So, I have no idea if it can only heal superficial wounds, or if it can save a heart that is on the verge of collapsing. And I don't know if it will save everyone here, or only the people immediately around me.
From the lack of movement in the dead body that fell on my foot, I assume it can't revive the dead.
But my own knee feels better within a second. The gaping bullet would in my kneecap is gone, and the wound from the firework exploding on me is repaired, along with the flesh lost in that painful collision.
I would tell you what everyone else's condition is, but it doesn't matter anyway.
President Li's voice booms over the speakers. There is no telling if the clone of him he brought into the room is dead or alive. But he's the one man that the Chimera Cube may not be enough to topple.
"You will all burn forever."
The concerned faces of the imperial guard members turn to inaudible screams in an instant. Some of them must have gotten orders to stop shooting at us, but they aren’t allowed to leave either. All three doors are locked, and even with them pounding on the doors as hard as they can, the thick, wooden planks won't budge.
The tear gas lingers in the air, causing tears to pour down my face and my lungs to wheeze with every breath. I stand up, not fearful of the imperial guards shooting me anymore, and glance at Jake, who stands next to me. He is in a state of shock. Whatever injuries he had before have vanished, only to leave him mentally scarred and suffering the agonizing effects of the tear gas just as me.
Seconds ago we were all lined up against one of the walls, fearing for our life, but now we are all banded together.
We have to survive.
I have to save us all.
But I hesitate. Every new command that pops in my mind I deny as I overthink the situation. The paranoia of having everyone find out about the Chimera Cube is outweighing everything, I can feel my mind turning into the same monster that my dad became.
What do any of these lives mean, if saving them means losing the Chimera Cube? If every life is worth the same, then how do twenty people outweigh the twenty million that can be saved in the future?
It's the toughest question I have ever had to answer.
So instead, I don't answer it at all.
Li answers it for me.
"Everyone who has ever figured me out dies soon after. I will spare no one." His voice sends chills down my spine even though it is the monotone expression of the translating device.
Then the fire that has started to eat away at the floor and ceiling, causing a light gray smoke to infest the air and form a pungent cocktail of hell for my lungs, erupts into one large flame. The wooden tiles on the ceiling slide to the side, revealing a dozen different torches that expel flames into the room.
We are now boxed in, each flame stealing away potential oxygen from our lungs and pumping out a heavy smoke instantly. The flames increase in intensity, the deadly tail of each one extending further and further, daring to singe the scalps of every person underneath one.
"Twenty fire-retardant suits," I say into my backpack. Without context, it is more believable that I am huffing chalk out my backpack rather than trying to save us. The imperial soldiers are going apeshit now. They are all communicating in a frenzy in Mandarin, their jumbled voices morphing into a number of disconcerted actions including people randomly firing bullets at the doors, which only drive tiny holes in their frame that do nothing to help with breaking out and next to nothing to provide ventilation.
Meanwhile, every one of the rebels stares at me as a large wad of cloth forms above the backpack I am holding, gravity pulling it back down to the earth right as I double-tap it.
"Put it on and let’s go!" I point at the suits on the ground and then grab one for myself. They are extremely thick and heavy. I imagine these are the same ones that firefighters wear, except we make the worst firefighters in the world because instead of trying to put this flame out, we are running away from it.
It's a classic move from me.
Jake is the first to follow my instructions as the rest stare at me as if I'm the nuttiest person alive.
"C'mon!" I grab one of the imperial guards’ shoulders. I don't expect him to understand me, but I need him to get the memo about changing out of his freak red suit and into the only shot he has at living. He grabs my shoulders in return and screams a string of words together.
I would tell you what he said, but I have no idea even what syllables he is blurting out, never mind if they are complete sentences.
I don't wait any longer. If they can't catch on before they catch on fire, well, I can only do so much. The suits themselves are made of loose nanofabric that molds around one's body but fits all sizes.
As I slip on the final part of the suit, the socket for my head complete with a zipper, the fires are so large that everyone has to duck down to avoid being burnt to death.
This is when people finally listen and put on the fire retardants.
They are too late.
Through the thick fabric, I am unable to see much besides the vague outlines of people's bodies and the smoke. The imperial soldier in front of me drops. The lack of oxygen was too much for him to keep going.
And it is for me too.
The torches kick into an entirely new gear. The outside of the fire-retardant suit begins to melt from the heat, and my pores leak out sweat as my body tries to cool down. Everyone who doesn’t have the suit on by now is burned alive.
My only mission was to save them.
But now nearly everyone is dead.
There's only one logical way to stop this. I rip the bag off my back and put it in front of me to ensure everything inside is concealed.
One easy command to deliver to the Chimera Cube.
"Clear the smoke, extinguish the fire!" I yell above the sounds of death which consist of the roar and crackle of the flames combined with people crying for help.
The smoke almost killed me without me even realizing it. I have been coughing erratically off and on for the last five minutes, the burning sensation in my eyes and lungs the new normal after being doused in enough tear gas to permanently damage a man.
Jake claws me as the smoke disappears around us, revealing the burnt corpses on the ground; some were halfway into putting on the fire-retardant gear while others are completely dead. I gasp for air, for the pure oxygen floating into my airways, but the fires are still burning, and even the army of nanobots can't completely sequester it. We have to go.
The wooden floor is slowly turning to ash as the fiery chunks of the wall fall one by one onto the already burning floor.
We are in a pit of fire.
And there's nothing we can do to stop us from melting.
We will end up dead just like everyone else—just like in the simulation.
So I do the only thing I can think of that will surely get us out.
"Rocket launcher."
I double-tap the cube and a joyous green wave of light surges over the smooth white exterior. It opens up, the item it is creating already programmed to become a permanent member of the space-time continuum.
A military-grade rocket launcher, both heavier and longer than I expected it to be. I grab it from the air before gravity can pull it downward. It rests on my shoulder, weighing down my entire right side in the short few moments I hold it there.
I press down on the trigger, aiming the rocket right at the wall that leads to the exterior of the palace
The rocket drives through the wall.
Jake and I are both knocked to the ground from the force of the explosion. Dust and debris fall everywhere, some parts of the palace walls even piling on top of the dead. Something tells me this is the closest they will ever get to being buried in a grave.
With my survival mode on high alert and my mind experiencing an intense high from all the destruction (I may actually be turning into some sort of destructive maniac), I push myself off the ground to see the final product.
The ro
cket drilled a hole in the wall over five feet high and three feet wide.
It worked.
Jake runs up to it before I even say anything. His body is unrecognizable due to the heavy fire-retardant suit he has on, but I have a feeling that Li knows exactly who is about to escape his torture chamber.
The room is silent except for the sizzling of the fire. Everyone is dead; the towers of flames did their job at killing everyone in the room and are now receding back into the wall. Except we lived. And the stampede of footsteps I hear outside the room is coming to make sure that exception doesn't exist any longer.
"Two hoverboards." I tap the Chimera Cube. There is no point in hiding this thing from Jake now, I will have to deal with that later. The security cameras in this palace have already seen me use it several times by now.
Li knows what this thing is capable of. He may even be able to use his hi-tech infrared technology to map exactly what it looks like.
Two hoverboards, identical to the ones I used to flee the U.S. government, appear above my backpack. The Chimera Cube did its magic yet again. Jake didn't even notice it. He is too busy staring out the hole in the wall, wondering if he can survive the fifty-foot fall to the pavement below. I sling the bag around my back, closing the Chimera Cube safely inside. Then I grab both hoverboards, which are already turned on, and hand one to Jake.
"Use this and let's get the hell out of here." I push him forward through the hole as the gunfire bursts into the room.
The torches are now turned off, rendering the suit I am wearing nothing more than a useless handicap that limits my mobility.
A bullet connects with the top of my head.
There is a ringing in my ears. I'm even more lightheaded than I was with all the smoke. I'm about to collapse.
Jake reaches inside, already floating on his hoverboard on the other side of the hole. He tugs my body in his direction, my head in so much pain that even holding my hoverboard is a challenge.
I drop the hoverboard on the floor.
Even with all the adrenaline in me, I don't have the strength to reach into my backpack.
They might have me now.
But Jake doesn't pull me out the window. Instead, he picks me up from the bottom of my legs and swings my body forward into his arms.
Jake has always been a big kid, but I had no idea he was this strong.
He blasts forward on the hoverboard, leaning all our weight to jet forward into the night sky. The bullets of the imperial guard have no chance at accurately hitting us from inside now.
Jake doesn't look at me nor does he smile. He just stares forward, a look of determination in his eyes that I have never seen before.
"I think every time the Syndicate tortured us prepared me for this." He smiles, a thing only Jake could manage in conditions like this.
My heart is racing, my stomach feels like it’s about to leak out of my asshole from the terror and motion sickness of flying through the sky at high speed, meanwhile even with all the pain and blood seeping out of the top of my head, giving me reddish-brown highlights in my blonde hair, my mind is ruminating on one thing.
I need to win.
Now, the U.S. government, the Chinese government, and the Syndicate are all actively trying to kill me. And all of them know that I am hiding something that will change the world.
I am just like Li Wang.
I need everyone who knows my secret to be ten feet under.
I need to kill Li and take every ounce of power that man has for good.
Chapter 15
I have the bag clutched in my hands, my arms shaking along with the pounding inside my head.
To anyone who ignores the blood dripping from the back of my head, I probably look like a novice drug dealer meeting a high-profile client.
In reality, I am standing on a street in the middle of Beijing with at least a thousand people involved in multiple operations, all with the goal of killing me.
“Let’s get to this alleyway.” I pull Jake with me down a small gravel pathway between two closed shops. The smell of cigarette smoke, street food, and the pungent chemical filled-air creeps into my lungs with each breath. I am about to collapse.
I am just lucky that I didn’t pass out when flying through the air at high speed. Jake almost dropped me twice, which was only slightly traumatic, and as we jetted off into the night, zipping between the skyscrapers of downtown Beijing, I couldn’t help but feel like those would be my last moments.
Military aircraft hover above the streets, scanning each block to find us. On the streets themselves, hundreds of imperial soldiers run about in their red suits. Most of the streets are now shut down, with the police setting up blockades that have backed up traffic flow all throughout the city.
In short, the entire city is shut down because of us, and now we have to find a way to magically disappear from it or we die.
“We can’t make it out of this.” Jake’s voice is a full octave higher than normal as he keeps his eyes glued behind us to make sure no one is following us into the alleyway.
The idea that we somehow ran in here unseen is a preposterous one. We landed in the middle of the city street seconds ago with the whistles of police officers and screams of pedestrians marking our arrival back to Earth. We would have tried to land somewhere out in the less-crowded suburbs, but the charge on the hoverboard was running out faster than we originally thought, and Jake’s arms were one minute away from collapsing underneath the pressure of my body.
But more importantly, the military helicopters beginning to lock onto us and shoot bullets in our direction along with the endless stretch of chaos on the streets below forced us to land immediately. The Chinese government won’t let us go without a fight. They are willing to go to war.
No one with any sanity left decided to follow us as I tugged Jake into a dark alleyway, but the police attack dogs and imperial soldiers sure are insane enough.
They will be here in seconds.
And now I have to find a way to escape or be killed.
“Shut up,” I snap at him as I run behind a dumpster in the dark alleyway. The disgusting juices from overflowing garbage drip onto my back as I lean against it. I rip off my fire-retardant suit that is now bloody and heavy with my sweat. Jake does the same—after all, these suits will only weigh us down during our getaway.
“Jake, Jake.” My consciousness is starting to dim from the overwhelming pain. I can’t take the pain of my head being torn apart anymore. In this situation, there is no right or wrong. I literally have no idea what to do, but I follow my gut.
And my gut says I need to run.
I place my finger on the scanner of the bag and tap the Chimera Cube. “Smoke grenade.” I tap it twice and a wave of green light flashes over it. A round, heavy grenade, complete with a shiny titanium clip, appears in the air. I grab it, and sensing the urgency in my voice, Jake grabs it from my hand, his expression appearing as if he is expecting it to disappear once it touches his skin.
“Throw it.” I grit my teeth and exhale. I tap the Chimera Cube to prepare it for my next command.
Jake follows through. He releases the clip and winds his arm back. The grenade explodes. Upon impact with the ground at the edge of the dark alleyway, a jarring sound is followed by a wave of smoke.
A number of imperial soldiers are right in front of the dumpster, only feet away from having both me and Jake in prison for eternity.
My mind is moving too fast for me to keep up with.
All I know is that I’m about to do something that I am going to regret.
“Heal,” I say to the Chimera Cube. It is my first command, and after double-tapping it, I can feel the nanobots repairing my bullet wound and taking my pain away in a glorious wave in real time.
Then, my next command is meant for pure destruction. I know exactly what can hold back the imperial soldiers and police better than just about anything.
“Five security robots.” I say the seemingly random number that c
rosses my mind, hoping that by some chance it is enough to do the job.
“Dude, what—” Jake stares at the robots being formed, at a loss for words. I know he suspected something was up with whatever is in my backpack, but he didn’t expect it to put most magical abilities to shame.
Each robot comes together as if it is a digital download online, loading bit by bit into the real world until I double-tap the Chimera Cube and command the nanobots to leave it as a permanent member of the universe.
“Come out now or we will shoot!” I hear someone scream in a heavy accent. Even after everything that has happened, they don’t want to kill us. Li can’t risk the technology I have being broken. Li can’t risk losing the one thing that will cement his rule forever.
I breathe in deeply and take a split second to absorb my surroundings. There is a helicopter directly above us, its spotlight circling around us and illuminating parts of the cramped alleyway that is teeming with rats, feces, and trash.
We landed in one of the poorer neighborhoods at the heart of Beijing. And at this point we have no way out. We have to find somewhere that we can hide.
“Let’s do it.” Jake grabs my arm, the anxiety in his expression starting to take control of his movements. He glances at the robots as if they are nothing more than figments of our imagination. We are all still hidden behind the dumpster, but the second I turn these bad boys on, they will enter the cloud of dissipating smoke and deliver fire and fury upon every person in our way.
I push Jake away from me and go around the back of the robots that are all lined up next to one another. They are the same model that has tried to kill me twice and then saved me in Noah’s penthouse. They are wide, stout, and packed with explosives in their torsos.
I palm the array of buttons on the back.
Yes, I will admit not the best approach when dealing with technology, but last time when I pressed every button, it proved to be effective.
After quickly slapping the control panel on the back of each robot hard enough so that each button moves from the pressure, they all turn on.
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