The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) Read online

  “There is a small pool behind the tree line, by the way,” Erin said and took a bite from the fruit in Garros’ hand. “You might want to take a bath. You haven’t bathed in a while, and not every one of these has fresh water.”

  “She means you smell like hot garbage,” Garros said, taking almost half of his fruit in one ridiculously large bite.

  “I know,” he said. “Where’s—”

  “She’s taking a bath,” Erin replied, and rubbed her eyes, exhausted. She seemed ready to collapse.

  “I’ll go with her, then,” he replied and walked towards the trees. It was difficult to admit that his friendship with Garros and Erin, which had been so strong back in Zenith, had degraded significantly since leaving it. He still liked them, and knew he needed them, but now, more than anything, there was resentment.

  They didn’t believe him.

  They didn’t believe that he saw what he saw during his last moments in the facility. The horrifying scene had played in loops in his mind since that day: Ezra, trapped inside the Minotaur, helplessly seeing two of his friends and teachers get murdered in cold blood by a betrayer.

  Sometimes, in his dreams, he would crush the murderer using Nandi’s powerful fist, and those were the times he wished he could have done something when he had the chance.

  How could they not believe him? Why would he lie to them?

  Thinking about it still forced him to unconsciously clench his jaw so hard it hurt.

  Ezra crossed under a small patch of tall trees, and it was cool beneath their rich branches. At the other side, there was a small slope leading to a body of water.

  It was hard to tell where the water was coming from. There were mountains nearby, but no visible river leading to this island in the desert, this oasis. It also looked fresh, like the rest of this capsule, unaware that the world around it had died. Ezra’s hypothesis was that maybe there was a clean network of tunnels beneath the crust, but he had no way to know for sure.

  When he came closer to the water, he finally saw her.

  Her clothes were scattered by the edge of the blue pool: the full Zenith uniform, boots and socks. She was submerged all the way to the shoulders, long, dark hair sticking to her slender back.

  He had been staring for at least half a minute when she finally turned around and noticed him standing there.

  “I’m almost done here,” she asked him. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was,” he replied and began to strip to his underwear. “Or at least, I was trying. They woke me up.”

  Jena chuckled. Out of all of them, she was the only one whose personality had remained almost intact. “Holding a grudge and resenting them is only going to make everything a lot harder.”

  “It’s not a grudge,” he said in a way that betrayed his words, and stepped into the water. It was very cold, and he knew that going in slowly would be more difficult. He took a deep breath and submerged his entire body, feeling like the coldness of the water would crush him.

  When he emerged, Jena laughed again. “I should’ve warned you; it’s cold.”

  He was shivering, but she appeared to be very comfortable. He wondered why. Swimming was a new experience for both of them. Outside of baths—an absolute luxury in a city where every drop of water was recycled, and one only a family like his could have—he had never experienced anything like this.

  “It’s not a grudge. I don’t understand why they don’t believe me—”

  He paused and looked into her eyes.

  “Wait, tell me something. You believe me right?”

  It was something he had not asked her yet, having always assumed that she did. Now that she was taking a few moments to reply, it became obvious that she didn’t know what to say, and the answer was clear.

  “Please tell me you believe me—dammit, why would I make this up!”

  “You wouldn’t. No one thinks you are,” said Jena, and handed him a piece of cloth doused in herbs to scrub himself with. “You just need to understand how it sounds to their ears. They’ve known Tessa for years; you expect them to believe that she would just kill two people, two of our friends, at face value?”

  He felt the acid in his stomach boil.

  “Don’t get angry,” she said, reading his expression with ease. “They told you already, Ezra, and I agree with them. We don’t think you’re lying, but—”

  “It wasn’t a hallucination,” he grumbled, looking away from her at the thick clouds above; day was finally breaking.

  “You know how the Creux plays with your head,” she replied. “Remember how we keep hearing things and words, and how at first we would forget some things we saw while we were piloting. It takes a while for us to get used to it.”

  He had already heard this attempted explanation, but he didn’t believe any of it. Ezra knew what he had seen, and how horrible it had felt to see it, and do nothing about it.

  “You know . . . there’s nothing I want more than to believe that what you’re saying is true,” he said, scrubbing his chest under the water so hard it hurt. “I would really just love to think that it didn’t really happen—that Tessa didn’t kill Barnes and Kat and probably Dr. Yuri too—like when you wake up from a nightmare. I can’t, though. I know when something’s real, and that was real. I saw their blood, I saw their faces, I saw—”

  He had to stop, and sank underwater so she couldn’t tell that he was close to crying. He wanted to stay down there, numbed by cold water, and never come out, but her hand drew him back up.

  “I believe you, Ezra,” she said.

  “You do?” he said, relieved but incredulous.

  “You don’t have a reason to lie. I believe you think you saw what you saw.”

  “But you don’t think it actually happened,” he said, and he had had enough of the conversation. Ezra swam back to the muddy bank and crawled out of the water, leaving her alone.

  Though the water was cold, the day was not, and the warmth was pleasant to his naked body. The warm humidity was something else that was new to him. Suddenly he wanted to go elsewhere to be alone for a while; he had grown tired of their company.

  Still wearing only the black underwear issued to him by Zenith, Ezra had fallen asleep leaning against the Minotaur’s shoulder plate. They had put their Creux to rest on their backs at the edge of the oasis, and that’s where he had found some semblance of peace: being in the only company he presently enjoyed. The thing’s massive shoulder armor was by no means soft, but it was remarkably smooth, and provided some decent support for his back and head.

  He had begun to dream again, but any moderately peaceful dream would always be interrupted by a betrayal of his imagination; he’d dream of suddenly being attacked by a monstrous Laani creature, without the protection of Besoe Nandi to save his life. He imagined being skewered or torn to pieces by the creatures, who sought revenge for all of those Ezra had killed in the guise of the Minotaur. He imagined being struck by a Carrier type, and becoming infected himself, slowly transforming into a horrible creature his friends would have to tear apart.

  Just like Jena’s father.

  Ezra shivered himself awake and was startled by a huge thing standing in front of him, silhouetted against a backdrop of deadened clouds. His eyes focused and he finally recognized Garros.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Ezra asked, using his hand to cast some shade on his eyes.

  “Not long, what do you take me for?” Garros said and took a bite of fruit—it was probably his third or fourth piece; he never seemed to be full. “Here.”

  Garros dropped a clean uniform by Ezra’s feet.

  “I noticed both your suits were a mess; I cleaned up the uniforms in the pool but they’re still wet, and you don’t want to wear them if they’re wet.” Ezra grabbed the uniform—it was far too big for him. “I was able to pack four of mine before leaving, so you can use this one while yours dries.”

  “Thank you,” Ezra said, feeling a small bit of the resentment fade a
way. Garros was right; the uniforms were not designed to be worn when wet—they became extremely uncomfortable, enough to impede good synchronization with the Creux.

  “I overheard you talking in the pool, Blanchard. I get how you feel, but you need to understand Erin and I don’t think you’re lying. We know you would never lie about something like that to us. We’re your friends.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Ezra grumbled, and began to get dressed in Garros’ huge uniform.

  “We’ve said this before but . . . you haven’t been piloting for that long—only a few months; you don’t know what the Creux and the energy that fuels them does to your head, especially when there’s stress involved. Remember what happened to Alice; she was hallucinating Davenport’s voice when her Creux started overloading. And she was the best of us. It’s—”

  “I know what I saw, Garros.”

  “Listen, we can’t go back to Zenith and, I don’t know, do something about Tessa. You know that, right?” Ezra nodded reluctantly. “We’re too far away now, much closer to Kerek than we are to Roue. Remember what your mother said: time is far too valuable. Strap the belt up there so it doesn’t hang—there you go.”

  Ezra did as Garros suggested, and slid the too-long belt of the jumpsuit to a loop under his armpit to tighten it.

  “Erin is setting up an aural beacon with Phoenix Atlas, and I’ll set up one with Quantum Ares. We’ll leave them a looping message to warn them, or at least to tell them to keep an eye on her, in case you’re right. Hopefully it’ll reach them.”

  “But the computers in your docking chambers won’t be active,” Ezra said, and he could tell Garros did not expect him to have such a sound argument.

  “Yeah,” he said, and scratched his beard. “They’d have to activate them to hear the message, which isn’t very likely, but it’s the best we can do for now.”

  Ezra nodded and shrugged. Garros smiled, patting him in the shoulder pad like he always did. The feeling was different when the uniform was so much bigger than him.

  “Sun’s climbing, Blanchard. We have to go. There’s still big things ahead, so try not to think about what’s behind.”

  ф

  Vivian Poole had been restless for too long, never finding any real peace in these walls that seemed to be closing in. All her friends had left, and she had never felt so alone—not even when she had been truly by herself. All those years before Zenith.

  Where were they? Were they close to reaching their destination, or was the journey still long before them?

  Were all of them still alive, or had the quest made a claim?

  It was times like these when she hated her personality. She drove people away for no reason she could ever discern, and now that the only people who had welcomed her into their good graces were gone, all she had was herself.

  Why was it that every time she had grown even slightly comfortable filling her own shoes in her new life, that life she had been waiting for years, the universe conspired against her? There was so much promise for her—for all of them—not long ago, but destructive chaos was immutable. It would have been so easy for things to go well, but they hadn’t, and she no longer had any of the comforts that used to make her inwardly happy.

  There were no classes in which to excel. There were no drills and no training to challenge her wits and her body. There were no teachers willing to look at her with proud eyes, and offer warm words of encouragement.

  She was alone.

  No. That was not true, Vivian told herself, shaking her head and walking into the bathroom to look at her dilapidated self.

  There was the one survivor of the massacre. At least she understood some of the struggles of being left behind in Zenith, while the others risked their lives in perilous adventure, enjoying the delights of purpose.

  Even weeks after the massacre in Besoe Nandi’s docking chamber, it was hard to believe that they had been a traitor in their midst. The whole time, that bitch had been sabotaging Zenith from within, wearing a mask of virtue, nobility, and sanity.

  She was glad that evil bitch was dead: killed in self-defense by the one miraculous survivor; the one hero left behind.

  Vivian wiped wet, cold hands down her face to freshen it, at least a little bit, and then left her chambers, headed towards the recovery room in the medical wing of the complex. It felt like she hadn’t been anywhere else since the others left. The only good use of her time, other than studying and reviewing every aspect of her Creux—a practice that had really become redundant, and only a means of distraction—was to at least offer the brave woman some company.

  That amazing soldier had suffered a gunshot—a coward’s strike from the back—and still she fought off the treacherous killer, and won. The least she deserved was some company while she recovered.

  Zenith felt even more empty and somber than usual, but she ignored the dead halls and hopeless corridors, quickly making her way to the survivor’s room. She knocked.

  “Come in,” she said.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No, not at all. Come in, Viv. I’m glad to see you here, as always.”

  Vivian walked into the recovery room and took a seat on the couch. This was the same room Ezra Blanchard had occupied after the overload of Absolute Omega, and this was the very same couch on which she had silently kept him company for days. She had grown used to this place and its comforting silence.

  “How are things out there?”

  “Everything’s the same,” said Vivian. “No one wants to talk about what happened.”

  “They shouldn’t; we’ll have to keep it a secret, but it will take some time,” she said, and licked her lips. “After the . . . after what happened when Erin and the others left, it took me some time to talk as well. It’s not easy being betrayed by someone you trust—by a friend. It was not easy to see Sergeant Barnes die in front of me. I felt like his blood would never come off my uniform.”

  “I understand,” Vivian replied. “You did what you had to do to protect Zenith.”

  “I know. But killing someone is . . . even if she—”

  “Tessa,” said Vivian, noticing tears in Tessa’s eyes. “She killed two people. She probably caused Akiva’s escape, and tried to ruin Director Blanchard’s plans. Kat deserved to die. She was a traitor.”

  Comforting someone had never been in her blood, but it seemed to work on Tessa. The brave soldier nodded and wiped her tears. “Thank you. It’s not the first time I’ve heard those words, but I know you mean them. I’m glad I’m not alone.”

  “Of course you’re not alone. All of Zenith is behind you, Tessa,” she said. “You’re a hero.”

  Chapter 2

  Hands of Rage

  Ezra gritted his teeth as the Minotaur’s mighty hands tore through the flesh and snapped the bones of another monster. It was not the first time he applied his Creux’s strength to such ends, but when the violence started all that time ago, he had a completely mistaken impression of the objects of the Minotaur’s power.

  He had been trained to think that these monsters were microscopic organisms. Ezra had grown used to fighting and killing these things, blindly believing the lies Zenith had fed him. They were supposed to be barely self-aware, after all, minute beings that could barely be categorized as living things. There was no guilt in ridding the world of them—it was commended, in fact; he was curing a disease.

  But then, in one moment of terrible discovery, one that had forever changed his and all of humanity’s paths, Ezra had found out that neither these monsters nor the Creux were ever anything but monstrous—both in size and power. Wielding a giant suit of armor, he had been killing giant monsters the whole time.

  Monsters that had once been human, infected and transformed by the alien virus, changed into creatures in the alien’s image—the very same creatures which had now become the dominant species on the planet.

  The very same creatures which now sought to re-create Lys, the god-like being that caused all this destruction. Stopping t
hat rebirth from happening was their mission, and he was sure not one of them was adequately prepared for it.

  Ezra didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to use Nandi’s strength for violence, but violence was all he had at the moment. He needed an outlet for his fears and frustration and all his rage; Nandi effectively funneled it all with ease.

  Mind your power, the Minotaur whispered. It had been quiet as of late, as though it too wanted to wander far away from Ezra. Mind your rage.

  The pack of Flecks had ambushed them. After half a day of travel, the group had reached a long mountain range that ran a great, irregular length. The mountains were tall—perhaps too tall to climb; Erin was sure the cold air and the snow at the top could render the Creux useless.

  It was when they were looking for a way around this sudden imposition that Erin called out to warn them: there were Tunnelers under their feet.

  “Blanchard, you need to focus!” Erin’s voice suddenly reached him through the unstable aural link. “I don’t know what you’re doing but you need to—oh, no. Garros, help!”

  Fighting inside the Creux was difficult in many ways, especially for someone as relatively untrained as Ezra. The most significant complications came from the Creux itself. He was controlling the giant humanoid machine through his brainwaves, but its sensibilities and perception, not to mention its dimensions, were still largely unfamiliar to him, and required a great deal of work to understand.

  Being unable to hear through his own ears, only through the radio links between the machines, was one of the greatest challenges. He could not follow sound to its source, so when Erin asked for his help, he had to scan his surroundings to find her.

  But when he let go of the Fleck’s torn carcass, it was Garros’ Creux he saw, not Erin’s. Quantum Ares ran, making the entire desert land tremble under his thunderous footsteps, towards the action, not far from where Nandi stood.

  Even inside the Minotaur, Ezra felt his stomach burn when he finally made sense of the knot of flesh towards which Garros was running. At least five Tunneler-type Flecks were pulling Erin down into a hole in the ground; all he could see of Phoenix Atlas was her arm, desperately holding on to the outside, grasping only air and unable to fight the creatures that were pulling her down into the darkness.