by Zen, Raeden
“Why are you telling me this?” Brody said, but the gag and hood muffled his voice almost entirely.
“Don’t speak! You don’t open that filthy mouth of yours unless given permission! Three hundred sixty-eight years After Reassortment, what’s it like up there now, what’s left?”
“Nothing,” Brody said, but it sounded like “Mu-hing.”
“Wrong answer!”
A turn. A slide. A smack. And Brody tumbled under the seats.
A hand grasped his ankle and pulled. “I don’t understand,” Brody mumbled.
“This brings me to the Island of Reverie,” the woman’s voice said. “Three hundred sixty-eight years ago, what happened?”
“Wawawa.”
“I can’t hear you!”
Brody was stabbed and jolted. A fresh flash of pain ripped through his bones and blood. He arched his back, convulsed.
“They all died,” said the voice, low and womanly, “and after three hundred sixty-eight years, an alloy jungle has given way to a real one.”
There was more muddled conversation. Brody breathed in swift, rapid strokes, his body fighting the mirage of Reassortment.
The transport slowed, and he slid downward.
He was dragged a ways, on his belly. Then the hood lifted from his head. A golden moon ringed by thick clouds and leafless trees appeared upon Granville panels. Brody shut his eyes. The tape was ripped from his lips, and he was lifted upright by the lapels of his bloodstained lab coat.
His head tipped to the side, his eyes closed. “Why … you tell … me? What … I … do?” His lips bubbled with spit, and saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth, mixed with snot and blood. He had a terrible bitter taste in his mouth.
“Open your eyes,” the man said.
Brody moved his head about, his eyes shut, the light painful.
“Do it!”
Brody opened the left one, disturbing the slow-forming bruise that had cropped out. He opened his right. His vision blurred, then brightened, revealing three silhouettes of transhumans. He blinked, painfully, and they came into focus. One seemed adolescent, a boy, his body tattooed, sharp facial features. He didn’t look like a fully developed transhuman. The man looked spindly, also splayed with animated tattoos. And the woman—the way she twirled her shuriken was as mesmerizing to Brody as her voice had been.
“We ask you,” the spindly one said, “because you feed our people to that organism, you sonofabitch!”
He punched Brody with the butt of the baton, knocking him unconscious.
Part II:
The Enlightenment
On the Surface: Summer
In Beimeni: Second Trimester
Days 182 – 209
Year 368
After Reassortment (AR)
ZPF Impulse Wave: Isabelle Lutetia
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
Lady Isabelle stepped over the marble ground of the tower’s Grand Salon, her lavender silk skirt twisting around her body and bare feet. She felt beautiful, sensual this evening. Antosha had told her how the dress complemented her hair and eyes, then taken it off, slowly. Yet there was no amount of contentment an audience with Atticus Masimovian could not unravel, she knew from experience.
She crossed under an arch onto the terrace, where the chancellor waited.
“Is Hammerton Hall not the most magnificent architecture in all of Beimeni?” Atticus said.
“Why no, my chancellor.” She ran her fingers over his back on her way to the balustrade. “It could never compare to your tower.”
Atticus didn’t seem as if he heard her. He was looking out at Hammerton Hall, which stood beneath the Granville sky in all its glory. Designed by architect Wilhelm Vanderslooten in the 200s, dedicated in honor of the hundredth year of Chancellor Masimovian’s rule in the year 268 AR, the hall featured a combination of majorelle-and maya-blue outer beams, two hundred meters tall, topped by an opulent roof garden, the Dream Forest. A pond where black swans swam sat amid the trees and lime bioluminescence, overlaid by a white marble bridge, surrounded by statues of former leaders and entertainers. The performance area on the third platform, notable for its marquee performances, featured an overhead trellis that simulated the acoustics of an indoor performance hall.
Isabelle pushed her hair over her shoulder. It smelled of coconut oil and was still a touch damp from her bath. Atticus reeked of sex, most likely with his maidens, though one never knew. “What made you summon me here on this steamy night?”
Atticus wore a maroon cape and cashmere slippers, traditional resting garb. His hood fluttered around his neck, and his thick curly hair waved in the gusts. Sweat dotted his forehead. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a glowing slab of fluorite stone carved with Beimenian glyphs. “Do you know what this means?”
“The ministers offered you that curio as their first gift, did they not, for the Bicentennial?” The chancellor held up the stone. She snatched it and made a show of feeling its weight in her hand, then set it back. She took two crystal glasses from a diamond cart and filled them with Loverealan wine and raised her glass. “To two hundred years in the Age of Masimovian,” she said.
May it end as grandly as it began, she thought. They clanked their glasses, and she swallowed the sweet and tannic wine made in the depths of Silkscape City. She didn’t feel as ill as she had when she’d arrived.
“What a year,” Atticus said, setting his glass down on a pedestal. “What a year!” He lifted Isabelle in the air and spun around with her. Her glass flew over the side of the balustrade, and she laughed like a girl in development, and for a second she remembered why she’d once loved him. “Smashing the records of Harpoon qualifiers,” he continued, “unprecedented rates of conversion! A healed economy! A dying BP! New hope with Reassortment—”
“With Regenesis, you mean.”
Atticus released her and pulled his sleeves down his arms. “So long as Antosha doesn’t stir the RDD the way he did last time, then yes, we have hope to meet Dr. Kole Shrader.” He picked a pipe up off a liqueur bar, lit it, and eyed Isabelle suspiciously.
“Lady Verena and Lord Nero should’ve worn biomats in the Regenesis Chamber. You cannot blame Antosha for a synism breach of containment when RDD scientists break protocol—”
“Perhaps it was an accident, as you suggested.” Atticus smiled and turned back toward the hall, pointing to it with his palm open. “Isabelle, this is the year of the Bicentennial,” he said, pronouncing each syllable. “The elite will gather, here, in my honor!”
She sighed. She hated him most when he summoned her in this kind of mood. “It shall be grand, my chancellor.”
She was thinking about Dr. Shrader’s awakening, not the Bicentennial, and the knowledge she and Antosha would gain from him about the Reassortment Strain, including its origins and humanity’s downfall—and how they could use this to pursue an evolutionary apex.
Atticus poured a new glass of dark-looking liqueur. Isabelle smelled licorice. He sipped it. “Do you know why I instituted the Harpoons?”
“For the good of the commonwealth—”
Atticus laughed and puffed his pipe aggressively. “If I told the people that I would send those inferior among us to work fifteen-hour days doing nothing of importance, and trudge in circles and inhale air not fit for rodents and sift the ashes of the dead and scum until their final hour, what would they say?”
Isabelle poured her own drink. She swirled it, eyeing the chancellor. The chatter in Marstone’s Database had turned ominous of late—an attack on the Research Superstructure executed, Captain Broden Barão reported missing. What could Atticus be so pleased about?
“I think we should be more interested in keeping as many Beimenians as we can in the thirty territories, developing each child to their full potential, in that way improving our research in the Beimeni zone as we strive to return to the surface—”
“What if I didn’t tell
you that you would be placed in such an underworld,” Atticus said, ignoring her, “but instead provided you the means to escape. You work, you learn. You perform, you advance. You lose, you leave.”
“A mirage.”
“A prism.” Atticus moved his forefingers in an arched shape as if to form the image in a way she would understand. “Devoid of the Harpoons and the Lower Level, we’d have no conversion. Devoid of conversion, no athanasia. Devoid of athanasia, we’d have no Fountain of Youth. And without the Fountain of Youth, we’d have nothing. And as for those ungrateful souls who seek to destroy what I’ve built—”
“What we’ve built,” she said, her voice a whip.
Atticus studied her thoughts. She revealed nothing of her plans with Antosha. “Tell me about this … attack on the Research Superstructure … Isabelle, tell me what progress you’ve made on that, and on the BP.”
“No casualties reported from the RDD infirmary, but the damage to the Superstructure was extensive. It will take twenty or thirty days to repair.”
“Will the RDD scientists have passage to their facilities?”
“Some will have longer commutes, but all the facilities will maintain access.”
“Have you found Captain Barão?”
“No. His neural feed disappeared from Marstone’s Database at the time of the attack. Miss Damosel doesn’t know where he is, I checked her thought log. Whether he lives or dies should matter not to us, Atticus. He has failed you for too long. This is a sign from the gods. We should end his term on Reassortment.”
The chancellor swiped his goatee. “The people cannot have their captain taken from them—”
“Not by you—”
“Not by anyone. The commonwealth’s psyche is fragile right now. I feel the people at all times, their thoughts and dreams flow through me like my own blood, and I know they cannot handle the stress of losing their captain. I will speak no more of it. What have you done about the Beimeni Polemon?”
Isabelle set her drink on the tray. “The supply lines are the least vulnerable they’ve been in years, and I’ve assured General Norrod the DOC will install sensors and cameras so as to coordinate defenses with the Janzer divisions—”
“That wasn’t what I asked—”
“Jeremiah Selendia yields little incremental intel and, truth be told, has little life left in him, so I’ve shifted my focus to his eldest son, to Zorian Selendia.”
“Is he talking?”
“He continues to claim that he doesn’t know what went wrong in Navita.”
The truth was that the bastard claimed she’d delayed too long, allowed the BP time to escape. She’d prepared what she believed were flawless contingency plans with Lieutenant Arnao. She was to bring an end to the Evolutionary War, the guerilla war the commonwealth fought against the BP since 308 AR. Then something had gone wrong. When she and her army had arrived, the BP hadn’t been there and, worse, had booby-trapped the place. It had taken all her skill in the ZPF to escape and survive.
“I believe him,” Isabelle continued, “though I’m still formulating how he might be of use to us. It wouldn’t be helpful to kill him.” Unlike his younger brother Hans, Zorian didn’t have the BP’s love, but he did have their trust. “My mind-sweeps in Marstone’s Database suggest something large on the horizon, and I’d like to find out where the next attack will be.”
“Vile, ungrateful terrorists!” Atticus sucked on the pipe.
“There’s more, my chancellor.” Isabelle rubbed her hands together, thinking about how she’d been almost buried alive in Navita. “The BP is burrowing, farther and deeper and wider than we expected. The Janzers discover intricate tunnels throughout the commonwealth by the day—”
“How are they traveling, how are they communicating, how are they living outside our territories? Still!” Atticus threw up his arms. “Even after the destruction beneath Haurachesa! How is it that you haven’t stemmed their advance?”
Isabelle was, at first, speechless. Without her attacks on the BP, she believed they would’ve already taken Beimeni City and let chaos reign in the underground. Why couldn’t her eternal partner understand this! She sighed. She didn’t care about his legacy. She cared about maintaining peace and order and ensuring a smooth transition to the end of the Age of Masimovian, which had overseen more inefficient life and death than she would ever allow.
No, hers and Antosha’s rule would usher in a true age of tranquility and evolutionary advancement. An age where strict population controls and efficiently allocated resources would ensure the highest level of development for each new citizen registered in Marstone’s Database. Resolve, moderation, and persistence, these are the virtues of Atticus Masimovian, and I’ll make certain they lead to his undoing, she thought. And afterward, I’ll see to it that no baby is sent to a Lower Level!
“The tunnels are a labyrinth,” she said, “and they build new passageways as quickly as we map and destroy the old ones. We’re mining all the data we have for the last half year, connecting loops and paradoxes and searching for anything we missed. It’ll take another fifteen days—”
“We don’t have that long!”
“I suspect an attack on the Bicentennial—”
“Oh! Do you!” Atticus lifted the palm of his hand in front of his face. “Hullo, Atticus Masimovian, I’m your hand, and I think the Beimeni Polemon is about to bomb your Bicentennial celebration!” He rotated his palm toward Isabelle. “Gee, wonderful news. Maybe I should hire Danforth Diamond to destroy the BP.”
“How dare you! After all the progress I’ve made. You’re the one who won’t let me execute false flag attacks or kill Jeremiah—”
“Pull divisions from Farino. Pull divisions from Nyx. Pull divisions from the Permutation Crypt.” Atticus’s eyes narrowed. “The people need this celebration. It is of great importance to the commonwealth, and all who serve me, that it go smoothly.”
ZPF Impulse Wave: Cornelius Selendia
Blackeye Cavern
300 meters deep
“You were brave down there,” Arty said.
Then why do I feel so terrible? Connor thought. He lifted himself out of the Cavern’s man-made lake onto the gravely shoreline. He’d just finished his thirty-third lap. Unlike his prior workouts, this one didn’t soothe him after his first Polemon strike. “We gave Captain Barão what he deserved,” he said, knowing this would be what his foster father would like to hear.
Arty grinned in that wise way he always had in their unit in the Third Ward of Piscator City, where they once had lived. He wore a sleeveless tunic. Bracelets and bands carved and painted with the BP’s regalia—a Morelia spilota spilota, a black-and-yellow dotted snake, an ambush predator—wrapped around his arms and neck and waist.
“It’s a start for what he’s done to his own people, son.” Arty rubbed his nose, which looked pointier than usual, perhaps because of all the weight he’d lost on his journey east from Piscator to the Cavern. He’d escaped prior to the Lady Isabelle’s surgical search there in the first trimester.
Connor picked up his towel off a granite boulder and dried his chest and back, then glided the towel down his swim trunks, knees, and ankles. He’d been muscular prior to his escape from Piscator, his body built from lifting sharks and seafood in nets each day on the fishermen’s Block. The journey from Piscator to the Cavern had taken much of his excess weight, though with the constant workouts since he’d arrived, he was starting to gain some of it back. It felt good to have more strength.
He looked out over the lake filled with cool water from the commonwealth’s piping system and splayed with blue-green bioluminescence streaking out from the shoreline. Prehistoric fossils engraved the sides of the cove and the limestone pillars that supported it beneath the Earth’s weight. A waft of warm air swirled around him, chilling him a bit, smelling musty, like a swamp, bringing forth memories of Piscator Territory. He thought about the time Captain Barão had visited the South.
The captain had traveled to
the Block this past year, just before the peak fishing season there, and given a rousing speech to the fishermen. He assured them he’d guide their return to the surface, where they could hunt on the sea the ways the men of the old world did, on ships with sails, safe from the Reassortment Strain, after he found a cure. How Connor had loved the captain that day, and how that feeling had curdled in his gut after his developer and longtime friend, Murray Olyorna, had told him of the captain’s betrayal of his father.
“Can we believe nothing the captain says?” Connor asked.
“I’m not sure we can,” Arty said. He loosened one of the bands on his arm. “He received the first bid during his auction. The champions are all the same, from what I’ve seen over the decades.”
Connor wouldn’t have a clue about this. He hadn’t been registered within Marstone’s Database when he was born, so he wasn’t given professional care by a house of development, and he had never competed in the Harpoons. Instead, his older brother Hans had treated him with a synism called E. evolution, designed to alter his DNA, shifting his genome further down the Homo transition spectrum, closer to Homo evolutis. It was a rugged method of development utilized by the BP, and the infection it led to induced an intense fever, something unknown to any registered transhuman, whose immune systems destroyed 99.9 percent of known, natural pathogens. When the fever had struck him, Connor hadn’t been sure he’d survive it, first while in captivity in the Department of Peace, then on the run through the Polemon passageways. It was in the passageways that Murray had helped him recover, and it was later on during their journey to the East, just before they were separated in Mantlestone Village, that he’d told Connor the late Vastar Alalia had bid first for Captain Barão during his auction in 260 AR.