Forbidden Read Online Free

of his chest.
    Corban inclined his head. “Then I will start at the beginning.”
    When the alchemist tilted his head, his neck looked exceedingly fragile. He was a slight man, though the long robes of his office disguised the fact well.
    “Within a generation of Null Year, our alchemist forefathers began to apply analysis of the human genome to systematically curing the diseases that ail humanity. The cancers, the blindness, the epidemic viruses—”
    “Save me the propaganda.”
    “You ask for answers. You must be patient—”
    “You school me on patience?” Sweat snaked down Saric’s spine. “I don’t have another five hundred years. My sister is preparing her inaugural address at this moment. I have days. Which means you have minutes.”
    He willed the tightness around his lungs to relax. Right now, he felt that he could kill a boar with his hands. That he could leap, unharmed, from the turret of the Citadel’s watchtower.
    That he might tear out his own eyes.
    He dragged his sleeve across his forehead, half expecting to see it come away red. His entire body hurt. His entire being burned.
    The alchemist folded his hands. “As we learned to correct the inherited mistakes of our DNA, we decoded the emotional ills of humanity as well. You must understand that the limbic system of the brain—a circuit comprising the amygdalae, the hippocampus, and the hypothalamus, among others—”
    “Too much!”
    Corban blinked. “When we identified the coding of these emotions, we also discovered a way to eliminate them, all but that one required for our survival—”
    “Fear. Yes. Yes, I know all about the evils of emotion as preached by Sirin. Tell me what has happened to me .”
    “As you say, Sirin preached against the volatility of emotion and denounced the passions. To that end, Megas offered a solution: a pathogen with the genetic code to alter the DNA of any host. Airborne, highly contagious. They called it Legion.”
    Legion. The name hung in the room.
    “Sirin wanted nothing to do with Legion,” Corban said. “Even though his philosophies were already failing, he would not embrace the solution. And so he was removed—not by emotion-crazed zealots, as history teaches, but by Megas.”
    Saric drew a slow breath. “You are telling me Sirin was assassinated by Megas himself.” The whole world believed that Sirin had been assassinated by radicals. It was the inciting event of the world’s new Order.
    “Yes. And those few who know it guard this secret with their lives.”
    Saric looked around the chamber with new eyes. “So. In that moment the Order gained both its martyr and its proof against every zeal Sirin condemned.”
    “Indeed. And Megas had the means to ensure the world’s eternal loyalty.”
    “So it’s true, after all, that Sirin was killed by zealots. Just not the ones we thought.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “This pathogen, this Legion that stripped humanity of all but fear—you’re saying it worked.”
    “The virus did its work within the space of a few years.”
    “And so the nonemotional state of the world is not the selective preference of evolution as we have all been taught, but an act of oppression.”
    Corban hesitated. “ I would call it an act of liberation.”
    Saric drew a slow breath. The knowing filled him with strange satisfaction. It also unsettled. He moved to the console and lifted the jewel-crusted knife, thoughtfully dragging his thumb over the twisted prongs of the settings. “You’re saying everyone—including me—is infected with a virus.”
    “No. It’s no longer a viral infection. Nearly half our genetic code is derived from viruses. Think of it…as a new volume added to the library of our genetic code.”
    “So in the face of all our talk of living as evolved humans, you’re saying we��ve selectively de volved?”
    The alchemist pursed his lips. “I would say we have customized our emotional makeup in the same way that we selected the translucence