The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2

by Michael Evans

  I can’t watch this stupid game any longer. I need to end him.

  I take the machete and drive it into his heart, the blade digging a few inches into his body before I pull it out. The life seems to fade from his eyes as I tear apart the internal machinery in the humanoid and cause a large river of blood to rush out of him.

  The body smashes against the pavement a few feet from the other two bodies. I bend over and hold my knife above it, readying to singe as many marks as I can with my machete into the humanoid. I want to carve my own name into his chest with my machete.

  I want him to never forget me.

  I want the feeling of my knife digging into his body to last forever for him.

  “You silly little boy.” Li sneers as another humanoid version of him climbs up the ladder. “I told you to give up.”

  I stand up and refrain from doing anything grotesque to the already dead humanoid. I’ll kill every last one these humanoids until there is nothing but his brain sitting all alone on a computer server.

  I raise the machete above my head, readying to deliver it directly into his skull. But then another humanoid version of Li climbs up the ladder onto the roof. Right behind it another one follows, and then another one.

  There is an entire army of short, buff, middle-age-looking Asian men in suits headed towards me. All of them have the same exact haircut and evil glow in their eyes.

  They all laugh in unison.

  “You will never escape me.” They laugh again, each one of them clutching their bellies in the same manner. “You will never stop me.”

  “Screw you.” I say it underneath my breath, using those two words as the fuel I need to propel me forward and drive my machete into one of their heads.

  Every second, a new humanoid climbs onto the roof. As more and more surround me, the humanoids forming a literal circle of hell around me, I can’t help but think if this is all one messed-up simulation.

  But from the distinct taste of the smoke in the air, and the energy of their eyes that I can feel even from behind this bullet-proof suit, I know this is real.

  There are hundreds upon hundreds of humanoids of President Li Wang headed for me. All of them are chanting in synchrony the same two words that only increase my vexation.

  “GIVE UP.”

  What Li doesn’t know is that this chant is useless. Even as it echoes off the skyscrapers of the surrounding blocks, all the chaotic noises of the night disappearing with the terrible chorus of Li’s monotone English translator, I am not discouraged.

  I rear my right arm back and in one punishing blow cut deep into the chests of two of the humanoids.

  They all laugh at my attempt at taking them down.

  He has no idea what is coming for him.

  I won’t stop until I kill them all.

  Aftershock

  Chapter 1

  There are over two dozen dead bodies surrounding me.

  Before you jump to any conclusions and call me a murderer, let me just make my case.

  Yes, I did slice every one of these bodies in half. So yes, I suppose by the classical definition of a murderer one would look around at the corpses scattered around me, their blood coagulating into one thick stream as it pours off the side of the roof, and think I’m a monster.

  I won’t argue that at first glance it looks bad—really bad.

  And saying I feel no remorse whatsoever for my actions certainly doesn’t help the case that I’m a solid guy who totally isn’t a serial killer. But looking at the bodies of the dead will help my case a bit.

  All of them look the same.

  And I don’t mean that they have the same hair color or are about the same age. Each dead body has on a suit with black pants and a black blazer along with a red tie which any fashionista would have to give credit for having the foresight that the red on their ties would match perfectly with the red blood spilling out of their stab wounds.

  Except these aren’t separate people.

  Each body is a carbon copy of one another, and they are all controlled by the same man: President Li Wang of China.

  They aren’t even real humans.

  At first glance, one would be fooled into thinking their smooth skin, pliable muscles, and lively glow in their eyes all are part of a real human being. But in reality, each body lying on the ground is a humanoid clone of the president that looks and feels indistinguishable from a human.

  There are thousands of these clones scattered throughout China, all controlled by a hive mind that operates with its core systems at the base of the capitol building. President Li Wang is in essence an army of thousands of clones of himself, making it nearly impossible to kill him.

  These humanoids can be destroyed, their bodies littering dozens of city streets.

  But Li won’t die. I still have thousands of more bodies to kill, and I won’t stop until either I drown in his blood or eliminate every one of his clones from the face of this Earth. But even then, his consciousness will still exist on the computer servers, his horrid mind only able to be destroyed when the neural network that controls his bodies is reduced to nothing more than a hot flame.

  He isn’t human anymore.

  This man is closer to a god than any earthly form of life. Normally, that thought would scare me. Normally, I’d retire to my room and spend my time playing video games as I choose not to think about the fact that a murderous dictator rules a country of over a billion people and has ambitions to destroy the Western World.

  But I’m the only one who can stop this monster from getting revenge on his own people. The only way to fight godly amounts of power is with a force of equal intensity.

  And I have just that.

  In my backpack I have the most powerful technology in the world, the Chimera Cube. The nanofabrication systems inside it allow me to harness every secret breakthrough in quantum engineering and create unlimited amounts of objects with my words alone.

  I can be the wealthiest man in the world in a second if I want to be.

  I can also end life on Earth permanently by blowing this planet up with nothing more than a simple command and wave of a finger.

  I can kill Li too.

  The only problem is he may kill me first. He may soon have the Chimera Cube all to himself, where he can let his dark past propel this world into an even more terrible future.

  And every second I look up at the world that is falling apart around me, I can’t help but feel like there is no way out.

  I feel trapped.

  Surrounding the mid-rise apartment building I am on top of, massive, thick clouds of smoke block the surrounding skyscrapers of downtown Beijing from view and prevent any light from the moon above from hitting me.

  I am surrounded in darkness.

  The chaos of a city that has now turned into a warzone drowns out any intelligible thoughts from reaching my mind. All I hear are the echoes of gunshots, explosions of grenades in the air, and the occasional piercing scream that feels like it’s coming from everywhere but also a place just out of reach all at the same time.

  We tried to bomb the capitol building. We tried to work with the rén to enact the largest terrorist attack in modern history by burning down most of the skyline of Beijing, killing all the prominent members of the Party, and toppling the government and very computer servers that hold Li all on the same night.

  We horrifically failed.

  None of the bombs went off in the tunnels underneath the capital. None of the fires that were poised to erupt and destroy once magnificent skyscrapers reserved as homes for the ultra-wealthy burned through the night sky. And none of the explosives I dropped from the Syndicate aircraft reached the capitol building in time.

  President Li was onto us.

  The Chinese military had drones already positioned to intercept the explosives in midair before they could do any damage to the building, and the entire operation at large was ruined with hundreds of arrests taking place on the streets and thousands of pounds of bombs being fo
und before they could erupt.

  Our one chance to kill a man who is nothing less than a threat to humanity when he was least expecting it is gone.

  He knows we are after him now.

  He knows that I have the most powerful weapon in the world and am not afraid to use it.

  This is war.

  “It amazes me how weak you are.” President Li smiles, another one of his humanoid clones clawing up the ladder that leads to a lower section of the roof. I step over the mangled flesh of two of the bodies that I am standing on top of. A few minutes ago, a wave of his clones surrounded me, making it impossible to swing my arm in the air without my bloody serrated machete connecting with a limb of one of the humanoids.

  The wave of clones has subsided for now, but the brief moment I had alone with the chaos of the night and the thoughts spinning through my mind is over. I compulsively itch my beard, the rash beneath the blonde hair on my face the least of my problems.

  President Li is back. And there’s a new evil glow in the eye of the humanoid that signals to me he is done playing around. I have already killed two dozen of his pathetic clones, which is extremely tiring, if you couldn’t tell.

  He won’t let me kill two dozen more.

  “There are dozens of you dead on the ground.” I snort, holding up the knife that is dripping with blood and covered in flesh. It’s lost much of its effectiveness at instantly tearing through the insides of the clones, but that only makes it more satisfying when I watch his body fall to the ground. “I can kill you a million times more before you manage to kill me once.”

  “I wouldn’t get so cocky.” Li narrows his eyes at me. His black hair is pushed to the side as always, and his face that has been almost entirely constructed from plastic surgery seems to have a way of absorbing the darkness into the creases of his skin.

  He pulls a knife out from his back pocket. The blade of the knife is much smaller than mine, but the pointed end of the blade looks so sharp that it could cut individual atoms in half. For a second I question if the knife is even real or if it is all a part of a virtual world that has been generated around me made to look exactly like the skyline of Beijing in the middle of a crisis.

  When I feel the knife dig into me, any thought of this being a virtual world flees my mind.

  The pain is real. Oh my, I can guarantee that. The blade slices through the skin of my forearm, the hyper-fast jab of his knife tearing apart my skin as if it is a flimsy piece of tissue paper. My wingsuit that I am wearing and my bullet-proof suit which shields me from any projectiles eliminating me are all useless underneath the pressure of the blade. It tears right through the fabric.

  Its point is the one spark of pain my neurons need to go into a frenzy. So many signals are being sent to my brain that I can barely register what is happening. My arm shifts from feeling hot to then feeling like it is on fire, to then having the feeling of pain fade from it entirely.

  A second later all I feel is the pressure of the blood rushing out of my system, all color draining from my face as my body enters a state of shock. The only thing that keeps me from freezing right then and there and letting President Li tear me apart is the anger.

  Not even adrenaline can overcome certain sensations.

  But anger can power a person through anything. An undying passion to win can keep someone going even when they feel like they are dying, which is exactly how I feel right now.

  I suppose this payback may be fair after I killed the same man twenty times in a row.

  I surge forward, driving my own machete into the body of Li Wang. Although I could step back and fend him off as I use the Chimera Cube to create a weapon that will be more effective at wiping out lots of bodies quickly, my ego can’t help but challenge him on a level playing field.

  I want to show myself that I can beat this man, even a robot version of him.

  I want to tear his body apart the same way I did to Charles, where his very skin becomes so dismembered that it would take a DNA test to decipher if the carcass on the ground is a human or not.

  He deserves it.

  Ten million Uyghur people were wiped out in a massive genocide due to no fault of his own. President Li Wang is a young leader, and one of the only surviving Uyghur Muslims that live in the northwestern area of the country.

  But he keeps this a secret.

  He’d rather use plastic surgery to make everyone believe he is ethnically Han Chinese and middle-aged when in reality he wants to kill the Chinese people to exact revenge for them killing his family, and he wants to take down the West to make them pay for sitting by on the sidelines as they witnessed his people be systematically eliminated.

  He wants to murder hundreds of millions.

  And he will either cause a massive earthquake to break down societal order in China, or he will steal the Chimera Cube and use its vast powers to orchestrate a number of schemes that would be effective at killing millions fast.

  I won’t let either happen.

  I made a promise to myself after The Last Migration genocide killed fourteen million Americans that I would never sit by and let pain be caused on others without me intervening. I made a promise to my father after he killed himself and everyone in Zion in order to protect the secrecy of this technology that I would ensure it’s only used for good.

  I won’t break those promises when I’m alive.

  I’ll only let him win if I’m dead.

  “You think that hurts?” Li Wang chuckles in his disgusting monotone manner. The monotone manner isn’t necessarily his fault, it’s only because he refuses to speak any other language besides Mandarin, thus he only communicates with me by speaking into a translating device that hangs around his neck and regurgitates his thoughts in the most mind-numbing yet creepy way possible.

  My knife connects with his shoulder, driving deep into the flesh of his wide, muscular frame. When I’m standing up right, I can’t help but feel like we are equals. Two powerful foes battling it out to the death on top of a roof with sirens echoing in the background. But when I remember that there are thousands more clones of him waiting on site as backup and millions of soldiers in the Chinese army, including the ones operating the dozens of military aircraft that roam the smoky skies, I know I am outnumbered.

  He has more power than me.

  And there is no way I am getting out of this alive.

  Everyone who could help me is gone, the wind carrying us to different places in our wingsuits as we all jumped to flee that helicopter before it exploded. Odds are that without the Chimera Cube there to help them, they never had a chance to even survive a minute without being killed by Chinese soldiers.

  My only hope is the Syndicate. But for starters, when one’s only hope is derived from the world’s most secret and corrupt organization that has tentacles of its powers reaching into and taking the cookies from every jar in existence, there are some serious red flags. It becomes even more hopeless when I dive into my own history with them and realize that I am a traitor of their brotherhood that only has one viable way to exit: death. And that since I’ve been inducted, I have rebelled against them for almost the entire time, including killing one of their senior members and hatchet men in Charles right before I fled the same Syndicate aircraft that blew up in the night sky above the capitol building.

  It’s safe to say they probably won’t be too eager to continue whatever friendship they wanted to have with me after reconciling with the fact that I am against everything they stand for and am actively seeking to kill every one of their members just like they tried and almost succeeded with the members of my family.

  “I don’t care if it hurts you or not. I want you to fear me,” I say as I dodge an unsteady stab by Li. I keep my eyes trained on the edges of the roof, remaining alert for more Li clones to appear.

  If more of them keep coming, there will eventually be a point where I can’t fight them off. The Chinese military will inevitably be here soon as backup, and not even the Chimera Cube can save me f
rom that kind of firepower.

  I need to run.

  Li laughs as he notices my eyes scramble around. His shoulder has a steady stream of blood streaming from it, but he doesn’t care one bit. He knows that he has no reason to be scared.

  I’m the one who should fear him.

  “You are a sad human being.” Li pauses. He stops following my backpedaling as I near dangerously close to the edge. I grip the edge of my super-strong, smooth backpack that contains the Chimera Cube inside it.

  In moments of distress, it is my security blanket, my only way to get out of situations that most would end up dead in.

  But the cube might not matter at all anymore.

  If I try and run and hide, there will be thousands of people surrounding me waiting to kill me. If I try and kill Li, I will be starting an endless battle that will eventually lead to me collapsing of exhaustion.

  I may have the Chimera Cube, but Li has unlimited people and weapons to throw at me.

  I’m no match for this.

  My story can’t end like this. I grit my teeth as I search for one last burst of energy inside me. I let the visions of the thousands dead in the esports stadium and the memories of my mom and Riva flood my mind.

  This world has taken so much away from me.

  It’s time I finally start taking from it.

  I burst forward once again. This time I have a last-second plan that may actually work. If I can kill him and throw a grenade onto the roof below, I can wipe out all the clones of Li within a reasonable distance from me. Then, all I will have to do is jump off this building and use the wingsuit to carry me down to the ground below.

  Once down there, I can summon the Chimera Cube to create a tank and attack the capitol building.

  I can still destroy Li.

  The first step in the plan goes rather splendidly.

  The unathletic Li Wang has no shot at combatting my violent slash into his chest. He manages to cut me in my back with his knife, but the pain dulls in comparison to the fire I felt in my wrist earlier.

  After the machete digs into his machine body, cutting the electrical systems off that give his monstrous self a semblance of life, the body falls to the ground. Blood gushes out of it, the dead, lifeless body of Li just one to add to what is a growing collection.