The Augenspire (Origins of Elaria Book 1)

by V. St. Clair

  He passed through the heart of the finance district, which was markedly cleaner and better lit than some of the less affluent areas of town. This was where all the important bankers and business owners kept their offices, so a large amount of the Public Works budget went into upkeep for this part of Silveria, to keep all the big-money happy. Decorative shrubs lined the walkways, sculpted into fantastical shapes like miniature works of art. In fact, Carl once heard there was a competition each year amongst local artists to compete for the right to sculpt the shrubbery here; the work got done for free, while the winning artists got to hold bragging rights for the next year or so. The streets were meticulously clean as a result of the huge fines for littering, and there were no posters, flyers, or other graffiti anywhere in sight.

  He exited the bus only after it left the finance district and moved into the neighboring borough, which was a hodgepodge of small businesses crammed beside and on top of each other in a fight for the limited amount of available real-estate. While still relatively clean and well-lit, this part of Silveria lacked the straight lines and even spacing of the buildings in the better areas of town. Carl knew there was a nest of hideouts, alleyways, and unregistered basements he couldn’t even begin to navigate in this part of the city. Only people who were born and raised in this part of town were really privy to all its secrets, and they would never share them with outsiders.

  Hera was obviously one such person, or else she had contacts who knew the area extremely well and were willing to share intel with her, because one of the businesses she used as a base of operations was in a sub-basement of a wine shop that was going out of business.

  Carl departed the bus and set off on foot, keeping his strides long and purposeful and avoiding obvious eye contact with anyone in particular. He passed the front door of the wine shop and turned a corner into an alley full of dumpsters from the nearby businesses. One of the overhead lights was broken, which darkened the alley considerably, but Carl noted it already had a bright orange tag on it, signaling it had been brought to the attention of the local Public Works office and was scheduled for repair.

  He grimaced and entered the alley, scanning the darkened area as thoroughly as possible as he passed through it and around to the other side of the building, which dead-ended into a razor-wire fence separating this property from the next. He tugged sharply on an unlocked door and entered the back of the wine shop, shutting it behind him and regretting it almost immediately. The back room was completely dark.

  Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves and to assure himself there was nothing waiting to attack him here, he felt his way around with one hand, stumbling momentarily over a box in his path before finding the door leading to the basement.

  He turned on the lights as he shut the door behind him and continued into the basement, which was separate from the cellar where the wine was kept. Most people believed there was only one cellar with two doors leading down to it on opposite ends of the shop, and so never bothered using this back one. After all, who would build two separate basements in the same building?

  The room Carl entered at the bottom of the stairs was small and cramped, despite being mostly empty. The basement was unfinished and had only two bare light bulbs to illuminate the eight-foot-square room.

  The trapdoor blended in almost perfectly with the scuffed and chipped wooden floor around it, so if he wasn’t looking for it, Carl wouldn’t even know it was there. He snaked his hand into a natural-looking divot in the floor, where the wood had been deliberately damaged to allow for access to the door.

  He managed to just grab the edge of the door and lift it upwards, propping it open long enough to climb down the ladder and pull it closed over him. Fortunately, the sub-basement was already lit, so he wasn’t descending into complete darkness this time. It was also much nicer than the room above it, a twenty-foot-square room with a carpeted floor, padded couches, and a gaming table. Currently, the only other occupant in the room with him was Hera.

  “Good, you made it,” she greeted him warmly, though there was something tense about her that made Carl wonder if the warmth was only superficial. He often felt uneasy around their leader. She held so many secrets and thoughts behind her eyes that he never really knew what she was thinking. Sometimes it felt like she had the next fifty moves planned out and the rest of them were all left to scramble around in the dark, trying to figure out where they fit into the grand scheme of things. Did the people who died for her plans even know what they were walking into, or did they just blindly trust that their leader knew what she was doing?

  “Yeah, they finally lifted the lockdown,” he replied, sitting down at the gaming table, which was currently cleared of dice and cards. “I never did hear for sure why they were at the Academy in the first place, but they must have found what they were looking for if they’re letting us out into the city again.”

  Or maybe they just decided there would be riots if they kept us cooped up in there much longer. Things had been getting rather tense by the end of the second day.

  Hera joined him at the table, sitting in the seat directly opposite him.

  “You don’t know why the Provo were at the Academy?” She looked mildly surprised.

  “No, why? Did they make an announcement or something and I just didn’t hear about it? I’ve been kind of isolated for the last few days, trying to keep a low profile and stick to the class routine.” That was only partly true. He had mainly been avoiding his friends because he wasn’t sure how to look them in the eye with the traitorous thoughts boiling around inside of him.

  “Hmm…” was all she said to this explanation, though her eyes focused on him with uncomfortable intensity, as though able to suddenly see right through him. “Well, if you had spoken to Ana, she could have told you what all the brouhaha was about,” Hera continued. “To summarize, she was on her way to speak to me—about you going missing, actually—when a member of the Provo-Major appeared in the room with a Gifted prisoner in tow. Ana pulled something from the Major’s mind, and both her and the prisoner’s life were in danger, so they overpowered the Major and robbed him of his ring of Talents and his ion-sword before escaping and finding me.”

  This made such little sense, Carl wasn’t sure which part to ask about first.

  “Wait, what do you mean Ana pulled something from the Provo-Major’s mind?” As far as he knew, all Ana could do was tell when she was in life-threatening danger.

  “I’ll let her explain it properly to you. There are parts of it I still don’t understand.” She frowned at that. “There seems to be more to her Gift than she was open about before.”

  Carl’s eyes widened at this, and he realized it had been a mistake to avoid his friends. He had noticed Ana seem bothered by the activities of the Provo at the Academy the last few days, but hadn’t had the spare energy to try to figure out why. He would have to rectify the mistake as soon as possible.

  “So some prisoner and a Provo-Major showed up from the middle of nowhere and fought with her? And she won?” Carl asked dubiously. Hera’s telling of the story was certainly leaving a lot to be desired.

  “Again, it’s a long story, and one I’ll let her tell. I understand the Major may have been impaired by drugs, making him easier to overpower. The prisoner is now in my custody, providing us information about the Augenspire itself, which we sorely need at this point. The Majors are infuriated one of their own was humiliated in battle and deprived of his most precious weapons, and they have been on a tear through the Academy ever since.”

  Realization struck Carl and his mouth fell open when he said, “They were looking for Ana? That’s why they turned out half the Augenspire to raid the Academy, why they were questioning all the girls so much—”

  “They are under the impression Ana is a psychic, and they are determined to find her, likely to kill her before she can tell anyone what she saw in Major Fox’s mind. Fortunately she was in disguise when the Major encountered her initially, and he seems not to rememb
er much about her emblem or else they would have already discovered her.”

  Carl grimaced and said, “I watched them haul off an innocent girl from school the other day. They were looking for Ana—and I’m glad she avoided capture—but they’re probably torturing that other poor girl to death right now inside the Augenspire—”

  “Seven girls, actually,” Hera corrected softly, looking disturbed. “This is the nastier, less tasteful part of war, Carl—the part where innocents often get in the way and are punished in our stead. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish we could charge into the Augenspire right now and get those poor girls back, but it’s impossible and you know it. In return for their sacrifices, we have gained valuable knowledge about the most private parts of the Augenspire we didn’t have before, and of a schism within the highest levels of the government itself. We have a full complement of Talents on hand—which our technical people are attempting to make sense of—and a priceless ion-sword. We have gained much for the price we paid, probably more than any resistance has ever gained since the Great War itself.”

  Carl was momentarily diverted from the thought of those innocent girls suffering on Ana’s behalf by the lure of advanced technology. If he could get involved with the technical team, he would have the opportunity to try and interpret the most coveted circuitry on the entire planet.

  Hera changed the subject abruptly.

  “Risa tells me you have been offered a job.”

  Ah, the real reason she called me here tonight…

  Carl was forced away from his happy thoughts of technology to confront the harshness of reality once more.

  “As a captain of a squadron of ground troops, yes.” He hoped if he kept saying it out loud, it would eventually sink in and mean less to him. So far it wasn’t working.

  “Congratulations,” Hera said, and she sounded like she meant it. “That’s a very illustrious offer to receive. They obviously have great respect for your Gift, and your intelligence, since they would hardly let an idiot lead their troops, Gifted or not.”

  He frowned thoughtfully at this assessment and said, “I hadn’t thought about that last part, but I suppose they did probably watch a few tapes of my classes and check out my grades before talking to me.” He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse about the offer.

  “You’ve always shown great potential,” Hera confirmed.

  “There aren’t too many full-spectrum classical Deco-Reco’s these days. Maybe only five.” he added. “I expect my rare Gift has them more interested than my above-average grades. They certainly had a lot of questions about my Gift.”

  “I imagine so,” Hera raised her eyebrows invitingly, but didn’t push him further.

  When the silence became oppressive, Carl continued of his own volition. “They wanted to know the full limit of my abilities—though why they didn’t just look through my files or rely on the videos of my practicums, I have no idea. They just kept asking…can I break apart anything or do I need to know its composition first? Can I reconstruct things regardless of their size, or does it become more difficult with larger objects? Does it work on plants, organics, and other living things, or only on inanimate objects? Can I repair something if the materials themselves were destroyed? And so on…”

  Hera looked like she wanted to know the answer to a few of those questions herself, though she had never pushed any of them to reveal their deepest secrets. People tended to be very proprietary of the details of their Gift, because it could literally be the thing that got them killed if the wrong person showed an interest in it, or if they were too forthcoming with key information. It was one of the things he appreciated most about Hera, her ability to lead a revolution and trust the people close to her even though she knew there were things they kept secret from her.

  “Did you answer the questions to their satisfaction?” she asked instead.

  “I think so,” he wondered if that was true. “I tried to be as open as possible about it, since the Minors don’t appreciate being lied to and they could verify most of the answers anyway by checking their files or reviewing video footage. I don’t know what information they have on me, so it seemed like a bad idea to try and hide things from them.”

  Hera waved away his need to justify himself and said, “I expected as much. Are they still interested in employing you as part of the Viceroy’s plan to reintegrate Gifted into society?”

  She looked deeply interested in the answer to this question, more interested than in the job offer itself. Feeling like he was missing something important, he said, “That’s what they told me, at least. It’s been long enough since the Great War. The Viceroy is tired of looking over his shoulder for revolutions against the establishment, and he wants to try to fix some of his grandfather’s mistakes—well, they didn’t say that, of course, but that was the implication.”

  Hera was fully absorbed in what he was saying, though her expression was carefully neutral. She looked like she was thinking very hard about something too important to share with him, which was annoying because he was being open with her.

  “So he’s finally trying to put some meat behind his promise to mend fences—slowly, of course. Glacially, almost.” Hera sighed, rubbing her temples tiredly.

  “That’s what it seems like,” Carl shrugged. “His daughter’s influence, I think. Everyone knows Vicerina Jessamine has been a vocal advocate for trying to end the hostilities between the Gifted and the military—she always does those charity events to sponsor families too poor to travel across the world to visit their Gifted relatives, and she was the one to push through the Electronic Privacy Act three years ago.”

  The Electronic Privacy Act had made it officially illegal to monitor the private communications of any citizen—Gifted or not—without a probable-cause warrant issued for suspected terrorist or criminal activity. Prior to that, the Gifted were openly targeted, with all of their electronic communications monitored and taped by the government for use against them at any time. Of course, since the people in charge of monitoring adherence to the new law were the same people who had been discriminating against the Gifted in the past, they didn’t really trust their communications to be truly private now, which was why they still used code phrases when calling each other on the comms.

  “Putting the Gifted into the army itself—as officers, no less—is a much bigger attempt at integration than any of his or Jessamine’s previous work,” Hera pointed out.

  “He has been making a stronger effort in the last year or so than he ever did before,” Carl allowed. “If he keeps making these overtures to give us back our basic rights, eventually we will become nothing more than petty terrorists for trying to overthrow him,” he pointed out bleakly.

  “I realize that,” Hera sighed. “It seems we may finally have a ruler who has figured out that oppressing an entire group of people doesn’t benefit anyone—though it seems to be a revelation that has only struck him in the last decade, and he has been slow to mend fences. He was a monster in his earlier days of power.” She frowned pensively.

  “I want to take the job,” Carl blurted out before he could stop himself. “I never thought I could have such an opportunity, but now it’s here and I don’t know what to do about it. I want to take advantage of it, but I don’t want to get you and Risa and any of the rest of your people in trouble, and I don’t see how I can do both things without betraying someone.”

  Hera didn’t look terribly surprised by this admission, which made him relax slightly because he half-expected her to kill him for it. Then again, maybe she was still planning to have him murdered in the near future and simply wasn’t upset by the prospect.

  “Is that why you’ve been avoiding your friends ever since you returned from your interviews?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to face them when I feel so bitter about the opportunity I’ve lost and the choice I have to make, even though I know it isn’t their fault.”

  Hera stared pensively a
t him, making him feel like he was being burned by her eyes.

  After a long moment she said, “Then we will bend our minds towards finding a way to make it happen for you.”

  “What?” he wasn’t sure he had heard properly.

  “Carl, I’m not here to make people miserable or to take prisoners. My goals have always been to make the Gifted’s lives better, not worse. If this is something you want, I’ll get in touch with some of my contacts in the scientific community and we’ll see if there’s a way to help you pass their tests without frying your brains out.”

  “You—you would really do that?” he felt like a weight had been lifted off of his chest. He never expected this kind of understanding from another human being, and certainly hadn’t expected it to come from the leader of the revolt against the government. Despite how long he had known Hera, he didn’t really know very much about her as a person. Hell, he didn’t even know the woman’s real name.

  “I will certainly try. I’m not sure there is a way to get around their chemical interrogations, but if there is, my scientist friends will know about it.”

  “You think there’s a way around Veritan?” That was news to him.

  “I don’t think they use Veritan on their own people, due to the risk of long-term side effects—it is mildly poisonous, after all.” She tapped her fingers rhythmically on the table before her. “There are other, less hazardous chemicals available that are marginally less effective. They would probably go to those for their officers and their Provo. I’ll see if anyone knows someone who has been through their hiring interrogations before and can speak to the exact process. That will give us a better idea of whether we’ll be able to get you through it or not.”

  “I—I—thank you,” was all Carl could stammer out to her.