She laughed. “It’s too late to push me away now. Alara will never forgive you.” The woman’s turquoise gaze seemed to taunt him, and Ethan had to restrain himself from slapping the grin off her face. It was Alara’s face, but those weren’t her eyes. What was going on?
Suddenly she was back on top of him, pressing her body against him in all the right places, provoking arousal against his will. He focused on waking up, and the woman smiled, as if she knew she’d won. “You like it, don’t you?” she asked.
She brought him to the brink and threw her head back in ecstasy. Her mouth opened wide and an oily black snake slithered out, its own mouth wide and gaping as it hissed and turned to him with glowing red eyes. Fangs dripped with venom, a loud hiss roared in his ears, and then the snake lunged and the gaping mouth swallowed him whole.
Ethan opened his eyes and lay blinking up at the ceiling. He sat up and turned to find Alara asleep beside him. He reached over and shook her shoulder.
“Ethan?” she asked sleepily. “What’s wrong?”
Where to begin… he felt enraged, violated, confused, and painfully aroused. “I had a bad dream,” he decided.
Alara flicked on the light beside her and turned to him, blinking bright turquoise eyes.
Ethan’s heart froze in his chest.
“Tell me about it,” she cooed, rubbing his chest. Ethan leapt out of bed, tripped over the bedsheets, and hit his head on the floor.
This time he woke up for real. He blinked quickly, clearing the bleary haze of sleep from his eyes. His body was bathed in sweat, and he shivered as a draft from the room’s climate control vents found him. He’d obviously kicked off the sheets while tossing and turning in his sleep.
Ethan rolled over to find Alara sleeping soundly beside him. He sat up and spent long minutes searching the darkness for slithering shadows and glowing red eyes. Blood roared in his ears and air wheezed in and out of his lungs.
Was he awake or dreaming still? How would he know this time?
The seconds slipped away, marking the minutes on a slow march to dawn. For all he knew, it was dawn already. Both day and night were equally dark and shadow-filled. Ethan turned back to his wife and stared at the back of her head. Suddenly he wondered what color her eyes were. He turned on his bedside lamp with the manual switch and then reached for her shoulder.
Déjà vu.
Ethan shook her gently, his heart jackhammering in his chest.
Alara flinched and rolled over. Violet eyes squinted at him. “What is it?”
Relief poured through him, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Alara’s gaze softened and her brow furrowed. “For what?”
“For the fight.”
Unable to help himself, he wrapped his wife up in a fierce hug.
“What if Trinity decides to go?” she whispered beside his ear.
“Let’s deal with that if it happens, but we’re a family, and we need to stick together.”
“So you’ll consider following her?”
Ethan hesitated. “I will.”
* * *
“Happy Anniversary, Darin,” Ceyla whispered before leaning over the table to kiss him. She withdrew with a bright smile and returned her attention to the heart-shaped dessert they shared by candle light at their dining room table.
“Seven years married,” Atton said, shaking his head, his eyes fixed on his wife’s beautiful face. Her features were framed by wavy blond hair, her blue eyes shining in the candlelit glow of their dining room. He smiled to see the heart-shaped silver locket he’d given her dangling down the plunging neckline of her sparkling blue evening gown. When opened, the locket would project a picture of the two of them, taken on their very first date. Now that was more than eight and a half years ago. She’d been so overwhelmed by the gift that she’d insisted they leave the restaurant early, taking their dessert to go. She wanted to be alone with him.
Atton smiled, watching Ceyla finish the last bite of the heart-shaped cake. He took a moment to look at his own anniversary gift, a holo-engraved wedding ring with their names on the outside and an inscription on the inside that read, I’ll love you forever -C.
Ceyla wiped her mouth on a napkin and rose from the table, taking him by the hand and leading him to their bedroom. Once there she continued to show her gratitude for the past seven years of marital bliss.
Afterward, Atton slept soundly until his alarm woke him. He deactivated it verbally and stumbled out of bed, heading straight to the bathroom to get ready for work. Admiral Vee had been working him harder than usual. Bliss doesn’t deliver itself, he mused bitterly.
As he approached the bathroom, he was surprised to find the light already on. He opened the door to find Ceyla sitting on the lid of the toilet, her locket lying open in her hands, the hologram of them hovering before her eyes. She stared fixedly at it.
“Ceyla?” he asked.
She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears, her cheeks wet.
A sharp stab of concern brought him rushing to her side. “What’s wrong?” he asked, getting down on his knees beside her.
She shook her head and blinked away her tears. He wiped them away with his thumbs before they could run down her cheeks. “Hey… it’s okay,” he said. “What is it?”
“Look at us,” she said, nodding to the hologram.
He looked at the picture. It had been taken on their first date. The two of them sat in a booth at the same restaurant they’d gone to last night, hugging one another, her head on his shoulder as they smiled dreamily at the camera.
Whatever it was that had her so upset, he didn’t see it. “It’s us,” he replied.
“Look at me, and then look at you.”
He still wasn’t getting it. “Ceyla…”
“Just look!”
Atton frowned and spent a moment analyzing every detail of the hologram. When he was done, he looked up and shrugged helplessly, but Ceyla wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at the mirror above the sink.
“Now look in the mirror,” she said.
He did, and this time he noticed what was wrong. His heart pounded, and his palms turned clammy with sweat. Eight and a half years had passed since that hologram had been recorded, and his face was the same as ever, an exact replica of the hologram, all sharp angles and smooth, unlined skin. Ceyla’s face, however, was not the same. She’d changed subtly over the years. Her features were now those of a woman, not a girl. Her face was fuller, her eyes harder, her skin duller, and faint lines had appeared to ring her neck and web her eyes.
The differences were still slight, but thanks to the high resolution hologram he’d given Ceyla, she had the before and after to look at whenever she liked.
Atton cursed his stupidity and turned back to Ceyla. “You’re as beautiful as ever,” he said with a sly grin.
Ceyla shot up from the toilet. “I’m not! But you are! I always wondered why you were so handsome. You said you chose to become a Null when you were eight. You didn’t, did you? You’re one of them.”
Atton took Ceyla by her shoulders and met her blue eyes with his gold. “You’re imagining things.”
“Am I? Prove it then. I want a blood test.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll make it up to you.”
Atton shook his head, and began working himself up into an indignant rage. He shook a finger in her face. “After seven years of marriage, suddenly you don’t trust me?”
“Get the test.”
“If we don’t have trust, then we don’t have anything.”
“And if you’re not a Null, then we don’t have anything anyway! If I married a clone, what do you think happens next? I’ll grow old and die, and you’ll marry someone else. That’s if you don’t leave me when I’m old and ugly and you’re still just as young and beautiful as ever. I’m not going to sit around and wait for that to happen. Besides, if you’re a clone, then I married a man without a soul. You think I want to die and
go to Etheria without you? Get the test, Darin.”
Atton wanted to say more, but he kept silent. He had no trouble looking outraged, but deep down he was actually terrified. What could he say? She was right. He shook his head and turned away. “I need to get to work.”
“If you’re telling the truth, what do you have to be afraid of?” Ceyla called after him.
Back in the bedroom, Atton waved open the closet and hurried to put on his work clothes. He forewent a shower and shave in order to avoid further discussion.
“Well?” Ceyla demanded.
“This conversation is over,” he said as he shrugged into a black trench coat that concealed the sidearm holstered to his waist.
Ceyla gave a bitter smile and crossed her arms over her chest. “You can’t answer me, can you?”
Atton stormed out through the living room and dining room. He waved open the front door, but Ceyla’s words followed him out. “You can’t answer me, because you’re lying!”
The door swished shut and Atton turned to stare at it. His angry scowl evaporated, and in its place came wide-eyed fear. She wasn’t going to give up until he brought her proof that he was a mortal, but to do that he needed help.
Atton turned and started down the hallway to the building’s lift tubes. On his way down to the parking levels, he began rehearsing what he would say to convince Admiral Vee to do him another favor.
* * *
“You already owe me a favor, Atton,” Admiral Vee said, crossing her long, smooth legs and sitting back against her plush, white sofa.
Atton remained standing and pressed his lips into a grim line. “Add it to my tab.”
Valari laughed. “Well, I suppose there is something you can do to repay me…”
“What would you like me to do?”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, there’s very little left that amuses you. Do you know what amuses me, Atton?”
He shook his head, staring into her deep turquoise eyes and trying in vain to find a spark of humanity there. “I have no idea.”
“Your father amuses me.”
Atton blinked, taken aback by that. “Which one?”
“Ethan, of course.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ethan is a faithful husband,” Vee went on. “Omnius tells me he’ll never leave his wife to be with me, or even experience a momentary lapse of his inhibitions. Do you know how unusual it is for me to come across something I can’t have?”
Atton felt an angry heat rising around his collar. His right hand twitched beside his sidearm. “You want me to help you get my own father to commit adultery. Who do you think you are?”
Admiral Vee’s amusement vanished and a scowl abruptly darkened her features. “A simple no would suffice.”
“You don’t need my help. If there’s a way, then Omnius knows what it is, and he can help you.”
“True, but then you wouldn’t have a chance to repay the favor you owe me. I pretended to be your mother, so that you could trick your girlfriend into marrying you. How is that any better than adultery?”
“It was one night.”
“And that’s all I’m asking for,” Vee replied, smiling up at him.
“I refuse.”
“Even if you refuse, as you pointed out, I don’t need your help. I’ll get what I want either way.”
Atton clenched his teeth. “What is wrong with you? What do you gain from my involvement?”
Admiral Vee laughed lightly and rose from the couch. “I told you, Atton, when you’ve lived as long as I have, there’s very little left that amuses you.”
Atton ground his teeth, considering the matter. If he didn’t help her, he stood to lose his wife, and Ethan would be delivered into Admiral Vee’s clutches just as surely by someone else. There was no way to make things any better for his father, but he could at least find a way to make things better for himself.
Admiral Vee watched him, her teeth bared in a broad grin, her eyes bright with needle-sharp points of reflected light.
“What would I have to do?” he asked.
“Come to my office, and I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 20
“This is the plan,” Therius said.
All eyes were on the hologram rising from the long, black holo table in the operations center of the Liberator, but Farah’s eyes were on the people in the room. Therius sat at the head of the table. To his right sat Shara, High Matriarch of the Gors, and down at the opposite end of the table sat Shallah with his Sythian second-in-command, Queen Tavia. All three factions were present to watch as Therius outlined the plan to conquer Avilon.
A glowing blue wireframe represented Avilon. The Union Fleet appeared as a fine haze of green dots orbiting in clusters above the planet, while their objectives were marked on the surface in three different colors. Green diamonds marked primary objectives, yellow marked secondary, and orange marked tertiary. The primary targets were enemy garrisons and omni-nodes—hubs in the quantum comms network that spanned the globe.
“The key to our battle plan is a quantum comms jammer that will disrupt Omnius throughout Avilon.”
Farah blinked. “One jammer for the entire planet? Is that even possible?”
Therius nodded. “We’ve code-named it the Eclipser. As soon as we activate it, everyone will be free of Omnius’s influence. He’ll be unable to harm them through their Lifelinks or speak to them. Even drones will be cut off, and they’ll have to revert to secondary programming that makes human Peacekeepers their commanders.”
“Will not the jamming also affect our fleet?” Shallah asked.
“We’ll have line of sight communications via conventional comms. Once our teams are on the ground they will lose contact with one another, so we will have to coordinate everything very carefully ahead of time. Making matters worse, the Gors’ telepathy will not work until we turn off the Eclipser.”
Shara hissed and bared her teeth. “How are we to fight like thiss?”
“You will use conventional comms to communicate between the members of your ground teams. It will work as long as your people remain within a short range of each other.”
“And Omniusss?” Shara hissed, blinking large, slitted yellow eyes.
“Avilon no longer maintains an orbital comms network. Coordinating a proper defense will be all but impossible.
“We’re going to jump straight into orbit, directly above the known locations of Omnius’s drone garrisons.” Therius pointed to one green diamond after another, identifying the fleet’s primary objectives. “We’ll destroy approximately 90% of the garrison before it even has a chance to get airborne.”
“What about ground defensesss?” Shallah asked.
“Most of the ground defenses are controlled via quantum links by Omnius, so we should see only a small fraction of them still active. It will take some time before drones or Peacekeepers can get to the ones that do have manual controls.”
Farah let out a long breath. “There’s a lot riding on this Eclipser. What if the enemy finds it?”
“There’s no way to pinpoint the origin of the jamming field, so unless we have a traitor in our midst, it will be impossible to find.”
Farah glanced around the room, looking from Therius to Shara and then to the Sythians. Her gaze lingered on Shallah, and her eyes narrowed swiftly.
Shallah caught that look and hissed at her. “I have no reason to betray the Union,” he replied. “I would surely die as well asss you.”
“Everyone here can be trusted,” Therius said, “But as an extra measure of security, the actual location of the jammer will only be known to myself and the general of the ground team in charge of defending it.”
Farah nodded. “How long will the jammer be able to maintain the field?”
“A month or more.”
“Then all we have to do is keep it safe,” Farah replied.
“Yes.” Therius pointed to the next series of objectives, marked with yellow diamonds. “Stage tw
o of our plan is to infiltrate the Omninet. These locations have been identified as nodes in the network. From here we’ll be able to hijack the quantum network and send a brief message to the entire planet, straight to their Lifelinks. That is how we’ll reveal Omnius’s lies. I fully expect our message to incite a violent civil war.”
“Won’t you have to disable the Eclipser to send a message via the quantum network?”
“The Eclipser will only be offline for a minute or two, and during that time we’ll keep Omnius busy defending himself from a virus.”
“A few minutes might still be enough time for him to organize a proper defense,” Farah said.
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
“What about the Icosahedron? New Avilon?”
“Based on what we have seen of Omnius’s movements in the Getties, we know that it will take him approximately a week to jump back to Avilon with all the Facets of his Icosahedron. During that week we will use Omnius’s own weapon against him. He’s spent the past eight years seeding the Getties with self-replicating nanites to erase the evidence of his lies. Over that same period of time we’ve managed to capture a sufficient number of nanites to weaponize them for our own purposes.
“Our plan is to plant nanite bombs in strategic locations throughout Avilon.” Therius pointed to the third and final set of objectives, the orange-colored diamonds. “If need be, as proof of our intent, we’ll detonate one of the bombs and allow Omnius to purge the area from orbit before the nanites can spread out of control. After that, Omnius will have no choice but to acknowledge that the threat is real.”
Farah’s blood turned to ice. “You’re going to use the human race as blackmail.”
Therius nodded. “We will offer to release Omnius’s faithful people if he will allow the rest of Avilon to be free. If he does not agree to that, then we will detonate the bombs and destroy the entire planet. Based on his need to be worshiped by his creators, it is unlikely that is an outcome he will be willing to accept.”
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