“The hole is only going to be big enough to fit one at a time.” I grunt as I use my abdominals to hold my torso off the ground as the impossible knife slices through the wooden planks beneath me. It cuts through the rotting wooden planks more easily than my fingers cut through the air, the sharpness of the material on the blade able to split individual molecules in half.
A terrible cracking noise jars every muscle in my body, causing my arm that is holding the knife to jerk to the right. What was supposed to be a neat hole now turns into a jagged line that no human could ever fit through. The force shakes the entire boat and thrusts my head into the bottom of the bedframe.
I know that familiar, yet terrible noise akin to a tree snapping in half during a storm.
The hinge to the door is gone.
The imperial soldiers are inside the room.
I finish cutting the hole into the floor only to realize that there is another layer of material below it before we can dive into the sea below. The pieces of wooden planks that the impossible knife sliced through fall a few feet through a storage compartment at the bottom of the boat to land on the metal shell trapping us inside.
I don’t have enough time to slice that apart too.
A chorus of screams hits my ears as the gunfire pounds against the bed frame, one bullet connecting with my foot. Unlike everyone else, I didn’t have time to put on my bullet-proof suit. My body is exposed to the gunfire, and this time President Li Wang isn’t trying to get anyone to capture us.
He wants us dead.
I forget about saving the people around me; the only thing on my mind is protecting the Chimera Cube. I throw the bag into the hole directly beneath me and squirm on the planks to allow my body to follow it down. The hole I cut is barely big enough to fit a human who has the ability to climb through it normally. Being in my position helplessly bleeding out while wedged in a two-foot vertical space between the floor and a wooden slab above me makes forcing my body through the hole the most acrobatic thing I have ever done.
“Damn.” A nail poking out from one of the boards tears apart the exposed skin of my left hand, its rusty metal tip only providing me with an extra dose of pain and likely some malignant bacterial infection no human on Earth would desire. I bend my back in a way that feels like I’m both having an exorcism of some sorts but also evolving as I unlock new abilities in my muscles.
When my body connects with the pile of planks and metal base of the ship, I realize that no new abilities have been unlocked in my muscles. That brief glorious feeling of an evolutionary process taking place in my body was actually the shock of my spinal cord as it is trying to digest all the pain signals coming in from my foot, hand, and now back muscles that have contorted themselves in such a way that it feels like I shot myself.
I keep the handle of the impossible knife held steady in my hand, ensuring that the blade of the knife is as far away from my body as possible.
“C’mon!” I scream, hoping that triggers Ai, Jake, Zhang, anyone to follow me down here. Although the space between the wooden planks and exterior of the ship is equally as tight as the space between the floor and bed, this is our only shot at getting out alive.
My scream does nothing. The gunfire is too loud to hear me above, and the multiple military ships that have surrounded the fishing boat are all having their horns play in synchrony as loud as possible.
The chaos is going to kill us all.
I place the knife down on the metal base of the boat and roll back over onto my back. In one haste, yet smooth movement I open the bag and pull out the Chimera Cube.
If I take five seconds to cut a hole into the bottom, this will flood before anyone can get out.
I need to kill the soldiers first.
“Swarm of ten thousand hornets.” I say the command and tap the Chimera Cube with no idea of how it is going to play out. Once in the woods near Gyurtog, Jake and I tested out this command, and given that they swarmed us immediately, I tapped the Chimera Cube once within a second to make them all disappear.
This time I double-tap the cube immediately after it unfolds, automatically triggering whatever horde of bees it forms to remain inside this boat with us.
I regret my decision the moment I make it.
Right as the Chimera Cube folds back up into a neat white box, at least a dozen hornets fly right at me and dig their stingers deep into my skin. In any scenario, a dozen hornet stings would cause more pain than anyone desires, but as with everything with the Chimera Cube, the template it builds these creatures off is different from the DNA that biology uses to construct a specific species of hornets.
These are nothing more than robotic forms of life that have transcended their biological limits and are programmed to do one thing: kill.
The ten thousand hornets easily fill every inch of space at the bottom of the boat, still leaving room for thousands to fly into the tiny cabin on the boat and attack everyone up there. I wish I picked a different number. I wish I picked a different command.
But it’s too late now.
My skin feels like it’s on fire as the toxins from their stingers flow throughout my bloodstream. If only I had on that damn bullet-proof suit, then the stingers would be blocked from ever reaching my skin.
The gunfire temporarily comes to a halt. The bees seem to have successfully swarmed the room, the screams of the imperial soldiers echoing like music in my ears above the hypnotic buzzing of all the hornets.
I know President Li would be prepared for me to release tear gas or a smoke grenade. These soldiers have likely been briefed on how to handle all of that. But even the machine-learning algorithm that dictates Li’s neural processes couldn’t have predicted that I’d conjure up a swarm of hornets to foil their operation.
Data doesn’t always win.
The Chimera Cube does.
I zip up the bag again and grab the knife off the floor. I contemplate putting on the bullet-proof suit, but every second could be the difference between us living and dying. All it will take is President Li deciding to have a missile shot at this boat to kill us all in an instant.
We need to get out.
I use the impossible knife to make the hole in the floor bigger. A large chunk of wooden planks falls on me as I double the size of the current opening, but the sharp pain that hits my chest when the corner of the plank connects with me is the least of my worries.
Ai’s body hits the bottom of the boat right next to me as the wooden planks holding her up collapse. With her entire body and face covered by the mesh-like material of the bullet-proof suit, she looks more like a robotic warrior than a human.
The hornets are still buzzing incessantly, forming a cocoon around my body. Every time I move, I feel a wave of them recede away from my arm as they avoid getting hit by me. Hundreds of them are still flowing out into the cabin of the boat above, but the flow of them has slowed down, the horde seeming to reach a sort of equilibrium where a few thousand attempt to feast off the people on the surface and a few thousand are content staying below the ship, all angry at me for being in their space.
“Get ready to swim!” I scream to whoever can hear me as I roll over onto my stomach and get ready to slice apart the bottom of the boat. The second the impossible knife tears through the metal, a thin stream of water begins to pour into the boat.
For once in my life, the idea of plunging deep into the sea is exciting me more than anything—once my body is submerged in the warm saltwater, the hornets will finally stop digging their stingers into me at a rate of multiple stings per second.
The blade of the knife effortlessly separates the bonds holding the metal together, and in only a few seconds I have cut a three-foot-wide hole into the bottom of the boat. The gunfire returns up above, the bullets piercing through the wooden planks causing chips of wood and shards of metal to dig into the back of my neck and legs.
“Now, man! Now!” Jake screams as he falls on top of my body. Another wave of vibration shakes the core of the boa
t as the bedframe slides to the side. In the darkness it is impossible to see how many guns are being pointed at us.
Between the feeling of hundreds of hornets bumping into me each moment, dozens of pain points of the stingers digging into my body, along with the pain of both my foot and hand bleeding out from their various wounds, I can feel the blackness tugging at the corners of my vision.
It would be easier if I could just let the hornets and darkness absorb me. But the second my fingers grasp the Chimera Cube, and I feel the straps of it around my back again, I feel the high I need to push through it all.
This cube is the reason I will end up dead, but it’s the only thing that is keeping me alive.
I force the weight of my body down into the sheet of metal directly beneath me. The force I apply to it is all it needs to overcome the last bit of friction holding it into place and fall into the sea. I drop the knife into the dark waters below, letting it sink to the floor along with the metal slab.
In the span of time it takes me to deeply inhale, dozens of gallons have already flooded the bottom of the boat, the hull dipping forward as the weight of the boat dramatically shifts.
With the Chimera Cube on my back, I descend into the water directly below the boat first. I feel Ai’s body press up against me, making her move not too far behind me. I don’t have time to wait around and see whether Jake and Zhang will follow right after. I need to think of something that will somehow get us out of this alive.
My terrible swimming skills come back to haunt me yet again as I awkwardly attempt to push the water behind me and propel my body forward out from underneath the boat. The pressure and anxiety work in tandem to make my heart feel on the verge of implosion.
I have no idea what to do.
I gulp for air, even though I have plenty of air left in my lungs, which only causes a massive rush of water to inundate my airways instead of the precious oxygen that I need.
I frantically kick my legs and flail my arms, doing everything I can to get out from underneath the boat and reach the surface of the water in time. The terror of the force of the sea pulling me and the Chimera Cube down with it leads me to gasp again for air.
I’m in the middle of a deadly cycle. One where my body automatically wants to gulp for air due to the tension and water inside it as my brain pleads with it to wait before it drowns itself. A trail of blood follows my haphazard path in the water, the stream of blood leaving my circulatory system diffusing out in the ocean for any sea creature within miles to smell.
Sharks coming to bite me are the least of my worries, it’s the sirens on the ships that I can still hear echoing underneath the water, and the dozens of soldiers that are on those ships, all of them ready to kill upon sight, that are sending my mind into a frenzy.
I finally swim to the edge of the boat, my head rising to the top of the sea immediately. I violently hack a bunch of the water trapped in my mouth and lungs out into the sea, but I don’t have enough time to fully catch my breath. In just the split second my head is visible I can already see the guns of the dozens of soldiers lined on the edges of the boats pointing directly at me. No doubt, multiple lasers detected me too and are tracking my location.
Every second I don’t find a way to destroy everything around me is one second I am closer to dying.
I close my eyes, attempting to channel the fear inside me to instead of overwhelming my mind get it to think of something crazy and genius. After all, that’s exactly what I’m good at, taking the pressure of the moment and using it as a weapon to destroy my competition.
This pressure is different, though.
The oil rig is less than half a mile away, and I know if I can’t get there with this cube in my hands, I will make my inability to stop the Life Pod killing machine seem like a minor mistake compared to this impending disaster.
I open my eyes, continuing to push myself further and further away from the surface of the sea. The outlines of three bodies are visible in the sea swimming right behind me. It must be Jake, Ai, and Zhang.
They have no idea that what I’m about to do might kill us all.
Chapter 9
I open the bag. From all the tests Jake and I performed, the Chimera Cube is still able to operate fine under wet conditions. That is when most of the cube is submerged in a stream or it is raining heavily outside.
We never tried creating anything from underwater—how fitting that I get to test it out now when the difference between it working or not will be what determines my life or death. Great.
“Four sets of scuba gear.” I scream the command and tap the Chimera Cube, adding it to the long list of things that I never thought I would say to the cube. I hold my face right up to the cube, air bubbles madly effusing from my mouth and nostrils as a ton of air expels out of me with each word.
I can barely hear what I am saying, but as the blue wave of light floods over the Chimera Cube, my only hope is that the machinery inside of it interpreted the muted sound waves pulsing in its direction correctly.
The cube folds open. The action seems to be a bit slower than it would be if on land, but every time my heartbeat increases in tempo, it has a way of decreasing the passage of time in my mind.
The sets of scuba gear form in the water in a manner that is nothing short of beautiful. The bright light of the late-morning sun beams down through the misty air just above the water, its rays shattering the veil of darkness that would normally exist beneath the ocean surface.
When the billions of nanobots coalesce to form the scuba gear, the light reflects off the tanks being formed in a glorious manner. Each item being formed looks as if it has been placed there by a higher-level being in order to save us.
I am that being.
I zip the bag back up and strap it around the front of my body to make accessing it easy. Then I propel myself to the surface so that I can grab my set of gear before it floats away along with any chance that I have at winning. I ignore putting on the flippers or even the wet suit, and instead focus on getting the oxygen tank slung over the backpack and the mouthpiece on the regulator inside my lips.
It takes me only a split second of having my head above water to get the regulator in my mouth and the goggles strapped around the back of my head. A flurry of bullets is shot at me as soon as my head peaks above water, and it doesn’t let up as my body submerges back underneath. One bullet connects with my torso and then another one with my right leg. Each bullet causes a sharp pain to radiate throughout me and an additional stream of blood to pour out of me and into the surrounding water.
I can’t survive like this.
I scream in pain into the regulator, the force of the air exuding out of me almost knocking out the plugs that I put into my nose. Me screaming and madly swinging my arms to continue pushing deeper underneath the surface doesn’t do anything to stop the bullets. Another bullet chips the right side of my ass as the pressure with the increasing depth and loss of blood work to double fuck my consciousness into submission.
I finally open my eyes, the water stuck between the goggles and my eyeballs causing it to be a dreadful experience as I glance at the pack of bodies covered in bullet-proof suits. They are all up at the surface a good twenty feet above me, taking their time to put on their scuba gear correctly as the bullets do nothing more than deflect off their clothing.
Well, at least that’s what I thought would happen.
But each one of them has to take off the protective cloth covering their head in order to be able to receive oxygen from the tank. From underneath the water I can’t see which body belongs to which person. All I know is that a bullet connects directly with one of their heads, causing a massive pool of blood to fall into the sea. My downward movements freeze for a second as the body falls lifelessly through the warm, murky waters. The light from the surface illuminates the dark cloud of blood swathing their head and renders the person unrecognizable.
The powerful rays of sunlight cut a deep band into the water, following the
trail of blood that sinks farther from the surface with each second. The massive pool of blood is approaching me with each second, and so is the same dead body whose head has been mutilated by the gunfire.
One of the automatic machine guns must have locked onto their head. Now they are dead. And I can’t wait to figure out who it is, I need to keep swimming before I end up exactly like them.
We aren’t going to make it.
I use all the strength in my body to propel myself deeper into the sea, but the weight of the water around me is suddenly too heavy for me to keep asserting my will over. I inhale in a panicked, desperate fashion, hoping that the infusion of oxygen from the tank into my lungs will give me a new breath of life. It does nothing but keep my body holding on to the last straw before it passes out, this time permanently.
I zip open the bag with the Chimera Cube in it and place my palm on the cube as another bullet connects with my left leg. If I can’t get this to save me, I am going to die. I let out a groan, the agony hitting such an intense level that I have become desensitized to the pressure of the water around me. All I can think about is the fact that I am dying, and everyone left on this planet that I love is too.
I can’t let that happen.
“Heal me! Heal me!” I take my mouth off the regulator. Water will now flow into the tank, rendering the scuba gear to be completely useless, but I don’t care. This is the only chance I have at living.
The sea water floods my mouth and throat. The salt seeps into my pores and lungs, promising a scratchy throat and rough cough when I wake up the next morning—that is if I’m lucky enough to ever sleep again.
A wave of blue light floods the cube, its beautiful LEDs illuminating the murky waters full of blood and pollution. The nanobots do their job at mending all my external wounds instantaneously. The bleeding from my hand, several spots on my legs, and my back ceases as the metal shards and torn tissues are eliminated from my body and replaced by perfect genetic copies of my skin cells and blood vessels.
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 34