by Zen, Raeden
They left no molecule unturned.
“What’re you hiding?” Isabelle said.
She paced along a narrow corridor lined with holograms—one of Captain Barão standing with Lord Nero and Lady Verena on Venus, another of Captain Barão and Miss Damosel at Palaestra Lake, and another of Captain Barão and Atticus in Masimovian Tower. She swiped her hand through the hologram of the captain and the chancellor, then heard footsteps.
“Madam Director,” a Janzer said softly, “I think we found something in the great room.”
She went with him. Another Janzer held two coins, oxidized. She gripped them between her fingers and rubbed them. The alloy flaked off in her hand. She couldn’t make out the language or carvings etched on either side.
“I don’t think those are benari coins,” the Janzer said, his voice just above a whisper. “The composition doesn’t match the official blend.”
“What’re they made of?”
“Oxidized lanthanum.”
The Janzer telekinetically parted the coins. One revealed a bloody cryptor within, similar to other BP coins Isabelle had found in the possession of other traitors.
She sent the cryptor through the air into a Janzer’s palm, while another moved the tip of a moist knob over the dried blood.
“It matches Captain Broden Barão’s DNA,” the Janzer said.
“I knew it!” Isabelle closed her eyes and connected to Marstone. She transmitted to Antosha.
We have a problem. Inside Captain Barão’s unit are two coins that match the BP composition and a cryptor with the captain’s blood inside the coin.
Is he present?
No.
Miss Damosel?
Asleep.
Good. Leave the evidence where you found it. Nothing’s changed—
Captain Barão’s alignment with the BP was never part of the plan. Everything’s changed!
That you found BP coins in the captain’s den doesn’t mean he’s their ally. It means they’ve contacted him. The traitors are pervasive. No doubt they contact many officials. The sickness has spread far under Chancellor Masimovian, and curing it will take more effort than we previously understood.
You’ve been gone for a long time, this level of treachery cannot stand.
Remain true to the plan. We will not fail—
“What in Reassortment’s name do you think you’re doing?” Captain Broden Barão swore.
Lady Isabelle turned toward the doorway, her chameleon cape twisting around her. The traitorous captain stood before her. She noted the way his eyes darted to the coins and the cryptor in the Janzer’s hand, then back to her. She could not sense his musings the way she should be able to. Either he’d grown more powerful with the ZPF upon his return from Vigna, as Antosha had suggested during the Mark ceremony, or he used a recaller to deceive her.
“I was about to ask you the same thing, Captain.” She called her Janzers back into the great room. They surrounded her and Captain Barão and activated their pulse guns. “Why don’t you tell me about these.” She held out her hand, and a Janzer dropped the coins into it.
“I’ve never seen those before.”
“Don’t lie to me, Captain.”
“Do you have a communiqué?”
“I’m Lady of the First Ward. I don’t need one.”
“Do you serve Chancellor Masimovian?”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “You have no ground to stand on. This is treason.”
Supreme Scientist Damosel Rhea emerged from the hallway. Her cheeks looked red, her hair tousled. “What’s going on here?”
“A misunderstanding,” Captain Barão said. “I’ve just sent a message to the Office of the Chancellor to personally thank Chancellor Masimovian for sending Lady Isabelle to offer her … protection.”
“From what?” Damy said. She yawned and rubbed her face.
Captain Barão didn’t respond. He turned to Isabelle, who caught his threat but sensed no message from him in the ZPF or with Marstone. It seemed doubtful he would contact the chancellor, or his office, even if he could shield his mind from hers. The captain was hiding something, not only from her but from his eternal partner as well. This reminded her so much of Atticus’s behavior that she wanted to arrest him right here and now. All the politics and procedures that might stop her from doing so were the same ones the chancellor used to mistreat his maidens, the ministry, the people, and most importantly—his own eternal partner. May I rid our world of these heathen men, she thought, and rule the people with Antosha, who would never treat me so poorly.
“Please, Madam Scientist, open your hand.”
Damy furrowed her brow. Isabelle nodded toward her arm.
Cautiously, Damy reached out. Isabelle dropped the used cryptor onto the supreme scientist’s palm. “It contains your eternal partner’s blood. Perhaps you know why.”
“She’s never seen that before,” the captain said, reaching for Damy’s hand.
Damy turned away from him. Isabelle smiled.
Damy narrowed her eyes. “You broke into our home because Brody went to the Fountain of Youth? He’s still entitled to athanasia, is he not?”
Isabelle handed Damy the oxidized coins. Alloy flakes floated around Damy. “I don’t know what this is,” she said.
“Let me enlighten you.” Isabelle activated the unit’s Granville panel, displaying holographic images of the manufacturing plant Zorian Selendia had shown her: men and women in stolen biomats pouring liquid alloy into sheets of coin-sized molds. Isabelle halted the scene. She zoomed in on one of the completed coins.
WE WILL STRIKE THE IRON FIST
FROM IT THE BLOOD OF OUR KIN WILL FLOW
Damy gasped. “What’re you suggesting, Madam Director?”
Isabelle disabled the Granville panel, which turned a polished taupe. “I’m arresting Captain Barão.”
“On what charges?” Damy’s bronze skin turned a shade of gray. Captain Barão reached for her, but she pushed his hands away.
“Conduct unbecoming a strike team captain, to start,” Isabelle said. “Did you still plan on contacting the chancellor, Captain Barão?”
The Janzers gripped Captain Barão’s arms to cuff him. Another placed a Converse Collar around his neck.
“You can’t do this!” Damy said. “He’s a strike team captain and a supreme scientist, he has rights, the accusation must be brought before the ministry, and the chancellor—”
“Will thank me for apprehending a terrorist.” Lady Isabelle nodded to the Janzers.
A pair held Damy back while another two finished securing Captain Barão. While Damy screamed and pushed the Janzers away from her and demanded the chancellor and ministry be notified at once, the captain didn’t fight or even speak. It reminded Isabelle of when she’d arrested Minister Orosiris in Navita City prior to her attack on the false BP stronghold. The minister, it turned out, hadn’t been lying; he had no idea the BP had burrowed a phantom cavern beside his territory, and the chancellor had allowed his reinstatement. This time, however, Isabelle had proof. Contact with the BP!
When she ushered Captain Barão into the hallway, she took one last glance into the terrorist’s home before the entryway reformed. His eternal partner was still shouting and fighting the Janzers, who blocked her way.
“Sedate her—” Isabelle said.
“Hurt her in any way, my lady,” Captain Barão began, as calm as the city’s spas. He shook loose of the Janzers’ grasp. “I’ll see to it you receive the next Warning.” The Janzers reestablished their hold over him.
Isabelle laughed. “Is that your shield, Captain?”
“Damosel,” said the captain, ignoring Isabelle, “Damy, please, stop, stop.” Tears and snot ran down his eternal partner’s face. She halted, looking at him from bloodshot eyes.
“What?” she asked. “Why?”
“I don’t anticipate I’ll be gone for long, my love,” he said, eyeing Isabelle. “The supreme director has shoddy information.”
�
�This is wrong, Brody—”
Lady Isabelle raised her hand, signaling the Janzers.
They rushed out of the apartment unit, sealed and locked the entrance, then pulled Captain Barão to the elevators.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Antosha Zereoue
Palaestra City
Palaestra, Underground Northeast
2,500 meters deep
The morning’s colorful Granville sun filled Palaestra Square’s golden marble, emphasizing the illusion of steps created by holographic artists at the four corners. In the middle, Marshlandic performers, dressed in tanned capes stenciled with Beimenian glyphs, set up their stage for the evening’s festivities. Antosha watched it all from the terrace of the First Ward apartment unit he’d purchased, in accordance with the chancellor’s Twentieth Precept. His maroon silk robe splayed over the onyx ground. A crisp Palaestran wind blew through his black-and-silver hair. The sheep shall gather here, he thought, and I will spit on them all.
“You’re falling in love with her,” Lady Isabelle said.
Antosha sighed. He turned to face his paramour. “What lies has Marstone been telling you, my dove?”
“Don’t let her destroy us.”
Isabelle looked the most concerned he’d seen her since the day she’d warned him the chancellor had ordered Captain Barão to seize him. Dark rings circled her eyes, her porcelain skin appeared lined, wrinkled, it seemed. Pitiful.
“Don’t despair over nonsense. Gwendolyn Horvearth provides the means we require to reach the ends.” He reached for her, but she backed away. “Don’t forget, it was you who suggested I help her in the Harpoons, you who called her the perfect accomplice in our plans with Captain—”
Lady Isabelle slapped him. “I didn’t tell you to fuck her!”
Antosha grimaced and placed a hand against his cheek. He turned to the balustrade, placed his hands on the railing, and squeezed so tight he bent the bar.
“What should I do?” Antosha said. “The Bicentennial nears, we must move forward, Gwen must fulfill her role, and the man frozen near absolute zero must awaken.” Antosha looked into her lavender eyes. This time when he put his hand on hers, she accepted his grasp. “Come with me, sweet belle.”
He led her inside his unit and activated the Granville panels upon the wall. The Earth’s surface was rendered all around them, a sinuous river, a colorful mountain range in summer, a city with skyscrapers taller than Masimovian Tower. “You and I will lead the people to the surface, not Gwendolyn, not Broden, not Atticus, not Damosel, not Avalonia or Decca or Charles or Furongielle or Genevieve or any of the supreme scientists who focus endlessly on conversion and expansion without any real knowledge of power.”
“Captain Barão is working with the BP,” Isabelle said. “Neither you nor the chancellor would allow me to act, then I discover you’re off in the West, fucking that whore—”
“Who will help us take Captain Barão down!”
Isabelle caressed Antosha’s forehead, pushing his hair away from his liquid-silver eye with the back of her forefinger. “The evidence I’ve collected against the captain would justify any action. He’s ours already.”
“Even so, that is not real power, and you, my dove,” he caressed her cheek, “should not settle for anything less.”
“You would have me release him?”
Antosha nodded. “I would have you achieve hyperpower. The chancellor thinks that his refined developmental system and Lower Level death machine created a perfected race, but what he’s done is ensure humanity’s extinction.”
She leaned her face into his palm. “He thinks that without this system he’s created, we wouldn’t have lasted this long inside the Earth, much less expanded throughout the continent, from Gaia to Gallia.” She held Antosha’s hand. Her eyes looked glossy. “The slob has ordered me to reduce the population growth rate to five percent rather than eight percent from a birthrate of fifteen percent this year. Do you know what that means?”
Antosha performed the calculations in his extended consciousness. “With forty and a half million births this year, instead of sending nineteen million Harpoon candidates to the Lower Level, you’d have to send—”
“Twenty-seven million,” Isabelle screamed. And now more softly: “My children … all that effort … all that life, wasted.” She squeezed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger.
“But you didn’t send nine million candidates to the Lower Level after the first Harpoon Auction this year.”
“I sent enough. The BP will surely take advantage. Atticus doesn’t understand the problem he’s created.”
“He is a fool.” Antosha shook his head. “His rule has been a necessary step toward ours, nothing more.”
Antosha had the panel render night in Beimeni City into view, a bazaar with golden tents and offerings of Phanean carpets embroidered with shape-shifting trees. A double helix floated between two Janzer divisions guarding the market.
“All I need do is make a few adjustments,” he brushed through the Janzers’ DNA as if it were the strings on his deodar violin, “and I could take out his entire army.”
Antosha shifted the view to the chancellor delivering a speech at Artemis Square. Masimovian lifted his arms toward the millions of Beimenians who looked on. Antosha caused a rendering of several transhuman double helixes. “He’s created a race so weak that if I chose, I could wipe them all out.” He turned to Isabelle.
“Can’t you eliminate these flaws?”
Antosha led her into his study and activated a workstation. Above it materialized a geometric molecular structure.
She caressed it with her forefingers. “It’s remarkable …”
“It is the maximal, master genome. It is hyperpower. This is what I’ll use to restore the man frozen near absolute zero to his prior self. It’s what I’ll use to defeat Captain Barão and lead the people, with you, back to the surface.”
Antosha wasn’t sure if she was listening any longer. She seemed enamored by the molecules. He’d spoken to her often of his work, but this was the first time he’d revealed his progress so vividly and so concretely. All those years in the Lower Level had served him well in this regard.
“Barão’s strategist—” Isabelle said.
“Learned the basics of hyperpower, same as the others will. And though its present form allows me to conduct operations with the CRISPR system unknown to transhumans, when it’s complete, we shall evolve thousands of times faster than during the Age of Masimovian, in ways directed to enhance diversity rather than limit it, ways that no transhuman, not even you or I, will fully understand until the process begins.”
She turned to him, smiling, but there was something in her eyes he couldn’t read. “You have the Lorum. What else do you require?”
He ran his thumb along the corner of her eye. “Reassortment in its raw, unaltered form … and volunteers.”
ZPF Impulse Wave: Gwendolyn Horvearth
Research & Development Department (RDD)
Palaestra, Underground Northeast
2,500 meters deep
“Captain Barão’s never in the Reassortment research center,” Gwen complained. Standing on the terrace of her Champion’s Suite, she held out her glass and Juvelle, her keeper bot, filled it with Gallian wine. She sipped it, tasting tangy sweetness. “He wasn’t in again today.” She sighed. “It’s no wonder he hasn’t found a cure for Reassortment.”
Caterina loosened her silk scarf, ruffled it, then pulled it around her bare shoulders. “Gwenny,” she said softly, “we’re not supposed to talk about our research!” Hundreds of RDD neophytes partied inside and outside of Gwen’s suite, including on the wide rooftop deck above. Caterina turned her head toward the crowd and made a show of moving her glass in a circle. “Not everyone here’s trustworthy!”
Gwen scanned her terrace. A group of neophytes were taking shots of bright red liquor served by one of the migrant Jurinarians she’d hired for the party. Another group danced in sync with the electr
onica music near the grape vines dangling beneath a marble archway, and yet more neophytes had gathered beside and inside the hot tub. Many more danced on the roof and roamed in and out of the suite. Gwen didn’t think any of them were trustworthy, but she’d not admit that to Caterina. Her friend from development worked in the Leguna Facility where the primary focus of Supreme Scientist Vanya Canis concerned the creation of synisms with mechanical-and nuclear-engineering capabilities.
“You’re not one to judge.” Gwen touched her lips. “As I recall after your first day shadowing in Leguna, all you could talk about were the biostars … and Cael—”
“Shut up!” Caterina turned to Roger, her boyfriend since their early days of development, who chatted with his siblings-in-development. He looked like he had combed his hair this evening and parted it to the left, and he’d finally shaved his grotesque-looking beard.
Gwen giggled. She handed her wineglass to Juvelle, then cupped her face and swayed as if about to swoon, doing her best impression of Cat. “‘Oh Gwenny, you won’t believe how cute my master is—’”
“Shut up!” Caterina playfully swatted Gwen with the bottom of her scarf.
Gwen laughed. She grabbed her wineglass from Juvelle. “Don’t be so prudish,” she said, bobbing with the electronica music. She sipped what remained of her wine, then held out her glass for a refill. While Juvelle poured, Gwen slyly looked at Roger and his friends, men and women who she and Cat had developed with during the first trimester. It was still odd to see them outside the Harpoon VR. “It’s not like he’s your eternal partner.”
Another neophyte stole Gwen’s attention. Markus Venatici had stepped out onto the terrace. Shades of red and blue light drowned the glass walls on either side of him, emphasizing his dark features, the single curl of hair over his forehead, his long eyelashes, his mustache. Marble steps beside him led down to the hot tub where neophytes drank and danced. Their frolicking distracted Markus long enough for Gwen to position Juvelle ahead of her.