Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

The Awakening had forced humanity to adapt to rules that arrived without warning. A little more than one hundred and sixty-eight hours had passed since the event began.

At least, that was what the clocks claimed.

Seven complete cycles of light and darkness had passed during that time. That made it close enough to one week for people to continue calling it one.

Nobody called it Day 374.

That would have required them to know whether Day 367 was an actual date or merely the name given to the day the world changed.

There were still periods of light and darkness, each lasting approximately twelve hours, just as they had before Day 367. But the Sun had not appeared again. Neither had the Moon.

The sky still became bright. The change happened gradually, although no section of the horizon became brighter before the others. There was no sunrise. Light simply spread across the entire sky until people could see the buildings, roads, and unfamiliar lands surrounding Linden City.

Several hours later, the light would weaken.

But there was no sunset either.

The sky became dark from every direction at nearly the same time. When the darkness deepened far enough, the Thirteen Great Signs became visible again.

Nobody really knew where the light came from. Neither did they know what removed it.

Astronomers continued releasing statements through emergency broadcasts. Most of those statements contained words such as unconfirmed, unresolved, and insufficient data.

Earth might still have been rotating. It might also have been orbiting something, although nobody could prove either possibility from the sky.

Some scientists were said to have argued that Earth might not have moved anywhere at all.

There was no visible Sun against which anyone could measure the orbit. There was no Moon whose phases could confirm the passing of a month. The known constellations had been replaced by thirteen Astral structures that could be seen from places where the same sky should not have been visible.

Still, the clocks moved. Mechanical clocks continued turning. Digital clocks continued counting.

Government facilities had synchronized the ones that still worked and declared the old twenty-four-hour period the official standard for emergency operations.

Not because they had proven it remained correct but because they simply needed doctors to know when their shifts ended. The Linden Metropolitan Exhibition Center had also stopped pretending that its current purpose was temporary.

The buses remained. So did the barriers.

Everything else had just multiplied.

Portable walls now divided the main hall into separate assessment areas. Sleeping sections occupied the spaces that had once held trade exhibitions. Temporary kitchens served food near the southern loading entrance. Charging tables had become charging rows. Medical stations had expanded into wards.

Section Nine had taken over most of the western hall.

The large Ophiuchus symbol remained above the processing area. Someone had reinforced it after one side came loose during the fourth period of darkness.

The assessment lines were shorter now. That did not mean fewer people remained inside the facility.

Most had already been registered. Some had been released. Others had nowhere safe to return to. Families with children had been assigned to supervised sections to reduce the risk of accidental manifestations. Most of the children had not yet awakened their Marks, leading officials to suspect that Awakening might occur only within a particular age range.

The people with occupied scales were still being monitored. Those with unusual manifestations were examined whenever the medical personnel had enough time. Those whose black centers were occupied had been transferred behind permanent partitions near the western wall.

The twenty-six had not remained twenty-six.

Other facilities had begun sending their unexplained patients to Section Nine after the Exhibition Center reported that Marek could identify the same condition inside all of them.

The official count changed after every transport.

Seventy-eight had arrived by the previous dark period. Eleven more came before the sky became bright again.

Eighty-nine.

Marek stood beside the nearest cot.

Devin Luneta continued breathing. His pulse remained regular. The intravenous1 line provided fluid. A feeding tube had been placed after the doctors accepted that he was not going to wake up for meals.

His body had not weakened significantly. That was one of the few useful things the medical team had learned.

The people contained inside their black centers still appeared to require their bodies to remain alive. At least, that was the current assumption. Nobody wanted to confirm what happened if one of the bodies died.

Marek placed his palm over Devin’s Mark.

The Quiet Room formed.

[SUBJECT IDENTIFIED.]

[DEVIN LUNETA.]

[ACTIVE CASE DETECTED.]

[CONDITION IDENTIFIED: BEARER.]

[CURRENT VESSEL: BEARER.]

[VESSEL ACCEPTANCE: ESTABLISHED.]

[CASE STATUS: STABILIZED.]

[RESOLUTION STATUS: INCOMPLETE.]

The result had not changed.

Marek had already known what the interface would display before the first line appeared. That did not stop him from checking.

He attempted to define the Case again. Devin as the condition. Devin’s body as the host.

Marek as the receiving Vessel.

[CASE BOUNDARY INCOMPLETE.]

[TRANSFER ROUTE: UNESTABLISHED.]

[VESSEL COMPATIBILITY: UNKNOWN.]

The same three statements returned.

Marek had already changed the order several times. The result remained the same. He attempted to treat the black center as the Vessel and the physical body as the source.

Still incomplete.

He tried separating Devin’s awareness from the rest of the Case. However, the interface did not respond. It did not appear to recognize any distinction between Devin the bearer, Devin the condition, and Devin the Vessel.

Everything had already been placed where the Mark believed it belonged.

Marek withdrew his hand.

The sounds of the ward returned.

Portable monitors released regular electronic tones. Medical personnel moved between the cots. A generator outside the western wall maintained the lights whenever the city’s electrical supply weakened.

Nothing inside the ward appeared urgent.

That was part of the problem.

The patients were not bleeding. They were not struggling to breathe. Their organs continued functioning. There was no injury for the doctors to repair and no substance for them to remove.

The bodies remained physiologically stable.

By every ordinary medical measure, they were alive. The people themselves remained unreachable.

Lia Reyes occupied the cot two rows away. Her hair had been retied during the previous shift. Both braids were now even. Someone had placed a small cloth rabbit beside her pillow.

Marek did not know who brought it.

He did not ask. He had checked Lia six times since she arrived. The result never changed. He just stopped counting after the sixth.

’Professor Halden would have called that inaccurate recordkeeping.’

Marek would have agreed.

He still did not count the seventh. A folder rested on the table beside Devin’s cot. The medical team had changed the name of the condition three times.

UNEXPLAINED NONRESPONSIVE PRESENTATION.

OPHIUCHUS-ASSOCIATED COMA.

OCCUPIED-CENTER CONDITION.

The third description was the most accurate. It still explained nothing.

Marek took the folder and returned it to the stack. His own phone vibrated inside his pocket. He pulled it out immediately.

The battery showed seventy-four percent. The charging stations had solved one problem. The network, however, remained unreliable.

A small symbol appeared near the top of the screen.

One bar.

It disappeared before he could open his contacts.

Marek waited for a while. But waiting for that one bar felt like hours, so he checked the family registry instead. The government had created an offline database for separated civilians. Every facility copied its records into portable storage devices. Couriers carried those copies across the city before returning with updates from other centers.

It was slow. It also worked more often than the phones. It was less a network than a chain of people carrying digital information by hand.

Mara’s name had appeared during the third period of light.

IV