Nightfall
Page 7
First, I have a terrorist to kill. When I get back up, I see Ahmed getting back on his feet as well. I throw a knife at him. He puts his forearm in front of his face, and the blade plunges into his muscles, confirming his shields are down.
My HUD is blinking with multiple warnings and error messages. The sonic blast has damaged many of my internal systems. But now that his shields are down, this can finally be a fair fight. I channel my anger and walk toward him. He removes the blade from his arm and throws it back at me. I deflect it.
When he fires another salvo of blaster fire, I bring my shield back up. It keeps flickering but holds, barely. I’m running low on power, so I must make sure this fight ends soon. As much as I would revel taking my time killing him and making him suffer, I will have to make this swift.
There’s nothing I hate more than a traitor. Of course, I realize the irony here; until I was told the truth and my eyes were opened, I’d also been a traitor, albeit an unwilling and unknowing one. Which is why I feel so enraged; and that’s also why Ahmed is going to be the recipient of my wrath.
He fires another shot from his repulsor, and I roll to the side, aim, and shoot his hand with my own weapon. His repulsor overloads, which causes his hand to explode. He screams in pain and falls to his knees, holding his severed arm, blood shooting from where his hand used to be. Now is the time to press my advantage. I fire four successive precise shots; two at his legs and two at his arms, making sure he can no longer use them.
As I walk the rest of the way toward him, I check on Eleanor. She is unconscious, and she’s losing some blood from her neck wound, but it doesn’t look too serious. I scan her vitals the best I can with the state of my internal systems. She does require medical attention, but it’s not critical.
When I approach Ahmed, he’s still holding his arm with the missing hand, and I can tell he is genuinely in pain. He tries to shoot me with the weapon in his other hand, but I deflect its trajectory with ease. The previous wound I’d inflicted on him has seriously hindered his speed. The fire blast hits a wall far behind me.
I grab his remaining hand, something he doesn’t expect, and activate the thruster firing mode. His own repulsor liquefies inside his hand as the rest of the arm is slowly burned. I haven’t pushed my weapon to its maximum setting on purpose, so at least that part takes a little time. He’s screaming from the pain. Now that he no longer has any hands, it’s time to end this.
“I told you I’d kill you today. I like to keep my promises,” I say.
He can barely speak from the pain, but mumbles, “If you think Vassiliki is better than the mega corporations? You’re in for a surprise.”
“I thought I told you never to utter her name again; you’re not worthy,” I say as I take a blade from my reserve around my thigh and plant it between his neck and right shoulder.
He grits his teeth as small rivers of blood flow down his torso. He doesn’t scream this time around.
“I don’t care what you think or what you say, Ahmed. You’re a fanatic. Whether your cause is just or not doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is your methods. And killing innocents by the millions is wrong. You want to hurt the mega corporations or the government? Attack them directly; don’t be a coward that preys upon innocents to make his point.”
“Look who’s talking; the company’s poster boy. You’ve been their puppet for so long that you can’t even remember when it started. They kill you with every mission, and still, you keep working for them, like the good dumb jarhead that you are.”
That stings. Not only because it is the truth, but also because I’m angry with myself for not having felt it sooner. I haven’t really been happy with my situation, but I never tried to dig deep enough and find the root cause of my inner discomfort. I’m a proud person, so it’s difficult for me to admit when I’m wrong.
“I’ve been used yes, even if I didn’t know about it. But that stops today. When I’m done with you, Rewind is my next stop. And everyone left standing in my way will regret ever being born.”
“You think you can do a good deed and be forgiven?” he says as blood bubbles around his mouth.
“I don’t ask to be forgiven. I only want to know why I was used this way. If I don’t get answers from the people at Rewind, then I’ll go higher up the food chain.”
“You do realize you’ll be dead soon.”
“I’m not the only me as you know. Once my consciousness is transferred, I’ll continue this insurrection of mine.”
“They’ll blast you to kingdom come. They have all the power, so you can’t hope to ever go against them and win. They’ll send another time agent to kill you and prevent even what you’ve achieved today. It’s a vicious circle, one they control and that you can only temporarily escape. I know. I’ve been hunted by you, and look at the irony: now that you’ve caught me, another time agent will hunt you down as a terrorist.”
“I’m no terrorist!”
“Oh really? Keep telling yourself that.”
Time is not a commodity I have in spades at the moment. I have to end this fast if I am to transfer my consciousness to the other me. Not to mention I’m getting tired of listening to this asshole.
I grab Ahmed’s head with both my hands, my repulsors lined up with his ears.
“So long. Say hello to Allah for me . . .” I say as I activate my repulsors at a near minimum thruster setting.
What happens next is probably unnecessary, but it helps me channel all that unhealthy fury that’s bottled up inside my soul.
His skull becomes hot really fast, his eyes melt and lose their color before bubbling and soon are replaced by light and flames escaping through his skull. His mouth is wide open, and a ray of yellow light shoots from it along with some amber and burning flesh bits.
He’s long dead before I turn my repulsors off. His skull deformed, melted, and burnt to a crisp. By some miracle, he still stands straight on his knees, the wind blowing the smoke off of his head like it would an extinguished torch.
A gust of wind blows his head’s ashy remains away, little by little, and they dissipate in the atmosphere. There’s still anger in my soul, but there’s also satisfaction to have done something that, at the very least, feels right today.
Tomorrow we may be nuked for this insurrection. Or, as Ahmed said, maybe another time agent will rewrite time like I used to. Who knows? I may end up taking Ahmed’s place after all. I won’t be threatening and killing innocents, though. That’s not who I am. But I have little doubt I will now be seen as a threat that needs to be eliminated. They can come, though, because I’ve realized something today: I’ve got nothing to lose.
I walk away, pick up Eleanor, and cradle her in my arms. I take her pulse. It’s a little erratic, but it’s there. I kiss her on the forehead. She is still unconscious. I take nano-gel from my belt and apply a little on her neck wound to stop the bleeding. The nanites are fast at closing the wound and repairing her tissues.
I take a few more steps with Eleanor in my arms and look at the city below. The electromagnetic dome protecting us from radiation is providing a slight greenish illumination to the otherwise dead-looking city. That’s the only part of the city that seems to have survived the EMP in terms of tech. I have no doubt the dome generators are shielded as well.
Fires are burning in the streets and inside the buildings where the flying vehicles have crashed. At this height, people look like ants, an army of insects in a panic running all over the place without purpose or order. It’s chaos alright, but maybe that’s what we need right now.
I hear a cracking noise in my head and then garbled words. I recognize Tanya’s scrambled voice. She keeps talking, and I try to make out a few words, but they don’t make much sense; plus I’m taken by the view.
“That’s it. I think I’ve managed to repair my vocal circuitry,” says Tanya.
“Welcome back.”
“It’s good to be back, Cole. How’s Eleanor?”
“She’ll live. I can’
t say the same about myself.”
“About that, Cole—While hacking my own systems’ sub-routines, I found data leakage from a hidden partition within my neural net. I’ve managed to access its data, and I saw every one of Vassiliki’s apparitions. Now, I understand better what has caused you to act the way you did.”
“I only did what needed to be done; that much I know in my bones.”
“Do you think Vassiliki can be trusted? I mean, it’s kind of fecked up when you think about it. She’s your wife, but she lets you die every time you time travel. If she was once part of Rewind, why did she leave you there?”
“I wish I could tell you. We’ll have to ask her if we ever meet her. She might have had her reasons. For all we know it was my idea to stay on the inside until it was time to strike. I know that sounds crazy. I think it matters not for the time being. If we need to get these answers, they’ll be revealed to us in due time.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Cole.”
“I’m not myself anymore, Tanya. I’ve been living a lie for so long—I can’t even trust my own memories. And right now, I don’t dare contemplate the how or why of it all. I’m just happy to have finally awakened.”
“Do you think we’ll stay together, you and I?”
“I don’t know, Tanya, I sure hope so. If I have anything to say about it, I’ll make it happen.”
“Thank you, Cole.”
“No, thank you, Tanya. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“That’s sweet of you to say, but somehow I doubt it’s true.”
I don’t answer her since an answer is not needed. My mind is somewhere else right now. After a while, I decide to speak.
“I sometimes wonder if humans actually need to be controlled. I question whether or not we’re capable of standing on our own. With our minds the way they are, formatted with this illusion of freedom, perhaps it’s the only sustainable life we know until it’s time for the human race to take a final bow. We’re so used to doing as we are told that I’m afraid some of us actually need oppression to survive.”
“Surely you don’t believe that, Cole.”
“Me, personally? No. Of course not. I think we should be free and decide our own destiny. I just question whether or not people are ready for it. We’ve gotten too complacent as a species; we like whatever comfort we acquire. Still, the people of New Geneva will have to adapt to a new world now. The changes they’ll face in the morning will be drastic.”
I keep looking at the dark city below. The wind blows through my hair and Eleanor’s. I don’t really have time to take in the view, but I feel in my heart that I need to. I need to be fully anchored in this moment. For a few fleeting minutes, nothing else matters not the past or the future—but to be here and now, free at last. The feeling warms my heart and uplifts my soul, and Tanya, as if knowing I need this, stays silent.
Eventually, several minutes later, she speaks.
“Cole, if we want to be at the Rewind facility in time, we should probably go now.”
By “in time” she means, “before it’s too late” to transfer both my consciousness and hers. That’s something that needs to happen and it will, no matter what I need to do.
“I guess we have to. Pity though, I feel like staying and enjoying the view longer.”
“What are you going to do when we get there?”
“It’s best not to think about it. But let’s say those who try to stop me probably won’t see the sunrise tomorrow.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t want to make plans for the future anymore, Tanya. It brings nothing but pain and anxiety. Not to mention I may not have a future. This body might not, anyway. All I want is to live every minute like it’s the last one and make sure I never again let any system, tyrant, or liar tell me how my life should be. From now on, all I want from life is to be free to make my own choices, for better or for worse.”
THE END
(Agent Cole Seeker may return for more adventures soon)
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Christian Kallias is a Bestselling, Award-winning Science Fiction author. He writes Science Fiction Space Opera with a Mythology twist and Fantasy influences.
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