The Illusory Prophet

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I ignore that and check the cockpit controls—they’re nothing I understand, even though the Resistance has modified them for human usage, with displays instead of transmitted controls. “How long until we reach the Makers?” My brain is scrambling to figure out how we will make contact once we get there without getting shot.

  “Just a few minutes.” She gives me a piercing look. “What I meant was that Augustus would be coming after the Resistance in search of you regardless of anything else you’ve done. You defeated him, Eli. If there’s anything I know about him, it’s that he can’t let that stand—least of all, defeat by a human. The ascender world thinks Marcus and Leopold wiped out him and his experiment with the Mind, but he knows the truth. And with the rumors of you resurrecting Kamali… you would have been a target, regardless.”

  “Which just means he’s going after the Makers because of me, as well.” I’m not sure what her point is.

  “That’s not true.” She tips her head to me. “Not that the signs and wonders you’ve performed with the Makers aren’t fueling his rage. They are. And the followers he’s gathering…” She purses her lips, and the purple tendrils are back, snaking along her chest. “The Makers were protected when they were simply an annoyance that bit at the ankles of New Portland on occasion. There’s a strong current of opinion among ascenders that humans are not to be tampered with, even if they’re rogue and uncontrolled, like the Makers.”

  “Uncontrolled?” That lights up the alarm bells in my mind. “Is that what you’re doing with the Resistance? Controlling us?”

  She scowls. “I was referring to the legacy humans.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Right. Tell me again why you keep us around like pets? Because I haven’t bought the genetic diversity excuse for some time now.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s complicated, Eli—”

  “Try me.”

  A wisp of black tells me she’s frustrated by this. And it is a distraction.

  Focus, Eli. I sigh again. “Never mind. You can explain all the horrors of it to me later.” I think I know the answer anyway.

  “Good.” She’s visibly relieved. “But you should know that Augustus is well aware of Miriam—he was even before you became a threat. He would have gone after the Makers, eventually, but now…”

  This is making sense. “He underestimated how fast they would move toward a second Offering.”

  “And he underestimated you,” she says. “While Hypatia has been building a bodyform for him, you have been leaping ahead and… Miriam has as well.”

  I nod, the realization suddenly dawning. “It’s getting away from him.”

  Her face is grave. “The last thing Augustus wants is for humans to commandeer this movement.”

  “Movement?” Grayson asks, his face pinched.

  “The Second Singularity,” she answers, impatient. Then she looks back to me. “That’s the unrest your presence—your rumored potential—has posed from the start, Eli. But you were an ascender creation. And singular—there was no one like you. But now, with the Makers potentially on the cusp of making another enhanced human…”

  Grayson scowls. “Miriam might actually get the revolution she wants.”

  Lenora gives a sharp nod. “Once Augustus was resurrected, it was only a matter of time before he would strangle the Makers’ movement in the crib. Or anything else that would keep him from being the sole victor in this war of ideas.”

  “And now that he has Marcus—” But I’m cut off by the sudden look of panic on her face.

  Outside the cockpit, sunshine reflects off the weathered towers of Old Portland, just like when I last saw it, only now, portions of it are obscured by thick, gray plumes…

  The city is on fire.

  “We’re too late,” Lenora whispers as our transport hovers down through the smoke.

  Old Portland is a war zone… only the war lasted minutes, and the Makers have lost.

  The ships are gone—the ascender ones that dropped the bombs, as well as the Makers’ transports, which are smoking wrecks near the command center below us. The decrepit towers around us are infernos or piles of rubble or a mixture of both. Great billows of black smoke choke the sky and waft past our transport as we hover down. Most of the buildings are hollowed out or collapsed entirely, some having only a stone façade surviving the onslaught and showing that civilization once lived here.

  Sunlight glints off mechanical things moving through the wreckage below. Sentries. The vast carnage of the firebombs was just a prelude to the precision death-squads that are skittering over the broken concrete, seeking out any Makers who dare to survive. As we get close to landing, a nearby sentry pierces a fleeing woman and her child with a light-weapon.

  They go down. The sentry moves on.

  Just one more deadly flame in the apocalyptic fire around them.

  “Do something.” My voice cracks—I’m begging Lenora to stop this.

  “We don’t have weapons,” Grayson says, his voice strung tight.

  Lenora’s hand twitches, and our transport lurches from its slow descent to land fast and hard on the sentry, crushing it. I grab hold of the cockpit seat to keep from being thrown to the floor. At ground level, a smoky haze obscures everything. The wind clears enough to see the Makers’ command center, exposed to the sky and engulfed in fire. A figure emerges from the flames, slender and powerful, dragging someone else.

  A drift of black smoke hides them for a moment, then blows away. “It’s Miriam,” I say, shoving away from the pilot’s seat and heading for the back. “Hold off the sentries,” I command Lenora while waving my hand to open the door.

  “Eli—” Grayson objects.

  But I’m already jumping down to the broken earth underneath our ship. Lenora flashes past me, hurtling out into the smoke drifts and hopefully seeking the mechanized death that’s stalking survivors, if only to keep me alive. Almost as fast, Grayson appears next to me, a half step ahead, covering me with his body as I hustle across the rubbled concrete. The full horror of what Augustus has done here chokes me as much as the soot-laden air. The Makers were a people, a society, with families and children and shops filled with all the things that human minds could invent. And in moments, he’s wiped these people and their lives from the face of the planet.

  I scramble over the broken ground, struggling to keep my footing as I work my way toward Miriam and the person she’s trying to rescue. They haven’t gotten far. She’s stopped and bent over the girl. She’s blonde-haired and fair and young—beautiful once, but now half of her is gone, and the rest is on fire. My stomach lurches as I get closer and catch the scent of burning flesh. It’s my vision—a smoldering body in camouflage—only the girl isn’t me, and the bomb that killed her has blasted away one leg and an arm. Miriam is crouched over the girl, speaking to her, but it’s obviously useless—the girl is dead.

  “No, no, no.” Miriam bats at the flames still trying to consume the girl’s remaining fatigues.

  Grayson’s ascender legs stomp heavy on the rubble, and the sound whips Miriam’s attention away from the dead girl while we’re still a dozen feet away. A blaster appears in her hand so fast, I can barely flinch.

  Grayson steps in front of me, shielding me with his body—he seems torn between protecting me and disarming her.

  I grip his arm and pull out from behind him. “Let me handle this,” I say quietly.

  Her eyes go wide, disbelieving. “You did this!” She releases the girl and stands up, the gun now targeting my head. “You called them here!”

  “I didn’t, I swear.” I gesture to the transport behind me. “I have a ship. I can rescue the survivors—”

  “There are no survivors.” Her lips tremble with her anger, and the gun wavers, but I’m stunned she hasn’t shot me yet. “You’ve killed us all.”

  Then a blur confuses my eyes, and suddenly Miriam is thrown to the side, and Lenora stands in her place, holding her blaster. But Miriam doesn’t stay down, her augment legs popping
her back up to standing.

  Grayson dashes away, but instead of tackling Miriam, he’s suddenly back by the ship, wrestling with a sentry. Grayson’s legs are augments, but the rest of him—

  “Lenora!” I shout for her to go after him.

  But then Miriam sprints across the rubble after me, and Lenora moves again—only she’s grabbed me, practically yanking me out of my boots and throwing me to the ground, landing on top of me with her impossibly strong ascender-tech bodyform. Before I can even form the question in my head, a blast of heat rolls over us, screeching across the skin of my arms, which I jerk back behind the protective cover of her body.

  “Eli!” Lenora’s cybernetic eyes blaze down at my head, which is tucked into her chest. It would be uncomfortable and awkward except I’m pretty sure she just saved my life. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” The backs of my hands sting from the blast, but nothing is screaming in pain except the point in my back where some rock is digging in. “Let me up.”

  She does, and I gape at the transformation of the scene—something exploded and spewed fire out into the open area. Behind us, Grayson is untouched by the flames but bleeding in several places from his fight with the sentry, which is now in pieces on the ground. But Miriam’s body was closer and caught the full blast. She’s lying inert like the first girl, both bodies now charred and smoldering.

  “Oh no.” I stumble across the blackened concrete, soot smearing my hands as I catch myself from falling.

  Impossibly, Miriam is still moving, but barely. She’s moaning through a pain I can’t even imagine—one of her Maker-tech legs is melted and twisted in a way that would spell doom for a human leg but isn’t much better for an augmented one. Her long hair, bound into a single ponytail in back, is on fire. I stamp it out with my boot, then crouch next to her. Her face has been horribly burned, and she’s missing half an arm. My hands beat at the residual flames smoldering through her camouflage, the sting of it barely registering.

  I can’t go into the fugue here on a battlefield… and even if I could, Miriam’s mind is too strong for me. Her eyes blink open, and even through the pain, she snarls at me.

  “You,” is all she can manage.

  “Just hold on,” I tell her. I turn to Lenora, who is hovering at my back. “Get her to the ship.”

  “It’s too late, Eli.”

  I open my mouth to object, but she disappears with ascender speed. At the far corner of the open pit of destruction we’ve landed in, I see her wrestling with a sentry. She uses Miriam’s blaster repeatedly on it at close range, then rips off its head, sending it tumbling through the rubble. Another sentry fires on her from somewhere, and she flits away after it.

  Miriam’s eyes are closed again, and her breathing suddenly turns into pants punctuated by sounds of pain. Moving her will hurt, but we can’t stay. I lift her from the rocks enough to slide my arms around her chest. She moans louder and struggles in my arms, but I hold her tight and drag her toward the ship. I’m horrifically slow, making almost no progress. A puff of wind has Grayson appearing at my side. Without a word, he takes Miriam from me. A scream is wrenched from Miriam’s lips as Grayson lifts her, but he clears her augmented legs from dragging. We both run back to the ship—Grayson still moves twice as fast as me, even with Miriam in his arms. I’m hauling over the rubble, watching for sentries to suddenly appear every ragged step of the way. I make it to the ship just as Lenora returns from battling the sentries. She closes the door behind us, buying us some protection from exploding buildings and sentry-sourced fire.

  Grayson has set Miriam on the floor of the hold, but he’s staring at me like he’s not sure what to do next. Lenora frowns and shakes her head, and I know what she’s saying—that Miriam is lost. There’s no ascender tech that can save her, or if there is, we can’t get there in time. We don’t even know where the Resistance is at the moment. I don’t know if it’s hopeless, but the ashen tint on Miriam’s pale skin isn’t soot or smoke—it’s death stealing over her.

  “Contact the Resistance,” I say to Lenora as I kneel next to Miriam. “Tell Tristan his backup needs to come armed for shooting sentries and picking up survivors. And we need to know where they’ve sent their med pod.”

  Lenora gives me a pinched look then disappears into the cockpit to deliver the message.

  I turn back to Miriam. She’s passed out and barely breathing. The pain of the escape must have overwhelmed her. I feel the ship lurch as Lenora lifts us away from the immediate threat of attack by the clean-up sentries.

  “She’s a weapon, Eli,” Grayson says, his voice soft. He’s looking at me with wide eyes, and keeping his distance from Miriam.

  “I know.” I turn back to her. “But so am I.” And somehow that makes what I have to do suddenly clear.

  Miriam is an advancement in humanity—her mind is like no human I’ve ever touched—and she holds the key to advancing even further. The attack on the Makers makes it painfully clear—I’m radically outmatched against Augustus. If I’m going to have any chance of stopping him from repeating this horror show across all of humanity—or anyone he sees as a threat—I will need a lot more help. The Resistance is unlikely to be enough. The Makers may be right—humanity may have to grow into this fight. Changing humanity the way Miriam has—the way she was trying to do with her Offering—could be as dangerous and uncontrolled as the first Singularity. But it’s simply a technology like any other. Augustus considers that technology a threat enough to firebomb an entire society to ruins. That alone is enough reason for me to save her… and convince her to leave her bloodthirst behind, along with the ruins of her world.

  If I can even do it.

  I look up at Grayson. “You’re right,” I say to him softly. “Anything can be a weapon. But the opposite is also true.”

  He frowns, but I have no more time to waste.

  I settle in next to Miriam, legs crossed and back propped against the wall of the transport. I hold back from touching her fire-ravaged face as I shift into the fugue. Her burned and twisted body transforms into her fugue-state form. She’s still wearing her armor—a medieval warrior in steel-plated metal, head-to-toe. Was she born like this? Was her tiny, infant fugue-state form heavily shielded from the moment she became Miriam Levine? And what was she before then? Or was that the moment her soul was created?

  These questions fill the void of my hesitation—because Tristan is right. I truly am an idiot. I’m as likely to get myself killed as save Miriam. It isn’t something I should even try… but I am.

  Her breathing is becoming more ragged and slow. She’s dying. I know enough about her to find her on the other side—I think—but I don’t want to take the chance. I reach my fugue-state hand toward her half-burned face—

  And I’m flung to the other side of the transport.

  My body is slumped against the wall next to hers, my physical hand falling against her face. I will myself to her side and try again—but once more, my essence is repelled, thrown away, cast aside by the pure energy, pure power, that is Miriam. I return to her side, and I can see the fading of her fugue-state form. Her armor is becoming more and more transparent, with her ravaged physical form showing through. How can I hold onto something that throws me back with such power? And what is it that gives Miriam her power, anyway? Is it simply the raw brain energy, the tangled extra neurons she possesses, enhanced by gen tech and made invincible in the fugue? I’ve never fully considered why the ascenders’ fugue-states were too powerful for me to access. Why did Lenora coalesce like a newborn sun when I called the fractured pieces of her together? Why would Miriam—a human—have that same characteristic strength, only less so? Is it simply the pure brilliance of their enhanced intellects?

  Then the answer flashes into existence like Augustus resurrecting from his backup… the intensity of their being. That’s what makes the ascenders’ minds so strong. They have a clear-spoken identity that holds them together, more than just a personal key, although I can see t
he reflection of it there. The thing that holds ascenders together—the thing fractured when Lenora’s mind was pulled into pieces—is their sense of self. Just as I mystically declared my own name in the void, knowing who I was provided the gravity to bring my mind back together into a cohesive whole.

  Miriam’s enhanced mind allows her to know who she is with the power of a god.

  And now, so do I.

  Her chest shudders and exhales a long, slow breath… and then it doesn’t take another. I reach with both hands for her fugue-state form, and the intensity of her being, even now, in the moment of death, threatens to drive me back. But I know who I am, and as the nuclear-brightness of her essence washes over me, I hold tight, letting her burn through me, meld with me, as I refuse to let go. She whisks us away from this plane of reality, riding high in the transport with Lenora and Grayson, flying away from the ravaged Makers’ camp…

  …and we land in a fuzzy-dark replica of her father’s temple.

  I’m not touching her anymore, and this isn’t the bombed-out religious house that Miriam brought me to, physically, back when I was a half-prisoner of the Makers. This is Miriam’s blurry vision of the afterlife, something I can sense even with the small bits of burned-in awareness I have of who Miriam really is. Warrior. Jiv. Prophet and savior for her people. And the daughter of a man whose connection to this place is both stronger than hers and more fragile in his humanity. Miriam has always seen herself as other-than-human—first, when she was born without legs, then when she rejected the legacy human society she was born into, and after that, when she was made half-machine as her augments were installed. She was always outside of, different from, other than… and when she volunteered for the Offering and embraced the change in her mind, it was just the final step in that long walk toward destiny.

  She’s always known who she was more strongly than those around her.

  The gen tech just rendered that in neurons.