The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

hands.
    “They didn’t tell me … about this …” Connor said. He dropped the chains.
    Nero was glad to see the boy up and about again. During the raid into Permutation Crypt, Connor had connected to the ZPF in a way Nero had never experienced. He’d overwhelmed the Janzers’ telekinetic defenses, ripping apart more than three hundred of them: he’d saved the operation from ruin. Then he had collapsed from exhaustion, and Zorian, Connor’s older brother, had carried him out of the Crypt.
    Presently, Nero’s anger over his imprisonment won out over his sense of gratitude. “We had an accord.”
    “Aera acts alone. She doesn’t hold to the commonwealth’s rules or those that govern the BP—”
    “Are these your rules?” Nero nodded to the cell walls. “You enlist a strike team captain and striker to your cause and turn on me—”
    “Your captain’s the reason I’m here.” Connor leaned his hand against the side of the limestone cell, and Nero noted the uneasiness in his tone and in his stance, so unlike the boy’s confidence in the Crypt. “Something’s … happened …”
    Nero sprang to his feet. He grimaced but limped to the bars. “The Bicentennial?” He could barely move from the pain that shot down his leg. While Nero had raided the Crypt with Connor, Murray, and Aera, his strike team captain, Broden Barão, had attended the two-hundred-year celebration of Chancellor Masimovian’s rule in Hammerton Hall. “What happened?” Nero reached for Connor through the bars and pulled him by his cape. A sensation struck his muscles, paralysis. He released Connor and dropped to the stone floor.
    Jeremiah Selendia rotated around his son, not at all how Nero remembered him—weak, withering, half-dead in the transport after they’d escaped the Crypt. Connor seemed tiny next to his father. A fur cape hung around Jeremiah’s broad shoulders. His head and face were shaved. His eyes looked clear and sharp, his power in the ZPF as effective as Brody’s.
    How long was I out? Nero thought . A trimester must’ve passed for Jeremiah’s full recovery.
    “Not that long,” Jeremiah said, “but long enough.”
    “We saved you—”
    “You betrayed me.”
    “Lady Isabelle—”
    “Killed my son because of you and your Jubilees and your adherence to Masimo’s backwardness.” Jeremiah knelt and rotated his fist clockwise. Spit flew out of Nero’s mouth, as if he were being squeezed for pulp. Nero twisted his brow, shivered, and his eyes closed, but he didn’t make a sound. “You know full well you’re sending those people to the surface without a cure—”
    “We … had … accord …”
    “Ah … the accord. I recall a similar agreement you and I and your captain shared in Palaestra. When our accord stated we’d work together to free the people from this underground inferno, an accord you and your captain and your strategist dismantled when you turned me in to Lady Isabelle!”
    “We … didn’t—”
    “The way of Reassortment with you—”
    “Father!” Connor said as Nero bellowed. “He’s had enough! Please, let him go! He helped me, carried you out of the Crypt, and you wouldn’t be here now without him … and … he deserves to see …”
    Jeremiah looked up to his son. “Yes, yes. ” He stood and nodded. “Wise beyond your years.” He ruffled Connor’s hair beneath his hood and released Nero, who gasped for air as if emerging from under the sea. Jeremiah activated a Granville sphere, and the cell bars dropped into the floor. “He’s right, you do deserve to see.”

ZPF Impulse Wave: Cornelius Selendia
    Hydra Hollow

    300 meters deep

    Connor watched Nero, still rocking back and forth like a submarine in the Gulf of Yeuron. Connor would ask his father, when the time was right, how he hurt the striker, how he induced the paralysis, how he controlled his telekinesis within the ZPF. Connor couldn’t use the ZPF like that, at least not since Permutation Crypt, when he’d lost