by A D Davies
“Just as I’d got used to the place,” Harpal muttered.
He’d listened as Jules explained what he was doing, but as the power below ramped up, the interference grew, and he had a better view of the prison from here. To get out, he had to scale the rickety bamboo ladder, which was, oddly, the most stable aspect of the platform.
Up one level, he held tight to a vertical steel pole on the outside to keep from throwing his stomach into the crossbar.
The first explosive detonated on the far side, popping a clump of brickwork like a champagne cork. Water discharged as powerful as a fire hose, blasting far and long, raining down on the gulag below.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
Harpal shoved back and took the next ladder even faster, knowing they’d failed to stop the chain reaction. The prisoners had risen up, taken their masters to task, and passed judgment. Now they were running—about time—from the danger of the collapsing dam.
The scaffold beside the first booby trap collapsed and plunged down faster than the new waterfall. A second later, the next one blew, then the next, and—finally—the one right below Harpal.
He was at the top. His fingers clutched the wall’s lip with his fingertips. And the floor fell away.
With morbid fascination, he twisted to watch as the structure practically folded in on itself before spidering out as it tumbled down.
He dug his toes into the rough face and pushed upward, pulling and straining, wishing he’d done more pull-ups during his downtime. Yet, with his muscles aching and his fingers raw, he swung a leg up and rolled to safety.
Only, as he gathered his breath and looked over the edge, he saw what he’d feared most.
Thousands of gallons of water sprayed hundreds of feet, drenching the population, four rivers already forming, washing away anything not nailed down. Panic drove the hundreds of humans away from the dam, but all that stood between them and death was Dan, Tane, and some very frantic gestures, instructing them the right way.
Harpal just hoped getting enough of them going in the right direction would mean the majority followed them up the path before it was too late.
Was it too late already? Cracks spidered up from the four holes and more masonry burst free, causing more hazards.
Harpal didn’t even have time to curse. He leaped up and ran. Arms pumping, the ground beneath his feet swaying. He was running on a surfboard, floating on a tumultuous sea.
The end was in sight, the gate he arrived through. But all below were set to perish. They’d stabilized the shields, avoided World War III but failed the inmates, the people who’d suffered directly at the hands of a power-mad—
A more powerful jerk of the floor sent Harpal flying. Mere yards from the end, from the salvation of powering up the hillside above the water level, he splayed forward onto his stomach, hitting his chin on the concrete.
He wasn’t giving up, though. And even as the walkway pitched sideways, the superstructure collapsing beneath him, he clutched the rail and stumbled onward. A vain hope but hope all the same.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Harpal caught a flash. A big one. And the results of Jules’s manipulation became visible.
Instead of expanding up into the ionosphere and dropping like a faulty umbrella to crush a country at the border, a controlled, crystallized sheet of light burst out of the ground at the dam’s base and expanded directly upwards, past Harpal, and over the reservoir’s level. It curled over him like fingers closing into a fist but stopped short of balling fully and crushing all in its grasp.
Harpal made it to the guard station, vaulted the fence, and staggered to a halt. As much as his body called to him to rest, he couldn’t simply drop and close his eyes. He had to see what the shield was doing.
The crystal-colored energy radiated from the shields embedded in the ground, rising upward, more a frozen wave than a half-fist. It sealed against the two sides of the valley, ascended over the reservoir’s former level, and caught the tons of bricks, mortar, and water pressing from behind. The dam had folded and collapsed like Lego and would have crushed everything below without the control generated from the orb and the giant’s stabilizing DNA.
And, of course, Jules, doing what he does.
“Whoa, guys, this is…” He then saw the stutter. The blip in the shimmering force blanketing the area.
“It’s temporary,” Dan said over comms. “But we’re getting there.”
Sure enough, through the undulating light of the Guardians’ great feat, of the Witnesses’ genius in uniting the two forms of energy, the barrier held, and the people below funneled to the west. A human caravan flowed upwards, out of their prison, a stream of injured and weak people, helping one another, rising from hell to safety.
Tane called it in. “All clear, people. Mission accomplished.”
No missiles fell. Maintaining communication with Charlie, Bridget and Prihya meant Jules knew he’d been successful, the Action Dudes up top signaling that the water had stalled, and the inmates were climbing to safety.
He maintained his vigil over the machine, though, his hands sunk deep into the orb, covering the Aradia and Ruby Rock bangles.
Gilim’s chamber remained iced over. Movement inside had halted.
“I can’t keep this thing here forever,” he said.
“The valley can take the flood,” Prihya replied. “Just not all at once. Can you reduce the shield instead of crashing it down outright?”
Jules didn’t know where he ended and the orb began. He was bonded to it. It flowed through him and him through it but voicing that would make him sound insane. He had complete control over it. And what Prihya said made sense. Executive Ryom dammed a river, so returning it to its natural state would wash away the gulag and establish a new river. But dumping millions of tons of water through the tight aperture of this corner of the valley, would create a tidal wave that would destroy any towns or villages close to the former route.
It should have been hard. Should have been complicated. Were it designed by modern man, it would have been password protected, probably a two-stage authorization setup. Not here. Not melding person with object, fusing molecules and consciousness.
Here, he just did it.
“Are the guys clear?” he asked.
“It’s as clear as it can be,” Bridget said. “Harpal says he can’t see any more movement.”
Charlie came on the line. “Tane and Dan are following the last of the evacuees. It’s okay.”
“Are you sure you know how?” Prihya asked.
Jules resisted a facetious reply, his contact with the network robbing him of any sense of ego, petty irritants, and a need to shift all discussion directly to the point. He liked this. A calmness. Peace he’d never known before.
“Jules?” Bridget said.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“You zoned out there.”
“I did?”
“For, like, half a minute. Are you okay?”
“This is… it’s like swimming for my brain.” Jules wanted to float, to see everything these spherical wonders had seen. To ask it everything. He was sure it would reply, too. He needed to ask—
“Are you high?” Charlie asked harshly.
Way harsh, in Jules’s opinion. Plus, he’d never been high, so wouldn’t know what it felt like. Faintly drunk, yes, but he hadn’t enjoyed that. He enjoyed this, though.
“I am part of the universe,” Jules explained. “I’m flowing into it, and back out, and it’s part of me. The shields are a conduit, and—”
“He is so high,” Prihya said. “Jules. Snap out of it. Concentrate. You have to lower the energy shield and get Gilim out of the chamber before he dies.”
“Dies?”
A spike drove through Jules, from his chest to his brain.
Yes, Gilim. The ice compensated for the heat, and the corrupted DNA that that been grafted to his original race’s genome had made it more difficult to force the machine to operational capacity. He was
dying before from the heat and power surging through him, and now he was dying from the cold.
“I can’t do it slowly and save Gilim,” Jules said, dredging his mind up, out of the water. “I gotta cut it out dead.”
Bridget spoke fast, computer keys clacking in the background. “Wait, Jules, if you do that…”
“Not if.” Jules retracted his hands and stepped on the abort button. “It’s done.”
Immediately, the lights went out and the generators kicked in with the emergency backups. Gilim’s compartment popped open, steaming as freezing air met room temperature. Gilim, frosted over, opened his mouth, and groaned. His fingers opened as he saw Jules coming toward him.
Jules used his sign language and the grunt he’d picked up to say, “Wait.”
He climbed up and disconnected the cables at the top. No power. It was now separated from the orb, which returned to its blackened state.
“Okay.” Jules stayed up there, but beckoned Gilim out.
The giant moved stiffly, shivering, his entire body giving off steam. He gazed up at Jules, who mimed an instruction. Gilim thought about it, then gripped the chamber.
“Holy crap, Jules,” Bridget said. “What did you do?”
Dan raced up the hillside. Although the road hairpinned around back and forth like the Hollywood Hills, it was still steep, and his lungs burned with the effort. It was a relief, though, an end to all they’d been through. Yet, it wasn’t the millions of lives saved from an unnecessary war that lifted his spirits, it was the ones he could put a face to. Those liberated from the horrific prison below, fleeing under the guardianship of the shield of Achilles.
Yeah, okay, he vowed never to say anything that lame out loud.
But it was spectacular. The crystal-like barrier translucent, almost transparent, with diamonds glittering and refracting the moonlight, and—
Then it wasn’t there anymore. Nothing to keep the waters at bay.
“Bridget, the shield’s down!” He sped up. “Tane, get a move on!”
Although they were nearly at the right level, there was no telling how hard that torrent would hit, or what it’d do to the land it crashed into.
They needed to get higher.
The downside of lightning-quick calculations and ignoring the prattling of other people worried about an outcome which he’d already ascertained was a dead cert, was that sometimes the pieces didn’t fall into place as quickly as Jules would like.
As the water pounded down from above, crashing through the valley, the circular underground subdivision would never withstand such pressure.
“Jules?” came another voice. He thought it was Charlie, but now he’d disconnected from the Witnesses’ grid, they were relying on regular comms. And that wasn’t enough.
“Stand by,” Jules said.
A broken response replied, indecipherable as a thousand cannonballs rained down above them. The bedrock, as strong as it was, couldn’t possibly hold it back. The room shook so violently, Jules couldn’t stay on his feet. Gilim kneeled on all fours.
“NO!” Jules cried. He slapped the machine, kicked the chamber. “This! Do as I said. Watch!”
But it was too late. Jules heard it first, then felt the shock wave, the damp in the air. The water had penetrated the installation. A wall of it blasted by the anteroom, torrents exploded out of both the smaller door and the double-wide corridor, drenching all.
At least I saw it all working as it was supposed to. At least I saw the truth.
Then the lights went out, and Jules could die… at peace with himself at last.
Dan stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Tane, watching as the enormous wall of concrete disintegrated, and billions of tons of water expanded in seconds, dropping into the valley—partly a waterfall to rival Niagara, partly an upturned bathtub, spilling with nothing to hold it back.
The gulag’s population had spread out along the garbage dump, finding places to rest and gather together for warmth. Although it was overgrown thanks to nature’s partial revival, they would start a few fires shortly.
“Hey, what’s up, guys?” Harpal said, half-jogging toward them.
“Good, thanks.” Dan threw himself into bro-hug that lasted three seconds before both instigated the obligatory backslap that broke it up before returning to the view. “You?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He grinned. “You’ve been busy.”
“You can say that again, brah.” Tane stepped in and they shared a thumb-linked handshake before bumping shoulders. “Where’s your man? You see him come up?”
“I don’t think he’s coming,” Bridget said, her voice cracking with each word.
Dan felt his face stretch into disbelief. “What? He’s gotta come up, he’s—”
“The network went blank,” Charlie said. “Our orb here looks like a rock. It’s dead.”
Dan stared out over the cascading water. “But he let it all go.”
“He figured it out,” Bridget said. “Letting it go like that—he could get free, and… and…”
Charlie stepped in. “The dogleg half a kilometer down the valley will stem the mass for a few seconds. You saw it back up slightly.”
“Yeah, like a big wave coming back at us,” Tane said, describing the sudden rise in the surface.
“It reduces the power, slows the flow, before releasing it onward. None of us are experts here, but we guess it’s taken the sting out of the volume of water. It’ll settle down into a major flow instead of a massive flash flood.”
“What about Jules?” Harpal said. “And our giant friend?”
No answer.
“Charlie?” Dan said. “Are you there? Bridget?”
“He couldn’t get out,” Toby said somberly. “There was no way for him to escape.”
Dan closed his eyes. He’d lost comrades before. Brothers-in-arms. Too many to think about. Some he was close with, others less so. But even those he chose not to joke around with or drink with during downtime, those he avoided because he found them objectionable, he respected their sacrifices.
This was different.
He opened his eyes to watch the waters churn. Another surge reversed track having struck the valley wall half a click downstream and met the current flowing forward. A whirlpool formed, swirling as the opposing forces battered one another, then merged, before dispersing.
“What’s that noise?” Harpal asked.
Dan listened, tuning his ears beyond the crashing of waves and the chatter of survivors.
Whump-whump-whump-whump.
“Helicopters,” Tane said.
Engine mufflers, rotors, overlapping reverberations.
“More than one,” Dan said. “And it’s gunships. Everybody down!”
Harpal just wanted to rest. Was that too much to ask? First, he got blown off course, then he hung off the edge of a dam on the world’s worst building site, then had to climb back up before it disintegrated, before finally negotiating the collapsing structure itself.
“Gunships now?” he moaned, swinging to position the gun he’d stashed on his back.
Tane and Dan prepped in the same way, although ammo was low, and there was nothing to stop the North Korean authorities from lighting them all up before razing their haven to the ground.
“Wait,” Bridget said. “Don’t do anything.”
“Huh?” Dan was checking the sky with his binoculars. “We gotta—”
“It’s the Chinese,” Toby said. “Bridget asked her father to put her in touch with someone in the government. They must have got through.”
Four WZ-10 medium attack helicopters rounded the bend up ahead, followed by a massive transport helo. It was at least a fifteen tonner, probably a new Z-8L—almost the length of a public swimming pool, it’d house dozens of people. The most injured, the most in need. Even from this distance, as it rose above the scene, the wash blew like a hurricane.
The inmates scattered again, but Tane waved his arms and shouted in Korean, plainly saying it was fine, it wa
s a rescue.
The war-machine helicopters circled, likely scanning the territory for threats, while the Z-8L transporter heaved itself around for another pass. Harpal expected them to hover, for medical personnel or military to descend and secure the area, but instead it continued out, over the roiling remnants of the water draining from its former status as a lake.
The levels kept going up and down, the dogleg Charlie spoke of returning the flow to meet the main volume emptying into it, opposing currents forming whirlpools.
And it was over one of these whirlpools that the massive Z-8L descended. A cable and harness dropped fast, along with two people on their separate lines.
“What the hell are they doing?” Dan asked, still not relaxed as he lifted his binoculars again. He and Tane clearly weren’t convinced the Chinese gunships were friendly, despite Toby’s assurances.
“Looks like they’re trying to…” Harpal took Dan’s binoculars and sought out the helicopter’s target.
Dan was already laughing. He slapped Harpal on the back.
There was something floating in the water. Churning in the circular current, a huge metal box with a clear front bobbed like a cork. It spun on its vertical axis, only halting when one of the rescuers attached a line.
“What is that thing?” Harpal said, lowering the glasses.
“That,” Tane said, “is an airtight wardrobe designed to withstand the pressure of an indestructible energy weapon, capable of housing something the size of a giant.”
The people on the lines secured the straps from the third cable to the rectangular cuboid, set it horizontal, and the helicopter rose. The “wardrobe’s” door opened, and Gilim sat up inside.
He lurched to find himself up in the air, the container swaying violently and threatening to tip him out. Yet, just as suddenly, he calmed. Turned his head.
Harpal watched through the binoculars.
And Jules was there, in the flying vessel, holding the giant’s face in both hands. He placed his forehead against Gilim’s, and two enormous arms wrapped around Jules. Gilim’s eyes closed, and Jules slowly disengaged. He held on, wind billowing at him, and waved thanks to the two men on either side of him.