Twilight of the Gods (Universe in Flames Book 8)

by Christian Kallias

  When I open my eyes, not much seems to have changed. The cylindrical light around me does its thing in reverse and soon I am standing naked in the room again. I can tell it’s not all the same people looking at me. Different shifts I guess. I’ve jumped back nearly twelve hours into the past.

  As is protocol, a member of the team comes and scans my jump tattoo.

  “Code identified. General Richardson will be here shortly to review your mission brief.”

  I don’t have time for this, not with this mission, not today.

  “This is a code Ultra Red. My AI augment will debrief him remotely, but we need to get going right away,” I say as I walk towards the nearest locker that contains some clothes for me. It’s not what I was wearing when I came in, but it’s only temporary so I don’t walk naked until I get to the armory for a quick load on supplies, then head out to my safe house in town, where I will pick a more precise set of tools. If I need something particular that I don’t have there, I need to get it from here, like a second portable deflector shield. Eleanor will need one as well and I don’t have a spare in the safe house. Not one that can link with Tanya’s systems anyway.

  When I turn back, I can see the team member is still unsure of what to make of my last statement. He’s in my way.

  “I repeat: code Ultra Red. This is not a drill, son,” I say with as much calm as I can but with authority nonetheless. “Do you understand?”

  “I . . . I have never been part of a code Ultra Red.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Now, son, let me pass.”

  I can see fear in his eyes. Can’t blame him though. Who wouldn’t be scared? Ultra Red is for the worst possible types of attack we can imagine. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine the consequences of a nuke or biological attack. Perhaps this man has family in the city. Working at Rewind requires the utmost security level but also the utmost discretion. Still, our humanity, it can be our strength but also our biggest weakness in times like these.

  “I sense a ninety-two percent chance that this man will call his family to warn them about the impending attack. We can’t leave this facility until this has been taken care of. A single phone call outside, a rumor even, could start a panic and change too many variables and render our mission strategy null and void. Our mission could be over before it started, Cole.”

  I can’t believe we have to deal with things like these on a day like today. I look at the man’s name tag.

  “John, would you please accompany me?” I say as I walk towards the door.

  “What . . . why? Did I do something wrong?”

  I stop and turn around to face him.

  “No, John, but I need your help with something.”

  His facial muscles relax a little. He follows me to the hallway and walks silently a few steps behind me.

  “Sir, I . . . I really want to tell you how much of an honor it is to work on this project.”

  Yeah yeah . . . but you clearly have forgotten the basic protocol that comes with your job, now haven’t you?

  “It’s a tough job we do, John. Do you have family?” I ask, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “A wife and a daughter of eight.”

  “What’s your daughter’s name?”

  Before he can answer I spring into action. I grab him and lock his head with my left arm, strangling him.

  “Cole? Go easy on him,” Tanya pleads.

  What is she worried about? I’m not gonna kill that poor sod. Maybe someone will, but not me.

  I can feel John trying to release himself but my augmented arms make that impossible. He hits my arm a few times with his fists, but soon enough he passes out from the lack of oxygen. I throw him on my shoulder and pick up my pace towards the brig.

  The guard there jumps out of his chair when I enter the room and salutes me. I salute back.

  “What happened?” he inquires.

  “He’s been deemed a security risk.”

  I gently drop John’s unconscious body in the nearest cell.

  “Would you mind?” I say as I point with my head towards the cell.

  The guard enters a command on a nearby console and a force field springs to life.

  “Your orders are to not let this man out of the cell for at least twelve hours. This is a priority one order, do you understand?”

  The guard nods back at me.

  “Sedate him if you have to, but under no circumstances is he to be allowed to talk with anybody until he is released. If in doubt, report to General Richardson.”

  “Understood, Agent,” he answers.

  I have no doubt it’s the end of John’s career in Rewind. Hopefully that’s the full extent of his punishment. After all, there was still a slight chance he would have kept his mouth shut.

  That’s three minutes wasted we didn’t have to spare. I leave the brig and run to the armory where I rush to jump into mission clothing and equip myself with full body armor. I grab a couple of guns (a blaster and a rifle), and a few throwing knives and shuriken that I attach to the magnetic strip running around my right thigh. I’ll load on some more later. I grab that extra personal shield and a couple of grenades. I also take two portable power packs and magnetically attach them to my belt.

  “Expecting resistance between here and our safe house?” Tanya asks.

  “Better safe than sorry; this is going to be a long day.”

  “Technically only less than half a day, but I get what you mean.”

  Less than twelve hours to save hundreds of thousands of lives; that’s a long day in my book, no matter how you spin it, not to mention that I have been up for more than twelve hours already. Why can’t I ever get a deployment call at seven in the morning when I’m all rested?

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say, not trying to hide my annoyance. “We’ve lost enough time as it is.”

  ON OUR WAY to the safe house, I get lost in thought as the cityscape of New Geneva unfolds in front of my eyes from the window of the self-driving ship taking us there. The view from the tube is mesmerizing, I get lost in it for a little while. Far in the distance, I imagine Lac Léman.

  New Geneva has been rebuilt a fair bit away from the now mostly dead lake. We’re a few miles from the shore, quite a difference with the old tall buildings only a road’s width away from the lake as it was before. I’ve seen holo-vids and documentaries of it in my down time; it used to be such a lovely place. The holographic waterjet in the middle of town emulates one of the old city’s monuments. It used to be the highest waterjet in the world back in the twenty-first century, and thousands of tourists the world over came every year to look at it. That was another world back then; it’s all but gone now, but the holographic waterjet is a reminder of that time nonetheless.

  “Why didn’t we take the underground turbo tube?” Tanya asks.

  “Well, I felt like looking at the city and gathering my thoughts, something I can do with more ease than when I’m in an underground speed tunnel.”

  “I thought time was of the essence.”

  “It is, but this doesn’t take that much more time.”

  “By my estimate we will lose three point two minutes this way.”

  That’s a very AI thing to say. She is right, of course. This way is slightly longer. But I need to gather my thoughts and try to find an appropriate way to convince Eleanor to come with us on this mission. Truth be told even if she refuses, we’ll get the job done without her. The important thing is to lock-in a battle plan that gives the maximum chance of getting rid of Ahmed. And since that plan of action is fundamentally different from the one in my nightmare, at least it won’t feel like déjà-vu all day.

  I have no doubt that we stand a much better chance of success with her help.

  “I need that little bit of extra time to think,” I answer moments later.

  Soon we arrive at our destination, and the ship drops me on the top of the building where our safe house is located. It’s deep underground, so we take the turbo elevator dow
n to the safe house entrance. A full body scan in the form of a sweeping green laser does its job, starting from my feet and working its way up to the top of my head in less than a second. The laser focuses on my retina next for just a brief instant and the door splits open in the middle with a familiar whoosh.

  As I step into the main room, lights turn on automatically. On the surface this looks like a big studio apartment with minimalistic furniture. A sofa and a coffee table are facing the holo-screen that’s imbedded in the wall. With the push of a single mental thought, a wirelessly transmitted password, it all changes.

  Walls flip onto themselves in their center to reveal the arsenal to choose from for my mission. There’s enough weaponry and destructive power in this room to start a small war. And then it hits me. Nothing is out of place; all my weapons are there. Could that even happen if I had time jumped the first time around? What if the nightmare is nothing else than a bad dream? What if by changing my approach I put myself into more jeopardy than I normally would have?

  “It’s too late to second-guess yourself, Cole. We have to proceed with the data we have now. There’s no turning back.”

  “I know . . .”

  But that doesn’t stop my internal questioning. I never have to replenish the stock in between deployments myself. Someone at Rewind does that for me. So I could have time jumped before and still have all my weapons ready. Unless my half-assed theory about alternate timelines is valid and even if I time jumped ten times for the same mission, each time this room would look the same simply because it would never have happened in that particular timeline.

  “You do realize that no matter what it is we do, no matter how it physically happens, it doesn’t impact our mission right this moment?” says Tanya trying to get me out of my wretched doubting loops.

  She is right, of course, but I can’t stop questioning everything now. I guess that’s what the human brain is all about. We want to know the answers to almost every question starting with what, how or why. Still, time is running out so this will have to wait. For now.

  I need to arm myself, not too little so as to run out of ammo and things to throw at my numerous enemies in the next eleven hours, but not too much as to be encumbered by my gear either. I need to be able to move freely and do the most outrageous of stunts, while fully armed, so I need to find that perfect yet fragile balance.

  “Tanya, according to mission specifics, please display what weapons you recommend.”

  While I will make the final decision, having her make a pre-choice in that matter saves time. She highlights every weapon in my neuronal HUD. The selected weapons glow green when I look at them. Just like I would, mostly, she selects a rather sizeable arsenal. I replace the gear I took from Rewind with my own gear, as it’s been adjusted to my liking, modified, and tested in battle.

  I take an extra blaster, more sonic mines and decide to have not one but three drones accompany us on this mission. Three is already a gamble. Their stealth tech is strong but they emit too much interference when there is more than one in close proximity. Three could vastly take away some of the surprise factor out of the equation should they be detected and dispatched before they are required.

  “Then why take the risk, Cole?” asks Tanya.

  “Call it a gut feeling. We’ll fly them miles apart from one another to limit the risk of detection.”

  “Do I have to remind you that Ahmed is one of the most talented cyber terrorists of all time? If there’s one person that will detect the slightest interference, it’s him.”

  “I bet on the fact that he will have bigger fish to fry today.”

  “Let’s hope you’re not betting our lives in the process.”

  I know she means well. I also know her logic is, more often than not, more sound than mine. But the one thing I believe an AI lacks, no matter how intelligent or how large her scope of emotions is, is instinct. She has yet to show me a decision based on the tickling of a je-ne-sais-quoi inside her that proves to be the right path of action. And truth be told, if instinct wasn’t required, they wouldn’t bother sending a human being back in time for these tasks. They’d send a synthesized canner instead.

  “I’ll try not to get offended by that.”

  “You shouldn’t. I don’t consider you a canner. You know that.”

  “I do, but if my mind was put into a synthetic body, by your own logic, I’d become one.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean, Cole?”

  How do I dig myself out of the hole I’ve just dug? I try to choose my next words carefully.

  “I mean that for all your wonderful personality and superior intellect, I still think you lack instinct.”

  “If that were true do you really think I would have allowed us to tamper with mission parameters to include Captain Trevisano into the mission? At the risk of having my circuits fried if anyone found out?”

  And there she was, throwing me a curve ball. Could what I have perceived as a leap of faith on her part, an implied trust, actually be governed by instinct?

  “You better believe it, jackass,” she says, her voice icy cold.

  “Was name calling really necessary?”

  She laughs. “No, but it’s fun, and you have to get used to the fact that you’re rubbing off on me over time. It’s only logical, right?”

  I smile as I continue to pack the gear, making sure to take some grappling hook extensions loaded into my forearms alongside my blades, claws and missiles. We need to get going; as fun and enlightening as this is, we’re neither on vacation nor sightseeing.

  7

  Mission completion time: T minus 575 minutes.

  I GO into the vehicle room on the fifty-seventh floor of our building. There are many options here. Flying car, chopper, small range fighter but more often than not I’ll just go with my trusty jet bike. It’s fast, highly maneuverable and has enough space to accommodate an additional passenger. Which hopefully will be needed later today. It’s also armed to the teeth with high-intensity beam lasers and plasma cannons, concussion missiles, the works. I load extra gear onto the jet bike in multiple compartments, more grenades, and additional spare weapons.

  Once I’m installed on the jet bike, I select a track to listen to on the way. I’ll have time for a single song, but that matters not. I feel the need to listen to some music, even if for a fleeting time. I scroll through my library’s metal section and choose a Sentenced song: Vengeance is Mine.

  The bass line of the song starts blasting inside my head as I open the flight-level garage door. It splits from the middle to display morning godrays struggling to shine through green tainted smog. It’s raining outside New Geneva’s dome, and each droplet that impacts on its force shield briefly illuminates in bright green. It’s an incredible sight. Millions of droplets generating expanding green light like ripples in a pond impacting with one another, sending lifelike green hues onto the entire city below. I check the weather forecast; it will stop raining in a few minutes. Somehow I’m happy I caught it. I love the mood it gives the city.

  Before we can visit my old— friend, we stop at a preliminary target spot. It’s the place where one of the terrorists involved in today’s attack lives. It’s his last known location according to the intel we’ve gathered. Which, more often than not, is accurate. This one is a direct connection to Ahmed, being one of his lieutenants, Samir Faysal. Taking him out of the equation so early in the day should slow down Ahmed's plans. But before I rip his heart out, I have a few questions for the sucker. Soon we land on the roof of the building where his apartment is located.

  After dropping ten flights of stairs in a hurry, I approach the target’s flat with caution. I use my vision augmentations to scan the place. Infrared, X-ray, subsonic resonance, light field, electromagnetic fields, local and external CCTV feeds, the works. Basically every data that can improve visual acuity through solid walls. It’s almost like seeing through them in fact. The overlay of all that real-time d
ata gives me a clear picture, especially when displayed on top of the building schematics. Tanya superimposes it onto my vision in wireframe as to not overload and disorient my brain with too many layers of visual stimuli.

  There are two people in the flat. One more than I expected. They are sitting in the living room. I take both my blasters out and set them on maximum stun.

  I guess it’s two for the price of one.

  I kick the door and shoot the first target before he can realize what’s happening but then, when I shoot the second one, a personal shield around him stops the blast. He gets up but he is still not facing me. When he turns around, I can’t believe my eyes.

  Ahmed!

  I instinctively unleash a flurry of shots straight into his head, but they are all absorbed by his shield. He looks back at me and smiles.

  I feel my blood reaching boiling point inside my veins. I quickly switch both my weapons to kill mode with a single thought and keep firing. He rolls to the side and takes cover behind the sofa. I grab a sonic grenade off my belt and throw it his way. He lurches out of cover and throws it back towards me. I jump out of the way but it’s too late; the grenade detonates before I have time to get clear of its blast radius. When it explodes, I’m thrown backward against the wall, cracking it upon impact. My ears are ringing, my head buzzing and I am completely disoriented. I hear a rolling sound approaching me amidst the chaos happening in my mind and body, and when I look down at my feet, I see two metallic spheres rolling, one on either side of me. Before I can kick the first one away, they fly upwards at shoulder level, and electrical arcs shoot from them and hit me on the thorax.