The long-range laser launcher is on the ground next to her, and behind her is the result of the destruction she caused. The explosions weren’t from Li executing the plan he has to engineer an earthquake. It was from Ai shooting at the various military ships approaching us and exploding them to smithereens with one shot of the power laser gun.
Five ships are on fire, their crew either already lying dead on the deck or forced to flee their ships and jump into the sea. The thick black cloud of smoke that rises from each of the sinking ships all join into one dark front that casts a shadow over the land with the death of their engines.
I am mesmerized by the scene of destruction. For a moment the entire scene looks to be nothing more than a painting from a depressing history textbook about a gruesome war. On one side of the painting is an oil rig that defies the laws of physics and forms a city in the middle of a place where there should be nothing. On the other end of the picture is the fleet of Chinese ships approaching the oil rig, all of them now up in flames, the deep orange color to the fires almost matching the red paint on the exterior of each of the ships.
If only this were a painting.
It takes no more than a single blink for the disoriented imperial soldiers who are now swimming through the water to start shooting at us. In the sky, a few of the automatic aim bots on the helicopters blink as they lock onto us.
Ai’s laser launcher can easily wipe all these people out before they can even dream of killing us. But the several dozen soldiers in the water and multiple helicopters are only the beginning of the battle.
This is now war, and President Li has brought everything he has to the fight, including dozens of ships and a countless number of aircraft that are on the horizon, headed straight for us.
I stare at the laser launcher as Ai picks it up. Oh, how I wish this were only a dream, but the fact that this is real life makes seeing all the blood in the water that much more enjoyable.
“Get in the damn suit!” Jake shoves a copy of the same black bullet-proof suit he is wearing into my chest. In the same second that I stand there admiring the destruction, the disorientation from drowning finally leaving my mind, Ai picks up the laser launcher and fires it at one of the helicopters.
A large beam of light shoots from the tip of the launcher and the force of the photons causes the helicopter to explode within an instant of her pulling the trigger. The sequence of events happens so quickly that in the same amount of time it takes me to grab the suit from Jake, the red exterior of the helicopter has erupted into a ball of flames as the roar of the engine being destroyed and helicopter colliding with the sea radiate from the point of impact.
I don’t need any more direction from Jake or Ai to know that I need to get my suit on as fast as possible unless I am looking to die—this time for real. I slip my legs into the suit, the fabric molding easily around my shoes, but with the erratic way in which I slide the suit up to my waist, my crotch finds itself being suffocated by the suit. Unfortunately, now is not the time where readjusting is a priority. Instead, I pull the fabric around my arms and head and zip it up so that the fabric is covering every portion of my body.
In the short few seconds it takes me to put the suit on, the gunfire has already returned in our direction, but this time the bullets have no effect on me. Ai fires another round of lasers from the launcher and connects with a military drone barreling towards us in the sky.
The drone blows up after Ai shoots only one laser at it, the smoke from the combustion of the engine combining with the existing cloud in the air to form what would be the most ominous thunderstorm cloud in the world if it carried rain. Instead, it carries a terrible smell, particulates that make my lungs and throat itch, and the echoes of all the lives that those flames have taken away.
I can’t help but stare at Ai, surprised as I pat down my bullet-proof vest to make sure the zipper is on correctly. When I feel the dull thud of a bullet bounce off my chest, I assume that everything is working.
“Don’t be surprised.” Ai throws the laser launcher on the floor and tilts her head up at the steep climb to the main platform on the oil rig. She must have noticed my stare. “This is surprisingly similar to the trouble I’d get into in virtual worlds.”
I nod, but don’t say anything in return. The idea that someone else on Earth besides me or Jake is using the Chimera Cube makes it hard for me to fully comprehend what she is doing.
Part of me wants to rip the backpack right off her back and hold the Chimera Cube in my hands. Part of me feels like it’s missing, knowing that the power of the cube lies with her and not with me
But I don’t have the time to get into a fight about who gets to hold the cube. All I care about is surviving, and every millisecond that passes by without us flying out of here, there is a good chance that won’t happen. The intensity of bullets being fired at us increases, causing us all to move in sync away from the side of the concrete pillar where they have a clear line of fire at us, and instead to the area of the pillar that separates us from the gunfire with forty feet of concrete. That sounds nice until the same people shooting at us now encircle us and graduate from shooting bullets at us to launching missiles and poisonous gas.
“You’re a lot better at killing people than me, goddam,” Jake says as he bends over and picks up a pile of weird-looking orange things off the ground.
“I don’t know if I should say thanks to that.” Ai has to yell to be heard over the gunfire, screaming of the imperial soldiers, and crackling of the various fires scorching through the remains of the boats.
“Don’t say anything until we kill all of them.” Jake hands Ai and I a handful of the lightweight orange objects. With them in my hands, it becomes obvious that they are suction cups with thin straps meant to wrap around one’s feet and hands. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here before we all die.”
“Where are we going to?” I look at him with wide eyes, trying to signal to him that he sounds absolutely insane, but with the suits we all have on, my facial expressions are pointless.
We can’t escape from the Chinese military with suction cups.
“We are going to the oil rig.” Jake straps the suction cups around his hands and tests them out against the concrete pillar. They may work when we are on the ground but when we are three hundred feet above the ground, that will be the real test. “We are going to stop Li no matter what it takes.”
“And we are using suction cups?”
“Just put them on and stop questioning things.” Jake shakes his head, his tone clearly offended by my words. He will have to deal with the fact that I find it difficult to trust anything about the situation I am in right now.
Ai clarifies, sensing that I am still confused about why putting on orange suction cups will get us any faster to the top of the skyscraper-sized structure than a jetpack. “If we use anything with an engine to get us up there, we run the risk of it exploding and killing us with only one bullet hitting it. This is our only chance.”
With her words, everything clicks about the current challenge we have in front of us. I frantically slide the suction cups around my feet and hands and strap them in without a problem. I place both my hands and feet against the wall, the sensation of being able to defy gravity with sticky suction cups providing me a rush of adrenaline.
My mind is back to the killer instinct dire moments usually bring me to. The anxiety is gone, and underneath the pressure of the world, I feel excited.
A flurry of bullets returns, all of them pelting off my suit or smashing into the cement pillar. They have no chance at killing me with them. They can’t even hit the suction cups—my hands and feet shield them from feeling any impact.
I now know what we need to do.
We have to stop Li from killing hundreds of millions. We have to stop him from causing an earthquake that will shake the global system nearly everyone in the world depends on.
We are going to end up exactly like my dad.
There’s no way we
are going to defeat the Chinese military. There is no way that we can get out of this alive.
Our only option is to die as the people who tried to make the world a better place. And that means destroying the one thing that could make it amazing.
Chapter 11
My arms and legs are shaking.
Not from fear—the adrenaline and endorphins rushing through me have numbed my body from feeling anything that isn’t raw determination.
They are shaking because after using each muscle in my arms and legs to propel me up along the vertical wall of cement, my body can’t handle any more pressure. I’ve only been climbing for a minute, the ground is about seventy feet below me and the bottom of the main platform of the oil rig is still hundreds of feet above me. Yet, as I crawl vertically along the wall in the exact same way a spider would, my body is screaming at me to stop. Well, I suppose it isn’t literally screaming, but a burning sensation in my legs and a heavy feeling in my arms from the buildup of lactic acid are pretty much my body’s way of telling me to cut the shit and stop pretending to be a spider.
“If they shoot a missile at us and explode this pillar, we will die!” Jake yells, his voice barely audible above the gunfire. Each second I feel a bullet pound against my bullet-proof suit, the impact feeling like nothing more than a harsh tap, while dozens of bullets chip at the cement wall around us, causing clippings of cement to fall onto my suit. Tiny holes are scattered throughout the entire cement pillar, the various impact points of the bullets creating a mini field of craters that I have to navigate the suction cups on my hands and feet through without falling.
“I know,” I grunt in return, the reality that they can kill us at the flip of a switch if they desire something that could not be more present in my mind. It’s kind of hard to forget the imminent chill of death when the wind from the sea only increases with our height above the water, yet that wind is impossible to discern from the equally intense wind of the bullets whizzing by us.
“Agh!” Ai cries out. For most of the frantic crawl upward, she has been neck and neck with Jake and I, but as we continue to ascend up the pillar, her pace starts to slow. Jake is even slowing down too, leaving me a few paces ahead of them as I continue my desperate, painful climb to the top of the cement pillar.
“Push through it!” I yell in return as my attempt at motivating them. Ai has to make it up. If she doesn’t then I will have to grab the Chimera Cube right off her back. It is our only chance at stopping Li before we all die.
I focus my gaze upward, my one quick glance downward enough to make the anxiety return to my stomach and threaten to bubble out of my mouth again. The sensation of looking downward and seeing nothing but a vertical drop that is high enough to easily kill someone is terrifying. Top that off with a large cloud of dark smoke infesting the air space and a group of ships underneath the oil rig with dozens of soldiers and even more artificial intelligence-controlled weapons aimed at us and it easily becomes the most frightening moment of my life.
Just keep going. I close my eyes and let my body fall into a rhythm. With the blackness absorbing my vision, it’s easier to suppress the sick feeling in my stomach and pretend as if the dozens of bullets pelting against me are nothing more than friendly butterflies gliding into me.
If I let the terror overcome me, I will die. It’s a sure thing that I don’t need any more vomit on me. The amount of hot vomit stuck to my shirt and wedged between the compression fabric of the bullet-proof suit is enough to make someone puke again from how gross it is. But more importantly, if any of my mental energy is diverted from overcoming the pain, then the biological limits of my body will crush me.
I will be stuck to the cement pillar forever.
“Fuck.” I wince as my heart and lungs join the chorus of my body parts clamoring for me to stop scaling up the cement pillar. This cement pillar is larger than most skyscrapers, and the farther we climb from the ground below, the further it feels like we have to go to get to the top.
“Keep climbing!” I scream as both Jake and Ai fall out of view in my peripheral vision. The gunfire has momentarily stopped. No longer is the cement being carved into a mess of holes around me as the military wastes thousands of bullets trying to kill us.
The eerie silence only motivates me to climb faster.
They aren’t going to let us get away.
I continue clawing my way up the pillar, my arms feeling like they have run a marathon in the last few minutes, yet with the identical dull gray color to the cement on either side of me, it feels like I am making progress. Even as I reach my arm as high as it can go above me and press down on the cement to ensure the suction of the cup secures me from falling down to the ground, I feel as if I’m not making any progress.
The metal grating constituting the first level of the platform is still well over a hundred feet away. I battle the urge to give up and surrender to the military and Li Wang. It’s one thing to deal with an excruciating amount of pain when you are being tortured, but it’s another thing when you are actively putting your own body through a series of physical exertions that make torture seem like a nice word.
I’m in control, I remind myself and take a deep breath as I take a slight misstep with my foot, the suction cup sliding against the cement pillar instead of immediately attaching to it. The last thing I need is the suction cups chafing to the point that I will have no choice but to fall several hundred feet down into the water below.
This pain doesn’t have to be there. I don’t have to feel this—I’m the master of the moment. I channel these thoughts and let the anger I have for Li and the primal desire in me to survive block out the pain so that I can unlock the extra strength in my muscles that I have been too afraid to release. I close my eyes, the sweat collecting between my face and suit causing my skin to be irritated all over my body.
As the silence continues, the beast inside me awakens. Every muscle fiber in my body is firing, allowing me to extend my body to its maximum with each movement and claw my way up the pillar with greater brevity and speed. That is until the silence ends.
I was expecting this. It’s exactly why I switched on the part of my mind that will exhaust the remaining fuel inside me in seconds but give me a greater boost of strength than ever before.
But when the concrete pillar vibrates, causing the suction cups in my right arm and left foot to detach from the concrete, I have no choice but to stop my movements upward. The wave of sound from the explosion hits my ears as the entire pillar wobbles, on the verge of crashing down into the ocean. I look down and see the shards of the missile flying in a million different directions as the structure of the cement pillar feet beneath me is dented from the explosion.
The pieces of metal that used to be a part of the missile and the chunks of concrete that disperse from the explosion have no effect on me as they bounce off my suit, all the force being absorbed by the black fabric. That isn’t my problem, though. The force of the explosion is too much for the suction cups to handle. Only a second ago I was gracefully making my way up the pillar. Now I am falling through the air.
“Yes!” I bellow, a wave of excitement overcoming me as I use my abs to shift my body midair and attach my suction cups to the cracked pillar. I manage to shove both my hands into the concrete only a moment before gravity pulls me down into the epicenter of the explosion.
Ai screams, both her and Jake caught on the other end of the missile’s point of impact. There is no possible way for them to get around it. A huge hole has been hollowed out in the center of the pillar that has knocked out every bit of cement connecting the upper part of the concrete pillar where I am to the lower part where they are stuck. My legs are hanging in that empty abyss that the missile carved out in the structure. If I had reached forward only a second later, I would have missed my one window at being on the safe part of the pillar. There would be no way for me to reach the oil rig alive.
I’d be dead.
The smoke and dust from the debris of th
e explosion make it impossible to see anything but the top of Ai and Jake’s head as they fight to claw their way upward.
They know they are trapped.
The military will be sending people to scale up the pillar and kill them, or they will simply shoot another missile at them, this time the impact delivering too much force for their bullet-proof suits to handle.
“The cube,” I scream in their direction, hoping that my voice carries well enough through the dust for them to hear me. I refuse to move upward even though I should. With only a minute more of climbing I will be at the top, but I know that without the cube, me trying to take on Li and whatever defense he has protecting the control center of his system for mass destruction will be hopeless.
I need that cube in my hands. I need the power to be mine.
“The cube!” I scream again after getting no response from either of them. With their all-black suits on, it is impossible to tell if they hear me. All I see is Ai reaching for the backpack which has remained unzipped the entire time—after all, the second one of them shuts it, they won’t be able to access it. I’m the only one who can get inside.
“Give me the cube! C’mon!” My screaming turns into a frantic command as I watch the dust dissipate around me. We survived the explosion, and so did the pillar, but it won’t be long until the military delivers another missile in our direction that will finish us and this pillar off.
I lower myself to the very bottom portion of the remaining concrete and reach one of my arms downward so that I am prepared to catch it when they throw the cube. My mind battles the urge to succumb to a panic attack as my internal fear of heights has to suffer through the fact that the only thing keeping my dangling body from falling two hundred feet to the water below is a singular dust-covered suction cup.
“Now! Now!” I keep screaming, but with the gunfire returning, it easily ricocheting off the bullet-proof backpack of the Chimera Cube and our bullet-proof suits, my words are drowned out. The dust fades enough to bring the scene of chaos down below into full view. Except there aren’t dozens of ships waiting below the oil rig to kill us. A series of drones hover in the sky, firing bullets at us while laser-equipped helicopters enter the fray.
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