The Lock’s thought rumbled through the fog. OBLIVION, END.
BULUC CHABTAN, END, Izu Yaxlan thought.
I blinked. It sounded as if Izu Yaxlan had called the Vanished Sea EI by the name Buluc Chabtan. That sounded like ancient Iotic, a human language. Oblivion felt alien to me, malevolence incarnate. My ancestors must have known this entity, maybe naming it after one of their devils.
The darkness around us took form, resolving into a nightmare version of the desert. Instead of blue sky above the desolate glory of the red sands, this land was black under a lead-grey sky. The rock outcroppings stuck up from the ground in giant skeletal fingers, bone white in the darkness. The ground continued to shake, and a fissure opened a few paces away from where I stood with the Uzan. Nazam stood on the other side of the fissure, teetering as the ground crumbled under his feet.
Nazam! I shouted his name. An avalanche of rocks and sand cascaded into the fissure, and Nazam fell with them. I had one glimpse of his face, his mouth opened in a scream of agony.
Nazam! I ran forward—and something jerked me back.
Stop. The Uzan gripped my elbow. You will fall as well.
We have to help him! I struggled to free myself.
He’s not hurt. You must remember. He is just sitting in a chair in the pyramid.
I jerked my arm away from him. You can die in real life if you die in a sim! His heart could stop, his brain burst—
Major Bhaajan. Dyhianna’s voice cut through my agitation. The sky lightened above us, blue showing among the grey. We are all linked. What we each experience affects everyone. Do not think of Nazam as in harm’s way. Envision life.
I took a deep breath, trying to control my adrenalin surge. Of course Nazam was alive. I recalled how I had last seen him, sitting in the chair on the dais, his head raised as he looked up at the skylight at the top of the pyramid, his impressive profile silhouetted against the light, his hooked nose evoking statues of our ancient princes.
NO. Oblivion thundered the word. Lightning jagged through the black sands under our feet. The ground opened and the Uzan and I fell, plunging into nothing. The fissure snapped closed, crushing us—
Never! I shouted. I live!
I grunted as light glared all around me.
“Major Bhaajan?” a man asked.
I took a shaky breath. The temple. I was back in the temple. They must have dropped me out of the sim. An Abaj was leaning over my chair, checking the panels around my seat. Dyhianna and Nazam were still linked into their command chairs, their faces and bodies hidden by their exoskeletons and visors.
“What happened?” I barely managed to grunt the words.
The Abaj straightened up. “Your heart rate spiked. It went too high. So we brought you out.”
“No. I need to get back.” Logically, I knew I wasn’t “going” anywhere; the simulation came from the attempts of Pharaoh Dyhianna, the Lock, and Izu Yaxlan to rewrite or erase Oblivion’s code. The Lock translated those efforts into images I could interpret, but I knew what they meant. Oblivion was countering us, and my interaction helped distract the awakening EI, forcing it to waste valuable resources to counter my efforts. I couldn’t leave in the middle of a fight.
The Abaj was studying the three-dimensional glyphs floating above a panel by my chair. “Breathe in slowly and wait. Then let it out.”
I inhaled and held the breath for a few seconds, then exhaled.
“Again,” the Abaj said, intent on his panel.
I breathed again, even and calm.
He turned back to me. “All right. I’m returning you.” He pulled down my visor . . .
I smashed into a hard surface. Rock, solid rock. Ah, gods, pain screamed in my body. I couldn’t move; my bones were broken, smashed, crushed—
No. I am fine. No way had I just fallen into a giant fissure. Oblivion was trying to screw with the simulation. It was only in my mind. That could still kill me, if I died of a heart attack or stroke or quit breathing, but damned if I would give Oblivion that satisfaction. I imagined myself in a tykado workout with Singer. Together we punched toward the desert, one-two, smashing an invisible opponent. That’s for you, Oblivion.
The pain receded. I still ached, but it no longer felt like I had smashed my bones. I rolled onto my stomach and braced my hands against the ground. With a grunt, I sat up. The light remained dim, but enough trickled in to show the underground passage where I had “landed,” a narrow place of rock and dust. I recognized it, but I couldn’t remember why. I must have seen this place at some point in my life, because whatever Oblivion used to create this sim, he had to take it from neural patterns produced by my brain, and I couldn’t remember a place I’d never known.
A low groan came from nearby.
“Who is that?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
Silence.
I climbed to my feet, wincing as pain shot through my battered muscles. The groan came again. I limped forward and the light ahead brightened, with an eerie blue cast, like bioluminescence.
“Who is there?” I called.
Nothing.
I kept walking.
A woman groaned. I’d never known what people meant when they said someone’s voice was “full of tears,” but listening to that moan, I understood. She sounded as if her heart were breaking.
“Pharaoh Dyhianna?” I asked. “Is that you?”
No answer.
Light brightened around me. I had entered a cave, and a woman lay by the opposite wall, on her back, a ragged blanket covering her lower body. Blood soaked her. She held a child in her arms, a newborn baby. It wailed in protest, and the woman cradled it to her breast.
No! I never witnessed this. It resembled the cave where I had found the dead mother with her newborn child last year. Pack Rat had led me there, a terrified five-year-old who couldn’t understand why his mother had stopped moving. I had fallen apart that night, holding the dead mother and her children in my arms while I cried, the sobs tearing out of me.
This is a lie. I couldn’t speak. I might as well have been invisible, helpless to change the tragedy unfolding in front of me.
“Shhh,” the woman whispered to her crying child. “Always remember, I love you.”
I was having trouble breathing. This wasn’t real. Oblivion had created a fantasy to torment me. I was a newborn! It is impossible for me to remember this.
“Come to me, little jan,” the woman whispered to her crying child. “Come to mother Bhaaj.”
STOP. I tried to scream the word, but no sound came from my lips. I couldn’t stop the memory. My mind, the mind of a child new to this world, unfocused, unformed, aware of so little, knew only my need for my mother. I reached out in pure instinct and she responded, the two of us forming a Kyle bond. She filled me with a mother’s love, imprinting that moment on my mind forever, forming a bond so strong, so sweet, so full of love.
And then slowly, with great pain, she died.
I sunk to my knees, my arms folded across my stomach. I had suppressed this my entire life, denying my Kyle ability rather than relive those unforgiving moments when my infant’s mind joined with my dying mother. She had been too far gone by then to break the link. I had lived every moment of her death, her passing forever imprinted on my mind, though I had understood nothing at a conscious level. Oblivion had taken that imprint and turned it into memories, forcing me to relive every moment. My eyes felt hot, but I refused to cry. I refused . . . and tears rolled down my face.
When her last spark of life vanished, darkness closed around me, ice cold, death, the death I deserved, for I had killed the only person who loved me fully and without condition. I murdered her with my birth, and her death would forever remain scorched into my spirit.
I knelt there, keening, and time passed.
My anger stirred. No. I wouldn’t let the EI use my mother’s death to defeat me.
I lifted my head in the darkness. Fuck you, Oblivion. I won’t go down so easily.
Slowly, so
slowly, I climbed to my feet, my body hurting with a bone-deep pain. The sim had changed around me. Once again, I found myself standing in the desert of black sands. A woman stood in the distance, her ghostly dress blowing around her knees, her figure glowing against the dark sky.
Pharaoh Dyhianna? I thought.
The distant figure became translucent.
A tall figure was running toward the woman. That looked like Nazam, the captain of her bodyguards. He reached her—and she vanished, like the sea.
No! Nazam’s voice reverberated in the air, the sky, the ground, reeking of failure.
Izu Yaxlan, an oily voice whispered behind me.
I whirled around. Izu Yaxlan spread out in front of me, but instead of the bronzed and golden colors of the true ruins, this false city Oblivion created had black shale houses and grey paths. It was rotting from within, the stench of a corrupting dream. The Uzan walked in my direction along a once great thoroughfare, his step long and slow. Decaying columns lined the avenue, sloughing off moldy rock as he passed. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t make a sound. Death stole my voice. The Uzan kept walking, never coming closer, forever trapped as his city disintegrated around him. I could just make out his face, his expression frozen in agony.
My head throbbed with pain. This all felt wrong, created by something that hated human life. Somewhere in the distance, just above the threshold of sound, laughter echoed.
Izu Yaxlan, a voice whispered.
The world melted around me as if it were paint running together into a muddy slush. The scene reformed, and I found myself in the Uzan’s home. Its crystalline beauty had died. The columns that had scintillated with light were twisted, their insides deformed and turned into rot. The circuit diagrams on the walls formed clearer glyphs now, images of death, violence, human sacrifice to the demons of hell, the fears that had haunted humans for as long as we had been capable of thought.
The Uzan stood in the center of the room facing away from me, by the table where we had shared water. I had to warn him about the messages on his wall, the predictions of his gruesome death, but I had no voice. As hard as I tried to speak, no sound came out, like a nightmare where I screamed endlessly in silence.
The Uzan turned to me—and his head was a skeleton, a dead man, a caricature of the vibrant warrior I had met here only days ago.
Bhaaj. His voice crackled. Come to me, my love.
Pain screamed through my head. I clenched my fist, struggling to ignore the agony. You aren’t the Uzan. He’s got more skin, asshole.
The skeleton turned into shadows with only glowing orbs in his eye sockets. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even raise my foot.
Couldn’t move.
I closed my eyes and imagined the streaming white light that had bathed Calaj, that healing radiance Dyhianna had offered her. I became aware of a lightening. I opened my eyes—
The temple at Tiqual lay in front of me, normal and quiet. I was still in my chair on the dais.
“Goddamn it.” They had brought me out of the simulation again. I didn’t need a break. Dyhianna was still in her chair. I couldn’t see much of her; the exoskeleton encased her body, the visor covered her eyes, and the neural cap covered her head. Her hands lay on the massive arm of the chair, covered in tech-mech gloves. Beyond her, Nazam sat similarly encased in his chair.
My cap and visor were gone. Who had taken me out of the sim? The temple was empty except for the three of us on the dais. I scraped at my exoskeleton, with no success at first, but after several tries, I released its fastenings. They felt gritty, encrusted with sand. When I was free, I rose unsteadily to my feet. I hurt everywhere. I must have been tensing in the chair. That was probably why the Abaj released me, but I was surprised they left us unattended. Then again, we could stay in the simulation indefinitely. Although a thrum of hunger bothered me, the exoskeleton had fed nutrients into my body during the session, making sure I neither starved nor died of thirst.
I limped over to Dyhianna. I couldn’t see her breathing, but the exoskeleton hid most of her body. I shook her arm. No response. I shook harder and her body slumped to one side. The visor fell away from her head—
The eye sockets of a skull stared at me.
“No!” I shouted the word. She couldn’t be dead. This had to be a trick. I strode to Nazam, pushed back his visor—it crumbled under my hand, uncovering the skull of a man who had been dead for long enough that the flesh had fallen away from his body.
I backed away. “This can’t be.” I couldn’t have been in the sim that long, alive while the Ruby Pharaoh and Nazam turned to dust. I couldn’t believe the EI destroyed everyone, or almost everyone, ignoring me who had no worth, the murderer of mothers and dreams.
Max, this is fake, right? I’m still in the sim. Oblivion created this simulation.
Max’s voice came out of my gauntlet. “What do you mean fake?”
It’s not real. I winced as pain stabbed my head. No wonder he spoke instead of using our neural link. I’d overextended my brain with this prolonged session. “It’s another simulation.”
“No,” he said. “It’s real. You stayed in the simulation too long.”
I spun around and ran down the steps of the dais, unsteady but never stopping. My boots rang against the stone floor as I crossed the temple, stirring up sand that had accumulated in drifts. When I reached the entrance to the tunnel on the other side, I grabbed a torch out of its claw on the wall, a torch for freaking sake, those damned relics the Abaj insisted on using instead of normal lamps. I tried to light it with the igniter I found in the claw, but it crumbled in my hand. I shoved the torch back into its claw and strode into the dark tunnel.
Max, do you still have a map of this place?
Yes, it is intact, he answered. But running into the darkness won’t solve anything. Take a breath, go back to the temple, and find out if you can contact anyone.
Just use the blasted map. Get me out of here.
You’re about to run into a wall.
I reached out just time for my palms to hit the surface. It felt cold under my palms. Which way?
To your left.
With Max’s guidance, I retraced my steps through the pyramid until a rectangle of light appeared ahead. I sped up, headed toward the light, and ran out of the temple into the late afternoon sunlight. Stopping, I gulped in the dry desert air, fresh and gritty, exactly as it always felt. Relief washed over me. Far to the northeast, the silver towers of the City of Cries still gleamed—
No, wait. Something was wrong. Those towers, that skyline, it looked different.
Broken.
Selei Building, the tallest skyscraper in the city, had become a jagged spire. The entire skyline had turned into a fractured caricature of its former glory.
“No.” I clenched my fists at my sides. “It’s a damned trick.”
“What do you see?” Max asked.
“The City of Cries is in ruins.”
“Is the flycar you came in still on the ground?”
I looked around—yes, the flyer was where we had landed.
I set off toward it.
* * *
I had little experience piloting a flycar and my takeoff drilled rocks. Landing would probably be worse, but I didn’t care. I had to prove this was false.
“You must have some hint this is a sim,” I told Max. “Anything.”
“I’m running diagnostics.” He sounded apologetic. “So far they all seem normal.”
“Keep looking. I have to get out of this.” If I were trapped in a fake reality, I couldn’t help distract Oblivion, who was probably trying to rewrite or delete our brains as we fought.
Max spoke. “If you want proof, it makes more sense to look in the temple.”
I clenched the pilot’s stick even though the flycar was on autopilot. “I have to reach the Undercity.”
“Why? I don’t see the logic.”
I took a deep breath. “Max, I’m not going off the deep end. I n
eed to see the Undercity because it’s more difficult to maintain an illusion for something as extensive as the aqueducts, especially when I know them so well. I’m more likely to find flaws there to prove this is fake.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“You find any anomalies yet?”
“I’m looking. But if this EI can control the neural input into your brain enough to create this illusion, fooling me would be child’s play.”
He had a point. I fell silent as we approached Cries. From the sky, the broken towers showed the most. Blackened and jagged, many had fallen, or else their upper sections had snapped off and crashed to the ground. I aimed for the plaza on the outskirts of Cries, bringing the flycar lower, letting down the landing gear, lower still—shit! The craft hit the ground, bounced up, slammed down, and bounced into the air again. Its wing caught on the ground and it crashed to one side, smashing into the plaza. The impact threw me against my safety webbing, and I groaned as pain splintered through my injured wrist.
Everything went still.
Max’s voice came out of the comm on my rebroken wrist. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I lied. I climbed to my feet using my good hand to brace myself against the hull. When I pushed open the hatch, hot air blew across my face. I half crawled and half slid out of the broken flycar down to the plaza. The silence of the desert surrounded me. I had disembarked facing away from Cries, so I was staring across the plaza at the remains of the archway that had topped the steps to the Concourse. The entire arch had collapsed. Gods only knew what had happened in the aqueducts.
I held my broken wrist against my abdomen. “Max, are you seeing all this?”
“Yes, I’m getting a visual. It looks like several earthquakes hit this area.”
I limped along the wreckage of the flyer. “Big ones. Bigger than we’ve ever seen.”
“We don’t know the capabilities of the Vanished Sea EI,” Max said.
I came around the flyer, into view of Cries—and stopped. “Ah, gods,” I whispered.