My muscles contract as pain travels up and down my entire body. I am, for all intents and purposes, unable to move as an intense electric current runs through me. My neuronal HUD is affected and I see an overlay of static and noisy artifacts adding to the blurriness my vision already suffers.
Tanya! Anything you can do?
She must be affected as well because I can’t sense her in my thoughts. I’m on my own now.
The amount of electricity in my body seems to lower somewhat. I still can’t move but the pain is less intense. I wonder why.
“You and I go back a long way, Agent Seeker,” says Ahmed Al’Hasi. “Somehow, you’re never far away. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re time traveling. But there isn’t any such thing, now is there?”
He must be fecking with me. In our last encounter—granted it might just have been a nightmare—he seemed fully aware of that fact. I fight through the pain as best I can before answering him.
“Was there a fecking question in there? What do want from me?”
He bursts into laughter. “What do I want from you? Are you for real, Agent Seeker? You’re the one that’s always after me. Every time I have a plan in place, every time I’m about to strike somewhere, you’re there. Like a cockroach infestation I can’t get rid of. It’s been fun playing cat and mouse with you these past couple of years but I’m growing tired of it. At least you’ve become predictable by now. Knowing you would show up allowed me to put additional failsafes in my plans. I guess I should be thankful for that. You’ve made me a better servant of Allah.”
“The feeling’s mutual . . . I’m also tired of your ugly mug. Tell you what? Disable your gizmos and I promise I’ll make both our lives a lot simpler.”
“I have no doubt you’d try. On the other hand, it seems to me you’re in deep trouble this time. These gizmos, as you say, I’ve had them custom made just for you. They’re one of a kind. Nice little prototypes, aren’t they? With a single thought I can modulate the amount of electricity and even deliver a fatal jolt.”
I fecked up. I went in guns blazing, not taking time to analyze the situation fully. I could have sent a stealth drone to provide me with real-time video of the apartment from the outside. I would have seen Ahmed then and not rushed in like a debutant foot soldier on his first day on the battlefield, looking for glory but getting death as a reward for his utter stupidity. I stepped unprepared into what could very well become my grave.
How can I have been so stupid?
I don’t know if the electric current traveling through my body is weakening me, or if I’m building a resistance to it. I keep grimacing so he doesn’t know that I feel less pain. Somehow, I manage to transfer most of my power to two systems. First of all, I need Tanya back, in any capacity, and the rest I divert to my super strength. I need to get out of this . . . Failure is not an option.
Tanya speaks inside my head but it’s all garbled. I catch enough words to make sense of her thoughts.
Cole . . . we’re . . . trouble. Got . . . destroy . . . spheres.
Yeah, thanks, I figured that one out already. If I can destroy one or even both spheres, perhaps I can end this day early; that would be something. But right now the first priority is to not die in the next few minutes. I need a distraction, and fast.
Tanya, try and have one of the drones shoot inside the apartment, preferably without vaporizing both of us.
Unders . . . bzz.
I’ll take that as a yes.
“Any last words, Agent Seeker? As much as I’d like to stay and enjoy this moment, as you can imagine, I have a busy day ahead of me.”
I shoot him as deadly a look as I can muster through the pain, buying precious seconds that I direly need.
“You’re a coward, Ahmed. You and your army of mindless fanatics.”
The pain rises. Great! I’ve made him angry. Way to go, Cole.
“You’re just proving my point,” I say, my voice trembling, feeling sparks of electricity in between my teeth as I speak.
“Listen, Agent Seeker, and listen well, since these words are the last thing you’ll ever hear: I’m not the enemy, and somewhere deep down, inside that tough exterior of yours, you know this to be true. The corporations have enslaved the human race. We’re nothing else but drones at their mercy. We either conform and accept the prison that our lives have become or we die, and neither of these options is acceptable to me. And they shouldn’t be acceptable to you or anyone else either.”
“And that gives you the right to blow up innocent people by the thousands? Is that it?”
“Nobody is innocent,” he says coldly.
I don’t know if I’m hallucinating from the jolts overloading my nervous system or not, but I hear a countdown in my head.
Cole . . . 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .
“Hey, Ahmed, it’s been fun but I’d rather die than continue this conversation with you. So here are my last words to you: FECK YOU!”
At this exact moment the reinforced plexiglass window on the other side of the living room explodes when multiple plasma fire shots impact inside the apartment. Flames travel inside like a rabid wolf looking for a kill as red hot plexiglass shards are sent flying all around. Ahmed covers himself.
It’s now or never. I divert all power to one arm and manage to grab one of the spheres with it. I apply as much crushing force as I can. At first nothing happens, which quickly elevates my already off-the-charts stress levels. But then I feel something happening in my right arm, some added strength. I don’t really know what Tanya did, but she manages to give me that little extra power that is the difference between life and death in this moment.
The spherical device cracks, and almost instantly the arc of electricity it had been jolting towards me is interrupted. Sparks flow out of the sphere as it gets smashed like an aluminum soda can in my hand. Ahmed recovers from the surprise of the explosion and turns his attention back to me. I don’t lose a millisecond. I throw my arm as fast as I can to the other sphere and punch it dead center. The velocity and power of that punch sends it flying to the other far left side of the living room where it rebounds against the wall. The second arc of electricity paralyzing me is cut off for a brief instant. I bring both my repulsors to life. One blast of carefully aimed plasma obliterates the second sphere while the second shot is aimed at Ahmed’s torso. He tries to dodge but it still hits his shoulder. His shielding takes the brunt of the blast but the point-blank range makes him lose balance and spin in the air before crashing into a glass coffee table nearby.
I feel like I’ve just come back to life. My neuronal implants are slowly rebooting and I get a ton and a half of warnings and damage reports. I don’t give a shit. I’m standing. I can move. That ought to be enough. I launch myself at Ahmed before he has time to get back up, but he’s already pointing his own repulsors at me. A shockwave hits me and sends me crashing back to the wall. I hear multiple cracks inside my ribcage, quickly followed by acute pain. I broke my ribs—again. He goes for another shot but I jump out of the way just in time. The second shockwave shot, a much more charged one, blows more than half of the wall off, revealing the corridors outside the apartment and carving a cobweb-like giant crack in the next wall in the hall.
That was close, says Tanya, her vocal subroutine back to full form.
I don’t have time to chit-chat but I must admit I’m glad to hear her voice clearly again. I mentally take control of the drone and have it lock onto Ahmed’s heat signature. I shoot one of my grappling hooks into the thigh of Ahmed's unconscious lieutenant. I need to interrogate the sucker and since I don’t plan to let Ahmed survive my next move, I’m hoping at least this asshole survives what comes next. I run like the wind, only slightly slowed down by the sliding body in tow. I know this next part won’t be fun for any of us if I stick around for much longer.
I jump atop the sofa and propel myself towards the ceiling where I grab the fancy chandelier. Three laser blasts impact nearby, scorching the ceiling. The cha
ndelier gets ripped off the cheap plastered material before I’m done swirling optimally and I land on the sturdy oak dining table. It quickly splinters all around me as Ahmed unleashes a barrage of laser fire in a panicked attempt to bring me down. I hear the attached body tumble like a piece of dead wood in my wake. Hopefully he won’t end up with more holes than Emmental cheese by the time we’re out of Ahmed’s firing range. Not much I can do about it though.
That’s right, sucker, you should have killed me while you had the chance; now say hello to your creator instead.
I jerk my arm as much as I can to give Ahmed’s lieutenant enough velocity to follow me as I jump through the large hole the drone created earlier and let gravity do the rest. The moment I feel its grasp on me, while still hearing blaster fire hiss past my ears, I command the drone to fire its entire regiment of missiles into the apartment. I swivel around in mid-air to catch a glimpse of the show. One explosion after another, it looks like a Fourth of July fireworks display.
I’ve already traveled down at least ten stories; now it’s time to get back inside. I deploy my left wrist blade and use my right repulsor in thruster mode to get projected against the nearest plexiglass window. It explodes upon impact as I’m thrown tumbling into someone’s living room. I hear distant shouts and footsteps in the midst of the chaos all around me. But soon I hit something and my tumbling stops. My heart is beating fast but it’s skipping beats, which is not a pleasant sensation. Clearly, a side effect from the current that has been pumped into my body for too long a time. I honestly can’t tell if this whole ordeal lasted a minute or an hour. The intense pain and disorientation made it impossible for me to keep track of time.
“Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds,” says Tanya cheerfully.
“Show off!”
“And haven’t you forgotten something?”
I get dragged on the floor but backwards this time, approaching the window fast. Yeah, I forgot I had an unconscious body attached to mine when I jumped out the window and now he’s bringing me down with him. I manage to stand by using my whole body as a counterweight while skidding and shoot another grappling hook from my other forearm armor into the opposite wall. Two loud noises follow. The first one is my own scream when the tension exerted by being between the grappling hooks dislocates my shoulder as the lieutenant’s body stops its free fall towards the ground. The second is a distant and muffled thump as the body hits the plexiglass of an external window many floors below. I have a high tolerance for pain but these past few minutes have not been kind.
“Let me help you,” says Tanya as she diverts the drone to use its tractor beam and bring the body back into the room I’m in. I’ve made quite a mess around me; whoever lives here will be pissed. I brush the thought away; unless I’m successful in preventing Ahmed’s nefarious plans for today, anyone in this building will be incinerated before the sun has set anyway. I can feel my nanites working my internal wounds. But they won’t be able to relocate my shoulder, so I’m gonna have to do that myself. I quickly glance at Ahmed’s lieutenant, Samir Faysal. I’m not even sure he’s still alive.
Tanya comes in. “His vitals are quite low but I think he’ll live, at least for another twenty minutes or so.”
“We won’t need him alive any longer than tha . . . aaaaaaaarg—” I scream after I propel my shoulder against the nearest sturdy wood cabinet, its glass window imploding upon impact with my shoulder. The bones crack, the pain goes straight to my head and I almost pass out from its intensity.
“Better? You could have used a wall to do that.”
I don’t know if she’s teasing me or if she’s being serious.
“Yeah I could have . . . As for feeling better, let me ask you this: are you sure you still want a body?”
“Mine won’t have pain receptors, just pleasure ones.”
“That’s cheating,” I hiss in between my clenched teeth, still hurting and aching pretty much everywhere. “Whenever you feel like administering painkillers, by the way, be my guest.”
“I’ve done that already, Cole, I’m just afraid to give you stronger stuff. You need your head to stay clear.”
Not that it was so clear to begin with. There’s a moment of hesitation when I want to tell her to screw that, but she’s right. I need to be able to think on my feet. A wave of shame permeates my thoughts as I realize my mind was clear earlier and I still managed to go in charging like a rookie.
“There’s no point in blaming yourself now, Cole. What’s done is done. I should have told you to wait before you made your move.”
“I didn’t give you time to do that in my impatience to get the mission started.”
“Correct, but I could have stopped your muscles from working. I just didn’t have enough information at the time to predict what would happen, and I know you don’t like it when I force you to do anything.”
“Yeah, well, seeing how this turned out, you have my permission to intervene next time I display signs of recklessness.”
“Really?”
“Yes . . . no. I don’t know. Use your own judgment.”
“This is not helping me establish a baseline from which to decide to take over.”
“Yeah, that’s part of being human, honey.”
I feel something viscous and awful-tasting in my mouth and spit it to the ground. A large quantity of my blood spills onto what was once a pretty carpet. Now it’s mostly torn to shreds from my wrist blade while tumbling inside earlier and covered with thousands of plexiglass shards too. I take a look at the mess in my own body. I have cuts and bruises everywhere.
That’s when I realize that Tanya is silent. There’s another ten seconds of silence before she speaks.
“Did you just call me honey?” she says with a mix of surprise and utter satisfaction in her voice.
I chuckle painfully. “I guess I did.”
8
Mission completion time: T minus 526 minutes.
“TANYA, can we get visual confirmation that Ahmed died in the explosion? I can’t seem to be able to contact the drone,” I say.
“I’m afraid the drone’s camera was damaged in the explosion. Would you like me to recall another one? The nearest one is about five minutes away.”
“No that’s okay. I’ll get visual confirmation myself.”
I secure Ahmed’s lieutenant, bounding both his arms and legs with lock-foam. The white shaving-cream-like material solidifies in less than two seconds to form unbreakable restraints.
I’m out of the apartment and rushing back upstairs, climbing steps three at a time. I need to see it for myself. I need to make sure Ahmed bit the dust. The staircase reaching to the sixty-fifth floor has been damaged in the explosion and I have to use my super strength to leap far enough and land at the top of the stairs.
The second I land I feel the floor under me give in. The structure isn’t stable enough and before I know it I’m stumbling back downwards. I instinctively fire my repulsors in thruster mode just in time before hitting the ground below, and soon I fly back upwards.
When I land on the floor where I stormed the apartment earlier, the entire corridor is in flames, sparks shooting from the walls, and I feel something’s wrong with my neuronal HUD. The interface is blurred and jittery. At first I wonder if it’s because of interference from the damage all around me.
“What’s happening, Tanya? Status report?”
There is no response. I try again.
Then something weird happens.
My view is filled with a holo-view of Tanya but the image is distorted. I can see her speak but no sound reaches my brain. I slap my scalp. The last thing I need today is hardware failure of any kind. The image gets more and more distorted and then her face is replaced by another.
My heart skips a beat. It’s Vassiliki. She smiles and looks at me for a few seconds.
What the hell is this?
Her smile vanishes as she gives a frown, a solemn look on her face. Her lips part and I hear her voice. It’s d
istorted as if the quality of the communication is weak. Her words send shivers down my spine.
“Cole, do not trust everything you’ve been told. There is more than meets the eye here.”
“Vassiliki? How is this possible? You’re . . . you’re dead,” I say, feeling a tear travel down my left cheek.
To my despair, her image fades away and is replaced with Tanya’s avatar. She’s still speaking to me. It takes a couple of seconds until the words are comprehensible.
“Cole . . . we can’t stay on this level for long. Too much interference, and it’s affecting all my systems.”
No shit!
I want to tell her to run diagnostics. I need to know what the feck seeing Vassiliki was all about. But then I remember why I came here. First and foremost I need to find Ahmed's dead body. It’s very hot all around and I don’t have time to help fight the flames so instead I activate my temperature shield augment. It radiates the right amount of sub-zero air around the force field surrounding me so I’m unaffected by the blazing flames.
Soon I reach the room I ordered the drone to blast a few minutes ago. I scan the room for remains of a body, anything to confirm that my nemesis perished in the explosion. But I find none. I punch a hole in the nearest wall before storming back downstairs.
On my way there I ask Tanya to run a self-diagnostic. I don’t know what happened earlier, but it worries me. Before I reach the apartment where I left Samir, she answers me.
“Self-diagnostic complete. All systems working perfectly.”
Why do I have trouble believing any of it? Is she hiding something from me or am I being paranoid because of all the stress?
When I arrive next to Samir he is still unconscious. I approach him and kneel beside him and Tanya deploys the drug injector from my right index finger.
“Wake that fecker up please, Tanya.”
“In his current condition, he won’t last long. Fifteen minutes at best.”
“That’s more than enough time. This will be a short conversation.”
Twilight of the Gods (Universe in Flames Book 8) Page 35