Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  A war cry erupted from Mike Fury’s chest. “My turn!”

  Semi-automatic gunfire erupted from Mike’s weapons as he lined up his targets and fired. All his shots connected. Even if they hadn’t, he was firing specialized rounds Buzz had designed for the government—patent pending—that would disintegrate into a harmless cloud of dust particles when they connected with the target or if they missed and traveled farther than a hundred feet. Mike’s shooting today wouldn’t harm any civilians.

  Buzz relished the sounds of propellers locking up and bullets pinging into the drones’ plastic bodies. Explosions soon rocked the sky.

  Buzz did a mental fist pump. All right!

  Thirty seconds into the attack, Buzz checked the progress bar at the bottom of his laptop screen. They’d destroyed nearly thirty-one percent of the drones, and so far, none had made it past them.

  This was going even better than Buzz’s best predictions.

  They say the tide of battle can shift like the current of the wind, and it wasn’t long before the black clouds of the exploding drones began to obscure the battlefield.

  “Ah shit, I can’t see nothin’.” Mike’s words came like a bad tiding to Buzz’s ears.

  Zach’s words, at least, gave him a heads up. “The drones are forming up again or something. I think…I think they’re about to—”

  The first bomb dropped onto the rooftop.

  “…go on the offensive.”

  That’s when the first Binnie went up in flames. They’d suffered their first casualty.

  Nor would it be the last. Some of the drones started to vary their height against Buzz’s hard-coded flight pattern. Some of the drones had forward-mounted machine guns, and Buzz watched as a stream of bullets rock-shocked a Binnie to her back, and she lay there, unmoving, her gaze fixed upon her master’s face.

  You’re slipping. You can’t handle the pressure after all

  Buzz smacked himself to clear the words from his mind. The constant machine-gun fire of the drones sounded like an angry mechanic mosquito in his ears.

  “Everybody! Take cover!”

  He grabbed his laptop and collapsed to the rooftop with his hands over his neck. He hoped Zach and Mike were doing the same. They couldn’t warp back in time like Rueben if they died, and if Rueben had been kidnapped by Pete again, he might never warp back. Might never undo his failure.

  Buzz suddenly thrust his hand into his pocket and rubbed his thumb over the flat shiny surface of the cubed device he’d liberated from the barn. He’d finished it right before they’d left for the hotel, but he didn’t want to use it. It was a last resort, and the results were, well, final.

  He wiped more sweat from his head and checked his laptop screen. The Binnies were still pew! pewing! away at their targets but drones were now getting through.

  Buzz felt sick to his stomach.

  The rooftop rumbled and shook as another Binnie blew up. Then another. Drones continued to buzz past.

  He noticed that not all the drones seemed to have guns or bombs. Some of them had stickers of flags on their sides. Others emitted a short prerecorded message in a foreign language as they whizzed by. Was this part of Pete’s plan?

  Even worse, had Pete already planned for this “last stand” atop the hotel? Had this scenario already played out and he didn’t remember because Pete had warped back? Was this all some game played by immortal time-warping gods that mere mortals couldn’t hope to win?

  Suddenly Buzz was jarred back to reality by the ripping blasts of Mike’s twin machine guns. The man now had them on full auto, and he wasn’t conserving his ammo. “Yeah. Take that! Haha. How you like that? Want some more?”

  Mike drew a breath as he reloaded. “Come on, men! We got this! Back to it! Yo, Boss Man. You got this. Back to—”

  A drone’s bullet struck Mike in the side of the leg, and he staggered to one knee. He kept firing. “Haha! You think you can kill me? I’m Mike Fuckin’ Fury! Take that, you ugly—”

  Another bullet winged him in the arm, and one of his machine guns clattered to the rooftop.

  Then, from out of the chaos of battle, Zach’s voice shouted, “For Fury!”

  Buzz watched as the drone targeting Mike suddenly jerked and swiveled and aimed its gun at a fellow drone. Then the drone began rapid-firing upon its fellows. Explosions once again lit up the night sky.

  Nice thinking, Zach. Real nice thinking.

  With renewed hope, Buzz turned back to his laptop, his fingers ready to spam out some damage to these drones. Would it be enough? He didn’t know. An awful lot of drones had already gotten through their line, and more continued to do so.

  He and Zach and Mike would continue the attack until the last of the drones passed overhead. And then…

  Well, then they’d take the fight down to the streets if they had to. They’d fight, and they’d fight some more. They’d fight until global nuclear war began if they had to. They would fight.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Monday, May 22, 6:56 p.m.

  Rueben and Aki struggled to hold on to something—anything—in the back of the military Jeep. They screamed as Martha took a sharp turn and they fell into each other. Gripping the wheel, Martha began to weave her way through NYC traffic, a borrowed police strobe light stuck to the vehicle’s bumper.

  Aki sat up and straightened her hair, only to get tossed sideways again. “Martha, can you please manage to stay on the road?”

  The last hour had been a bumpy ride. Back at the military base, edgy soldiers had surrounded them. As they were about to escort Rueben, Martha, and Aki to the brig—Zach had already escaped the base—Aki’s CIA reinforcements showed up and straightened everything out.

  The military base had even loaned them this Jeep and some guns, and some off-duty soldiers had been able to slow Pete down as he fled in his green Ford Escape. The soldiers had reported Pete’s position over the Jeep’s radio as he neared the city, and Martha had eventually caught up to him.

  It was hard to imagine that Pete had been able to elude capture in a Ford Escape—a rather ordinary SUV that could easily flip if taking a turn too sharply—which only proved Pete’s driving prowess. Of course, maybe he’d died and warped back a few times in the process to make it so far. Regardless, Pete left a trail of disgruntled drivers and the occasional fender bender in his wake.

  Martha found an opening in traffic and gunned it, while up ahead, Pete ramped up onto the sidewalk, sending pedestrians screaming and running for cover.

  “Jesus. He’s getting off on this, isn’t he?” Aki fell into Rueben, then sat up. “Tell us what your evil twin is thinking.”

  Rueben thought for a second and tried to get into Pete’s mind. The worst part was that it wasn’t so hard. “He doesn’t give a shit. He has nothing to lose, nothing to gain, and the whole world is one giant video game. He can reset whenever he feels like it, and nothing matters.”

  Aki held on to the seatback as Martha agreed, “I’ve seen that. How do we stop him?”

  Aki replied quickly. “By ourselves, I’m not sure we can.”

  Martha pulled out her phone and put it on speaker while she took another sharp turn to pursue Pete. “I’m calling in help.” She completed the turn, narrowly avoiding a bus. The bus horn blared at them, and the passengers gestured at the Jeep.

  Pete was straight-out playing with them. What was his game?

  Martha conversed with some fellow cops on the force for a few moments, and a few minutes later, she’d arranged for cop car barricades a couple of blocks ahead in all directions.

  Suddenly Aki cried out, “Fly! Windshield!”

  Rueben focused on the black speck on the other side of the windshield. Aki was right. “I bet that’s Pete’s mini-drone.” Probably the same one that had implanted the nanobot “capper” in him at the Exit Bar.

  The fly flew off. Then it was inside the vehicle. It landed on the dashboard and emitted a tiny electric spark.

  The Jeep died.

 
Its mission complete, the fly took flight again and buzzed toward the back seat as if to gloat in Rueben’s face. Rueben eyed it closely, raising his palms to strike.

  “Can’t beat meee,” a tinny speaker warbled from the mini-drone.

  Rueben brought his palms together in a mighty clap. “Oh yeah?”

  Aki took Rueben’s hand. “Rueben, that was very—”

  “We’ve got to get out and go!” Martha yelled, opening her door. “We can’t let him get away.”

  Traffic was hanging back from the Jeep, and they were all able to climb out. They sprinted after the green SUV, following it on the sidewalk as it took a turn. Up ahead was the police barricade.

  Martha drew her gun, and the three of them hustled down the street.

  Ahead of them, the Escape barreled up to the barricade and showed no sign of slowing down. Rueben’s heart quickened. Was Pete going for a suicide mission?

  Then, right before he reached the barricade, Pete opened the driver’s door and rolled out into the street, a black backpack strapped to his back. His vehicle continued, hitting the police barricade at full force.

  In a massive orange blast, the vehicle exploded. Pete must have rigged it with one of his bombs.

  People screamed and ran for cover, and glass from the windshield and nearby storefronts rained down onto the street. In the commotion, Rueben spotted Pete making a break for it down an alley.

  He motioned to Aki and Martha. “Go, go, run, run.”

  The three ran after Pete, and Martha grabbed a police radio from the officers gathered there and radioed in that the suspect was on foot. “We have reason to believe he’s headed to the U.N. building.”

  The barricade scene was still in chaos, and Rueben overheard someone on Martha’s radio talk about injuries. With all that glass and fire, of course, someone had gotten hurt.

  He saw Pete about a quarter-mile ahead in his signature white hoodie, running with the precision of a track and field athlete. Rueben was keeping up now, but he knew that his endurance was fading. He didn’t appreciate his future self showing him up like this, especially not in front of Aki. He’d have to take up running after this.

  Rueben summoned every ounce of energy in his reserve to keep up with Pete. Do it for Aki. Do it for Aki, he repeated in his mind like a mantra as he closed in on Pete.

  Then Pete slipped down another side alley, and they pursued him down a narrow, brick-walled space. There was nothing here but a dumpster and some undergrowth in between two tenement buildings. Then, much to Rueben’s astonishment, Pete started Spider-Manning up the wall.

  “What the fuck?”

  Then Rueben realized Pete was climbing up a series of small metal pipes. Once he got to the second story, he smashed in a window and crawled inside.

  After glancing at the vertical and probably difficult-to-climb pipes, Martha and Aki looked at Rueben questioningly.

  The trio instead scrambled toward the front entrances of the building, but they were all locked.

  With one swift kick, Martha broke down a door. The threesome entered a dark and dank apartment hallway. One of the hallway lights buzzed and flickered with the commotion, and residents peeked out through doors, only to scurry back inside. A woman in a dirty housedress stood with a crying baby on her hip, and the whole place smelled like cigarettes and urine.

  The three of them raced down the hall toward a chipped and broken wooden staircase and up to the second floor. That level was a maze of green painted doors and ratty carpet, with occasional graffiti on the wall.

  Aki leaned against the wall, brandishing her gun around the corner. “Where would he have gone?”

  Rueben didn’t have an answer to that. He figured they would find him dashing through the hall and catch him. Now that it was empty and silent, he didn’t know where Pete would be.

  Rueben remembered one time watching a show about some bounty hunter and remembered how he had handled a situation like this. He nodded at Aki and Martha. “Let’s make some noise. Let’s piss everyone off until someone tells us something.”

  Martha, Aki, and Rueben smiled at each other and went down the hall yelling, “Pete, come out, you bastard. We’ve got you surrounded.” They kept yelling at the top of their lungs and started kicking doors.

  Residents screamed inside their homes, and children wailed. Rueben kicked in a door and caught two burnouts sitting on a couch. They nodded when they saw Rueben. “You see an older version of me in a white hoodie come through here?”

  “Dude, oh my gosh. Yeah. You look like him. But younger.”

  “So you know where he went?”

  “Nah, man. He says he don’t smoke no more. Hey, look, man, I’m up in the clouds.” The stoner gestured at the ceiling with one lazy hand, his face illuminated by a TV playing Bevis and Butt-Head.

  Rueben shut the door, but at least he knew that Pete frequented the place.

  The noise plan worked because Pete came out with a wide grin. He tugged on the straps of his black backpack on his back to make sure they were snug. “You’ve got me surrounded, huh?”

  The three of them turned toward him, and Aki pointed her gun. “Freeze.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m not going to let you take me alive. And if you kill me, well, we’ll just do this dance again.”

  Rueben sauntered up to him. “You’re not going to get away with this.”

  Pete shrugged. His hands were bare, weaponless. “Yes, I will. If not this time, next time. Instead of fighting me all the time, you should thank me. I’m doing you a favor, you know.”

  Pete set his arm on Rueben’s shoulder, and Rueben pushed it off. The next thing he knew, they were wrestling on the floor, with Martha and Aki jumping in to wrangle with Pete.

  A couple of the residents came into the hall. One was a giant hulk of a man with tattoos and a toothy grin, wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whiteys. “Hey, we don’t need no cop shit up in here, Jared. Don’t be bringing that shit up in my house.”

  “Jared?”

  Pete smiled at Rueben. “We have many names and many lives.”

  The distraction was enough that Pete got a solid punch into Rueben’s gut and sent him flying backward in pain. Then police car sirens sounded outside, and Pete took off on foot down the stairs.

  Tighty-Whitey Man cursed up a blue streak and lumbered back into his apartment, searching for a gun. “I’m going to kill you, bringing that shit up in here.” He reappeared in the hallway, chasing Rueben down the stairs and firing shots the whole way down.

  Rueben shook his head at Martha and Aki midway down. “There has to be another way.”

  Rueben pursued Pete outside, glad when Tighty-Whitey ran out of bullets and luckily hadn’t hit him or Aki or Martha. Once outside, they saw Pete in the distance, about twenty yards down the block, getting farther and farther from the scene.

  Aki panted and checked her phone. “That’s the direction of the U.N. building. He’s headed there. This was a decoy to lose us.”

  Martha scoffed. “Or to lure some of the cops away from the summit. Now they’re tied up for the next half hour investigating the scene. Too bad this isn’t my jurisdiction.”

  A sudden buzzing sound brought their attention up to the sky. Bright colorful lights droned past them. Martha pointed up. “The drones for the light show. They’re here.”

  Rueben watched them with dread. These weren’t light-show drones. They were killing machines.

  Aki cursed. “What do we do?”

  Rueben rubbed his forehead. Then he had an idea. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Buzz. He’d tried to call him earlier, but Buzz hadn’t answered. Surely Buzz wasn’t drunk again. Not when they needed him most.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Monday, May 22, 6:42 p.m.

  Buzz beelined through the empty city streets, his gaze so focused on the drone that he nearly ran right into a parking meter. Behind him, he heard Zach ask if he was okay. And behind Zach, Mike Fury limped along, his wounded leg and ar
m tied off with strips of his t-shirt so he wouldn’t bleed out.

  When he was a kid, Buzz’s mom used to call it “Buzz-Zone,” by which she meant he had an abnormal capacity to zone in on something and completely lose sight of anything else. That’s what he was in right now as he ran through the streets, following the path of the drones.

  He’d done all he could to slow down the drones with his computer hacking. The drones had almost reached the U.N. building, but Buzz had managed to program a couple more detours into their flight pattern. He, Zach, and Mike clutched microwave hand cannons taken from some of the fallen Binnies atop the rooftop.

  Now Buzz raised his microwave hand cannon and lined up his shot on the drone. He stopped, held his breath, and pulled the trigger. Pew. The drone’s propellors stopped mid-hover, its forward momentum carrying it into the path of a street lamp where it exploded into tiny bits.

  Mike cheered from behind him. “Hell ya, bro.”

  Buzz’s eyes tracked another drone. He kept his neck craned so high it hurt, and he wondered if he would get it stuck in the pose as people did in yoga.

  Zach sprinted up behind him, completely out of breath. “Man, you almost lost Mike and me back there.”

  Buzz kept his hand cannon raised to the sky and gestured for Zach to do the same with his. “You have to aim carefully.”

  Buzz pointed at the drone he was currently watching. “See that one? The way it’s traveling, if I stand here and aim at a forty-two-point-five-degree angle, I can get it.” Buzz lifted his hand cannon, positioned it, and waited for the drone to pass at the perfect angle.

  Zach raised his hand cannon. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Pew. He struck the drone before Buzz even had a chance. “Or you could do it that way.”

  Buzz narrowed his eyes at Zach. “Science is based on precision and respect for the process. If it’s all a big joke to you—”

  Zach sighed. “I’m not disrespecting science. I just want to shoot a cool gun, okay?”