by A D Davies
Jules leaped up and made for the same door.
“Where are you going?” Dan yelled. “Get out of here.”
“Evacuate,” Jules replied, pausing in his exit. “Trust me, I got this. I understand it all. I understand me. I understand the machine. Just gotta get Gilim back here. You get the people out, and make sure Bridget and Charlie can shut the network down.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Closed in, they couldn’t use heavy artillery, so it was sensible that Ah Dae-Sung trailed the breadcrumbs outside. Jules would have done the same. If he were a cold, calculating soldier.
Gilim knew no better than to follow his nose. He had a target, the man who’d ripped him from his family, hurt him, forced him into confined spaces, and then hid until he could hide no more. The massive form lumbered, hunched over, through the corridor, ignoring anyone who didn’t fire on him. His pace was impressive, the equivalent of Jules at 90% speed.
But Jules was operating at maybe 50 to 60% capacity. The exertion of the past few days, the jump, the fight with Pyong-Ho… he was sapped but not finished. He struggled to maintain the chase, but wouldn’t give it up, not yet.
The fact Ah Dae-Sung was luring Gilim outside, to where he would have more room to fight, suggested they didn’t want to take that chance. They needed Gilim neutralized. And for that, they had to subdue him.
Maybe even kill him.
Activating the meteor rocks and the elements in the Ruby Rock and Aradia bangles required Jules to be conscious. That melding of human observation and the mix of neutrinos and gluons and all the other facets that made quantum mechanics so unknowable, so different from most of the physical world, could hold true here.
If Gilim died, they all died.
And the best chance for him to survive—along with the millions threatened by the device if Bridget and Charlie blew the network—was to leave the Executive alone.
“You got it, Bridget?” Jules asked as he charged through the next large door. He gasped as he found himself outside.
He knew what the plan was. And it was clever. Brutal but clever.
“Nearly.” Bridget was nothing if not fastidious. She’d make guesses, but where a certain outcome was available, she’d strive for it, even under pressure.
“Hurry.”
They’d lured Gilim to the yard above the barracks where prisoners would exercise. The tower equipped with high-caliber machine guns protected it. They were not as powerful as the railgun in the lab or on the gunships that raided the volcano facility, but Jules figured they’d pierce the giant’s armor-like muscle.
Kill him?
Maybe.
With Ah Dae-Sung in sight, shepherding the Executive and a cadre of five more goons toward a sturdy-looking gate on wheels, Gilim ran across the yard.
Jules yelled, “Gilim, no, wait!”
The guard towers lit up. The central one, plus a second embedded in the valley wall which they hadn’t spotted earlier—camouflaged against the night-draped landscape. Two machine guns blasted away, aiming for Gilim in a crossfire. Bullets cut up the frozen dirt, tracers flashing as they impacted. His flesh tore, making him stumble and scream. He landed hard, shaking the ground—an impact that stuttered the barrage.
Jules assessed the open space between the facility and the towers. Even if he could run the half-football-pitch of land, he could only scale one tower. By that time, they’d pepper Gilim and likely kill him.
The giant, hobbled and bleeding, turned himself over and pushed halfway to his knees.
Jules said, “I need air support.”
“You got it,” Harpal answered.
As the machine-gunners recovered and opened fire, part of the first tower blew inward, halting the shooting. Then a smattering of bullets impacted the second, and the yard fell silent. Returning to the first, more bullets from up high slammed home, and the guard manning that tower fell out, tumbling to the floor without even a shout. He was dead already. No one emerged from the other, but no gunfire blasted either.
Both were dead.
“You’re welcome,” Harpal said.
He’d come armed with the same weapons as Dan, but so high, he’d been able to spot the commotion, so Jules had known he’d have an angle, even at the very edge of the submachine gun’s effective range. Again, he’d known the outcome would be death, even though he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself.
Gilim lumbered away, shouldering through the solid gate where Ah Dae-Sung and the Executive’s party had fled, gambling the towers would give them time to evac the main man. The giant growled and huffed, favoring his right side, but there was no doubt he was still powerful. The larger rounds, as far as Jules could tell, had inflicted damage, but weren’t life threatening.
Jules gathered his breath and set out after them all. “Bridget, where are we?”
“Two minutes,” she replied.
“Patience, Sibeko,” Charlie added, presumably from Bridget’s side.
Jules skirted the yard’s edge, sticking to the shadows. No telling who else was watching. “Patience ain’t my strong suit. And we’re on a clock, but I can’t tell you the deadline.”
“Eleven minutes,” Prihya said. “They launch in eleven minutes. You must declare the place neutralized by then, or we’re all at war.”
“Yeah, so… Bridget? You got something for me?”
No reply. He knew she was on it, so didn’t push it. All he could do was press on, after the injured creature whose instinct told him to kill his enemy, to stop these men from hurting him further, from going after his family. Gilim did not know they were an entire ocean away.
Only one thing stuttered Jules’s approach, and only briefly.
Beyond the fence, the dark expanse of the gulag’s residences teemed with motion. Hundreds of adults in various stages of fitness swarmed around. None of them knew where to go, what to do, just that danger had come calling in a form worse than the guards who controlled their daily lives.
“Dan, you gotta get a grip on the prisoners,” Jules said, hoping they hadn’t ventured into another blind spot.
“These bombs aren’t going anywhere,” Harpal answered, even though Jules hadn’t addressed him. “The valley will flood, and we’ll lose the machine.”
“Okay, Asian Mr. Bean, you call it.” Dan was back online, unseen, but must have been nearby. “Gimme some eyes.”
Dan listened for Harpal’s reply and tried to see more of the gulag, but it was difficult with such dull light.
“I think we can ease up on the call signs,” Harpal said. “And ‘gimme some eyes’ isn’t the best instruction ever.”
Dan and Tane cut around the base of the dam, up onto the edges where it seemed the camp had attempted some limited farming. All he could determine was the dam itself, the prison yard, the entrance to the facility embedded in the mountain, and the vague edge of the mile-wide barracks, which reminded him of a prisoner of war camp. The people were swarming, but there wasn’t much in the way of direction.
Dan said, “Where do we need to frighten ‘em?”
“Frighten?” Tane echoed.
“Only way we can evac ‘em is to get them up high. And I don’t have a bullhorn. Or a clue where the PA system is controlled from. Do you?”
“No, but…”
“Asian Mister— Harpal, you read? I need a route up to our LZ that the inmates can manage.”
“Not above the dam?” Harpal said.
“Just high enough so they don’t get washed away. You do that?”
“Sure, one minute.”
“Bridget, I’m switching channels,” Jules said, tapping the bud twice. He waited a moment. “You there?”
“Yes, and I have what you need.” Bridget lacked the usual spark of excitement present whenever she worked out a code or deciphered a hieroglyph. This was too important, not a mystery, not a treasure trove, but life and death for millions. “Are you with Gilim?”
“Not yet.”
The path spiraled, and Jules mainta
ined a line of sight on Gilim, a single twist leading to an outcrop on the western hillside, a clear run to a helicopter pad that—when Jules scanned the dam looming hundreds of feet above—would have been hidden from Harpal’s view. No way to tell it was there.
On the pad, a sleek helicopter warmed up, with the five goons pushing the executive toward it. Ah Dae-Sung ran backwards, his submachine gun’s stock mounted on his shoulder, probably wishing he’d opted for something heavier—perhaps a grenade launcher. Yet, LORI’s one advantage on this mission was the hubris displayed by their enemy, an assumed superiority in all areas of life. Be it militarily or political, moral or philosophical, it was going to be their downfall.
The squad of men lined up, forming a last defense at the perimeter of the rotor wash. Dae-Sung ushered his boss toward the helicopter with the whining engines, its rotor speeding up for takeoff. The tower-led machine guns had given them less time than expected.
If they killed Gilim, though, there’d be nothing to mitigate the shield’s critical mass. If the Executive got away, there’d be nothing to stop him activating it remotely, the controls being mobile rather than engineered into a panel.
If Jules allowed Gilim to kill the Executive, the dam would blow, and trigger a chain reaction stretching across the globe.
Perhaps he’d grown inured to the violence, to the carnage, but as Gilim tore into the goons, who must surely have known they were giving up their lives for a few seconds’ grace, Jules felt nothing. He viewed it with the same cold detachment as calculating a jump between buildings, the angle of a throwing knife, or the pressure required to snap a lock. It was a matter of timing.
And the men had slowed the rampaging giant enough for Jules to overtake. To ignore the bone-crunching skirmish between Gilim and five under-prepared bodyguards as they used their pistols to defend themselves. This time, Jules succeeded, running up the incline to their left, like a cyclist zipping up the steepest part of an indoor track, and tapped a reserve of energy to sprint on, taking Ah Dae-Sung by surprise.
He launched himself at the commander who was concentrating on Gilim’s position, disarming him with a swift over-rotation before unleashing a furious volley of elbows, knees, and fists. Executive Ryom staggered on toward the helicopter, but as Jules fought with Dae-Sung, Gilim had finished with the last stand of goons, and hurtled forward.
Dae-Sung pulled a knife, which Jules parried. He gripped the commander’s forearm, missing his chance to apply a lock on the joint, his opponent too experienced despite the sudden beating Jules had dished out, and went for a sweep of the leg. Dae-Sung stepped over it, but that wasn’t Jules’s intent. Jules instead held the man up, levered him over, and extended one fist to the sky.
The speeding rotor lopped off his hand and the knife and limb sailed high overhead and away to safety.
Jules threw the stunned Dae-Sung to the ground and ran after Ryom. “Move to your left!”
The Executive glared back at Jules, then boggle eyed as Gilim thundered towards them. The rotor blade, although plenty to slice through Dae-Sung’s wrist, was not quite at full speed, and stood no chance against the giant’s super-hard muscle.
Jules—perhaps having retained some measure of what he’d witnessed in Kainga Pukepuke—dropped his head, ran as fast as he could at Ryom, and slammed into his waist. He wrapped an arm around the man’s thighs, hoisted him up, and continued charging aside.
The rotor cut into Gilim, breaking skin as the bullets had, but shattered at the stem. The engine burst out in smoke. A squall of gears and cranks and a hundred moving parts filled the air, and the helicopter’s tail spun, propelling it sideways. It lifted off the ground a few inches, whipped around into Gilim, who punched the main body. This sent it hurtling over the platform’s edge, tipping end over end, before exploding in a massive, orange fireball.
Harpal came good, issuing instructions which Dan trusted he’d based on more than a hunch. With the residential sector set out in a grid, bending to the contours of the land, he and Tane placed themselves at points that plotted two stages of a curve. He imagined the line started at the corner where the dam met the mountainside, arcing over to the bottom of the road that wound up to the very top.
“Herd them up that path,” Harpal said. “I’ll redirect them to the dump.”
“Let’s hope it’s just a precaution.” Tane took off toward the outer position, ignored by the handful of prisoners milling aimlessly around.
Dan’s experience was much the same, following Harpal’s directions toward the coordinates closer to the dam, until he found himself at a huge water butt where three men and a woman queued with metal pots. All four were wearing filthy overalls and although each huddled a blanket around them, they were rail thin and shaking. They saw his gun, and all averted their eyes.
“No, no, it’s okay,” Dan said, pointing down the lane toward the access road. “That way. You have to leave.”
No one spoke.
Dan jabbed his finger harder and spoke more slowly. “Go. You. Have. To. Go.”
Because intoning words helps translate them, right?
No, dumbass. It doesn’t.
“Tane, how do I tell these people to run for their lives?”
“You can’t learn Korean that way,” Tane replied.
“Just give it to me. I’ll say it. One word at a time.”
Tane did so, and Dan repeated it.
“Salgo. Sipdam…ye…on.” He pointed again. This time the people took notice. “Jin…ibloleul. Dallyeo.”
“That was atrocious,” Tane said. “But I guess it’d have gotten the gist across.”
While Dan thought he’d rocked the line, the men and woman bore the same expression—part confusion, part fear. A Caucasian man stuttering words at them in the middle of the night. Why wouldn’t they believe him?
“Okay, screw this.” Dan jogged a few yards away, set his carbine to single shots, and fired into the floor near their feet.
They jumped, then huddled together.
“No, you idiots.” Dan pointed yet again at the route he wanted them to take. “Run. Leave!” He fired again into the mud nearby.
This time, they got the message and—again, as a huddled mass—hobbled along the row in the right direction.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Dan said, resuming his path to where he needed to be.
“They ducked into a different barracks,” Harpal said. “They’re hiding from you.”
“Damn it, don’t these people want to be saved?”
“They’re conditioned to behave,” Tane put in. “Even when a big brave ‘Meri-cun shows up to deliver some freedom.”
“I suppose the crusading Kiwi’s had better luck?” Dan replied. “Hey, Crusading Kiwi is a really cool call sign.”
“I got a handful heading the right way. But it’s not enough. We can’t reach everyone.”
“Well, give me a couple of minutes. I got an idea.” Dan sped up his jog, eager to put his plan into action. It was going to work, for sure.
Jules and Ryom untangled themselves from one another. The Korean was not a fighting man. He opened his shirt to reveal the wires attached to his chest, then pointed to his watch. The only surprise to Jules was that the wires appeared to be surgically embedded in his skin.
Can’t transfer them to someone else.
“Make your animal stop,” the Executive said.
Gilim lay on his side, propping himself up on one fist. Although the blade hadn’t cut him in half, it had severely wounded him. Worse than the guns from the prison yard. And now here was Jules, standing between Gilim and the man he clearly saw as a mortal enemy. As the one responsible for all his hurt, his loss. That was why he leaned forward, poised to strike at Jules, the protector of the man Gilim simply had to kill.
“Ready, Bridget,” Jules said. “Any time now.”
She relayed what he needed. What, deep down, he didn’t want to give out, didn’t want to do, but there was little choice. At the same time, he kne
w it was right. His core instinct—to preserve even the worst of human life—bloomed within him. It made his chest warm and his limbs relax. This was what made him… him. How he’d lived well for so long, how he’d contributed to the Lost Origins cause. Denying it, forcing it away, and living a life of other people’s rules and regulations. Be it society’s norms of friendly interaction or the NYPD’s endless laws and procedures, he was never happier, never more fulfilled than following his own path. And Bridget had helped him find that path, as she helped him find it now.
Jules repeated the guttural series of syllables transmitted into his earpiece.
Gilim froze. His massive brow wrinkled and his ear twitched.
“Not quite like that,” Bridget said. “Elongate the sound. Grrrrrff. Not grrff. Listen again.”
Jules held up a palm to Gilim, a universal gesture for wait a minute, and concentrated on the recorded huffs and grunts that Bridget had determined meant the words he needed to say. And it wasn’t as dumb as it had sounded back at their home. The giants were descended from the same common ancestor as humans, shared much in the genes, including the vocal range, but lacked the capacity for retaining alpha-numerical language the way homo sapiens did.
“The intonation is important, too,” she added.
Jules repeated the longer grunt, gesturing to Executive Ryom, cowering on the ground.
Must help, Jules was telling Gilim. Or trying to. Many dead.
“Try ‘friend’,” Bridget said, and played another sound. “Put a fist on your chest when you say it.”
Jules repeated the short, low snuff of a noise and made the gesture as directed.
Gilim lifted his injured arm, a fist to his own chest, and said the same thing to Jules. Then he turned the fist over and made a louder, throatier sound, his eyes narrowed toward Executive Ryom.
“I’m guessing that means the opposite of friend,” Jules said.
Ah Dae-Sung remained with them, too, dragging himself across the platform with the helicopter debris strewn about. He’d used a belt as a tourniquet but was still bleeding. He was making for a gun. Still, here, at the end, he had to do his duty. Even if it doomed them all.