The day of reckoning is today.
President Li knows we are coming—he wants me to challenge him. And if he wins, he won’t just kill everyone on this boat and the hundreds of people who are stationed to work on the oil rig.
He will kill hundreds of millions of innocent people.
“We need you, Jake.” I sigh and glance out the small circular window at the top of the cluttered sleeping quarters we were forced inside. “We need everyone we can get in this fight.”
“I don’t know how we win this.” Ai lays sprawled out on the bed. Her head is face down on the pillow, her eyes seldom looking up from the rough comforters on the bed after we explained to her everything we could about our current situation.
“I don’t know how we lose.” I gulp, thinking about the final conversation we had with Kamala, Drew, and Justin before we parted ways. We all stood around the closed manhole for a few brief moments, the morning rays of sun finally heating up the damp sections of dirt on the construction site.
If we fail in this task, the Syndicate’s entire plan is in jeopardy. If we fail to stop this earthquake before it hits, then this country won’t recover in the aftershocks. It will be impossible to stop President Li.
The hope for the Chimera Cube will be dead.
“Losing is not an option,” Zhang speaks up. He has spent most of the boat ride huddled against a cooler full of ice, constantly refreshing the various streams of data that are being fed to him on his hologlasses. He has a live view of the drones that operate the oil rig, multiple data points coming in each minute on the seismic readings from around the country, and he is getting constant updates about the progress of the Chinese military occupying various places of public safety in the eastern provinces.
The Party is preparing to use every resource they have to ensure that no help will be coming in the wake of the disaster.
“We have done crazy stuff in the past.” Jake finally puts the bait down and closes it back into its compartment in the box. In the small bedroom we are all in, dozens of cabinets of fishing supplies line the walls along with a number of bookshelves full of weathered textbooks and atlases that report on the conditions and geography of the sea. “But I don’t know if we have done anything at this level. Kidnapping congressmen is different from ending an operation powerful enough to create an artificial earthquake.”
“Thanks for the burst of positive energy.” I lean back against the foot of the bed, my body feeling surprisingly awake despite the heaviness to my eyelids. “Usually I’m the cynical one around here.”
“He’s not being cynical, Sam.” Ai sits up. A harshness to her tone cuts through me. “It’s just reality. I mean, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into? What the hell are we doing?”
“You two can still leave now. No one is forcing you to do anything. We all know I can handle this alone.” I eye the backpack in my lap, a surge of energy coursing through me when I think about the power that I hold. No matter how destructive the weapons are that they plan to release on the Chinese people, this weapon is more powerful.
But I also know the truth.
That I can’t do this alone. I might not even be able to succeed with an entire army. President Li knows we are coming, and he won’t let us win without trying to kill us all first. But if everyone on this mission ends up dead, I’d rather it be me than them. I’d rather someone live on with the chance to be able to take the power of the Chimera Cube and use it justly in the world instead of letting Li use it to control everything.
“Oh, yeah, ’cause I’ll just jump off this ship now and swim for a solid day to get back to shore.” Ai shifts her body to the edge of the bed so that her legs dangle down the comforter to the side of my head. “Sounds like a wonderful plan.”
“I can get people to our location to take you both safely back to shore,” Zhang says, his eyes unmoving from the stream of light beaming off his hologlasses. His facial expression is unreadable, making it hard to tell if all the data he is analyzing is good or bad for our mission.
“I need to go.” Jake stands up and loses his balance immediately, making what could have been an impactful moment a laughable one as he falls back onto the very table he used to be sitting on. As we continue venturing further out into the ocean, nothing but blue visible out the window, the swells have only grown in magnitude.
We are almost to the oil rig.
“Woah, woah, don’t get too excited there, buddy.” I hold up a hand as if my position seated on the ground will do something to stop his fall. Luckily, he catches himself in time and stands up again, looking like a drunk in the bar as he holds his hand up in the same way someone would when asking for one more shot when they should have stopped three drinks ago.
“It’s all good.” He smiles, the last thing any of us feel like doing when the only sound besides our voices and the crashing waves is that of the thirty-year-old engine that keeps this boat floating above the waves and pushing through the sea. “Thanks everyone for so swiftly moving to help me.”
“Oh, shut up.” I sigh, but I can’t help but smile. Sometimes all you need is someone like Jake around to distract from the pressure in the biggest and worst moments of life. “You only stumbled for a second.”
“You don’t know what could have happened if I didn’t catch myself. I could have fallen onto the floor and cracked my head open.” He motions with his hands dramatically, the theatrical version of Jake coming alive. “I could have just died. Then we would have a potential murder on our hands? What would happen if one of you were accused of killing me?”
Everyone pauses for a second, the shock hitting me not at his sarcastic words but at the realization that if he were to die right now, nothing would happen. Not only are we in international waters, but law and order in the modern age is gone. All anyone cares about is who controls the most data, whether it be a group of powerful men like the Syndicate having access to all the data of American tech companies and the data of their users around the Western world, or President Li Wang and his cyborg artificial intelligence self having access to nearly every data point in a nation of over a billion people.
They don’t care what happens to any of the people in these countries.
All that matters is that at the end of the day, they still hold the data, they still hold the intimate secrets to the lives of everyone—that is true power.
“I think you dying is the least of our worries right now.” I clutch the backpack in my hand as a sharp ring carries across the ocean, its sound nothing more than a dull echo by the time it seeps between the cracks in the door and hits my ears. It sounds like a ferry horn announcing its departure from a port, yet there are no ports anywhere nearby.
“A year ago, if you had said that to me, I would have gotten mad at you, but I actually understand you now,” Jake says, not blinking an eye at the sound of the horn. Chills run down my spine as I contemplate whether the noise was all in my head. “That is why I’m here. I know that you value your visions above everything else and are willing to do anything to get there. And I wish there were more people like that, because at a time when the world could either go to utter shit or become a literal utopia, people need to fight for what’s right even if it means doing a few things wrong in the process. And I will stand with you until the very end because I don’t want to win the battle. I’m willing to lose once, twice, three times, even a hundred times as long as it means the war will be ours in the end.”
“Thank you. And I’ll fight this to the end with you. With all of you,” I say, a wave of emotion overcoming me at his words. Very rarely do Jake and I talk about why we are doing this. It’s easier just to focus on the next task ahead instead of wondering about the bigger picture. We have already tried figuring it out too many times, and frankly neither of us have any idea how to win this war. Neither of us have any idea how to give the legacy of Isaac Savery and in turn the life work of both of our fathers’ justice in the world.
We just know we have to try.
I look up at Ai and notice tears streaming down her face as she stares out the window at the layer of mist that hovers above the blue waters.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, not knowing whether I should put a hand on her kneecap that is only inches from my face or if I should sit on the bed next to her.
I choose to do the latter.
“My whole life I’ve been worried about what people think about me.” She says each word slowly. The words want to roll off her tongue naturally in Mandarin, her brain a bit behind in processing her thoughts to be spoken in English. “I’ve been worried about trusting people, trusting the Party, that I have spent most of my life on a crusade trying to do things that would impress the people around me. I was so afraid of hurting my parents by letting them know who I really am, by letting them know that their daughter is nothing like the person I thought they wanted me to be that I spent my life in virtual worlds, being the avatar that I wanted to be in the real world in a video game. Now I realize why I loved Chimera so much. It gave me the power to feel like I could be my true self.”
She turns to me and smiles in a cute yet sad way that tears my heart apart and puts it back together at the same time. “You were always a symbol of exactly who I wanted to be. And I didn’t realize until just now that you have always been that person. Someone committed to their own visions and willing to sacrifice anything for it. And I wish I had the courage to do that, I wish I had the courage to show the world who I really am. But I spent my life scared. Even once I joined the rén, I was more focused on what they wanted the future to be, rather than what I wanted to do with my life. And now my family will never get to see the person who I always wished I had the courage to be.”
A heavy silence follows her words, and tears pull at my eyes when I see the sadness sink into her face. For a moment the waves seem to stop flowing beneath the boat and the reverberations of the engine blend into the world around us. I hesitate to say this, but things even feel peaceful, calm, and relaxing.
“The fear will never go away. I wake up scared every single day.” I look into her eyes, her large brown pupils reminding me of the gorgeous eyes of Riva. When it’s late at night, I oftentimes still think about her. I oftentimes still cry when I think about the fact that it was my vision that took her life away from her. And it’s my vision that killed Ai’s family.
I’m the one who decided I wanted to take the Syndicate down. And now I want to kill Li even if it means killing thousands in the process.
But the ghosts of the dead lives that I have indirectly and sometimes directly marched to their grave won’t ever leave me.
It’s why it must have been so easy for my dad to end it.
“How do you get over the fear?” Ai asks. She neglects to wipe the tear droplet that falls off her face, and it lands on her pants. “Why do you do any of this if you wake up feeling that way?”
“I do it because if you believe in something enough, you are willing to sacrifice everything for it. And I know that if I don’t do this, no one will. We are the only ones in the position to save the world from the dark future that we are barreling towards.” I gulp as the sound of the ferry horn interrupts me speaking. From the wide eyes of both Jake and Zhang, it is obvious they hear it this time too. “And even if my idea of a great future isn’t the best, I sure as hell know it’s better than the one Li wants us to live in, and that’s all that matters to me. That’s why I’m willing to work with anyone to get there. The Syndicate will have to realize that this is my future we are building, not theirs. This is our future, not the future of five hundred men in an organization of fucking—”
“Get under the bed!” The fisherman manning the navigation of the boat from the small wheel and control board on the outside bursts into the tiny bedroom we are all crowded in. He has to use the translator that I gave him when we first met at the docks so that we could communicate with him seamlessly.
After he barks at us, he throws the translator across the floor, the flash drive-sized device sliding underneath the bed, the fiberglass exterior holding up strong against the collision with the weathered wooden planks.
He switches off the light, leaving the entire room blanketed in darkness except for the minuscule amount of light that pours in from the small window at the corner of the room. The fisherman who wears a hat from one of the best basketball teams in China and has a scruffy weathered beard doesn’t have to yell at us twice to convince us to get moving.
The ferry horn sounds again, this time the source of the noise so close that it sends reverberations throughout the ferry.
I bump into Jake as Ai and I fumble in the darkness to try and crawl under the bed. The conversation we were having only seconds ago couldn’t be farther from my mind anymore.
The ferry horn isn’t signaling a passenger cruise line passing by.
It is the Chinese military.
“We can’t all fit underneath here,” Ai hisses.
“We are going to have to get comfy.” I pull her body close to mine as the bottom of the bed frame rubs against my shoulder and back. I grab the backpack, keeping it nestled between me and Ai right near my stomach.
I grunt in pain as I force my body even farther into the tight space beneath the bed. One of the nails in the floorboards digs into my back, sending a painful sensation down my entire spine.
“They know we are on this boat,” Zhang says. I can’t see him over Jake and Ai’s bodies that are pressing up against mine, shoving me into the far corner underneath the bed. All it will take is one person bending down and looking at the floor to notice us.
And the second that happens, we will all be dead.
I put my finger on the scanner on the backpack and place my hand on the Chimera Cube. “How do you know that?” I whisper, the beating of my heart easily doubling in speed in a matter of seconds.
“I can see the footage from the drone.” For the first time all day the excitement is drained from Zhang’s voice. Now he sees that his data isn’t everything. These people have guns. “We are surrounded.”
I look at Ai, whose small nose and soft skin I can feel digging into my chest as we all try to fit into a space no bigger than a twin mattress.
The boat rocks.
But this time it isn’t a wave that causes the bow of the boat to meander up and down with the sea. The imperial soldiers are on this boat, the weight of only a few soldiers enough to throw off the balance of this thirty-foot vessel.
If we stay under this bed, we are going to die.
Chapter 8
I’ve said this before, but I will say it again.
We are screwed.
“What are you doing?” Ai hisses at me as she notices the white light reflecting off the Chimera Cube illuminating the darkness.
“Trying to get us out of this alive.” I grit my teeth, the same facial expression I instinctually make when I am analyzing a situation causing my jaw to clench.
“Using that?” She has a scared tone to her voice.
I don’t have time to respond and tell her that this cube has a way better shot at getting us to that oil rig than staying under this bed and hoping that the imperial soldiers don’t find us.
We have to kill them first.
“Four bullet-proof vests.” I tap the Chimera Cube and it unfolds inside the backpack, the space between the zippers just enough room for the nanobots to leave the backpack. The quantum computers inside each nanobot are easily able to process their surroundings and they immediately pick up on the fact that there is not much space above the bag and instead of forming the bullet-proof vests directly above the cube as they normally do, the vests are formed in a neat pile in the space between my legs and the bottom of the bedframe.
I double-tap the cube so that the objects are permanently in the space-time continuum and so that the nanobots can collapse back into the cube. I figure, even if by some wild chance the imperial soldiers don’t have any weapons, bullet-proof armor is about the one necessity we know we will all ne
ed at some point.
“Throw a grenade at them,” Jake whispers as I tap the cube again. Outside there is a loud echo as a gunshot is fired. That one bullet likely marks the death of the fisherman who got us out here in the first place.
Any second they will be inside this room ready to make sure the next echo marks the death of us.
“Get the suits on.” I take my hand off the cube so that it doesn’t pick up any of the words I say. If we weren’t about to potentially be killed in a few seconds, I’d scold Jake about how careless he is being.
He knows only one person can control the cube at a time.
The last thing that we need to have happen is the cube interpreting two commands at once as something entirely different that could get us all killed.
Ai’s leg jabs into my rib as she contorts her body to get the bullet-proof vest on. Now we don’t care if parts of our bodies are sticking out from underneath the bed. They already know we are here.
“Impossible knife,” I whisper into the Chimera Cube and tap it right after. Zhang’s vision is so absorbed by the streams of data flowing into his hologlasses that he doesn’t even ask how there are bullet-proof vests randomly appearing. I can only do so much to hide this from him. Getting to live another day is more important than keeping the cube secret from him.
The knife lands on my lap as I zip the backpack up with the Chimera Cube inside it. With the motor of the boat at the back, there should be nothing hazardous in our way if I cut a hole straight through the bottom of this vehicle to the sea below.
I pick the knife up and roll over onto my stomach so that I can slice through the wooden planks in a controlled manner. At this rate I should just carry the impossible knife on me at all times so that the next time I am trapped in a corner with people looking to kill me closing in on all sides, I can always have a way out.
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