The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2

by Michael Evans

  “Once a brother is always a brother. And we never wanted anything other than you to become one of the most powerful among us. We have always recognized that we need great minds like yours and Jake’s to lead this collective into a new century and beyond. We only wanted you to think we wanted you dead, and to think we were after you.” He smiles, that signature grin of his sending chills down my spine. Even the operatives seem to be disturbed by what is transpiring. “We only killed Riva and took away Reno to send a message. We are the ones who make the deals. We are the ones with all of the power. But we never intended to use it to destroy you. We only wanted to raise this organization up to a higher level of power. And you have helped us do exactly that.”

  “I can’t believe you.” I shake my head, my mind still having trouble coming to grips with this reality. I need to find a way to fight back. I need to find a way to destroy him. “I can’t believe you.”

  “We are friends now.” He inches even closer to me and extends a hand, expecting me to shake it. “We won’t ever need to play on different teams again. We both have the same goal. We want President Li dead and we want to establish a new world order. If we work against each other, one of us may manage to gain power temporarily, but the fighting will never end. If we work together, we will be unstoppable. This whole world and more will be ours.”

  “Stop reading from a fucking script that you and the council concocted.” I step back so I don’t have to smell the intense odor of cigars and margarine that seeps out of his nostrils. “I know what is going to happen in the end. You are just going to use me and take that bag for yourself so that you can all rule over the world one day. You will have all the power in the universe, and somehow that still won’t be enough.”

  “That’s not quite our plan.” Charles chuckles. “This bag is yours. We know exactly what’s inside of it—that’s without a question now thanks to you broadcasting its contents earlier.” He holds out the bag in front of him, and I don’t hesitate to react as fast as I can to grab it from him. The Chimera Cube is mine again.

  I won’t ever let anyone on this Earth touch it.

  I won’t let anyone take it away from me again.

  The smooth fabric feels heavenly beneath my fingers, and the crippling anxiety that has been plaguing me since the moment Justin showed up has finally let up a bit.

  “We aren’t interested in that. We are interested in ruling the world. One backpack won’t get us there. And it won’t be enough for you either. You need us just as much as we need you. If you don’t accept this deal, not only will you be dead, but in some outlandish theoretical scenario of you living, you will have an army of several million and the American government after you incessantly. Even your little backpack can’t save you from that. You need our protection. You need our help, our resources, to ensure you can not only win this battle against Li, but win the war. Everyone here does. And if you make the wrong choice, you will be forever responsible for letting the last people you have left dying.”

  I put my finger on the scanner and zip open the bag. Charles eyes me carefully, his stance tense as he watches me stick my arm into the bag. My finger is now on top of the Chimera Cube. I can command it to release a bunch of smoke in the aircraft and hope it gives me enough cover to be shielded from the gunfire.

  I can command it to make a grenade and let it explode inside this aircraft. But Charles knows none of that will work.

  I can feel the energy of the gun of one of the operatives only a few feet behind my head. The second I make a wrong move, they will shoot me. And nothing the Chimera Cube can do can bring me back from that.

  Once someone is dead, they are gone for good.

  And Charles can end my life in just one blink.

  “What choice do you want me to make?” I ask. Both Ai and Jake are watching in silence. Everyone knows if they say one wrong word, we will all end up dead.

  “I want you to destroy the capitol building below us.”

  “How do you want me to do that?”

  “Any way you want.” Charles smiles and pulls out a tiny keypad from his pocket. He presses a button on the pad. For a second I wait for something dramatic to happen.

  I glance around the aircraft, scanning for any changes. The only difference in our surroundings is the fact that instead of just blackness and faint city lights beyond the windows, there is now a fleet of aircraft visible far in the distance.

  Once we are within firing range, they will shoot us down.

  Li must know we are here.

  He knows we are here to kill him.

  “What are y—” Mid-sentence, I am jerked backward. A loud screech painfully blasts against my ear as the floor opens up. The paneling slides away from the center, the floor tiles receding beneath each previous layer to leave a gaping hole in the floor.

  I run back against the wall, holding on to the bench along with everyone else with one hand while I keep a tight grip on my backpack in the other. It is safe to say that Charles is the only one who didn’t have a mini heart attack over that surprise. In fact, from his sick laughter echoing above the screeching, it is obvious he is very amused.

  “Any way you want,” he repeats. The difference in pressure between the air inside and outside the helicopter is causing loads of molecules to rush out of the helicopter. I feel the heavy wind pulling me in its direction, threatening to pull me into the darkness.

  What is it with these damn people and heights?

  Any decrease in my anxiety from having the Chimera Cube back is gone. My heart is pounding so fast, it is threatening to burst through my chest.

  Here’s my chance.

  The moment I’ve been waiting months for.

  I have the most powerful technology in the world and a straight shot at Li’s servers right below.

  I know exactly what I need to do.

  I don’t care if this plays into the Syndicate’s game. President Li needs to die.

  “What are you going to do?” Ai’s body is backed into a corner to try and escape the harsh gusts of wind. The wild swing in pressure is evening out, but it doesn’t make standing only feet away from a several-thousand-foot drop any less scary.

  I peer over the edge, the lights glowing in the golden dome of the capitol building shining like a beacon in the night. The Party just finished construction on this behemoth structure a few years ago. It looks more like a place where one would go to be surrounded by precious metals and priceless artwork than actually get any of the work of this state done.

  Soon, the building won’t exist.

  I gulp as I step forward and approach the ledge.

  I can feel the energy of Charles’s sinister glare. He knows exactly what I’m about to do. For every part of my mind screaming at me to do it, for every part of my mind so caught up in the paranoia and the pure determination to kill President Li, I wish I could say there was something inside of me screaming no.

  But commanding the Chimera Cube to deliver my next wish is one of the easiest things I have ever done.

  “One ton of explosives.”

  I know exactly what this will produce. Jake and I tried it once in the woods and immediately tapped the Chimera Cube to make it deconstruct. I have no clue how powerful it is, but in a five-by-five-foot cube there are enough densely packed explosives to do catastrophic damage.

  One ton of explosives definitely isn’t enough to destroy the entire capitol building, but it’s more than enough to give everyone else all throughout Beijing the signal that it’s time to begin the destruction.

  I hold the Chimera Cube out over the edge of the hole so that the bomb forms directly above it. I double-tap the cube so that the pack of explosives becomes a permanent object. Within a second, gravity takes hold of the large black object that is full of enough shrapnel and explosives to kill every high-ranking official in the Party.

  “Fuck.” Jake stands up and walks to the edge of the floor tiles. Everyone watches as gravity takes hold of the massive object and pulls it un
derneath the aircraft.

  In only a few seconds it will hit the capitol building.

  A series of explosions will be triggered after that, explosions that will kill anyone guarding the capitol building, destroy the servers in which Li’s consciousness is stored on, and cause the government of this country to fall.

  The Party will be dead.

  We will be the new ones in power.

  Except the bomb never reaches the building.

  Only a few seconds after falling through the night sky, the bomb explodes midair. I dive backward, the heat from the explosion singing my skin instantly. Shrapnel pours into the aircraft from the bomb. Two sharp pieces slice into my arm, and from the agonizing sounds in the room, I can tell I’m not the only one who was hurt.

  The screeching returns as the floor tiles slide back into place. Charles dashes back into the cockpit. The look of surprise on his face would normally make me happy. I want this man to feel like everything is out of his control. I want him to feel like his world is caving in.

  The only problem is my world is caving in too.

  I look out the windows, expecting to see some of the skyscrapers up in flames or smoke from the explosives that went off in the tunnels underneath the capitol building. But the city is spotless—no one would know that one of the largest, non-state attacks on a capital city is underway.

  Then I notice the fleet of aircraft that have surrounded us. Every inch of the blackness is covered in the outline of fighter jets, military helicopters, and an assortment of other vehicles that look both futuristic and deadly.

  Never did I think in my life that I would be united with the Syndicate in anything.

  But now I finally see what Charles was saying.

  President Li is too powerful to take down alone.

  But I’m not sure we can take him down together either.

  Chapter 28

  “They want us to land,” Charles calls out to us. The door to the cockpit is open, putting his frantic movements on display for everyone to see.

  “Did they seriously intercept our plan?” Jake erupts and smashes a fist against the glass window. He finds out just like me that doing so only causes one pain.

  “They must have. I know for a fact a drone must have destroyed that bomb before it could reach the capitol building,” I respond, already fumbling for the Chimera Cube in the bag. I have no clue how much time I have until we die.

  But I’m going to try and delay that for as long as possible.

  It’s time to try and shoot down every aircraft here.

  “Open up the floor again!” I scream to Charles, who is so discombobulated that he is doing nothing more than hitting random bottoms. Something tells me the council watching over this operation has no way of helping us. We are all on our own, which means it’s time for him to wake the fuck up.

  “Are you crazy?” Ai moves towards the cockpit to try and stop me. If I was her, I wouldn’t trust me either. I have no idea if this is going to work.

  But we only have one shot to get out of here or we all will die.

  “Open it up!” I scream again. All three operatives are way past the point of shooting me. They have no clue which side to take—they have no clue if they are going to live.

  “Everyone in here is leaving this aircraft,” I yell above the screeching. Charles listens to me—for once that man is giving up control in his life. Even he gets that waiting one second could be the one fatal mistake that gets us all killed. “I’m going to pack this entire thing with explosives, and we are going to get the fuck out of here before it explodes.”

  “We will die if we do that!” Ai yells in return.

  “No, we won’t.” I lock eyes with Jake, who nods at me. The floor tiles stop moving as the floor locks into place. There is now a gaping hole that leads to a several-thousand-foot drop to the capitol building roof below. He knows what I’m about to do—unleash the power of the Chimera Cube. “Watch this.”

  “Seven pairs of bullet-proof armor,” I say the command and the Chimera Cube instantly delivers. I double-tap the cube and a green light flashes over it. The pairs of bullet-proof armor fall to the floor beneath me and the Syndicate operatives scramble to put them on.

  The roar of the near dozen aircraft circling around us outside pours in through the hole in the floor. Soon, their bullets will pour in too.

  “Seven wingsuits,” I say the command, knowing well enough what will be produced. Seven heavy, black, costume-like pieces of nanofabric material appear. These are the only machines that won’t be affected if the Chinese government decides to shoot an electromagnetic pulse into the air to fry all electronical systems, and unless dozens of bullets connect with our wingsuits, they can’t do anything to stop our smooth glide to the ground below.

  These are the best wingsuits known to man that will allow us to fly through the air at over eighty miles per hour. This is our only shot at survival, but just thinking about how wild this idea is makes me question if it even has a chance at working.

  We have no idea where we are going to land, and limited control of how fast or how far we travel through the air. Soon we will be at the mercy of the wind, allowing the aerodynamic shape of the suit to carry us through the night or to our death.

  “When you jump, spread your arms and legs!” I yell over the increasingly loud noises coming from the aircrafts around us. I slip on the bullet-proof armor rather quickly, the material tightly fitting around my clothes. Then I put the wingsuit on. The material is much lighter than I remember it being when I tried it out with Jake one rainy afternoon in the woods.

  We never actually climbed up a tree high enough to test out if they actually work. From the way Jake eyes me as he approaches the ledge, his body tense and hesitant to jump, I know he is thinking the same thing I am.

  I should have known our messed-up lives would lead to something like this.

  I eye him, the same solemn glance that my dad always directed at me when it was time to get business done. Jake knows I have no words of encouragement. The only thing left to do is jump.

  If the wingsuits work, we have a chance at living. If they don’t, well, we die. But if we don’t do something at least a little insane and stupid, there won’t be any chance at avoiding that fate.

  “How do you know these things work?” Ai yells as she slips it on. The veins in her neck are bulging through her skin as sweat drips down her face.

  The suit is entirely around my body and the itchy fabric of the wingsuit is grazing against my neck. All I have to do now is zip the bullet-proof bodysuit around my head and jump.

  “I don’t,” I scream. I near the edge of the hole, taking a deep breath to try and release some of the tension from my body. People say it’s all about building courage in these moments. That’s bullshit. I don’t know if any courageous people exist in this world—our minds aren’t programmed to operate in a way that is even remotely courageous.

  It’s all about how desperate someone is.

  And I’m desperate as fuck. More desperate than I ever have been in my life—so now it’s time for me to do something that may look courageous.

  Love is a great motivator at times, but nothing gets one moving in a different direction like fear.

  “C’mon, Charles,” I bark at him. He is too busy shaking and staring at the spotlights shining through the windows on our aircraft than actually putting on the gear that will save him.

  “How do you expect him to do that?” Ai glances at the operatives, who have already slipped on the bullet-proof armor and wingsuits. It is still not certain how well they can understand us, but terror pierces through all language barriers. “How do you expect any of us to do this?”

  “Unless you have a better way to live, jump now.” I stare at her for what may be the final time. I have to fight the part of me that is threatening to burst into tears. When I look into Ai’s eyes, the eyes of a woman who is fierce, strong, and noble, I know who I am reminded of. She’s just another great person who doe
sn’t deserve all this shit from the world. She’s another great person whose life I barged into and now have destroyed.

  I close my eyes and zip up the last portion of the bullet-proof suit. Now every inch of my skin is covered in anti-ballistic material. The adrenaline acts as the best medicine to silence the memories bubbling up inside me. “I’m going to start pushing you guys if you don’t move.”

  I clip the backpack around my bag so that the Chimera Cube will rest on my stomach during the fall. With the bag open, I have one last task for the Chimera Cube: explode this helicopter.

  “C’mon!” I scream again. I know we only have seconds until they shoot a projectile at this helicopter that will cause it to crash to the ground. But I have to be the last one to jump. I have to be the one who stays in this helicopter until it explodes.

  “I said jump! Jump! Jump!” I move my arms up and down furiously as I stare at the vague outlines of the figures in front of me. My eyes can only vaguely see the silhouettes of objects from behind the mesh-like material of the suit.

  Jake jumps first.

  Watching his legs erupt off the side of the helicopter as he dives straight into the hole of darkness is the most frighteningly beautiful thing I have ever seen. He is now gliding between a maze of military drones, skyscrapers, and laser-beam-equipped aircraft that can all lock on and kill us instantaneously.

  One of the Syndicate operatives follows, and immediately after, the other two operatives jump. I look over the edge, and all I see are four dark outlines that nearly blend in with the sky.

  Those wings better work. The pulsation of my heart echoes throughout my entire body as my head incessantly pounds from the intensity of the moment. I may have just watched my best friend kill himself.

  “God help me!” Ai calls out as she dives into the hole with her arms and legs outstretched immediately upon flight.