DEAD SQUARES
Chapter 1
Jo spat the black liquid she’d thought was coffee back into the mug and put the mug back on the console of her control station. The dim light from the sky dome seeped through the semi-transparent ceiling and reflected on the polished floor and the shiny computer monitors on the wall. She normally preferred monitors to wallpaper, but at the moment, it seemed a little too much for her. She’d been staring at the monitors for so long that her eyes felt like they were bleeding.
She needed some caffeine to jolt her system. She had to catch up on her research for the job at hand—being Sciphil Four—a position that made her responsible for more than a hundred billion civilians in her district.
Jo considered herself a good computer designer. On Earth, as the Steel Princess, she was unbeatable in the hologame community. She had only ever lost to Ciaran, who played as White Knight. That was good enough for her when it came to computer games. She wasn’t nearly as good as Ciaran in computer programming, but that was only because he had more resources than she did.
She clucked her tongue to herself. In the hologame and in matrixes, being able to see patterns was a crucial skill. She was definitely as good as he in recognizing patterns. Ciaran was good because he had a wealth of knowledge about…well, about almost everything. But he had the unfair advantage of being conceived in the Red Stage of the Daimon Gate. And from what Jo had heard, children conceived there were considered to be the best beings in the cosmos.
Her parents were bakers and lived in New York. They had a modest cake shop in town that had earned them enough money to put her through college. But her ability to see patterns hadn’t come through education. It was her natural talent—or maybe her curse. Because of that so-called talent, she’d ended up here—in this strange universe where none of her life experiences or skills applied.
She missed her coffee and the bagels from her brother’s bakery. For the life of her, she couldn’t get her robot to make a decent cup of coffee. She missed hanging out with her best friend, Madeline, and watching silly chick flicks. And she missed the time she had been Tadgh-free.
“Ted!” she growled as she leaned down to her computer keyboard and banged her head against it a few times. Sometimes her robot’s name sounded much too close to Tadgh.
“Yes, Jo!” Her home robot rolled in. He was as round as a soccer ball and stood at knee height. Although he had working limbs, he usually chose to roll instead of walking.
“I gave you the precise recipe for coffee, yet you brought me this disgusting black liquid! How hard can it be to make a cup of coffee? If you show me where the ingredients are, I’ll make it myself. Is there a coffee shop in town? There has to be one.”
“I make the coffee according to your formula. However, some of the organic ingredients you gave me aren’t available in Eudaiz, so I took the liberty of using some substitutes.”
“Well, that’s the problem. Coffee isn’t simply black liquid with caffeine. But taste is something I doubt you’ll ever understand.”
“I am afraid that human tastes and preferences are too complicated to program into a home robot like me.”
“I’m sure Ciaran’s Robert has the correct program!”
“Robert isn’t just a home robot, he’s the first generation of—”
“All right. I get it. No need to elaborate, Ted.” Then she sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m a little testy—”
“Obviously!” Tadgh’s voice interrupted. Without invitation, he sauntered in and began to massage Jo’s shoulders.
“Why wasn’t Tadgh’s arrival announced?” Jo asked Ted.
“It was.” Ted pointed to the door monitor. There she saw the blinking message that Tadgh had just arrived at her residence. She had been testing a program that would allow her friends in without scanning. Apparently, the system considered Tadgh to be her friend.
“So what are you testy about, Sciphil Four?” Tadgh asked. “Nothing I did, I hope.”
She shook her head. “I can’t put my finger on some programs.”
“Anything I can help with?” Ted asked.
Jo arched an eyebrow. “What kind of analyses can you run?”
“I don’t have the ability to conduct any analytical processes. But I do have access to data. I can gather the data for you using any data retrieval algorithm you wish. The speed of my—”
Jo raised her hand to stop the robot. “You’re saying I can dictate search commands to you, and you’ll pull the data for me? I don’t have to deal with this monstrous search engine with its odd search terms and algorithms?” Jo’s voice had increased noticeably in pitch, and she shifted in her chair to gather her composure. She removed Tadgh’s hands from her shoulders so that he stopped massaging them.
Tadgh pulled up a chair and sat down next to Jo. She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “Now, Ciaran’s coronation will be next week. I imagine it’ll be a huge event in Eudaiz, and there will be many badasses in the cosmos lurking around to try to ruin the day. I’m assuming security will be strict, but I want to see if there’s any potential danger the ordinary system might have missed.”
“Affirmative,” Ted said.
“Ciaran wouldn’t want his coronation ruined, so I suppose Tower Three is already secured. But have the security risks of the other eight towers been assessed?”
“Yes. In order from the most to least secured—Tower One, Tower Seven, Tower Nine, Tower Two, Tower Six, Tower Five, Tower Eight and Tower Four.”
Jo nodded then frowned at Tadgh’s expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re the most unsecured Sciphil during the coronation,” Tadgh said.
She frowned again and recalled Ted’s report. Tadgh was right. The robot had said Tower Four was the least secure. “How can I rank even lower than Sciphil Eight, the guy we haven’t even met?”
“Sciphil Eight has been on a mission and will return by coronation time. He has no record of a security breach in the last fifty years,” Ted said.
“On what basis does security rank me as most risky?” Jo asked.
“The security committee has twelve members. The head of the committee, Sizx, Eudaiz’s head of intelligence, has developed a...”
“Who? The blue-haired chick? Oh, come on! Give me a break!” Jo exclaimed and pushed up off her chair.
Tadgh pulled her into his arms. “Calm down, darling.” Then he turned toward Ted. “What are the criteria for security ranking?”
“History of Sciphil succession. Origin of the current Sciphil. And security records,” Ted answered.
“All right. What’s the succession history of the Sciphil Four position?” Jo asked and sat down on Tadgh’s lap.
“Hoyt Flanagan. Tor Linii. Manix Lunn. Bly Srico. Kyle Wolf. And you, Josephine Cassidy.”
“Well, I know I’m human. Kyle Wolf is Eudaizian. How many other humans are in the successor line?”
“Hoyt Flanagan and you are both human. The rest were Eudaizian.”
“Okay, so what’s the succession line of, say, the Sciphil Three position?” Tadgh asked.
“Pierre LeBlanc. Aedan LeBlanc. Ealga LeBlanc. Malachi LeBlanc. Bran LeBlanc. And the current king-to-be, Ciaran LeBlanc.”
Jo turned around and saw Tadgh looking at her. There was one thing that Tadgh and Jo had in common—they were both good at recognizing patterns. And Tadgh was brilliant at numbers. He could even calculate the probability of pattern occurrence in his head.
Now, they both saw a pattern emerging.
“Apart from Sciphil Three, are other Sciphil positions running within a family?” Jo asked.
“It has been the case in the past. But the latest generation of Sciphils has changed. Sciphil Two, Zach Flynn, has no blood relation to Ayana Dee. Daniel Chandler has no blood relation to Juliette Dubois. He does, however, have a family tie with Sciphil Nine, Pete Chandler. And with you, Tadgh.”
Tadgh nodded. “As Sciphil Seven, I have no family tie with Ralph Durant. But I do have a blood tie with Ciaran.”
Jo nodded and said, “So the Sciphil Four line of succession is a mumbo jumbo.”
“I was wondering why Hoyt Flanagan didn’t appoint a human successor for the Sciphil Four position,” Tadgh said. “And why other Eudaizian Sciphils didn’t appoint their relations. They have family ties in Eudaiz, like we humans.
Jo stood up and paced back and forth. “When Kyle kidnapped me on Earth, he had an entire army working for him,” she said. She turned and looked at Tadgh. “Wait a second. All Sciphil Fours before me didn’t have blood ties. They were all Eudaizian…born from boxes. I want their birth records, Ted.”
“Unfortunately, you don’t have access to that information.”
“Ahhh… so who does?” Jo snarled.
“Ciaran,” Tadgh said before the robot could reply.
“All right,” Jo muttered and engaged her computer system to create a holocast to Ciaran’s residence. “District Four. Tower Four. Me—Sciphil Four. Now there are four Eudaizians in this line of Sciphil succession,” she said.
Tadgh nodded. “Yes, there’s a pattern. But of what? What would make a pattern of four? Four gods? Four elements? Like metal, water, fire, and earth?”
She chuckled. “Or simply the four points of a square. But all of these Eudaizian Sciphils are dead now. So that makes them dead squares.”
The computer monitor blinked a couple of times, and then the screen went blank.
“What the hell?” Jo looked at the monitor.
“Look out!” Tadgh shouted and dove at her. He hit her so hard they both fell to the floor.
In front of them, the computer exploded.
Chapter 2
Madeline stormed into the control room and saw that Ciaran had just finished giving instructions to staff and had programmed a couple of bug-like robots. He raised a hand to gesture her to wait. Once the staff had cleared the room, he turned toward her.
“Jo and Tadgh are fine.” He approached her and rubbed his thumb on the dimple on her left cheek.
Madeline exhaled, releasing a ton of anxiety. Her psychic ability had decided to balk when she’d needed it the most. Ciaran kissed her. He always did that—before she could rant, ask questions, or complain about anything. The next thing she knew, she’d almost forgotten what she had stormed in here for.
“Fine? As in not dead? Free from injuries?”
He smiled. “Jo and Tadgh were thrown into a dimensional hole as a result of the explosion. But Jo managed to shoot a message back here before the hole closed. The message said they were both okay. She’ll get back to us when she can locate their physical position.”
“Are you sure she can?”
He nodded. “I am. And they’re free from injury—that’s the most important thing. I can’t say the same about Jo’s robot, however.”
Madeline narrowed her eyes. “Wait…how did Jo’s home robot get to your control room?”
“I picked him up and transported him here.”
“You’ve been to Sciphil Four’s residence and back?”
He nodded and smiled. “I’m efficient.”
Madeline sighed and said nothing. She was busy asking their own home robot, Robert, to teach her to use the inter-universal communicator so that she could call the Daimon Gate directly to check on the children.
He rubbed his thumb on her chin. “I have something to discuss with you, First Councillor.”
Damn it! Her hormones were always stirred up whenever he called her First Councillor. Maybe it was because of the way he said it. Maybe his British accent was what turned her on. She cleared her throat. “Sure.”
He smiled again. “Promise me you won’t get upset.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Jo was really injured?”
He shook his head.
“Tadgh?”
He shook his head again.
“You?”
“Promise me!”
“Okay, I promise.”
He nodded. “I was able to retrieve the last search function Jo performed on the robot before the explosion. And the information—or rather, what I can deduce from it—warranted some attention.”
She paced the room. Her psychic feelings started to creep in, none of them good.
Ciaran grabbed her shoulders, holding her still. He looked into her eyes. “Jo thinks someone related to the succession line of the Sciphil Four position is planning to do something catastrophic before—or maybe on—the day of my coronation. And it has something to do with Dead Squares because when she said the words, her computer system exploded.”
When it came to computers, Madeline didn’t need to ask Ciaran or Jo whether they were sure about their speculations. They were usually right, at least most of the time. She sighed and nodded.
Ciaran continued, “It could be anything. It could be a chess move…or a location. Jo thinks it might have something to do with the way children are born in Eudaiz. I’ve checked the profiles of all four Eudaizian Sciphils. All were born in District Four. And I don’t think the profiles stored in the system are authentic.”
“So what’s the part you think I’d be upset about?”
He sighed. “I’m afraid it could get a bit more complicated. I think it has to do with the number four. Considering the four Eudaizian Sciphils, Kyle Wolf was number four. That was why he was so ambitious. He wanted to be king of Eudaiz.”
“And that’s why he ended up dead,” she said.
Ciaran nodded. “Because Kyle wasn’t meant to be king. Whoever planned the ennead codes either wants to be king or wants to build the rightful king for Eudaiz. Judging by how someone tried to pry information out of my mind and the way we were attacked before, I think it has something to do with children born in the Red Stage of the Daimon Gate.”
“So it might have something to do with you and our children,” Madeline said.
“Three of us, and maybe one more,” Ciaran said. “If what Moira claimed is true—that she had a daughter conceived during the Red Stage of the Daimon Gate, and her daughter is alive in Xiilok, her daughter is number four.”
“So you think it might have something to do with Moira?”
Ciaran nodded. “And that’s the upsetting part for you. I know you sympathize with her situation. And given she’s my ancestor, I should be more sympathetic. But I think that not only does Moira want to build super soldiers to find her daughter, she also wants her daughter in the king Sciphil position.” He turned and looked into her eyes. “You know I don’t care whether I’m king or not. But I’m a firm believer of nurture over nature. If Moira’s daughter was raised in Xiilok—the land of the multiversal outlaws—and was brought up by her captor, a traitor of Eudaiz, then she’s not fit to be the queen of Eudaiz.”
“Ciaran.”
“Yes, First Councillor.”
This time, his First Councillor sounded cold. He spoke it almost like a reminder that she held a position with great responsibilities, and all personal matters and feelings must be set aside. “What do you want me to do, Ciaran?”
“Break your promise with Moira. We will not help her find her daughter.”
She stared at Ciaran. “You remember that our children were born using Moira’s technology. You can prevent her from having direct contact with the children, but there’s nothing to stop her from remotely controlling the birth chamber.”
“You don’t have to tell her anything before we have a chance to secure our children.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to not only break my promise with that poor woman but also lie to her. Okay. Fine and dandy. I’ll do that for the sake of my children. But when push comes to shove, when Moira needs an answer, I will not upset her.”
“I told you we can secure the children. And they’re our children by the way.”
“No, Ciaran. If you could have taken our children out of those boxes—before they hatched—you would have done so already. So as long as our children’s lives are in Moira’s hands, I refuse to upset her.”
“Our children aren’t chickens. They don’t hatch. And I told you I would get them out of those boxes,” Ciaran growled. “Be patient. Make yourself unavailable to Moira. That way, she won’t ask you questions, and you don’t have to lie. That is, if you insist on holding your moral ground with her.”
She snarled back, “I know you have a universe on your shoulders, and I realize you take your responsibility seriously. Unlike a petulant councillor like me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you implied. Keep your moral ground, and stay up there on your high horse. Take care of your universe. But I am a mother. My children will always be my top priority. They are not yet safe and sound in my arms, so there is nothing you can say or do that will change my mind. Do your best, and keep Moira away from me.” She strode out of the room, breaking her promise to him.
She was royally upset.
Chapter 3
The cold breeze seeped up from the ground and absorbed into her fragile skin. Jo shuddered. She couldn’t tell whether she was still in Eudaiz or had been transported into another dimension. But she didn’t care for the eeriness around her at the moment. It reminded her of her darkest days in New York—the ones she didn’t care to remember and had never told anyone about, including her best friend, Madeline.
She glanced around. Tadgh was nowhere to be found. She didn’t have Madeline’s psychic abilities, but she had a feeling he was alive and looking for her.
He was her second chance in life, and she wasn’t about to take their relationship for granted. She promised herself when she found him that she would make more of an effort to make their relationship easier. She couldn’t keep letting her past haunt the most beautiful thing happening in her in life.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the shape of something moving in the dark.
“Who’s that?” she shouted and reached her hand out for her gun only to discover she didn’t have it. Damn it, she cursed silently. Because she had been working with a computer in her control room before being plunged down into this dark hole, she hadn’t had any weapons with her. She hadn’t been prepared.
The shadow grew larger and wriggled toward her.
“Don’t come near me. I’ll hurt you!” she shouted again, having no idea yet how she intended to hurt a ten-foot-tall, human-shaped shadow. The air around her thickened, and the space seemed to close in on her. The ground lifted up and lowered as if it was breathing, and a small amount of liquid oozed out on the surface from seemingly nowhere. It seemed as if the air around her had liquified and materialized, acting as a curtain that the shadow was pushing against.
Jo turned around to run. It was the most sensible solution given the circumstances. Her face smashed into a jelly-like wall, and she felt her head bounce backward. She squinted and saw a light that seemed to come from her right-hand side, via something that shaped like the entrance to a cave. The entrance was closing. She wasn’t in a hole—she was in a cave. The air smelled awful. The shadow in front of her became more prominent and seemed to be coming closer. The good part was that it was getting smaller as it closed in.
Jo realized it had looked gigantic before because of the distance and the light distortion. The ground beneath her rose and fell, rose and fell.
The shadow came right up to the jelly-like wall and was separated from her by only the thin layer of a damp tissue. It clawed and pushed at the curtain as if trying to find its way out—or in.
Jo glanced again at the closing mouth of the cave. It was time for her to flee. As soon as she turned, she heard the shadow calling her name.
“What the hell? Who’s that?” she asked.
The sharp tip of an object poked at the gelatinous curtain from the other side, and a dagger slipped through, slicing it open. The curtain parted to reveal Madeline, covered in a slimy substance. Jo heard moaning from somewhere deep inside the cave. Hot, putrid air pumped out in waves.
“Madeline!” Jo exclaimed.
Madeline looked at the rising and falling ground where Jo was standing and tried to maintain her balance. She glanced to the far end of the cave on her left and then to the closing cave mouth on her right.
“Is this place alive?” Madeline asked.
Jo realized that Madeline might be right. It looked like they were in the mouth of a living creature, and it felt as if the creature was either going to spit them out or swallow them. Personally, she preferred the former.
Chapter 4
“Jo!” Tadgh called out, cursing under his breath. They had been thrown into a black hole after the computer in her control room exploded. As soon as they got to their feet, Jo had tried to message Ciaran. Before she could do anything further, he grabbed her and kissed her, and then they were thrown away for a second time. All he had now was the lingering sweet taste of her lips on his, but Jo was nowhere to be found.
He thought they were going to die. He was no psychic, but his unfortunate connection with Kyle had given him an unwanted talent that allowed him to read the emotions of Kyle’s victims. Jo had been one of them, and thus he could live and breathe her emotions. The bad news was that whatever she dealt with hit him with an earth-shattering magnitude.
Kyle was dead. He was free of that connection. But he still could read a part of Jo’s emotions, and he liked it that way. After Jo messaged Ciaran, he saw fear in her mind. Fear shouldn’t be a part of her emotional portfolio as far as Tadgh was concerned. He loved her because of her fearlessness. He admired her tenacious approach to life. Her qualities made up for what he lacked. Seeing fear in Jo left him feeling hopeless. He would not allow that to happen.
Tadgh surveyed his surroundings.
The fear clawed at him now.
Khanuilay.
The scenery around him had an odd resemblance to the Khanuilay camp in Black Rock, where hundred of Eudaizians had been captured and ended up sacrificing themselves to buy himself and Ciaran time to escape. It was the camp that Libby was from. Her soul was still locked in a stone that he kept in his drawer to remind himself that life had been lost for him to be in a position to serve Eudaiz. It reminded him that he was a man with larger-than-life responsibilities—a concept he found difficult to swallow.
But this place didn’t look exactly like the camp he had been to with Ciaran. The camp had been a mocked-up area within Black Rock to simulate the real Khanuilay in District One. He had never had a chance to find out the true purpose of the camp before everyone involved was killed, but he remembered vividly how close he had been to giving an incorrect command, a command for the real Khanuilay in District One to be destroyed. If that had happened, he would have collapsed Eudaiz.
It was Ciaran who had stopped him. Tadgh sighed. Where would he be—what would he be—without his brother?
Earth had become a part of his past. Eudaiz was his future. He owed people here his life.
“Jo!” Tadgh called again and charged faster toward the hill.
An aura blasted at his senses now. He shook his head. If this was Black Rock, he knew how to handle these creatures. He checked for his guns and daggers and was relieved—his weapons were still with him even after all of the dimensional travel. Then he remembered that Jo wouldn’t have a weapon with her. The fear of that clawed at him.
In a worst case scenario—if what he was sensing now was sorcery, the kind that the man at the creek in Xiilok had used on Ciaran—even with him and Jo together, with or without their weapons, they would be in serious trouble.
Behind him, the sand whirled up and formed the shape of a scorpion with eight claws reaching out in multiple directions. The presence of the creature created a pressure in the air. Tadgh turned around. Seeing the creature, he reached for his guns.