I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (63 page)

“Why are any of us doing it?” I look over to John Hando. “Why are you here?”

He looks me straight in the eye. “To try to save my family.”

I look over at Subjack. “That’s the only reason to live, isn’t it? To create and protect, then leave behind something better than when you started. Lucan can’t help who he comes from any more than Junco can. Any more than I can. You don’t get to choose your Destiny, Subjack.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes. Thinking of the parts we will play.

Do they know their parts?

I look over at Gideon and he’s staring at me. “We found something in the ice,” he says softly.

“I figured,” I say back just as quietly. “What is it?”

“I think we better show you first before we try to talk about it.”

Everyone stands back up and exits the conference room, following Gideon single file back down the long corridor, back out into the main cavern near the door, then across it and into another tunnel. This one is narrow and short, short enough that everyone but John Hando needs to duck in order to pass through. Then we come to a door and when Gideon pulls it open the heat is intense.

“I thought ya said it was in the ice?”

Gideon shoots me a look like I’m an idiot. “There’s a volcanic hot spot nearby, it’s the only reason we made the discovery in the first place. They were contained in a layer of ice almost a mile thick.”

“So how’d ya find it?”

“We knew it was here—well, not me, but the other aliens that share this facility with us now. They’ve always known.”

“Does Lucan know?” Annun asks.

“I’m not sure,” I answer honestly.

We pass some ventilation vents in the rock that pump in cool air to make the rising temperatures more tolerable, but it doesn’t take long to be sweating our asses off, especially Annun and I, who are in full tactical armor. My vision screen is flashing red when I scan the rock wall. The temperature is more than fifty Celsius on that surface, even with the environmental conditioning.

“Yeah, don’t touch the walls,” Gideon says to John as he catches him placing his palm a few inches above the surface to check the heat.

We end up at a cage lift that will take us even further down into the mountain and we all pile in. The cage jerks as it begins the descent, and we all settle in against the metal bars to think.

It’s a dangerous thing, this late in the game. Thinking. Sometimes it’s better if the shit just comes quick, so it makes you react out of training, habit, and instinct.

Thinking gives you time to doubt that what you’re doing is right.

Subjack looks down at his feet. Gideon has a comm he messes with. John Hando stuffs his hands into his pockets and gazes out at the rock wall as it passes. Even Annun is contemplative and quiet. When I look over at him he’s watching me. He raises his eyebrows and then shrugs.

Out of his control is what that all says.

When we reach the bottom of the line it’s cooler. Not because it’s naturally cooler, no. My vision screen says the surrounding rock walls are a searing sixty Celsius. It’s cooler because the environmental conditioning units are pumping out freezing cold air.

The cage door opens and once again Gideon leads the way. We’re led into a control room that is almost chilly, that’s how cool it is. My vision screen says fifteen C. Inside are two humans and a dog.

As soon as we enter the humans leave but the dog stays.

“What’s with the dog?” Annun asks.

“It can sense… activity inside the canisters.”

Annun is about to ask another question but Gideon puts up a hand. “Just wait, Annun. You’ll see.”

There’s a control pane facing a blacked-out window. Gideon takes a seat in the chair and John, Annun, and I hover over his shoulder trying to see what’s going on.

“The show’s on the other side of the glass, just give me a minute to open the blackout. They’re sensitive to light, even artificial light, so we have to black it out.”

“Or else, what?” Annun asks, impatient.

“They start to wake up.”

And then the black color on the glass begins to fade, until no color is left.

We lean in a little more.

On the other side of the glass is another control panel carved into the side of the wall of ice. There’s rivers of water flowing down the sides of the cavern and it takes me a minute to figure out what’s going on here. Gideon fills us in before I can clearly articulate my thoughts.

“The cylinders you see below the control panel are made out of ice. Just ice. No metal, not rock, no nothing. Just frozen water.”

“How’s that possible?” I ask. “It’s like hell down here.”

“It’s not possible. Without a cooling mechanism, which is built into whatever those containers are.”

“Containers?” This time it’s John.

“The ice is acting as a container, there are seven stations to hold them.” He says this as he points. “And each container holds some sort of biological life form.”

But one is missing. There is a station for the seventh container. It’s just sitting empty. I study the other six cylinders of ice that are nestled into the side of the wall. A wall that should be more than sixty C if my vision screen is correct. But even as the ice melts into a pool on the cavern floor, it vaporizes from the heat, rises into the surrounding air, and then condenses back into ice on the wall. It’s a miniature water cycle occurring right in front of us.

“It’s like a loop. A phase change loop that keeps the ice canisters continuously frozen.”

“Why?” I ask.

“It’s a generator, Tier. A geothermal generator that’s protecting those… those things inside the ice cylinders.”

“What’s inside?” Annun asks.

“Death and then life,” Gideon whispers, just as I say, “The Seven Siblings.”

Subjack turns to me with a long, sad face. “What do you know?”

It surprises me that they got this far and don’t know the truth. But it surprises me more that I never knew it was here and yet this truth has been drilled into my head almost since birth. “The Seven Siblings aren’t really Junco and the others. If it were that easy, well, we’d be done here, right? There’s more to them than what they are now. These are the Cylinder Seals.”

They just look at me.

“Surely, you, Subjack, know what I’m talking about. You’re from the RR for fuck’s sake. Tell me ya at least listened to the preachings yer priests yammered on about in church.”

“The End of Days,” he says softly.

“Yes.”

“And Junco’s one of them?”

“Junco
is
the Seventh Sibling. The Seventh Angel of the Apocalypse. These here are the
Seals
—inside they contain the Punishments meant for Lucan for his disobedience when he drove the Angels from Earth seven thousand years ago. When the Halo activates, one by one, as each of the Seven Pillars connect one to another, this corresponding Seal will be broken and the punishment inside will be released.”

“What are the Punishments?” Gideon asks.

The dog gets up and walks over to the window, growling and hair bristling on edge, signaling it’s time to black out the windows again.

I repeat Gideon’s guess. “Death. Not Lucan’s death because like I said, that’s impossible. But these things will bring death, in some form or another. Death that will inhibit Lucan’s assault against the High Order. And they will be released very soon. And then…” I stop to consider what Caleb said to me on Sargassum.
Everything, Tier
. “And then after death, they contain life.”

Chapter Seven—JUNCO

Pillar Seven

You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.

Why this is the recurring thought in my brain as I shoot out towards my scattered destiny, I have no idea. It’s like a cruel joke, right? Rubbing it in. Rubbing in the fact that I’m naive and dumb. That I believed them and did their bidding. Hell, I proved it myself. I proved my stupidity to them in a game of Fledge. I killed my friend. Two of them, actually. Even if Kush was an accident, I still killed him.

My weapon is gone now. Lost, or left in the Pillar where it struck Inanna and shattered her.

I like how it feels. The drifting. Well, shooting is a better word. I was shot into the sky like Jupiter’s arrow. Once I reached free-G my velocity remained constant. I’m like light right now. I’m a fucking photon. I’m a wave. And a particle.

I sigh mentally. I’m insane, that’s all. I don’t even make sense. I don’t even make sense to me. And I know this, so that just makes me more insane.

You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.

Nope. And I didn’t, either. I got all my secrets hidden so deep inside even I forgot them.

I laugh mentally. It’s not quite as satisfying as laughing verbally, but it’s all I got right now. And that’s just the story of my life, right? Make do with what you got.

I look around with my non-existent eyes and take the shit in.

Well, that didn’t take long. Because it’s pretty much nothing. You’d think shooting out into space would give you a great view of the stars, like when Lucan takes me to space. But this isn’t like that at all. It’s just… black. There’s no light, really. Unless you count me, because I’m light, right?

I look down at myself mentally. I’m not sure why I still have a body, it must be some kind of self-image that’s burned into my brain. I see my body even though it’s not there.

You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.

I lied to pretty much all of them once Isten and my wings were gone. Everything that came out of my mouth since that moment Lucan lifted me out of that tank of goo was either a lie or a half-truth. Because that was it for me. That was the end of my passive participation in this fucked-up deal I got handed when they made me.

I am not Junco and Tier is just the biggest liar on the planet. Because all the way back in the RR, when we were bathing in that hot spring, after he told me that first story about Inanna’s trip to the Underworld, he was lying. He said I wasn’t a slave. But he lied.

I am a slave.

I’m Lucan’s slave.

I’m Inanna’s slave.

I’m Subjack’s slave.

I’m Gideon’s slave.

I’m… well, everyone’s slave.

I have no free will, not really. I don’t even make sense. Why can I still see my body? I think it’s a trick. Who would trick me?

I mentally laugh at that. Who
wouldn’t
trick me?

Back to the mind readers. They’re not very good at it. Especially if someone as fucked up as me can pull one over on them.

Unless…

No.

They didn’t know. I saw Tier’s face, he was appalled with me. He looked at me like I was rot and filth.

And I saw Lucan. He crossed his arms over his chest and searched me for truth.

And I made sure he found the lie instead. The lie that said I was choosing Inanna.

What the hell are you talking about?

Huh? Was that a voice?

I look around and try to figure this out.

But that makes no sense. How am I able to look around, and see myself, and have these thoughts, and notice that there’s no light, just blackness? How? When I’m just a mist of scattered Junco shooting out into the galactic wind?

Think about it, Junco.

Think about what?

But there’s no more thoughts. Just me. Shooting up and out in my own constant velocity…

That’s slowing down.

That’s not possible. I recite the laws of physics to myself in my head. In a vacuum, velocity is constant. Mostly.

There’s gravity. Maybe gravity is slowing me down?

I ponder this in my non-existent brain for a while. I’m not sure how long since I have no vision screen up here…

Wait. I do have a vision screen. And an incoming message. I open it.

You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.

Yeah. Got that. Thanks.