by Zen, Raeden
Antosha swayed into view. He eased beside her. A large pendant hung around his neck, shimmering over his liquid silver synsuit. Antosha tsked when Oriana struggled. “Now, now,” he rubbed the blood that trickled down her hand and spread it between his thumb and forefinger, “look at the mess you’ve made.”
She bristled and struggled, and the clamps dug further into her wrists. Her blood flow quickened. Medical bots rushed to Dorothy’s aid, holding Oriana to the gurney, adjusting holographic levers above the workstation from the side on which uficilin and tranquilizer descended from suspended bags into Oriana’s arm.
Antosha wiped his face and hands with a wet towel.
Oriana’s wrists healed. She calmed and eased onto her pillow, holding back tears. Her hair lay matted over her face. A dribble of snot ran over her lips. Dorothy wiped Oriana’s wrists and mouth and set her hair behind her head.
“How’d I end up here?” she said. “I was just … in the jungle … on the beach … with Pasha … with—” Nathan, she didn’t say, too sad and unsure to speak his name, too angry at the Lorum, and Antosha. “The Lorum re-formed into a transhuman,” she added, “and it killed Pasha, and it killed me—”
“You’ve been dreaming,” Antosha said, overly friendly as far as Oriana was concerned. “Though that’s understandable with all you’ve been through.” A bot handed him a wet towel to clean Oriana’s blood from his fingers. “You missed the big events. Your father’s friends have had a bit of fun over the last twenty days.”
Her father’s friends? Twenty days? How long had she been out?
“What’s going on?” she said.
“The BP took down most of the commonwealth’s supply lines, cut off its electricity.” Antosha looked to Dorothy, and the bot lowered its head as if in mourning. “Well, lucky for you, Area 55 has a separate power source, and even more fortuitous for you, Mintel and Dahlia conducted a search and rescue for their captain.”
“Ruiner!” Oriana said. Suddenly she remembered it all, the attack in the Voltaire, Dr. Shrader, Hengill, her arctic foxes, Triple Drop Cave, Cryo Room. “I didn’t mean to …”
“Kill the Legend?” Antosha said. “Gods no, but this treasonous act of violence—”
“You did something to him! He thought my father killed—”
“I know it’s hard to admit your father’s follies, his obsession with advancement, and those he killed along his way to the top.” Antosha rubbed the back of his hand over Oriana’s sweaty head, and she cringed. “Poor thing, I suspect it’s your blindness to the truth that holds you back in the zeropoint field. You’ve only just begun to understand what you’re capable of, and I look forward to mentoring you further.”
“I’d die before I’d work again with you.”
“Ah, perhaps so, but then you’d miss your brother.” Oriana sat taller. She scanned the room.
“Would you like to see him?”
When Oriana didn’t respond, he added, “I assumed you would.”
He smiled and said something to Dorothy that Oriana couldn’t hear. Dorothy ordered the other medical bots to detach the workstation, and they removed the tubes and wires from her body, then threw a fur blanket over her. Dorothy pulled a bar from beneath the hovering gurney and pushed Oriana through the room. Antosha meandered beside her, his hand on its edge.
He tapped his forefingers as he would upon his violin’s neck.
They moved down a cold hall, through an archway.
NIGHTINGALE FOREST
Oriana shivered.
Ruiner had told stories about Nightingale Forest and the spirits that wandered through it. She never believed him, but now as she entered, she did feel different. White rose petals lay upon the ground. White tree trunks extended to the icy ceiling. Branches arched together and intertwined to form a gnarled canopy. Was it something foreign? Something in the minty air? Or was it her hatred for Antosha manifesting this out-of-body sensation, like leaves grazing her neck?
She grew gooseflesh.
She heard laughter, and several scientists emerged, as if from a parallel universe. A tall, handsome man held the hand of a woman with curly hair that bounced upon her fur-lined lab coat.
“Hullo,” Oriana said. They floated past her, smelling like peppermint, as if free of cares and not part of her world. She wished she could join them. Antosha glanced at her and grinned but said nothing, while Dorothy’s eye slit glowed bright, then dimmed.
“Yes,” Dorothy said, “did you need anything, Madam Champion?”
“No … I thought …”
“Don’t mind the ghosts of Boreas,” Antosha said, “and they won’t mind you.”
Oriana looked back. The scientists were gone. She shook her head, regretting having spoken to Antosha at all, though she was content to cooperate, for he was taking her to see Pasha. She didn’t trust him, but the fact remained that the commonwealth held her loved ones captive only because the chancellor believed them traitorous. Oriana would meet with Chancellor Masimovian and show him the truth.
They passed through the forest and entered Changhsingian Station, empty but for a gibbous moon that loomed in the Granville dusk, and Oriana realized that Antosha meant to take her away from Boreas.
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
The transport eased into Tortonia Station, and Dorothy pushed Oriana through the exit. When scientists streamed past Antosha and the Janzers, they bowed.
What’s going on? Oriana thought. Why is he so kind to me, and why do the Janzers listen to his commands, and why do they treat him like he’s the—
“Welcome, Chancellor,” said a medical bot labeled DENNIS.
“Chancellor-designate,” Antosha corrected, “but thank you.”
Oriana stared at the pendant on Antosha’s neck. No, she thought, it couldn’t be.
“You seem troubled, my dear.” Antosha tapped his fingers along the edge of her gurney. “Speak your mind. I don’t seek harm to you. On the contrary—”
“Where’s Chancellor Masimovian?”
Dorothy’s eye slit dimmed.
“A tragic end for our dear leader,” Antosha said, “gunned down by the BP at the Autumn Gala.” He rubbed his chin. “You have been out for some time, haven’t you? This must all be very shocking.”
Dorothy stopped pushing Oriana at Antosha’s command.
He leaned over her bed.
“Your father’s friends are cunning, like you, but where my predecessor failed, I will not.”
“You, you …” Oriana said.
“Chancellor Masimovian knew for decades the fever festered beneath the surface. The disease, easy to detect, difficult to extinguish, soon spread like gangrene, and the smell, the rot engulfed what was once the Great Commonwealth.” Antosha straightened and nodded to Dorothy, who pushed the gurney forward slowly. “My rule shall be superior in all dimensions. Where my predecessor put off open war with the BP, I will not. I will see to its utter and complete destruction.”
Oriana had never heard of the BP, now repeatedly mentioned by Antosha. Nor did she understand why it would’ve harmed the chancellor. “You killed him,” she said.
Antosha snapped his head toward her. “Watch your tongue, young fool. Everyone knows I loved the chancellor as a son loves a father. As your chancellor, I’ll ignore your traitorous comment and your desperate plea for attention.”
“You’re …” Oriana had no words. She was utterly unprepared for this.
“In this time of mourning, in this time of great rebuilding, I shall hold the people to my bosom, and traitorous wenches like you and traitorous bastards like your father will fall in line.”
She looked up. “What about my father? Where does he fit in your new commonwealth?”
Antosha sneered and didn’t offer a response.
Father lives, she thought, and Antosha doesn’t have him.
“What about Nero? What about Nathan, Pasha? Are we still going to see him?”
Antosha raised the edge
s of his lips. His nose twitched, but he didn’t speak.
They reached Medical Center One. The glass doors parted.
Dorothy pushed Oriana through carbyne corridors that reeked like chlorine. They passed more medical bots that bowed to Antosha and greeted him as chancellor, until they arrived at the medical bays. At the back of an enormous room, surrounded by bots and a Janzer division, attached to hundreds of wires and tubes, Pasha lay on a suspended gurney.
He was unconscious, though the vitals, visible above three workstations, indicated he lived.
Next to her twin brother stood Dr. Kole Shrader!
She turned to Antosha. “Shrader’s alive? How? What’ve you done to him?”
“Behold, the Legend fulfilled,” Antosha said. He bowed deeply.
Shrader shifted the tubes around Pasha but did not say a word.
“Man’s metamorphosis to Homo transition took less than a century,” Antosha said. “From our superior strength and enhanced regenerative capabilities to our mind-body-cosmos interface and communications over the zeropoint field, the Marstone overseer, our present capabilities far outstretch those of Homo sapiens, mere mortals.”
He paused. Oriana’s stomach felt queasier by the minute. “What if we could shed the parts of our being that make us delicate and prone to weakness,” he continued, “even in transhuman form, and alter our consciousness to an even higher level?”
“Then we truly wouldn’t be human at all,” Oriana said. Antosha had her gaze now, but all she was thinking about was Pasha—and Dr. Shrader. How was he here? What was he doing to her brother?
Antosha grinned. “Ah, yes, you and the doctor performed magnificently.” Dorothy wiped the sweat that trickled down Oriana’s face.
Antosha exhaled and looked upon Granville panels that lined the wall near them. “We sent your father to Vigna in our gambit with perfection, and he resolved the chancellor’s Warning when he returned with the Lorum orb. This you know.”
Oriana agreed. “My father also enacted an agreement, a treaty, and the true chancellor decreed the treaty active with his Mission to Earth’s Core, a mission you prevented when you reassigned the Holcombe Strike Team—”
“I cannot be held responsible for all your father’s mistakes, can I? What you don’t know is that I’ve been working on a maximal, master genome, a genome you helped me to complete.”
Oriana crumpled her brow.
Antosha rendered images of the molecular structures of Homo transition next to Homo sapiens. Then he rendered the raw Reassortment Strain’s genome and placed it across from the Lorum’s.
“Gods,” Oriana said.
“Oh, my dear, gods is right. Humans, transhumans, Before Reassortment, believed that in order to end their Second Hundred Years’ War they would evolve further, evolve completely, evolve into posthuman, Homo evolutis, the penultimate end of our evolutionary chain, the end made possible by the maximal genome.
“Though the Western Hegemony didn’t know it, couldn’t know it, the Lorum, an impregnable living liquid metal with a superior quantum connection to the cosmos, was always their missing link in the Reassortment Strain.”
“Why speed the evolutionary processes?”
“You don’t need to fight a war over asteroid mines or clean water or viable land if you don’t need air to breathe, if you don’t need sustenance to live, if you don’t need to build shelter or bridges to connect peoples and landmasses. With a mere thought, you could travel thousands of light-years across the galaxy.
“With mere thoughts, you could be full of food and water, flood the body with warmth or hormones, pleasure or pain, and be content.”
“But the strain killed everyone instead.” Oriana looked at Shrader, then Antosha. “He stole the data from me, that means you have it, that means you can cure—”
“The only cure for Reassortment is rapid evolution and managed natural selection. Those who survive exposure to the strain shall form a new society upon the surface—”
Oriana bared her teeth. “You are a monster.”
Antosha tsked. “Traitorous words have never harmed me, even from your venomous tongue.” He leaned closer to her. His mountainous scent sickened her. “I’m logical, realistic—”
“Everyone might die, just like during the Death Wave! You said you’d find a cure!”
“No,” Antosha said, softly, intensely, “you’re mistaken about Reassortment, Shrader, and much else.”
Antosha backed away from Oriana and orbited her gurney, glaring at her. “When the League of Scientists failed to discover the maximal genome, they shifted the research on Reassortment to weaponize it with the CRISPR system. Before the Eastern Hegemony infiltrator destroyed Hengill Laboratory, Shrader’s plan was to treat citizens of the Western Hegemony with gene therapies designed to alter their genomes in a manner in which Reassortment wouldn’t understand, then unleash it on the Eastern Hegemony, killing them all.”
Oriana had never heard of the CRISPR system. She had never heard any of this, and she didn’t believe Shrader capable of hurting anyone before Antosha corrupted him.
Then she recalled Dr. Marshall’s comment: Peace isn’t possible without the East’s demolition, isn’t that what you told me last time we met?
Did Oriana misread the doctor’s intentions? Did Antosha change him, or did he unleash the Dr. Kole Shrader of Livelle Laboratory?
No, she assured herself, this is all a distraction, a well-planned deception by Antosha. “If a transhuman designed Reassortment,” Oriana said assuredly, “then a transhuman should be able to solve it.”
Antosha shook his head. “The strain reassorts parts of its genome on the quantum level, encrypting it in a way designed to thwart anyone using the CRISPR system. Even the most skilled transhuman, even the most advanced artificial intelligence in our world, Marstone, would require millions and millions of years to solve it, and as you know we don’t have that long.”
“It’s designed to be incurable …” Oriana shuddered when Antosha nodded. She recalled the tables and doors puzzles from her development and the false stomachion inside Ceres. She never imagined the Reassortment enigma might also be unsolvable.
Then she thought about the release of Reassortment, the Death Wave, and Shrader. “Something went wrong with Shrader’s plan.”
“Yes.”
“We attacked Hengill!”
“No, and yes. Dr. Kole Shrader unknowingly gave the Eastern Hegemony’s Delta Division the access codes necessary to break into Hengill Laboratory. Your attack, as you say, your battle with the Eastern Hegemony infiltrator destroyed the Hexagon, but it was your use of crushers that allowed the strain access to the geothermal vents, releasing Reassortment into the atmosphere before the nuclear detonation.” Antosha leaned closer to her. “Nothing went wrong on that mission, my dear. Ruiner thought the adjustments to the exotic matter would create a portal to 2 BR, but,” and Antosha flashed his teeth, “I made sure he’d err and send you back to the year zero, testing you and Shrader in the field at the most dangerous part of the war.”
Antosha raised his head, and his voice. “Releasing Reassortment was necessary to achieve hyperpower, the maximal genome. As we speak, a million Janzers are constructing the tunnel to Sky City upon the surface where the terradome of my design has been fortified with the Lorum genome.” Antosha brought the rendition of it to the Granville panels. Sky City formed. The brightness from sunrise on the surface stole even Shrader’s attention. The Janzers, conspicuously dressed in synsuits rather than biomats, were working furiously to complete the city. Shrader returned to his work.
Antosha deactivated the panels and they turned taupe. “We are going back to the surface, Miss Oriana.”
She didn’t want to believe him, for his deceptions knew no bounds. Still, she sensed he spoke truly to her, possibly for the first time since she’d met him. “Why did Dr. Shrader try to kill me?”
Antosha laughed, a laugh that made her want to snap his neck, the same as she had the doct
or’s in the Cryo Room.
“The good doctor will fulfill his legend.”
“Because I tamed him—”
“Because you performed the way I knew you would, and in so doing, you gave him the raw Reassortment Strain, you gave him what he required to complete the maximal genome.
“You, my dear, gave me control over the Earth’s first posthuman.”
“No,” Oriana said. Again and again, she fell to his deceit. “You didn’t answer me.”
Antosha shrugged. “Dr. Shrader thought if he could prevent the Reassortment Strain’s release, the League of Scientists wouldn’t have been frozen near absolute zero, that the Western Hegemony’s destruction would be prevented, and that he could return to a new future—”
“Reunited with Luella Shrader—”
“—where he wasn’t responsible for humanity’s near extinction.” Antosha looked at Shrader, then back to Oriana. “Yes, he also hoped to return to a future with Luella as well, poor thing. At least she died without pain. Not all of us are so fortunate.”
Oriana shook her head. She felt hot, as if she’d melt through the gurney, through the Earth, through space and time. She eyed a Janzer’s sword.
“I’d kill Pasha the moment you tried, young fool.”
Oriana gasped. She’d let him in her mind, again. Damn him! She blocked his access.
“I met you in the past, and you weren’t like this.” She looked him up and down. “You were … kind, and strong, and you protected my father from Shrader—”
Antosha backhanded her.
Shrader turned at the sound of his name. Antosha met the doctor’s gaze and smiled. “Ah, yes, of course, now I remember.” Shrader focused back on Pasha and his work. “Now it makes sense. Shrader must have altered the time portal so that he could travel forward through time, to 327 AR,” Antosha narrowed his eyes, “and you followed him, clever girl. You were the Janzer who rescued us all that day from a mysterious assassin. Your father assumed I was the one to crack Shrader’s neck, but I knew it was you, or the Janzer you were pretending to be. I always wondered if we had an imposter. But you left too soon, my dear, before your father decided he could connect to the scientists in the zeropoint field and force their regenesis with insufficient regenerative synisms. Your slut mother’s recommendation, even though I explained to them—”