QUEEN
Chapter 1
Did the gray, dull, and inanimate garden wall in front of her just shiver, sweat, and leak out tears of blood?
This was incredulous. She wasn’t Alice in Wonderland. Madeline shook her head. It must be fatigue. She looked at the wall again.
Now, it stood still as any dull gray wall in any backyard. She sighed. It was fatigue.
A strange shade of gray light spread over a garden of plastic-looking trees. Her eyes shot to the sky and widened. She was looking at the magnificent sunset in Eudaiz, a universe far away from Earth.
She smiled.
After what felt like decades of bloodbath and battles, she had survived and come here. The sunset was comforting.
Madeline had read many science fiction novels, which at the moment served the sole purpose of preventing her from freaking out or making a complete idiot of herself.
Then she realized the sunset in front of her was artificial.
The smile left her face, giving way to a frown of anxiety at the daunting thought of an uncertain future.
A few months ago, she would have laughed at the idea that she would ever space travel. But this was worse. She hadn’t just space-traveled to get here. She had traveled across dimensions of time and space and God-knows-whatever-else. The sort of travel that didn’t allow her to use a map to track the routes, the kind where she didn’t know where she had been or how long it had taken her.
In 2015, she had been an accomplished New York journalist. A few short months later, she’d discovered she was not Madeline Roux, but Madeline Kelley. She was only half human from her mother’s side because her father was Eudaizian.
She’d met Ciaran in London and discovered that she could love a man like madness. Ciaran said they were soulmates. But his words were too polished for her. She preferred to say simply that they loved each other. She’d married him a few days ago—in whatever dimension existed between Earth and this place.
She was now Madeline LeBlanc, in whatever year it was in Eudaiz.
Eudaiz was a multi-billion citizen universe, governed by a council of nine Sciphils—a word that stood for Scientist Philosopher. There had been countless times Madeline rolled her eyes internally when she used the term.
In her lay English, she considered the council to be like royalty or a government of some kind. They controlled everything in Eudaiz. What intrigued her most was that the council members were mostly humans who’d come from Earth. A council of nine humans governing an immense universe of alien citizens was a concept she’d never have imagined in her wildest dreams.
The thing was, her grandfather had been Sciphil One. Before he died, he’d appointed her as his successor of the Sciphil One position because she was the last living member of her family. So she was due to take up that appointment in a few days and became Sciphil One. That had been quite a shock to her peaceful life on Earth.
Suddenly her vision wavered. The garden in front of her flickered. “Oh, no,” she muttered and turned around to go inside. On Earth, she’d thought she was a pseudo psychic. But since reconnecting with her biological family and accepting this Sciphil One position, her psychic ability had become stronger.
She could see minds and track minds, and sometimes she could even read people’s minds. The baggage that came along with that ability was that she had precognition—mostly in regards to negative incidents. They called that her talent. She called it a curse.
She didn’t think she could make it back inside the house. It seemed as if the ground was moving under her feet.
On the wall at the other side of the garden, a blood-red text appeared: ENNEAD WILL KILL YOU ALL.
The garden bed was covered in blood and gore. Body parts littered the ground.
She wanted to run, but her feet were buried in what looked like bricks made of dried bones. She yanked at her feet but couldn’t free them. She called out for Ciaran, but no sound escaped her mouth. The bones built themselves up quickly, now reaching up to her body.
She was suffocating in a tomb of bone.
Chapter 2
“Welcome home,” Kyle Wolf muttered to himself.
Kyle drew in the purified air of Eudaiz to remind himself of what he had missed in his thirty-three years living in exile. He swore to his soul that he would make those responsible for his miseries pay. In this universe—or in the one that contained Earth—his soul was the only possession he was sure was not illusory.
He chuckled at his analogy. As a mind-bender, Kyle’s strongest talent was the ability to make others hallucinate. He could control people’s minds. And he enjoyed doing it, especially when he made people kill themselves.
The stench of fresh blood always gave him a shiver of pleasure.
Deep in his thought, he tripped on a tub of water. He stared at his reflection in the purified water someone had put out in front of their house to give blessings for the new king of Eudaiz. The face mirrored back at him was a face he hadn’t dared to look at for a long time—scarred, wrinkled, and ancient.
He had once possessed the typical angelic, Eudaizian look—and he’d had an innocent Eudaizian mind to match.
Those precious days were long gone.
Eudaiz was a place of happiness where people lived in total contentment and excelled at their individual talents. Eudaizians looked like extraordinarily beautiful humans. People here were born beautiful and saw nothing but beauty in their lives. There was no concept of heaven or hell because those benchmarks just weren’t needed. This universe offered its citizens a true happiness that no other universe could.
Kyle cursed to himself and glanced from a distance at the happy crowds preparing for the king’s coronation. Only those like him who had visited other universes could understand and appreciate Eudaiz, just as only those who had been to hell would appreciate heaven.
Kyle knew the difference between heaven and hell all too well. Eudaiz was a heaven—a perfect world that had rejected him.
“That should be my coronation,” Kyle mumbled.
Eudaiz’s constitution stated that people deserved happiness when they used their excellence to contribute to virtuous acts. But no one had ever clearly defined what a virtuous act was, and more importantly, what it was not.
Kyle clenched his teeth, thinking of the LeBlancs again. His life’s work was down the drain now.
Bran LeBlanc, the previous king of Eudaiz, had cut off his eudqi—the life force that gave him his good looks and invincible strength. And Ciaran LeBlanc. Even the sound of the name made him feel as if his head was going to explode. Ciaran had taken the king’s sovereignty. And that would terminate Kyle’s existence.
“No!” He couldn’t let that happen. “Damn you all. I curse you all,” he growled. He whirled around in anger. “Ennead will kill you all. I swear to the gods of darkness, I will make them pay. The ennead will kill them all . . .”
A Eudaizian man carrying a tub of purifying water stepped out from a house and ran straight into Kyle. Half of the water in the tub poured out onto Kyle. Putting the tub down, the man turned to check on him.
He caught Kyle’s face and withdrew slightly. Then he spoke politely in Eudaizian, “I apologize.”
Kyle smiled. He understood that no one in Eudaiz was as ugly as he now was. Of course, the man was shocked seeing his deformed face. Kyle answered in his native tongue. “It’s not a problem. I’m on my way to the Sciphil zone. I shouldn’t arrive like this.” He pointed at a few leaves and flower petals still hanging from his clothes. “May I use your facility to wash up?”
“Oh, of course. You’re from the Sciphil council. My house is your house.” The man pushed the door open and invited Kyle in.
Kyle shook his head. Naive Eudaizians should die. Kyle followed the man in and closed the door behind him.
Sensing something unusual, the man turned around and looked at Kyle. Kyle savored the fear in the man’s eyes and the pain in his voice when he ripped the man’s heart out with his bare hand. Kyle wiped the blood from his hand on the man’s clothes.
He moved to the window and peeked outside. The air was filled with the distant sounds of cheering, music, and laughter. The aroma of burnt incense and fresh flowers whirled in the air for a moment and was then whisked away by the wind.
“Long live the king!” he hummed the words in his throat and smirked.
Chapter 3
Ciaran searched the garden and found Madeline fainted on the ground. His wife scared the hell out of him sometimes. He could see nothing unusual in the garden. The plantation in the garden looked plastic, but having dealt with chemicals for such a long time, he recognized that the material was organic, just not of Earth.
He knew for sure that the dome above that looked like sky was artificial. Its purpose was to create an environment that a human body could tolerate. The air inside the dome was normal. There were no strange creatures here or anything in the garden that he could peg as a sign of danger. So why had Madeline fainted?
He looked back at the house. It was more like a grand mansion than a bunker or a stereotypical space residence. Ciaran smiled to himself. Bran was Irish. It was only natural he’d build such a house to live in.
Ciaran noticed an old robot standing at the corner of the garden and approached it. It hadn’t been operated for a long time. If dust existed in Eudaiz, the machine must have gathered a lot of it. He activated the robot.
The machine came back to life. After humming for a second, it blinked and looked at Ciaran. At first, the monitor on its chest was blank. Then it seemed to reconnect to the current network, and it updated its system.
Text appeared on the monitor on the robot’s chest. “Please verify your access.”
Ciaran pressed his right palm to the control panel.
“Left palm please,” the text stated.
Ciaran pressed his left palm to the control panel.
“Welcome to Sciphil Three’s residence, Ciaran LeBlanc—king-to-be of Eudaiz,” the robot verbalized.
“Is there a surveillance system in this garden? I need to know what happened here before I activated you,” Ciaran said.
“Yes. The data is available in your control room,” the robot said.
Ciaran nodded and turned to go to the house.
“Please accept my condolences about Bran’s death. It was a great loss for Eudaiz,” the robot said.
Ciaran paused and looked at the machine. “You are one smart robot.”
“My name is Robert. I am the first-generation robot that could potentially handle data from the EYE.”
Ciaran glanced around to ensure no one was close by. “I thought you were a garden robot.”
“No. I am the central robot. 245.21YZ ago, Bran deactivated me here because he was in haste to leave for a mission.”
“How long ago?” Ciaran asked, arching an eyebrow.
“My apologies. Converted into Earth time, it has been the equivalent of thirty-three years since he deactivated me.”
“No one has reactivated you since then. How do you know your information is up-to-date?”
“Only a King Sciphil can activate me. You will be King Sciphil in twenty-eight days from now after your coronation. You will have access to the full data of the EYE. My system has been connected to the central databank. It is up-to-date.”
Ciaran hissed audibly. He didn’t know how much intelligence they had here. How much surveillance data would be available and to whom. Attempting to access the EYE system violated multiversal law and would result in a death penalty.
“We are not authorized to access data from the EYE system. I have no intention of building that databank. Neither did Bran,” Ciaran stated as clearly as possible to the robot. He knew the message was being recorded.
“You do not have to worry about surveillance. No one in Eudaiz has the privilege to access King Sciphil’s data in his private residence.”
Ciaran smiled. You’re a robot. You’re allowed to be naive, he thought. “All right, Robert, how many others have lived in this residence?”
“Pierre LeBlanc until 1655. Aedan LeBlanc until 1755. Ealga LeBlanc until 1805. Malachi LeBlanc until 1976. Bran LeBlanc until 2015. Current owner, Ciaran LeBlanc,” the robot narrated the information in a monotone voice.
But every word cut at him like a knife on bone. Generations of his family had been involved in this. And he hadn’t known. His parents had worked their whole life to keep him out of it. To spare him the pain of power and responsibility to people he didn’t know.
Ciaran LeBlanc, King of Eudaiz. Ciaran shook his head. He wasn’t sure how long it would be before he got used to this life. A few months ago, he was a business man, running his family global pharmaceuticals empire out of his London headquarters.
Now he was here, working toward his kingship. There would be a lot to do before his coronation. If claiming the kingship of this universe was easy, there shouldn’t have to be much bloodshed required.
He glanced around. Every brick in this place was soaked with the mystery of his family. The mysterious aura that had followed his family for generations. From Earth to the multiverse. Some people considered his family the most mysterious family on Earth.
Perhaps they were right.
He looked at his hands. There was blood on these hands. He’d killed to get here. But as Bran had said, it took a life to save a life. He didn’t have to be a virtuous king—he only needed to be a just king.
But would he be capable of being a just king? What would it cost him to do the right thing for the citizens of this gigantic universe?
His emotions were his weakness. He was a human, not a robot. And when it came to his family, he would not compromise. Ever. He would do whatever it took to protect them. Everything else came second to that.
Family!
It dawned on him now why Madeline had fainted.
Chapter 4
Madeline was agitated. She needed to tell Ciaran about her precognition. But since Ciaran had found her in the garden, he and the others had made her lie down like a sick puppy. She protested. But then they’d taken a complicated-looking wristwatch off her, and the next thing she knew, she felt as weak as . . . a sick puppy.
At a corner of the room, Ayana Dee, Sciphil Two, and Pete Chandler, Sciphil Nine were talking. They had helped her and Ciaran a lot during the process of coming here. Ayana had been born in Eudaiz. She was as beautiful as an angel. Pete was a British man, recruited later in his life. He was like a kind uncle to Madeline.
Ciaran strode into the hall from a wing of connected corridors. His face was unfathomable—a typical Ciaran expression. He crouched next to her. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m perfectly fine. I’ll feel better if they give me back that wrist unit.”
Ciaran nodded toward Ayana, who was holding the wrist unit. She approached and gave the little machine back to Madeline. As soon as she put it on, waves of energy pumped into her body. She felt like a new person. She sat up, but she wasn’t sure if she should tell Ciaran about the precognition in front of Ayana and Pete.
After all, she and Ciaran had just arrived in this universe. They didn’t know who were friends and who were foes.
“I’ve taken a look around the residence. Everything looks fine. We can stay here. The top priority for us now is to plan Madeline’s officiation as Sciphil One, am I right?” Ciaran asked.
Ayana answered, “Yes, indeed. It is important that she receives her full power in Tower One. Her succession had been authorized and lined up at the precise astronomical time, two days from now. If we fail to officiate her, the power of Tower One will fail—and so will Eudaiz.”
“Understood,” Ciaran said.
“Let me show you the map.” Ayana turned on a floating screen, revealing a map of Eudaiz.
Eudaiz was organized in circles. The towers of power, clearly labeled, stood in a protected area. In the middle was Tower Three, the king tower. The other eight towers were located in a circle surrounding it. They looked like the eight petals of a sunflower.
Ayana pointed to the king tower and said, “This is the core of Eudaiz’s power. It must be protected at all costs. The king has access to all towers. However, each Sciphil has access only to their own tower. So, Madeline, after officiation, you will have full access to Tower One. I have full access to Tower Two. And Pete has access to Tower Nine. Ciaran has access to all.”
Madeline gestured widely. “So, given how important the towers are, security is critical. This universe has more than six hundred billion citizens. This must be a massive area. How can you guarantee security for the towers?”
Ayana smiled. “The tower zone is called the Sciphil zone. No citizens are allowed in there. The area is self-contained and quite small. The security of the Sciphil zone is strict and has never been breached in five hundred years. The towers have no entry point for anyone except the Sciphil of the tower and the king. Within each tower, there are nine round protective layers—they would spin and grind any unauthorized individuals into dust if they attempted to trespass.”
Madeline nodded.
Pete pointed to a large circle which wrapping outside of the Sciphil zone. He said, “This is the Sciphil residential area. Each Sciphil has a residence, located as close to his or her respective tower as possible. We are here, at Sciphil Three residence.” He pointed to a dotted line. “The internal capsule is strictly private and secure. It operates only for people with the right access. The capsule terminals are like subway systems in New York or London. So really, within the Sciphil zone and Sciphil residence areas, I wouldn’t worry too much about security.”
Ayana pointed to a larger circle outside the Sciphil residential area. “This is where the six hundred billion citizens live.” The area took up a large area of the map. Ayana continued. “There are eight districts, located in circles in the outer ring here. Each Sciphil governs a district. No citizen has ever been allowed into the Sciphil zone.”
“There are nine Sciphils and eight districts. Who doesn’t have a district to govern?” Ciaran asked.
“You, Ciaran.” Ayana smiled.
Pete laughed. “You have to manage all of the Sciphils and handle important matters such as protecting Eudaiz from our enemies. I think it’s only fair to exempt you from the administrative duties of governing a district.”
“From what I know, the Black Rock is our number one enemy. Is that information accurate?” Ciaran asked.
Pete shook his head. “No. It’s speculative. That universe attacks us all the time because they don’t have much energy or natural resources. Other universes may have attacked Eudaiz before, but not during the five hundred years’ reign or our Sciphil council. There is no guarantee they won’t attack us in the future.”
“Have the Black Rock ever breached our security in the Sciphil zone?” Madeline asked.
“No,” Ayana responded.
Ciaran nodded. “All right. It’s been a long day. I think we should continue this discussion tomorrow.”
“It feels as if a day here has fifty hours,” Madeline said.
Pete smiled. “We don’t use hours. A day here has nine units. Three for the morning, three for the afternoon, and three for the night. Each unit has one hundred slots. At the moment, it is the fiftieth slot of the night. The average person should have at least one unit of sleeping time a day.”
Madeline rolled her eyes. Another set of rules and numbers to remember.
“Thank you, Pete. I’ll be sure we get enough sleep.” Ciaran smiled.
Pete nodded. “Especially you.”
Ciaran arched an eyebrow.
Pete continued, “The battles you engaged in before arriving here have drained you of all of your natural energy. In Eudaiz, energy is everything. It’s life. Eudqi is a special energy for Sciphils. It’s like your blood. However, in your case, you won’t receive full power until after your coronation. So right now, your energy is fragile and very temporary. Be sure you take advantage of the resting time so that your body can recharge what’s used up during the day.”
Ciaran raised a hand in frustration. “What you’re saying is that, at the moment, I don’t have the natural energy to operate my body. And I have to rely on the eudqi—like batteries?”
“Precisely,” Pete smiled.
“So don’t pick a fight,” Madeline laughed.
“We’d better go to sleep now,” Ciaran muttered.
“Not here, I hope,” Ayana said.
“Why not?” Ciaran asked.
“This place has been vacant for more than thirty years. It can’t be comfortable. Madeline has a fully operational Sciphil One residence. You both have full access,” Ayana said.
“Yes, we’ll go to Sciphil One residence later. But I’d like to have a bit of time here with Madeline, if we may,” Ciaran said.
“It’s only for one night. We can manage. If you could stop by again tomorrow and take us to Tower One, it would be greatly appreciated.” Madeline smiled.
Ayana nodded. “Very well then. We will let you have some privacy. It’s been a long day.”
Ayana and Pete left the residence.
Madeline opened her mouth to tell Ciaran about what she had seen in the garden, but before she could say a word, Ciaran had locked his lips with hers. Whenever he engaged in such an intimate act, she was defenseless.
Suddenly, Ciaran glanced toward the side door. “Who’s that?” he shouted and darted toward the door, weapon drawn.