The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3)

by Zen, Raeden

  Caterina turned. “Now who’s the synism calling the bacterium stupid?” A joke spread by the neophytes after several had heard it from their masters. “Does Markus know about … Mr. Right Now?” Caterina asked, raising her brow.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Gwen said, not unkindly. “What do you think? Cat, you cannot tell anyone about us. Not until—”

  “After the Bicentennial, right,” Caterina rolled her eyes. She grinned. “He can’t be that good, can he?”

  “It’s not about the sex. It’s about—”

  “Reassortment. Right. Sure thing. But you’re already on the Reassortment research team, Gwenny. And Captain Barão—”

  “Has been the supreme scientist of Reassortment since 288 and he’s not found a cure. He can’t.” Gwen shook her head, swaying with the music. “He’s too distracted, especially since his … disappearance.”

  Caterina held out her glass for a refill from Juvelle. “You never mentioned what happened to him.”

  “I don’t really know. It was the first day I shadowed him. He taught me about Reassortment, which is totally disgusting by the way. Then he dismissed me. He must’ve worked eighteen hours that day if he was there so late. He disappeared on his way home that night, and I didn’t see him for a few days. I worked with a few members of his team during his absence, then out of nowhere he returned … different.” Gwen pressed her lips together and huffed. “He shouldn’t be running the Ventureño Facility.”

  “So who should be? Mr. Right Now? He was exiled, Gwenny. He killed—”

  “I’ve heard enough about Antosha’s so-called crimes. None of you know him, not truly. He’s only ever treated me with kindness. If Captain Barão can change, so can—”

  Gwen took a sharp breath. Antosha had stepped out onto her terrace! He descended the stairs, his elbow interlocked with Supreme Scientist Vanya Canis’s arm. His sister-in-development.

  “Oh gods,” Gwen said, feeling her heart thunder inside her chest. She tugged Caterina by her arm and pulled her closer to the balustrade.

  Caterina’s wine splashed over her gown. “What the hell, Gwenny?” she yelled.

  “Shut up!” Gwen felt as if she were drowning. “Juvelle! Clean Cat’s dress!” Juvelle pushed on her left-side plate, beneath her arm, and out spun fifteen vials filled with synisms. The keeper bot plucked one and dabbed a metallic finger into it, drawing the liquid out. Juvelle pointed at Caterina and sprayed her. The wine coloring cleared from her dress. Gwen handed the bot her emptied wineglass. She wrung her hands together.

  “What’s wrong?” Caterina asked.

  Gwen looked out upon the Research Superstructure transport station and the surrounding facilities, drenched by Granville starlight. She wished she were in one of those facilities rather than on her terrace. “Mr. Right Now is here, right now.”

  Caterina peered over her shoulder. “I see him. He’s with the supreme scientist who runs my facility. He looks rather splendid tonight.” She raised an eyebrow and pushed out her lips.

  Gwen snuck a look. Antosha did look handsome. He wore a dark bodysuit with a phoenix sewed over his chest. Golden buttons lined his sides and forearms. His obsidian eye, flecked by snowflakes, caught her gaze. He whispered into Vanya’s ear. The supreme scientist of the Leguna Facility smiled and sauntered over to the hot tub. She artfully slipped out of her fur-lined cape, which had concealed her entirely. Beneath she wore a two-piece bathing suit and silk dress made of the finest Palaestran silks. The neophytes cleared a spot for her.

  “He’s coming,” Gwen said. “How do I look?”

  Now Caterina swayed the way Gwen had earlier. She placed the back of her hand on her forehead. “I don’t know. I’m just a stupid, silly girl who received a bid in the top five hundred.” More than thirteen million candidates had competed in the Harpoon Exams in the first trimester. “I wasn’t the champion.”

  “Asshole.”

  Caterina chuckled, looking again at Antosha. “He’s such a wicked man, Gwenny. That’s why you like him so much.” She kissed Gwen on each cheek, then whispered, “Have fun.” She floated to the other side of the terrace, where she joined Roger and their friends.

  The music seemed louder, suddenly. Gwen remembered the spa, when Antosha had made love to her until sunset. She’d fallen asleep in his arms. When she’d awakened, she had slipped his grasp and moved her forefingers over his bronze skin, from his neck, down his chest and abs to his manhood and legs, then back up to his neck. She loved the way he held her, kissed her, touched her, and how he said “gorgeous Gwendolyn.” And she loved the way he looked upon her now, as if she was the only woman who mattered in the multiverse, a look that made her want to grab him, kiss him, and wrap her legs around him.

  “I hope it’s all right that Vanya and I stopped by the Champion’s Suite,” Antosha said. “Your parties are well known in the RDD.” He peered toward Vanya, as did Gwen. The supreme scientist had sprawled on one of the chairs near the hot tub and now sipped a glass of champagne. She looked like she had arrived after a visit to the Fountain of Youth, her dark skin glimmering and taut around her cheeks and eyes. If Gwen didn’t know her, she might’ve mistaken her for an RDD neophyte.

  “I didn’t think supreme scientists hung out with neophytes,” she said.

  “How would we get to know our apprentice shadows,” he said, “if we didn’t mingle with them? The others are fools for ignoring theirs outside of work.”

  Though the music drowned out most conversation, Gwen lowered her voice. “What I meant was: Why are you here? Is that wise? What will people say—”

  “People are always going to talk, my violin.” Antosha touched her waist, and Gwen wanted nothing more than to ease into his grasp. “You may as well give them something good to say.” He stepped back.

  She gasped, then grabbed his hand. “I don’t want you to leave—”

  “A bit old to be hanging out with neophytes,” Markus said, “don’t you think?” He eased his arm around Gwen. She dropped Antosha’s hand and broke free from Markus. “You must be what, over a hundred?”

  Gwen looked at Antosha. In truth, while the supreme scientist of Project Regenesis was just over fifty years old, he looked as youthful as any neophyte. If he had only fixed his mismatched silver eye, he would be perfect …

  Gwen exhaled and placed her hand on Markus’s chest. “You’re drunk.”

  Markus moved his head side to side. “You just need to drink more.” He snapped his fingers at Juvelle. The bot’s eye slit glowed, then dimmed. It looked to Gwen, who shook her head no.

  “What, you’re too good for us …” Markus said to Gwen. Swaying away from her, he leaned against the balustrade, his elbows upon the crystalline ledge. “Now that you’re a Harpoon Champion?” A House Lissette candidate, Markus had received a bid from an RDD consortium in the top one percent of all candidates. But he blamed Gwen for sabotaging his performance in the second-half critical-reasoning session. They were both team captains, on separate teams, and though they’d crossed paths in the maze, she hadn’t helped him when she could have. They’d been on a dating “break” since the auction.

  “You’re a clever fellow,” Antosha said. He stepped beside Markus, who lifted his arms from the balustrade and straightened. It was the first time Gwen had ever seen fear in Markus’s eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Antosha brushed the back of his forefinger across Markus’s sweaty left temple. He whispered in his ear.

  Markus staggered away from them.

  “What’d you tell him?” Gwen asked.

  “The truth.” Antosha paused. “You are too good for him.”

  Markus made his way through the throng, then disappeared into the suite. Gwen didn’t know him to be a man to give up like that. Oddly, a part of her pitied him. “How’d you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Change him.”

  “It’s up here.” Antosha tapped his temple with two forefingers. “One day you’ll learn, and when you do the peop
le will drown in your consciousness.” He grinned. “Did you wonder why Captain Barão missed work today?” Gwen shrugged. “He’s being held in the DOP on suspicion of treason.”

  Gwen opened her mouth wide. “Does this mean you—”

  Antosha waved his hand. “A misunderstanding. The chancellor will release the captain tonight.”

  “Oh,” Gwen said, lowering her head. “I’d hoped …”

  Antosha lifted her chin with his forefingers. “You must continue your work with Captain Barão.” He leaned closer to her. “The captain must trust you completely.”

  “I understand.” Gwen closed her eyes, hoping Antosha would kiss her and sweep her off her feet and carry her to her bedroom and pleasure her all night—

  “I want you to slap me as hard as you can.”

  Gwen’s eyes opened swiftly. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “What?”

  “Slap me and tell me to leave and when you do it, I want you to mean it—”

  “I can’t—”

  “My violin, you can do anything. Dig deep, find that most haunting secret, pretend I shared it with the world, and slap me, scream at me, hate me,” and when Gwen hesitated, “your parents conceived you in an alley and when your mother discovered her pregnancy, she left you to die on those steps in Transport City, she didn’t want you, she still doesn’t—”

  Gwen punched Antosha so hard he flew, and when he landed, he tumbled down the marble stairs, crashed into neophytes, and they all splashed into the hot tub. All eyes at the party turned toward her.

  Gwen felt tears burn her eyes. “Don’t ever come back here!”

  Vanya helped Antosha out of the tub. He held his nose. Blood gushed down his face. Gwen caught his nod to her before he and Vanya disappeared inside the suite.

  Gwen held her chest. She felt like someone had stabbed her lungs. What had she done to her lover? And what had he done to her?

  No one knew details about her parents except Caterina, Roger, Markus, and Minister Kurt Kaspasparon. To her knowledge, none of these people had spoken to Antosha. How could he know? Could he see her consciousness? Or did he view her file in the RDD’s database and make assumptions?

  She rested her hand on Juvelle’s arm.

  “Aha, mademoiselle,” Juvelle said, dabbing uficilin onto Gwen’s bloody knuckles, “should I ask the guests to leave?”

  “No, let them—”

  “Gwenny!” Caterina said. She arrived with Roger beside her. “What happened?”

  “He’s still trying to recruit me to his team,” Gwen lied, examining her cleaned and healed fist.

  “Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Roger said, “or invite you to join my team in the Taos Facility.”

  Gwen laughed, then frowned. “He bought up my parents …”

  Caterina rubbed Gwen’s arm. “I knew he was a dick.”

  She coaxed Gwen into joining their friends from development for a drinking game called Guess the Synism. The Jurinarian migrant workers cleaned the hot tub, which bubbled with blood-stained water. The guests drank and chatted as if nothing had happened.

  But Gwen knew word would spread quickly of what she’d done. She danced with her friends from development, pondering Antosha’s next move, and hers.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão

  Spa of Delphi

  Gaia, Underground West

  2,500 meters deep

  “What are we going to say?” Nero said. “Great Lady of Lux, Delphi, have you seen our terrorist friends lately?”

  “Just follow my lead,” Brody said. “We’ll see where it goes.”

  Delphi wasn’t known to give straight answers to simple questions. Brody assumed the meaning of the BP’s note would become clear when they got there. When it did, he wanted his striker with him, more so after his arrest in the First Ward.

  The Lady Isabelle had overestimated her authority, as Brody assumed she did, when she took him from his apartment in the middle of the night. The chancellor had gone to Brody’s holding cell in the Department of Peace himself and powered down the teal laser beams that secured him. “I’ve been set up,” Brody assured the chancellor, who nodded. “You’ve ever been my friend, ally, and confidant in strike team and commonwealth affairs,” Masimovian offered, kissing Brody on both his cheeks, “and I would ask your forgiveness in this most unfortunate misunderstanding.” He hadn’t seemed as distraught as Brody would have thought. Was he not directing policy to the director of communications and commonwealth relations? Were he and Lady Isabelle not coordinating Janzer search and seizures with the ministry, as required by Beimeni law?

  So much still didn’t make sense to Brody, and he hoped Delphi might provide the answers—and that the BP would make contact, as they had offered in their cryptor.

  Now he and Nero neared the Protector Prototypes, alloyed bots covered with golden chains. Black orbs the size of oranges, tipped with diamond spikes, floated around the Protectors. Then the spiked orbs surrounded Brody and Nero, and they heard the gruff voices of the Protectors in their minds.

  Captain Barão, what business do you have with Her Lady of Lux?

  We seek wisdom from Delphi.

  You shall be granted access to Her Lady of Lux for one hundred benaris.

  Brody paid with coin, and the Protectors withdrew the spiked orbs closer to their bodies. They collected Nero’s shuriken and pulse guns. A keeper bot escorted them to the dressing area, where they changed into maroon robes—the traditional Beimeni resting garb—and galoshes.

  They scurried through the Corridor of Delphi. Water flowed down ruby walls. Soft apricot bioluminescence emanated from the pools below. In the main atrium, the falls transformed from clear and clean to milky and as dark as oil until they parted in the middle. When last Brody had visited the spa, the falls had been golden.

  Delphi emerged, burning in the flaming tar and dust and muck as she tiptoed over the bubbling pond. Her once silky obsidian hair was charred. He might not have known her at all if not for her iridescent almond eyes, which seemed to hold the cosmos within.

  Brody stepped back. “What’s happened here? What’s happened to you?”

  “My appearance does not concern a change in my being but in yours, for the Great Falls of Delphi reveal your consciousnesses, as experienced by the Twin Gods.”

  “Lady of Lux, we require your foresight,” Brody said. He pulled Nero’s arm down, and they knelt before her. “We believe we have discovered a traitorous act from among the commonwealth’s highest officials.”

  “Freely speak your minds here. No chancellor, not even Mr. Masimovian, holds sway over the gods.”

  Traitorous words for traitorous times, Brody thought.

  “Forgive us for bringing evil here, but we’ve seen proof that our chancellor, he who allows the people an opportunity for endless life, he who allows for equality in development and infinite underground expansion, he who has maintained peace and prosperity for so long … we believe he has committed an act unworthy of a supreme chancellor of Beimeni.”

  “You are a sworn captain of the underground and you know that I will not interfere in transhuman affairs. You will uphold your world’s rules and its traditions and its integrity at the expense of all else. This is your destiny. This is your purpose.”

  “Lady of Lux,” Nero began, “if I may speak on this.” She nodded. “We cannot cross the chancellor and have any hope those we care about will survive. Our lives may be lost, but more innocents shouldn’t suffer for our perceived treachery. We ask that you impart your wisdom of the multiverse to us and guide us in this monumental challenge.”

  You must see the darkness in your hearts that fills my spa, darkness that now spreads throughout the Beimeni zone.

  Delphi’s lips did not move, yet Brody and Nero heard her voice as clearly in their minds as if she spoke them aloud.

  “Do you speak of the BP or of the commonwealth, and how do you recommend we respond?” Nero said. “What do you see in our timescape?”
>
  You must see into yourselves, and you will know how to react. She turned and tiptoed over the curdling black water.

  Brody connected to the ZPF and, without Marstone’s interference, sent, Wait, Delphi, you once told me of a choice of destiny.

  She disappeared through the oily waterfall.

  You will know, Captain Barão.

  Should I help the BP? Should I bring forward the information to the ministry?

  You will know …

  Her Lady of Lux disappeared behind the falls.

  Brody and Nero dressed in their fatigues. They ambled past the Protector Prototypes, whose spiked orbs simmered gently around their bodies.

  Once they were clear, Nero said, “What was that?”

  “That was actually quite a direct conversation, for her.”

  “Are you kidding? Look into your heart? What total bullshit, I want my hundred benaris back.”

  “I paid, Nero, and besides that’s not why we’re—”

  A captain and a lord,

  Oh my, oh my,

  They’d never help a ward!

  The song echoed from a secondary tunnel perpendicular to the Corridor of Delphi. The rat-a-tat of footsteps pressed closer and closer, and a little girl, a child, stopped to face them.

  A striker and a captain,

  Oh my, oh my,

  Catch me if you can!

  Brody and Nero dashed toward her and into a tunnel lined with petrified wood and polished stone. The girl disappeared. Brody turned. Behind them, aristocratic Beimenians dressed in tunics checked in with the Protector Prototypes. None noticed the ruckus, or if they did, they didn’t react. Nero grasped the handles of his shuriken when the giggles and the tapping of the girl’s feet resumed. She flashed into and out of sight in the opposite direction.