The transcendent, p.1
The Transcendent, page 1
Nadia Afifi
The Transcendent
Book Three of the Cosmic Trilogy, Following The Sentient and The Emergent
FLAME TREE PRESS
London & New York
*
To Tristan, Dylan and Henry
Chapter One
Refuge
For the third time in a single day, Amira Valdez gripped the metal rail that lined the S.S. Monterrey transport vessel, pressed her face into the ocean breeze with closed eyes, and vomited into the waves. Her thick black hair rippled in the wind as she leaned forward, drawing ragged breaths. Bangs clung to her clammy forehead. A passing woman behind her tutted in sympathy. Spending a week on choppy Atlantic waters could bring out sea sickness in anyone. With a second trimester pregnancy added to the equation, Amira had spent the last week losing most of the mushy meals she consumed, her throat raw from vomiting.
One week. In the age of trains that could cross North America in a matter of hours, spending days on bumpy waters felt surreal, like an exercise in time travel. But boats could only move so quickly, especially navigating the icy and politically charged waters of the North Atlantic. This ship carried cargo and a small set of passengers to Free Greenland, where regulation dictated that ships could not rip through the ice caps and local marine life.
Farther down the rail, two women spoke in Danish. Amira blinked, activating the lens of her Third Eye, and selected the translation command. She stole a glance at the two women and a yellow frame formed around their heads. A second later, text flew across the lower right edge of her vision as the women conversed.
“One of the crew said three more hours until we pull into port.”
“Thank goodness! I’m exhausted. I don’t know how much more comfortable the beds at the Nuuk hostel will be, but it’ll at least be quieter there.”
The other woman let out a short, bitter laugh that required no translation.
“Sad, but true,” she said. “It’s a shame we have to go to the ends of the Earth to get away from the crazies. That, or space, and that window’s closing fast. I didn’t qualify for the Titan colony. Didn’t qualify. Shit, I’m a biochemist with three full degrees out of Copenhagen. What more do they want?”
“Money,” the second woman snarled. “And political connections.”
“Well, maybe it’s for the best,” the other woman said with a dismissive toss of her hair. “There are no good guys in this fight. I still get sick thinking about that American priest guy they tortured. Those screams. Do you really want to go up in some cold station where you’re at the mercy of those Cosmic nutjobs?” The captions in Amira’s Eye underlined the world ‘nutjobs’, noting that it was an imprecise translation of Danish.
Reflexively, Amira’s neck craned and her gaze tilted upward. The grey cloudy sky and her own watery, wind-stung eyes shielded the orbiting space stations from view, but they were there. All her life, she had dreamed of working in one of those stations, of leaving the fractured world behind and pushing the boundaries of science on humanity’s farthest frontiers. From her early childhood years, the stars called her name.
Instead, Amira had been betrayed by the scientists of Aldwych after failing to outmaneuver their political games. She had escaped the dark labyrinths of the Osiris station, returning to Earth after eight years of unconscious imprisonment. She had indeed pushed the boundaries of science, but not in the way she had intended. She was a walking science experiment. Pregnant with her own clone, a part of her consciousness transferred into the fetus growing inside of her, draining her of her strength and sanity. Her eyes burned with fresh tears and she lowered her gaze back to her present reality. Salt water misted her face. The two Danish women had vanished, presumably retreating into the safety of the vessel’s interior. Dark skies crawled across the horizon. Amira followed them inside, cradling her stomach.
The smell of stale oatmeal and pickled fish greeted her in the ship’s mess hall. Workers sat in muted clusters, eating grey meals. Screens flickered in the room’s corner, blaring news of the world beyond the choppy ocean waters. Amira didn’t need to join the small groups gathered around the screens to know what stories they told. She had seen enough in the last week. Explosions in crowded cafés. Screaming pedestrians running through city streets, followed by a phalanx of marching compound faithful, their eyes glazed under the spell of Tiresia. Fear and destruction. Panicked governments speaking of surveillance and expedited due process, the kind of laws that existed before the Cataclysm. Even on this remote, rocking ship, fear clung to the damp walls. Anxious eyes darted between the monitors and cold meals. For the first time in a long time, the world was in a state of war.
Amira’s stomach rumbled. Wandering toward the serving station, where a robotic server waited for orders, she scanned the menu on a holographic screen. Wetting her lips, she punched in an order for creamy potato salad. The robot’s eyes flashed green and it spun on wheeled feet to retrieve her order. A flickering memory of Sparkes, the trusted mechanized guard of the Soma building’s archives, leapt into her mind’s eye. Her last image of Sparkes had been a collection of charred gears and metal scraps, the diligent robot murdered by the Trinity Compound.
Was it murder? Could one murder a machine? Amira would have once scoffed at the idea, but her time on the Osiris station, trapped in the hazy realm between life and death, had altered all her preconceptions. What was life, anyway? Consciousness took many forms. The life inside of her, for example. Bigger than a kidney bean, smaller than a full-grown infant. But what of its mind, its consciousness? How much of herself had Barlow managed to transfer into the clone she carried?
Amira’s teeth gritted at the memory of her last moments with Tony Barlow. Her last waking ones, anyway. Her former direct report on the Pandora project had presumably surveyed her, poked and prodded her while she lay drugged and captive on the Osiris station for years, until she was eventually impregnated with her own clone. He might have even used her to create Tiresia, the drug that enabled consciousness transfer – and mind control, depending on one’s intent. It was easy to imagine Barlow hovering over her like a shadow, with his pale blue eyes always fixed in an unsettling, appraising stare. Barlow knew how to appraise things and people – to find their weaknesses, exploit their vulnerabilities, leverage their strengths on his obsessive quest to unlock human immortality. But what were his weaknesses? Amira would need to learn them if she were to stop him.
More than stop him – make him pay for his crimes.
The robot returned with a grey tray, adorned with an even greyer potato salad. The sweet, starchy smell reached Amira’s nostrils and she fought the urge to vomit. The robot remained motionless, with none of the cloying sympathy exhibited by the ship’s other passengers, and Amira could have hugged it in gratitude. She shuffled to the nearest dining bench, the metal scraping against the floor as she shifted her expanding body into a sitting position.
With gritted teeth, Amira slid her tense fingers over her swelling stomach, as if in warning. Let me eat, or else, a voice screamed inside her. She warred between an urge to protect the growing life she carried, to soothe it against the evils of the outside world, and to extinguish it. It was a parasite. Unwelcome and unwanted, it depleted her energy and gnawed at her frayed nerves. Every time she leaned against the rail outside, Amira itched to ram her belly against the cold metal, to harm the invading host within.
But she didn’t. She would be on land soon, closer to Hadrian and Nova, and could decide what to do then.
“Escaping the cold ocean air?” A velvety voice trailed across the room. Maxine St. Germaine sank into the bench opposite Amira with a gentle sigh. She sipped a colorless milkshake, her lacquered lips pressed around a metallic straw. Against their grim, industrial surroundings, she looked almost comically vibrant. Her long buttoned blouse bore tropical patterns and her honey-blonde hair, wavy from the salt water, bobbed across her shoulders. She wore full makeup every day on the journey north. Of course, having been assigned male on the Trinity Compound, Maxine was denied the ability to express herself in her early years, only to be forced into different boxes when she made a new life for herself in Westport. She had lost time to make up for, and an unpleasant boat ride through icy Atlantic waters wasn’t likely to stop her.
“I hear we’re arriving in a few hours,” Amira said. “How long until we get to Hadrian?”
“A question with a layered answer,” Maxine said in a light, cheery voice. Amira would have thought they were in a charming Riverfront café, based on Maxine’s demeanor. “We reach the port in Nuuk around noon, I heard. Our dear friend – and we should be careful with his name in semipublic locations – has chosen accommodations on the edge of the city. Greenland isn’t the easiest landscape to traverse, so add another hour of walking to reach him.”
Amira gripped her fork. Her knuckles paled and frustration bubbled like bile in the back of her throat.
A soft hand covered hers, lacing their fingers.
“It’ll be all right,” Maxine said, her tone gentle. “You lost a lot of time in that hellhole station, I know. You want to catch up. But you will. You’ll see our old friend – and her – and the last two weeks will vanish in your mind.”
Amira’s throat tightened. Her. Nova. Rozene’s clone, who Amira had last seen as a crying infant in the rubble of a destroyed vertical farm, was now a child of nine. A unique child in many ways. The first surviving human clone, believed missing or de ad by the wider world. Kept alive and hidden by Hadrian and Maxine.
But Amira knew another layer to Nova. She was more than a clone of her mother, Rozene Hull. A part of Rozene’s consciousness had been transferred into Nova during gestation, the result of a secret experiment known by a smaller population – Amira, the elite members of the Cosmic movement, and the experiment’s orchestrator, Tony Barlow. Her betrayer and captor. She had seen him on the screen several days ago, speaking from a station high above them about peace and human advancement. Amira had vomited scrambled eggs into her lap.
And now Barlow acted as head of the Cosmics. They marketed themselves as a New Age movement that combined science with a spiritual blueprint for understanding the universe. In reality, they were an exclusive, cultish club of Aldwych scientists that reminded Amira of the compound Elders of her childhood. They had their beliefs, yes, but their ultimate belief was in their own right to power.
“What’s she like?” Amira asked Maxine in a faint whisper.
Maxine let out a raspy laugh. “It might be better for you to just meet her. She’s feisty, like our Rozene could be at times. But to be honest, Hadrian could tell you better than me – I wasn’t up here as much as I would have liked. I spent more time back in North America with Lee and the others, plotting to get you out and keep our enemies on their toes. The child-rearing was more Hadrian’s role, by his own request. When he lost his job at NASH because of the whole Reznik connection, it did more than just make it harder to rescue you – he lost some of his purpose. Nova brought that back for him.”
Sadness flickered across Maxine’s face like light from a dying candle. This had been the dance Amira and Maxine performed over the trip, ever since they landed in the Atlantic Parallel from space. The topic of Nova came up and they skirted on the raw, bleeding edge of something meaningful, before Amira backed away. A barrier had risen between the two women. Too much had happened to them both, the years creating a chasm between them that neither dared to cross.
How wide would the chasm be between Amira and Hadrian now? She knew him as an agent for the North American Space Harbor, known more colloquially as NASH, one of the two main space hubs that orbited the Earth. A man who devoted his non-working hours to sheltering escaped compound teenagers. But his full connection to the compounds had come to light before Amira’s capture – he was the half-brother of Andrew Reznik, the ruthless leader of the Trinity Compound. Hadrian’s past bled with loss and betrayal, secrets he had kept from Amira until they could no longer stay buried. And now he was unemployed, adrift. Would Amira even recognize the man who waited beyond the port?
Amira swallowed a forkful of potato salad, her mouth puckering at the sour taste of greasy mayonnaise. The food settled like chalk on her tongue. It still felt alien to her, after years in a sedated state in which she was fed by IV needles. A strange but satisfying sensation, to eat again.
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Amira said. “I have so many questions.”
“One thing at a time,” a male voice said behind her. Lee sat next to Amira, struggling to shift his long legs under the narrow bench. She had been in his company for the last two weeks, and his had been the first face she saw when she woke on the Osiris station. Despite this, she still found herself gazing at him with awe and disbelief in equal measure. Gone was the sullen, lanky teenager, the fellow compound escapee who had found his place as a technical genius and Hadrian’s loyal lieutenant in Westport. His face had matured, his body broad and muscular. He carried himself with an easy confidence, but his serious demeanor remained, bolstered by a grim sense of purpose. His tattooed tribute to Rozene poked through his jacket sleeve as he fidgeted with its frayed edges.
“Is everything ready for our arrival?” Maxine asked Lee with an arched brow.
Lee’s mouth formed a thin line and, for a moment, betrayed hints of the surly child he had once been. “No response yet from our friend,” he said. “But that’s not that unusual. He’s often busy, keeping the little one out of trouble. He knows we’re on our way. And he can’t wait to see you, Amira.” His face brightened in a warm smile.
Amira smiled back, but the heaviness inside her lingered, threatening to pull her through the swaying vessel floor to the bottom of the sea. Her friends were kind to her, had risked so much to free her, but had they become strangers? Was eight years a chasm in time that could never be closed?
* * *
Nuuk crept upon them in the late morning. Water foamed against the rocky shores, which gave way to pale green hills and patches of snow. Colorful, compact houses covered the surrounding landscape – bold reds, blues and mustard yellows, offset by duller greys and the small cluster of buildings that marked the city’s center. A lone drone patrolled the coastline, glowing with solar power. And behind the small city – if you could even call it a city – dramatic mountains like nothing Amira had seen before, steep and snow-capped. The sun glinted off their icy edges.
Amira leaned over the rails, drinking in the surreal sight. She inhaled the smell of salt water and cold air. For an otherworldly landscape, it felt oddly peaceful. She imagined running up the distant hills and curling into a grassy spot between the cozy homes. Breathing in fresh grass and damp soil, falling asleep amid the stillness. The city of Westport, the glittering, bustling home she had found after escaping the compound, never felt farther away. Her mentor, Dr. Mercer, would have loved this place.
Dr. Mercer. The ground swayed beneath her. Her knuckles whitened against the rusted rails as she suppressed a wave of dizziness. The force of it nearly knocked her off her feet – a grief that threatened to eat her inside out. Dr. Mercer was dead. Rozene Hull was dead. They had lain, blood-soaked from magnetic gunfire, on the floor of a vertical farm outside of Westport, unable to escape an ambush by the Trinity Compound. One she had enabled, thanks to her shared mental connection with its brutal leader, Elder Andrew Reznik, and a litany of mistakes.
It had been eight years, but to her, it was only days ago. An inconvenient side effect of being a captive on the Osiris space station, held in a state of mental limbo. Unconscious, but dreaming. Strapped to a patient bed, yet adrift in mind and spirit. When she had been awoken by Lee, eight years had passed and she was pregnant, but the past had been a cruel blink in time.
Since then, she had been on the run. First, escaping the Osiris station against the protests of her swelling belly and sedated limbs. Then back on Earth, on a boat from the Atlantic Parallel space elevator, Maxine and Lee in tow, to this cold, wondrous place, to reunite with an old friend.
How was she to grieve if she couldn’t stand still? Maxine, Lee, her other friends had their time to mourn and process the tragedy. But for Amira, grief was a raw, wild thing, its teeth gnawing at her heart. Hot anger snaked through her veins like a poison.
Her friends had been murdered.
She had been kidnapped, experimented on, her bodily autonomy violated. Pregnant, against her will. Clenching her teeth, she pressed a tight fist against her womb, as though she could force the fetus out.
She had decided, at last. It would come out, as soon as possible.
“Isn’t it magical?” Maxine asked, her tone as honeyed as her blonde hair.
“It’s cold,” Amira snapped. Lee grunted in agreement. His face, painted a sickly green hue, suggested Lee shared Amira’s sensitivity to the choppy waters.
Maxine let out a sympathetic tut, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
“You’ll feel better when we get off the boat,” she said, eyes still closed. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks, I know. We’ll get some real food and drink in our bellies, stretch our legs, see Hadrian and Nova—”
“Get this thing out of my body,” Amira said.
At last, Maxine’s eyes opened. When she turned to Amira, her eyes shone with kindness, but she spoke with hesitation.
“Amira, dear, you have every right to feel violated and more than every right to choose how to handle your situation,” she said. “But you are aware that the thing, as you call it, is basically you. Are you sure you’ve thought about this?”
