by Nick Thacker
The first bursts of rounds finished, and the room fell into silence.
Ben watched as three Ravenshadow men entered, each taking a different path — left, middle, right. They flicked their rifles around, looking for something to target and shoot at. Ben saw the man’s face closest to him, and saw his eyes widen, then constrict again as he took in the sight in front of him.
He spoke into his wrist, waited, then nodded.
Three more Ravenshadow men entered the room. It was clear by the expressions on their faces that they were confused. The remaining Exos that were in fighting condition were all standing at attention against the back wall, two lines descending away from Mrs. E on either side. Reggie and his Exo stood at the far end, while Julie’s stood on the side closest to Ben.
Ben heard the man near him speak to his fellow soldiers.
“What the —”
Before he could finish, Reggie flicked his controls and his Exo came back to life, his torso flying around and his cannon immediately finding its target.
The man standing near Ben stood, shocked, as the cannon round blew a hole through his chest. He stood silently for a second, blinking, then fell into a heap.
The other soldiers reacted far too late. They lifted up their weapons, but the Exos standing near Mrs. E turned and rained hell on them.
It was over in about ten seconds, all six of the Ravenshadow men lying dead on the cold stone floor. Ben watched, waiting for more, but nothing came. He turned to Mrs. E and the rest of his team, as well as the other operators in their Exo suits.
“Does anyone speak English?”
A small man next to Reggie raised his arm.
Ben walked over to him and faced the Exo and the man inside. “My name is Harvey Bennett. My team, like your people, were forced into this room. We never intended to hurt any of you. Do you understand?”
The man nodded.
“We are going to stay and fight the rest of these men, but we are running out of time. Can you tell your people that?”
The man nodded again. The other Exos were beginning to gather around Ben and the man as they spoke. Ben knew there would be more Ravenshadow men, and he knew that they really were running out of time. Whatever Sturdivant had planned for them, it was going to happen in less than ten minutes.
“You need to get out of here, then,” Ben said. “Please, if you stay here, you will die. We all will.”
As he finished the sentence, another two groups of Ravenshadow men rushed in.
“No,” the man said to Ben. “We stay. We fight them.”
The soldiers starting firing on the Exos, and Ben threw himself behind Reggie, then climbed up his back.
“Hey buddy,” Reggie said. “Welcome back.”
“Yeah, feels great to be here.”
“What’s the plan?” Reggie asked. He looked at Ben.
“Kill the bad guys, get out that door, find Garza, kill him, figure out how to get out of here, get out before the clock runs out.”
“Right. Any idea how we do that?”
Ben pointed at the wave of Ravenshadow men still spilling into the room. He pointed toward them.
“One step at a time,” he said. “Get through that first.”
“You got it, buddy.”
Reggie pushed his control forward and the Exo began marching toward the door. The others followed suit, but it seemed as though having an entire army of ten Exos would be unnecessary.
Reggie, Julie, and Mrs. E had cut down the Ravenshadow men before they’d even finished entering the room.
“Okay,” Reggie said, laughing. “Now what?”
“Step two: walk through that door.”
Reggie was already moving. His Exo was in the center of the room, and the line of Exos streamed out behind him, one after the other, a chain of robots marching toward their freedom.
Ben waved at Julie, who was nearest the door. He wanted her to go through, to get out of this hell first, but she seemed to be happy waiting for the others to exit first.
Reggie was twenty feet from the door when it happened.
Ben felt the tingling sensation at the same time he noticed the pitch change — it grew louder, stronger. Once again it filled his head, once again it took him over.
He froze.
Reggie and his suit did as well.
All along the line the Exos froze in place, their operators locked back inside their own bodies.
Oh, no, Ben thought. No, not again.
He was looking straight ahead, but Reggie had his hand up on the edge of the Exo’s frame, not on its controller. His wrist was tilted, giving Ben a perfect view of his watch.
7:54.
7:53.
While Ben and his team was frozen, time was not. It ticked away, the brutal seconds mocking Ben and Reggie, alerting them every moment to their fate.
At the edge of Ben’s vision Ben saw movement. Someone was walking into the room.
Garza.
He stepped over the bodies of his fallen men, twelve in all. Ben knew it was nothing to him — hardly a loss.
But Garza would be upset for a far deeper reason.
Ben had played him. Ben had figured out his ruse, figured out a way around it.
And he was here now to return the favor.
Garza walked up to Ben and Reggie. Ben was still locked onto the back of Reggie’s suit, but Garza had a clear view of both of their heads.
“Hello, gentlemen. Harvey, Gareth.”
He walked a full circle around them, inspecting. Ben knew he’d see the open panel. He wondered if he would be able to put things together.
“My men figured it out,” Garza said, his hands in his pockets. “The polarity of the signal. The amplifiers installed within my suits have phase switches, don’t they? And you figured out how to reverse it.
“The only problem with that strategy is that you haven’t eliminated the signal chain. The sound is still there, isn’t it?”
Ben heard the sound ringing in his ears, still coming from far away from the ceiling-mounted speakers.
“The thing about reversing the polarity to cancel out a signal is that you need two signals — one with a waveform that’s been fully phase-switched away from the other.
“But what happens when you remove one of those waveforms, Harvey? What happens when I simply stop broadcasting the signal through the suits?”
He turned and looked up at the speakers. “There’s still a signal, and it’s plenty loud enough. Clearly.”
He walked up to the Exo, looked up at the two men, and smiled. “I’m proud of you, though. It’s about time you took the opportunity to figure something out, Harvey. Luck comes to those who earn it, right?
“It took you this long to realize: you can’t beat men like me until you think like men like me. You never wanted to go there, Harvey. You never wanted to admit to yourself that you could think like me. That you could scrape the depths of your soul to figure out how to beat someone.”
Ben wanted to break him in half, to snap his neck and be done with it.
But he couldn’t.
And the seconds we’re still ticking off the watch.
6:38.
6:37.
6:36.
70
Julie
Julie felt her body stiffen up, the sense of her entire body falling asleep hitting her all at once. The pain of the tiny pinpricks of excited nerves, then the nothingness of feeling afloat in space, yet rigidly connected to the ground simultaneously. She wouldn’t ever get used to this feeling, and she never wanted to.
Somehow Garza had triggered the signal once again, but she wasn’t close enough to Ben and Reggie to hear his explanation, if he’d given one.
Now she was about five paces away from the open door, still inside her Exosuit. The others were stacked in a waving line behind Ben and Reggie’s, all waiting their turn to exit.
All frozen, all unable to reach the exit standing directly in front of them.
She wondered how muc
h time was left. It had to be less than ten minutes. How would they make it? Even if they somehow freed themselves, how could they make it up to the next level to the base’s exit, and get clear of whatever it was Sturdivant was going to do?
She assumed it would be some sort of bunker-buster bomb — smaller than a nuclear warhead, which would no doubt cause much more political mayhem than physical — but also something that could pierce the mountain’s craggy exterior and root out whatever was inside.
Or, more likely, simply collapse it in on itself, killing everyone inside.
Sturdivant would then be prepared to kill anyone trying to leave by blockading the exits to the Ravenshadow base.
In short, they were screwed. Fewer than ten minutes wasn’t enough time to do anything but speculate on their fate, and since there was literally nothing she could anyway, she speculated.
Garza’s voice grew in volume, and Julie couldn’t shake the idea that the man sounded rattled. She’d never heard him like this before — enraged, maniacal, possibly even scared? She strained to hear what he was saying.
“It took you this long to realize: you can’t beat men like me until you think like men like me. You never wanted to go there, Harvey.”
Garza got even closer to the two men he was addressing, but his voice still rose.
“You never wanted to admit to yourself that you could think like me. That you could scrape the depths of your soul to figure out how to beat someone.”
And then, to Julie’s horror, Garza pulled out a pistol.
“It’s about time I finished what we started in Philadelphia. Back then you were chasing me, and I was too busy to worry about you. A hawk catches its prey when there is a good opportunity to do so, and I never found it worth my time to bother with your little group.
“But now — now, Harvey — look around, with whatever your peripheral vision allows, and see what I’ve been able to accomplish. See that even though your work brought you here, to fight me and to prevent this, see that I’ve been able to still accomplish every aspect of what I set out to achieve.
“Know this, Harvey, in your last seconds of life: know that you failed. Not a failure of physical accomplishment, nor one of desire or teamwork or any other morally righteous failure, but a failure of character.
“You failed, Harvey, because you are not enough. You simply cannot bring yourself to do what it takes to defeat someone like me. You are simply not equipped to deal with the harsh reality of life: that you must take every opportunity, when it is presented to you.”
Garza lifted the pistol and held it up the side of Ben’s head.
“Know that you tried, Harvey, and that’s not for nothing. But success comes to those who can handle it; to those who aren’t afraid of what it brings. Or what it might cost.”
Julie felt the scream building inside her, the rage and fear and fury and overwhelming grief building to a point that she wondered if it would even be enough to bypass the chemical that was holding her back.
Unfortunately it wasn’t. She was still locked in place, unable to move, and unable to take her eyes off of Garza and her husband, and the gun that was being held to his head.
“I wish there was a way to let you have a last word or two, Harvey,” Garza said. “I always did appreciate your little quips.”
He took a deep breath, and even from her distance Julie could see him gently squeezing the trigger. The pistol was against Ben’s temple, pressed hard against it.
Garza pulled the trigger.
Julie felt the shock of it from where she was. It was like a wall of sound, entering and leaving her body in the same instant, a pressure wave of epic proportions hitting her and pushing her back.
She felt as though she were falling backwards, her mind tumbling through open space, her limbs flailing helplessly as she watched her husband fall.
71
Julie
But Ben didn’t fall.
He moved.
Julie realized then that the pressure wave had been exactly that — but it was the absence of pressure that had caused the effect. It was the feeling of sound, but it was actually sound leaving the space around her that had caused it.
The noise, the high-pitched whine that had once again driven them into their captive state, left. The sound had disappeared.
She had been straining against it, wiling it to move, to release its hold on her, and in the instant it did leave she had burst forward, pushing against the controls of her Exo and immediately causing it to lurch forward.
Ben and Reggie had apparently done the same thing. In the instant Garza had pulled the trigger, the noise had disappeared, and Ben had simultaneously fallen away, no doubt also trying to press against his noise-induced prison.
When Garza fired the pistol, Ben had jerked to the right, moving out of the way of the round and catching himself — and Garza — by surprise.
Reggie had reacted exactly as Julie had, by nearly falling on the front of his Exo and unknowingly pushing it forward. In the first second of their newfound freedom, Ben dodged the bullet while Reggie drove his Exo directly into Garza.
Garza stumbled backward and fell, his back to the stone floor, and he scrambled away from the marching Exo.
“Kill him!” Julie yelled. She was still finding her balance, working desperately to regain control of herself and her Exo.
She watched Garza regain his composure, wipe the sweat off his face with a sleeve of his shirt, then stand and begin running toward the open door.
“Kill him!” she yelled again.
She knew the others were feeling the same — a slightly drugged state consciousness that would wear off in a few more seconds.
But it wouldn’t be enough time.
Garza was nearly at the door. He would disappear into the base, once again slipping through their fingers.
She looked over at Ben and Reggie, her eyes seeing double as they tried to keep up with the motion of her head.
No…
She knew they wouldn’t make it. She knew they wouldn’t be fully freed in time, and it would be to Garza’s advantage.
This time, she did scream. Of all the physical manifestations of strength she was trying to regain, her ability to scream had been the first to return. She put everything she had into it, screaming and pushing against the controls and screaming more and finally —
Pulling the trigger.
She had him in her sights. The cannon fired.
The blast of it shook her to her core. The Exo nudged backward as the round exited the chamber and flew toward Garza’s back.
He was out the door now, turning…
And the round hit the wall next to him.
It blasted a chunk of stone off the wall, creating a crater of dusty rock and debris, but she saw Garza through the cloud of dust. Saw that he was unscathed.
She had missed.
She heard his boots, falling against the stone floor as he continued around the corner.
She felt the tears welling up, and knew that they would be falling freely in a few seconds.
Garza was now completely gone, completely free.
Julie let the tears come. Everything she had been feeling fell out through her eyes — the rage, the confusion, chaos, sadness — all of it.
She heard a gunshot. It echoed through the corridor and into the large room.
Julie craned her neck to see, just as the bits of dust and rock finally settled to the floor just beyond the doorway.
Garza was there.
Stumbling, walking backwards.
What the hell?
He had a hand out, palm-up, in front of him. Holding something off, trying to persuade it to stop.
He backed up a few more steps, now fully back in Julie’s sights.
She wiped her eyes. Placed her hands back on the controls. She had a clear shot. One press of the trigger, one flick of her wrist, and it would be over.
She wondered how many minutes were left before Sturdivant made his move.
Garza turned to face her. She gasped.
He had a long bloody line down the side of his face. His ear was in shambles, wrecked by a —
Another gunshot. This time Garza was hit in the side, puncturing a spot just between two ribs.
He made a strange gurgling noise, part high-pitched squeak and part groan. Julie watched on, mesmerized.
He stumbled again and fell, landing heavily on his shoulder and side. He spat a chunk of something, something red. More blood fell out behind it. He blinked twice, three times, staring at Julie and the others.
And then…
Victoria appeared. She was standing over him — standing over her father — holding a pistol. She stepped up next to him, right above his head, and aimed down.
She looked at Julie, met her eyes, then nodded.
And pulled the trigger.
This time the gunshot was deafening. Julie’s ears felt the pain of the searing blow as the wave concussed through the chamber. The pistol must have been Garza’s — the huge, 50-caliber Desert Eagle she’d seen him carry.
Julie opened her eyes and saw Victoria standing there, sobbing.
Suddenly Ben and Reggie were by her side. Ben reached out and jumped over to Julie’s Exo. He placed his hands on her shoulders, gently pressing against them.
“Jules,” he whispered. “Julie, we need to go.”
Julie nodded, then stepped backwards, allowing Ben to pull her along and guide her out of the Exo.
Reggie and Mrs. E, followed by the remainder of the villagers — eleven in all — were there. They were all standing nearby, just inside the doorway, staring.
Staring at the man who had started all of this.
Staring at the daughter who had finished it.
“Come on, Jules,” Ben whispered again. “We may not have much time before —”
The ground beneath Julie’s feet shook and buckled, and she felt herself thrown into Ben’s arms.