by A D Davies
Losing time, Jules then fired a volley of strikes at Pyong-Ho’s vulnerable spots—where all human beings are weakest. The neck to stun, the groin, the kidneys. He jabbed a finger at the man’s eye, but it Pyong-Ho blocked it. Jules’s next big attack, aiming for the knee, missed too, as his opponent got his act together.
He didn’t see the back-hander fly.
It caught Jules in the temple, rattling his brain and sending him tumbling. A fist flew by as he ducked, but Pyong-Ho’s taekwondo was note-perfect, landing a sweet round-kick in Jules’s ribs, followed by a sweep that took his ankle. Jules would have landed hard, but Pyong-Ho’s meaty hand—the one not encumbered by a blade in the tricep—clamped onto his neck. Fingers closed around him, all but meeting on the other side. Pyong-Ho lifted Jules and slammed him against Gilim’s prison. Again, the air whooshed out of him.
Being winded for the second time in as many minutes would take a toll on even the fittest athlete. And although Jules had at one point approached professional levels, he’d eased up of late.
There was nothing he could do.
Too weak to defend, too rattled to think his way free, Jules lay against the polymer, with a giant pounding away beneath, and waited to black out for the final time.
Chapter Forty-One
“Okay, it’s time,” Harpal said, the scaffold swaying as he shifted his weight. “Let’s step this up.”
“I’d love to pretend I know what you mean,” Charlie replied. “But can you be more specific?”
“I’m not sure I can. This whole setup…”
Harpal tried to summon the vocabulary to describe the device, but it wasn’t easy.
Phil came on the line. “Right, then, give it to me step by step.”
“Hi, babe,” Charlie said. “Glad you could join us.”
“I’m just glad you’re not in the firing line for once.”
“You know I’ve been stabbed in the leg, right, honey?”
If Phil heard her, he gave nothing away. “Harps, give it to me. You got a video you can send?”
Harpal shook his head as if anyone could see him. “We didn’t bring phones, and cameras were too much bulk. Didn’t think we’d need them.”
“Phones wouldn’t work in that location,” Charlie added. “And the Executive heads an advanced tech company. Could have compromised our network.”
Phil said, “Then let’s hear what you see.”
“A box.” Harpal examined the setup more closely without touching the bricks of plastic. “There are…” He counted each side of bricks. Seven by seven. “Forty-nine bricks of explosives in a metal case.”
“Wires?”
“Cables. There’s a thick, black one connecting this to the one near the middle of the wall. I can only see a few inside. On top is a black box with a green light next to three more that aren’t lit.”
Phil sighed, thinking. “Can you cut the cable and see what’s inside?”
Harpal took out a folding knife and sliced a shallow groove in the thick, black rubber. He checked how deep it went and cut a little more. “I’m a centimeter in. This is some serious insulation.”
He deepened the gash until a train of color showed. “Okay, I see wires.”
“How many?” Phil asked.
Harpal’s hands were numb, his pulse pounding in his neck. He was sweating as he widened the gap and his stomach hollowed out at what he saw. He didn’t need a munition or demolition expert to convey what it meant.
He said, “Too many. Dozens.”
It was like a fibrous muscle, a multitude of red, green, yellow, and blue wires woven together so it was impossible to see which were active and which were redundancies.
“You can’t deactivate it,” Phil said. “Our options just got a lot thinner.”
Harpal left the booby trap to the elements and returned halfway to the platform’s edge, where he could view the prison camp without making the whole world sway.
“Sounds bad,” Charlie said.
“How long until the Americans launch?” Harpal asked.
“Last update from Ms. Grainger,” Toby said, “leaves us twenty minutes.”
“Dan, you heard that. We have to wait on Jules, but you need to clear this place, get them all above the water level. If Bridget and Charlie take down the system, this whole site is gonna blow.”
Jules’s world closed in, black circling the edges of his narrowing vision. He’d lost his strength and his advantage, a year and change of civilian life having robbed him of his edge. Adhering to common rules written and unwritten, learning their ways, overwriting his instincts, had led to this moment—an enraged Pang Pyong-Ho pinning him to Gilim’s compartment, hand around his neck, squeezing the life out of him. If only he’d taken control of that railgun and slaughter everyone below him… This would have been over in seconds.
Pyong-Ho’s free hand, with the blade embedded in it, served to block off Jules’s feeble attempts to fight back. It must have been painful to move it, but this fight would be done soon enough.
Twenty seconds before Jules’s brain could send no more messages to his body, thirty-five-to-forty seconds until he fell unconscious, and maybe ninety seconds until death if Pyong-Ho chose to finish him.
It was his own fault. Getting angry. Allowing his rage at the men before him to define his actions. He could just go to sleep here, and all would end as it should. In fire. In death. As it had throughout human history.
Fifteen seconds until he could no longer move.
A vibration made his senses seek out its source. Something he couldn’t ignore. Something he’d never have ignored a year ago. And here, at the end, he recalled the reasons he’d never ended up this way in the past.
It wasn’t only his constant training that raised his fighting prowess above military champions and psychotic thugs. His internal approach was different, too. Aware of all. Of his own body, his mind, his surroundings.
Calm. Measured. Unemotional.
And his senses were reporting back that Gilim’s ferocious hammering, his panicked desperation to get out of the manmade chamber, was trembling the structure. The control panel.
He couldn’t see it from here. Couldn’t reach it, even if his vision extended that far.
Calm. Measured.
He pictured the scene. His eidetic recall 20:20 in optimum circumstances, tainted here by a lack of air.
Ten seconds to paralysis. Twenty-five until blackout.
Perfect recall: The orb spun black yet bright above head height; the shields hung in their cages, with cables spreading out like tentacles; the control panel like something out of a 1970s sci-fi TV show, the bridge of a starship on a budget.
But simple.
Simplified.
That was what had struck Jules as so odd—how it wasn’t a ton of computer screens and buttons. It was the twenty-first century. Of course it was all run by tablets and laptops away from the principal center. Only a few buttons remained.
Including the one he needed.
Five seconds until Pyong-Ho rendered him immobile.
The darkness closed in, only Pyong-Ho’s face in view. He sweated with the effort of pinning Jules, strangling him, and dealing with a blade jammed into a very tender spot.
Jules thumbed his remaining flashbang, the marble-sized smoke bomb-come-firecracker that he’d used for years to distract an opponent in a non-lethal way. It was his only chance. The only chance this region had, the only way to prevent a conflict in which millions would perish. One tiny little explosive.
And Jules’s hope that he remembered the layout correctly.
He set the fuse and flicked it to his left, under Pang Pyong-Ho’s armpit, toward the big red button. In a typical factory or power plant, or even a treadmill in a gym, it would serve as an easily accessible abort switch.
Jules pictured the flashbang flying, first up to its apex, then down, down toward the panel. If he’d calculated the distance and height correctly, the tiny device would detonate five feet away fr
om him, an inch or two above the button and—
Pop!
The timing was spot on. The only question was whether the mini bomb’s concussive force was enough.
Pyong-Ho laughed. “What is this, American? Distraction?”
The vibration beneath Jules increased. Not a trembling, but a shove. A surge of tectonic plates. Jules gagged as Pyong-Ho jolted backward.
Jules rose into the air and slumped aside as the door opened beneath him. He slid sideways, out of the way of the heavy, polymer-crystal door crashing over as Gilim freed himself. No cry of fear, no growl, no grunt.
What followed was a roar. Like a grizzly bear defending its young.
Gilim surged out of his prison with catlike agility. His musculature was tough, but sleek, efficient. Although he looked like a brute, he exhibited the speed of the great apes, combined with a human understanding of the world around him. And he had identified his enemy.
Pang Pyong-Ho stood no chance. Without a hint of gloating or grandstanding, Gilim thrust out an arm at the fleeing bodyguard, curled his fingers over the man’s head. His other hand snatched Pyong-Ho’s torso, not easing up on the pressure, and ripped off his head.
Jules still wasn’t able to stand, gasping for breath as his pulse pounded through his skull, reacquainting itself with the oxygen it so desperately needed. He was nothing but a passive observer, wishing he could turn away.
The men on the ground who Jules had disabled all started crawling or shuffling toward the exits. They’d scattered in limps and lollops to allow Jules and Pyong-Ho to fight. Evidently, they’d stuck around to witness their man finish Jules off, but now they couldn’t scatter fast enough.
Gilim recognized them as his tormenters, though, and plowed into them. Bones broke, blood flew. Some of the jailers tried to escape via the anteroom, where the audience was crying and whimpering, only to be repelled by the electrified fence. The abort button hadn’t dropped the current.
The people on the other side were filtering out, withdrawing under orders, stopping only to glance back as another of their tormentors met a grisly end at Gilim’s hand. Jules couldn’t see all of them but, on a few faces, he picked up a smile or two. The first he’d encountered in this place.
Did they sense freedom approaching?
But there was an addition to the mix here, in the lab. Three armed men racing in from the rear, firing en-mass at Gilim. Ah Dae-Sung one of them, the commander on the front line.
When did he get here?
Orders flew, guns fired. Bullets penetrated Gilim’s skin, but not the muscles, not the bones. Painful. But he was so enraged it was like throwing stones at King Kong.
The carnage turned Jules’s stomach. He had known, on some level, that this would be the result. That this was what freeing Gilim meant. That the blood was literally on someone else’s hands made him feel less guilty, but as Jules pushed to his feet, sensing his extremities returning to functional capacity, he faced the simple fact.
I am responsible for this.
When Gilim finished the final technician, he rounded on the gunmen as they defended the wide double doorway through which they must have brought Gilim. Jules guessed that was the escape route Executive Ryom had taken, where arrangements would be made for his safety.
His legs were a little shaky, but he could move. He tested his balance.
All good.
And as Gilim charged, smashed through the first gunman, and bounded headlong toward the final guy and Ah Dae-Sung, Jules careered forward on an intercept course. He’d have no chance to stop the ten-foot behemoth, not even trip him up, but he had to try.
“Gilim!” he cried.
The giant’s head turned to Jules, veered that way for a second, but pulled up short. All gunfire ceased, all screaming muted.
“Go,” Jules said.
“I cannot.” Ah Dae-Sung sidestepped, taking the last soldier with him, both aiming their peashooter weapons at Gilim. They covered the double doors leading to the passageway which, in turn, led to the exit.
Gilim growled and dove forward.
Jules got in his way. “No!” He held his arms up, halting the giant.
Gilim braced, fists either side of Jules. He clearly recognized him. If not a friend, then an enemy of his enemy. How long that would last, Jules couldn’t guess. He only knew that in this moment, Gilim didn’t want to kill him.
Jules said, “Just go.”
“We must hold the creature here,” Dae-Sung said.
“Your boss ain’t worth it. This guy will kill you.”
Gilim’s breath clouded hot on Jules’s face. Sour and meaty, it made Jules gag, but he remained in the giant’s path. A snort, a growl. His patience was wearing thin. But Jules couldn’t let this go without trying. He couldn’t stand aside.
“Jules!” Dan shouted, entering against the flow of prisoners leaving the anteroom. “How’d you get comms up?”
Jules heard it in his earbud as well as in person. Tane backed Dan up, both alive but on the wrong side of the fence.
“You got comms back up,” Jules said. “Useful. And I don’t know how.”
They came up to the perimeter but must have seen the electrocution warnings despite what they were watching: Jules in front of the ten-foot Gilim, blood and limbs spread all over, and Ah Dae-Sung waiting to die, should Jules allow it.
“Probably close vicinity,” Tane said. “Later for that. Right now, we need to get you out. We can’t stop the dam blowing, so it’s now an evac. Leave them.”
But Jules had allowed his emotions, his anger, to cloud his judgement too much already. This was his way. Preserve human life. There was always another way. Except where Pang Pyong-Ho was concerned. Jules would be dead if he hadn’t unleashed Gilim.
Did that make Jules a killer? Pointing a loaded weapon at an enemy?
“Let the big guy past,” Dan shouted. “It’s not you finishing them. It’s him. It’s—”
Gilim rounded on Dan and roared at him. Both Dan and Tane backed away, despite the fence between them, before Gilim lumbered to the side.
“I can’t stop him much longer,” Jules said. “You wanna live, you leave, and close those doors quietly behind you.”
Ah Dae-Sung foolishly stepped forward one pace, agitating Gilim. He held position but spoke loudly enough for his words to carry to Dan and Tane. “You do not understand. None of you.”
Dan hefted his gun but had no clear shot at Dae-Sung. “I understand you’re cooked. We stopped your ass-shield, and if we don’t report in that it’s decommissioned, you got fifteen cruise missiles heading this way.”
“It is not decommissioned.” Ah Dae-Sung flapped his hand, shaking his head in despair. “This creature wasn’t there to power it, or act as a conduit. It was there to stabilize it.”
Something Bridget had said before came back to Jules. That it was part of a phalanx of other points on the globe. A shielding device, not simply for individual use—although that was how the Guardians used it—but potentially a global shield. To defend against rocks falling from the sky, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs or smaller, localized disasters that could have been witnessed.
Witnessed.
The Witnesses.
Who would have been around at the time of the Earth’s last magnetic flip. 42,000 years ago.
This was always about cocooning the planet. From pre-history through to the Guardians concealing its legacy, to discovering the DNA needed to control the unstable elements, present in the race of giants they’d protected from certain death. The slave race who helped build the magnificent structures of the ancient world, who fought as comrades to the Guardians, who came to the United States long before that country even existed, and lived alongside the Natives, found peace, and a life outside of servitude.
“They didn’t hide giants’ existence from the world for some arbitrary reason,” Jules said, having processed his conclusion in a couple of blinks of the eye. “They couldn’t risk activating this shield without the
proper knowledge. And that was lost.”
Damn, Bridget. Your obsession with knowing everything might pay off.
Gilim’s breaths came deeper, slower, seemingly sensing a shift in the danger, in the mood of the room.
“We got this,” Jules told Ah Dae-Sung.
“You do not.” Dae-Sung patted the other soldier on the chest. Both aimed up at Gilim. “If we can buy more time, we will. You must call off your air strike, or the world will suffer. We must save executive Ryom.”
“What’s so important?” Tane demanded. “He lied to you, used you, made you think what you were doing was noble. But it’s just a power grab. For him. Not your people. Like this concentration camp. An army of prisoners and workers, all in place to make him the most powerful man on Earth. How can you stay loyal to him?”
“Because…” Through gritted teeth, Ah Dae-Sung stared at Gilim. “Executive Ryom’s life readings are linked to a series of explosive charges. If he dies, or his heart rate increases to dangerous levels, the detonators will trigger, this dam will be destroyed, and all will die here. And this machine? No one knows how it will react.”
“It’ll blow like a neutron bomb,” Jules said. He directed a firm eye at Dan. “Remember Scotland? How that pulse knocked us all out? Well, imagine that with an energy blast on top, spreading out across the country. Across every country linked to the orb.”
“What do we do?” Dan called back.
“Evacuate. I gotta shut this down.”
“We must protect the Executive,” Dae-Sung said.
He then gave an order in Korean. The soldier looked terrified for a moment, then opened fire on Gilim.
The giant roared, lunged forward, and would have swiped Jules aside had he not read the intent and threw himself flat to the floor.
While Gilim smashed his way through the pawn of a soldier, Ah Dae-Sung ran out the half-open double doors. Once Gilim was satisfied his immediate threat was dead, it took him a moment of rattling and yanking and pounding on the doors to wrench them open, then he ducked under to pursue.