“Governor,” Patrick announced, “they’ve arrived.”
The governor turned, his face brightening when he saw Aldous, although he didn’t smile. He walked away from Alejandra, who’d been at his side, and held out his hand early, even as he was walking up the stairs that led up to the doors to the room, and spoke before they’d even shaken hands. “Chief Gibson, we’re so pleased you survived.”
When the governor finally reached him, Aldous shook his hand and replied, “As am I that you and your people have endured.”
“I know we’ve had our differences,” Wong stated, “but the enemy of thine enemy is my friend. It’s time we put our differences aside. The fate of our solar system depends upon it.”
“Agreed,” replied Aldous. “Please get me up to speed.”
“It would be my pleasure,” the governor returned as he guided Aldous back down the stairs.
Meanwhile, Rich glared down at Alejandra. She craned her neck to look at him, and as soon as they made eye contact, he waved with his hand for her to come to him. She narrowed her eyes and used the opposite of the twin staircases that lined the walls of the command center to make her way to him.
Lieutenant Commander Patrick had, by this point, noticed their odd behavior and silently watched.
“What is it?” Alejandra whispered when she reached Rich.
Rich grabbed her hand, then turned to the lieutenant commander as well. “I need to speak with you guys outside,” he whispered.
Curious, the two Purists made their way out of the room with the post-human, closing the doors behind them.
“What’s going on?” Patrick asked.
“Listen, we might have a huge problem,” Rich explained. “I’m still in contact with James and the A.I., and—”
“They survived?” Alejandra responded, astonished. “Then why haven’t they—”
“They’re trapped in a simulation—trapped in a computer. The hard drive is that black box Aldous has strapped over his shoulder. But they’ve found a way to communicate with me, and they think Aldous is the number one suspect for having trapped them and sold us out to the androids.”
“Holy shit,” Patrick replied. “The fox is in the henhouse for real this time.”
Rich closed his eyes and shook his head. “I still really don’t get that metaphor. Can we use metaphors from this century please?”
“It means we just let the most dangerous man in the solar system into our command center,” Alejandra explained.
“Yeah! That’s what I said!” Rich replied, exasperated. “Though we don’t have proof yet. Look, James and the A.I. told me to watch him. They think he might be here to sabotage you guys to make the Purists as easy to assimilate as we were.”
“We can’t let that happen,” Patrick announced, holding up his rifle as though he were about to charge back into the command center.
“Hold it!” Rich fired back. “Aldous has the solar system’s best hope strapped over his shoulder. That hard drive contains James and the A.I., not to mention Thel. If we try to confront or arrest him, he could destroy it.”
“So what do we do?” Alejandra asked. “We can’t let him shut down our defenses!”
“We’ve got to incapacitate him without harming that hard drive,” Rich replied.
“Any idea how we do that?” Patrick asked.
Rich shrugged. “I’m willing to open the floor to suggestions.”
“You don’t have a plan?” Alejandra replied in disbelief. “Can’t you ask James or the A.I.?”
“They’ve been quiet for a few minutes. They must have their hands full with something at the moment.”
“Great,” Patrick replied, impatient. “Well, we can’t just sit here while a traitor learns how all our defenses work. We’ve got to act now.”
Rich nodded. “I agree. Okay. I’ve got an idea.”
“You do?” Alejandra replied, her tone dubious.
Rich looked the empath in her eyes, eyes that clearly saw he was bluffing, and he immediately folded. “No. No I don’t. I was just hoping I’d come up with something at the spur of the moment, you know?”
“Seriously?” Patrick responded.
“Sorry. I’m not usually the one who has to come up with the plan. Look, how about this? We go in there, and I just walk up behind him and blast him with a charge to the back of the head. That should render him unconscious, as long as he doesn’t see me coming.”
Patrick considered this for a moment. “It’s simple as hell, but sometimes simple works.” He looked to Alejandra.
She nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Just remember,” Rich cautioned, “we can’t let him damage that hard drive. At all costs. The hard drive contains the brains of the guys who can get us out of this mess. If we lose that hard drive, this solar system’s as good as finished.”
“Got it,” Patrick replied.
“Got it,” Alejandra echoed.
Rich took a deep breath. “Okay, guys. Let’s do this.”
17
The white light and golden sparkle of the figure before them suddenly faded. When the blinding distortion of the light was absent, it revealed that Thel’s image was gone, but Kali’s image remained. Astonished, the trio of James, the A.I. and the candidate looked on as Kali examined her body, and her regrown hand, holding her hands up before her eyes.
“So cool,” she finally said.
“Thel?” James asked in near disbelief.
Kali smiled before her form melted away, replaced by Thel’s. “Yep.”
“Thank God,” James exclaimed. He tried to run toward her to embrace her, but the A.I. and the candidate continued holding him back.
“James,” the A.I. spoke in a half-pleading, half-scolding tone, “this has never been tried before. If you touch her, your patterns might merge, and you could end up killing each other! Stay back until we know what we’re dealing with.”
James’s eyes locked on Thel’s before he relented and did, indeed, hold back. He desperately wanted to hold Thel in his arms, but he knew the A.I. was right. Thel’s bizarre leap of faith and her previously never attempted method of joining with an avatar were unknowns, and as they always did, James and the A.I. chose to be cautious.
“Okay. Okay, you’re right,” James said as he disentangled himself from the two artificial intelligences that held him back. They relented as well and James stood, just meters from Thel. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“I’m awesome,” Thel replied. “I’m checking the systems. Guys, the Kali avatar is fully operational. I can do anything inside the sim, just as the Kali program was designed to do. I can heal wounds, I can manipulate matter…” She trailed off as she seemed to see something while she read through her list of capabilities. She turned to the curved glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the perimeter of Cloud 9 and stepped toward the edge. “I can even stop the purge.” She held out her hands, and suddenly, every NPC that was still functioning stopped their rampaging.
James and the two A.I.s ran to the window themselves to see the results. NPCs that had been ripped to shreds and deactivated suddenly came back together, their patterns resetting until they were fully functioning. They simply stood up and walked calmly away, returning to their business. The fires extinguished themselves all over the city, and the smoke blew away, dispersing in the rain, vanishing into the ubiquitous clouds.
“There,” Thel said as she watched, amazed by her own accomplishments. She turned to her companions. “We’re safe. And I’m digging these godlike powers.” There was a twinkle in her eye as she smiled. “I think I understand you guys a little better now. It’s not easy to give up being superhuman.”
“Incredible,” the candidate observed.
“Indeed,” the A.I. echoed, smiling before he turned to Thel. “It appears that whoever our mystery occupant of the Kali avatar was, is also our guardian angel. That entity has provided us with the means to protect ourselves.”
“Unless it’s
another trick,” James cautioned. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been manipulated.”
“True,” the A.I. conceded. “However, for the time being, we do seem to be safe within the sim.”
“The trick is to make sure we’re safe outside the sim,” Thel pointed out. She sighed. “Fellas, I’ve checked the systems. I should be good to go for an exit. My body is within range in the real world.”
“Thel!” James suddenly reacted, so quickly that it appeared to be an instinctual reaction rather than a considered one. “Please, wait! That could be the trick,” he said, urging caution. “Maybe whoever it is wants us to kill ourselves by trying to exit?”
“For what purpose?” the candidate asked.
“I agree with the candidate’s implication,” the A.I. announced. “James, you’re understandably trepidatious. You don’t want to lose Thel—she’s the love of your life. But this is an instance where logic must dictate our decision. Whatever entity inhabited the Kali avatar before could’ve killed us with the ease of a thought while she was here. What advantage could that entity have possibly had by keeping us alive, only to then trick us into our own deaths at a later point?”
“I don’t know,” James responded, “but we have to be absolutely sure that—”
“We’ll never be absolutely sure,” the A.I. countered, his lips tightening as he spoke. “James, your emotions—your love—are capacities that have served you well. They make you the hero that you are. But you cannot let your love turn into a fear that controls your better judgment. We naturally fear the loss of those we hold most dear, but there’s no reason to believe Thel won’t be able to successfully leave the sim.”
James listened to the explanation and then ran his fingers through his hair before collapsing onto one of the chairs that lined the windows of Cloud 9. He looked up at Thel, who’d watched the entire exchange wordlessly, but who’d kept her eyes locked on James.
“I’ll be okay,” she told him with a reassuring smile.
“And one of us needs to be in the real world,” the A.I. added. “Thel can help to sequester Aldous, and she can also relate to the Purists what’s happening to us.”
“Rich can do those things!” James countered.
“But he can’t get us out of here,” Thel replied. “If I can escape, then we know the two of you can too. All we need is to send a powerful enough signal to reach Earth, and if we reach Earth—”
“We can activate Trans-human,” James said, finishing her sentence.
“And if we activate Trans-human, we can undo this damage,” the A.I. added. He put his hand on James’s shoulder. “Let go, James. Trust her.”
James shut his eyes tight. “You’d go, even without my blessing,” he said, as he opened his eyes and looked into Thel’s.
“Yep,” Thel replied, “but I’d still appreciate the support.”
James sighed and stood. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. I’ve asked you to trust me so many times—it’s time for me to trust you.”
Thel smiled wide. “Damn straight. I love you, James Keats.”
“I love you too,” James replied.
Thel blew James a kiss and winked before waving goodbye. “Talk to you on the other side.”
A second later, Thel vanished and the Kali avatar, along with its deadened eyes, returned.
James held his hand up to his aug glasses before speaking in an almost pleading tone, “Rich, please tell me Thel just woke up.”
18
Old-timer remembered that James had described what this would feel like—the sensation of thousands of tentacle-like appendages acting out instead of the arms and legs, fingers and toes he was used to. Then he remembered the way James described his own ability to manipulate space-time, comparing it to a seven-year-old catching a fly ball. He realized now what James had been trying to tell him.
“It’ll feel natural. I promise,” James had proclaimed.
Old-timer nearly smiled at the remembrance of the conversation as his thousands of tendrils sprang into action, his body morphing into something that, to his companions, resembled more closely a jellyfish than it did a human, as each tendril flashed out, circled an attacking android’s neck, and severed its head from its body.
Paine ducked and partially protected himself with the railing of the catwalk, his eyes wild as he made sure no androids came close to him while also keeping an eye on Old-timer, who was doing things Paine had never imagined in his wildest dreams. To him—Old-timer—Craig, as Paine knew him—no longer appeared human. Craig was a killing machine, more lethal than almost anything he’d seen in his life—more lethal than anything other than one very notable exception.
Hundreds of androids were attempting to pounce on Paine, Daniella, Djanet, and Samantha, yet none of them were able to manage so much as a hand on their quarry, each android who got within reach having its head summarily popped from its body, decapitated with ease by the weapon that Old-timer’s body had become.
Even their leader, Neirbo, was powerless, standing several meters away from the flailing death-bringer that was Old-timer, firing futile shots from his weapon in an attempt to bring the monster down—or at least slow the ease with which it was destroying his forces. One of Old-timer’s tendrils seemed to sense this, reason that the shots were a threat, and consequently circled Neirbo’s arm, easily ripping it from the android’s body and sending the android screaming and stumbling away in retreat.
The weapon slid down the catwalk, eventually finding its way to within Paine’s grasp. He moved from the railing and lunged out for it, grasping it before rolling back against the railing, the bodies still falling around him like trees in the woods, smashing hard against the ground or tumbling over the ledge for what seemed to be an eternity into the darkness below.
“Did you get the gun?” Old-timer called over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Paine responded, realizing that Old-timer had planned it that way.
“Watch my back,” he turned his head slightly to meet Paine’s eye. “Just in case,” he added.
“Okay,” Paine responded, watching to make sure that no androids breached the killing perimeter that Old-timer’s body had formed. Not one of them got close to touching them.
Then, suddenly, everything changed.
The android ship seemed to pitch, its nose pointing upward instantly, the gravity suddenly throwing them all to the side, the limp android bodies falling to Paine’s left instead of downward to the ground so far below.
Paine hooked his arm around the railing, as did Daniella, who was the first person his eyes instinctively went to. The others in their party had managed to react in time as well, the catwalk seeming to have been turned on its side, debris smashing down around them, falling to the new bottom of the scene, which was the back of the Constructor vessel.
Old-timer had latched onto the railing as well, reaching out with his tendrils to catch Djanet and even Jules, the android he’d kidnapped, keeping her from plunging toward the irresistible gravity.
“What’s happening?” Old-timer shouted out as his body re-furled most of his tendrils, his human form retaking its shape. “Did we get hit with something?”
“We weren’t close to a planet!” Jules shouted back. “We were in deep space—nothing could explain a gravity shift like this other than—”
“A black hole,” Samantha realized.
“A black hole?” Djanet reacted. She turned to Old-timer with a hopeful expression. “Like Trans-human! James! The A.I.! They must be fighting back!”
“No,” Old-timer said, his face contorted with dread, “they’d have contacted us if Trans-human was online.”
“It’s not a friend,” Samantha announced. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
“Why? What’s happening?” Daniella shouted.
Paine looked at Old-timer, their eyes locking onto one another in deadly seriousness. “It’s V-SINN,” Paine announced, his voice filled with both hatre
d and dread. “And anything that hasn’t escaped this ship in the next ninety seconds is going to be dead.”
PART 4
1
“Rich? Rich, do you copy?” James’s voice desperately called out over and over in Rich’s ear. Rich ignored James’s plea for a status update in his mind’s eye, turning the volume down as he led Lieutenant Commander Patrick down the stairs of the command center. Alejandra was at point, her job to detect any sign that Aldous suspected them or could detect their approach. She turned to Rich when they were only a couple of meters away and silently gave him a nod and a thumbs-up before she stepped away, clearing the path for Rich to fire.
Rich held his hands up, the magnetic energy pulsing green on his finger tips before fusing into a ball of light. He knew he had to hit the chief with just the right amount of power—enough to stun him unconscious but not enough to damage the sensitive instruments of the command center or, perhaps even more importantly, the hard drive that carried the sim in which James and the A.I. were still imprisoned. He licked his lips as he prepared to fire, took in a deep breath to muster the courage, and fired.
A second later, Rich was upside down, flying through the air in the opposite direction, headed for a collision with the far, concrete wall of the room. He hit with a thud and grunted when one of his ribs cracked with a sickening snap that he could hear as well as feel.
As he rolled to his side, he saw Aldous turning around, a look of shock on his face as Alejandra, Lieutenant Commander Patrick, and half a dozen of Patrick’s men trained their rifles on the former leader of the post-humans.
“What is the meaning of this?” Governor Wong demanded. “This man is my guest!”
“Richard?” Aldous said, still incredulous as he saw Rich barely moving, struggling to get to his knees. “Did you attack me?”
Within the sim, James looked up at the A.I., concern furrowing his brow. “I just heard something weird. I think he’s been injured! Rich! Rich, do you copy?”
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