Fire

by Jim Heskett

  Hamon didn't experience any of that now, but it didn't matter. The king needed to die, regardless of how it felt. This wasn’t over until the king’s sparkling eyes turned blank and his chest no longer rose and fell.

  Hamon let the sad man in the expensive clothes beg for his life for a few more seconds, and then Hamon drove the knife into his heart. Slowly, grinding it in all the way to the hilt.

  King Nichol’s eyes opened wide. He gasped, tears streaming down his face.

  And although Hamon couldn't speak, he sent his thoughts out into the room. He thought about all of the men and women Nichol had killed in pursuit of turning the kingdom into a machine for slavery. All of the people he had used and abused in the name of power.

  Hamon knew this one death wouldn’t equal justice for them, but it was something.

  A sense of completion.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The tear gas burned Yorick’s eyes and lungs. The cloud had dispersed throughout the room. He could see through it now, hazy and white, but his eyes were barely open. Tears cascaded down his face, and if he tried to take in a full breath, it came out as a violent cough.

  But, no one was shooting at him. There were no sounds of boots shuffling along the floor. When he could force his eyes open, he didn’t see or sense any immediate danger.

  Yorick found himself prone, and he pushed his hands against the floor to gain a little elevation. Even that small effort made his head throb.

  After several blinks, the room came into focus. The video screen on the wall showed the software install progress at 91%. Green bar ticking along left to right, slowly coloring the remainder of the blank space.

  He rose to his knees, and through his bleary and wet vision, he saw Rosia, two meters away on the floor, face down. Not moving. Her mouth agape, with drool leaking out of her bluish lips.

  “No,” he said, and when he tried to take a breath to call out to her, his lungs seized, and a round of coughs sent him back to the floor.

  That’s when he saw a pair of familiar boots strut into the room. Each step deliberate, thumping on the floor in intervals like a drum beat. Yorick looked up to see wet pants and a wet shirt.

  “Well, well,” Diego said, pistol in his hand. “That’s the second time you made the mistake of thinking I was dead.” He stopped short of Yorick and hunkered down, holding the pistol across his knee. Wet hair hanging down in strings in front of his face, the scar on his cheek shiny. “When I was fighting the current in the creek, I thought: what was your goal? Why were you doing all of this? And, as I pulled myself up onto the bank, it came to me. You stole a control chip from the plantación, didn’t you? You found some way to reprogram it to do… something with it. I haven’t figured that part out yet, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever you meant to do, you’re not going to do it now, little brother.”

  Diego squinted over at the monitor, and the software update bar sat at 97%. A grin cracked his face.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, then disappeared from view. Yorick tried to rise to his feet again, but he felt a debilitating weight pressing on him. His body wanted to shut down. He slumped, seated, unable to move. Lungs scratchy, as if filled with bits of broken glass. There were guns on the desk, but he didn’t know if he could lift his arms to grab one.

  He looked up at the monitor, and the bar stopped at 99%. It changed, and now read:

  INSTALL INTERRUPTED ON SERVER A001

  His eyes fell down to Rosia. She was still not moving. “Wake up,” he croaked. “Please, wake up. Don’t leave me, Rose. You can’t leave now.”

  Diego strolled back into the room, the control chip resting in his palm. He bounced it up and down a few times, catching it each time and wiggling his hand to make it bounce. Finally, he held it up to the light. “This little thing. I always wondered what they could do, outside of powering the suits. I figured there had to be another purpose for them since Wybert always kept such a close eye on his stock. It’s not like he’d ever tell us, but it’s definitely something important. That’s for sure.”

  Yorick could hear voices out in the hallway now, but it didn’t matter anymore. Diego came to a stop between Rosia and Yorick, and he pointed the pistol down at Yorick’s face. “Talk to me, guerrero. What were you planning to do with this? Consider it your last act as a serf loyal to King Nichol to explain it to me.”

  Yorick sat back. Defeated. He heaved a breath, trying to stay upright. A little of his strength had returned, but it didn’t matter now. In the time it would take him to reach for a weapon on the desk, Diego could put five bullets in his brain.

  “You not going to talk, serf?”

  Yorick pressed his lips together and breathed. Each time, deeper and deeper. For what it was worth, his head cleared a little. Not strong enough to rise up and take on Diego, but maybe if he could sit here for another minute, he might get his strength back.

  Diego sighed. “If that’s how you want it.” He pulled back the slide on his pistol and extended his arm, the barrel of the gun mere centimeters from Yorick’s temple. “It’s been a long time getting to this, but it was always inevitable, wasn’t it?”

  Yorick breathed, resigned to his fate. After everything, Diego had won. And it didn’t matter any longer. Just as Rosia had said, without her, any victory would be hollow. Empty.

  Yorick looked up at his older brother, eyes barely open. Scratchy breaths wheezed in and out of his lungs.

  Diego grinned. “You don’t have to answer. I know how you feel.”

  His finger wrapped around the trigger and Yorick braced himself for the shot.

  Then, Rosia’s eyes opened. Her hand shot out and grabbed Diego by the ankle. She jerked, pulling him backward. Diego went flying, arms pinwheeling, his pistol and the chip sailing into the air. He landed on his back.

  Yorick sucked in a breath, even though it made his lungs burn. Time to go. Reach deep inside himself and extract a strength reserve he didn’t know he had. Yorick snatched his pistol from on top of the desk and pointed it at Diego.

  The long-haired man tried to sit up, and for a brief second, their eyes met. At that moment, Yorick remembered him. Not from the plantación, but from before. Long before. From when he’d been a little kid before his parents sold him. Franco and Diego, brothers who barely knew each other. Who had only even met a handful of times in their lives.

  Diego tried to open his mouth.

  Yorick pulled the trigger. The bullet entered Diego’s left eye and exited the back of his skull. He slumped backward, falling on top of Rosia. He went silent instantly, a lump of dead flesh weighing her down. She cried out, trying to push him away.

  Yorick crawled across the floor and used his meager strength to drag Diego’s dead body onto the floor. Yorick swooned from the exertion. He collapsed alongside her, his chest burning. Agonizing breaths whooshed into his lungs. Lightheaded, his skin tingling, face flushed with the rush of oxygen.

  Rosia shuffled back and wiped the blood from her face. Ten seconds passed in silence, then another ten. Her breaths came a little more steady now, and Yorick also found he could expand his lungs without coughing.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said, wheezing, as he pushed himself into a sit.

  She coughed a few times but managed a smile. Then, she held out her open palm, beckoning him. “I’m okay. Where is the chip? We still have to hurry.”

  Yorick hunted around until he saw it on the floor, under the desk. He snatched it and dropped it in her hand.

  “I’ll take care of this,” she whispered. She leaned forward and kissed him, her eyes bloodshot and dim. “Watch the door. More are probably coming.”

  She staggered to her feet and left for the servers.

  Voices came from the hallway. Yorick reloaded the pistols and the rifles, then he did the same for Rosia’s on her side of the desk. A meter away, Diego’s limp body leaked blood onto the tiled floor. The hair covered his face, splayed out like black spider legs. His clothes wet with creek water hung on hi
s frame.

  The voices in the hallway grew louder.

  The video screen brightened, and it showed 99%. A moment later, it flicked over to 100%.

  INSTALL COMPLETE ON SERVER A001

  Nothing immediately changed, and Yorick wouldn’t have had time to appreciate it, anyway. A new wave of at least ten soldados marched down the hall, rifles pointed into their room.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Hamon drew in a breath as his eyes opened. His chest could barely rise, and breaths came out as labored wheezes. Eyes fluttering, limbs as heavy as tree trunks. Blood from the bullet wound in his chest still flowed. A red blanket marked the front of his shirt, all the way down to his waist.

  He was seated on the softest and most plush carpet underneath him he had ever experienced. His brain told him to lie down and let the plush carpet take him back to slumber. Nichol’s bedroom. He had been in here once before, serving at the pleasure of the king.

  Then, he realized the king was sitting across from him. Dead. Knife stuck deep in him, blood cascaded down to the floor. His eyes open, fixed on the ceiling. Mouth agape, drool on his chin. He looked pathetic. This pleased Hamon, in the sad and sickening way that only a man on a mission for revenge could experience.

  The king was dead. After all of it, Hamon had succeeded.

  But he still had work to do. Yorick and Rosia needed help if they hadn’t died already. Maybe they were in the server room, still trying to install the virus. They could probably use assistance.

  He tried to rise to his feet, and when he put his hand on the floor to push, he experienced a painful reminder of his other injury. Blood had turned his shirt sleeve red.

  Hamon used his good arm to push himself up. When he stood, he swooned. Tilting back and forth on his feet like a top at the end of its spin. But, his hand still worked. He could still fire a gun.

  If he could get to his friends, he could still be useful.

  Hamon staggered out of the bedroom and set his sights on the front door. On the way, he caught sight of the window. Outside, on the ground level, the soldados and the revolutionaries still fought. He watched a grenade immobilize one of the king’s tanks.

  Except, the king was dead, so who now owned the tanks? Nichol had always been too paranoid to name a successor, for fear that person would assassinate him. There was a slew of people in his government who were under him, but no clear number two. Unless these Frenchie revolutionaries had a solid plan, there would be a power struggle. More blood would spill until things stabilized.

  Hamon supposed it didn’t matter. He had survival to worry about. Helping his friends. All of them leaving this building alive.

  His feet carried him toward the door, but each step grew harder. More labored. Each time he set a foot down, he didn’t know if he could pick it up again.

  When he neared a desk with a computer, he sat. Needed a minute of rest before making the remainder of the journey to the door. He wouldn’t be much help to Yorick and Rosia if he collapsed in the stairwell on the way down.

  And then, he looked down at the wound in his chest. Blood still rushing out. Hamon had to come to an unpleasant conclusion about his current situation. He wouldn’t much help to anyone in another minute or two.

  “No,” he said, his voice gravelly and thick, barely a whisper. “You don’t give up yet.”

  His knee bumped against the side of the desk when he shifted in the chair, and the computer monitor came to life. Security camera footage.

  First, it showed a feed from a camera in the lobby on the ground level. There were no more soldados. Only dozens of revolutionaries streaming through, headed for the stairs and elevators.

  He tapped the right arrow key, and the feed changed. The next showed an exterior view from high up. A shot of the east side of the building. There, a crew of sun worshippers had lined up a row of soldados against the exterior of a building. They raised their rifles and shot the soldados dead. Bullet holes and their blood marked the brick wall when their corpses crumpled.

  Hamon coughed, and his ears rang. His vision pulsed. Hands heavy, eyelids trying to slam shut. His body begged him to give up, to slump to the floor and wait for death.

  He tapped the arrow key again, and now he could see the server room. First, his sleepy eyes landed on the video screen in the background, which showed the virus install progress at 100%.

  They’d done it. They’d spread the virus to open all the plantación gates. He tried to open his mouth again to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t draw enough breath to speak.

  Next, he noticed Yorick and Rosia, taking cover behind a desk while an onslaught of soldados streamed into the room. They were fighting them back, but Hamon tapped the arrow button again to change the view to the hallway. There were fifty or sixty soldados out there, trying to get in.

  Enough to kill them a hundred times over.

  Yorick and Rosia wouldn’t last long against that force. Hamon knew he needed to get down there to help. But, he also knew there was no way he would ever rise from this chair. He’d been shot in the chest. A mortal wound. A trail of blood marked his passage from the bedroom to here. He would die in this chair, in a matter of minutes. Maybe not even that long.

  He changed the view back to the server room and noted text along the bottom of the computer screen.

  1 - server room surveillance on/off

  2 - server room heating/air-con on/off

  3 - access server room door controls

  He raised an eyebrow at the text. A tired and bloody finger tapped the number 3 on the keyboard. The screen changed to show a new row of controls.

  1 - lock/unlock front door

  2 - lock/unlock back passage

  Back passage?

  Locking the front door wouldn’t do them any good. It was off the hinges, in pieces inside the room. Hamon leaned forward and tapped the 2 key. A moment later, he saw Rosia turn her head toward the back of the server room. They’d heard it or noticed it somehow. This could work.

  A secret way out. The back passage.

  Go, he mouthed, because he couldn’t speak.

  Before he slipped into unconsciousness, Hamon smiled. They had a way out.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Yorick heard it, somehow. Above the deafening sound of the soldado’s guns, he heard a buzz and a click come from the server room, fifteen meters behind them. Rosia turned her head around in that direction.

  “There’s a door!” she said. “I can see it from here.”

  “Go first. I’ll cover you.”

  She gave him a nod and then dropped down. She spun around and crawled toward the server area of the room. Shifting back and forth, bits of ceiling tile cracking and falling on her as bullets pelted the room.

  Aside from the ammo in his current magazine, Yorick had one spare. No more rounds for the pistol. He had a few seconds of cover fire left, then nothing. Gritting his teeth, he sprayed bullets in an arc toward the door. He ducked back down to load in the last mag, and then popped up.

  An idea struck. He raised the rifle and shot at the ceiling above the heads of the soldados hunkered down in the doorway. Bits of ceiling tile cracked and descended, a shower of plaster and metal. It worked. The ones in front turned away, shielding their eyes from the rain of detritus.

  Yorick had to take his chance.

  He sprang to his feet and ran with everything he had in him. Lungs burning, head pounding. By the time he’d reached the adjoining server room, he had found Rosia, five meters ahead, still crawling. Bullets cracked the servers around them. One of the main servers had gone dark, destroyed by the soldados.

  But that didn’t matter now. The virus had been uploaded, and, as far as Yorick knew, spread out to every plantación in Nichol’s kingdom to force all of their gates open.

  They had won.

  Yorick pulled Rosia to her feet and pointed her toward the open door at the back of the room. A fake server rack, cracked open a few centimeters. A secret way out
.

  They raced toward it, and he whipped the door back. He shoved Rosia inside it and then followed a moment later. The soldados were advancing, sprinting through the room. He could hear the boots and the implements on their uniforms shuffling as they ran. Yorick slammed the door closed.

  They found themselves in darkness, but Yorick felt around the door for a handle, then he cranked it up to lock the door. He jabbed his rifle under the door handle to wedge it in and buy them a few extra seconds.

  His eyes adjusted a little, and he could see they were at one end of a long hallway. Tiny orange running lights near their feet to guide the way to some unknown destination. “Let’s move,” he said. “I don’t know if this will hold for more than a few seconds.”

  She nodded and took his hand as they jogged down the hallway. After a few seconds, they came to a door. They paused, and Rosia put her ear up against it. “Stairs. I think it’s stairs on the other side of this door. No gunfire, at least.”

  She reached out to open the door, but he grabbed her hand. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the white bandannas Alejandro had given them. He slipped one on his head and gave the other to Rosia. Then, he held her gaze for a few seconds, both of them trying to catch their breath.

  “We can do this,” he said.

  She nodded at him. “We’re almost there.”

  Now properly dressed, she squeezed his hand and then opened the door. Down the stairs, out onto the ground floor. Feeling like every step was a bounce on a cloud. Along a hallway, back into the giant room leading out to the loading dock. Out the same door they had come in, to the streets of the First City, to a war past the turning point, to a whole new world.