Enemy of the Gods Page 2

  “Not directly. It is hard to understand you. You always told me I should extrapolate and not take things literally.”

  I must be careful about what I say to Harry. “What exactly did I tell you at that time?”

  “You ordered me to do something sexual with myself and to ask the goddamn ships. So, I began communicating with everything around us.”

  I stop walking for a moment and look at him, my cheeks burning. “Uh… did you do anything sexual with yourself?” Against my will, my brain begins picturing ways he could do it.

  “No, Zeon. It is not physically possible. I assumed it was just a disrespectful comment.”

  I look away, disgusted with myself. Perhaps I should stop insulting him.

  “Sorry about that. Why did the missile—Ethae—explode?”

  “Ethae knew she would be dead anyway, so she calculated the best position to destroy herself without injuring others. It’s sad.”

  A machine with empathy. Harry and the others are too good for us.

  “What about the other weapons in the submarine?” I point at the sea as if the vessel is right there. Maybe it is.

  “Ethae’s sisters were also distressed regarding the whole situation and refuse to be launched. And Jay is not obeying orders anymore.”

  I laugh. A family of missiles, and all girls. Harry inadvertently created a mutiny inside a submarine. People think nothing can hack our computers unless a backdoor is baked into the system during production. Harry, however, with his advanced brain, is developing a whole new way to hack by sugar-talking a missile.

  But the consequences of his actions are astonishing. There’s no way for the people who tried to kill us—whoever they are—to hurt us unless they land here and personally shoot us, since our whole world is connected with smart machines. I take a deep breath, relieved. We’re safe.

  At that moment, the hum of an army of lawn mowers breaks through the night silence. I frown. The mower-bots never work during the night, and they definitely never synchronize their mowing engines like that.

  “One more thing,” Harry says. “A helicopter is approaching. His name is Frei. And he’s carrying soldiers.”

  2

  Conscript

  Location: Jora

  Without much time to think, I run toward my cabin in a bid to seek out cover, perhaps under my bed.

  “They’re going to kill us!” I shout back to Harry. What they’re doing is an age-old war tactic. First, you use your artillery. Then you drop ground forces to mop up whatever’s left.

  On top of it all, the white sand is too loose today, and I feel like one of those cartoon dogs trying to flee.

  “There’s no evidence of that, Zeon,” Harry replies, overtaking me with clumsy and biomechanical movements. Under the night sky, his shape looks like a real black cat. Really, the last thing I want to do now is to explain what gut feelings are to my naïve pet robot.

  Twenty seconds later, I’m inside my unit, breathing loudly, being greeted by my biological calico cat, Bebe. She rubs up against my legs and purrs, wholly oblivious to the fact we were almost killed by Ethae. It makes me uncomfortable. Bebe’s personality has changed completely since I created Harry IV. While she used to avoid me at all times—except when it was time for her to be fed—now she can’t have enough of me.

  Because of my ongoing work on Harry, the tiny living room is a mess of computers, surgery tools, synthetic blood, bioprinters, and bioelectronics. In a world with advanced computers and artificial intelligence, the government invests heavily in education.

  And, apparently, rehabilitation.

  Harry comes inside and the door closes behind him. “Frei has landed. Five individuals are walking in this direction.” He must be speaking with Frei. The helicopter. As if we’re in a kid’s show. His social aptitude is both a blessing and a curse.

  Think, Zeon. I look around me. The kitchen is directly connected to the main room, with no walls between. The bedroom and bathroom are at the back, in case I want to hide or take a shower. This is not what I’m supposed to think! I need a backpack, food, and some clothes so we can run away—assuming we can get past those people.

  “Are they armed?” I ask, as if I could handle five people with my bare hands. Harry closes his eyes, and I wait. He’s probably talking with his new buddy.

  “Yes. But Frei said they do not plan to harm us.” Maybe I was wrong about them, but they have really bad timing, showing up just after the missile incident. “At least not here,” he continues. That settles it.

  “We have to get away. Right now!”

  There are some hills and a small forest behind my unit. If we leave now, we may be able to hide there and try to flee the island later. There’s one major problem, though.

  “Zeon, you are in prison,” Harry says. “You cannot escape.” He’s stating the obvious. I’m a convicted felon sentenced to five years in complete isolation. Even if I somehow manage to traverse the bay, there’s still a tracker inside my right shoulder, and the guards would be on top of me as soon as I was a few meters into the water.

  “I need solutions, not problems, Harry!”

  As I rub my shoulder trying to think of a way out, the doorbell rings. I freeze. Two thoughts immediately spring to my mind. First, I had no idea we had a doorbell in this place. Perhaps the conservatives are right, and we’re treating those scumbag criminals too well. What’s next, a butler? Second, who on Jora would be ringing a prison doorbell?

  “Someone is at the door,” Harry says.

  No shit, Sherlock. The doorbell rings again, but this time the “ding” sound lingers. Harry moves his head toward the entrance, forcing me to act.

  The creepy cat is right. There’s nothing else for me to do but check who’s there. So, I open the front door, just a little, enough to see what’s going on.

  The sight of a familiar short, skinny blonde in her mid-fifties smiling at me makes my heart skip a beat. I can’t believe she has the nerve to come and see me after all that happened. She wears an ornamented blue cêlçê and elegant flat black shoes as if she’s going to a formal party. We don’t have high heels on Jora.

  Behind her, four soldiers walk about, forming a perimeter or whatever they do in this situation. I actually don’t know what the situation even is. It’s not every day a high-ranking authority figure comes to visit a convict in prison.

  “May I help you, ma’am?” I ask Dooria, who incidentally is the vice-governor of the whole Atlantic Alliance. I force a smile, trying to hide my anger. A long time ago, in what feels like another life now, she was like family to me.

  “Zeon, we have to talk. May I please come in?”

  Like most people on Jora, she wears head adornments. Both of her temples have stick-on jewelry helping to delineate the sides of her face along with her short hair. Although the left one usually has religious significance and the right one is about family ties, Dooria’s family doesn’t follow tradition. Instead, all her temple jewelry is shaped like winged lions—her family’s coat of arms.

  “Sure, Dooria. Make yourself at home.” I gesture toward the tiny living room. “But I’m out of beer, you know,” I lie.

  Dooria signals her soldiers to wait outside, somehow convincing them to leave her alone in a prison-cabin with a felon. Then, she steps inside as if she owns the place, which technically is true.

  In the living room, she steals a glance at Harry, and I swallow. I don’t want people to know the extent of his intelligence. Luckily, the usually chatty cat remains silent.

  Then, she turns to me and stares at my blackened arm.

  “Zaén! You’re hurt. And dirty.” Dooria frowns and draws closer. Gently, she reaches up to caress my head, brushing a few strands of hair away from my eyes.

  Not ready to reopen old wounds, I move away abruptly and take some of the dirty clothes off the couch to make some space. Her motherly behavior brings back memories, and my cheeks burn red. Zaén is the nickname she gave me when I was a boy, and it almost sounds like Zeon. It means “ladybug” in English.

  “Let me treat your arm,” she says. “It’s the least I can do in this situation.”

  After I bring the first-aid kit, she carefully cleans up my wounded forearm and palm, gently wrapping them with gauze pads. The situation is awkward, and we both remain silent.

  Many years ago, she was the nurse-in-chief of the Sacred Ring Hospital, and it was her healthcare plan that got her into politics. Considering I have the vice-governor fixing up my arm, I should have no complaints about my provider.

  Once my arm is professionally bandaged, she sits on the couch. Meanwhile, I grab a short stool I usually use to work on Harry. Not the best accommodations for a head of state—or, to be more precise, a vice-head of state.

  “How’s Bodan doing?” I finally ask.

  During my teenage years, I spent plenty of nights in Dooria’s house. The mothers and fathers of your best friend often become surrogate parents to you, especially when your own mother abandons you. And of all Bodan’s mothers, Dooria was my favorite.

  She smiles. “He’s doing fine. He was promoted to level orange after he won a big case for General Pharmaceutics. They tell me he’s the best young lawyer in the firm. And he misses you.”

  I snicker. Bodan used to be my best friend until he betrayed me. He’s also one of the few people on Jora that knows what happened here, on Earth, and in Pangea. But no one lifted a finger to corroborate my story, and the rest of the world thought I was making stuff up about parallel Earths just to pretend I was insane and not go to jail.

  I move my head in a circle, the Jori equivalent of a headshake. “Well, I definitely could use a friend.” Or a mother, I think, looking away. “Too bad they’re hard to find.”

  Of course, I understand I sounded crazy when talking about Earth and the messengers, but I thought she’d have understood. Or more importantly, that she would have believed me. But she trusted Bodan’s lies instead.

  Dooria frowns. “Zeon, you have been attacked. I’m glad you’re alive, but how are you not dead? We were already on our way when we saw what happened.”

  I touch my bandaged arm. “I don’t know,” I lie. The pain slowly fades away, helped by the cold and wet antibiotic cream. It’s replaced by an uncomfortable tingling sensation. This is going to hurt in the shower.

  “But Zeon,” Harry says, speaking for the first time in front of another human. “I explained it to you.”

  Dooria’s eyes light up and she grins, beaming at Harry. I glare at him.

  “Shut up, Harry! Don’t you dare say another word!”

  Harry’s eyes shift from me to Dooria as if considering whether he should obey me or not, but he stays quiet. I’m not technically his master or anything, and he has no loyalty to me, so I never know what he’s going to do.

  Dooria looks back at me. “Fascinating! And he speaks English!”

  “He speaks both English and Dïnisc, but I specifically ask him to speak only English to me. I didn’t want anyone else to understand him.” I smile, thinly. No one speaks English on Jora. Well, almost no one. The Jori who know about English are the ones who also know about the gods. It’s a small, exclusive club.

  Then, the realization of what just happened hits me like a punch in the stomach. Heart racing, I gasp as though I’m in one of Earth’s cheaply made soap operas. We’ve been speaking English since I let Dooria inside; it’s been a long time since I last spoke Dïnisc, and I didn’t realize I was even speaking English when I answered the door.

  And there’s only one possible explanation why Dooria’s able to speak it too.

  I stand up and point a finger at her. “You knew!” My breathing becomes shallow. I try to gather my thoughts, gesturing toward the kitchen, in the direction of the paradisiacal shore. “And yet you left me here… to rot on this beautiful beach!”

  Her eyes gaze away from mine, which is unusual for her. Dooria rarely avoids eye contact even when she’s in the wrong. “Yes, I did. And I’m sorry about that.”

  I take a quick breath. “Sorry? You are the vice-governor of the goddamn Atlantic Alliance, and you couldn’t give a fuck about me? You knew I told the truth!”

  She leans back and crosses her arms, frowning. Few people probably talk to her like that. To her credit, she remains silent and waits for me to blow off steam.

  Betrayal takes a long time to process, and this is just the beginning.

  “But how?” I ask, looking at nothing in particular. The explanation is obvious, but it’s worse than I thought. Yes, the Jori who fought in Pangea know about English, Earth, and the gods. But only a few of them—besides me—actually speak the language.

  “Dooria,” I lower my voice. “Are you… are you… an angel?”

  All of a sudden, I regress to when I was eleven years old as if asking her for attention.

  For love.

  “Yes.”

  The winged lion on her left temple flashes as she scratches it, deep in thought.

  Dooria, the parent of my former best friend, the mother figure in my life, is an angel of the messengers of the gods.

  For who knows how long, the messengers have been selecting humans from Jora and from Earth to fight for them in battles. They call those humans protectors. But only a few of the protectors are also angels of the messengers.

  Don’t get me wrong; angels are not that special. They’re no better than any other protector, and they don’t have special powers here or in Pangea. After all, they’re humans like everybody else. The only difference is they speak most human languages.

  But, most importantly, they’re spies. The messengers draft them when they are young. Brainwash them. And when they’re adults, the angels do the gods’ bidding, which, for some sadistic reason, usually involves smashing my heart into pieces, both literally and figuratively.

  Dooria stands and approaches me, arms open. I take a step back. “You know I’m innocent,” I say. “Everything I said is true. So why didn’t you help me?”

  “I was told by the messengers not to get involved,” she says. “You know how the gods work.”

  I sneer at her. “No need to tell me. They work in mysterious ways?” And here I thought the lowest point of my night had been when someone was trying to kill me.

  Dooria stares at me. “We don’t have much time. The messengers need you in Pangea.”

  I wince. Pangea is a place where our consciousness goes when we’re asleep, while our bodies stay behind. But as far as I know, only the messengers of the gods can send us there. It looks and feels like a real place, but it’s not. People can and do die there, though.

  “Can you tell them to tickle themselves?” I ask.

  I’ll never go back there, and certainly not to help those two-faced weasels. Although they don’t really look like weasels. They’re hairless albino humanoids in Pangea. In reality, they could be disgusting millipedes living on a distant planet, and we would never know.

  It’s not their appearance that makes me dislike them, though. The problem is they’re emissaries of the gods, who are beings made of fuzzy clouds of energy that live somewhere in Pangea but are never seen. The gods are involved in a war for the control of Pangea, and they were hoping to draft us last time I got involved in all of this. They failed badly because we rebelled and didn’t pass their psychopathic tests. Maybe they’re trying again.

  Dooria ignores my rude reply. “The messengers can’t reach us anymore. Something really bad is happening up there.”

  “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” I say. It’s one of my favorite expressions in English.

  “I don’t think you understand. If the messengers lose Pangea—if we lose Pangea, everyone dies.”

  Here we go again. I roll my eyes. “How would that even happen?”

  Her eyes drop to her clasped hands, and she begins fiddling with her thumbs. “I guess you always assumed we were protectors of Jora. Or protectors of Earth. But you’re wrong. We’re protectors of Pangea.” She sighs, nods, and looks me in the eyes. “And you’re one of us. An angel. The highest form of protector.”

  I stand and walk around the stool, away from her, fuming. “It’s not like anyone ever explained anything to me. And I don’t know if you’re being honest.”

  Dooria’s eyebrows furrow, and she touches her forehead.

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn? Bodan is right. Do you know why you’re in prison?” She snorts. I don’t answer her. It’s a rhetorical question. “You’re here not because of what you did, but because of what you didn’t do. And once again, you’re fleeing from your responsibilities. You’re so unlike Bodan. He never stops fighting.”

  All my life she gave me similar speeches. About how Bodan was better than me. But her words aren’t as painful anymore. After I was abandoned or betrayed by everyone I loved, I developed a thick skin. Her words almost don’t bother me.

  Almost.

  “I’m not going back,” I tell her.

  Her eyes follow me as I pace inside the cabin. Despite her anger, Dooria is always great at diplomacy, often knowing exactly where the conversation’s going to go. In international politics, it earned her the nickname “the Whisperer.” Compared to that, persuading me or Bodan of anything is a piece of cake.

  Then she says, “Jane’s in danger. She’s asking for your help.”

  I pinch my lips. Of course, they’d go there. The messengers are clever. They know exactly how to twist my knobs and make me do their bidding. But Jane would never ask for my help. She must hate the messengers as much as I do. I stay silent, so as not to give Dooria any ammunition. There’s no way she can convince me to help them.

  “She sent you a message,” Dooria continues. “She said, and I quote, ‘Louise Lane needs spider guy’s help.’ I’m not sure why she phrased it like that.”

  My hand quickly finds the couch behind me and I sit. When we had a big fight, when she found out about who I really was, Jane and I discussed superheroes of all things. No one else but Jane would know this.