The Armor of God (27 page)

Sometime later, while conversing with Erin and Tessa, he noticed Garros talking with Akiva next to the bar. He was worried for a moment, but their conversation appeared to be one of drunken friendship. They were talking with their limited faculties about topics they should discuss soberly. Ezra didn’t care how it happened: he just wanted them to be friends or at least tolerate one another.

Sometime later, Ezra saw Jena and Akiva kissing. It was a sight he hated, so he turned away to find Garros and Erin talking. Garros was crying, and Ezra assumed he was venting his feelings about Alice’s death and the mystery of his own survival—a feeling he shared with Ezra.

Sometime later, he was telling Poole about his conversation with Rebecca. Sometime later, he saw Garros and Erin kissing. Sometime later, he was sharing his deepest insecurities and fears with Jed and Tessa: two people he barely knew. Sometime later, he was laughing on the floor. Sometime later, he was crying, and not doing it alone. Sometime later, he was wiping blood from his face, feeling proud about something, but not sure what.

Sometime later, it was daylight in Roue and he was on the train back to Zenith, leaving the city behind.

He wouldn’t remember the moment he slipped into bed, or any of the dreams that followed.

“Does it hurt?” Jena asked in a groggy voice, taking a huge sip of her coffee.

“It does,” Ezra said and looked around at the dining hall. It felt like every pair of eyes in Zenith was fixed on the group and their terrible disposition. “It hurts a lot, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

It was a Sunday, so Ezra had the mercy of several extra hours of sleep. He didn’t wake to take part in the two hours specifically designated for sport and physical training, so for the first time since his arrival at Zenith, Ezra woke up at noon.

Yet, despite having slept for a reasonable amount of time, out of all the pilots who had joined in their celebration, only Jed and Tessa seemed to be in decent shape (Jed couldn’t drink because of the medication, and Tessa didn’t like to drink). The rest were also feeling the weight of a thousand-pound head, ready to return their breakfast.

But despite all the headaches and dizziness, none of them had brought back such a tangible souvenir of their night as Ezra.

“I can’t believe you did it,” said Akiva, reaching with his index finger to touch the irritated skin of Ezra’s nose. His eyes watered and he cried out in pain. “But it actually looks cool, if that helps.”

“It looks great,” said Garros, eating a second serving of steak. All animosity between him and Akiva seemed to have disappeared, at least for now. It made Ezra feel a little better about the previous night. “You’re not thinking of taking it off are you? Just go to the nursery and have it checked for infection and you’ll be fine. That guy, Luke, did a pretty brutal job of it. You took it like a
champ
!” He slammed his hand against Ezra’s shoulder.

“I don’t know. I’ll probably take it off,” he said, scratching at the irritation in his nose and trying to remember the moment in which the piercing was made. He couldn’t.

“Aw, you’re gonna break Barnes’ heart,” said Jena. “It looks good, Ezra—really.”

“I think it becomes you,” said Poole. Though in a far more controlled manner, even she had joined in the drunken mirth of the previous night, revealing a more energetic and playful side.

Ezra sighed, but wanted to scream. How could he lose control of his drinking to the point of getting convinced to have his nose pierced? Seeing blood on his pillow after waking up and discovering the ring hanging from his nose and reaching down to his lip, boasting the colors of Besoe Nandi, had sent him running head-first towards the toilet.

He didn’t remember the last time he felt so embarrassed, even if a part of him liked the accessory; he wanted to have something to always remind him of this radical change in his life—a bull-like ring in his nose felt appropriate, if unsightly.

Still, if he had gone as far as mutilating his own body, what else had he done under the effects of drink? He made a silent vow never to let it happen again.

“It’s a good thing it’s Sunday. Other than the Grand Meeting tonight, we have very little to do,” Erin said and looked at Ezra, Poole, and Akiva. “Well you three have to write your reports but it will only take a few minutes. I don’t suppose anyone’s up for a game of cards . . . or a game of ball in the pitch?”

“I do, but only if it’s at least three-on-three and in the Suits,” said Garros. He looked awful, but Ezra knew his words weren’t a bluff—Garros had the physical resilience of a beast of burden. His Creux’s alias seemed to match the pilot as well as the Creux itself.

Ezra didn’t want to do anything. He wanted to have his nose checked for infection, and then sleep forever. He only had a couple of days before his next synchronization, when he’d be in combat for the first time, and he wanted to be ready. Returning to Nandi’s body was all he had in mind. He wished he could just go down to the docking bay and synchronize, even if just for a minute.

Still, he forced himself to speak to Erin, thanks to a new instinct wouldn’t allow him to let the entire day pass without doing something productive. “You think you could let me take a quick glance into your new office, Erin?”

She considered the question for a moment, having forgotten Ezra’s first appeal in the pub. “Oh, right. I haven’t even been there myself. I don’t know why they even gave me an office.”

“Alice used it all the time,” Garros said.

“Alice was insane,” Tessa added, and everyone at the table took a moment to try and process Tessa’s words. She never spoke, and now she did so to insult their deceased former leader? “What? She was. She spent more time locked in that office than she did anywhere else.”

“Dammit, Tessa, be cool. For once,” Garros said. “You’re talking about Alice.”

“All right, I’m sorry,” she said, but Ezra knew it wasn’t sincere. He could tell.

“I’ll take you there when we’re done,” Erin said, and looked at all the empty plates on the table. “Which apparently we are. Let’s go.”

Ezra and Poole had to wait outside the office for Erin to get a copy of the keys. She had assumed the position a few days earlier and hadn’t yet bothered to even visit the office that was now hers. “All right, let’s see what I got,” she said, inserting the key onto the slot.

Ezra wondered why this area of Zenith was so old fashioned. For reasons a mind like Ezra’s couldn’t understand, not being appreciative for design or architecture, the doors and walls in the Management wing emulated old houses; keys and locks were actual keys and locks, whereas the rest of the facility used key cards, fingerprints, and optical scanners.

Erin opened the door to reveal Alice’s old office. It smelled like her perfume, or her natural scent, and Ezra wasn’t ready for that. He had to take a moment to compose himself and get accustomed to the smell. He scratched his nose and accidentally pulled the ring he forgot was there, causing him to yell out in pain.

“This looks too clean to be Alice’s,” Erin mused.

“It’s been cleaned since, I presume,” said Poole.

Ezra walked around the desk and noticed that the layout of the office was identical to his mother’s, and the only variations were in decoration. Tara Blanchard’s office had no personal items with the exception of pictures of her family. Alice’s photos were mainly of her and the other pilots in casual, friendly situations. There were a couple of old pictures of her and Susan, and Ezra was tempted to take one.

“Well maybe Tessa wasn’t so off-center about Alice,” Erin said, looking at the decorations. Alice had a thing about lions—a large feline long extinct. There were figurines, photographs, and a painting, all depicting proud, fearsome lions and their prides.

“Ezra Blanchard,” said Poole, hand inside an open drawer behind the desk.

He joined Poole and looked down at a brown leather-bound notebook. The Zenith logo was stamped in golden type. Below: the letters CDSL. Poole took it and flipped through some of the pages, revealing Alice’s busy schedule for that past year, filled only to the halfway point.

“What was it you want with this?” Erin said, taking it from Poole’s hands.

“I need to look at it,” Ezra said and looked at the drawer. “Can I have it please?”

“You can borrow it, but I want it back tomorrow,” she said, closing the book and giving it to Ezra. “I can’t let you keep it, I’m sorry. This belongs to either Zenith or Alice’s family, not us.”

“That’s okay, thank you Erin,” he said, walking towards the door, notebook in hand. “Are you coming?”

“No,” Erin said. “I’m here already. Might as well sort this place out if I’m gonna be using it. I guess I should send at least all these pictures back to Alice’s family—I can’t believe no one’s taken care of that. Wait, not this one—this one’s pretty. I’m in it . . .”

Ezra and Poole left Erin to her business and walked out of the office. They walked together out of the Management wing, through the central area and towards the dormitories. As it always seemed to be, the Pilots’ Lounge was empty, so they took a seat at the farthest corner.

Poole opened the notebook, flipped through Alice’s busy schedule, and found the last entry. It was dated the day before the explosion—the night Alice got drunk and visited Ezra in his dormitory. That latest entry, scheduled during dinnertime, was filled in with a thick black marker.

1930s – 2100s: MEETING WITH WHOSITS / CONFERENCE HALL B

“‘
Whosits
.’ That isn’t very helpful, Alice,” Ezra said.

“Of course it is, Ezra Blanchard,” Poole refuted. “We know there was a meeting with someone she didn’t know, probably from outside Zenith, and we know where it was. We only need to go there and see if the room’s computer was used that day. The computer is likely to contain information about the meeting.”

Ezra nodded, for the first time in weeks feeling stupid.

They looked back down at Alice’s last written words and noticed something else: a folded piece of paper slipped between the next pages. He put the notebook down on the colorful table and unfolded the loose page. It was a recycled sheet of paper, filled with evidences of boredom. Small doodles surrounded a larger one: a triangle with circles drawn over the angles, the top one blacked out.

“They’re just doodles,” Ezra said, disappointed. “And why is that tooth sneering at me?”

“No, Ezra Blanchard,” she said. Every time she used his full name, it made her sound condescending, like she was talking to a child. “Why would she keep a page full of doodles? The central figure, this triangle, is important. The rest likely aren’t. And that is a lion, not a tooth.”

Ezra nodded again. “I’m really glad you’re with me on this,” he said, and Poole smiled, blushing.

Chapter 15

A Lifeless World

So, basically, that’s what I’ve learned from all this: Even if our stars weep, even if our sun dies, we never really stop growing.

It was the final line
of Alice Nolan’s book.

Ezra read it the first time many weeks before the event that would later be known as the Shattering. It was the only thing in the entire book Ezra would have tried to dispute, but he couldn’t; when he finished reading it, the author could no longer offer further insights to support that crucial final claim.

Despite his physical and emotional transformation, Ezra still considered himself a cynic, and would argue that the human mind comes to a developmental halt at some point in adulthood. As time passed, Ezra began to better understand what Alice had meant, and would notice that, even in her death, she was a formative force in his life.

Not long after his first field test, Ezra began to wonder if he’d ever be truly happy in Zenith. He had been soaking inside Besoe Nandi’s capsule for ten minutes, ready for his first battle operation, and despite the excitement and anxiety he had anticipated for days, he truly wished he could continue his investigation with Poole. Ezra didn’t know why, but something about the trail of clues left behind by Alice told him that the mystery had an expiration date. Somehow, he knew that he had a time limit to discover Zenith’s secrets and what was said in Alice’s final meeting.

“Ares is prepared,” said Garros through the speakers system. “I’m synched at 93 percent—
reeeal
damn low for me—but I’m out here. Erin, fearless leader, what’s your status?”

“I’ve been out here for over ninety seconds. My OS says I’m at 97, by the way,” came Erin’s voice.

“Bugger off, Lieutenant,” said Garros boldly, but Erin laughed. “What about the noobies?”

“Milos Ravana is synchronizing as I speak.” It took Ezra a few moments to recognize Kat’s voice pouring from the speakers. “Everything normal. Phase two starting.”

Barnes clapped his large hands together for a thunderous sound. “All right, it’s show time. Watch your head, Blanchard,” he said as the lid began closing and all the familiar sensations took over.

Ezra fell spiraling into darkness, his body being torn apart and remade with sturdier stuff. When his eyes opened again, he was in the hollow red world, in the guise of the red Minotaur—Besoe Nandi.

This was a dead space, but for him it was like breathing again. He wondered how he could have gone so long without this feeling of power and freedom, wanting never to go so long again.