“Why did you ever think we would let you destroy the Party?” Blonde highlight girl says. I have a feeling from her thick accent that she speaks English not out of necessity but to annoy Li. “We know everything about you is bullshit. You even try to always speak Mandarin like it is your native language when you didn’t grow up speaking it. Your parents were terrorists, and now you’re carrying out their same mission to destroy the Party, except you are leading it.”
“This is great.” Li looks gleeful, his expression not even showing a sign of pain even though he has been strangled for the last five minutes. “This makes it all so much better.”
“And why is that?” Blonde highlight girl responds. The eyes of everyone are transfixed on Li. Even my own gaze can’t help but meet Li’s sinister eyes. The residual pain has stopped causing every bit of my body to feel like it’s dying, instead leaving me in a state of shock where I stare at the scene ensuing with me directly in the middle, yet I feel like I’m still in another world.
After years of having wild experiences and loads of pain in virtual worlds, my brain is adept at switching back and forth between reality and a virtual reality. But this pain was more intense than any emotion I have ever felt by a magnitude of ten. It was a hell so bad that when I stare at Li, my mind is instantly transported back to his horrid expression encapsulating my being.
I will never go to a movie theater, or anything with a big screen, again.
“Because.” Li chuckles, the energy in the room shifting. Everyone is instinctively getting into a defensive stance. I can feel the tension of fingers moving closer to the triggers of the guns as others grasp tighter around the bodies of their prisoners. “It will make it that much sweeter when I kill you.”
Even without anyone signaling to do anything, there seems to be a silent agreement that now is the time to unleash their firepower upon President Li and the imperial guard.
Gunshots ring in my ears. I hit the floor as the horrid images of the dozens of dead bodies lying across the stage cross my mind. I haven’t had time to digest the horrors and lock them away in the back of my mind. The bloodshed is still fresh in mind, the screams still echoing in my ears along with the comically tragic visions of people stripping into the gunfire and making out until their lover drops dead.
None of the bullets even come close to hitting me. In fact, none of the bullets were even directed at me.
Each bullet pierces through a vital organ of a member of the imperial guard. All their bodies fall to the floor. Their blood stains the wooden planks and matches the colors of their hideous red outfits.
But the only bullet that matters is the one that connects with the head of Li Wang. I sit up, taking my body off my backpack, which I smothered, and watch in awe as Li’s body falls to the floor. The two men strangling him release their grips on him and step back.
I hate to say this, but watching this man die is beautiful in a demented way. The sound of his body hitting the floor brings comfort to me instantly, and the blood gushing out his mouth, eyes, and bullet wound looks like chocolate flowing out of him. Well, okay, maybe it looks nothing like chocolate, but the feeling of victory is just as sweet.
One of the most powerful men on Earth is dead.
I expect there to be a loud sigh from his body as the great influence he contains flees from him. I expect birds to spring from trees and begin singing. I expect something to happen, something big, something that commemorates what feels like a monumental moment.
I am let down.
Let it be known that Li Wang died like everyone else. There’s nothing special about him. He’s just a guy, a really demented one, but everyone goes the same in the end.
Except they don’t.
The silence that follows his body hitting the floor leaves an odd feeling of static in my ears. No one dares move. Noah looks shocked that the team actually pulled this off, and the highlight girl who is the apparent leader of the entire thing holds up the very gun she used to shoot him, staring at its barrel as if in disbelief that the actual thing fired.
Something tells me that no one planned about what to do if they got to this point. The blood continues dripping out of the corpses on the floor, the color continues draining from their skin, and the tension in the air surges as everyone realizes that there will only be more people coming.
Lots more. And there’s no way we can take them all out.
“Get in a defensive position.” Noah pulls a pistol out from his waistband and hastily glances at each door. Everyone else backs to the one wall of the room that doesn’t have any entrances. I follow, clutching the backpack in front of me.
I put my finger on the scanner and open the zipper up so that my hand rests inches from the Chimera Cube. I need to be prepared for anything. I need to be prepared to kill everyone if I have to.
The heavy breaths of everyone seem to be in sync as we all await what is happening next. If I happened to not be currently recovering from an egregious amount of trauma and dealing with a body that is fighting off the urge to shake uncontrollably, I might actually take the lead and scream at everyone to make something happen instead of waiting for shit to hit the fan.
Jake does it for me.
“Wake up, people!” Jake steps out in front of them. His manner is more desperate than confident. “Let’s start running and get the fuck out of here. This entire country could be ours.”
“We can’t run anywhere,” highlight girl retorts. “The plan was to get the imperial guard to accept our rule now that Li is dead. We don’t want to completely overthrow the government; we just need Li and his radical policies out of China so that things can go back to normal. Today was our breaking point. He can’t keep killing thousands without consequences.”
Jake doesn’t immediately say anything back. Outside, there is no noise from the footsteps of any imperial guards.
My eyes scan the room, the adrenaline beginning to wake me up to the fact that I am now in control of my own survival and need to step on the gas. I analyze the cabinet fixtures in the room, the large golden ceiling fan that spans half the room, and the Renaissance paintings on the wall behind me, trying to search for any tricks Li may have up his sleeve in defending this palace.
“So, we are just gonna stay here?” Jake glances up and down the row of people until he lands on me, his eyes calling out for help.
I don’t make eye contact with him. Instead, my glance is transfixed on Li. His body has rolled over so that his head is tilted to stare directly at Noah. Maybe emperors do die differently.
“Yes.” Highlight girl speaks, but at the same time that the word leaves her mouth, a voice booms over a speaker embedded into the ceiling. It’s the voice of Li.
Everyone freezes. If this is a security feature of the house, then that is the weirdest thing I have ever heard.
“What’s that?” I eye Jake, hoping that my mind is processing something incorrectly, but from the concerned expression on his face, I know I am not going insane.
All three doors slide open.
In comes the army—literally.
Unlike the imperial guards before, these guys aren’t messing around. Every part of their body is covered in protective armor. The bullets that highlight girl and the rest of the crew fire at the soldiers exert no damage. They ricochet off the armor and land on the floor, none of the imperial soldiers even flinching. They likely have noise-canceling headphones that block out the pounding of the gunfire, and their faces are covered in a thick red fabric with one tiny camera at the middle of their foreheads.
Jake scrambles back towards the wall and stands next to me. We both look at each other and know we have to get out of here.
But we have no idea how. Correction: I know exactly how we can get out of here. I know a million ways we can, but zero that would end up with the Chimera Cube staying secret.
“You think a handful of weapons can destroy the dynasty I have built?” Li’s voice booms over the loudspeaker in English, but I can still hear h
im speaking in Mandarin in the background.
“You all are fools.” Li laughs as the imperial soldiers take a step forward. I do have to admit that their red attire matches great with the blood and guts all over the floor, but when that is the only positive thing I can think of, I know we are fucked.
I expect someone to yell at him in response. Or scream in fear at the roughly twenty soldiers who have swarmed the room, all with their guns raised. None have shot any bullets at us yet, but they don’t exactly have to rush our deaths along.
The weapons we have at the moment are useless to stop them.
“I have known for months that you have been plotting against me.” His voice has a power that has a way of resonating in a horrifying way with each of us individually and as a group. “I listened in to the conversations you had even when you thought you were safe, and read your texts even when you thought no one could decrypt them. I purposely let you in even more, I gave you access to everything, just so you could think it was easy to destroy me. It made it even easier when you all effortlessly fell into my trap.”
I feel the energy of Li smiling behind the mouthpiece of the microphone he is speaking into. “You thought you could kill me when there are thousands of clones of me? You will never destroy me. Every time you kill one of me, a thousand more will be made. And each one of me I can control. My brain is one with the cloud. I am untouchable. To kill me, you have to blow up the entire world.”
Everyone exchanges shocked glances. Everything seems to be clicking in their minds now. They are having their aha moment about how they were played right as they are all about to die. A bit too late to wake up if you ask me, and from the defeated energy in all their bodies, they know it too. They never had a plan to get out of this. They never thought this was possible. But Li manipulated them all into making sure they would end up right where they are today.
And now Jake and I are trapped right in the middle.
A man with distinctive pointy ears and a wide face tears open his dress shirt to show his tattoo of the Chinese flag on his chest. Only a minute ago he held up a gun, preparing to take Li’s empire down. Now, he bows down to the invisible force of Li on his knees.
“Méi mén er!” Li responds, this time not bothering to translate his words to English. The man who ripped open his shirt collapses on his knees and weeps. Something tells me Li did not say something good.
“You will regret this.” Noah steps forward. He looks fearless and powerful. “You will get yours. I will haunt you for eternity if I have to.”
“It’s funny you say that,” Li says, back to translating his words to English. Except there is no echo in the room anymore. His voice isn’t projecting over the speakers. He is inside behind the wall of soldiers. “I think your grandpa will be the only one haunting you for not taking his throne back. Everyone here thought you were another Chinese nationalist who cared about our flag more than anything else in the world. Your comrades had no clue that you are a liar. You are only doing this to regain the throne for your grandfather. You don’t give a shit about the Party, you want to dissolve it and restore the old ways of this country.”
“You should be in jail!’ Noah screams. He had no idea Li figured him out. He thought I was harmless to tell the truth, meanwhile the most dangerous man in the world already knew.
“And you should be dead.” Li’s voice grows closer, remaining as calm as before. “I was going to burn you alive like everyone else, but you’ve convinced me that I want to do it myself instead.” He steps forward. Now Li is finally visible in front of the line of guards. Each guard has their gun raised at a different person.
No one is dumb enough to shoot. They know that will end up with us all dead. It’s too late to save Noah anyway.
Li presses down on the trigger. Noah tries to dodge the bullet, but it ends up connecting with the center of his chest. Although not a direct hit on his heart, it is fatal all the same.
Noah falls to the ground, blood gushing out of his chest, to land on the floor. He lands face forward on the ground, and the blood oozes out of him in the way a block of ice would melt on a hot summer day.
Noah’s dead.
He has no backup bodies to bring him back to life.
And now killing Li is utterly useless. If what he is saying is true, the more times we kill him, the more of his horrid plastic-surgery-ridden bodies will appear.
I instinctively resort to the first thing that always comes to my mind in a bad situation: I have to run.
Li isn’t going to let me burn in the fire along with everyone else, though. I have a valuable asset to him, maybe the most valuable one in the world.
He narrows his eyes at me.
The barrel of the pistol is now pointed right at my chest.
He is going to shoot me next.
Chapter 14
I’m about to do something stupid.
One would think after having that thought, that one would decide to pause and take a different course of action. Maybe I can try and talk Li out of shooting me, or maybe I can dodge the bullet quite literally and use the Chimera Cube to save us all.
The thing is I have no way out of this without at least killing some people.
I choose to do something that could very well kill everyone.
“Tear gas.” I press the Chimera Cube and double-tap the top of it immediately after I say the words. A blue wave of light followed by a green wave of light flashes across the cube, lighting up the dark confines of the bag.
No one hears me say the words tear gas, I can’t even imagine how weird I must look mumbling into a backpack as a clone of the President of China stands with a gun pointed at me.
The nanofabrication systems go to work. Within a second, my vision is clouded from the tear gas. I fall to the ground—mainly from the burning sensation all over my skin and eyes, but also because I know I can dodge Li’s bullets.
He thought he would have time to press me to tell him my secret one last time. He thought he would be able to cause me one last moment of pain before he killed me.
But I anticipated his action and moved faster.
Now everything is descending into chaos.
Bullets fly through the air. Li attempts to shoot me, but instead of connecting with my heart or head, which would lead to my instantaneous death, he shoots me in my groin.
Now I know the sensation of what it is like to have my balls blown off. It’s terrible. The metal shards dig into every especially sensitive area down there. I can’t walk even if I tried. I am completely immobilized, and this pain, when thrown on top of the trauma from earlier, sends my body into a horrible series of convulsions.
I gasp for air, but every molecule of oxygen that floods my lungs has now been contaminated with poison. The tear gas rips apart my lung tissue, sending a searing pain through my throat and chest as I exhale. The pain is so strong that whatever food is left in my stomach expels in a hot, mushy goo from my mouth.
My troubles don’t compare to what has broken out in the room. Bullets fly back and forth, their force reverberating the walls of the relatively small room for this amount of people. I feel a dead body land on my foot, another thing to add to the list of things I never want to happen again in my life.
The screams shake me to my core and cause me to scramble even in my agony to clutch on to the Chimera Cube. I need to save Jake. I need to save all these people, and the thick gray color to the tear gas gives me the perfect cover to release monsters and weapons that can do just that.
The visibility is now returning as the tear gas diffuses throughout the room. The only thing my attempt at saving us has been successful in is burning everyone's eyes and skin and delaying the imperial soldiers from shredding our flesh to pieces with their bullets.
I can't think anymore. I cave into my desperation, every bullet marking one moment closer to our deaths.
I only get one shot at turning this around.
The words spit out of me and I double-tap the Chimera Cube. N
ow my words are forever etched into the fabric of the universe.
I said something even I didn't expect. And when it all explodes, I feel like both the biggest idiot and smartest man alive.
I commanded the Chimera Cube to explode fireworks. That was my exact phrase that I yelled into it above the gunfire. With the tear gas heaviest around me, my lungs and heart hating me for saying those words, no one is able to see the formation of the fireworks in the second the trillions of nanobots manipulate the arrangement and structure of the atoms in the air. The colorful, cylindrical devices packed with explosives erupt in the air in a way that mirrors the chaos of the bullets.
Except this time with color.
Millions of sparks travel throughout the room, some blue, some yellow, others red, all cutting through the thick gas. My eyes instinctively shoot open at the new burst of loud noise which only causes them to hurt more as the tear gas lacerates every part of my outer skin. The sparks burn my body, and to add insult to injury, one of the fireworks exploded right on my knee that is already bloody and injured.
To put it lightly, I am in a fuck ton of pain.
And I'm not the only one. The gunfire briefly halts, the smoke from the fireworks combined with the tear gas and the initial shock of the magnificent explosion of color catching everyone by surprise.
Hell, it even caught me by surprise. The fireworks exploded in the same way that shrapnel from a bomb flies in every direction without a reason or purpose.
I wanted the fireworks to offer a quick and fast distraction to keep the guards from killing us all.
I wanted more time to dream up a plan that can save us all.
But the smoke isn't just from the fireworks. The wooden floor, walls, and ceiling in this room reserved for torture are now all up in flames.
"Heal now," I command the Chimera Cube. I have no clue how the nanofabrication responds to that request or how intelligent the nanobots are inside it. I don't have any fancy degree in this kind of stuff, and my dad didn’t explain it to me in nearly enough detail before he killed himself and exploded Zion. And more importantly, I haven't taken the time to read the several hundred pages and intimidating small font that contains the patents for the cubes and likely everything I need to know about operating it.
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 12