by J. D. Cavan
“Go!” she ordered, grunting her words out as she held time in place.
“No way,” Luca asserted. Bags and Shark came over and stood next to Luca, who was clearly hurt from the blast. His leg was bleeding and he was limping. Luca was hard to kill—all Ereb high on strength were, but they still bled and bullets could end them.
“Get to the truck, I’ll meet you!” she called. They couldn’t protect her now.
Luca hesitated and looked beyond ticked that she was compromised, but this was their only option. He could barely walk. So they left the bank and Luca stumbled across the parking lot passing right in front of the police officers.
The cops were crouched behind their cars, guns drawn and pointed toward the bank. Not one of them moved an inch, like they were stone figures.
Once they were safely at the truck, Samantha would attempt to direct the blast that the Time Grip would produce when released away from any civilians. She focused her mind and got ready, but then through the motionless scene in parking lot, a figure appeared.
He came from what looked like an unmarked police car, a black Escalade. He was tall and dressed in a shirt and tie and wore an eye-shield similar to the Replica. He walked casually into the bank, stepping over the fallen debris and frozen people on the floor. He looked like a young, well-dressed police detective. She was stunned her Time Grip didn’t seem to touch him.
“Stay back!” she shouted, struggling to maintain the grip.
He took his eye-shield off, and stared at her. She felt her breath escape. His dark eyes took her off guard but she quickly went into his mind, searching his history.
That’s because I’m not Replica, he said to her mind. She felt her heart pounding and he smirked, stepping closer. Did you find what you were looking for? he tapped the side of his head.
She hadn’t, he was clearly blocking her and obviously in her mind instead. Impossible, she thought, Replica always used eye gear for everything, including tracking them and reading basic thoughts. They never removed their eye-shields.
“One more step and I’ll blow this bank to pieces!” she threatened. She felt the pressure of the Time Grip it was excruciatingly difficult to hold.
“No you won’t, you’re too high on compassion for that,” he replied.
She growled at him. He was right—she’d never kill innocent people. “What do you want?!” Stupid question, she knew. She was finished. He knew she was high status already. She had to stay in place to hold the grip. She was completely vulnerable.
He came closer to her and then loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. “Hot in here.” He had long arms that were very strong. She felt him looking at her, analyzing her like it was the first time he’d ever been close to an Ereb.
“What? You’ve never seen one of us before?” she said.
She was different looking and stood out even among the Ereb, so perhaps that’s why he was gawking at her. She had light brown eyes that had intensity to them; she had no Asian in her, as far as she knew, but her eyes had that quality. This gave her an unmistakable cool-as-a-cat appearance, as if nothing could ever rattle her. Even though at that moment, she was certainly rattled.
He just continued to look at her. “What do you want?” she demanded, thinking of ways to kill him.
“You called me here, so you tell me,” he replied immediately
She felt her face flush. His eyes were disarming. She was mostly impervious to attractive men and he certainly wasn’t the best-looking guy she’d seen, but there was something about him that left her speechless, a real rarity for her. She didn’t trust herself with him. He was probably some sadist Replica, here to mess with her mind and torture her before offing her.
“Okay, how did I do that?” she replied, trying to string it along, buy time to figure something out. There was pause and she thought to herself, Was this what my synchronic sense has been telling me? This guy? Can’t be.
“There’s something different this time, I can sense it…” he repeated her thoughts exactly. The one’s she had sent to Luca earlier when her synchronic sense kicked in. She gazed at him blankly, without words. “Something is going to happen and this is part of it,” he said raising his eyebrows.
“I wasn’t thinking that to you,” she muttered, not knowing for sure what was happening.
“How could you be so sure?” he asked genuinely, seemingly surprised by it all himself. “I’ve studied your kind. I know about your trait, this synchronic sense.”
“You’re just a part of the machine, the mass-thinking of Aion.” She was on guard for his possible brainwashing tactics even though he appeared honestly confused by the possible synchronicity of their meeting.
“Do I seem like them?” he pointed to the Replica. “I work for Aion, but I’m not Replica. I am an Original, Samantha.”
Her heart stopped when he called her Samantha. No one called her that. It was always Sam. She shook her head. This was bad. Really bad. She knew, because she was barely paying attention to the huge thing he had just said to her. She reined it back.
“Original?” she uttered. “Can’t be. The Originals are all gone. You’re here to kill me.” She grunted a little and clenched her jaw. The Time Grip was slipping.
“I don’t want kill you,” he said. “I want something else from you. It can be the only reason why we’ve been put together like this.” He looked like he was contemplating what he’d just said, as if he was figuring it out as he was going.
She gulped hard and felt her face flush again. She found herself looking at his eyes and lips. His mind was a total trap—she couldn’t get in, but his incredible eyes had a sad quality to them, like there was something deeply unsettled behind them. She fought off her compassion and the other feelings she was having for him.
“Aion controls humans and we want to free them,” she proclaimed. “Let them think for themselves as individuals again.”
He leaned against one of the desks that had been partially blown apart. “There wasn’t much of that going on before Aion took over—not a lot of humans acting thoughtfully. As a matter of fact, it was the opposite. It was a total mess, to put it lightly.”
“Humans should at least be given a chance to think freely. Look at them, they have nothing left, no spark of life, no soul!” There was a pause. “You’re taking their money too, and they don’t even know it.”
“I would consider it a small price to pay for protecting them from themselves,” he said causally.
“So tell them what you’re doing, then,” she replied.
“Let’s see, tell people that Aion is feeding them invisible technologies so they don’t kill one another and charging them a monthly fee to do so? It’s like trying to tell a fish in a tank that it’s swimming in tap water, not lake water. They wouldn’t understand.”
“People aren’t fish,” she replied. She felt the sweat pouring down her body.
“It won’t matter now, anyway. None of this will matter for anyone—” He stopped himself as if he shouldn’t have spoken at all. He looked distressed all of a sudden.
“What won’t matter?” she asked genuinely.
He glanced down at the floor and sighed. He said to himself, “It’s why I’m here, anyway.” Her synchronic sense suddenly went off the charts.
He then stared at her with incredible intensity. “Are you ready to see the truth? I’m going to let you inside me.” She nodded, but then stopped. This could be a trap. Draw her in and kill her. But she needed the information. This was what her synchronic sense had been telling her. So she risked it and entered his mind and instantly felt the tremendous suffering.
There was a human—a woman holding a baby. She had fallen in the streets. The baby was lifeless, and her weeping mother was pale and shaking. A collapsed and burning city loomed all around them. Dead bodies piled up on the sidewalks and she could almost smell the rotting corpses. Fires were blazing in the background and thick black soot filled the air, blotting out the sun. Then she saw them, huma
ns against humans, killing one another in the streets.
There were children sitting in a classroom. Suddenly their heads started to shake violently and they all looked like they are having seizures, heads whipping back and forth, foam coming from their mouths, blood then pouring from their noses and ears before they stopped moving and their heads fell to their desks.
Get out of his mind! she shouted to herself before yanking out of him and back into the bank, still shocked from what she had witnessed. A pandemic released upon the world, killing off the vulnerable first. Then sick and dying humans murdering each other for shrinking resources, food and water.
“Aion’s program has changed. It will be mass extermination of the human race,” he uttered, as a matter of fact. “And there is no time. They plan to start the Extinction Phase 1 within days.”
“So they aren’t getting kicks out of making humans pets any more. They want to kill them all now?” She couldn’t accept it. “You’re lying. Brainwashing me.”
“I wish I was. But I believe what’s happening between us right now offers a possible solution,” he replied quickly—almost too quickly for her. “If you come with me, Samantha, I think you can help stop this from happening.”
“Why do you even care?” she asked him.
“I told you I’m not one of them,” he replied.
“Yes you are,” she said, glaring at him. “And I’m not surrendering to you, or Aion. Ever.” Her head felt like it was about to combust. She used all of her power to pull the Time Grip into her body, the energy forming an explosive device. She loathed Aion even more now. “I’ll stop this on my own.” She was about to let the Grip go.
“When I was driving and I heard you thinking to me, I could have ignored it, but I didn’t,” he asserted. “And if you don’t feel it, don’t synchronic sense it, then I don’t know what to say to you.”
Her world suddenly exploded into a million pieces as she lost the Time Grip. At the last instant, she directed the energy toward the front of the bank, away from everyone. The energy blew out the windows and doors, sending shattered glass and debris flying into the parking lot.
As the Grip released and the police ducked and crouched, shards of glass sprayed out over them. The Replica came to life again and she slipped up the embankment to the street. She got to the truck where Luca was waiting behind the wheel and shoved him over into the passenger’s seat. Just before she sped the truck down the road, she searched for him, the Original. But he was gone.
* * *
IT WASN’T LONG before she pulled the truck into a gas station parking lot without saying a word. She was soaked with sweat. Her black tank top was sticking to her body. She took her aviator sunglasses off and put them on the dashboard. She was still sickened by the images of death and destruction and human misery that Aion had planned.
“We need to keep moving, Sam,” Luca said. “Replica will be trailing us any moment.” He ran his hand through his light brown hair that contrasted sharply with his eyes. They were obsidian in color, and had shadowy rings outlined around them. His eyes had a dazzling quality, and his high cheekbones made his face darkly striking. He didn’t smile often, but when he did, it lit up the spaces around him and changed his dark appearance momentarily.
She shook her head and breathed in. “Something happened.”
“Please drive,” Luca begged. “You’re not safe here.” He had an assault pistol by his side and was still very much on the lookout for Replica.
She put the truck in gear but then she stopped. She felt oddly guilty telling Luca about the Original, confirming that he had elicited some kind of feelings inside of her, ones she usually had control over. Even though she owed Luca nothing, he had a forever-crush on her, one he absolutely couldn’t act upon. No Primary Protector could ever fall for the high-status Ereb under their protection. They needed to maintain absolute objectivity to ensure complete safety.
“There was an Original,” she flatly stated. “He came to me in the bank.”
“Original?” Luca questioned, his face twisting in confusion.
“Yes, of the Replica,” she said. “That’s what he said, and something else, something really bad.”
“There is no such thing.” Luca glanced at Bags and Shark. “They don’t exist anymore.”
Bags just waved her head back and forth, peeking out from her bandana. Bags usually wore a skull-and-crossbones bandana around her head. Her eyes were always half shut and she barely spoke two words.
“I ain’t questioning Sam at all, but I ain’t ever seen one,” Shark said from the back seat of the pickup’s cab, his shotgun resting on his lap.
“Replica got inside your head,” Luca said disapprovingly, “which means Aion did too, and that’s not good, Sam.”
“You’re wrong,” she snapped, sounding defensive because she honestly didn’t know for sure.
“My job is to protect you, because I’m protecting all Ereb. Let’s be clear about that. So get this truck moving. We need to get an Ereb extinction-level check, right away.”
Luca’s eyes seemed to drill through her. He was right. They needed to get current Ereb survival numbers, otherwise known as an Ereb Extinction Rate, pronto.
They couldn’t know for sure how many Actualized Ereb were still alive and fighting until she conducted an EER. The EER also gave them the numbers of Potential Ereb out there in the world, ones they needed to get to urgently—particularly if the numbers of actualized had been diminished.
The likelihood that the Original was showing her truth hit her like a tidal wave. Now she had two emergencies to deal with—the Ereb’s immediate survival, and Aion’s plan to end the entire human race.
She raced the truck out of the gas station and down the street. She headed towards the Ereb hideout as quickly as she could.
2
DR. BEN MYERS drove his black Escalade north though the mountains of Vermont before reaching an Aion outpost, five minutes from the Canadian border.
As he came closer to the giant steel and cement walls that protected the outpost, he was struck by how much things had changed. When Aion was just coming to power, this was nothing but a chain-link fence.
He remembered his own life then, how exciting and honored he felt to successfully become an Original and embark on a new journey to save the human race from its rapid decline—with its increased levels of violence, war and ecological destruction.
It had been no easy task. Aion had scoured the earth for the first group of humans who could tolerate biotechnology insertions. It took them a number of years, and most died during experimentation, but they eventually found a group of forty-six people who could tolerate the human-technology integrations. He had been one of them, and they were called the Originals. That had been the beginning of his noble purpose in which he’d made significant sacrifices. Now everything had become dark, and what was once clear had become convoluted and twisted.
The outpost was massive, miles in diameter, with walls and high barbwire fencing surrounding the interior compound. Dr. Myers flashed his face at the recognition station and a giant gate opened, allowing him to drive his Escalade through a series of other gates before finally getting inside. He parked outside a modest looking gray building and noticed someone was waiting for his arrival.
It was General Zim. He had his eye-shield removed, which was unusual for military Replica. His eyes were still and icy, like all military Replica. Aion made the civilian Replica’s eyes seem warm and alive, humanlike.
“General,” Myers greeted him as he approached.
“The Order is prepared for your update,” General Zim said. His voice was deep and had a growl to it, but it also had a slight automated quality that Myers just couldn’t ignore.
Zim was a giant at six-five and over two hundred and fifty pounds. His Original had been a ruthless Special Forces operative, infamous in his many victories over terrorists and dangerous global criminals. Now he was a major hit man pretending to be a general for Aion militar
y forces. The Ereb feared Zim like no other Replica.
Zim always carried a Glock holstered around his waist. His arms freely hung at his sides as if any situation could end in a gunfight. That stance, and the Glock, was clearly carried over from his Original.
Ben Myers followed Zim through a series of doors and up some metal staircases to the main meeting room. The building was all steel and concrete, and the clanking sounds echoed down empty hallways as they moved. Soon the Replica would be returning from the daily Ereb sweeps and from the attack at the bank earlier that morning.
The outpost housed hundreds of military Replica, and it was loaded with weapons and assault vehicles of all kinds, including helicopters and drones. Below the main buildings were bunker systems and laboratories.
They finally reached the meeting room. It was an empty concrete room without windows. There was one metal folding chair in the center of the room and Myers sat down on it. General Zim fashioned his eye-shield and quickly projected images in front of Myers.
Immediately, the Order appeared. They were the elder Replica and were sitting as they normally did behind a large table in Aion’s walled city, called the Great Community. There were three of them dressed impeccably in business suits, as if they were working for a wealthy financial institution.
The Order was the wisest of all Replica because they came from the oldest and wisest of Originals, and were closest in line to Aion. Ben’s mother, Silva, was one of them. His real mother, the Original, had died years ago, but her Replica lived on.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Myers, greetings from all of us,” First Order said. His name was Bernard. Before his passing, Bernard’s Original had been a high-raking British intelligence officer, and his replica still spoke with a sharp accent.
“Hello,” Myers replied.
“No disrespect intended, but we’ll avoid the chitchat and get right to it,” Bernard sniped. “What exactly happened?” Every military Replica’s eye-shield was a window for the Order to watch through any time they wished, so Myers was sure they had seen and heard some of what had occurred in the bank.