by Zen, Raeden
She’d know what to do if she was here, he thought. She’d beat this bot.
His treadmill locked in the LAUNCH position, and his holographic image appeared over the arena. The treadmill slowed, and Pasha soared into battle.
He slid to take out the Graka’s legs, but the bot flipped forward. When Pasha popped up, a carbyne foot was thrust into his chest in a roundhouse kick harder and faster than his sister’s. He flew backward and wheezed.
He recovered and vaulted to his feet, arms open, fists clenched. The Graka spun the spike and Pasha hopped.
The Graka twisted and shot the spike for Pasha’s legs. He dodged, grabbed it, and tumbled to the mat with the bot. The spike flew to the side.
Pasha sensed victory; his enemy was disarmed. He grabbed the bot’s wrist and twisted it, taking the Graka to the ground, but it slipped from under him, spun over him, and jabbed him in his face. Pasha couldn’t block all the strikes. He fell to the mat, bleeding from his mouth. The bot pinned him.
Dahlia called the match.
“No, wait!” Pasha said. “I almost had him!”
“You’re done, Barão. You did all right, now get off the mat.”
Medical bots moved in to clean Pasha’s blood from the mat. Perspiration mixed with blood upon his face, and Dahlia handed him a towel. She led him to the recovery area and sat next to him on a bench.
“Rest for a bit,” she said, “then go again, another twenty kilometers and another round with the bot.”
Gods, he thought, I can’t run another twenty meters, much less twenty thousand.
Pasha heaved and wiped his mouth. “Uficilin, please—”
“Not until tomorrow,” Dahlia said. He looked wide-eyed at her, sweat dripping from his chin. “To be a striker is to be strong in body and mind,” she continued. “When you’re on this Timescape Mission, the Western Hegemony Guard isn’t going to care if you’re sore.”
“How many missions have you been on?”
Dahlia pushed her fingers, uncovered by her dark glove at the tips, through her light violet-colored mohawk and exhaled. “Too many to talk about.” She twisted her lips and rubbed her neck. “And the one that matters, what do they say? They say, ‘No, we’re sending neophytes.’ What’s this world coming to?”
“Why does Antosha insist Oriana and I accompany your captain, do you think?”
“I ask myself that all the time, and I can’t figure it out, but it doesn’t matter what an aera thinks or what a strategist thinks, or even what a captain thinks, here.”
“Did you know my father?”
“The People’s Captain.” Dahlia grinned and tightened her gloves. “Sure did.” She laughed. “Now he was a captain who got what he wanted.” She narrowed her eyes. “Your papa was a good man who spoke up for the teams when we were wronged or when he felt the balance of power shifted too far to the Janzers or the chancellor or the scientists. He didn’t deserve what he got, but that’s the way life goes in the commonwealth now.”
“What’d he get?” Pasha said.
Dahlia froze as if she’d done something catastrophic. “You don’t know, do ya?”
“I know he was exiled from the commonwealth. My sister told me he murdered a man.”
“That’s what they say.” Dahlia narrowed her eyes. “But that’s not what the teams here think. They say he was set up ’cause the chancellor feared what he was becoming, what with the way the people and the teams took to him. Most of us would die for your papa.”
“What do you think?”
She perused the neon blue timer in the corner of the rest area. “I think it’s time for the next round, Barão. Nine more to go.”
ZPF Impulse Wave: Oriana Barão
Research & Development Department (RDD)
Palaestra, Underground Northeast
2,500 meters deep
“He’s using us,” Oriana said.
She grabbed Pasha’s wrist, and they stopped beneath one of the Research Superstructure’s marble archways.
“Either we die,” she said, “and he wins, or … we get him the data … and he wins.”
“We’ve been chosen for this task—”
“And what’s worse is that Mintel doesn’t know what he’s doing. My gods, Pasha, you should’ve seen him in the infirmary with Dr. Shrader. Three hundred sixty-eight years in stasis and hundreds of failed awakenings, and our father’s failed research, and Mintel nearly forces him into cardiac arrest!”
“We must serve the chancellor,” Pasha said. He slanted his head and looked to the sky, to the eye in the sky, to Marstone.
“You can’t be serious—” Oriana grew silent as scientists in lab coats passed nearby. She pulled Pasha closer to the marble arch and lowered her voice. “We’re talking about the man responsible for our mother’s death and father’s exile—”
“We don’t know that.”
“Nathan told me.”
“Nathan could be mistaken. Conspiracy theory should never be confused with conspiracy fact.” Pasha turned with Oriana as more scientists strolled nearby.
“I also conducted my own research.” Oriana paused, eyeing a Janzer division that marched past her and Pasha. When no one except Marstone might hear her, she continued, “Our father helped the commonwealth capture Antosha after the chancellor issued a Warning. Father defeated him in Palaestra Square, and afterward, at Antosha’s hearings with Chief Justice Carmen, Prime Minister Decca presented proof Antosha killed—”
“We don’t have a choice, O. We’re not in House Summerset anymore. You push this like you did our lineage during development, and it isn’t going to be a Warning next time, it’s going to be Lady Isabelle, tenehounds, Janzers—it’s going to be a trip to Farino Prison.”
Oriana pressed her lips together. She glimpsed the Holcombe Strike Team headed toward them. Pasha saw them too.
“Don’t talk of this around them,” Pasha said. “I don’t trust Mintel.”
“But you trust Antosha, over your own sister?”
“I didn’t say that. We serve Chancellor Masimovian, we serve the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni and we live forever, this is what Father would want.”
“As a strike team captain, our father would want us to stand up for him. As a supreme scientist, he would want us to uncover the truth.”
“What truth?” Dahlia said.
Pasha stepped away from her. “The truth,” he glanced at Oriana, “is that my sister and I are going to succeed in the mission. We’ll find out what happened at the end of the Quaternary and we’ll retrieve the synthesis of the Reassortment Strain.”
“Right,” Mintel said, “assuming you don’t die along the way, or get my cap’n—”
“My captain,” Pasha said, turning to Ruiner, “I promise you that we won’t let you down.”
“Good lad,” Ruiner said. “Come, your new synsuit awaits you.”
Tomahawk Facility
They entered a room labeled REGENESIS CHAMBER. In its center lay a black marble slab surrounded by six workstations. Oriana didn’t recognize the data readouts suspended above them, but she suspected it had something to do with the Lorum synsuit. Antosha stood in front of the slab, his head bowed, dressed in his usual silver synsuit and fur-lined cape. He lifted his head and opened his eyes.
“Welcome,” Antosha said.
Kiss him now, Oriana thought, cut him later.
Antosha twitched his lips before he continued with his adjustments.
“Have you conducted clinical trials with this … Lorum synsuit?” Oriana said.
“I’ve done what’s necessary to ensure our survival.”
Ruiner, Dahlia, and Mintel entered. A medical bot ordered them behind a barrier at the room’s edge. “Aha, Madam Champion, that goes for you as well,” it said. “Please, over here, for your safety.”
Antosha shrugged. “The bot’s orders, not mine, my dear.”
Oriana joined Ruiner, Mintel, and Dahlia on the other side of a neck-high barrier. Antosha raised his arms and t
elepathically adjusted the holographic images—data feeds, levers that activated robotic arms on either side of the slab. Pasha lay down on it. He wore a bodysuit cut at his elbows and thighs. He turned his head to Oriana. He moved his lips: I’ll be okay.
She heard his voice in her mind. Love you, O.
“Are you ready to change the world?” Antosha said.
“Yes, sir,” Pasha said.
“We’re ready for the Metamorphosis,” Antosha said to his medical bots. “Retrieve the orb.”
A medical bot labeled AUDREY set an alloy trunk atop a workstation beside Pasha and inserted a massive key in the workstation. The trunk’s walls descended and revealed the shimmering Lorum orb. Its gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow colorations swirled counterclockwise, then clockwise.
Pasha swiveled his head and stared. His dark blue hair lay across his face, just like it had when Oriana used to wake him in the morning.
The vein in his neck pulsed.
Please gods, Oriana thought, please protect him from this evil man.
The holographic vitals near Pasha flashed a warning. A medical bot scurried to one of the tubes in his arm and injected him.
Pasha’s eyelids sank.
When he awakened, Antosha hand-signaled a Janzer division, and they surrounded Pasha’s gurney. The Janzers strapped his arms, legs, and torso to the gurney.
“What’s this?” Oriana said.
Antosha ignored her.
“Sir,” Pasha said, “I can’t feel my face.”
“Good, you won’t want to feel this.”
Audrey moved forward with the orb.
Antosha took the orb. “I’m going to put this on your chest. Don’t move.”
Pasha swallowed, and Antosha set the orb down. It flattened and oozed over Pasha’s body, spreading over his midsection. Oriana saw gooseflesh on his arms.
I’m all right, she heard.
She could feel the cool synsuit as it leaked up her twin brother’s neck, over his head, up his nose, and into his mouth, over his tongue, icy and foreign. He choked and she choked with him. She grabbed her throat as he did.
“Gods,” Oriana said, “he can’t breathe—”
Oriana moved around the barrier, but the Janzers interfered. Pasha lurched on the slab. He broke through the straps and fell off the gurney. He writhed on the ground, then stood and backed into a shelving unit, which tipped over.
Pasha held his throat.
Oriana pounded at the Janzers, but they wouldn’t let her through.
Audrey called for aid, and the medical bots streamed around Pasha. Oriana cried out, and the Janzers held her. She flung her arms over them and screamed, “Get it off him, get it off him!”
Pasha backpedaled, his metallic hands on his metallic face. He lost his balance and took out another shelving unit. He clawed at his mouth, layered with the alien synsuit. She felt it in his eyes, his ears, his nose and mouth. His body was not his own. He reached for her and she heard, O, help, please help.
She elbowed a Janzer and stole another’s Reassortment baton, but there were too many. They subdued and held her. She writhed and gasped. “Somebody do something!”
Pasha crashed into a glass platform. He fell with it and convulsed on the ground. He rose again and stumbled into another workstation, into bots, into Antosha.
Blood poured down Antosha’s face from his broken nose. “Get him under control!” he yelled.
Oriana broke free from the Janzers and stole another baton. She slashed it across one of their visors, spun, and kicked the other out of her way. She slid on the ground near Pasha and plucked at the synsuit. He lay limply, one arm across his chest, the other in Oriana’s grasp.
She couldn’t hear his heartbeat or his thoughts.
“Antosha, you’ve got to do something,” Ruiner said.
Antosha held a towel to his nose. Dahlia and Mintel remained behind the barrier, while Ruiner ran to Oriana and knelt beside her. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I shouldn’t have allowed this,” Oriana said. She cradled Pasha’s head and pressed her face to his. She recoiled, surprised by the synsuit’s warmth. She rubbed her fingers around his colorful, hard, metallic ears. Pasha’s leg twitched. She put her hand on his knee and felt a vibration, like the flutter from a bee’s wings beneath her fingers.
Pasha’s body arched. He gasped, and the colors swirled all around his body, clockwise, then counterclockwise. Oriana lifted him in her arms.
She hugged him. “You’re alive.”
“I am,” Pasha said, though his voice sounded synthetic. “I’m oka—” His voice caught, and he gasped. He put up his hand. “I’m okay.”
“Get her out of here,” Antosha told the Janzers.
She helped Pasha to his feet. “You’re a monster,” she said to Antosha as she pushed the Janzers away from them.
Should I forget about the kiss and cut Antosha now? she thought.
“Aha,” Audrey said, “vitals are normal. His body has been successfully fused with the Lorum synsuit.” The bot’s eye slit glowed, then dimmed.
“What have you done to me?” Pasha said.
“Made you more than transhuman,” Antosha said. A bot placed a bandage over Antosha’s nose and wiped the blood from his lips. Antosha pinched Pasha’s arm. “When you wear this synsuit, nothing can harm you. In time, you’ll realize you have the strength of a thousand Janzers and skin stronger than carbyne.”
“Then why didn’t you put it on yourself?” Oriana said.
“I’m not about to raid the most advanced military research complex this world has ever known.”
In the days that followed, Antosha worked with Pasha, Oriana, and Ruiner on the mission protocols, on the Lorum synsuit’s capabilities, and on Pasha’s abilities when he wore it, as he still did. During the last session, Pasha interrupted Antosha.
“I’m connected to the Lorum, and the Lorum is connected to me.”
Oriana wondered at the sound of his voice each time she heard it.
“That’s the point,” Antosha said.
“I can hear the Lorum.”
“What does it say?”
“It tells me all the time that it will protect me, and it asks about the treaty and the extremophiles.”
“Tell us what that means,” Oriana said to Antosha.
“It’s the Mission to Earth’s Core,” Ruiner said, “the mission delayed for this one.”
“The Lorum starves,” Pasha said. He held out his palm, and the Lorum synsuit reformed, rendering the insides of Planet Vigna, native for the Lorum, to a vacuum where extremophiles once lived. Then he shifted it to the Earth’s interior where a hypothesized pool of extremophiles swelled, glowing with radioactive hues. “We have the resources it requires for survival, you must let me go, let me retrieve the extremophiles for the Lorum, let me fulfill the treaty …”
Antosha overrode Pasha’s telepathy in the ZPF, forcing the organic, metallic substance back to Pasha’s hand and arm where the colors of the Lorum swirled wildly.
“First, you will complete the Timescape Mission,” Antosha said.
He activated a Granville sphere. The Vigna system and its three stars formed.
Pasha rushed for it and caressed the holograms. His metallic hand ran through them.
“Pasha,” Antosha said, “I promise you that if you retrieve the synthesis of the original Reassortment Strain, I will support the Mission to Earth’s Core, and when we find the extremophiles, you may deliver them to Vigna yourself.”
“We must act immediately. The Lorum will die.”
“The Lorum has survived for billions of Earth years. I think it can survive for a few more until we’re ready. I’ll speak no more about this.”
The gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow colorations swayed over Pasha’s body. He stepped away from Antosha and didn’t push the topic further.
More days passed, and with each, Oriana recognized her brother less. He took out Graka training bots with ease, sometimes
many at once; he lifted ten-thousand-kilogram boulders in Gubertiana; he swam down the Archimedes River from Volano City to Yeuron City and back in a day; he climbed the Great Gorges of Hillenthara, with the water rushing over him; he survived pulse launcher attacks; he walked through magma and over water.
He’d become more a god than transhuman, it seemed.
He stood with Oriana now upon her terrace.
She looked over at him. Was the Pasha she had developed with still here, or was he the Lorum reincarnated?
“How goes your research with Dr. Shrader?” Pasha said. She was used to his artificial voice by now and glad to be distracted from her traitorous musings.
“Not good. I’m afraid he remembers nothing of his life before the procedure, and it isn’t clear when, or if, he’ll ever recall what occurred at the end of the Quaternary.”
“Antosha knows how to get the information, he just isn’t doing it.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s the most skilled telepath in the commonwealth, talented enough to block the Lorum on Vigna from communication with the Lorum on Earth.”
“He created a z-wall?”
Pasha nodded and the colors on his skin turned and twisted. “Yes, far more sophisticated than the one we broke through in House Summerset. He’s found a way to split the Lorum’s consciousness from the ZPF, yet I can sense it trying to break through. One day, it just might.” Pasha held up his fist in front of his eyes, then opened and closed his fingers. “I’m not sure if Antosha truly understands what the Lorum is capable of; it’s like I can hear everything, more acutely than during development.”
“Can you help me?”
“I doubt it. This is a power with the ZPF I don’t fully control, not yet, though I suspect that when I do, the Western Hegemony’s defenses won’t be able to stop us.”
The bustle from candidates in the courtyard stole her attention. If they knew how fragile the condition of their commonwealth was, would they joke as they did? Would they be shadow apprentices by day and party by night, mock the unbid-for candidates sent to the Lower Level? Would they envy her and her twin brother’s special positioning in the RDD? She shook her head. So much had changed.