The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5)

by Zen, Raeden

  Brody lunged out of his chair and swiped a crystal paperweight chiseled in Chancellor Masimovian’s likeness. He heaved it into the Granville panel. The graphene split, shattering the sunlight, revealing bare rock.

  I’ll free them all.

  “Not if you die first.” The Controller waved to his Janzers. “Escort the exile to his tomb.”

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Oriana Barão

  Research & Development Department (RDD)

  Palaestra, Underground Northeast

  2,500 meters deep

  Oriana’s private transport decelerated, and the holographic view of colorful swirling clouds, dark trees, and bushes in the surrounding walls disappeared.

  Since her birth thirty days ago and her development in House Summerset, she’d prepared herself to be Champion of the Harpoon Exams, the primary arbiter of commonwealth function, divider of the doers and innovators from the dependent and underdeveloped. Now she’d received not only the first but also the highest bid in Harpoon Auction history from Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue. She could not, for her soul, imagine what came next. She would serve the commonwealth, that much was certain. But in which facility did Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue reside, and in which projects did he specialize?

  She connected to the ZPF and transmitted to her twin brother, Pasha, through Marstone: Are you okay? Did you receive a bid in the top one percent?

  No response.

  Please, answer me.

  No response.

  Oriana frowned. She and her twin brother had been censured by the government during development. Because of that, if bids for him hadn’t been high enough, he might have been sent to the Lower Level and had his neurochip removed, and she’d never see or speak with him again.

  Her eyes welled up, but she pushed her illegal emotions aside. She closed her eyes.

  Sometimes, when Oriana and Pasha had been in Harpoon classes or House Summerset, he would hear her thoughts and reply in her mind, without interference from Marstone.

  Pasha, where are you?

  All she heard was her heartbeat.

  “Madam Champion,” one of her Janzer escorts said, “we’ve arrived at the RDD dormitories.”

  Oriana stepped out onto white marble pavement. The dorms stretched around her—white onyx buildings with sharp peaks studded with gemstones, connected by skywalks. Hundreds of Janzers knelt on either side of a staircase, their diamond swords angled to the Granville sky. Torches lined a massive glass archway labeled NEOPHYTE DORMITORIES, and in between each torch the flags of the thirty territories hung with the Great Commonwealth’s flag—wine-red and painted with a flock of doves, wings spread along a triplet of crescent moons—above them all.

  Oriana turned. The line of transports behind hers looked like pearls beneath Palaestra’s orange Granville sunlight.

  Was Pasha in one of them?

  “Come, Madam Champion,” a Janzer said, “the rest of the commonwealth’s neophytes may not depart until you walk.” He offered his elbow.

  The Walk of the Champion. Oriana had imagined herself here from the first day her developers, Lady Parthenia and Lord Thaddeus of House Summerset, had taught her about the Harpoons. Yet now, as she pushed her right foot to the first step, she couldn’t move. It was like when Lady Isabelle had called her up in front of the group the first day of Harpoon classes. She stood, her body paralyzed, her mind asunder.

  I’m Champion of the Harpoons, she thought. These steps should be the easiest part of my ride.

  She lifted her right foot, then her left. With each step, though, her legs seemed heavier. She gripped the Janzer’s elbow tighter.

  Did Pasha watch her upon a transport’s walls? Did he wait outside a dormitory in a lesser territory? Had his bid been high enough to negate their Warning from the Office of the Chancellor?

  Twenty more steps.

  I am a Harpoon Champion, she thought, and I will demand to see my brother.

  Ten more steps.

  Again, she accessed the ZPF, called Pasha through Marstone, and was notified he wasn’t available. She tried to contact her friend Nathan Storm, the candidate who had helped her win the second half of the Harpoon Exams inside Ceres.

  No response.

  Three more steps.

  She arrived at the summit. Behind her, oval transports snaked for kilometer after kilometer.

  Her Janzer escort shot a flare into the sky. It erupted into a flock of crackling doves that flew through the air and spiraled over her, then down the stairs until they arrived near the base and spun up in a tornado of sparks. When the bird-flares extinguished, the first hundred entryways to the first hundred transports opened, and the newly minted RDD neophytes stepped out.

  Oriana activated her extended consciousness and scanned them all.

  She didn’t find Pasha.

  He must’ve received a bid, Oriana thought, must have!

  She felt a burning sensation in her eyes but wouldn’t let herself cry.

  “Madam Champion,” the Janzer said, “your new life awaits you.”

  They took an elevator up to the Champion’s Suite at the top floor, and the Janzer taught her the code to activate her doorway. When the frosted-glass entryway slid open, indigo light enveloped her.

  “See the instructions in a z-disk on your counter.” He nodded to the z-disk surrounded by golden light, then bowed to her. “May your research lead to many proper and significant conversions and an eternal life.”

  “Thank you,” she said and bowed courteously in return.

  Her suite smelled like cinnamon and cloves. Garnet gravel lined narrow streams topped by water lilies near the walls. Golden plants squiggled up and around thin carbyne support poles. Indigo phosphorescent beams glistened along the black marble floor. The couches were plump, the kitchenette complete with any and every cooking utensil she’d ever need. She looked around, not a little in awe. Her whole life, she’d always shared a suite with Pasha.

  The entryway to her unit slid open. Oriana started.

  A keeper bot curtsied smoothly. “Aha, madam, apologies for startling you. I’m Ramona. I’m yours to command.”

  “I’m … okay for now … thank you, Ramona.”

  Oriana stepped out onto her terrace. To her right lay a hot tub shaped like an amoeba, to her left an archway with dangling grape vines. She moved down the marble steps ahead of her and leaned on the crystalline balustrade, closing her eyes to enjoy Palaestra’s vanilla air. She opened her eyes and roamed beneath the grape vines to an opening where a ladder led to the rooftop deck. She climbed the ladder. From her perch atop the Champion’s Suite in the RDD, she could see the Gorges of Hillenthara in the northeast and to Palaestra City in the southwest and all the compressed diamond pillars that supported the Beimeni zone in between. That was hundreds of kilometers in either direction. Far beneath her, candidates streamed into the courtyard. She searched for Pasha. How could he have been a second-half captain in the Harpoons and make it so far to the end and not be bid on by an RDD consortium?

  She descended down the ladder, back onto her terrace, and strolled to the opening leading back into her suite. She looked out upon the RDD facilities, carbyne and glass palaces in the distance, surrounding the Research Superstructure transport station. An artificial gust whipped her hair around her face. She heard a doorbell ring and turned toward her suite. Her doorway opened again revealing two silhouettes, speaking, it seemed, to Ramona. Oriana recognized Pasha’s voice.

  He ambled over the tile to her terrace. His escort hung back behind him. She had the impulse to sprint to him and hug him like she had during development but checked it.

  “Is this real?” she heard herself say.

  “I’m so glad you did it, O,” Pasha said. His voice caught.

  And wasn’t this the ending assured, even in their fiercest battles, by the Summersets, that they would both be purchased if one excelled? A part of Oriana hated that they were right.

  A man stepped out onto the terrace, a beautiful man
with a sharp nose, wavy hair, and eyes of flecked obsidian. She bowed. “Welcome to my suite. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “O, this is Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue,” Pasha said. “He traveled all the way here from Boreas to greet us.”

  Oh gods, a supreme scientist, and the one who had purchased her, in her suite! She hoped Antosha didn’t notice her blush. “Forgive me,” Oriana said. He stood silently. “I should’ve known, I should’ve inquired, I should’ve—”

  “No, no, my dear, it is I who should apologize,” he said, his voice soft and kind. “I wish I was here in time to greet your arrival for the Walk but,” he sighed, “circumstances as they were, I was forced to complete other business.” He kissed her hand, as tenderly as a lover. “I was the supreme scientist covering Regenesis, soon to be the supreme scientist of the Ventureño Facility, covering Reassortment.”

  Oriana felt light-headed.

  “The specifics for our first meeting with the Holcombe Strike Team are contained within your z-disk. I hope I don’t have to tell you to keep this information in strictest confidence.”

  “You don’t,” Pasha said, “we understand.”

  “Then I will take my leave and allow you and your sister time alone, but be sure to check your z-disk and prepare.”

  Oriana bowed again. “You have my eternal gratitude.”

  Antosha nodded and left.

  Oriana hugged her Pasha. “I thought I ruined you, that they sent you to the Lower Level—”

  “You did what I would’ve done, what any candidate would have done to win. It wasn’t the end that mattered, O, it was the journey, it was our development, it was the time we spent with the Summersets. They prepared us well, and you delivered them a champion. I’m so proud of you, so glad you’re my sister.”

  She squeezed him tight, then released him. She nodded toward the glowing golden z-disk on her crystal counter. “Shall we find out what happens next—”

  Oriana? Are you there?

  It was Nathan Storm, via Marstone.

  Yes, where’re you? she sent.

  Look in the courtyard.

  She dashed to the edge of the terrace.

  Nathan waved up at her. We have the rest of the day off, and I’d like to take you away from here.

  I’ll meet you in the lobby soon. She disconnected from him.

  Pasha sauntered out to the terrace and stood next to her. She turned to him. He had none of the boy she knew from the early days of development in his face, but he also didn’t look as stressed or angered as he had prior to the Harpoons, after their … argument. His dark blue hair flowed over his forehead in a gust, his bronze skin looked vibrant and young, and his eyes didn’t have dark rings.

  When he didn’t speak, she couldn’t help but wonder: Was he truly no longer upset with her for saving Nathan rather than him during Isabelle’s candlestick puzzle?

  She pushed his hair away from his eyes. “Pash, why didn’t you answer me?”

  “What’d you mean?” Pasha crumpled his brow, and his dimples pocked his cheeks.

  “I’ve been trying to call you the entire way here from the stadium. They didn’t let me watch the rest of the auction, no matter what I said, and I was so—”

  Pasha put his finger on her lips. “O, no candidate can communicate after the auction.” He laughed, and Oriana laughed with him. It was just like the early days of development, when they had so much fun together. She felt lighter than a dove. “You weren’t listening to Lady Isabelle before the auction, were you?”

  The auction was a blur to her. The whispers, the crowd, the perfect sky, Lady Isabelle, and the bid, the bid, the bid! She shook her head. “I suppose not.” She watched the candidates frolicking far below in the courtyard. “Our path is different from theirs, isn’t it?” She looked at Pasha.

  “Only Antosha knows what lies ahead for us.” He and Oriana turned toward the suite, where the z-disk was still glowing gold. “Come, O, let us find out.”

  Starmine Village

  Gallia, Underground Northeast

  “This is exactly what I needed,” Oriana said.

  She and Nathan navigated the green bioluminescent limestone path, and she massaged the angel necklace he’d given her during the Harpoons. The sounds of streams and waterfalls grew louder as the stone turned to sand and Granville day turned to night. Starlight reflected off the waterfalls, which rolled over boulders rounded from erosion and gushed to the spindly streams below. Oriana breathed in the misty air.

  Nathan set down a silk blanket near the falls. Beimenians meandered around them. The scent of vetiver oil wafted through the air. Nathan unlocked an alloy bin, and up popped mugs brimming with cappuccino. He handed one to Oriana, and she eased into the nook near his chest. She followed the trail of a comet across the sky through the constellations. A sense of peace overtook her.

  “Do you think they’d let us be on the same team?” Nathan said. The Blackstone Consortium, known to train the strikers, aeras, strategists, and captains for the strike teams, had bid for Nathan, who had been in the top quarter percent of all candidates. “Or are we to be separated forever?”

  “You know I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to.”

  The z-disk that Antosha had left for her, which she’d scanned before she went down to Nathan, indicated he’d secured her and Pasha to a special assignment with the Holcombe Strike Team, one that would exclude them from the normal RDD processes. They would not take the tour with the other RDD neophytes, and no other supreme scientist could claim them. Oriana was excited at the thought of working with Antosha, Pasha, and the Holcombe Strike Team, though she would miss Nathan.

  She inhaled the steam from the cappuccino and sipped. “Thanks for bringing me here,” she said.

  “You’re working with Supreme Scientist Antosha Zereoue, aren’t you?”

  Oriana didn’t respond.

  “Oriana?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I heard he bid first for you.”

  She exhaled. “No one was supposed to know that.” She pushed away from him and planted her hand in the sand. “You didn’t ask me to the edge of the commonwealth to listen to the pearl falls or see the stars, did you?”

  Nathan gritted his teeth. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just wanted to see you. I didn’t see or hear from you after the Walk, and I didn’t know if it was because—”

  “I received the first bid and you didn’t,” she said.

  “Because I couldn’t protect you when it mattered most—”

  “I don’t need anyone’s protection.” Oriana gestured and flung the sand off the back of her hand.

  “You’re in danger,” Nathan said. “That’s why I asked you to come with me here, before it starts.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Antosha has a history.” Nathan peered across the rounded falls at the Beimenians, who all seemed mesmerized by the starlight illusion. Even so, Nathan turned back to her and lowered his voice. “He has a violent history, and I thought that—”

  “If we were further from Marstone, it wouldn’t hear your traitorous accusation.”

  “It’s still a risk, but I had to warn you, and I remembered your love for the stars.”

  “Antosha’s … otherworldly.” She sipped from her mug, stared into the waterfalls, and pondered the man who had bid the highest in Harpoon history for her. “He’s a supreme scientist. He brought Pasha to me. I’d never … expect he’d be violent.”

  “That’s part of the problem, I think. No one ever has irrefutable evidence against him, but all around him scientists die or disappear or deceive each other, or, in the case of your parents …”

  “What?”

  Nathan turned from her.

  “Look at me.” She pulled his chin to her. “What did you find?”

  “I heard things during my development … knowledge that I wanted to share …”

  “What kind of things?”

 
“Evil things, about Antosha, about your father, and your mother …”

  “What did you hear?”

  “The rumors are that Antosha may have had something to do with your parents’ downfall, that … that your mother’s death …”

  “Tell me, Nathan!”

  “That she wasn’t strangled by Vernon Lebrizzi.”

  Oriana’s breath gave out. “They think Antosha killed her?”

  “The scientists in the RDD knew your father and Antosha had a … complicated relationship, but in the end, though the details are all mixed up, your father didn’t allow Antosha’s entry to the board, and the rumor goes, he convinced the chancellor to exile Antosha to the Lower Level. And there’s this other idea, not spoken about much, that …”

  “That what, Nathan? Finish it!”

  Nathan swallowed and looked away from Oriana. “That your mother was genetically poisoned.”

  “You tell this me now?” She threw her mug over the side of the falls and it shattered. The water took what remained of the steaming cappuccino over the stone. “You could have mentioned it in the VR, at the Trimester Trek. I asked you what you knew, and you didn’t tell me!”

  “Lady Parthenia contacted Lady California, told her we shouldn’t see each other any longer. She said I was dangerous for your survival in the commonwealth. After their contact, my developers talked about you and your developers and your parents and Antosha. They didn’t know I overheard their conversation, and I didn’t say anything before the exams because I didn’t know how you’d react and I didn’t know if you’d be able to handle it. I couldn’t live with myself if you failed the exams because of me—”