The Armor of God (24 page)

Ezra shook his head, deciding to ignore those thoughts, and a more obvious name came to him: Leonardo Crescent. Jena’s father. He had died of a laani infection. Dr. Mizrahi assured everyone that he had been declared dead and was then cremated, but now Ezra could easily believe that Zenith and its directors were capable of telling lies.

Did that include his mother? Was she keeping more painful truths from him?

Ezra didn’t want to think these things, even if they were unavoidable. He especially didn’t want to think them now that he sat inside the Besoe Nandi synchronization capsule as Barnes and Dr. Mustang prepared the Creux for launch.

The day when he was expected to synchronize with the Minotaur had come too soon, and the moment was upon him.

The newly appointed leader of the Creux Defense Squad, and the newly promoted First Lieutenant Erin Perry, had been in the room when Ezra stepped into the Egg. “Thank you again for your vote, Ezra. I won’t disappoint you,” she had said. “See you on the other side.”

She had then gone with her crew to the room where Phoenix Atlas was docked, and Ezra hoped that wouldn’t be the last time he’d see Erin. It was amazing how easily just one traumatic event could condition a young mind.

Garros walked into the Minotaur’s docking chamber and approached the window overlooking the docking bay, where the four massive Creuxen were lined up, waiting to be boarded. Eyes on Nandi, he said: “Erin is inside Atlas. The others are synchronizing now. Everything looks fine. How are you feeling, man?”

“I’m ready.” Everyone in the room knew he was lying; the tank could already read his vitals, and there was no way to hide his fear. Everyone had wordlessly agreed to not think, much less mention, the disaster that had happened last time, sure that after all the preparations, things were more likely to go smoothly. “Let’s just get it done.”

Garros smiled behind his beard, which had grown larger and bushier. According to Erin’s tales, Garros had kept a thick beard for years, but normally trimmed it every few days to keep it neat. He also shaved his head with the same regularity. However, lately, he had ignored his scheduled use of scissor and knife; even his hair was starting to grow again, revealing a deeply receded hairline that made him look older.

“Mr. Blanchard, you—you’ll need to try and relax,” Dr. Lance said, examining Ezra’s vitals displayed on a screen.

“Hey, Ezra,” Barnes said next. He looked up at the man, who held in his hand a thick blue-and-red ring similar to the one that always hung from his nose. “This is for you. After this first synchronization is done, we’ll hook it up.”

“What do you mean?”

Barnes pulled at the ring in his nose, making his meaning obvious. Garros laughed, giving them but the faintest glance before returning his eyes to the docking bay, and the monsters that waited there. “Just like mine.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to get a—”

“Sure you do; you just haven’t earned it yet. Watch, I’ll put the ring right here,” Barnes said and put it in one of the many pockets of his tactical pants. “Make your Creux proud!”

Ezra didn’t know what to say—Barnes’ fanaticism to the Creux was something that could only be categorized as odd. “Okay?”

“Is everyone in?” Erin voice boomed from the machines.

Garros pressed a button and spoke into a mic. “Blanchard is missing. Down in 10.” Garros nodded at Dr. Lance and the skinny man passed the nod on to Ezra. Slowly, the lid began to close, and Ezra dipped his head, closing his eyes and hoping for the best.

Where’s Mom?
he thought, wondering why she wouldn’t be present for her son’s synchronization test.
I hope she’s far away. Maybe even back in Roue.

Then came what Ezra expected, just as he remembered it from Alice and Susan’s last day. Total darkness, then the soothing white dot between his feet at the end of the Egg. Then, whispers and echoes and a terrifying feeling of detachment.

Nandi’s voice:
You’re back.

I’m back,
Ezra thought, and couldn’t tell if the thing could hear him.

You seem afraid.

I’m not.

Then his new eyes opened, and he was looking through Nandi’s eyes—a giant looking down at the humans at the other side of the glass.

Being suddenly out of his body, no longer feeling his lungs filling and emptying with quivering and weak motions, made it easy for him to forget that he was afraid. He was out of his body. He was altogether
safe
.

In here it was just him in an indestructible body, accompanied by the presence that once inhabited it. It spoke to him, whispering with cold breath.

Are you sure you’re prepared?

“Mr. Blanchard, you’re synchronized but you’re not very stable. Try to relax,” Dr. Lance said into a microphone, and he heard him inside Nandi. “Can you see us?”

“Yes, sorry,” Ezra said.

“The others are already in the network so I’m going to link you as well. Everything is perfectly normal,” he said trying to sound reassuring, but his foreign accent and the inherent sheepishness of his voice didn’t add much confidence to his words.

Blanchard. I know that name,
whispered the Minotaur.
I know your name.

The sudden blast of sound filled his mind, and again he was linked to all the others—he could feel their presence, more than he had been able to the last time.

“Is everyone ready?” Erin’s voice had replaced Alice’s in this replay of his nightmare. “Blanchard?”

“I’m ready,” he replied.

Are you?

“Crescent?”

“I’m ready, ma’am,” Jena said.

“Davenport?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Poole.”

“I’m ready, ma’am.”

“Everything seems to be stable according to my crew, and I’m just waiting for the green light from your respective chambers. Guys, I know it’s difficult to believe after these folks repeated it so much the last time, but the hard part is behind us, everything is working normally, and—”

Silence. Erin’s voice was suddenly cut off.

Ezra had no stomach to feel, but he knew it had frozen inside the Egg.

“Hello? Erin? Jena?—Poole?”

There was no answer. Everyone inside the docking chamber stood still.

You’re not ready,
the Minotaur said and mocked him with a mean, growling laugh, aware and amused by its new inhabitant’s fear.

“—taking you.”

“Sorry, Mr. Blanchard, there was a minor blip in your link,” said Dr. Lance. “I can see it gave you a good fright but everything still reads normal otherwise. You’re almost ready.”

“It’s all right, Ezra,” Erin’s voice reassured him. “That happens all the time, especially with Phoenix; I probably should have warned you. So hey, remember: if you’re booted from the aural network, just give it a moment—it usually doesn’t last longer than a few seconds.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Ezra said.

“Everyone else on board?” she asked, and the other three spoke up to confirm. “Phase two begins . . .
now
,” Erin said.

The feelings with which the process of miniaturization filled pilots had been described in Entry Lectures as dizzying and disorienting. The human mind is accustomed to a particular sense of scale, and suddenly changing it could result in a lot of psychological distress and discomfort.

In her book, Alice called it Dimension Shock.

For Ezra, it was like falling. Like riding a car that went far too fast down a winding road. Like a thrill ride without safety precautions that could betray you at any moment. After Erin’s last words, he could no longer see or hear anything except the black, and that sensation of falling and sinking, never knowing when his body would hit the ground.

Words and thoughts and maybe even images spun around him in inscrutable patterns until suddenly they began to make sense, and Nandi’s eyes opened to finally gaze upon a different world.

It was dark and red—like the surface of a different planet that had never known light or vegetation or even life. He couldn’t feel the floor beneath his iron feet, but it gave him the impression of fragility, as though he was walking on ice that was viable to crack and swallow him.

Above, darkness that stretched to apparent infinity, and no sound to speak of—barely a mechanical whisper resonating inside of Besoe Nandi.

There was something else that felt entirely new: mobility, and a strange warmth in his lower back he had never felt before: an ethereal fluctuation of energy from which he was drawing strength.

You cannot do this without my help.

Ezra could move, and it was like breaking chains, unshackling him from the weakness of the flesh. Nandi’s hands were brought before him, opening and closing at Ezra’s command. He had known them from the Equivalency Suits, but now they felt truly strong and capable of great damage: a feeling entirely new to him. He had no muscles, no skin, hair, or organs: nothing but steel, or whatever variation of it that gave this suit of armor solidity.

If he was smaller than the width of a hair, why did he feel like a giant?

Do you want me to help you?

Yes.

In another exercise of mobility to test his range and his control, Ezra straightened his arms in front of him, and a flash of light engulfed his hands. It was weak, but felt like touching an electrically charged surface.

“What the
hell
are you doing, Blanchard?” Erin yelled.

Having no ears to guide him towards the source of a sound was also disorienting, so he spun around and found his company behind him: Jade Arjuna, Phoenix Atlas, Rose Xibalba, and Milos Ravana, each of them just a few feet away from each other—

No, not feet. A unit far smaller. They were encouraged to roughly measure distance in
body lengths
.

“Who gave you permission to use technomancy?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ezra said, and remembered his lectures on the control of Besoe Nandi. Stretching his arms activated the pulses from his T-Core through a switch in the elbow joint, and shot the energy forward. He had to keep them slightly bent, at least until he learned to control the discharge of energy.

“Mr. Blanchard, we caught sign of a technomantic discharge; is everything all right?” Dr. Lance’s voice reached him from far away.

“Yes, I apologize,” said Ezra, still trying to get a feel of Nandi’s body.

“You can’t stretch your arms unless you mean to attack,” she said, and a new source of light on Atlas’ shoulder pads lit up, though it could barely stand against such powerful darkness. “We’re in a dead body now, but you could damage tissue if you’re not careful; the concentration of the T-Core in Besoe Nandi is
very
strong.”

Jena and Akiva were, like him, practicing their own movements, getting accustomed to their new bodies. “My word. It feels . . .
exactly
like the Equivalency Suits. The designers did a great job!” Jena said, looking down at her Creux’s delicate but deadly hands.

“This is very impressive,” said Poole understatedly, moving Jade’s arms with incredible ease; it’s the most enthusiastic he had ever heard her.

“Feel free to move around this specific area and no further. How is communication with your Creux?” Erin asked. “Can you gauge its temperament for the report?”

Is she talking about me?

Yes.

Ezra wondered why Nandi seemed far more talkative and less confrontational now. He was also surprised to find that Nandi could apparently hear Erin’s voice as well. It was a frightening but comfortable thought to believe that, at least, he wouldn’t be completely alone, even if he felt like an intruder in someone else’s body. Ezra wanted to forget that there wasn’t anyone truly there with him; those words he could hear were barely thought patterns left behind in the T-Core by its creators.

Ezra took several steps and the land began to feel stronger beneath him; in truth, it had never been weak—Ezra was just forgetting, amid this mistaken feeling of largeness, that he was virtually weightless.

“I can talk to Jade. In—in my head. It’s so strange,” said Jena. “She’s talking to me, in my own voice. Or something that sound like it.” Jena’s experience didn’t appear to differ from Ezra’s; he too heard Nandi speak to him with a voice not too different to his own: just older and wilder.

“Milos is silent,” said Akiva. “I don’t hear anything.”

Milos?
He’s
here?

Yes.

“That’s strange,” said Erin, making a sign with her fingers—no, her Creux’s fingers—to line up in front of her. “Poole? How’s communication with Rose Xibalba’s core?”

“I can hear something, ma’am, but it might be my own thoughts I’m hearing.”

“All right, good. Line up in front of me,” she said again, waiting for Nandi to take his place between Rose and Milos. “What about Besoe Nandi?”

“He’s talking to me. Erin, I can hear him,” said Ezra.

Don’t trust Milos Ravana.

Why?