Armageddon (9 page)

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 different 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.

“Do you think she would come down to the Null Zone to see me?”

Atton’s eyes drifted out of focus as he stared at the wall at the foot of the bed. “She won’t have to. She lives on level 45 of Thardris Tower.”

“She’s a Null? I thought you said your parents were Etherians?”

Prickles of adrenaline stabbed Atton’s fingertips as he got caught in his first lie. The irony was, with the exception of Ethan, his parents really were Etherians, but he could never introduce Ceyla to any of them without her realizing who he really was. She’d already met Ethan and Hoff, and she knew they were
Atton’s
parents.

Thinking quickly, he turned to Ceyla. “My parents
are
Etherians. Valari is like a second mother to me, but she’s actually my aunt. She took me in when I chose to become a Null.”

Ceyla began nodding as if all of that made perfect sense. She lay her head back on his chest, her suspicions assuaged. “That was nice of her.”

“Yes.” Atton’s smile tightened. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll have dinner sometime.”

Ceyla covered a yawn with one hand. “Sounds great.”

Atton’s smile turned to a frown. Now he had to bring Valari Thardris into his lies. He supposed that was only fair, since she had brought him into her and Omnius’s lies. But the problem was he didn’t trust Valari, and now he needed her cooperation. That would only give her more leverage over him. Although, Atton supposed that didn’t change anything. Valari already had all the leverage over him and anyone else that she would ever need—she was Omnius’s creator—his
mother,
if that made any sense—and because of that, Atton suspected there was nothing she couldn’t do, have done, or get away with. Whatever Valari wanted, she got.

He just hoped she didn’t start wanting something that he couldn’t offer.

Chapter 9

G
alan Rovik lay staring up at the eye of Omnius through the domed ceiling of the high council chambers. Dazzling light beamed down on him, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. As he lay there, processing everything that he’d learned, he wondered how he could go on living. Omnius was right—the truth was a burden, and it was
heavy
.

A voice like thunder rolled through the chamber. The voice of Omnius. “Now you know everything. How do you feel?”

“Betrayed. I want to know
why
.”

“You already know the answer. Not everyone can handle the truth, Galan, but you can. Arise, my child; you are stronger than you think.”

Galan found himself rising from the floor, floating up and onto his feet, caught in a grav gun hidden somewhere within the room.

The grand overseer reappeared before him, materializing out of thin air. The man’s sharply-angled face and flickering silver eyes made him look sinister now that Galan knew he was really Omnius.

“You have already begun to accept it,” Omnius said, smiling and nodding.

“You didn’t leave me any choice.”

“You won’t even try to resist me?”

“How can I? You already know what I’ll do before I do it.”

“So fear compels your loyalty.”

“Did you expect otherwise?”

Omnius’s smile grew. “You needn’t be upset, Galan. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and I have just made you wise.”

Galan shook his head. “What are you going to do about the Sythians?”

“Come, and I’ll show you.” Omnius turned and preceded Galan up the stairs to the catwalk above the quantum junction. There, they walked up to a radiant white sphere sitting at waist height in the speaker’s podium. Omnius placed his hands against the sphere, and the council chamber grew suddenly dark as the transparent dome overhead polarized. A holographic star map appeared hovering in the air, showing both the Adventa Galaxy and the neighboring Getties Cluster.

Omnius pointed to the nearest edge of the Getties, and the map zoomed in. Stars whirled by in a dazzling blur until one star system in particular came into focus. Galan recognized it almost immediately.

It was Noctune.

Omnius pointed to the planet by the same name. “Here, on the Gors’ home world, below kilometers of ice, Shallah, the Supreme One, is hiding.”

“How do you know?”

“My view of Noctune is clouded. The planet causes too much interference for me to see clearly beneath the surface, but I have an agent aboard Shallah’s command ship. A human by the name of Lenon Donali.”

“The Sythians trust a human aboard one of their ships?”

Omnius turned to Galan with a smile. “Why wouldn’t they? He’s their agent, too.”

Galan shook his head, confused. “If Shallah is hiding on Noctune, then we should send a fleet and kill him before he leaves.”

“No. Most of the Sythians’ fleets are elsewhere, scattered across the Adventa Galaxy. Shallah is desperately trying to reverse-engineer quantum jump drives so that he can reach Avilon and attack us here, and I’m going to let him. He has a group of rebel Nulls that he captured during the battle for Dark Space. They’re helping him to develop the quantum technology. He thinks those rebels have been de-linked, but just like Donali, they are still connected to me. Every breakthrough those Nulls have made was subtly fed to them by me. Rather than hunt the Sythians all over the known galaxies, I’m going to help them to come here so that I can defeat them in one decisive victory. All of Avilon will watch as the Sythians are defeated. Humanity will have its revenge for the invasion, and I will be the hero.”