by Zen, Raeden
Twenty-four Janzers stood upon the lowest stairs, their Reassortment batons inactivated, while a Janzer whose synsuit glowed midnight blue stood alone at the highest point.
“Clothes off!” the blue Janzer said.
Endless rows of exiles, men and women alike, soon stood nude. Brody noted that many more had skin much lighter than his.
The bots collected the clothing.
“March!”
At first, no one moved.
Then Brody heard a hum, like the moans of many dying animals, and the Janzers disappeared through the walls. The walls closed, and the exiles forced Brody up the stairs and to the left. Its distance astonished him, the horizon as far as Mars, it seemed. He passed marble pillars topped with lavender, a maroon Granville sun broken by tinted clouds. He drank in these features with his eyes, ignoring the footsteps of those beside him, ignoring the cries and fire, and the smell of burning coals and flesh.
Magma crawled along the back of the cavern, slow and bright. Brody moved up and across, up and across, up and up and up. At the sixth platform, he glanced over the side and understood the depth of the stairs: he was, in fact, moving over a repetitious staircase, the lowest portions filling with magma.
Luke fell, and Brody lifted him. Don’t stop, he mouthed. If you stop, you die. Whether Luke heard him, Brody couldn’t tell, but he got up.
They climbed up, up, up and across, up, up, up and across.
More exiles were forced upon the stairs. Brody suspected there must be millions. They panted and hurled and collapsed and died, buried in igneous rock.
How can I lead these people when I can’t lead myself? Brody thought. How can I organize resistance when none can hear me?
If only he still had his neurochip, he could access the ZPF—then he could lead them to freedom.
At the eighteenth incline, sweat rolled down Brody’s cheeks, and his legs burned, his mouth overcome with an unquenchable thirst. His vision shifted. He found himself in Beimeni City, sipping champagne with Nero, Verena, Chancellor Masimovian, and Lady Isabelle in the Fountain of Youth. Together, the old friends raised their glasses amid the sounds of lovemaking and falling water, and the flowery scents of roses mixed with citrus and the spicy vapors from the Fountain’s pedestals.
“Serve Beimeni,” Lady Isabelle said.
“Live forever,” Brody and his strike team replied.
Isabelle, Masimovian, Nero, and Verena disappeared, replaced by exiles, stairs, stench, and, not far below, rising magma.
Brody spit phlegm, dark and bloody.
A wave of exiles pushed against him. The magma drew nearer, the moans louder.
He pulled Luke to him before the exiles could trample them. They climbed.
At the twenty-eighth incline, perspiration mixed with soot upon their bodies, the air unbearable, hot and misty, tinged with smoke, sweat, puke, excrement.
At the fortieth incline, Brody moved up the marble stairs outside the Fountain Temple with Damy in hand, golden silk across their bodies, revealing their left breasts.
The rising heat from the magma seared his hair and skin, forcing Brody away from the Fountain Temple and Fountain Square and Damy.
Exiles dropped all over the stairs. The magma swept them up like refuse. Brody all but carried Luke now, his teammate’s eyes closed to slits, snot dripping from his nose.
At the fifty-second incline, Brody dodged bodies strewn over the stairs, exiles exhausted and asleep, in comas, or dead, too many to count.
He wasn’t sure if Luke was breathing, and he slapped his face.
Stay awake, friend.
The noise from Luke’s mouth sounded like a dying bear.
If we stop, we die.
At the sixty-first incline, a scenario looped in Brody’s mind in which he avoided hands and feet and fingers and hair and death and magma, and he and Luke ascended to the precipice and took out the Janzers, rushed the elevators, commandeered a ship across the Infernus Sea, and took the elevators to Beimeni City, where he exposed Chancellor Masimovian and, with the strike teams behind him, led a contingent to the Lower Level to free the exiles.
At the seventy-third incline, Brody delayed his plan, for he could barely breathe.
He moved over the stairs with Luke strewn over his shoulders.
A Janzer’s voice blared over the speakers, though Brody couldn’t hear his words, or anything, not the drops of sweat that fell from his arms and hands and legs or the hissing, burning rock, or the death cries, or the flare from the fires when a body combusted.
If we stop, we die.
At the seventy-seventh incline, Brody glanced up at the stairs’ reflection, the unending journey. He dropped his head, and the unfamiliar rush of mortality swept over him, similar to what he had felt on Vigna and in Farino Prison.
If we stop, we die.
Brody couldn’t have said when the magma ended its rise, but suddenly a mist consumed him. The magma cooled, frozen by water that flowed down the center of the stairs.
The few survivors dropped and cried and kissed the stairs.
Ash rained on them.
Brody set Luke near a pillar, swiveled at the landing, and with all his strength tackled a Janzer, who flipped Brody on his back.
Brody’s breath gave out, more so after the Janzer crashed his boot on his chest.
The Janzer lifted Brody, who grasped the Janzer’s helmet.
I won’t give in, Brody mouthed, not speaking, and smiled.
He spat onto the visor. The Janzer threw Brody into one of the pillars along the staircase. Brody oozed down it like a slug.
The Janzer strutted toward a newly existent exit tunnel. His comrades seemed amused by the encounter.
Brody rose and gasped. He lunged for the Janzer’s ankles. The Janzer wrapped a hand around his neck.
I’ll kill you, Brody mouthed, kill you!
The Janzer dropped Brody on his knees. He choked as loud as any transhuman before death.
I’ll free them all.
Saliva and mucous flew from Brody’s mouth. The Janzer let go. Brody leaned over and puked.
The Janzer struck Brody with a dart. He sank to the ground. The last words he heard were, “Take him to the Controller.”
The Impossible Stairs shrank in his vision and disappeared.
Brody screamed and awoke. Gasping, he wiped his face. He lay on his cot in his unit in Region 7.
This isn’t going as you expected, is it? Damy’s voice. Her likeness was illuminated in the wall.
The plan proceeds, or so Luke tells me. Brody’s ability to speak had returned after his first Vitex dosage, but he didn’t dare do so, unless he was with Luke on the factory floor where the noise provided sufficient cover. Even then, they rarely managed a full conversation. They had been on the factory floor when Luke had told him, I can get you out.
As much as Brody hung on those words, he wasn’t ready to trust them, or his own strength.
Brody’s hair had grown back. It splayed messily around his head and face, mixed with sweat that dripped down his beard. He wiped his face and head and neck and chest with his clothes. Luke knows the way.
Luke can’t even make it around the Impossible Stairs more than ten or fifteen floors without gagging. How could he ascend from Region 7 to Beimeni?
I don’t know! I’ll carry him.
She disappeared.
Sitting in the dark, Brody heard a majestic melody, a song played on his floor every fifth day, a few hours after final shift, a few hours prior to lockdown. He opened his door’s vent, spied Tyler’s maroon light. Brody didn’t care. He closed his eyes, and enjoyed the tune, the harmony of harps, bassoons, cellos, violins, and timpani, instruments he’d once heard played in the Fountain Temple and Artemis Square, a lifetime ago.
He closed the vent, undressed, and lay on his cot.
The Controller had questioned him after the last two runs over the Impossible Stairs, in which hundreds of thousands of exiles collapsed and died, cremated and buried.
“
I don’t know how you’re doing this,” the Controller said, “but if not tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that, you’ll follow the rest to your grave, and I’ll be sure to piss over your ashes before we spread them over Phanes Lake.”
Brody unscrewed the pipes to his sink and found his Vitex dropper. He dabbed one drop beneath each eyelid in the dark. Without it, he’d be dead by now. Even with it, there was no telling how much longer he could survive.
“Hey, bub, what’s the word?” Luke said. He waited for Brody near check-in.
Millions of new faces lined up with them, the largest infusion of new blood Brody had seen since his arrival. They appeared youthful, innocent, naive, failed candidates from the Harpoons, most likely. Most were light-skinned. Brody nodded. “My children, my twins may be among them.”
“Down here,” Luke said, “you sure?”
Brody assumed the Summersets would treat the twins with E. pigmentation to aid their valuations with the Navitan traders. He scanned all the entrants with bronze skin—to no avail. “I don’t know what they look like. I don’t know who they are anymore.”
This was the worst part, Oriana’s and Pasha’s unknown fate. Brody thought about the first and only time he had seen his babies in the Natal Level in Palaestra’s Medical Center, where Damy had given birth to Oriana and Pasha, where they had waved their piglet fingers and toes, where he and Damy had embraced during the viewing.
The Summersets were an old house, successful in garnering bids for their candidates in the Harpoon Auction, but Lady Parthenia’s temper was well-known. Could Oriana and Pasha handle her hard hand? Had they received bids? If so, could Nero protect them?
Emotionless exiles filed into the lines near Brody and Luke. The new entrants filed in closer to the obsidian square.
“I’m ready,” Brody said, “but I have conditions.”
Luke nodded.
Turbines initiated, and it sounded like a shuttle was about to lift off. Hot air blew over the exiles. Many collapsed. Bots cleared the bodies while the Janzers found replacements. “We can’t leave them here,” Brody said. “We must release them all.”
“We can’t—”
“I won’t go without them.”
A Janzer moved closer to them. Brody put his shirt over his mouth and nose, and Luke did the same.
“You would sentence them all to death?” Brody said.
The Janzer turned away, drawn by a fight between three exiles on the end of a line.
“We’ll get our chance, bub, and when we do, you mustn’t fear, you mustn’t think, you mustn’t hesitate—”
“I won’t turn my back on these people, never again.”
ZPF Impulse Wave: Isabelle Lutetia
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
Lady Isabelle, General Norrod, and Lieutenant Arnao led a column of twenty-five thousand Janzers over Artemis Square, the first deployment of the two hundred fifty thousand new servants ordered by Chancellor Masimovian. These would remain in the city for its protection.
Isabelle hand-signaled the Janzers, and they quickened their pace, their boots singing on the marble as they approached North Archway. Janzer snipers hung poised on the roofs and domes of the First and Second Wards. Aristocrats stood upon their balconies and terraces, half-nude or in golden tunics, their right hands lifted in salutes. Smoke billowed from eatery booths on the cobblestone paths between the buildings, where artisans displayed holographic works. Tourists tossed golden pebbles along the square’s edges, around the fountains and white palm trees—a wish for eternal life.
General Norrod halted and saluted the likeness of Chancellor Masimovian, who appeared above a Granville sphere at the center of North Archway. He stood over the balustrade of the third-highest terrace in his tower flanked by two Janzers. Chants of “Masimo!” and “Serve Beimeni, live forever!” broke out until the chancellor grinned and called for decorum. The emeralds and sapphires on his tunic glinted in the holographic light, while his maroon cape fluttered in the gentle winds.
The bastard’s on his Pleasure Level, Isabelle thought. He’s going to fuck those maidens while I’m down here?
She offered him the kindest smile she could conjure as she fiddled with her rings.
“My people …” Atticus’s voice boomed over Artemis Square, and all the squares in all the territories of the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni, “… we gather today to welcome the newest servants of the chancellor into our great city. Let us take heart in their dedication to our freedom and their service to the commonwealth. All hail!”
“All hail!” the Janzers repeated as a chorus.
“Give me your pledge!”
When the newborn Janzers finished dictating the Pledge to Beimeni, those citizens who’d gathered on the square, in the alleyways, in the gambling halls, and in the wards cheered and sang. Pockets of smoke lifted from grills, and the Janzers dispersed into their district coverage areas within the city.
General Norrod and Lieutenant Arnao returned to the Department of Peace while Isabelle strutted past the open cedar doors and beneath the widest arc at the center of North Archway. She made her way around Masimovian Center’s concentric, polychromatic, entertainment and gambling buildings, and dashed into Masimovian Tower. She entered the Pleasure Level, an open space bathed with Phanes’s sun, filled with essences of potpourri that burned from a hundred pedestals.
The chancellor either didn’t see her or he did and ignored her. His bare feet pushed aside burgundy rose petals along the white marble. He stepped down into the steaming spa lined with freesia and unhooked the golden chains that held together his cape. It slipped off his body. His maidens, nude but for the pearl lace draped from their heads to their breasts, surrounded him. They pulled off his tunic, singing softly.
The closer Isabelle drew to the spa, the stronger was her desire to unsheathe her sword and be rid of them all. One of the maidens spotted her. She covered her nipples with her hands. The others turned, and Atticus opened his eyes.
“I hope I’m interrupting,” Isabelle said. “Leave!”
The maidens cooed and swam out of the spa. Steamy water dripped down their bodies as they scurried into Atticus’s bedchamber. A keeper bot labeled FARRIS tended to the potpourri, refilling the pots, lighting others.
“Farris,” Atticus said, twisting his lips, “my robes, if you will—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Isabelle said.
She slipped out of her cape and bodysuit, letting them fall to the ground.
With the chancellor roused, she knew this wouldn’t be difficult. She slipped into the spa and weaved her way to him. She squeezed Atticus’s biceps, and his manhood beneath the water. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, and in his ear, she said, “I once wore the pearls of the maidens.” She kissed his neck.
“Seems you were destined for a greater path,” he said, pulling her to him, “a loftier path, a path to my tower and all its riches.”
“Let us put aside the quarrels for today. I bring news sure to warm your heart, more so than the potions from Natura or any of those … maidens.”
He massaged her breasts and kissed her.
She slid her lips to his other ear. “Zorian lied to us, Atticus. He knew the locations of both BP strongholds all along.” She licked his neck and rubbed her cheek next to his, and in his other ear, she said, “I have their western location. We’re adjusting our contingency plans with new prehistoric additions.”
“Oh,” Atticus groaned, “how I love surprises.”
ZPF Impulse Wave: Antosha Zereoue
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
“Was I wrong to reinstate you to the RDD?” Masimovian said. He sauntered beside Antosha through the Gallery of the Chancellor, beside the statues representing the thirty territories of the Great Commonwealth.
Antosha suppressed a smirk. The chancellor had contacte
d him through Marstone, less hostile about Pasha Barão’s coma than what he called Antosha’s “reckless use of commonwealth resources.” He was sounding more like Prime Minister Decca by the day, and Antosha wondered whether he should delay no more, put an end to Masimovian and Decca and all the traitorous sheep.
Yet, if he acted too soon and without the people’s blessing, an underground commonwealth of over three hundred million could descend into chaos; too late, and he risked the chancellor’s wrath. His strategy required a delicate balance.
“Gods no,” he said, stopping in front of the statue representing Phanes, a chiseled rendition of the Fountain of Youth. “The Lorum technology is unpredictable, but I shall tame it. Once I’ve perfected the synsuit, I’ll apply the technology to Sky City’s terradome, its ground, and a transport tunnel to Beimeni, and our return to the surface will be finished—”
“We’ve been without a terradome resistant to Reassortment for centuries and you think an alien genome and a bit of luck is all that’s necessary to secure our future upon the surface?” Masimovian looked down and shook his head, then raised his head, and with pouty lips, he said, “I’ve taken great risk with your trials and offered great coin to achieve conversion, and you lied, you—”
“I stand by my word, Chancellor. This conversion is for your benefit—”
“Don’t.”
Antosha noted the sweat over the chancellor’s brow, the twitch in his cheeks. He softened his tone. “Sky City is but a temporary solution,” he said. “For total victory, you will require a cure, or Reassortment’s destruction, and neither is possible without the organism’s synthesis, its origin. An ill-equipped strike team will not succeed in the Western Hegemony’s premier synbio laboratory.”
“Neither will a strike team comprised of neophytes.” Masimovian drifted to a liqueur cart, his robes dragging across the marble floor. He gestured to offer Antosha a drink. Antosha refused.
Masimovian took up a pipe from the cart and lit it. “This obsession with Barão’s kin will be your undoing.” He put his massive arm around Antosha, the gemstones on his armlets digging into the supreme scientist’s skin.