"Words of praise should be shouted from the rooftops," the grand overseer said.
He certainly looked grand. His flowing white Celestial robes appeared luminous, and his eyes were a bright and flickering silver in the light of his ARCs. "Master," Galan said, bowing his head.
"You are wondering why you've been summoned here."
Galan nodded, not yet daring to look up. He was also wondering how the overseer had appeared so suddenly and silently. Surely he would have heard the junction slam shut and then open again.
"Omnius has been watching you," Thardris went on. "He has seen your unwavering loyalty. You descended into darkness, and then you climbed triumphantly back into the light. This proves that the light is where you belong. By now you know that everything Omnius does, He does with love, and that all things—even suffering—are for the benefit of His children."
Galan nodded.
"Omnius has decided to make you a Celestial once more."
Galan looked up, his eyes wide. "I don't deserve such an honor, Master."
The overseer's smile grew wide, and his burning silver gaze became suddenly brighter. Then the eye of Omnius flared overhead, washing the entire dome in a blinding light. The Overseer replied, his lips moving to speak, but the thunderous voice of Omnius came out instead. "Before you are elevated, you must pass one final test. It is the test you ultimately failed the last time. The test of enlightenment."
Galan gaped at the overseer, his eyes burning with tears from the overpowering brightness in the room. He bowed his head to escape the blinding light, but even that didn't help, so he shut his eyes, making his blindness complete. In that moment, he had his first revelation.
There was no grand overseer of Avilon, only Omnius. Galan felt a giddy thrill of surprise. He had learned many things when he'd become a Celestial the first time, but even so, he'd never learned that the grand overseer was just a human avatar for Omnius. And as far as he knew, none of the other overseers knew that either.
Omnius continued, "As a Celestial, ascendance becomes synonymous with enlightenment. Only a Celestial's faith is strong enough to handle the burden of truth. Is your faith strong enough, Galan?"
He hesitated. Was Omnius asking him? Surely He already knew. He decided that the question was a courtesy.
"It is. I am ready."
"Good."
What came next wasn't words, but a pure stream of information, downloaded directly to his Lifelink and from there to his brain. Images flashed before his eyes in a dizzying stream of shapes and colors. Sensations came and went; tastes and smells flickered through his awareness. Voices alternately whispered and shouted, speaking too fast for him to hear, and yet somehow he understood it all. Galan's mind felt heavy and full, his brain bursting with information. He felt himself falling...
But the jarring impact never came. Instead, he settled gently to the floor, as if cradled by giant, invisible hands. Then the flood of information ceased, and he lay there gasping on the floor and gazing up through the domed ceiling of the council chamber. The blinding light pouring from the eye had dimmed to a more comfortable radiance. The grand overseer was nowhere to be seen, but Galan now knew that Vladin Thardris had never really been there at all. The grand overseer did exist as a physical being, but he rarely appeared in the flesh. He had too many different places that he needed to be, and Galan wasn't the only one who needed to be enlightened.
Now he knew everything. Along with the revelations, Omnius had supplied the reasons for what he had done, and Galan was surprised to find that he understood. Even the most shocking, most atrocious acts seemed justifiable.
Omnius had created the Sythians and caused the war, but he had also united humanity on Avilon because of it, and now they would never know the horrors of war ever again.
As for the Null Zone, Bliss, and the fake resistance, all of it was necessary to keep people from forgetting why they needed Omnius. No one was forced to live down there, so in a way, their suffering was their own fault. Further justifying it all was the fact that most Nulls eventually became Etherians anyway. Their experiences in the Null Zone only served to cement their loyalty to Omnius in the future. Galan knew that much firsthand.
But the most shocking revelation of all wasn't any of that, it was something that Galan never would have suspected. It was the real reason for The Choosing. Galan understood why it was best that people didn't know. The shock of finding out was so overpowering that he had trouble accepting the truth. Yet the very fact that Omnius had allowed him to know, suggested that he would come to grips with it all sooner or later.
"How could you?" he asked, staring open-mouthed up at the eye of Omnius, even as that eye glared down on him.
"How could I? I am God, Galan. I can do anything I want."
Chapter 8
Atton kept a hand on his gun as he walked down Darwin Street on level ten to his and Ceyla's apartment in the East Grunge. The first ten levels of the city were considered a red zone. Crime was so bad down there that most enforcers refused to actively patrol, but Atton wasn't on patrol. He was walking home, and unbeknown to the sketchy-looking passersby, he had a ring in his pocket that was worth over four thousand bytes.
Hence the weapon he wore on his hip. Apart from that he relied on the fact that he, unlike the rest of the denizens of the Null Zone, was actually an immortal Peacekeeper from the uppers with a limitless supply of clones to draw on. If someone killed him, he'd be back again within the hour. Emboldened by that knowledge, Atton had taken to walking home at night rather than taking a taxi or bus directly to the relatively safer outer entrance of his apartment. Tonight, he really should have opted for a taxi, but he needed the time and the brisk air to help him compose his thoughts.
Flexing a gloved-hand around the butt of his plasma pistol, Atton eyed the shadows pooling around the bactcrete buttresses of the buildings to his right. Tonight the fog in the lower levels was thin and visibility was good, but there were still plenty of places for someone or something to hide. Between buttresses lay darkened shop windows aglow with the faint blue haze of active shields. To Atton's left, a line of trees and street lamps ran along the railings of the elevated street, and beyond that was a ten-floor drop through a slithering gray fog to the decaying surface of Avilon.
He shivered at the thought and went back to watching the shadows. He half-expected to see a Psycho come lunging out at him, drooling with hunger, eyes wide and bloodshot with Bliss-induced madness. But instead of bony, sub-human hands clawing out of the darkness, he heard the honeyed words of streetwalkers and stim-pushers reaching out to him from the light.
"Hey handsome, you looking for some company?" asked a young woman standing beneath the glaring yellow eye of a streetlight.
Atton turned to the sound of the woman's voice. Excessive makeup, a white trench coat, and red high heels left no doubt as to her profession. She flashed open her trench coat, revealing a lacy red pair of underwear and nothing else.
Then he passed under the streetlight and she noticed his eyes. They glowed gold in the light of his ARCs. The woman shut her trench coat quickly and shied away from him. Enforcers were among the only people in the Null Zone who wore augmented reality contacts. For everyone else they were simply too expensive.
"Sorry," the woman said quickly. "I didn't—"
"I'm off duty," Atton grumbled, putting her mind at ease. Not that he would have detained her if he had been on the job. Atton's cover for all the Bliss-running he did with the so-called Resistance, was that he was an undercover Enforcer investigating lower levels' crime rings.
In reality he was a part of those crime rings.
That irony became particularly clear when he walked by a burly-looking Bliss-pusher standing two streetlights down from the woman in the trench coat. Atton guessed he was probably the woman's handler.
"Care for a taste?" the man asked, holding out a vial of luminous red liquid. "First one's free," he said.
The cowled black robe Atton wore hid his g
lowing golden eyes. "No thanks," he replied, looking away quickly to avoid the pusher seeing his ARCs.
The stim-pusher wasn't taking no for an answer. He took a few hasty steps toward Atton, still holding out his vial. "Just take it home with ya. Think about it. Wouldn't have to walk down here anymore if ya had a better job. I can have it delivered straight to yur door."
This time the pusher got close enough to see Atton's glowing eyes. He swore and dropped his vial with a clink of transpiranium hitting bactcrete. The pusher's hand flew to his sidearm, but Atton waved him away before he could draw it.
"I didn't see anything," he said, patting his own sidearm as a warning. "Carry on."
The burly man nodded, looking hesitant, his hand still on his gun.
If that pusher knew who Atton really was, he would have been asking for Bliss rather than offering it.
Five minutes later, Atton reached the door to his apartment building. He hurried through the retinal and biometric scans, and then slipped inside the first door. It quickly slid shut behind him while a second set of scanners made sure that no unauthorized persons had slipped in behind him. Finally, the inner door gave a pleasant chime and swished open. Atton hurried to the bank of lift tubes at the end of the building's run-down foyer and rode the nearest one up to level fifteen. From there, Atton walked down the hall to apartment 15G and submitted to a final security scan. Another chime sounded, and the door slid open.
"Ceyla?" Atton called out as he walked inside. He noted the dim, sleep-cycle lighting in their apartment and he frowned. Had Ceyla forgotten their anniversary and gone to bed already?
The front door slid shut behind him, and Atton removed his black robe and hung it in the coat closet by the door. Before leaving the coat there, he remembered to remove the small blue velvet box from the robe's inner pocket. He slipped the box into his pants pocket and then turned to look for Ceyla.
The main living area was empty, but now Atton noticed the trail of rose petals leading through the living room to the bedroom. He smiled and kicked off his boots, hurrying to follow that trail.
Halfway there, he was ambushed by a shadowy figure and pushed roughly against the wall. Soft lips pressed greedily against his, and a sweet, familiar fragrance filled his nostrils, making his head swim with a pleasant buzz.
When Ceyla withdrew for air, Atton noticed that she wore nothing but a lacy red bra and panties. That brought to mind an unwanted image of the half-naked streetwalker. He pushed it aside with a shake of his head.
"Happy anniversary, Darin," Ceyla said, breathless.
Atton smiled, watching as Ceyla trailed her hands over his chest, quickly undoing buttons on his nanoweave-armored shirt. Once Ceyla finished with his shirt, she took a moment to appreciate her work and bit her bottom lip as her eyes flicked over the hard ridges of muscle running across his chest and abdomen. She began kissing his chest, trailing fire all the way down to his navel. She got down on her knees and reached for his belt, but Atton grabbed her hands to stop her there.
"Wait," he said.
She looked up at him, her big blue eyes suddenly full of concern. "What's wrong?"
Atton shook his head. "Nothing." He pulled Ceyla to her feet. "But I think I should be the one on my knees."
He dropped to one knee, and produced the blue velvet box from his pocket.
Ceyla gasped, and a sudden sheen of tears replaced the worry in her eyes.
Atton opened the box, revealing a diamond and platinum ring that he never should have been able to afford. It was too much to safely wear down here, but Atton held out hope that Ceyla wouldn't want to stay for much longer once he told her the truth.
Atton began steeling himself for exactly that as he put the words together inside his head. "Ceyla, I—"
"Yes!" She knocked him to the carpeted floor, and straddled him there, stealing his breath with more kisses. Again, she blazed a trail down his bare chest and stomach before reaching for his belt. This time she wouldn't take no for an answer, but Atton found himself unable to appreciate the moment.
After a while, she let him up and led him to the bedroom. He admired Ceyla's backside as she walked ahead of him, his pulse singing in his ears and his blood burning with desire. She had conveniently distracted him from the speech he'd planned to deliver. There would be a more appropriate time to tell her the truth.
Ceyla pushed him onto the bed, assaulting him with kisses and crawling on top of him with eager haste to finish what she'd started.
Later, as they lay naked and gasping beside one another, enough clarity returned to Atton's mind for him to wonder at the wisdom of showing Ceyla the ring before he'd told her who she was really going to marry. Atton found the blue box on the night table and turned to Ceyla. She smiled, her cheeks flushed red from exertion, and her eyes bright with emotion. She held out her hand for him to put on the ring, and Atton didn't have the heart to hold back. He opened the box and slid the ring onto her finger.
"It's beautiful," she whispered. "Is it..."
"Real?" Atton nodded.
"How did you afford something like this?"
Atton took a breath. "I—"
Suddenly Ceyla gasped and sat up straighter. The sheets puddled in her lap, baring her breasts and distracting him once more.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I haven't even met your parents yet!"
"I haven't met yours either."
Another lie. Atton had been there when Ceyla had first come to Avilon and been reunited with her parents. She'd been orphaned during the Sythian invasion, and it had been more than ten years since she'd seen them. Unfortunately, her joy had lasted only as long as it took for her to realize that Omnius was a human creation, and that he'd resurrected everyone via physical rather than spiritual means.
"My parents are dead," Ceyla replied. Atton frowned. They weren't dead, but he supposed that to her, maybe they were. That didn't bode well for what he had to tell her.
"Well, my parents are also Etherians," Atton said, hoping to broach the topic with that admission. He had deliberately not talked about his parents before, hoping to avoid awkward conversations that might reveal who he really was.
"I guess that makes sense. Your last name is Thardris, after all."
Atton grimaced at the reminder of his lies. "Yeah."
"So who are they? You're not the overseer's son, but you must be related to him."
"He's my grandfather."
"Do you still see him?"
Atton shook his head.
Ceyla blew out a breath. "That's a relief."
"Why's that?"
"I don't trust Omnius, and I don't trust any of his puppets either. I wouldn't even want to be in the same room as the grand overseer."
Atton nodded and Ceyla snuggled closer to him. She laid her head on his chest and held out her hand to admire her ring. "We've just got each other. We're going to grow old together, Darin, and then one day, after a long and happy life, we're going to die and live together in a real paradise—in the real Etheria."
Those words sliced through the slender hope that Atton still clung to, dropping him into an abyss of guilt and despair. He had hoped that he could escape the Null Zone and his involvement with the Resistance, that he could convince Ceyla to join him in Etheria. Then there'd be no more need for him to lie.
"Don't you think it would be safer for us to raise children in Etheria?" Atton asked.
"Safer?" Ceyla snorted. "We'd die and wake up in the real Etheria, with Etherus asking us why we decided to kill ourselves."
Atton tried to wrap his head around Ceyla's thinking. "What if you're wrong? What if life goes on without a blip, and we're still the same people that we were before?"
"But we won't be."
"What if I could prove to you that people don't change after they're resurrected? In the Uppers we won't have to worry about the violence and crime. We'll be living in luxury, not poverty, and we won't even be allowed to make mistakes. It's a real utopia. How is that any dif
ferent from the paradise you believe we'll go to when we die?"
Ceyla sat up and turned to him with a sharp look. "Where is all of this coming from, Darin?"
The truth sat on the tip of his tongue like a drop of acid, burning a hole. He was desperate to just spit it out, to tell her, and to the Netherworld with the consequences—except that he was living in the Netherworld, and he'd have to live with those consequences.
"Don't tell me you're actually one of them and you just came down here to get some excitement."
The look of wary judgement on her face gave Atton pause. He snorted and shook his head. "No."
"Because I fell in love with you knowing that you were different, that unlike half of the Nulls living down here, you're actually real."
"Of course I am!"
"Then don't throw that away. You can't get your soul back once it's gone."
Atton sighed, defeated. Not even Ceyla's love for him would be enough to overcome her prejudice against a man-made eternity ruled by an equally man-made god. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's just that with all the terrible things I see on the job, it's hard to imagine anything like that ever happening to you, or to one of our children someday."
Ceyla nodded, and some of the angry fire left her eyes. She rubbed his chest reassuringly. "I understand, but the solution isn't to run away and hide in the Uppers. That's what Omnius wants. We'd be falling right into his trap. Better to grow old and die than to live trapped inside a lie forever."
Atton felt those words stab through him like knives. Ceyla didn't realize she was talking about him. Except that I won't have to live trapped inside my lies forever. Ceyla talked about growing old together, but he was an immortal; he would never grow old and die, and someday Ceyla would wake up and realize that she had aged, but he still looked just as young as the day she'd met him. Atton's brow furrowed, and pressure began building inside of his head.
"What's wrong?" Ceyla asked, noticing the look on his face.
"Oh... I was just thinking about introducing you to my mother," he lied without thinking.
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