“You knew I’d come here,” I stated. “You knew I’d arrive alone, and you knew I’d have no way to escape.”
“Are you admitting defeat?” he said with a theatrical tone, mocking surprise. “Are you conceding that I, Sultan Darmaki, outsmarted the legendary Matthew Moxon?”
I replaced my goblet on the balcony’s railing and threw my hands up in surrender. “You got me, Sultan. I’m screwed. Any maybe I’m not so smart after all. I mean, let’s just assume that I knew you’d be inviting if I showed up to your palace. Arrogant, even. Maybe arrogant enough to reveal your plans and tip your hand.”
He raised his hand and gestured to his servant, who had been loitering inconspicuously for refills, and who now immediately scurried away. “Please,” he said offhandedly, “go on.”
“And assume that, just maybe, I figured out your powers. That you’re in tune with not only the elements, but with nature itself. Which means from the moment I stepped onto the terrace you’d be monitoring my pulse, pupil dilation, sweat glands – you can probably even hear my heart beating.”
“Very interesting, Mister Moxon. Continue.”
“And maybe,” I continued, leaning in a little closer, “knowing all of this, I realized that if someone showed up who wasn’t me, like some kind of ‘technological miracle’ that just looked like Matthew Moxon, I’d have to compensate for all of those abilities. I’d have to mimic the same characteristics of a human being so precisely that you’d never guess what I actually was. It would never even cross your mind, until...”
His arrogant smirk melted away, and the raging storm began to swirl once again. But this time it wasn’t just anger behind his eyes – it was fury.
“Right about now, I’m guessing.”
He lashed out and smashed my swarm robotics suit to pieces.
Back in Fortress 18 I stepped out of my virtual reality rig.
Chapter Fourteen
I splashed two handfuls of cold water on my face, massaging the heels of my palms into my eyes. Staring back at the confused, broken man in the bathroom mirror, I kept asking him the same question: how long until it happens for real?
Dying in virtual reality was more of a shock than I’d anticipated. I knew it was going to happen – that wasn’t the issue. When I’d sent London – my swarm robotics exoskeleton – into the Liwa Desert, I knew it wasn’t coming back. Thousands of miles away in the safety of Fortress 18, I controlled London with my VR rig, maneuvering it like a life-sized marionette. When the strings were cut and the suit was smashed to bits, the experience was painless, and, at the same time, all too real.
I felt nothing, though I was face-to-face with my attacker when he struck. Darmaki never blinked. It was the madness stirring behind his eyes that chilled me to my core. It was the way he lashed out; wild, violent, like a reflex more than a conscious decision. Intentional or not, his reaction sent me a message: there would be no hesitation. Not the next time. Before now he wanted me alive to use as leverage (he said as much during our brief but informative conversation) although now, the game had been changed. I was safe for the time being, but the next time he lashed out at me I wouldn’t be half a world away. And there wasn’t a suit of armor in existence strong enough to protect me anymore.
I blinked hard, dabbing a small cloth against my face. Glancing down at my com I noticed the time; I’d been standing here for more than half an hour, water running, leaning forward on the edge of the sink. My short term memory had been on the fritz lately, so much so that I rarely knew what time of day it was anymore. I was losing track of the little things, like where I’d put my medication, and what I’d asked my assistant to do for me just moments before. Suddenly I realized that I was running up against two separate (but equally dangerous) ticking clocks: would Darmaki hunt down me and my friends before I had the chance to neutralize him, or would my brain turn to oatmeal before I could figure out how I was going to stop the threat?
Four tiny raps at the door startled me.
“One second,” I shouted, clearing my throat. “Just finishing up in here.”
“Okay Mister Moxon,” Bethany replied. Her thick Jersey accent was unmistakable, even as the water ran from the sink below and the fan spun overhead. “Quick reminder: you called a meeting seventeen…wait, no – eighteen minutes ago. Everyone is waiting for you. So…”
“I said I’m finishing up,” I snapped back.
She never answered. I heard the clack of Bethany’s heels recede into the distance, and the hydraulic whoosh of my bedroom door shutting behind her.
When I’d arrived in the conference chamber everyone was already there. Gavin, clad in his suit and tie, sat next to Peyton, who’d opted to continue wearing her scrubs. They sat across from McGarrity, who was in a housecoat for some reason, and Brynja, who’d reverted to her old wardrobe (probably just because she knew it annoyed Peyton): ripped jean shorts over black leggings, knee-high boots, and a tattered black tank top that revealed a generous amount of midriff. Karin sat at the end of the table, knees pulled to her chest, engulfed in her oversized bomber jacket. As usual her eyes were glued to her com, though it was the first time I’d seen her without food in her hand since I’d met her.
I made my way to the head of the oval-shaped table and pressed my palms into the surface, triggering the transparent glass. It illuminated with an electric-blue hue, and the overhead lights began to dim.
“We have a problem,” I blurted out.
Among the long list of things that were not my specialty? Motivational speeches. Neither was tact.
“I love this plan already,” McGarrity said. He uncorked an annoying laugh before pulling a beer bottle from the deep pocket of his housecoat, twisting off the cap.
Peyton shot a disapproving glare across the table. “You’re drinking? Now?”
“So we can’t drink beer just because we’re in a conference?” he said, furrowing his brow. “What’s next – you’re going to tell me I can’t do coke, either?”
“You brought cocaine with you?” Gavin asked.
“Well not much. Just a couple of bumps to take the edge off. Why, you want some?”
“No!” Gavin shouted, throwing his hands up.
McGarrity took a sip from his bottle, looking Gavin up and down. “I dunno, man…I think you could use some.”
I sighed, letting my head sag. “Can we focus on the task, here?”
“Sure,” McGarrity said calmly, kicking his bare feet up on the edge of the table.
“Our timelines are tightening,” I explained. “Now that I confronted Darmaki he’ll move into phase two of his plan: he’s going to start exposing Moxon Tech as a hazard, and trying to replace it with his own solutions.”
“His superhuman security force will start protecting cities, not destroying them,” Peyton said.
“And his homemade rain clouds will replace your seeding technology,” Gavin added.
“Exactly,” I nodded. “And that’s when things get even more dangerous…he knows he can’t negotiate with me, so once his plan goes into effect, having me alive will become a liability. As well as everyone in this room.”
“He can’t find us here,” Peyton asked, her voice thin with panic. “We’re safe…right?”
“For now,” I assured her. “But we can’t stay here forever…and we can’t keep the employees here forever, either. Eventually they’ll want to return home – we can’t hold them hostage.”
Brynja threw her hands apart. “Well we can’t just sit on our asses and let your company crumble – all while this jackass builds a rep as some kind of messiah.”
“You’re right.” I swiped my hand across the table’s surface, bringing a satellite view into focus: it was his stronghold in the Liwa Desert. “We can’t just sit here…every minute we do nothing he fortifies his position and he comes closer to achieving his goal. So we’re going on the offensive.”
McGarrity spit out a stream of beer, splashing the table. “Are you saying we’re going to war again
st an entire army of superhumans?”
“More or less,” I shrugged.
He slapped his knee, blurting out another grating laugh. “Finally! This is the stage I’ve been waiting to perform on. And now I can show that big bronze bastard what I can really do.”
Judging from their expressions, the rest of the gang didn’t share his rampant enthusiasm.
Gavin stood, letting his white leather chair roll away behind him. “Let’s just say we do this,” he said plainly. “There’s just one little problem.” He reached out and touched the image of Darmaki’s fortress with both hands, swiping them apart until the rooftop came into focus. The satellite clearly showed twenty people on the terrace, and there were likely more hidden beneath the shaded ivy-covered latticework, standing out of view.
I nodded. “Yes, I’m aware that we’re outnumbered, Gav.”
“But we’ll have the element of surprise…” Brynja asked, eyebrows raised. “…right?”
“Nope.” I circled the desert with my finger, tracing a glowing red line around a wide radius. “According to the readings that London picked up before Darmaki smashed it to pieces, he can project his abilities up to fifty kilometers – at least.”
“At least?” Peyton asked nervously.
“That’s how far away the rainclouds were that he created,” I explained. “There’s no way to know for sure if his range can extend beyond that, but it’s a good estimate. The problem is that he can sense disturbances in nature all around him…as soon as we’re in range, no cloaking device will be able to hide our transport. He’ll know we’re there before we can even see his compound on the horizon.”
McGarrity stood and spread his hands apart, producing a glowing broadsword. Peyton gasped and jumped from her seat, knocking it over.
“Are you crazy? Put that thing away!” she shouted.
“You see this?” he boasted. “This baby is going to be the difference maker. I can cut through those posers like a chainsaw through a bowl full of Jell-o.”
“Nice analogy,” Brynja groaned.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d been suffering from a bout of short-term memory loss.
“First of all,” I reminded him, “You weren’t even able to scratch Dozer’s armored skin. For some reason that light sword of yours can’t pierce bronze.”
“Okay, he conceded, “but it can cut everything else. No one else stands a chance! Once I take out Darmaki we win, right?”
“Until he does this.” I pulled up the HUD on the tabletop and dragged a pair of fingers down the panel’s lighting system, completely darkening the room. In the windowless chamber the only light source was the outline of our coms; the faint glow of blue and green that pulsed from the devices strapped to our wrists. In the absence of light, McGarrity’s sword dimmed, and eventually dissipated. He stood frozen with his hands coiled around the invisible hilt of a non-existent weapon.
“Ha ha, very funny, man.” Mc Garrity reached across the table and dragged his hand along the glowing head’s up display, once again illuminating the room. “But if we attack this guy’s base it’ll be in the daytime, right? No problemo. I’m totally ITC.”
“What?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
“It stands for ‘In the clear’,” he said slowly, as if I were a complete idiot for not recognizing the acronym. “Everyone knows that, man. GTS.”
I said nothing, and my confused eyebrow remained in its arched position.
“Google that shit,” he said, pointing towards his com.
“Okay, can we start using full sentences again?” Brynja huffed.
I typed a file name into the surface of the table, converting it into a three-dimensional video projector. Class was now in session, and McGarrity was going to listen if I had to duct tape him to the goddamned chair and prop his eyes open, Clockwork Orange-style.
“Darmaki can control the weather,” I said sharply, “as we’ve already established. But there’s more to it than that…let me give you a little history lesson, my dim-witted friend.”
The first video I showed was a bird’s eye view, shot by a drone. The now-notorious footage had been leaked online during the security breach of 2022 when a rogue programmer released thousands of classified documents to a South American journalist. The reporter exposed some very damning evidence, highlighting America’s numerous foreign policy blunders. There were several to choose from, though one was particularly relevant in shaping Darmaki’s belief system.
“In 2019,” I began, “an American drone strike in Afghanistan killed most of Sultan’s family. He was seven when it happened. His uncle had been using the underground opium trade to finance a rebellion against a corrupt dictatorship. It was a noble cause, but the US government didn’t see it that way. The strike leveled three city blocks. It demolished schools, a hospital, a market, and a number of private residences. The bomb hit the ground and that was it – young Sultan was an orphan. He grew up bitter, rejecting technology as a result. When he developed his powers, he was able to do this…”
The video I brought up next was clearer, more recently shot. The footage was taken by another American drone, time stamped 2034. It circled over the United Arab Emirates, and then a sudden rush of darkness swarmed in. The jet-black clouds blotted out the sun, making it impossible to capture any additional video. The bright, cloudless sky was overwhelmed by Darmaki’s artificial storm, plunging daylight into darkness. Drones can’t target what they can’t see, and since he can feel their presence soaring overhead, he can shut them down at will. This has become Sultan’s MO: when a drone approaches, he simply blinds it. Or sends it crashing into a sand dune.
“Your unbreakable sword made of light,” I informed him, “will disappear the moment Darmaki sends a black cloud overhead. And he can do it anytime he wants.”
McGarrity’s eyes widened, and his silence spoke volumes.
“Any more good news,” Brynja said with a stinging smile.
“He’s not the only one we have to deal with,” I said. “We know that already. But I did manage to dig up some specifics on each member of the rogue’s gallery. Care to see who we’re up against?”
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Gavin prompted me with a nervous chuckle.
“First up, we have our mystery man from back in The Fringe – the guy who started it all, Jonathan Ma.”
I tapped the tabletop and displayed the first image. Jonathan’s profile picture was of a well-dressed, dark-haired young man with broad shoulders and friendly eyes – not the portrait of a killer everyone had expected to see. When we’d caught each other’s gaze in The Fringe he was sporting a much a different look, though; at the time Ma had a defiant, egotistical flare– an arrogance that radiated from him. It was in the way he walked, the way his mouth twitched with just the tiniest hint of a smirk when I stared him down. He’d just killed someone, and that was disturbing as all hell. Even more disconcerting was that he wasn’t just at peace with what he’d done. I had the sense that he was actually proud.
“The twenty-five-year-old Asian-American grew up in San Francisco,” I explained, “eventually earning a degree in psychology. He turned his focus to investing, earning millions on the stock market before his twenty-first birthday. He eventually diversified into technology, and that’s, ironically, when he ran into Sultan. They became business partners after a chance encounter at a trade show in Dubai, and Ma has lived overseas ever since. His motives remain unclear…they could be financial, or he could be doing this for the fame. One thing is for certain, though: he’s loyal to Darmaki.”
“His power seems pretty gnarly,” McGarrity said with an impressed nod. “When he tore the asphalt off the ground and whipped it through the air I nearly jumped off my couch.”
I’d almost forgotten that portions of the battle in The Fringe between Ma and the mystery woman had been captured by a handful of spectators and was recently posted on iTube – at least in shaky fragments.
“The metallic gauntlets he wears hav
e nothing to do with his powers,” I replied. “They use electromagnetism to allow him control over certain types of material – when he’s wearing them, he can lift anything with a substantial amount of metal in it. The more metal content, the farther it can be tossed. It’s an interesting back story: the technology is actually used to build commercial airliners and satellite systems. Workers can lift thousands of pounds of—”
“Okay we get it,” Brynja sighed. “The gloves can throw junk. I don’t need a doctorate in metallurgy.”
Public speaking? Also not my forte.
“Sorry, right…I’ll get to the point. His real abilities were on display in Helsinki.”
“That was him?” Brynja asked, leaning forward over the table.
“It was,” I assured her. “The guy in black and yellow leather who had about a hundred identical twins, all attacking like a well-coordinated mob – that was Ma. As far as I can tell, he’s able to self-replicate.”
Gavin seemed even more dumbfounded. “How is that even possible? I mean, I know we’ve seen some crazy shit over the last couple of years, and I’ve learned to believe the unbelievable…”
“Self-replication happens in nature all the time. DNA, cells, even crystals – with the proper conditions they can make perfect copies of themselves. Jonathan Ma must have an enhanced variation of that ability.”
“So we won’t just be fighting a bunch of superhumans at the compound,” Brynja said, “as well as his regular security squad…we could also be facing hundreds of additional copies of this guy, too?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Damn,” McGarrity whispered.
“And it gets worse.” Probably not the best choice of words, but we were in too deep – no point in sugar-coating this nightmare now.
“Here we have another familiar face: the man we encountered in Venice, ‘Dozer’.” I pulled up the image of a pre-transformation Paul Glendinning, without the benefit of his impenetrable bronze skin. We all knew the story, and we all knew the challenges he’d present on the battlefield. Not even McGarrity’s light sword (a weapon I’d seen slice through solid rock like it was a stick of warm butter) had been able to scratch his seemingly impervious skin.
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