by Zen, Raeden
“Connor?” Pirro said. “What’s going on?”
The Janzers pulled the triggers, over and over and over.
And darts, darts filled with uficilin and sustenance, wisped into the nearest prisoners, primarily BP dissidents. The Janzers landed upon the islands, stepped off their rocketcycles, and unlatched the prisoners’ collars.
Without Marstone’s interference, Connor transmitted to the prisoners: Take their weapons and their rocketcycles and follow me to the entrance platform.
Connor stepped on the rocketcycle and flew to Pirro’s island, then helped him aboard. They circled the islands with the survivors and made pass after pass to the crescent-shaped platform at the prison’s entrance. Connor couldn’t free all the prisoners of war, not yet. But seven thousand two hundred thirty-three was a start.
After the last drop-off, he looked back.
The Janzers stood upon the towerlike islands where prisoners had once lived. They raised their pulse rifles, the tips glowing blue, pointed at one another—
“My boy,” Pirro said.
Connor turned. The prisoners, women with hair down past their waists and men with hair and beards as long as Connor’s, stood upon the platform, their mouths agape.
“You are your father’s son,” Pirro said. He looked like a walking skeleton with skin stretched over his bones and dark circles around his bloodshot eyes. Yet his voice was clear and strong.
“Now you need to decide which son you’re going to be.” Pirro put his hand on Connor’s shoulder. “Are you going to be Hans? Will you show a lesser foe mercy?” He inclined his head. “Or are you going to act like Zorian?”
“The Janzers aren’t blameless.”
“They have no more control over their consciousness than machines—”
“They set the eels on us—”
“You should’ve been patient, you should’ve listened to Nero.”
Connor lowered his head. The Janzers lowered their weapons. “Father gave us this chance,” Connor said, moving away from Pirro’s grasp. When Pirro twisted his lips, Connor continued, “Can’t you tell? The time has arrived, my friend.” He raised his arms the way his father did and balled his hands into fists. “We must strike the iron fist—”
“Not like this,” Pirro said.
Connor dropped his arms and turned.
Pirro shook his head and, speaking softly, said, “What would your mother think?”
Connor slapped him.
“You mock her memory.”
“No, my boy,” Pirro rubbed his cheek, “you do.”
Connor didn’t respond.
He bowed his head and telekinetically sent the rocketcycles back to the Janzers, who returned to the crescent platform and used drills shaped like heart-shaped boxes to remove their synsuits. When they finished, Connor sent them back to the islands in their dark bodysuits and recalled the rocketcycles.
“I’m not Zorian.” Connor lifted one of the Janzer’s drills. “I’m not Hans.” He pushed his forefinger through the bioluminescent falls beside the prison’s entrance, the only source of light in the area. He swiped the colorful bacteria in an S-shape upon his forehead.
“I’m Cornelius Selendia,” he leaned next to Pirro’s swollen ear, “and now I’m going to the great city.”
Pirro pulled back and bit his lower lip. He moved his head side to side. Connor couldn’t tell if it was pride in his expression, or fear.
“My friend, are you with me?”
“Do you remember what I told you when we first met?”
Connor did recall. “You said, ‘Call me Pirro. Pirro Koliner, at your command.’”
“To the end,” Pirro said.
Connor nodded, then turned to the thousands of BP who stood with him on the platform. Many were swiping the bioluminescent bacteria across their foreheads in an S-shape. He raised his voice. “Beyond these doors awaits the prison’s innards. There will be many more Janzer foes to come. I’ll do what I can, as I’ve done here. But if the chancellor should regain control, I will likely lose my hold over them.” He looked to Pirro, who blinked and moved his chin up and down. “I’m not going to lie to you.”
Connor paused, gaining strength from the hope he sensed within his people. “I’m leading us to the great city to bring an end to this forever war,” he said loudly. “We cannot use the transport system. We’re going to have to travel through the North.” The one region in the commonwealth where his father no longer recruited transhumans to the Front’s cause, the cities and villages with transhumans the most hostile to the Beimeni Polemon. Discreetly, Connor connected to his people’s consciousness. They’re with me, he thought. “We may all return to the gods,” Connor added, “in this, our final Polemon operation—”
“We’ll follow you!” one woman shouted. Her tunic looked like it’d been dragged through the sewer, her skin and hair no better. She knelt and placed her hand over her heart. Others voiced their agreement, and before long all the thousands and thousands of BP on the platform knelt, while others on the prison islands cheered. The chants echoed throughout the prehistoric cavern.
SEL-EN-DIA! SEL-EN-DIA!
SEL-EN-DIA! SEL-EN-DIA!
Connor looked out to the millions of towerlike islands in Farino Prison, then back to his army before him. Could they achieve the impossible? Might they end the war? Yes, Connor thought, they could, and he felt a swell of pride unlike anything he’d ever known. The surge inside him extinguished when he thought about the journey ahead of them, a trek through the North. He felt a shiver down his back. With more than twenty million Beimenians in Farino City, Xerean City, and all the villages between and beyond to Phanes, the Janzers weren’t the only threat.
Connor leaned over the side of the platform, looking down toward the eels. Their pulses remained dim.
“What’s your plan?” Pirro said after the chants softened. He pushed his head toward the islands where the Janzers stood in bodysuits, hands on their hips. “You have to assume that they sent distress signals to their comrades,” and he turned toward the carbyne entrance, “my guess is you have no less than fifteen thousand Janzers on the other side.”
“Then we’ll have fifteen thousand more POWs on our side.” Connor closed his eyes, focusing his energy in the ZPF. He pushed his consciousness outward into the prison. “Far more than that.” He opened his eyes slowly. He’d gone too far to turn back now. He reached for the Janzers’ consciousnesses within the ZPF. “I still have control.”
“Something must be wrong with the chancellor,” Pirro said.
“He’s … dead.”
“My boy, how do you know?”
“I can sense it. Marstone is awaiting new orders from a new chancellor, as are the Janzers.”
“Then Antosha’s coup is underway. Time is against us.”
Connor agreed. He forced the Janzers on the other side of the entrance to stand aside, then he telekinetically opened the massive entrance from the center. The innards of Farino Prison opened before him. He stepped forward, cautiously.
The power was still out; the only light in the prison shone from bioluminescent bacteria in the streams and from glowworms upon the stalactites. He’d forgotten how vast and far the prison stretched. Granite pillars, wide at the top and the bottom with carbyne watchtowers built in the center, stretched so far those upon the horizon looked like insects. Tens of thousands of Janzers stood and rode upon rocketcycles with their pulse rifles aimed at the entrance, at Connor.
He rolled his hand through the air, sending quantum waves with his consciousness through the ZPF. The Janzers dropped their weaponry and dismounted from their rocketcycles. Connor forced them forward and commanded them to remove their synsuits, carry their brethren to the islands, and set free the POWs. He forced the Janzers to reattach the synsuits to the BP.
The Janzers responded with the efficiency and swiftness Connor knew well. He soon stood ahead of a robust BP army all clad in synthetic diamond armor that made them look like Janzers. They ma
rched around the granite pillars and watchtowers—disabled from the electrical outage—and along carbyne bridges built over streams. Along the way, they disarmed and stripped the armor from all the Janzers they encountered and liberated more prisoners from the islands.
Finally, they arrived at Carina Falls and Aza Bridge, which led into the passages and caverns beneath the city center.
“Farino City, my boy,” Pirro said when he and Connor stepped upon the bridge. “The achromatic city.” The city stood one hundred meters above them, atop a man-made granite plateau, while Beimeni River rushed two hundred meters below. Far from them, water from the commonwealth’s coolant system streaked down the arced granite cliffs. The falls sent steam rising.
Connor looked up. The Granville sky did not function, but if it did, it would appear bright white with hues of gray, much like the rest of the city above them. Instead, emergency white light within tubes along the sides of buildings provided the city with light. It looked just as hideous as when Connor had arrived, alloy and carbyne spires angled and connected by plastic skywalks, intercut by transport tubes, shrouded in endless mist from waterfalls that stretched for kilometer after kilometer.
The BP advanced across the two-kilometer bridge to a polished gemstone promenade. They arrived at the two-way ramp—which led to the city above and the river below—and descended through a tunnel wide enough to fit a hundred of them side by side. They met less resistance than Connor feared, for the Farinoans they passed parted like sand for a snake. Connor sensed their confusion in the ZPF but didn’t speak to any of them; the longer the Northerners believed he and his army were Janzers, the better the chances he could invade Phanes undetected.
Finally, they arrived at the lowermost level and to the white sands of Orion Wharf. Connor knew that Beimeni River flowed from here to Xerean City and to Phanes Lake and Beimeni City. He turned. Pirro stood beside him, and behind them, the BP army.
We will march over the water, he sent to them. He sensed their trepidation in the ZPF. He connected to the field in the way he remembered Murray had when they escaped from Beimeni City, earlier this year. He took a cautious step toward the birch wood wharf.
Pirro grabbed his forearm. “Are you sure about this, my boy?”
Connor did not at first respond. He wanted to tell Pirro he wasn’t sure he could adjust matter on the quantum level—superimpose solid matter over a liquid river—for the one-thousand-five hundred-kilometer trek to Beimeni City; that he wasn’t confident in his army’s stamina and capabilities given their long and grueling prison sentence; that he didn’t fear entering Santonian Village, the largest and likely best-protected village along their journey, but didn’t look forward to entering Xerean City, whose minister’s disdain for the BP was well known; that he didn’t know if he could handle a quantum field generated by Antosha Zereoue, or conquer Lady Isabelle the way Hans could not. Instead, he calmed his nerves and emotions the way Aera taught him, and said: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Pirro grinned and released Connor’s arm.
Connor turned and made his way to the water. He tapped his toe to the river, cautiously yet confidently. Beimeni River felt as solid and sturdy as granite.
He took more steps and, without looking back, hand-signaled his army. Fifty thousand BP flooded out of the earth, trudged through the white sands, and marched over the wooden wharf and solidified river top behind Cornelius Selendia to war.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Verena Iglehart
Hydra Hollow
300 meters deep
Foolish child, brave child, Verena thought. Her heart thumped faster than it had during the attack.
Jocelyn slithered up a trench in the Hollow’s cliffs, less than a meter wide and lined with jagged limestone. Verena stealthily moved out of their nook and crawled through the trench with her. She could hear the terror birds chewing bodies, and every time they shrieked she thought she might go mad. She used her forefingers to clog her ears and peeked through a slit in the trench. Some Janzers stormed the Hollow’s tunnels, while others returned with commonwealth weapons and sacks full of BP benaris, goods, and supplies, all strewn along the limestone ground for Lady Isabelle’s review.
Verena debated her next move. Her and Jocelyn’s time was limited. She’d never taken the trench where Jocelyn had escaped. She didn’t know the way. She shook when the terror birds screamed, but it was when their screams subsided she knew the end would arrive—the Janzers would destroy the BP stronghold—and she and Jocelyn would be entombed forever, along with any other survivors, though Verena saw none.
She squeezed through the trench and slipped, and her hand pushed into a sharp limestone spike. Its bloodied tip poked through her hand. She bit her other fist. Her heart raced, and sweat poured down her face. She felt light-headed. She grasped her wounded hand and removed it from the stone, wincing, then leaned against the limestone wall and breathed heavily.
Her blood streamed down a slit in the trench.
Reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.
Verena ripped off a piece of her military fatigues and wrapped her hand.
Reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.
The terror bird’s cry felled Verena, forcing her to cover her ears, and her blood rushed down her hair, face, and neck.
Reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.
The prehistoric bird found a drop of blood on the stone below. Its comrades joined it in the search for the source. The birds pecked here and there and looked up and at each other. They wailed and squealed, that sound that vibrated Verena’s bones. She wanted to scream. Tears streaked down her face, the pain from her hand presently replaced by a severe headache.
Verena glimpsed Jocelyn’s lilac eyes, so full of innocence and bravery and brilliance, eyes that gave Verena strength. She mouthed, Get down.
Jocelyn crouched.
A Janzer division moved in their attack formation, rotating with their backs toward each other to where the birds had swarmed. The terror birds fled and returned to the transhuman carcasses they’d been enjoying.
Verena squirmed along the trench.
A pulse blast shattered the rock. Shards of stone fell upon her. She covered her head and scrabbled faster.
“I have movement,” she heard a Janzer say, “and I have a visual.”
“Kill them,” Lady Isabelle said.
Verena hunched and crawled up the trench to where Jocelyn hid. Pulse blasts landed all around her, and the terror birds howled. She threw herself over Jocelyn, into the dark limestone nook. When Verena raised her head, she realized the dark nook wasn’t an enclosure at all, but a passageway, one unfamiliar to her.
“Take them down!” Isabelle said.
Verena peeked through a slit in the cliffs. The Janzers were arranging a pulse launcher on a tripod. She grabbed Jocelyn’s hand and pulled her into the passageway.
The wires fired into the limestone. The pulse blast struck the stalactites, and the passageway collapsed.
Verena and Jocelyn choked from the dust.
Darkness consumed them.
“We have to keep moving,” Verena said. “They’ll conduct a search, then collapse Hydra Hollow.”
Jocelyn sobbed. “Hey,” Verena said, “hey, all will be right.” She hugged the poor child, who held her so tightly Verena had trouble breathing. “I told you I’d never let anything happen to you.”
Jocelyn pushed her away. “It’s … not … that.” She hiccupped and her breath gave out between sobs. “What that … lady … did to Jerry … what those … things … did … to … the Polemon … they’re gone, aren’t they? Gone to the gods?”
“Yes, they’re with the gods, and I’m sorry about Jeremiah, and I’m sorry about your family and the commandos. I’m so sorry you had to witness all of that, and I’m sorry we didn’t protect you—”
“I don’t blame you.” Jocelyn sniffled and wiped her nose. “What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know … but I’ll take care of you.” Verena felt along the wall
for the indentations that would let her know how to traverse the passageway, but she didn’t feel them. The wall was smooth and dry, the air stale.
“Sweet pie, do you know this passage?” Verena said.
“Does a Polemon kill Janzers?”
They moved without light, Verena holding Jocelyn’s hand, Jocelyn feeling her way through the passageways, tunnels darker than the void. A decay tinged the air that Verena had last smelled in Portage City, distinguishable for the bitter taste it triggered upon her tongue, though not as bitter as Verena’s mood, for she couldn’t stop thinking how she could’ve led the remaining commandos out of the Hollow days ago. She could’ve saved thousands more lives.
Why oh why wouldn’t Jeremiah just leave and allow the remaining Polemon to exit? she thought.
The cloth over Verena’s injured hand was drenched with her blood, and though she held it across her chest, the current roped down her arm. She needed a cache and she needed it soon, for uficilin could heal, but it couldn’t revive.
Jocelyn told her when to turn.
Verena felt a swell of resentment for Jeremiah, stealing this child’s, and many others’, innocence in the name of survival, in the name of a war they couldn’t understand. And here she was, using the child the way Jeremiah did, for her selfish purpose, for her escape, for her survival.
The thought made her cry, sounds that shattered the silence in the tunnel.
“What’s wrong?” Jocelyn said. “Is it your hand?”
“No, sweet pie, it’s not my hand.”
“Is it the dark? I was afraid of the dark once. Not anymore.”
“No, it’s not the dark.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s nothing, sweet pie, I’m okay. Let’s keep moving.”
Verena knew that word of Jeremiah’s death would travel far and quickly. She assumed Chancellor Masimovian, while not eager to trumpet the death of his brother-in-development, who was already officially deceased, would seek swift justice upon BP loyalists, including herself and Jocelyn.