by Chris Fox
“Don’t,” Jordan said. Mark watched the man’s gaze move over his left shoulder, where he knew the camera sat. “We’re being recorded. Let this serve as an explanation. There’s a lot to fill you in on. Take an informal report and let the Old Man see it. If he’s going to damn me, let him damn me. I have nothing to hide.”
“It’s your funeral,” Mark said, eyeing the camera before turning back to Jordan. “We know what happened up to the moment Yuri left the pyramid. I presume you allowed subject alpha to successfully infiltrate the structure and wake his target?”
“I failed to anticipate their avenue of attack, because they demonstrated abilities we hadn’t seen. Blair altered his appearance to mimic our personnel. By the time we realized what was happening, they were already inside,” Jordan explained, not trying to hide from the blame but simply explaining circumstances. It was interesting that he’d called subject alpha by name. “They cut down our guards. We pursued in the X-11s, but they held us off long enough for Blair to get inside. He woke the Mother. She tore me apart and slaughtered every last man under my command. It was violence on a scale I’ve never seen. The carnage was…impressive.”
“So you woke up as one of these things and the other werewolves just accepted you as one of their own?” the Director asked, genuinely interested now. He was about to have one of the most troubling gaps in his data filled, and if the Old Man accepted those answers he might just get his best operative back.
The latter was critical, especially given that Jordan was much more powerful now. The more Mark learned about the Old Man the less he trusted him. If a battle was coming, Jordan could be the game piece that delivered the checkmate.
“More or less. They didn’t entirely trust me, but the whole zombie apocalypse thing caught us all off guard. It made sense to work with them to try to save who and what we could,” Jordan explained with a shrug. “I joined and we started clearing zombies. Werewolves—champions, we call ourselves—are very good at it.”
“So that’s why the werewolf plague was released? To combat the zombies?” the Director asked, already deeply troubled by the probable answers. He’d had plenty of time to consider the situation and already suspected what Jordan was now confirming. They’d been blind to the facts and had seriously curtailed the spread of the werewolves, thereby ceding most of the world to the zombies.
“Yes, sir. The woman who woke helped design both. She wasn’t very forthcoming, but I gather that she was atoning for what she felt was a mistake,” Jordan explained, toying absently with one of the straps. “A bad mistake. The zombies aren’t the worst of it, sir. They evolve into some pretty nasty varieties, but even they can be contained.”
“There’s something worse?” the Director asked, bracing himself for yet another hammer blow.
“Yes, sir. The zombies evolve as they eat. Some eventually gain intelligence and their own type of abilities to go along with them,” Jordan explained. He rose from the bench and approached the gap in the glass. “The Mother wasn’t the only thing we woke up. The evolved zombies are called deathless. They’re very much like vampires, but not the sparkly kind from shitty movies. The brutality and ferocity is like nothing I’ve ever seen. One of those deathless was asleep inside the Ark. I believe he’s the single biggest threat the world has ever faced.”
The Director considered Jordan’s words. Ark. The Mother. Deathless. It was a whole new lexicon, one Jordan was obviously very comfortable with. He’d changed more than just physically. Was he still capable of being a part of Mohn, or had he gone native?
“Explain,” he demanded.
“His name is Irakesh. He has abilities even the werewolves had a hard time dealing with. He’s ancient, cunning, and a canny strategist. He’s got military training, though no military we’d know,” Jordan answered, expression hard. The Director sensed a lot more anger there than he expected. “We fought him at the Panama air base. Yuri’s unit arrived just as Irakesh left with one of our planes. The one holding the package you sent to Peru.”
“You’re telling me that this deathless has one of our nukes?”
"Yes, sir,” Jordan replied, breaking eye contact. Another anomaly. He was embarrassed. That took Mark aback.
The Director fished his smartphone from his pocket, swiping to wake it. He opened a call to Ops, “Benson, are we still tracking the rogue bird heading north from Panama?”
"Yes, sir,” she answered. He was quickly coming to rely on her. She too would play an important role if he needed to take a stand against the Old Man. “It’s over southern California. East of Los Angeles.”
“Do we have a lock?” he asked, meeting Jordan’s gaze.
"Yes, sir, target is locked,” the tech answered. He could tell she wanted to add more. She knew the cargo the plane was carrying.
“Use the Skyhammer. Take it out,” he ordered.
49
Gotcha
Trevor engaged the autopilot, releasing his death grip on the controls as he waited to see what the plane would do. It continued a steady course, the yoke unmoving as it roared through the sky. “It worked. The plane will fly itself on the course I’ve locked in. It can’t land or take any sort of evasive action, but we should be safe at this altitude. It’s not like there are any other planes to run into.”
“You continue to impress,” Cyntia purred, running a finger along his shoulder from her place in the co-pilot’s seat. She’d returned to her human form, but the corruption was visible even there. Her once shiny blond hair was dull and limp, her dark skin cracked and peeling.
Trevor’s emotions had been muted since the change, but even now his heart went out to her. This was a woman he could have fallen for, were he still alive and she not falling deeper under Irakesh’s influence. He turned to face her, aiming his tone at neutral.
“I’m going to go speak with Irakesh. Would you mind keeping an eye on things? I’d feel better having someone up here. I don’t trust the autopilot just yet,” Trevor asked, unbuckling his harness and rising to his feet. It was a lie, but one he hoped she’d accept. She seemed to like it when he asked her to do things, and he found it increasingly difficult to be around her.
“Of course,” she said, shifting to provide a view of more than ample cleavage in her blood-spattered tube top. “If anything happens, I will come for you. Do not be long. I worry when you are alone with Irakesh. I do not trust him.”
“Uh, sure. I’ll try to make it quick,” he said, pulling the heavy metal handle and popping the door open. He stepped through and closed the hatch behind him, heaving a mental sigh of relief.
The hum of the engines was muted as he strode through the belly of the plane. It was domed with a cargo net above and wide rubberized tiles lining the floor. A huge chrome box sat in the center, covered in bold red warning labels. A nuclear weapon. Something that belonged in a bad Bruce Willis flick. Of course given what he’d become that shiny box was the most normal thing he’d seen all day.
“Yes, Trevor?” Irakesh said. Trevor scanned the room, but there was no sign of the deathless. He must be cloaked in shadows. Perhaps near the back of the room? That’s where most of the books his unwelcome master had accumulated.
“Our fuel is down to twenty percent, about three more hours. We’re going to have to set down soon. I need a destination,” he explained, walking towards the rear of the plane. He kept his tone even and his back straight. He’d be damned if he showed Irakesh how nervous he was.
“Head north and stay near the coast,” Irakesh demanded, finally emerging from the shadows. He was in the corner where Trevor had assumed, still wearing the pristine white garments so out of place on such a monster. They contrasted sharply with his dark skin. “I don’t know where exactly, but I will feel it when we get close.”
“How do you not know where it is?” Trevor asked, glancing at the nuke. Irakesh was a planner. It seemed so odd for him to leave something like this to chance.
“The land has changed much since my time,” Irakes
h admitted, running a clawed hand along his ebony scalp, utterly hairless save for thick, dark eyebrows. “Back then the oceans were much lower. The world was colder. The entire coastline I knew is underwater and I have never been to the Ark of the Redwood. I only have rough maps from my mother’s Ark. Not much use, I’m afraid.”
Trevor was stunned. It was as straightforward an answer as Irakesh had ever given, and it revealed more about his past than anything else he’d said.
The door behind Trevor groaned open. He turned to see Cyntia stepping through, lips pursed. “Trevor, there is a strange light blinking on the console. It seems urgent. What should I do?”
“Deal with it,” Irakesh ordered, waving a hand casually towards the cockpit. “I have much to think on. Let me know when we are nearing the end of our fuel. I will tell you when—”
A klaxon sounded from the cockpit, one reminiscent of the air raid sirens from the ‘50s. The dim lights running along twin tracks suddenly flashed red. Trevor spun, blurring into the cockpit and back into his seat. He studied the readout beneath the red button. Proximity alert.
“Something’s locked onto us. It’s coming from above and it’s dropping fast,” he yelled over his shoulder to the belly of the plane. “Grab onto something.”
He toggled off the autopilot, jerking the yoke to the right. The plane veered, but changing the direction of that much mass took time. Time they didn’t have. From above, he could see something twinkle, then it streaked into view like a wrathful star. It was a huge chunk of metal, glowing red from re-entry. A detached part of his mind identified it as something he’d read about in sci-fi books. All you had to do was position a huge chunk of metal in orbit. Release it over your target and gravity did the rest, obliterating it with the force of a many-kiloton bomb. Your own personal meteor.
Trevor yanked harder, but he could see the inevitable. The streaking hunk of metal was ahead and above them and falling to match their course. The only reason he could perceive it was because he’d blurred, slowing time around him. It streaked towards them and he watched in horror as it sheered off the plane’s right wing in a hail of fiery shrapnel and screeching metal.
His blur provided all the time in the world to study the explosion of fragments advancing on the cockpit. They’d puncture it, instantly equalizing pressure. Their forward momentum would war with the changing pressure to see if they were ejected, but no matter the outcome the plane was doomed.
“Grab onto something,” he roared, releasing his blur.
The cockpit shattered, peppering all of them with molten debris. Cyntia cried out in pain, but Irakesh endured it, face twisted into a rictus of rage. The deathless’s arm shook against the force of the wind as he forced it forward, seizing the back of Trevor’s chair. “We must secure the bomb.”
“This plane is going down. You can die with the bomb, but that won’t save it,” Trevor roared back over the howling wind. It pressed him back into his restraints, tossing him about as the plane fell end over end. They’d be very, very lucky to survive this and that wasn’t going to happen if they wasted precious seconds trying to recover the bomb. “You want to try for it? Go ahead. I’m saving my own ass.”
He waited for Irakesh to exert some sort of control, but the deathless merely hissed at him and darted back through the doorway into the belly of the plane. Now that was interesting. Why hadn’t he ordered Trevor to accompany him? Maybe it meant his control wasn’t as ironclad as the deathless pretended.
Trevor undid his restraints and blurred again, seizing the lip of the shattered canopy. Shards of glass cut into his palm as he swung outwards, fighting the plane’s spin and the wind to get free of the dying aircraft. Then he was tumbling loose in the air, the plane’s wake hurling him into a frigid bank of clouds.
He lost sight of the plane until a rush of hot wind boiled away the cloud. It was accompanied by a sound louder than god’s name, heralding the inevitable destruction Trevor had just predicted. Wreckage stormed through the sky around him, a two-foot fragment of wing humming past his head. The plane had dissolved into thousands of fiery streaks, radiating in all directions like some macabre firework.
It covered hundreds of yards, probably a half mile or more. Trevor blurred again, feeling the drag as he reached deep into the well of power he'd accumulated from the sun. He scanned the sky, shrapnel slowing to a crawl with his enhances senses. There was Cyntia, incandescent and screaming as her fur and flesh burned. The howl hadn’t reached him yet, but he knew she was in utter agony. He wouldn’t wish that on any one, least of all her. Would she live? It might be better for her if she did not.
A flash of movement caught his attention. Nothing should be moving that fast during the blur. A patch of pulsing green energy undulated beneath him, little motes of red and black dancing within the cloud. What the hell was that? It must have been something Irakesh had done. The green energy was identical to the light they used, and it felt familiar.
Time sped up again as the blur sputtered out. Trevor had nothing left to give. He plummeted towards the dry brown landscape, Riverside’s chrome-dotted desert stretching out before him. He’d die less than two hundred miles from San Diego. That was fitting somehow, coming home at last. At least there’d finally be an end to it.
Trevor gave in to the free fall, closing his eyes and stretching his arms and legs as the wind ripped at his clothing. It was an enormous relief. He’d feared the worst after Blair and Liz had failed, thought Irakesh was certain to win. He didn’t know what that would mean for the world, but he was certain it wouldn’t be good. Somehow a force powerful enough to nuke them from orbit had pinpointed their position.
How had Mohn known where to find them? That would have required satellites and there was no way they could have survived the CME. It would have fried every satellite in orbit, and if it was as large as the data suggested it would have fried anything on the moon as well. So how had Mohn just fired something from orbit? It made no sense, unless they’d somehow created a satellite with some very potent magnetic shielding.
“Trevor,” a jagged voice thundered over the roar of the wind. He opened his eyes, shifting his flight to turn towards the speaker. The cloud of energy had matched his trajectory and speed exactly, pulsing just a few feet away. He could feel the power there, the enormous energy.
The ghostly outline of a face appeared, jagged fangs and neon eyes set into a mask of determination. “Trevor, you can save yourself, but you must listen very closely.”
He strained to listen, the words very nearly lost to the wind. Trevor sucked in a breath and roared back. “What do I do?”
“Turn over control to your Risen. I will show it how to do as I am doing, to become energy rather than matter,” he shouted back, moving closer to envelope Trevor. His skin tingled, but he ignored it. He reeled from the sudden knowledge. Irakesh would survive the fall. Should he let himself die, denying Irakesh one of his strongest tools? Or should he survive and try to break free?
Irakesh was so powerful and Trevor’s every attempt to resist had failed. Yet the logical part of him said that that would change eventually. Sooner or later he must be able to break free, as Irakesh had no doubt broken free from his former master. He closed his eyes, relaxing despite the rushing wind and the ground he knew was surging up at him.
I will tend to this, the voice hissed in its oily drawl, back from wherever Irakesh had banished it. Surrender and we will both survive and grow in knowledge. The power he offers will serve us well.
Trevor shuddered, though not from the frigid air around him. The devil within or the devil without. He made his decision, releasing conscious control over the situation. Something large shoved him down a deep well, black water pulling him under as the world disappeared.
50
Excalibur
Liz now had a pretty good idea what a caged lion must feel like. She sat up on her bench, giving a small smile of satisfaction at the pile of torn straps on the ground next to the cool metal. It had taken her ho
urs of struggling, but she’d had nothing else to vent her rage on and eventually the straps had torn loose. It was a small victory, but an important one. It meant she wasn’t powerless.
She glanced across the hall to the other cell, but Jordan hadn’t returned. They’d taken him last night, though where or why was a mystery. He’d given her a reassuring look and a shrug as the three soldiers had led him off. Had he been executed? Or was he being tortured? Liz rose to her feet, pacing back and forth in the narrow confines of her cell.
There was movement down the hall. Liz pressed her face to the far corner of the glass, peering down as best she could. Two figures approached, one in a pressed black suit and starched white shirt. The other wore the black t-shirt and camo pants she was coming to know well. Jordan and the man he’d called the Director.
The Director’s hair was jet black streaked with white. Lines creased his weathered face, yet there was a solidity to him as he approached her cell. This was a man not easily deterred, one who pursued a goal no matter the odds or cost. One who’d orchestrated the occupation of the Ark and had destroyed Trevor’s home and possibly his life when he’d come after her and Blair back in San Diego.
He paused in front of her cell, cold eyes sizing her up as he rested a palm against the glass. She took a step back, trying not to look threatening. They’d never open the glass if they thought she was a threat. The area around his hand pulsed red and a narrow window oozed open somehow in the center of the glass. Not enough to escape through, but enough to get her arm around his neck if he was foolish enough to approach.
“Good morning, Ms. Gregg. My name is Mark Phillips and I’m the director of this facility,” he explained, his expression unreadable. He turned slightly and gestured at Jordan. “I’m given to understand that you’ve spent some time with the commander. I’ve brought him as a show of good faith. Hopefully, that will engender at least a little trust.”