The Phoenix Fallacy Book I: Janus (2 page)

– Book I –

Janus

The World Is Changing, Great Executors,

With the fall of Phoenix Corporation, a vacuum has been created within the Corporate hierarchy.  It must be clear that Cerberus is a full contender for dominance.  I suggest we make use of our mobile forces to secure additional outposts and territory while our opponents are off balance.  Our intelligence indicates that we sustained the least losses during the recent battle.  By engaging in selective assaults against our weakest competitors, namely Titan and Hydra, we may obtain new and valuable territory without raising the ire of the surviving Corporations.

… 

On this note, I must make you aware of the reports of a recent power shift in Titan Corporation’s Executor structure.  After the catastrophic disease that swept through Titan, a new player has joined the Executor ranks.  He is an unknown, although our reports suggest that he was responsible for the large supplies of Immutium alloy that went missing from Cerberus outposts.  Increased efforts must be made to monitor Titan’s power so that it can never again threaten us.  I will be devoting a great deal of my time and resources in the coming months trying to learn more of what has transpired there.

…

The world is changing, Great Executors – and we must be the ones who change it.

- Excerpts of a letter from
Colonel Victoria Middleton
,
Intelligence and Affairs, to the Executors, Cerberus Corporation

Chapter 1: Cerberus

A young man of about nineteen perched on a lamppost that had pitched over and now leaned perilously against the ruins of a long forgotten building.  His hair was a dark brown, contrasting sharply with his sickly pale skin.  But his eyes shone bright as he surveyed the scene around him.

“Janus, get down from there, you’re too visible.”

He heard Clara’s exasperated sigh behind him.  She just wasn’t able to keep up with him anymore.  He had grown tall – for a slum dweller, at least.  Average, perhaps, for one of upper elite.  In the narrow alleys of the slums, the small, quick and lithe had the advantage.

“In a m
inute,” Janus replied.  “You know we need to find something we can sell for supplies.  This is the best way to do it.  Besides, the Rats could spot us just as easily on the ground.”

Every year, the conditions had gotten worse.  And now, t
he slums had fallen on harder times than ever.  No one knew why – it just happened.  There was little Janus could do about it other than try to keep the pair of them afloat.  Every day, they scoured the slums for new treasures.  Sometimes they were lucky.  Sometimes, like today, they found nothing. 

But the danger was always there.  Rats
– the scourge of the slums, lurked, waiting for the unaware, or the unfortunate.  By scouting ahead, he might just be able to give some warning of an incoming Carrion Eater.  Clara still didn’t like him to be the one in danger.  If any Rats were to surprise them, he would surely be caught.

“All
right, I’m coming down now, mother…”

Janus kept his back to Clara, but he knew she would be smiling
.  He tried to only call her that when he was annoyed or exasperated, but she would never rise to the bait.  Although he would never admit it, he knew she enjoyed hearing that word.  For all the trouble he gave her, it was the least he could do.

And although s
he would never admit it, he knew she was slowing down.  Just a bit.  She was still smarter and faster than most in the slums.  Although she retained her youthful beauty – her black hair still shined, even in the dark of the slums, Janus knew that the day would come when only he could safely venture out.  It troubled him.  She was the only family he knew.  And the only person he cared about in the world.

He twisted around on the lamppost, catching Clara fiddling with her locket.  It was a beautiful jeweled bird, unlike anything he had ever
seen, and Clara’s most precious possession. 
Next to myself, of course
, Janus thought with a laugh.  But he knew nothing about the necklace.  He only caught glimpses of it, when she fiddled with it while worried or distracted.  Once, long ago, he had asked her about it, but she had reacted angrily to his queries.  She had seemed sorrowful about the incident afterward, but he had assumed it was not for him to know.

Janus slid down the pole, leaping off an
d landing lightly on his feet.  “Something wrong?”

She snapped out of her reverie.  His face was a combination of worry and concern.  “No, of course not,”
Clara smiled.

“Good.
” Janus turned on his heel and weaved his way between the great heaps of garbage, his footsteps muted by the mush.  He could hear her follow closely behind, and called back softly, “These piles have nothing; they’ve already been stripped bare.” 

It
was not unexpected.  It didn’t take long for any new dump to be picked clean.  He stopped at a new pile, waiting for her to catch up.  As Clara came around the corner, she glanced at the sky. The last vestiges of light were disappearing from the murky haze above.  “We should probably get back - soon it will be too dark to find much of anything and the Rats will be out.”

Janus scowled, “Who cares?
 
They’re idiots.  We can outsmart them.”

“They’re
still vicious and ignoring them won’t help you get out of a situation.”

“That doesn’t change what they are.”

Clara sighed unhappily, “Let’s just get back safely; then we can argue without fear of being caught.”

Janus frowned, “Fine.”

They moved as silently as they could, sticking to the edges of the heaps, and held their breath whenever they heard the familiar
whirrrr
of a Carrion Eater.

A crumbled and sagging structure of wood and concrete was their beacon of safety.  Snaking their way inside, the pair emerged into an ancient and decaying lobby.  Letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, he could see the crumbled moulding, broken tile, and familiar wrecked elevator wreathed in snapped cables that forever greeted them.  He quietly passed an ancient wooden desk where the remnants of a cracked brass plaque too worn to read hung on a wall.  The hollow and hole-filled walls whistled with the hot winds of the slums. An ancient stairway, piled in the broken remnants of the ceiling above, protested grimly as he leapt along.

At the end of the hall, around a gaping chasm in the floor, he stopped at
room number eight and carefully pushed open the little door.  He stopped and listened.  The familiar
drip, drip, drip
of the faucet echoed from the sink in the corner.  He touched a switch, and a single, dim bulb feebly glowed, illuminating an old armchair and a cracked shelf full of books.  A sense of well-being suffused him – their tiny oasis lay untouched.  In the corner sat a ratty mattress that he hopped upon, crossing his arms behind him.  He didn’t know what fortune had led Clara here – she had found it abandoned shortly after rescuing him.  But to this day, it possessed both power and water – precious gifts in the slums.  Fusion had made the Corporations lax; the energy required was abundant.  It was the maintenance of the pipes and generators that was hard now.  Carefully barring the door, Clara plopped down in the chair, watching Janus.

He
propped himself up on his elbows, “You’ll be going to work in the morning?”

“Yes
, Miss Middleton wants me all day tomorrow to prepare for her party.”

“Then we should get some sleep, I’ll
bring you to the station tomorrow.”

“I…” She raised a finger to protest,
thought better of it, and instead angrily snatched the blanket beside her armchair.

Janus merely shrugged.
Even now, she still didn’t like him exploring the slums alone.  He curled up on the mattress so that his legs no longer hung over it.

He closed his eyes, beckoned into sleep by exhaustion and the
drip, drip, drip
of the faucet.

He awoke to a dim room, a small amount of light filtering through the many cracks and holes in the walls. 
Another day...

It took a few minutes, but Clara finally stirred. 
Removing herself slowly from the comfort of her armchair, he watched her with some amusement as she mentally prepped herself for the long trek to the station.  It never changed – she was comfortingly predictable.  After a few moments, she stood up and moved easily through the dark to the light switch.  He heard the flick of the switch, but the room remained dark.

Her muttered curse was unintelligible.

“Light out?”

“Yes.”

Janus bit back his tongue.  It would be tough to find a new bulb.

“Take your vitamin supplement,” Clara instructed him.

“If you insist.”  Janus hated that she used a large portion of her meager earnings each month to pay for a supplement to replace his lack of nutrition.  The slums were a notoriously poor place to try and raise a healthy child.  There had been a brief period when Janus had resisted the supplement – he didn’t think he needed it, nor did he want her wasting the money.  But when Clara had continued to purchase the supplement, letting it rot rather than bend to Janus’ pride, Janus had discovered that his biological parents were probably not the only ones who had put a stubborn streak in him.

“Are you ready?”  Clara spoke fro
m the darkness near the door.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”  Janus
asked matter-of-factly.

“I was just trying to be nice.”

“Sorry…”

“No, you’re not,” Clara said smiling.

He smirked in the dim light, “Let’s go.”

They made their way through the silent slums, focusing on navigating the obstacles that lay ahead of them.

Clara gritted her teeth, “They’ve
dumped even more trash here since last time.  Pretty soon we’ll have to find a new route to the station.”

Janus nodded, “We can look for one in a couple of days.”

Trash had become a real problem for the slums.  Clara had explained to him that the real problem began soon after the invention of fusion power.  Although recycling was very popular in the days before fusion, it had now become much more “efficient” to produce new products than spend the time sorting the various wastes.  Fusion was both a blessing and a curse, costing them the few precious recycling jobs that were available, but providing the electricity they needed so survive.  

Clara turned to stare at Janus through the haze.  “Why a couple of days? Why not tomorrow?  We
’ll need a new path as soon as possible.”

“Middleton will want you to clean up after her party
, won’t she?”

“I completel
y forgot about that,” Clara slapped her forehead.

“Of course, if both of us are busy searching for a new path, we won’t have much time to look for things to sell…”

Clara growled as she realized what he was doing.  “Janus, you may be clever, but I’m not stupid!  I told you that I don’t want you exploring the slums on your own.  I don’t want you out searching while I’m working.”

“I’m not a child.  A
nd I’m better than you at hiding from patrols.”

“Yes, but—”

“And I've been making my way back and forth from the station for some time now.”

“And you know I hate that—”

“You were on the streets alone for years.”

“But—” she knew she was defeated.  Clara had been avoiding it
for as long as she could.  Janus was no longer the baby she had found helpless so many years ago.  She sighed.

“Fine, you can go.  But please be careful.
” She smiled weakly at him.

“Thank you, mother.”  This time it was genuine.

Not another word was said between them as they passed through the slums towards the station, finally arriving as the hour approached six.

Clara paused, “Let me change.”  Janus nodded as Clara pulled a carefully folded servant’s uniform from her knapsack.  Slummers weren’t
technically allowed on the upper levels, and the punishment could be severe if caught.  Clara had devised a careful routine to ensure that she at least appeared clean, even if she still needed a shower.  As she went into a dark corner to change, Janus turned to look at their destination.

The station
had a deep black shine and smooth edges that made it appear as if a giant piece of polished obsidian had been dropped in the middle of the city.  Bright lights illuminated the outside, giving the station a strange, otherworldly glow.  The light pulsed, giving Janus the sensation that he had stumbled upon the jagged, black heart of some giant creature.