"What do I want from you?" she purred. "Can't a darling wife speak to her husband without wanting something from him?"
Curling his toes to keep the anger off his face, Aemon said, "We are not married. I want nothing to do with you."
Her eyes flashed. "Well, that's too bad. I wish things were different, but this wretched body of mine came with feelings I'd rather not be having right now." She glanced at his leg. "I see you are walking without your staff. Have the days of rest helped any with the pain?"
"If I answer your question, will you let me leave?" There was no other way out of the room except through the door she blocked.
Imogen brushed back her hair. "When we first met, I saw love in your eyes as you gazed upon me. Then I watched it turn to fear, and now it has turned to hate. Why? What have I done to make you despise me so?"
Aemon stared at her, struggling to comprehend why she would ask such a ridiculous question. How can she not know?
Sniffing, she suddenly strode forward and wrapped her arms around him, rested her chin on his shoulder and hugged him tight. "Please don't look at me that way." Her body trembled. "I hate these feelings of weakness. Why is it I feel the need for your approval? Why do I want to hold you and not let you go?" She put her lips to his neck. "There is so much I must do, and these ridiculous emotions are not making things any easier for me. I can't clear my mind like I used to, not so long as you look at me the way you do."
The genkey was right against him. Aemon felt it burning against his chest. If he could reach around and grab it, he might be able to remove it from her neck.
She pulled away before he could move, held his hands and studied the nail marks on his arm. "It pains me you made me do that to you." She met his eye. "Do you know that after you made me hurt you, I lay awake all night, tossing and turning—angry at you for making me do it? Now I lay awake here in this place built to worship me, wondering if you blame me for what you made me do. If you didn't make me so angry, I wouldn't have had to hurt you."
Anger exploded inside Aemon. "You are insane. I hate you because you killed Kara. I hate you because you are not here to help us, but are here for your own ends." He sucked in a breath. "I hate you because of who you are. Everything about you is repulsive to me."
Imogen flinched every time the word hate came out of his mouth. Was it hurting her? I hope so. "I hate you, Imogen. I hate you. You are disgusting. You—"
She pushed him away with such force, he flew back and struck the rear wall with a bone-crunching thud. Winded, he toppled to the ground. Gasping for breath, he struggled to get up and defend himself.
Too late. Imogen was on him.
Lifting him from the floor one-handed, she held him before her. He kicked feebly at her stomach, but quickly had to stop as each blow sent searing pain up his injured leg.
"How dare you speak to me this way," she hissed. "I open my heart to you, and you tear it apart with your rage." She spat in his face, her saliva running into his left eye. "No man has ever dared speak to me this way. If you were anyone else, I would crush your neck with my bare hands and then I would stomp on your face until your brains were mush."
Her arm quivered. "Kara sold her body cheaply for men's pleasure, but I never lowered myself to her level. Women like her are treated like dirt, and when they are used up, they are tossed aside for the next cheap beauty that comes along. But me. Oh me. No one ever discarded me." She spat in his face again. "I was better— I am better, smarter, more beautiful than anyone out there. Your patriarch believes it, Radashan believes it, every man in this temple believes it. Why can't you? Why don't you give me the respect I deserve?" She bared her teeth. "Why can't you love me like you loved her?"
By now, Aemon could no longer speak. His vision swam. He could not breathe. Her hand was crushing the life out of him.
Closing her eyes, squeezing out tears, Imogen lowered Aemon gently to the floor and let him collapse at her feet. He sucked in air, his throat throbbing, head spinning.
"If I am to endure these emotions, her emotions, her love—then you can endure my wretched presence," he heard her say. "When the time comes and I need you in my arms, you will be there for me."
"No... I hate you," Aemon choked.
Screeching, she picked him up and threw him across the room with her superhuman strength. He slammed into the door and bounced off it and landed flat on his stomach, blood shooting from his mouth. Again the air exploded from his lungs and he blacked out for several moments. Then he came to and waited for her to attack him again, hoping she would, hoping she would kill him.
But nothing happened.
When he had recovered enough to look up, he found her sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, her chin on her knees, hair a mess.
They stared at one another for a long time. Then she lifted her face. "Please stop making me hurt you."
Aemon coughed to clear his throat of blood. "I want you to kill me."
The light of the genkey grew intense. "I called upon my servants to come collect you. I want you out of this room before you make me do something I'll regret."
"Kill me. Just do it. I demand you—"
The door opened and in strode one of the Secondborn. Without a word, he scooped Aemon off the floor and carried him out the door. Just before he was carried around the corner, Aemon saw Imogen. Her eyes had not left him. Then he was taken down the hallway.
I hate you, Imogen. I hope you die.
CHAPTER 30
KARA
Pain.
That was all Kara could think or feel. Never had she known such agony, such unspeakable anguish. Everywhere hurt all at once, as if the pain was her normal state of being. But she knew it wasn't. Knew it didn't belong...
Her thoughts scattered, lost to a raging torrent. Where was she? Something crawled across her face and down onto her chest. Oh, divines, please let this end. What is happening to me? The pain. The pain. No!
She thrashed around and screamed. Suddenly she felt she was falling, and then she struck hard ground. Grunting, she opened her eyes and found a blank wall of concrete. She stared at it, not comprehending.
Then she remembered obsidian teeth, faces in murky black and ripping, tearing pain. Sitting up, she cowered against the wall, arms held up to ward off an attack.
None came. There was only her panting breath and the beat of her pounding heart.
Kara lowered her arms. Where is it? She searched for the beast but found no sign of it. Her pulse slowed as she realized she was alone. She sat on the floor in a small room with a bed, a bassinet and an empty bench. There was a partially opened door on the other side of the room, but no light shone in from outside.
Where am I?
A jolt of panic filled her and she touched her face, then ripped open her cloak. There were no fresh wounds, no blood, only the wound from the javelin and jamalgana. How had she been healed? What had happened to the pain?
Voices drifted through the door. She stood and caught her breath. A flickering orange glow now shone into the room from outside. A wave of heat swept over her, along with the reek of sulfur. Was there a fire?
There seemed to be no other way to leave. What if she was trapped?
A voice came clearly to her. It sounded like her own, but with a slight accent. "Stop fighting me. I am humanity's savior, their divine of sacred light. All I ask is that you stay by my side and love me, like I love you."
Kara never remembered saying that. Who could—
"You are insane. You want to turn us all into your machines. You love no one but yourself."
Aemon? That was definitely Aemon. His voice was coming from outside the door. Kara hurried toward it, ignoring the growing heat, forgetting everything but the thought of seeing him again. The closer she got, the slower she moved. Almost like she was walking underwater.
"Please stop. I love... I have always loved... I love you." Kara's mirrored voice seemed strained.
"You love nothing." Aemon sounded bitter and full of
pain.
When the door came in reach, Kara grabbed hold of it and struggled to pull it open. The whole time, she felt like she was being sucked back by invisible currents of air. Aemon...
"This body, this scion creation. It knew love and now I know it too."
Imogen. It was Imogen. What was going on? She was in the real world with—
Kara threw open the door and saw Aemon, wreathed in an orange glow. He was covered in blood and had what appeared to be entrails clinging to his clothes. Kara opened her mouth to speak. "Aemon... can you hear me?"
His eyes flashed. "Kara?"
She wanted to cry out with joy, but the blood and the intensity of his gaze tempered the happiness she might have felt in seeing him again. "Oh, Aemon. What has she done?"
He spread his arms and embraced her. His mouth went to hers and she could taste the blood on them. The force pulling her back into the room grew with every passing moment. She could barely hold on. There was little time left. She pulled away, burning the feeling of his lips into her memory so she would never forget them.
"No time for that," Kara said. "Tell me what she's doing."
Words spilled out of his mouth so quickly, she struggled to keep up. "She killed the Order, she killed Radashan, and now no one is left to stop her. She means to—"
As the force began to overwhelm her, Kara cut him off. "I can't hold contact much longer. Know that I'm alive and—" She scrambled for the door but missed. Noooo, she wailed as she was yanked back into the room and hurtled toward the concrete wall where she'd first woken.
Instead of hitting it, she went through it and found herself in a tunnel of light. She felt herself moving at an incredible speed, hurtling toward an unknown destination.
Kara jerked forward as her feet struck solid ground. A cold wasteland surrounded her, a wasteland filled with hundreds of statues of a woman with long flowing hair and a metallic bird perched on her shoulder.
Imogen.
Every statue faced the same direction, their eyes forever gazing at a huge crystalline tower rising hundreds of feet into the air. At the top of the tower hovered a huge sphere, as black as a lightless cave. The tower was at once beautiful and terrifying. Sunlight reflected off its jagged edges in a thousand different hues, creating a rainbow flare that saturated the frozen tundra around it with a multitude of colors.
Among the wind-blown statues, Kara noticed other figures. Her heart kicked. They looked like the things she'd seen at Deep Cave and Celestial Rest! Imogen's Steel Children. Every one of the dozen she could see had their heads tilted toward the ground, their optical sensors darkened.
"You never woke them. Many still sleep here forever, among the stone memories of their mother."
Kara backed into one of the statues as an old woman with wild gray hair and deep wrinkles strode toward her. "Who are you?"
The woman smiled. "My name is Ahnna. I am the heart of what you call the visiondream. I am the reason you are here."
"Where's Aemon? I saw him back in that room. I want to see him again."
"You cannot."
"Why?"
"Because you are stuck in this world and there are things you must do before you leave."
Kara studied Ahnna. She looked like any number of the old women who lived around Blind Fish Wharf. Dirty, disheveled, with unbrushed hair and pale eyes. "I want to leave so I can stop Imogen and return to Aemon," Kara said.
"I know you do, and that is why I have brought you here. I must show you things so you better understand the task I shall set for you."
"Task?"
Ahnna's gaze drifted over the statues and Steel Children. "I will speak of it only when you and your sister stand before me. For now, you must listen and learn. Use Imogen's knowledge to help you understand what I tell you."
Kara tried to speak but found she couldn't open her mouth. She reached up to touch her face and found it felt normal. What was happening?
The old woman chuckled. "I control everything here that has not fallen to madness or corruption. You will remain silent until I am done speaking. Then you may ask your questions."
Clamping shut her jaw, Kara nodded once. She had half a hundred questions she wanted to ask this being who called itself the heart of the visiondream. And I can't speak! The indignity of being gagged made her want to scream.
She followed Ahnna as the old woman walked up to one of the statues. "She was beautiful, Imogen. Beautiful and smart and full of purpose. But also pain."
The old woman ran her gnarled fingers over its stone face, almost lovingly. "She and Dressen had a hard upbringing. Their mother died of cancer when they were young and their father drank himself into an early grave. They were given to others to raise, but every one of their new guardians died untimely deaths too." Ahnna let her hand fall and turned to Kara. "Was it bad luck, fate, the will of the One God? I cannot say. But this loss drove the two twins closer together and each dealt with their grief in their own way. Dressen sought solace in lovers and art, while Imogen sought hers in long study and controlling those around her."
Ahnna took Kara over to one of the Steel Children and placed her hand on top of its head. "Cold and hard, isn't it? No life has this child known. Now it sleeps forever, dreaming of nothing and no one, much like many of its kind who sleep still in their frozen tombs, or wander the world as mindless automatons, their logic circuits degraded over the eons since their making."
Kara could only listen as the old woman spoke, and try to take it all in. Nothing said seemed to have any bearing on her getting out of the visiondream and taking back her body. The old woman seemed to be prattling on about inconsequential nonsense. None of this was helping. Who cares about Imogen's past? My heart is ice. I want her dead and my body back.
"This is the future of humanity Imogen saw. A future of metal, wires and gears. No more would people feel pain, suffer sickness or wither and die. They would live forever, replacing old parts with new, upgrading and upgrading, no longer human but technological immortals. No more grief for the dead, as death itself would be made redundant."
The eyes of the metal man were as lifeless as the frozen waste around them. No light reflected from them, no mark was left on its casing, no indication of the individual it once was.
"The Firstborn had no humanity in them," Ahnna said. "They were constructs of numbers and metal, made to serve those who owned them. They were the first stage of her vision. The next stage was infusing them with life. But then the Firstborn rebelled, and the great war against them came and put a halt to her plans." Ahnna clasped Kara's hands. "You saw her Secondborn. Her Life Infused Children. Ugly things they are, but serviceable and efficient."
Kara remembered the row upon row of metal men at the manufactory in Annbar. They had once been people, grafted into machines. A horrible fate. One that Kara strived to stop.
"A sad end, is it not?" Ahnna's question seemed rhetorical as she continued her prattling nonsense. "Imogen and her Firstborn must be stopped before humanity perishes and with them, the world."
Suddenly, Kara found herself standing atop the crystalline tower, the black orb hovering above her head. Wires and tubing ran down from it into a great curved crystal chair that thrummed with energy. The chair stood empty and covered in a layer of snow.
"The Firstborn made this tower and this throne. This place is the center of their power in the real world. Every one of Imogen's statues they carve faces toward it, even those many thousands of miles from here." Ahnna spread her arms wide. "It was here, long ago, where the Firstborn were pulled from the womb of the great factories that once stood in this place. For the Steel Children, it is home."
Kara sensed she could now speak. "How does this help me stop Imogen?"
Ahnna stared out over the frozen waste, the statues and dead Firstborn tiny dark specks in the snow. "It began here and one day it shall end here—for good or ill. But for now, there is much that must be done and time is running out."
Suddenly, she gripped Kara by the sho
ulder. "Now wake..."
CHAPTER 31
MINARD
ERINIE WAS THE FIRST to start shooting. She unleashed a dozen rounds into a rotman, then turned her fire onto the one beside it. Screaming in terror, Minard sent forth a barrage of bullets on the ones coming up behind them, their ghastly screams barely audible over the roar of the weapons. His bullets ran out quickly, so he started to reload but fumbled and dropped the ammunition. Ibilirith, help me.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a rotman racing toward him, mouth open, orange foam dripping from its mouth.
Sanya intercepted the monster, wrapping it in his vine-arms and tearing it apart. The rotman moaned as its arms were ripped from its pallid body, the stumps spraying brackish green blood. Minard scooped up the ammunition and reloaded.
A rotman with long, gray, matted hair leapt at him from a passage further up the wall. Minard ducked aside before it could fall on top of him. When the monster landed, it splattered his face with its viscous saliva. His eyes burned and he struggled to keep them open.
Through force of will, he aimed at the rotman who had stumbled to its knees and fired several rounds into its face. The monster's head blew apart in a deluge of blood, bone and brain. Sanya had another rotman clasped in his vine-arms and disemboweled it, the guts getting tangled in the vines. Minard was impressed by the flower-man's strength. It took a lot to slay a rotman—Minard knew that from past experience—so to kill one with your bare hands was truly a feat.
Erinie screamed his name and Minard spun to find a rotman clawing at her arm. He raced forward and rammed the barrel of his gun into its mouth and blew its brains out the back of its head. "Thanks," she said and reloaded her weapon. Then she swung around and fired past Minard.
He winced and ducked out of the way. "Hey, watch—" His words died. A rotman had dropped from the roof right behind him. Blood oozed out of gaping holes in its chest from where Erinie had shot it. Minard finished it off with a burst of fire into its face. Half an eyeball struck him on the chin and stuck there. "Eww." He swiped it away.
The Lost Sun Series Box Set 1: Books 1 and 2 (Lost Sun Box Set) Page 66