Still no message.
Hera massaged her brow. No icon flashed on her round, rust-framed screen, and she’d been expecting word from Pelia for four endless weeks now. If only the dreams did not plague her so often — strange dreams of the seven islands rising from the deep, vibrating and covered in flashing metal.
Sighing, she twisted her long hair in a knot at her nape, stuck a pen in it and rubbed her weary eyes. Fading daylight reflected off the bare white walls and the metal desks of the deserted office. Everyone had gone home hours ago and she had long since finished her filing.
But Hera could not leave, not yet. News of the shipment would finally arrive — the cure Pelia had promised, to rid the world of a parasite unlike any other. Details on who would meet with her, when and where, should come in an encrypted message from the Undercurrent leader, Dione, and Hera would be there to receive it.
While waiting, she clicked open file after file of reports from various projects. The words rolled before her eyes, but none penetrated her conscious thought. Instead, images from the dream pelted her mind — steel encased peaks, wet and glistening, rising higher and higher into the sky. The seven islands that formed the known world.
‘With a clap of thunder and fast as lightning, seven islands rose from the ocean deep: Ker, Torq, Ert, Aue, Kukno, Ost, and rich Dakru,’ wrote Sarpion three hundred years back.
Well, Hera thought, sneering; maybe Sarpion had some weird dreams as well.
She wondered why so little was known about the islands. Apart from the fact that they rose simultaneously and were similar in geography and size, information was scarce. Each island was about five hundred square miles, composed of steep central mountain massifs, which were surrounded by lowlands stretching down until they met the coast. Fresh water sprang from the mountains, and the pale daystar traveling the sky produced enough radiation for agaricum crops to feed both races — the Gultur and the other, lower humans.
Yet the system contained no information on the origins of the islands or their curious symmetry. Symmetry in a face meant health. Symmetry in a crystal meant adherence to basic laws of physics. Symmetry in islands rising from the sea meant purpose — islands rising in a perfect circle and so close to each other they could all be connected with great steel bridges, both between them and with Dakru, the central island.
Coincidence? Divine provision?
Why did nobody wonder? It was as if all data had been erased from the system, and with it all memory or interest in knowing.
Yes, and why would anyone want to erase ancient history? Hera sighed. Obsession. Simple as that. The wait was getting to her. When would Pelia finally send word?
She was about to close the file and finally head to her sleeping quarters, when two highlighted words in the text caught her attention. Hera tapped her forefinger on the screen. ‘Siren Project.’ She was sure she had seen that project mentioned in another document, a historical file about early Gultur civilization she had secretly accessed a week back.
Siren. A sea goddess with a fish tail, guiding the souls to the deep sea. Maybe the symbolism meant something…
Hera snorted and leaned back in her chair. There she went again, looking for a mystery where there was none. Many projects had the names of gods. Nothing out of the ordinary. Tail-fished gods and monsters. She glared at the text. She’d had enough of the gods.
“Lady Hera? Are you still in here?”
She flinched and pressed a key to close the data file. One could never be too careful. “Yes, Mata, I’m still here.” Although Mata had been around ever since she was little, Hera had never trusted her. Nobody could be trusted.
The old office keeper poked her head inside. Her silver hair, pinned back, caught the light of the dakron lamps in sparks and glitters. Gradually the rest of her body emerged, shrunken and hunched. “Apologies. I thought the building was empty and was about to lock up.”
Hera shrugged. “I was filing reports. Just give me a few moments to tidy up.”
“You must be so excited, hatha.” Coming from Mata’s lips, the honorific sounded so much grander than Hera knew it to be. Echo. She was that, an Echo princess, and had no choice in the matter.
“Excited?”
Mata’s eyes shone and her crinkled face creased more. “I cannot believe that your Maturation Day is coming up in only three weeks! What a pretty girl you have become, hatha!”
Hera turned her head to hide a frown. She had no reason for excitement and no time for babies just yet. “That is none of your business, Mata.”
“Apologies again.” Mata’s voice dropped to a more deferential tone. “I forget sometimes that you are not a child anymore.”
Hera sighed. “Close the other offices, I will be—”
A message symbol flashed on her screen. Pulse pounding in her ears, she opened the small window and entered her first password. When the system asked for a second one, her breath caught. Doubly protected. A message from the Undercurrent. News from Pelia. At last.
“Lady Hera?” Mata’s voice held puzzlement.
“I will be but a moment longer.” Hera waved a hand and typed the password, then waited, barely daring to breathe. When Mata finally bowed and backed away, she opened the message.
It was brief and to the point. “Our Ost connection was terminated. Position of expected shipment unknown. Locate it.”
The air left Hera’s lungs. Terminated? Unknown? She erased the message, her hand trembling. Sobek’s balls, she’d not seen this coming. She’d assumed all was going according to plan.
Gods. Pelia.
Hera bowed her head, fighting the cold grip of fear in her chest. Pelia was dead, and Hera had to know what exactly had taken place. She flexed her fingers and willed her pulse to slow.
“Snap out of it,” she whispered to herself. “Do something.” All this waiting and hoping in the dark, only to find that the light would reveal death and despair.
I will not let this happen.
After accessing the classified page of the secret police, she entered another password, opened the newsfeed and scanned the fuzzy images recorded by the surveillance cameras across the street from Pelia’s apartment.
A shooting.
The gunshots sounded tinny on the bad recording of the cameras. Pelia’s long, flat aircar — the new S152 model — appeared. A thin, young man dressed in dark clothes stumbled out of the aircar door, holding Pelia’s limp body in his arms, and laid her down on the deck. He knelt over her. Then more shots rang and fuzzy silhouettes with big guns in their hands moved out of the shadows. The image fizzled and went black.
Hera banged her fist on the desk. Nobody outside the Undercurrent was supposed to know the importance of Pelia’s work. Pelia had been betrayed.
A traitor walked among them.
Icy sweat trickled down Hera’s spine and her hands trembled. Knowing she had no time for a breakdown, she shoved her fear deep inside its box. A quick search of the message pool showed her that the shipment had not yet been found. She sagged in her chair, releasing a pent-up breath. Then who had it?
Her eyes narrowed. The boy. He must have the shipment. Pelia’s chauffeur, right? Sort of an adopted son she’d recruited from a monks’ factory on Ost. He’d been with her when she was shot, and therefore was the only person to whom she could have given it.
Hera pushed back her chair, grabbed her longgun and her glitcher from a drawer and stood. Others had already seen the images. They would be searching for the boy right now. Dammit all to the five hells.
Holstering her gun, she stepped out into the lobby of the administration offices and strode out and down a passage leading to the great auditorium of the Echo Palace. Turning abruptly left at the fresco of the butterfly garden, she headed to the main hangar. Her mission was compromised. It was imperative that she found the boy, and time was running short.
As she crossed to the helicopters, she nodded a greeting to the hangar officer, a tall, lithe woman with ash blond hair in a braid. While c
limbing into the first helicopter in the row and powering up the system, she gazed at the woman.
Curvier than most, filling out her gray uniform well, the young officer turned to stare back at Hera, fine features locked in a scowl.
Hera winked, blew a kiss and raised her forefinger and thumb, flashing the woman an “all well” sign. Then she took the helicopter out of the hangar and up over the Tower’s white turrets and green groves, over the grey slopes of the mountains and then the boring plain.
She would find the boy — if he’d made it out of the shooting alive.
Chapter 2