“The elevators?” Jake questions. For once he is at a loss for any sassy comeback.
He knows this is life or death for real.
“No, but I do have an idea.” A rare strike of genius hits me. Well, it’s not genius. It’s straight-up mad, but it feels inventive enough to call semi-intelligent.
“Five mines,” I scream into the Chimera Cube. Heavy box-like devices are produced in return. But they are exactly the kind of mines I am looking for. They fall to the ground, each of them weighing over one hundred pounds. Normally we would bury these in the dirt and wait for someone to apply pressure on top of it and trigger an explosion.
Instead, Jake and I chuck them wildly on either side of our position in the hallway, hoping that they somehow thwart or even explode on any attackers.
“Let’s break into this room.” I look at the door directly across from us. “This better work.”
Jake shoots a laser through the door. I don’t know if he expected it to pop off its hinges from the force, but nothing more than a black hole is left in the burnt wood. We are going to ram through it.
I shake my head at him and lean my body weight back, readying to explode forward and smash this door open. If you’re thinking how the hell are you able to tear down a door, the answer is I am a scrawny, tall, esports player at heart.
But when you get me down to my bare bones of survival, I turn into a freaking madman.
I lock eyes with Jake. “In three, two, one.” We both bound forward. I lean all my weight into my right shoulder, trying to knock the door off right at its hinge.
Thankfully we are in the poor district of Beijing, where the doors are cheap and the exterior of the buildings are stone. The door almost snaps in half from the combined force of Jake and me.
We are inside.
“Woohoo!” Jake yells like he is at the top of a roller coaster looking down. I feel a similar level of excitement.
When we enter the small flat, there is nothing but darkness. I can hear the pounding of the footsteps and screams of the soldiers on the third floor. We only have a few moments before they run over the mines.
We venture into the living room. There is a small window above their couch that will be perfect to escape out of. And this time we will make sure no one catches us.
“Shoot the window,” I say to Jake as I place my finger on the scanner and open the backpack. The one-bedroom door is shut, muffled tears echoing from behind the door. There is no telling if there is an entire family in there, an old couple, or someone who lives alone.
Either way we have given them the scare of their life, and they certainly don’t seem interested in trying to hamper our operation.
The Chinese government will probably eradicate them anyway after finding out that we have been here.
The window smashes after the several high-energy photon beams Jake shoots at it tear it apart. The ray of light that emits from the laser gun is so fast that at first, it’s hard to believe that it’s even real, but after the window breaks, Jake questions it no longer.
Then, the mine explodes.
The violent snap of bones breaking in half causes me to hesitate from delivering the Chimera Cube my next command. Someone ran right over that mine. And in turn everyone around them is now dead too.
I hear the chilling scream of death.
“Two jetpacks.” I say the command, effectively rolling the dice and risking that my dad had the ingenious foresight to upload a design in hopes that one day I would desperately be in need for a jetpack.
The Chimera Cube produces something, as it never fails to do. Two large, clunky metal devices appear in the air. My eyes are too caught up analyzing its features to catch the objects before they fall. They are no larger than two feet high, yet they have two mini rockets tied to the back that at least look to be effective in our goal.
I have no idea how long the fuel in this thing lasts or what kind of fuel drives the combustion engine of the device. I also have no idea if it even works—after all, it could be nothing more than some horrible prototype that will end up with us both dead in a tragic explosion.
But we have to try.
I pick it up off the ground and tighten the belt of the backpack around my stomach. Jake does the same, both of us having no clue about how to operate these machines.
I hope it is as easy as it looks in every movie I have ever watched and as fun as the one time I rode one on a simulator I played with using my gaming portal.
I climb on top of the couch, my bloody shoes digging into the soft cushions. Jake is right behind me as I step onto the windowsill. The reverberations from the explosions of the mine have dissipated, all that can be heard now is the groaning from the soldiers whose limbs have been severed and footsteps that are now inside the flat.
“Press the button on the top right of the bag,” I yell to Jake as I find something besides the rough fabric of the backpack to put my finger on. I drop the rifle to the ground, Jake doing the same with the laser gun in his hand.
This better work.
Then I jump. A wave of gunfire overcomes Jake and I before we can launch out of view of the window. The soldiers are within such close range that their bullets would have easily killed me. I feel one hit me in my head and at least a half dozen connect with my back. All of it feels like nothing more than a light tap, the fabric of the bullet-proof vest absorbing all the force.
Luckily, our fuel tanks absorb none of it, or else we would be descending to the earth below in a painful explosion that would likely leave me dead on impact.
Instead, I press the button on the top right of the backpack and quite literally blast off.
Jake does the same, his head bumping into my leg and knocking me of course as we both become our own human-sized rockets.
“This is insane!” Jake’s words barely make it to my ears above the roar of the engine.
I want to yell back something like “not in a good way,” but I am too caught up ensuring that I don’t smash into the building and fall to the ground right into the arms of the military personnel shooting at us from below. I redirect my body weight so that my momentum is back on course—straight into the stars above.
In a few seconds, we surpass the height of the apartment building. We are now hundreds of feet in the air and climbing dozens of feet higher with each second.
It’s by far the greatest rush of adrenaline I have ever had, and this is coming from someone who has skydived on top of a prison (which by the way is not recommended in case you wanted to try).
I forget about tactics and strategy for a few seconds, my body overwhelmed with the euphoric sensation that accompanies defying the will of gravity and rocketing at dozens of miles into the night sky.
We might be the only people on Earth to experience a sensation like this, and if it were ever possible to give this feeling to everyone, I would in a heartbeat.
The air resistance pushes down on my body and stings the skin on my face when I stare up at the stars. The air is freezing away from the warmth that the city streets provide, and with each ecstatic breath, a cloud of fog exudes out of the tiny holes in the bullet-proof suit that allow for oxygen to enter but not much else.
Then it hits me about how messed up this is.
We are trying to go under the radar and hide from the government, meanwhile we are rocketing through the night sky with a trail of flames and smoke behind us. That is the opposite of under the radar.
Shit.
We can take down the entire government now. We can fly into the sky and drop nuclear bombs on this whole city.
“YES!” I scream wildly as we propel past the height of the helicopters, our height rivaling that of the tallest skyscrapers in Beijing. Normally, I would be afraid of the height. But I’m not even thinking about the fall.
All I feel is the power.
And the power makes me feel like I can keep going up and up forever. It is intoxicating. In fact, my mind is probably thinking like someone who has taken a few
pills too much, but it doesn’t matter.
I feel beyond powerful.
And true power is being able to create anything and get anyone to believe it. I can create anything, and I can force everyone to believe it.
I can drop a nuke on this city right now. I can kill everyone in the government. I can take over this country and bring the Chimera Cube to everyone.
I place my finger on the backpack and unzip it enough for my hand to slip inside. I put my finger on the cube and await building up the courage to say the words that could kill millions. With the black cloth coating my vision, the city below doesn’t even look real. The lights are fuzzy and the outline of the buildings look like nothing more than sketches in a notebook.
This may be the only way.
I have to kill millions to save billions.
I have to kill millions to further my father’s legacy.
I need to kill millions to ensure that I win.
I finally say it. “Nu—”
“Dude, this is so much fun!” Jake jets past me and then slows down to return back to my level. He interrupts me before I can say the word. He regains control of the jetpack so that he flies upward in synchronicity with me. With the chaos of the city streets thousands of feet below us, and the sound from the projectiles being shot in our direction fading by the time it hits out ears, I can hear him quite well. “There’s two buttons below the first one that change the mode. If you press the right one you go faster, and with the left one slower. We are gonna have to use the slow setting for it to only gently push us against gravity, so we don’t die when we fall.”
Well, looks like someone was being productive while I was dreaming about killing millions.
“Yeah. That’s awesome.” I nod, coming back to reality from my unsettling thoughts. As we eclipse the heights of the skyscrapers on Billionaire’s Row that are thousands of feet tall, the power trip I am on settles. I can’t kill millions.
That would ruin my dad’s legacy. That would break my promise to my dad.
They would win.
“Looks like we can land somewhere over there.” Jake points somewhere out in the distance, but his silhouette is surrounded in darkness, making it tough to discern his movements.
“Let’s do it.”
“What happens once we are back on the ground?” Jake questions.
“We need to try and hide out in someone’s house for a little while and regroup before we can plot out a larger escape.”
“Well, how the hell do we do that?”
“I’ll show you.” I smile. “All we need to do is land without a million military personnel around us.”
He nods. With the fuel on our jetpacks draining, he immediately leans forward. I follow his lead, refusing to look down and let the anxiety overcome me as I come to terms with the fact that we are hundreds of feet above some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world.
The Chinese military definitely has no clue what we are doing or where we are headed at this point.
We manufactured jetpacks out of thin air and are now flying higher than the positions of their helicopters and other patrolling aircraft.
But they will find us soon. And although the missiles and bullets launching in our direction have temporarily stopped, they will be back soon.
They will be back to kill us both.
I change the setting with the tap of a button on the jetpack. It alters the angle of the mini-rockets so that they propel me at a tiny angle upward but most of the force is applied at pushing me in the direction we are facing, which is as far away as possible from downtown.
Jake finds the same button located on the tiny control panel and moves in sync with me, neither of us having to strain our backs to prevent us perpetually ascending to the dark clouds above.
I let the cold air ebb in and out of my nostrils, briefly taking in the magical view of the city below. I close the Chimera Cube back in the backpack and unzip the bullet-proof suit down to my neck so that I can feel the fresh air smack against my face and take in the full beauty of the city as we fly above it.
From this height, the smog looks like nothing more than a retrograde filter applied over the city skyline. From this high up, the road blockades and disorder are invisible. Even all the skyscrapers seem to blend into one bubble of light that penetrates into the blackness and blocks out any stars that would be visible between the clouds above. The suburbs of Beijing are equal in their magnitude, their light pollution illuminating hundreds of square miles of territory.
It all looks no different than one massive fire from this high up.
I shift my gaze to Jake, who is flying beside me.
I can’t help but smile, a fearful yet euphoric rush of excitement electrifying my tired and worn-out muscles.
“Dude, why are you staring at me like that?” Jake says, taking off the black fabric of the bullet-proof suit coating his head. His hair emerges wilder than I have ever seen it as it blows in the wind.
I clench my fists, the rush of adrenaline and testosterone enough to explode my heart. “Because we are renegades now.”
Chapter 17
If this doesn’t work, we die.
Then again, the chance of this working decreases every second that passes by. We need to move fast.
I breathe in the dry, cold air, my lungs burning slightly as I exhale. The clouds swirling in the sky have disappeared, making way for a thin layer of stars to dot the sky above the street we are on.
I wish I could tell you where we are.
I didn’t think of grabbing my hologlasses out of the bag to check our location in time. All I know is that we are located a few miles outside of Beijing, with thousands of people on a mission to kill us.
“Are we gonna go in there?” Jake motions with his hand for me to step forward first. I can’t read the sign outside the door in front of me with the black material of the bullet-proof suit coating my eyes and also due to the fact that it is written in traditional Chinese symbols, so I have no clue if we are about to break into an insurance agency or a strip club.
All I know is that there is a strip of bright lights reflecting off the glass from behind the door and it is good enough for me to break in.
We landed right in the middle of the street after over ten minutes of flying through the air and then traveling back down to the earth at a gradual pace, the upward propulsion of the jetpack making it feel like we were simply floating downward.
I’ve never had so much fun but also been so terrified at the same time. I wanted to shit my pants from the anxiety but also scream and yell with joy. The second I changed the direction of the rockets and intensity with which they pushed upward, my stomach dropped out of me.
I looked straight down in horror.
We had thousands of feet to get to the ground below. And if the fuel tanks ran out in the middle of our fall, we would have nothing to resist the strength of gravity. We would die.
Thankfully, there was just enough droplets of fuel to get us safely to the ground. Upon landing, we threw our jetpacks onto the ground, the metal fuel tanks harshly echoing against the pavement.
We had nothing better to do than to throw them down a large sewage drain and hope that no one will ever find them. But deep down I know that they will.
I know that somewhere in the night sky there are military drones hovering above us that have our exact location pinpointed for every squadron of imperial soldiers and emergency responders within one hundred miles to race to our location.
We need to hide.
“I see no better place to go,” I say, glancing at Jake, who looks like a cartoon character with the bullet-proof bodysuit compressing each part of his body.
“How should we get in there?” Jake presses his face up against the window, the dim lighting inside making it hard to see anything in there. The only thing he accomplishes is surely scaring everyone inside who sees a man with his crotch bulging out and skin covered head to toe in black staring at them.
“The doo
r, you dipshit.” I roll my eyes, despite no one seeing my expression. I step in long strides to the door, its metal handle nothing more than a faint outline in my vision.
I wish I could take off this bullet-proof suit, but it’s not worth the risk. Everyone in this entire country likely knows by now that we are officially the most wanted people in the entire world.
We have only one option left.
The door swings open with one easy pull. A bell rings, with music of a flute humming over speakers at the corner of the room. From the inside, it looks like we entered an empty restaurant, with weathered wooden chairs and tables constituting the seats for the guests. The walls are decorated in countless pictures of tigers, some with rainbow-colored fur, other with vicious fangs the size of their bodies, and others that have beautiful stripes adorning their dark mats of fur.
There are even sculptures of tigers hanging from the ceiling and adorning each table in the restaurant, some with vases of flowers next to them, with long white petals and extravagant pink orchids extending in front of the brass and wooden sculptures as if they are teasing the inanimate objects.
“Follow me,” I say, slightly surprised that no one is here to greet us upon our arrival. From the looks of things, they are preparing to shut down for the night. The sound of the dishes clanking against one another echoes from the kitchen, and the smell of disinfectant tickles my nose. Then, I lock eyes with a woman seated in the back of the restaurant. She is next to the back hallway, sitting at a table and tying bows out of pieces of a thick grass that will sit on the center of each table.
She glances up from her work in the brief moment that Jake and I first notice her. She stares at us, dumbfounded.
It doesn’t take her long to realize that two figures covered from head to toe would not show up in a restaurant before its closing looking for something to eat.
The clock says it’s already one in the morning.
The soldiers will be outside this restaurant any minute. From the echoes of the sirens outside and slamming doors from the streets, they are already storming some of the nearby houses.
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 15