The Final Option

by Kyle Robertson

  Tory pointed to it, and motioned that the signal‘s origin came from its lower fuselage.

  When did the Russians get this advanced? He thought. For not being a superpower anymore, they're still formidable.

  Behind the helicopter was a doorway that led deeper into the cave. They used the biorhythm scan to check behind the closed door for life signs on the other side. There were none.

  There were double doors with a keypad lock. Tory scanned the keypad for wear patterns. After he saw the wear, he calculated the code, and opened the door.

  They entered without incident, and moved down the corridor. They came to a larger opening. The steel walls integrated with the rock. There were three guards patrolling the area.

  Eldridge motioned they were his targets. The rest let him sneak up to the two nearest the corridor they came from. The other guard walked into another room farther down the corridor.

  Oh, don't run away, Eldridge thought. You'll kiss death‘s ass momentarily.

  He crept in front of the two guards. They had no clue an assassin was a foot from them.

  Eldridge punched one guard in the throat, and the other in the chest. The speed was blinding. The guards didn‘t flinch. The effect of the blows weren‘t active just yet, so they just kept standing guard.

  Those nimrods have no idea they're already dead. Eldridge thought as he made his way to the other guard.

  He slowly inched towards the last guard. He had to stay silent. The other two were still alert. He knew if he made a slight switch in his breathing, it would be enough to trigger their curiosity. He needed them to stay where they were so he could reach the other guard without incident. He held his breath, and quietly inched away from them.

  He moved down the hallway methodically. Once he was out of earshot, he began breathing again. He moved closer to the room the guard went into.

  Cody watched very pensively. He knew Eldridge was a professional at his skill, but he didn't know how Eldridge would react to any form of adversity. He didn't fully trust his team yet, and not knowing their improvisational skills made him weary.

  If some crazy shit goes down, I hope Eldridge can roll with it, he thought.

  Eldridge knew the first two guards would be disabled soon. The countdown to their deaths couldn't be stopped. Once he struck them, their fates were already sealed. When they expired, Eldridge would have time to creep, and take care of the other guard. When he was halfway to his target, the guard walked out of the room.

  Eldridge stayed still. As the guard began walking back to the other two guards, he realized he would see them die.

  I can't kill him thirty feet away. Time to augment my plan, he thought, as the guard walked closer to him.

  Then it happened.

  The first guard’s throat blew out the back of his neck. It splattered across the wall in an explosion of blood.

  As he began to fall, the other surprised guard felt his sternum blow through his back. It ripped a hole in the back of his uniform, and spinal chunks skittered across the floor. Blood sprayed as if it came from a sprinkler system nozzle.

  The guard walking from the room saw this and pointed his rifle down the hallway. He didn't know what he just saw, or who did it, but he wasn't going to share the same fate.

  The guard clicked a button on his headset. “I got a code twelve situation here!” he blared into the headset. “Sub-level six. The chopper entrance!”

  Eldridge knew he was in the line of fire, so he dropped to a prone position on the floor. He hoped the rest of the squad had become scarce. There was about to be a hail of bullets saturating the area in seconds.

  The guard began emptying his clip in the hallway. The bullets ricocheted off the walls with a loud roar. His rifle became hot as he kept carving divots out of the wall. Then Eldridge used his skill.

  He unclasped the holster of his gun, pulled it out, and leveled it at the guard. He shot center mass and neutralized the guard.

  As the guard was dying, he fell to his knees and kept firing. His last bullets peppered the floor dangerously close to Eldridge. Nuggets of the floor from the impact of the bullets stung his face. He was happy it was part of the floor instead of the bullets.

  An alarm cued their situation of disruption. Eldridge ran back to his squad to see if anyone was hit.

  “We’re fine, Futureshock,” Cody assured him. “Remind me not to piss you off! That was brutal!”

  “Our element of surprise has been compromised,” Geogyn told his squad. “Stay covert and quiet.”

  They set up in a defensive formation, waiting for them to fill the room with guards. They didn't have to wait long.

  A sea of forty men poured into the area. They saw three dead guards and the devastation from the clip of ammo, but that was all. There were no hostile elements present.

  “Lockdown sub-level six, and implement God’s Hand,” the leader spoke into his headset.

  A large steel barrier slammed down from the ceiling, cutting them off from escape. They just had to evade this wave of men and get back to their mission.

  Cody began to trust his squad more after the display with the third guard earlier. He knew they were quick on their feet, and could handle whatever was thrown at them. Even if whatever was God’s Hand. Then there was a revelation of what it was.

  A neon blue wave of light ran across the ceiling, walls and floor of the area. It wasn't damaging to his squad. It wasn't meant to hurt them, physically.

  Cody‘s suit began to have electrical worms running across it. He realized the worms were dying, along with the reason he wore the suit initially.

  He and his squad were now visible to a platoon of restless, trigger-happy men!

  “Damn!” Eldridge exclaimed. “An EMP wave! Retreat now, fall back!”

  The suits were rendered useless when they flooded the area with an electromagnetic pulse and stopped everything electrical.

  Being in a compromising position, Cody kicked into gear. “Get that damned door open! I'll hold ‘em off!”

  As a wave of men began to fire their weapons, ripping his suit to shreds, Cody pulled out his rifle, spiked his body to look like a medieval Morning Star battle mace. His body blocked the bullets from his squad. Tory ran to the door to hack the lock. They had to be quick. The situation was collapsing.

  As Cody began firing into the platoon, he yelled at them, “I hope you said goodbye to your families before you came to work today!”

  As Cody dropped the first wave of soldiers, he turned to Tory and said, “Get that damned door open, Cypher!”

  Tory was at the door looking for a locking mechanism. It blocked them from the hallway leading back to the hangar. It appeared from the ceiling and slammed to the floor with a boisterous steel clang. He looked at the shiny smoothness of the barrier and discovered it was just that. A barrier, not a door.

  “I can't open something that has no lock! We're trapped!” Tory yelled back.

  Cody heard the afflicting report, focused back on the platoon, and said, “Well, I don't run from assholes anyway. Time to let them know who Ghost Alpha is. Remember the name, bitches!” He fired at the next wave of soldiers with a loud war cry.

  The rest of the squad took cover behind Cody. They also began firing at the platoon of men. As soon as they took out a row of men, another row replaced them. Soldiers kept pouring in.

  As Tory targeted a soldier, another shot him in the shoulder. The pain was surprising to him. As he bled from the wound, he turned to Eldridge and said, “I'm hit! This shit's not bulletproof?!”

  “Why would I make my stealth suit bulletproof?!” Eldridge yelled over the gunfire.

  “Because some asshole might hit you with an EM pulse!” Tory yelled back.

  “You're the chaos theorist!” he yelled. “You should've seen this possibility!”

  “I told you before I'm not a fortune teller! I guess trusting my squad to prepare against any possibility was stupid on my part!” Tory said bitterly.

  “You can't ab
sorb bullets, I can!” Cody told Tory with harshness. “Stay behind me! I got this!” He kept firing at the platoon with an evil grimace. He finally felt smarter than the M.I.T. graduate who’d never experienced a firefight before.

  “Cover me!” Geogyn yelled at his squad. He sprinted with lightning flash quickness from Cody's cover. He made his way to the deadly platoon. He avoided their gunfire by passing through the bullets like he was dodging a torrential deadly, horizontal, rainstorm. He was unscathed as he began attacking the soldiers.

  Now I know why they call him the Final Option, Cody thought as he saw Geogyn violently dismantle the platoon.

  They kept coming. The numbers were relentless. The more they dropped, many more replaced the fallen.

  The squad did what they were trained to do. Take out the threat. They were quick and efficient, killing many enemies. Geogyn had to wade through copious amounts of corpses to continue his annihilation.

  “Get the Novichok sniper! Drop that big bastard!” one of the soldiers yelled to the back of the platoon.

  Geogyn continued his assault with deadly, quick strikes. He used his Kenpo and Capoeira training to negotiate through the soldiers. The rest of Ghost Alpha were the cleanup crew, until the sniper got a clear shot, and locked in on Cody.

  The sniper adjusted for the distance to Cody and fired a capsule into Cody's face. It exploded in a cloud five inches from his nose. Not knowing, or caring what it was, he unknowingly inhaled the cloud without a second thought.

  “Keep comin'! We'll kill more!” Cody yelled at the perpetual waves of soldiers. “Bloodbaths get me horny! Just keep on co…chtkt!”

  Cody stopped in mid-sentence. He dropped to his knees and began to contort violently. He lost his spiking ability, and received gunshot wounds from the soldiers.

  The sniper had hit him with the nerve agent Novichok. The reason the cloud was so small and didn't affect the rest, was because of how deadly it was. It would kill you as well as your enemy if the dispersal wasn't controlled.

  Novichok causes involuntary contractions of all muscles, then attacks your respiratory system. You choke to death, while your muscles severely contract strong enough to break your bones.

  Tory and Eldridge dove behind Cody's deforming body. Tory heard the sound of a wet leather strap being twisted across a tree limb, breaking branches. It was coming from Cody's condensing muscles over his shattering bones!

  “Cody!” Eldridge yelled. “Man down, man down!”

  Geogyn saw Cody fall, and went after the sniper. Before he had a chance to squeeze off another devastating round, Geogyn reached him. He snapped the sniper’s neck, quickly incapacitating him.

  As Eldridge watched Geogyn kill the sniper, another soldier threw a grenade at Cody's body. As its path arched down to the squad, Eldridge began to dive away and yelled to Tory.

  “Grenade!”

  Sadly, it was too late for Tory. As he heard Eldridge warn him, the grenade reached him and detonated.

  It exploded two feet above Tory's head. It didn't produce a deadly concussion; it sprayed white-hot shrapnel across the area.

  Tory received the brunt of the burst, while Eldridge was peppered with burning particles.

  White phosphor grenades burn at five thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Eldridge howled in pain as the particles burned through his skin. Tory didn't have a chance to cry out. He was dead when he saw the flash of the grenade.

  And then there was one. Everyone assigned to a mission with the Final Option was killed in combat. It became an absolution Eldridge fought with for a second.

  Death has been my guarantee, but I'm not coming to the party without inviting some guests, Eldridge thought as he locked, loaded, and ran towards the platoon.

  As the phosphor burned through his body, he ignored the pain and began killing as many soldiers as he could.

  He, unfortunately, couldn't dodge the bullets, as well as Geogyn, could. He took out nine more before he was shot down.

  Geogyn saw Eldridge fall. He expected this, but not so soon. They were all dead, just like all the others. Their early demise influenced Geogyn's psychotic break. He began to rend the flesh from the terrified soldiers.

  “Don't run! You won't escape my wrath!” he barked at the soldiers as they started to retreat in terrified haste.

  Geogyn was ferociously dogged in his massacre. Tearing soldiers apart every which way.

  That was when he heard an incredibly loud, intrusive blast in his ear.

  It ushered him into darkness. The soldiers faded away. His dead squad mates faded away. Light and color faded away to oblivion.

  To… nonexistence.

  Chapter Seven: 1 Kings 22:16

  Geogyn was slowly becoming conscious. The darkness began to fade. He was alive, with a migraine from that abhorrently intrusive tone. It climbed through his temples. He heard his pain every time his heart pumped in his head. It was blinding.

  As he focused, he found himself on his knees. His arms were spread apart and confined with heavy forearm gauntlets. They came from the floor to about three feet high. He was confined and incapacitated.

  My God. Where am I? Geogyn thought as he realized no matter how strong he was, he couldn't move.

  “Most of the humans have labeled me with that moniker. Some Allah, others Adonai, or Jesus. I liked Yahweh myself, But you can call me Val-Koorin,” a voice came from nowhere.

  Geogyn looked to see who it was and saw nothing. He was the only thing illuminated in the area. Everything else was deprived of light. He thought, where are all those soldiers?

  “Those that are still alive are recovering elsewhere,” Val-Koorin said, reading his mind again. “You were killing too many of my disciples, I had to flood the area with a sonic paralyze cascade. The headache will subside, eventually.”

  “Who are you? Where are you?!” Geogyn screamed at the voice.

  “I have told you who, and being who I am, I am everywhere.” Val-Koorin projected into Geogyn's mind this time. “Since this is too convoluted for you, I will manifest in an image.”

  An image began to materialize in front of Geogyn. It was humanoid in form, but not entirely human in features. It had two eyes, but the slits were different. Instead of just horizontal eye slits, they opened vertically as well. It had no nose, or mouth. The area was smooth. It stood about thirteen feet high. The mass suggested about three tons in weight. It didn't wear any armor, protection, or clothing. Its color became whatever you thought of at the time, and sometimes past the spectrum of known color.

  “You are still confused,” Val-Koorin's voice emanated from his image. “Just accept me as your creator.”

  Geogyn believed he was created from alien technology, so this… thing could be legitimate.

  “I created the humans that inhabit this planet. It's a detrimental component that will aid in the survival of my planet,” Val-Koorin revealed. “You are a detrimental component of securing this planet's success.”

  This was getting more colluded by the second. Geogyn was getting frustrated with this thing who recently revealed it was his creator. The situation didn't compute to him. His questions were only secondary to the pain crushing his skull. He couldn't move. Incarceration aided in his delirium.

  “You need an explanation before you lose sanity,” Val-Koorin said to an involuntarily shaking Geogyn.

  Geogyn closed his eyes as Val-Koorin began speaking. “You are my disciple. You were created to craft a utopic society if it hadn't happened by this time. You are my answer to all the wrong of this world. The reason you are still bound is because you don't believe me, yet,” Val-Koorin explained. “You will be released when you understand enough to truly believe.”

  He still wasn't making any sense to Geogyn. Val-Koorin felt this, and continued.

  “Our planet will experience what humans call an evolutionary level event. This event is imminent. There is no way to stop this from happening. I am a scientist from my world. Since our fate could not be changed, I looked for other a
lternatives,” he continued.

  “Every planet has an evolutionary level event, once. Having two has been a celestial impossibility since the universe was created. A countless number of planets having to experience this event destroys the act of it being a cycle. I searched for a planet that already had its event.” Val-Koorin was coming to the important part for Geogyn.

  “Once I found an inhabitable planet that had its event, I began my experiment.”

  He was getting to the age-old question asked by many a scholar. If he was who he said he was, the answer of ‘why are we here’ was coming.

  “This planet was a fertile land of existence; it was full of life. The ecosystem sustained many species. It thrived, until the event.” Val-Koorin became grave. “An asteroid struck this planet, and wiped out the dominant species of that time. It did not kill everything. The lower creatures survived. Eventually, the planet recycled itself. It didn't die like ninety four percent of the planets that had their event. That was when I discovered it. Not a new place for our species yet. Yes, it had all the building blocks for sustainable existence, just not the technology. I created something that could adapt and survive here. Something that had the capacity to learn. Something that would ultimately evolve technology to our standards. I created humans.”

  Geogyn was getting his history lesson. It still didn't give him the reason for his purpose. Val-Koorin continued.

  “I couldn't give them intellect equivalent to ours. I was obligated to create them to be indigenous to this planet’s laws of environment. They had to adapt past the harshness of this world. They were primitive, but had the capacity to learn. They didn't live like us. They were finite. Their offspring learned from their predecessors. The next generation became smarter. I believed my experiment was going to be a success, until they stagnated.”

  “All of this is informative, but what is my purpose?” Geogyn asked.

  “You don't know the reasons for my actions yet. If you were released, you would try to escape. When you discover your purpose, you will want to be my disciple,” Val-Koorin explained. “Your purpose will be revealed.”