Cosega Source: A Booker Thriller (The Cosega Sequence Book 5)

by Brandt Legg

  At another Etheren settlement quite far away, Kavid held tightly to the precious Eysen mineral, still unsure of what to do. There had been no word of Prayta. He had sent a message to the shaman, but had not heard back.

  He walked a winding path between giant fern trees, waiting for more information on the fate of the other globe runners, and for a reply from Grayswa.

  A friend he trusted brought news. “They say that Julae is dead.”

  Kavid shuddered at the words. “Are we all to give our lives for this mad man?”

  “Trynn could be crazy, or he could be our savior.”

  “He could be both,” Kavid said, looking at the pouch in his hand. “This is a death sentence.”

  “Or the last thing that saves us.”

  “What should I do?”

  “If Prayta was here, she would tell you to deliver the globotite.”

  “Prayta isn’t here because of the globotite! She may never return.”

  “Even so, she would still tell you to do it. You know she would.”

  Kavid sighed. “Okay . . . ” he said at length, resolute. “I will go.” His words were weakened by the realization that he would likely die in the attempt.

  Thirty-Nine

  Trynn walked through the crowded streets of the Etheren settlement. Tens of thousands lived in this one, the largest because of its proximity to Grayswa, the eldest shaman. Trynn felt more stressed than usual, and worked to release the tension. The Terminus clock now showed only nine days of life left. That’s not enough time to save humanity, he thought, unsure what was consuming those precious days. Globe runners getting captured, something Rip is doing, more repercussions from the Nostradamus incident, an unknown event in the Missing-Time . . . it could be almost anything.

  He needed to get to his real lab.

  He needed more Revon.

  Hoping his daughter would be home, since he’d arrived earlier than planned, he turned onto the path that led to a cluster of earthen houses in a grove of flowering trees.

  “Mairis!” he called, smiling, spotting her ahead on the trail.

  She turned. “What are you doing here?” she asked coldly, recovering quickly from her surprise at his early arrival.

  “I’ve come to see you.”

  “I doubt that,” she said, sorrow in her eyes. “You came to see the shaman.”

  “And you, too.”

  “As an afterthought. I’m always an afterthought.”

  “Mairis, why do you say that? It’s not true.” Trynn grieved for how their relationship had deteriorated since his wife had died. In recent years, with the Terminus Doom, he had seen even less of Mairis than he should have.

  “It is true.” She stared at him, anger preventing her tears.

  He shook his head, showing a dejected, begging-for-forgiveness look.

  “Well, you’ve seen me now,” she told him, unaffected. “Better get back to the city and all your important matters.”

  Trynn, one of the smartest among the incredibly smart Cosegans, didn’t know what to do about his daughter. A man known for always having the answers, or, at least, being able to find them, and yet he never knew what to say to her. Making it worse was that she resembled her late mother so much. Looking at her, Trynn always saw the happy memories and felt the pain of her loss fresh each time. He still blamed himself for her death, and assumed Mairis did, too.

  “Why are you so mad at me?” he asked, knowing there were a hundred answers to that loaded question.

  She glared at him, her jaded look concealing her pleading eyes, desperate for him to take her in his arms, to insist she should come with him, help him with his work, to hear him say, ‘You are the most important thing in the world to me. I want you to be part of my life, and I won’t leave you again.’

  But he said none of those dreamed-of words.

  “You want to know why I hate you?”

  Her words cut through him, taking his breath. Anger and hate were two different, albeit related things, and now she hated him?

  “Because you left me here. You abandoned me!” she yelled before he could respond. “After losing my mother, you abandoned me and took the only thing I had left!”

  “What . . . what did I take?”

  She looked at him as if he were a fool, and shook her head in disgust.

  “What?” he asked again.

  “You. You took you away from me!”

  Her charge stunned him. He had always been there for her. “I never . . . I’m here. You’ve always had me.”

  “No, I haven’t. You left me here and lived in the city with your work—your horrible, selfish work. The work that took my mother, and then took my father.”

  He stared at her for a moment, confused, hurt, wanting to make it right, to make her understand. “But I’m trying to save the future . . . I’m doing that for you.”

  “No you’re not. Don’t lay that on me.”

  “But I am. I want you to have a future to live and experience all the wonders of life.”

  “I’d rather give up the future and have you, even for those few years, or months, or whatever we have left.”

  Just days, he thought. For a moment, the brilliant Trynn looked lost, out of his element. There could be nothing more difficult for him than being a father.

  “Have you ever asked yourself . . . ” She paused, as if he might know the question, then looked disappointed when he didn’t reply before she finished. She continued, “What happens if you save the world and there’s no one left to enjoy it with?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Think about it.” She turned and stormed away.

  “I don’t deserve this,” he muttered to himself, although he knew he did. He watched until she was out of sight, disappearing into the throngs, then headed back to his vehicle, frustrated and impatient with his daughter. “One day she’ll understand I really am doing all this for her.”

  But the encounter had made him doubt even that.

  Forty

  With Jofyser as the decoy, the girl had a chance to get the globotite out. Without the precious mineral in his pocket, his new mission was to get as far away from the elixir bar as he could. It was critical that the guardians not connect him even to the area where the girl was if she were to have a chance to get out of the city to meet Trynn.

  He worked his way through another elevated sidewalk, taking it to the six-hundred-twenty-first floor, where he disembarked and mingled with another group of travelers. He overheard their conversations about the significant guardian presence in the area.

  “I talked to my friend in Tunssee, and there is nothing extra going on there,” someone said, referring to a neighboring city.

  “That’s good,” a woman replied. “If it’s just a local incident, then it may be nothing to do with the Doom.”

  Jofyser caught a brief read of the woman’s mind. She didn’t really believe what she was saying. Everyone knew that everything had to do with the Terminus Doom, particularly with what was now several hundred guardians involved in the hunt. He did not have to use myree to know all of the other highly intelligent Cosegans present would be thinking the same thing: Something serious is happening.

  As incidents such as these occurred with more frequent regularity, the overall mood of Solas and the other cities had been steadily darkening, since it seemed obvious the Doom grew closer. For those still living in denial, trouble and crime made the pending Doom more real, more personal. It was why the Circle did not advertise the ticking Terminus clock.

  “There!” someone shouted.

  Peering over the heads as best he could to the end of a long, wide corridor of light, he spotted two guardians rushing toward the group he was in.

  How did they see me through the crowd?

  He glanced up and saw the visuals. Visuals were little floating cameras the size of large marbles that could be deployed by the thousands. Originally, visuals had been used for other purposes, but since the Doom discovery, they’d been ut
ilized more and more for tracking and shutting down globotite, as well as other now illegal trades.

  Now that visuals are in play, it will be even harder to escape.

  Unsure of what else to do, a fast runner, a globe runner, he ran out onto a moving sidewalk. More guardians poured in from the other direction. The air, filled with flyers, appeared clogged with swarming, sinister bees. He stepped off and dropped nearly forty feet to the skybridge below, sprang to his feet, and ran into the adjoining tower.

  Oh, it’s a swinger, he thought, adjusting to the swinging tower, which, as if on hinges, flowed through a large, fan-like section of the city, shifting and changing the skyline constantly. Jenso had created them to replicate the wind. Fortunately, the momentum meant the building could not be stopped, and it swept him across to the other side of Solas. Just before it changed direction again, he took a descending skybridge all the way to the ground.

  From there, he could see the edge of the city, just blocks away.

  Wilderness, he thought with relief. I’m going to make it.

  He suddenly heard the nearly silent buzz that most Cosegans would be unable to detect, but as his Etheren ears were more attuned . . .

  The sound wasn’t from just a single visual, it was a swarm, and soon it was followed by the flying guardians.

  Jofyser made a break for it, knowing it would require some sort of cosmic intervention for him to make it out of Solas. He burst through a crowd of younger Cosegans gathered for an educational lecture, knocking several off their feet.

  “Stop!” A guardian’s amplified voice commanded. “You cannot escape!”

  He didn’t even glance back. Banishment, or even worse . . . They might kill me, but the longer they chase me, the more time she has to get away with the globotite. Maybe she’s already gotten out of the city . . . soon she will reach Trynn.

  The voice came again. “Stop!”

  Four more guardians came in from the side, weapons aimed, demanding his compliance.

  Jofyser ran faster. As he grew closer and closer to the edge of town, a crowd of onlookers seemed to follow him.

  Flyers soared in from above.

  The first red beam skipped past him. Yellow and orange light beams hit all around.

  He’d never been shot at before. He didn’t know that they were missing on purpose.

  Just a little farther.

  “Stop! This is your final warning!”

  I cannot stop.

  Jofyser tore around the moving walkways, leaping into the air, trying to avoid the beams.

  The noisy mass of people, not used to such a spectacle, gasped and stared as if watching a movie.

  A red beam caught Jofyser at an upward angle, came through his chest and into his head. His body collapsed instantly.

  The watchers, having never seen a killing, went totally silent. Many dropped to their knees, others wept, and no one knew why.

  Forty-One

  “I barely escaped,” Ovan said when he found Trynn at the rendezvous point—a small, concealed meadow carved out under a dense stand of twistle trees.

  “What happened?”

  “The Circle is scared. On the way, I tried to contact the others.” His face tightened. “They’ve all been taken in for questioning.”

  “All of them?” Trynn asked, thinking of the thirty-three other scientists semi-friendly to their quest.

  He nodded. “Has any globotite gotten through?”

  “Not yet. They intercepted the final three shipments, but I’m hoping Jofyser makes it.”

  Ovan shook his head. “I just heard. A globe runner was killed in the city. An Etheren. I’m sorry.”

  Trynn closed his eyes, but couldn’t stop the tears. He wiped his face and tried to control his anger at the Arc. “Fear has done this, and every evil thing ever. Fear kills.”

  “True and sad words,” Ovan said.

  “She has to be stopped.”

  “We stop her by stopping the Doom.”

  Trynn nodded.

  “We need more globotite to do the Leonardo da Vinci insertion.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. We could strip out the mineral from everything we have. That would give us enough to get the Leonardo Eysen set.”

  “Big gamble . . . if we don’t get more, we’ll lose the archaeologist connection.”

  Trynn nodded again. “I know.”

  “Lose it for good.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “What if we have to keep placing Eysens in order to defeat the Terminus Doom?” Ovan asked.

  “Nostradamus, then Leonardo da Vinci. That’s it.”

  “Everything would have to go perfectly . . . that’s a tall order.”

  “Then it will just have to go perfectly!” Trynn had already determined the location for Leonardo’s insertion, and had a team standing by to do the placement.

  “If not,” Ovan pushed, “if something goes wrong with Leonardo da Vinci, we’ll have to do another insertion. We’ll have to go back and put another one in earlier or later.”

  “It has to work.”

  “I know, but after Nostradamus, we’ve learned it may require additional tweaking. And if that’s the case, we won’t have enough globotite.” Ovan started working his hands in and out of each other, rubbing them like the motion conjured up special thinking abilities.

  “What would you have me do?” Trynn asked, exasperated. “I can reverse the Nostradamus nightmare, stop the Doom. Then the archaeologist will never find it.”

  “But the archaeologist is our failsafe. You need to keep using him to gauge our success or failures. He’s the key. You have to use him to tell.”

  “It won’t matter!” Trynn snapped. “Don’t you understand? If we have to put another one in after Leonardo, even if we had the globotite, the complexities matrix will be impossible to manage. Each Eysen insertion gets more complicated than the last because of the weight of the eleven million years and all the ripples and what the previous Eysens are doing, and they keep rippling into each other now. The more Eysens, the more dangerous it all is, and—”

  “Of course I understand, but it is possible to handle one, or even two more insertions.”

  “No.” Trynn shook his head, thinking of how much Revon he’d have to consume. “I can’t do it.” He rubbed his temples, then squeezed his neck and cracked it. His face flushed.

  “You can . . . but calm down. We’re not there yet. Maybe Leonardo saves us.”

  Trynn took a deep breath. “Where will you go?”

  “I have a friend in Tunssee with more crystal-minds than you and I put together. I can hide and work from there.” He looked at Trynn, worried by how tired he seemed, but said nothing. “And you?”

  “They won’t arrest me until Shanoah is gone,” he said. “The mission is their priority, and they know she would stop it if I am taken without absolute proof.”

  “But after lift-off, you’ll stay at High-peak?”

  “Yes.” He thought of his secret facility. Without the existence of the remote lab and expansive Eysen command center, there would be no chance to stop the Doom.

  “Pray it remains hidden to the Arc.”

  “We have some protection with that.”

  “The Arc must suspect, though?”

  “Of course.”

  “And once Shanoah is gone, she will act.”

  Trynn looked to the sky. “Shanoah leaves in the morning.”

  Ovan stared at his friend, still gazing at the heavens. “Does she come back?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “The Eysens have the answer.”

  “Unfortunately, they keep shifting . . . everything changes.”

  “Another reason Leonardo must be the last.”

  “Yes, one of a million reasons.” They were quiet for a moment. “You better go.”

  “Are you staying?”

  “A little longer . . . just in case someone brings the globotite.”

  Once Ovan was gone, Tryn
n checked the Terminus clock.

  Eleven days. What changed?

  There was no way he could have known that at least one of those days they’d gained had been paid for with Jofyser’s life.

  Forty-Two

  After no one showed up, Trynn continued on foot to High-peak. Deep in the forest, Trynn knew every sound, and guardians were not quiet. “How did they track me?” he asked himself softly, looking behind him. This was as close as he’d ever come to getting caught.

  I might have lost them, he thought, glancing up through the tree tops, looking for aerial surveillance. The canopy is too thick.

  If the guardians caught him in possession of serial-numbered Eysen parts, there would be no denying his purpose. The Circle would come down hard, stripping his lab, staff, funding . . . Banishment? Without station or authority, it would be impossible to proceed.

  The risks were increasing hourly. He had always assumed The Circle would banish him to the Etherens, but now realized that the Arc would likely see that as too easy, knowing he had connections there and might even be able to scrape together a laboratory and equipment. It was far more likely she would send him to one of the extreme remote sections of earth, possibly under guard. Cosegans had no real jails or prisons.

  The Havloses . . . He thought of the ‘primitive’ society on the other side of the planet. Would they send me there?

  Catching his breath, Trynn wondered if the Arc had evidence of his secret lab, and if so, did she know it was in that area? The thought horrified him.

  I need to go under, but . . .

  He remembered the discussion with Shanoah.

  “How do you do this work?” she had asked in the middle of a heated conversation about the possibilities of succeeding with the initial Eysen placement.

  They had looked at each other, both knowing the question was dangerous, that he should not answer. She had been to his lab, the one sanctioned by The Circle where he did his work. “I saw no evidence of Eysen making, time manipulations, or anything beyond the normal mind crystals and lightshapings.”

  “I have a place,” he’d said, slowly and quietly.