infusion of human DNA your species would eventually devolve completely.”

  Micah was shaking his head before she finished. “There is some evidence of that, but the research you refer to was authored by DAB-lab, and they’ve refused requests for independent review of their data. We suspect the need for such tight controls is completely exaggerated. Without them, the population would self-regulate. No one—including Augustus Paxton—is going to marry or reproduce with a creature more animal than human. It’s all about power. The geneticists, and the amir through them, are playing God with our evolution. They are deciding our genetic destiny.”

  These sounded like reasonable conclusions, and it reminded her of something Pax had said about the Manti not managing things much better than humans. One thing she could not imagine was Pax letting scientists choose his mate. Considering who his father was, he wasn’t likely to have a choice about that. She wondered whether he’d be required to mate with someone more Manti—someone like Cleo.

  “Do you know what Cleo wants with the amir’s son?” she asked him. “It seems like interfering with the ruling family is only going to escalate things.”

  Asha felt pretty confident at this point she’d picked the side most aligned with her interests, but she had serious doubts about their ability to prevail. Almost as serious as her doubts that she’d be able to stomach upholding her end of the bargain with Cleo.

  “I have more access to the priestess than most disciples enjoy,” he replied, confirming what she’d suspected. “But it’s not something she’s discussed with me. I’d guess escalation is exactly what she’s looking for. Besides political and philosophical differences, I think there’s some bad blood.” He stopped just short of the stairway up to Debajo. “Did you know that Paxton’s sister is Cleo’s daughter?”

  * * *

  After Iris was gone, Pax held his position on the roof, thinking about the look that had passed between his sister and the priest, and the way she’d touched his arm. She must be aware she was setting herself up for pain. The amir would never give his permission for an alliance between his daughter and a mudgrubber priest with wolf DNA. It was exactly the sort of thing his father had founded DAB-lab to prevent.

  But he had no business judging Iris when he was busy positioning himself for the same sort of trouble. The geneticists wouldn’t make any argument against pure human DNA—though because Pax’s mother was also human, they might argue it was going too far the other way—but politically it was impossible.

  And then there was the fact she never stayed around long enough for him to figure out what he actually wanted from her.

  He intended to stand by Iris as best he could, even if it did turn out she was foolish enough to think she could have Carrick. Pax was the amir’s oldest child, next in line for governing Granada, and he knew where his loyalties lay. But growing up in the Alhambra had been lonely. His sister had been his only playmate. The only friend he could trust. There wasn’t much that could divide him from her.

  “Why is she so scared of that place?” asked Carrick.

  Pax looked at him. “You mean the temple?”

  “I could feel it in her. It wasn’t the fear of walking into a fight. Your sister doesn’t have that.”

  Don’t I know it. “Something bad happened to us here. The woman who leads these people tried to manipulate us once. Tried to use us against our father.” Not knowing how much Iris would want revealed, he tried to leave it at that.

  But the priest was perceptive. “It was a betrayal? She was important to Iris?”

  “Yes,” Pax acknowledged.

  “What about you?”

  Pax sighed. “I believed Rebelión Sagrada was asking important questions, and I was interested in mending the rift between the priestess and my father. But all that’s out of the question now.” Yes, out of the question after his sister’s mother used his greatest vulnerability to try to trap him.

  “Those entrusted with championing faith often become faith’s worst enemies,” replied Carrick.

  Pax raised an eyebrow. He was beginning to understand why the man was so interesting to Iris. “Are you a believer yourself?” he asked.

  “I lost my faith a long time ago.”

  “Those people back in Beck’s camp, they all called you ‘Father.’”

  Carrick’s lips curled in a tired smile. The smile of a man who’d been flipped on his back like a turtle and had come to accept he was at the world’s mercy. “People need something to give them hope, don’t they?”

  Gazing again at the fanciful spike, Pax said, “I’d call sentiment like that a truer mark of a holy man than faith.”

  The priest let that pass without comment, and after a moment Pax asked, “You had no idea, did you? That you weren’t fully human.”

  “I never knew my father. There were things I could do that others couldn’t, and my mother always said I was just like him. But she made me pretend I was just like everyone else. She begged me to go into the priesthood. Maybe she thought it would cleanse me.”

  “Maybe she thought it would protect you. Maybe it did.”

  The priest’s gaze drifted back to the temple. “My whole life I thought she was touched. ‘Fey,’ they used to call it. She could see things other people couldn’t. She seemed so open to everything. So vulner
able. All this time I thought I was protecting her.”

  “I’m sorry you lost her.” The priest’s mother had been one of the casualties in the wasp attack, succumbing to the smoke in the burning building.

  “I’m not.” Pax glanced up at the flat statement.

  “She’d never been more than a dozen kilometers from her village,” continued Carrick. “It would have broken my heart for her to die here, alone and afraid.”

  Pax thought about his own mother, dying surrounded by luxuries she cared nothing for, and servants who were also prison guards. Placated like a child with pretty things, as if she’d forget everyone she loved had been taken from her.

  The temple’s exterior lights dimmed. Silent as the grave in there.

  “Listen,” said Pax. The priest met his gaze. “I bear you no ill will. Iris is right—you don’t belong in a cell in the genetics lab. But I can’t force you to stay with me, and I don’t want a knife in the back. If you’re planning to run, run now. I won’t come after you. I can’t speak for Iris.”

  Carrick studied him. “You’re going after Asha.”

  The man might as well have knifed him in the back. There was nothing Pax hated more than a hypocrite. With every passing moment it became harder to deny that’s what he had become.

  “I don’t want to hurt Asha. I just want to…” To what? “I just want to talk to her. And the people she’s gone to for protection—I don’t trust them.”

  The priest’s gaze drifted to the street below, deserted now as the hour had grown late. “Iris told me the truth about what I am,” he said. “She helped me escape. I owe her for that. When I’ve repaid that debt, I’ll look to what comes next.”

  Pax breathed in relief he hadn’t expected to feel. “All right, then. Let’s go find out what magic they’ve used to empty that temple.”

  * * *

  “Iris’s mother!” Asha thought she must have misunderstood. The Manti woman hardly seemed old enough to have a child Iris’s age. But then her features were so alien it was hard to be sure. “Is Cleo married to Pax’s father?”

  “No. But they used to be on friendlier terms.”

  Much friendlier. She struggled with the image of the Manti priestess as mother to anyone.

  “From an ideological standpoint I’d say the rift was inevitable,” continued Micah. “That plus the fact they’re the most powerful figures in the city. My understanding is the amir’s son expended considerable time and energy playing diplomat between them. But something went wrong—some scandal. The rumor is he tried to seduce her.”

  Pax seduce Iris’s mother? It didn’t seem possible. And yet … she’d seen him overtaken by lust. An image of Pax in Cleo’s chains rose unbidden. She banished it, but it left a sour feeling in her stomach.

  Noticing they’d turned out of the corridor between the temple and Debajo, she asked, “Where are we going? Where are the others?”

  “Ahead of us in the tunnels,” replied Micah. “We’ll see them soon.”

  He moved close to one of the walls of the passage, where there had once been another of the arched openings—possibly an intersecting tunnel, now blocked by fallen rock and dirt. He raised his hand, passing it in front of the opening.

  The debris disintegrated.

  Gasping, she said, “How did you do that?”

  He guided her through the opening, and she watched it seal up again behind them.

  “The technology is similar to what you see above, in the tower. The construction resin is ‘smart.’ A blend of microbial bots and organic material.”

  She stared at the reformed surface. “That’s amazing. Like magic.”

  Micah smiled. “Not magic. It’s more illusion than reality, but still very complex. There’s generation, and degeneration, and cooling processes for both. Plus artificial intelligence for ensuring secure access.”

  “Who did all this?”

  “I did.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Are you serious?”

  “Security is my area of expertise. I work for DAB-lab, which gives me access to all the more experimental technology.”

  “DAB-lab?” She shook her head, confused. “Do they know that you’re involved with Rebelión? Seems like a serious conflict of interests.”

  “No doubt,” he laughed. “No, they don’t know. They can never know.”

  She understood now why he was so valuable to Cleo. “Why have you gone to all this trouble?”

  The tunnel forked and Micah veered left. She followed, forced to walk behind due to the narrow path through the very real debris from a partial collapse.

  “The tunnels are officially off-limits, and we’re the only ones who use them regularly. But it won’t take long for the amir to figure out we’ve gone underground. The modifications to the tunnels, combined with the secure access, should prevent them from catching up with us. By the time they figure it out we’ll be long gone.”

  “Gone where?” she asked. This would all be for nothing if she ended up farther from her father.

  “Al Campo.”

  Asha hesitated, confused. “The internment camp for human survivors?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s an empty quarter of the village, set aside in case the people in Sanctuary ever need to be relocated. I worked with a hacker inside the camp to arrange it all. We reconfigured the flies—the DAB-lab surveillance cyborgs—so the feeds are showing dummy video for the empty quarter. Basically they’re feeding a bunch of historical footage of nothing.”

  “You’re going to hide in plain sight.” She respected her companion’s ingenuity more every moment. “In the last place the amir would look for you. But if you can get into Al Campo, can’t the humans get out?”

  Micah paused, glancing back at her. “We’ve created a similar type of secure access point there, and only disciples can open it. But we’re not jailers. We have an agreement with the people inside. In exchange for their help hiding us, we’ve promised to free them once the shift in power takes place.”

  “An alliance.”

  “Yes, that’s accurate.”

  They walked for a while in silence, and she processed the implications. The first one being that she’d made a dangerous deal with Cleo that had turned out not to be necessary. But she couldn’t have foreseen this. And if she hadn’t done it the priestess could have just as easily tossed her back out in the street.

  “Tell me,” said Micah. “Who is it you hope to find in Bone Town?”

  “Bone Town?”

  “Sorry. The residents refer to the camp that way because of the architecture. You’ll see. Are you looking for someone else taken by a Scarab?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do if you find them?”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  Ridiculous as it now seemed, she’d never thought past finding her father. That had seemed unlikely enough in itself. Now it was beginning to look like she had a chance—it fired off a little flare of hope in her chest.

  They couldn’t go home—that much was clear. Even if she could find transportation, Pax would come for her; she felt sure of it. They could try to run far enough away from Granada to start a new life. Maybe persuade some of the others to join them. That too seemed to hold low odds of success.

  But this alliance between Rebelión Sagrada and Al Campo had suggested another possibility. She’d learned something in the course of her journey: her life in Sanctuary had been half a life. The idea of going back to that kind of stasis no longer held any appeal for her. Here she might just see change in her lifetime. Here she could write new history rather than keeping the old history on life support.

  But to stay she would have to betray Pax more deeply than she had already. Join his family’s enemies, and help them pull him down. There was a part of her—that sliver of her that had been awakened by him—that she would have to extract and bury before she could. That part of her wasn’t going to go
down without a fight. She wasn’t sure she wanted it to.

  * * *

  Pax stared down at the iron rings, unable to distinguish rust from blood. There was no reason for a chain like this—Manti technology could have created something much more sophisticated, both lighter and stronger—but Cleo had a flair for the dramatic. Or perhaps it was meant to be symbolic of their disdain for scientific interference in reproduction.

  More likely she chose them because they hurt. Yes, he was giving her too much credit.

  “Asha was here,” called the priest.

  Pax turned, nodding. He could smell her too, as well as the disciple they’d met in the alley. They’d both been in this room more than once.

  “Fear leaves a mark,” Carrick continued. “So does…” The priest glanced up from the spot on the floor he’d been staring at. His gaze met Pax’s only briefly before he glanced down again.

  Pax felt sick.

  The priest disappeared into a curtained-off area. “I lose her here,” he called. “It’s like she walked through the wall.”

  Pax followed him into what he’d assumed was an enclosure to stow attendants in the event of a sudden desire for privacy. But it looked more like a makeshift corridor.

  “That’s possible,” said Pax. “Some kind of illusion, maybe, or a false wall.”

  He rested his hand against the curved surface. It felt solid, and warm—characteristic of this particular building resin since it was basically alive.

  The wall was seamless. There was no section that didn’t match up. No darker or lighter color, or sudden change in texture.

  The priest followed Pax’s lead, wiping small circles over the surface with his hands, and they worked toward each other from opposite ends of the curtain.

  “My close vision is not very good, but it doesn’t look like—”