by Gwynn White
“So, these are the friends you keep?” he asked Darya.
“The world is a complicated place,” she replied.
Winslow walked around the desk. “Doctor Bedrosian,” he said. “What is going on here?”
She rose from the chair, the light white robe loosely tied, and waved the back of her hand toward the man. “Restrain him.”
One of the Goliaths circled from behind, grabbed Winslow by the arm, and pulled him back. Darya gathered papers from the desk, without bothering to make eye contact with the confused, squirming man.
“So Winslow had nothing to do with the Jasper?” Abby asked.
“No. In fact, he is one problem after another.” Her accent caught Jazz’s attention.
“Budapest. Yes?”
She glanced up at the youthful-faced man and flashed him a wide smile. “Very good. Pesh, actually.”
“Nothing but trouble?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” She stood and held the papers to her chest.
“How so?”
“After going through all of the trouble convincing the professor to gather the Jasper the Arden Mortuus requested, Mister Winslow was about to give the stone away.”
“What?” Abby said. “Why give the stone away?”
Winslow chimed in. “Doctor Labreque thought the Jasper would be safer with him. He said the stone was very dangerous, too dangerous to keep in Mahayana. He told me he would make arrangements, then he disappeared.”
Abby noticed the corners of Darya’s mouth curl up on the word disappeared. If he had any doubt before, it was gone; she had disappeared his old student.
“Trouble,” she said. “After all of the effort to find the stone, the years, he makes arrangements to give the stone away. When that problem was resolved, I find he’s moved the Jasper to the securest room in Mahayana.”
“So you had to call on your partner to make the Jasper disappear.”
“Something like that, Doctor Squire, another problem resolved only to be replaced with you.”
“Where is Valon going?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Her eyes darted across the Goliaths. “Take them.” She nodded toward Winslow. “Him too.”
The odds had swayed heavily the moment Valon left the room. One Goliath was already holding Winslow, leaving one near the door. The other two from the hallway were still standing by the chamber door with particle rifles leveled at the three. As soon as they stepped forward with their rifles, they lost the advantage. With a twirl of her wrist, Leta ignited her blade. The first rapid spin of her blade removed the barrels of their weapons and the second their heads. Abby and Jazz spun back in turn, each taking out one of the other two, separating heads from bodies in the same manner. Heads that, once free from the shimmer, revealed the Maro they were.
Darya wasn’t without tricks. Abby and Jazz were right in guessing she had been charm school trained, because when the three spun back toward her, she had drawn a fang from the inner wrist of her wide bangle, and was pointing it in the direction of Jazz’s chest.
“I don’t need all of you,” she said. “I’ll just take the pretty one.”
49
A burst of fuchsia passed over Darya’s wrist and blasted into the wall.
Darya’s eyes darted toward Abby’s blade, now shortened to a dagger length.
“Blades don’t fire,” she said.
“This one does,” he said. “She’s a custom flame job. I call her Sally and believe me, the next one will take off your hand.”
She kept her arm steady, her bead centered on Jazz’s torso. “What makes you think I won’t put a hole through your pretty friend?”
“You might. But there’s no advantage. You know we don’t want to hurt you.”
“You want me to tell you where Valon went.”
Winslow shook his head side to side. “Who is Valon? Doctor Bedrosian, why do you have a weapon?”
The stern expression lifted from Darya’s face, replaced by the compassionate companion Abby had met the day before. “Shhh,” she said. “It’s okay, Malcolm. You’ll understand soon enough. Valon is one of many names Mister Chauncey goes by.”
“Oh. I see.”
Darya eased her left hand up, then the hand with the fang, into the air. When she did, her robe fell open, revealing her naked body. “No need for weapons, then. I am happy to take you to him. You can even tie me up if you like.” Her brow bent down and she tilted her head toward Leta. “Or maybe the captain would prefer the task.”
“Would you mind taking off that bracelet of yours before we go?” Abby asked.
“I’m sorry. I need to wear this to take you where you want to go. Without it…” She shrugged.
Leta extinguished her blade, swapped it for her pistol, then gestured for Darya to come around the desk. “C’mon,” she said. She waved Darya toward the chamber door.
“You lead, we’ll follow,” Abby said. “And put your hands down.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Any funny moves, and we’ll find our own way.”
50
The centerpiece of the chamber to the side of Darya’s office room was a lacquered two-meter cross section of a tree trunk. Not a tree from one of the resource planes, but the trunk of an extinct sequoia from the Homeland. Yet one more token of decadent wealth. The trunk table was circled by a long leather sofa and two shorter leather lounges. With the exception of the one through which they entered, there were no visible doors in the chamber, rather ceiling-to-floor wooden bookcases on every wall.
Jazz gestured to the bookcase to their left. “Behind the second section.”
Darya had walked directly toward the seating area in the center of the room, and not the side. She spun back around, her hair flowing up as she did. “How did you do that?”
Jazz said nothing. Every chin chip could be used for echolocation. Jazz, an audiophile, had additional implants that gave him near x-ray vision.
Abby was already crossing the room. He chin-chipped a ping and detected the shallow behind the section. With a flex of a temple muscle, his ocular engaged and rectangle augment overlays danced across the shelves.
Jazz followed Abby to the bookshelf. He glanced back at Darya. “Where’s the mechanism?”
Leta, to the side of the near-naked Doctor, jostled her pistol. “Well?”
Darya shrugged. “I was going to show you.” She approached the bookshelf and waved her bangle. The second section of shelves slid back then to the left. “I was just impressed that you found the elevator so fast,” she said, stepping past them.
Jazz shot Abby a wink and the two went in behind her, followed by Leta and Winslow.
When all five were inside and the panel door again slid closed, Darya nodded toward the console, a brushed metal plate with two-quarter-inch dots, one three inches above the rest. “Excuse me,” she said to Jazz. “Would you mind?” She twirled her index finger in the air. Jazz smiled and lifted his hand over the lower of the two. Darya nodded, then he delicately pressed the tip of his index finger to the small spot.
The car slid down.
Abby had positioned himself in the back corner. His eyes moved around the small space in a slow rotation. Darya was in the center, between him and Jazz. She no longer seemed bothered. The flash of concern that had come over her in her office had passed. Abby figured she had only been abrupt because of the moment, beheadings and all. Jazz bobbed his head to music no one else could hear. Leta, in the front corner, appeared all business, weary, if anything. Winslow, he appeared to be surprised.
“Winslow,” he asked, “where does this elevator go?”
Winslow appeared to contemplate for moment then in an awed tone said, “I don’t know?”
“You mean you’ve forgotten.”
“No. I know all of Mahayana. This elevator is not supposed to be here.”
Abby nodded. “What do you say, Doctor? You know where this bo
x is going?”
“I do,” she said.
Leta smirked. “Well, don’t keep it to yourself.”
“Remember,” Abby said. He glanced at Leta and she raised her pistol an inch. “No funny business.”
Darya let out an indifferent sigh. “The elevator goes below Mahayana.”
Winslow rapidly chattered, “There’s nothing below Mahayana. Only sand and silt.”
“You’re wrong there, Malcolm.” She turned her back toward Abby and smiled. “We’re going down.” She faced Winslow again. “Wait ‘til you see.”
“Always chatting, you and Mister Chauncey. What did you build down there?”
With a small jolt, the elevator stopped moving.
“My dear,” she said, “all we built were a few doorways in and out.”
The panel slid open and the five stepped out onto a balconied terrace. Before them was a cavernous red-hued room, the ceiling hundreds of meters high and across. The entirety of the massive hall was filled with thousands of syn pods hanging horizontally from a forest of ceiling-to-floor poles. They stepped out onto a terrace, a wide catwalk fastened midway up what he calculated was a three-hundred-meter wall.
He looked through the grating at his feet. The floor below was empty, and there were no signs of Valon or any other Maro. Abby thought of the Maro who had been hidden in the spectrum back near Darya’s office. There would be no reason for them to hide down deep. Still, he kept his blade ready.
Winslow’s body was following his head around in circles. “If you didn’t build this, who did?”
Darya arched her brow and pulled her robe tighter. “You should ask your friend, Doctor Squire.”
Abby nodded. “The room’s a massive cube.”
“What does that mean?” Winslow asked.
“Abby,” Leta asked, “what is this place?”
“I know enough to know this place is transplanar,” Jazz said.
Leta moved closer to the balcony. “Like the Bubbles and Tubes?”
Abby stepped behind Darya and, leery of any further sudden moves with the bangle, took her upper right arm with his free left hand and joined Leta. “Yeah,” he said. “This place is a transplanar structure, all right. They’re rare, but they exist. Like the tube stations, this structure exists across planes. Valon may’ve built a new door in, but by the size and shape, I would say the Elders built this place.”
“Why would they build this place under the sea?”
“They didn’t. Like all of the Atlantean structures, this sunk here.”
“So this is Atlantean?” she asked.
Abby shrugged. “I don’t know. The architecture is old, geometric, I would guess Elder, maybe Atlantean. I’m more curious as to what’s in the pods.”
Jazz spoke over his shoulder, “Bronson said Valon was building an army.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think he meant literally,” Abby said. “There has to be, what?”
“One million,” Darya said softly.
“One million clones,” Jazz echoed. “A clone army. That’s intense.”
“No. They’re not clones. They are warriors of the Arden Mortuus clan. Sleeping. Waiting.”
Abby shook his head. “That can’t be. There were never that many Arden Mortuus, and the Maro would never clone.”
“I told you, they’re not clones. Some of these warriors have been asleep since the war, most others have arrived over the years. The finest stock have continued to breed in the deepest pits of the Arden Mortuus lairs and their progeny have come here to train and wait for the time of return.”
“He’s built the army over time,” muttered Jazz.
“Many were sired by Valon himself,” Darya said.
“That doesn’t sound so good for Valon,” Abby said. “The Maro path to clan ascension usually involves the death of a parent.”
“But Valon has the Jasper. They’ll all follow. You will too.”
Abby gave Darya’s arm a tug. “Don’t be so sure.”
“Don’t be silly, Commander. You’ve moved up the timeline. Valon has the Jasper, and soon this army and others like it will follow him to the Homeland then to every other plane. We own the planes.”
“I hear that a lot lately.”
“Come. We don’t want to miss the ceremony.”
51
The catwalk ran the span of the wide wall. As they walked, Abby counted the poles of pods to their right: a hundred across, fifty pods down, fifty pods up. That added up to one million sleeping uglies.
“They can’t open all at once,” Abby said. “There’s a whole city out there.”
“Sure they can,” Darya said. “The syns up top have been preparing for years. Everything is ready: barracks, food, weapons. Everything.”
“Valon didn’t know when they would find the Jasper,” Abby said.
“Excuse me?” Darya said.
“These pods are full, and now he has the Jasper. Seems like perfect timing.”
“Oh,” she said. “This hall was filled decades ago, as were so many others. All waiting to be woken.”
“How many?”
The corner of Darya’s mouth pulled up into a smile. “More than enough.”
As they reached the far wall, they came upon a stairwell descending to the right, down to the floor of the cube. At the top of the stairs, they stopped.
Leta chin-chipped, “Abby.” He saw what she saw. Far below, at the bottom of the stairs, were four Maro dressed in the garb of the Goliath, mingled with five other Maro in traditional loin cloths.
Abby tugged Darya back from the top of the stairs. In a whisper, he said, “Winslow,” and Winslow stepped back as well. Leta then disappeared up spectrum, leaving the four to wait.
“No funny business,” he reminded Darya, tapping her hip with the dagger of his blade. After what he figured was an appropriate amount of time for Leta to reach the bottom of the stairs, Abby leaned forward. Seven of the Maro below had already fallen. The last two had managed to ignite their blades and were just getting their bearings when, in unison, they too fell to the floor, each with a wound from behind.
The Maro never had a chance. They were such predictable creatures. Abby had used the tactic himself on occasion. Rarely would a Maro ever look up spectrum, to the cool blue shade of the Umbra; they only shifted down, toward the warmth of the Maro Plane.
“Okay,” Abby said, pulling Darya forward. “Let’s go.”
He quickly traversed the hundreds of steps, catching Darya a few times as she stumbled. Winslow trailed behind, trying to keep up. To his right, the pods appeared to ascend as they descended, and between the trunks, far across the cube, the lights of doorways and equipment gave signs of habitats that were hidden from the ledge above.
Midway down, Leta materialized next to them. She had the daggers from her kidney sheaths in hand, and she was still on: shoulders bent forward, back inversely curved, her head slowly rotating, scanning, a preternatural hunter ready to pounce. The assassination of the Reds at the foot of the stairs had been silent, and he was relieved she held the landing with the same form of protocol he’d been taught.
“Which way?” he asked Darya, lifting her by her upper arm down the last few steps.
“Back that way,” she said breathlessly, gesturing under the metal stairwell.
With a tug, Abby pulled her around the last step toward the direction she’d told them to take. A ten-meter-high scaffold structure stood midway between the end of the stairs and the far wall. Abby led the way, Darya in hand, keeping track of the steps of the other three at his back by listening with his chin chip. He held his blade pistol up high. Though the blade wasn’t ignited, he was ready to send a blast into anything that felt strange.
A tall transparent door had been installed into the side of the cube, and Abby suspected that the project might’ve been more recent than the pods, catwalk, and stairwell. Whether there had been an existing door, he couldn’t tell. Like many of the Bubble gates, an entrance to a transplanar structure
had to be built to accommodate the local plane. As this cube was so deep below Mahayana, he wasn’t surprised to see the housing of an emergency drop gate suspended above, or the path beyond, a hollowed hole of transparent pane that burrowed through the earth beneath a strip of dull red LED for at least one hundred meters.
“I’ll be,” he said.
“What’s that?” Jazz asked.
“Looks like Valon built a tunnel.” He squeezed Darya’s arm. “What’s on the other side?”
“Valon, of course,” she said.
“I’m sure. What else?”
“The Jasper.”
“Okay,” he said. He gave Darya’s arm a small lift. She attempted a failed shirk then waved her bangle past the side console. The door slid to the side. Abby traded questioning looks with Leta and Jazz who, in turn, responded with shrugs. “All agreed then,” he said. “Let’s go.”
52
The architecture was state of the art. Tons of visible sand weighted against the surrounding transparent panes a mere meter above Abby’s head. It was unnerving. The weight that rested there should have been unbearable, but a precise calculation of material and form, a technical marvel, held the structure in place. He’d been in other mines, and the same could be said of those of the gaseous or blue planes, or any of the resource planes. What could also be said was that being so deep beneath the Earth, or at least so aware of the depth, was unsettling for most mortals. That was why syns worked the mines. They were a cheap labor force, but with the population abundance, all labor was cheap. They worked the mines because they were modeled with the genes of all those who had dug deep for generations before.
The Maro didn’t have the issues of living below the Earth that mortals did. The Maro Plane was so much hotter that little lived on the red rocky desert surface. The world of the Maro was in their down deep lairs. They thrived close to the mantel. The dimly lit, red-hued corridor reminded Abby of a Maro lair. This same state of the art architecture could be found in the deep molten caverns of the Maro Plane—corridors lit by hot rock rather than LED.