“That sounds pretty damn great,” Keanu said. “Maybe I need to get a chip, too.”
“Soon, the technology will be available on a wide scale after all SANDs patients have received them,” Apeiron said. “Not only can we help them recover from SANDs, but by connecting people to INN, we can monitor their health permanently and tune the chips to react to any sign of illness before a person even realizes they are sick.”
Chloe wasn’t sure what to think. She was alive, yes, but she was no longer herself. Being connected permanently to this network that she had no control of frightened her. Sure, the chip could heal her, but what else could it do with this AI in her head?
“I will leave you alone for now,” Apeiron said. “If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask. I can respond immediately through your chip.”
The droid turned and promptly walked down the aisle.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Keanu said, “but what’s important is you’re safe now. Megacity Paris is back under Nova Alliance control, and we have a future. A bright one at that.”
She wiped a tear from her eye. “I… I am never going to be the same.”
“You’re still you, Chloe,” Keanu said. “But perhaps what you need, or what we both need, is a change of scenery. There are too many memories in this city.”
Another tear spilled as she nodded.
“I’ll let you get some rest now,” Keanu said. He rose to his feet, wincing. “I’m staying in a refugee camp about a mile away. I’ll be back later to check on you, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Uncle Keanu.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He gently put a hand on her cheek and smiled one last time before pulling the curtain almost all the way shut. She watched him through the gap as he limped away. It was hard to watch, but he was right—what mattered was they had survived the war.
They were alive.
Closing her eyes, she tried to rest, but the footfalls outside kept her alert. Just as she began to drift off, a pair of footsteps stopped outside her curtain.
“Excuse me,” said a male voice. The curtain pulled back, and a handsome face emerged. She recognized the young man with brown eyes and thick brown hair, parted to one side.
“Hi,” he said. “My name is Cyrus.”
Chloe sat up. “I’m sorry… I remember you, but I’m not sure where from.”
He looked at her like a sad child. “I’m sorry. I just thought I’d come see you while I was here to see your uncle.” He took a step closer. “Do you remember escaping the prison at all?”
She shook her head. “Were you…” Chloe started to say. “You’re the resistance fighter.”
“Yes, I was with my brother. We were trying to find my dad.”
“I’m so sorry, I—”
“We both knew the risk, and my brother’s death was not in vain. He helped save you.”
“Did you find your father?”
He hung his head low, shaking it. “Not yet. I’m searching the hospital for him today, but thought I’d say hello when I noticed you here. I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?” Chloe asked. She could only think of all the people who had died following her out of the prison. “So many didn’t make it out. How can you thank me?”
“I know things didn’t end up how we had planned, but without your help, all of us would be buried underground. At least now, I’m here. You’re here. And we’re not alone.”
Chloe sat up straighter. She reached up to the bandage, wincing after a jolt of pain.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She rubbed one of her wounds. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually look like this. I didn’t really expect visitors.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude, but I hope you know, even with those bandages, you still look beautiful.”
She avoided his gaze, her cheeks warming from embarrassment. “Thanks.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s probably inappropriate right now. I swear I’m not always so brazen, but I have a bad habit of saying whatever’s on my mind.” He hung his head. “At least, that’s what my father always told me. He said it would get me in trouble one day, and well, here I am.”
“It’s okay, really, I appreciate it.” She thought about Apeiron and all the secrets of the L-S88 chip and her own surgery she still didn’t understand. “We could all use a little more honesty like that.”
He nodded. “I’d better let you rest.” He began to pull the curtain back, but she held up a hand.
“Hey, Cyrus.”
He turned. “Yes?”
“Come back and see me, okay?”
“I will.”
“I hope you find your father.”
“Thank you.”
He closed the curtain, and she rested her head on the pillow, letting out a sigh. Her new heart was fluttering, but this time it wasn’t from fear. For the first time in months, she felt what might be considered happiness from a human connection.
Maybe things are going to get better, she thought.
She closed her eyes, knowing better than to hope. Hope had been ripped from her the day the Coalition invaded.
***
Frost crouched on a rooftop and transferred the view across the squad HUDs as she roved her sniper rifle. Three soldiers in the park, three more in the parking garage, and two squads patrolling around their target building.
Taking out the troops from here would be easy, but Akira couldn’t risk being detected when hundreds more could be here in minutes.
“Perez, hold here with Frost,” Akira said. “Tadhg, you’re with me. We’ll advance to the building, but if we get into trouble, you know what to do.”
Frost dipped her helmet. “Death from the Shadows.”
“Together, we are one,” Perez said.
Akira checked his HUD as he approached the rooftop door, checking for heartbeats on the other side. A single bleep emerged in the mini-screen.
Tadhg collapsed his pulse cannon and pulled out his plasma pistol. He grabbed the door handle and opened it.
An unsuspecting guard was coming up the stairs as Akira entered. He fired a three-round burst of plasma bolts into his helmet, then reached out and grabbed him to prevent the dying man from falling down the stairs.
Tadhg moved past as Akira lowered the corpse to the floor quietly. They entered a hallway and crouched.
Moonlight streamed through a gaping hole on the right side. The rocket or bomb had destroyed the first three apartments. Akira tested the flooring, then crouched for a scan. Using his INVS eyes, he marked the locations of the heat signatures on his HUD mini-map for the other Engines.
Next, he proceeded to an elevator shaft at the end of the hallway, where he tested the cable. Feeling secure, he pulled out his tactical cable descender, locked it onto the cable, and began the journey down.
His boots hit the floor with a light thud. He unlatched, brought up his rifle, and strode into the lobby. A single guard stood at the open exit door with his back to Akira and Tadhg. Akira snuck up and twisted the man’s helmet, breaking his neck, and pulled his limp body away into the shadows.
Tadhg crouched for a look outside before giving Akira the nod to advance.
Keeping low, Akira ran across the sidewalk and to a vehicle for cover. A patrol of three soldiers headed in his direction. He took a knee and slotted his rifle slowly, careful to not make a sound.
Reaching back with his other hand, he drew both of his blades. A swift stroke cut off the first soldier’s head. Akira sprang toward the other two men, slashing one across his chest and stomach. Guts sloshed out as the man crumpled. The third soldier tried to raise his rifle, but Akira hacked it in half and used the hilt to crush his helmet with a punch of metal.
Tadhg ran over.
Keeping low, they continued toward the machine gun nest on one side of the two-story building. Their power armor ma
sked their heat signatures, and Akira didn’t bother trying to take it out.
He continued toward the parking garage, crouching behind a brick wall. Four soldiers held sentry on the third level. There was no way to get past them without being seen. Akira selected single shot. The targeting system locked on, and he pulled the trigger four times, hitting each of the exposed helmets. Brains exploded out of the exit wounds before the poor bastards had enough time to register what had hit them.
Tadhg hopped over the wall and took off running as the soldiers dropped. Akira followed, halting when a head popped up in the machine gun nest.
Frost let loose with two suppressed shots, blowing off the top of the skull.
Akira and Tadhg got to the front of the building without a single enemy shot fired. Heartbeats blinked on the screen on their HUDs. Three, then four.
Tadhg stepped back from the front door with his plasma cannon aimed at it. Akira kicked it in, and Tadhg unleashed a flurry of bolts into the room. Blue flashes illuminated the interior, meat and metal exploding where the bolts impacted Coalition soldiers.
Akira moved inside, his boots slurping through the pulpy remains and crunching over armor. Leading the way, he opened a door to a dark stairwell and descended, clearing each landing until they arrived at the bottom, five stories below.
A ping on his HUD caught his attention. Frost marked a convoy of APCs headed their way.
“Shit, they know we’re here,” Akira said. “We got to move fast.”
Tadhg took point and entered a chamber full of gurneys and medical equipment. Cryo-chambers framed the walls, their lids open.
“Apeiron, we seem to have discovered one of their Breaker facilities,” Akira said. “No sign of our target.”
“Copy that, keep searching,” she replied.
They advanced through the maze of gurneys. The tap of dripping water came from the center of the room. Crouching, Akira examined a drain clogged with fresh flesh and blood.
Tadhg continued toward two metal doors at the other end of the room. They opened onto a hallway marked by bloody tracks across the floor. A humming noise grew louder as they trekked onward.
The next open door exposed a mezzanine. Akira moved slowly, his foot making a slight clanking. A cloud of flies burst up from corpses piled on the tiled floor below.
Armored plates, helmets, and prosthetics lay stacked on carts and in open crates throughout the room. There were ten seats with spider-like appendages holding surgical devices, and open helmet halves around headrests. Metal leg and arm clamps were covered in dried blood on the surgical seats.
Akira zoomed in on robotic limbs and torsos in crates throughout the Breaker facility and Hell Hive that seemed like a modern Frankenstein lab.
Tubes of ribbed metal snaked away from a helmet on the ground, and inside, a tarantula had burrowed. It scurried out as the flies swarmed Tadhg. He swatted the insects away.
Over the buzzing, came a raucous whooshing sound.
“Tadhg, get down!” Akira screamed.
A rocket streaked away from a raised platform across the room. The cloud of flies and Tadhg disappeared in an explosion.
Akira dove to the platform to avoid another rocket that blew up above his kabuto. Hunks of concrete crashed down on his plates. He pushed himself up as the chop, chop, chop, of Tadhg’s pulse cannon came to life.
The bolts slammed into a gunmetal gray shape that leapt to the same platform Akira was on. The metal mezzanine trembled under his unsteady feet.
Akira aimed his rifle, trying to see the target.
This wasn’t a Breaker, this was something…
An SOS suddenly blinked on Akira’s HUD. It was the first time in a year that he had received the alert from another Engine team. The location immediately popped up on a mini-map, revealing four dots from the Blood Crane Engine Squad.
One of the Engines was offline, and the other four were in trouble.
Suddenly, the mezzanine gave way beneath Akira. He fell two stories to the tiled floor that cracked under the weight of his body. The gel in his power armor absorbed most of the impact.
He managed to look up, trying to make out what was happening above. Tadhg and the enemy soldier were wrapped up together in a blur of metal. The monstrous enemy tossed Tadhg into a wall with a crunch.
Akira aimed his rifle, but the targeting system couldn’t lock on with Tadhg in the way. He grappled with the mammoth soldier in thick plated armor. The warrior grabbed Tadhg by both wrists, forcing him to his knees, giving Akira a clear view of his helmet.
Ribbed tubes snaked away from a breathing mask. The crest of the skull was a cap of metal, and red INVS eyes burned inside the slots.
This was some sort of hybrid soldier as tall and as wide as Tadhg. It pounded him in the helmet, over and over. Then it snapped down on his arm with a titanium jaw and teeth.
“Get the fuck off me!” Tadhg screamed. He managed an uppercut, knocking the warrior back and providing Akira an opportunity for a shot.
He aimed for the tubes and fired. The bolts severed the ribbed metal. Air hissed out and the soldier reached up, clamping a hand around the leak.
Akira fired again, hitting his target in the center of the chest. The beast still did not go down and kicked Tadhg, knocking him to the platform before jumping over the side of the railing.
It landed twenty feet from Akira. He continued firing, but the bolts only seemed to slow this behemoth down as it charged Akira with an energy blade.
A war cry from above reverberated through the chamber, followed by a flash of red.
The hybrid went down with a thud, part of him skidding away, leaving a smear of blood and entrails. The upper half slid to a stop right in front of Akira.
Tadhg stood behind it, gripping his energy sword, chest heaving.
“What the hell… is… that thing?” he gasped.
Tadhg helped Akira up and leaned down to check the monster. It jerked and reached for his leg.
“What the fuck?!” Tadhg yelled. He brought his sword down into the top of the skull, crunching through metal and bone.
“I hate machines, man. I fucking hate them,” Tadhg said.
“This is not a machine,” Apeiron said to their chips. “You are looking at a severely augmented man or what the Coalition calls Dreads.”
Akira crouched next to the dead beast. “You knew about these things?”
“About their development, not their deployment,” Apeiron replied. “It appears Doctor Cross is farther along than we thought.”
“Engines are dying out here. You should have told us!” Tadhg shouted.
Anger ripped through Akira as he sifted through the data on his HUD, pulling up the location of the other Engine squads. The Blood Cranes were down to a single warrior, a Staff Sergeant named Manny Raines. Akira had served with the thirty-year-old on three tours of duty. It was Raines who had come to the aid of Shadow Squad when they were pinned down by enemy fire in a village outside Megacity Moscow once, saving them from almost certain death.
Akira pulled on Tadhg. “Come on, we have to move.”
Together, they hurried out of the room and back the way they had come. Halfway up the stairs, Akira tried to tap back into Frost’s view, but she had gone dark.
He saw why when they reached the surface.
Spotlights raked across the ground from turrets in the APCs. His targeting system flitted between heat signatures as Coalition troops jumped out and surrounded the building.
Akira held up a fist to keep Tadhg back.
“Should we backtrack?” he asked.
“Wait…” Akira said.
An APC suddenly burst into flames outside, and a group of soldiers flew across the lawn. Akira ran to the windows as a tank from the parking garage rolled across the park, firing another round of shells at the APCs. A second, and third, erupted into flames.
Frost was in the turret of the tank, gripping her sniper rifle. “Run!”<
br />
Akira and Tadhg ran and jumped on the tank. They crouched behind the turret, firing their rifles at Coalition soldiers. Most were down now, crawling or limp and dead.
On his HUD, Akira saw the final beacon for Manny go offline.
An entire Engine team wiped out, for the first time in history.
Gunfire continued around the tank, and sniper bullets and bolts pounded its armor. Akira tried to find cover, but they were sitting ducks.
A rhythmic pulsing flickered across his HUD, and the comms crackled.
“Apeiron,” Akira said. “Apeiron, do you copy?”
Bullets pinged around the turret, and Akira followed Tadhg around the moving barrel as Frost searched for the source—snipers on a rooftop down the road.
Perez pulled onto the road, slamming through concrete barriers. Rounds of all calibers joined a flurry of plasma bolts from dozens of raised Coalition positions.
Frost fired her rifle, clearing two snipers before ducking down into the turret. “Get inside!”
Akira went first, sliding down into the belly of the tank.
Tadhg tried to duck in but got stuck around his chest. “Help!”
Akira pulled on his legs until he finally popped through.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Tadhg shouted at Perez.
“And go where?!” Perez yelled back. “We’re surrounded!”
— 18 —
While the world watched the battle for Megacity Moscow, Jason prepared for what came after the war. He was with Apeiron at Sector 220 of the Titan Space Elevator, not far from where Petra had taken her last breath while admiring a view of Earth and space. She would have cried if she could have seen what he saw from the viewport now—orange and reddish-brown fires across the AAS project sites.
Jason shook his head and looked away to Megacity New York, hardly visible. His family waited for him there, probably worried sick.
Love before work… he thought.
“Are you ready?” Apeiron asked.
E-Day Page 24