The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2
Page 37
If we don’t get out of here now, they will kill us with the lasers. They will explode this entire pillar and make sure our bodies are nothing but ash by the end of it.
I watch as Jake snags something from the air with one of his hands that the Chimera Cube produced. It is black, metal, and in a similar shape as a pistol, except it looks much wider.
He faces the barrel upward and I scream again, this time my body lunging forward. I almost let go of my grip on the pillar and send myself down the most hellish dive of my life.
He’s going to use that gun to kill himself. The panicked thought crosses my mind as everything they are doing makes sense. They are going to end this themselves. They are going to make sure that Li will never get the chance to kill them.
But when he fires the gun, the barrel of it faced nearly straight at his head, no bullet escapes from the chamber. Instead, a shiny metal hook and thin rope shoot directly upwards. The hook whizzes by my face, only missing me by inches. A moment later, it collides with the metal grating of the platform above, the hook latching on to the thin strips of metal that constitute the first floor of the oil rig.
He wasn’t holding a pistol. I feel stupid and betrayed at the same time. He has a grappling hook gun.
“Jake!” I scream as I watch him press a button on the grappling hook gun and hold on tight as he speeds past me through the air. Somehow the fact that he is wearing all black makes him look like the superhero cartoons I’d occasionally watch on television as a little kid. He reaches the top of the pillar with relative ease, all the gunfire and lasers missing him by a mile as both the humans and computers struggle to catch up to his trajectory.
“Catch this!” Ai screams so loud that I can tell it hurts her throat as the words come out. I look back down at her. She is holding two grappling hook guns in her hand with the Chimera Cube still mounted safely on her back.
They had a plan to get us out of this all along.
She throws the grappling gun in the air. The gun at first seems like it is going to fly way above my head and be easy for me to catch. Instead, it hits the top of the hole in the middle of the pillar and bounces down onto the thick slab of concrete at the center of the blown-up pillar.
I don’t hesitate for a second.
I rip off the one suction cup keeping gravity from pulling me down to the earth and free-fall through the air. The sensation is quite enjoyable, but I don’t have any time to enjoy the rush of adrenaline. I lunge forward in midair, hoping to reverse my momentum that is pulling me slightly backwards away from the pillar and redirect myself so that I can attach one of the suction cups into the exploded section of the pillar with sharp edges of concrete.
This works beautifully for me. Instead of landing on top of Ai or in the water below, I manage to get an entire foot planted onto one of the flatter sections of concrete. The grappling gun is only an arm’s length away from being in my hands. This is usually one of those moments where I do a little happy dance inside and stick up my middle finger at President Li.
But he gets the best of me.
The moment I land on the concrete, one of the lasers from the hovering drones connects with me. I can’t help but wonder if Li waited to have the drone lock onto me only to build my excitement and then crush it with the painful sensation of a concentrated ray of billions of photons subverting the protective gear I have. I don’t need to look to know that the laser effectively drills a disgusting hole into the flesh in my thigh, and the sheer magnitude of energy that flows through me almost causes my heart to die on contact.
My knees give out as I collapse to the ground. The pain of being shot by a laser is a new one for me and one I can’t experience again.
If another drone shoots me, I will die.
“C’mon, Sam!” Ai shouts as she rides along the rope tied to the edge of the hook that she shot into the metal grating above. The Chimera Cube remains safely in the backpack that has its top section open and exposed to the elements.
Watching her zip by me gives me the extra determination I need to overcome the pain of the laser. The photons can’t take over my body. They can burn a hole through my leg, through my heart, even through my brain. But they can’t burn a hole through my ambition.
I am going to destroy Li.
I yell in a way that combines a warrior’s battle cry with the mating call of a humpback whale. The rage overcomes me as I regain control of my muscles that have spasmed with the resulting hit of the laser and pick up the grappling hook gun on a ledge of concrete next to me.
The same drone that shot me with the laser originally is still hovering only twenty feet away from me. Any second it can pull its internal trigger and kill me.
I don’t wait to see when that will happen.
Instead, I fire the grappling gun at the metal grating, hoping that by some stroke of luck the hook will actually connect with somewhere and allow me to smoothly glide up to the oil rig. The hook works, or at least I suppose it does after I see it hasn’t fallen down into the sea of smoke.
I take that as my cue to press the button on the side of the grappling hook gun, assuming that it will do exactly as I wish and take me for a ride along the rope up to the platform above. My legs give out as soon as I press the button, the muscles in my upper thighs unable to continue pretending that they aren’t dying after the laser smashed a hole into them.
It’s okay that my thighs high key feel like they will never recover. I don’t need my legs anymore. At least not for the moment. I grip both my hands around the handle of the grappling gun, the suction cups in the palms of my hand easily attaching themselves to the gun, and take a deep breath as the rapid ascent to the platform begins.
The acceleration upwards is so powerful that I feel like I am falling towards the ground with the blue waters beneath me representing the sky. In some weird world where I could go out and do these kinds of wild things for fun in my free time, I might register this memory as something enjoyable.
What happens next ensures I will never be looking back at this memory for anything else than what it is—trauma. That is if I’m lucky enough to be able to live long enough to reminisce about times like these.
As life usually goes, everything is fine at first. The metal grating is quickly approaching, my head seeming like it is on an inevitable collision course with the metal bars. In a blink of an eye, the major concussion awaiting me becomes the least of my worries as another laser connects with me, this time in the back of my neck.
The electric sensation jolts down my spine, making it feel as if someone set a rod of fire onto my back and is now using it to ignite dozens of sticks of dynamite in my body.
My body smashes into the metal grating of the platform, the pounding sensation from the pain reverberating throughout my body drowning out the sounds of the explosions and gunfire below.
I blindly flail my arms upwards as I let go of the grappling gun and attempt to attach myself to the bottom of the metal grating. With the shockwave of the electron pulse still being felt throughout my body, my coordination is on par with that of a toddler, and my brain is processing everything around me at a slower rate as it tries to overcome the system reboot that took place internally.
The suction cups on both my hands successfully attach to the metal grating on the rig, but now I realize how fucked this plan was from the beginning. Even if in some imaginary world my numb body and fried nerve endings in my muscles could actually communicate with my brain correctly, there is no way for me to magically break through the metal.
I’m like a fly on a ceiling: helplessly stuck to the bottom of the oil rig, waiting for a missile or laser to swat me down and end my life for good.
You’ve gotta be kidding me. I try to use my core to bring the suction cups on my feet onto the roof, but my legs are immobile due to the wound in my thigh. I try to analyze my surroundings to see if the drones are closing in on me again or watch any developments in the blood bath down below, but my neck can’t move. The electrons have a
lready burned a huge welt into my skin, the tiny subatomic particles easily able to seep through the pores in my suit.
“Agh!” I force my body weight upward, hoping that by some miracle the strength of my arm muscles alone is enough to bend metal. As expected, this painful maneuver does nothing but ensure that the thumping in my head will be even more intense for whatever time I have left alive.
There is nothing I can do but wait here, dangling from my two arms, hoping that by some chance another laser doesn’t cause my heart to conk out for good.
Ai and Jake come just in time. I can’t turn my head to see who the pounding footsteps on the grating right above me are, but once the two figures are directly above me, I recognize their black jumpsuits and know they are here to save me. They must have cut their own way through the metal in the spot that they grappled up.
“We got you,” Jake screams as Ai whips out the impossible knife and begins chipping away at the metal grating right next to where I am hanging on. Within seconds she cuts a hole into the floor, allowing me a clearing to pull myself up onto the oil rig.
“Help,” I grunt, the pain making it hard to force the words out of me. That one word is enough to signal to both of them that I am in no condition to lift my body through that hole on my own. Two arms reach through the hole and grab my wrist. I use my own free arm to help in the effort of pulling me up, but doing so doesn’t make the task much easier.
One last surge of adrenaline dulls the pain inside me for a moment and allows me to dig into the last reserves of strength I have. The one thing that keeps me rushing forward at lightning speed is the paranoia that a laser has already locked onto me.
The exact time of my death could already be sequenced into a machine that I have no control over.
There might be no way out of this.
I grunt as they pull my body onto the metal grating. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, gravity is able to pull down on my body without the threat of me falling several hundred feet into a barrage of military personnel.
That reality is short-lived.
Ai rips out the Chimera Cube from the backpack and Jake delivers to it the two commands that I need to save my life. The first is external-wound repair. Jake unzips the top of my head and chest so that the nanobots can roam freely throughout my body and not be confused as they detect my injuries by the fabric coating every inch of my skin.
The gunfire still rages on below along with continued loud explosions, likely signaling more missiles being fired into the cement pillar. The part of my body that is within range of any of the projectiles is already covered, and as the nanobots enact their magical healing powers upon my body, I can feel the welts on my neck and thigh close up and the pain suffocating my muscles leave.
Then Jake utters the second command into the Chimera Cube, the same internal-wound repair command that saved my life only minutes ago. I remain motionless as he jams the syringe into my neck, the needle piercing through my skin in a painful and messy manner, but once the nanobots are inside my bloodstream, they will do the trick to fix any of the internal damage that the lasers caused.
Except none of that matters anymore.
Another explosion shakes the platform of the oil rig and causes tons of smoke and dust to cloud the space underneath the rig. With the hot, volatile debris floating through the air, it will be impossible for any of the drones to detect us and even harder for any humans to deliver a life-ending bullet.
The gunfire ceases as a thunderous boom shakes the platform once again. This time the platform shakes so much that it feels like the earthquake that Li was talking about.
President Li doesn’t need any more weapons to kill us.
The two cement pillars on our side of the oil rig have been battered by enough bullets to look like the surface of an alien planet at war. The millions of pounds of concrete that once constituted these massive pillars have been blown to bits.
This oil rig doesn’t have any more support.
This oil rig is going down, and we are going to fall right with it.
Chapter 12
On the Atomically Precise Scale of Terror that I myself have formed, fear ranges from this-is-fucking-scary to holy-shit-we-are-about-to-die.
In one instant my fear shoots from the bottom of the scale to the upper echelons of the Atomically Precise Scale of Terror and almost breaks the entire system. A sound so loud that it can’t be described as anything but the shrill of chaos drowns out Ai, who is screaming at me and Jake.
There is no time to command the Chimera Cube to produce something that will magically get us out of this situation. We are in a tight space. All around us, metal bars line the network of tunnels and pathways that cut through the main floor of the oil rig. There are various flashing lights, lots of gauges poking out of the copper pipes that run through the compound, and a few hundred feet in front of us is the first floor of the massive building that houses all the workers and control station of the oil rig.
Except there are no workers on the oil rig. As I stare on either end of me, witnessing the entire platform crumbling from the lack of support, I see a barren wasteland akin to that of an abandoned construction site for a project that wasn’t fully funded.
We are the only people on this platform.
And now the thousands of tons of metal, wood, and concrete are being destroyed by Li and his crew. It all happens too fast to even register the full enormity of the rig. I zip up my bullet-proof suit, preparing myself for bullets and other projectiles to fly at me from all directions.
But my bullet-proof suit can’t save me from what is about to come.
The first wave of noise that overcame us was from the concrete pillars finally crumbling underneath this end of the oil rig. One more missile collides with the oil rig, this time smashing through the metal grating a few dozen feet to the left of us. The missile blasts through several levels of the oil rig and causes metal shards, wood chips, and cement shavings to rain down upon us.
That one missile is all it takes to send everything into a free fall.
With my body already sprawled out on the metal grating, I grab one of the metal bars that is bolted into the floor. The creaking noise follows next. It is a familiar noise, as I have heard the creaking of large structures many times when roaming around abandoned buildings. Except this isn’t the foundation of the oil rig settling into itself, providing a chilling noise to reverberate throughout the platform. The collective breaking of every bolt and snapping of every nail that holds this structure together causes the equivalent of an avalanche of terrible, mind-splitting noise to knock every sensible thought out of my mind.
The thunderous boom of the platform falling reminds me of only one thing: the scream of dozens of people dying as their bones are crushed and the life is squeezed out of them. No. I close my eyes as my stomach drops out of my body. I know that the sound will haunt me forever. Its unique sound waves that violently pulsate against me will find their way into the hollow parts of my being and wedge themselves within me for eternity.
The terrible noise is only the first of the sensations to hit me. In the same moment, the entire section of the platform we are on slides downward. The once level metal grating beneath me shifts in an instant into an almost vertical slope. Due to the fact that we are at the end of the platform, this shift causes us to fall dozens of feet through the air, the water nearing closer and closer with each passing second. I keep my hands attached to the metal bar, the suction cups miraculously maintaining my grip on the bar that is shaking madly along with the rest of the platform. Sheets of metal, chips of wood, and loose nails and screws fall on me. The pain from their collisions feel like nothing more than taps on my shoulders when compared to the excruciating agony the lasers put me through, but the numerous hits to my head are still enough to have my consciousness dance the line between letting the blackness absorb me or fighting through it.
I choose to fight through it, but I don’t see how it will ever stop.
How the hell did my life end up like this? I gulp as a large chunk of metal slams into my head. I lose the grip of one of my hands on the bar as the bar itself pops out its socket connecting it to the level of the rig above me. The bar jerks downward and bends the only socket that is left keeping it from falling to the sea. Now, I am hanging on by a single thread, and in only seconds everything is going to snap.
The entire platform doesn’t fall through the sky in one neat pile. It happens in slow motion. The supports take a while to give out, the foundation that holds this structure as stubborn as it gets in letting go. In this way the entire half of the platform doesn’t simply crumble and cascade in a horrifically beautiful motion. It slowly begins tilting on its end, gravity pulling the end of the platform we are on first as the metal bars and large industrial bolts resist the tension of gravity.
They won’t be able to hold on for much longer.
And I won’t be able to hold on either.
My terror skyrockets to a new level when the large building that used to be level with us now towers above us. The once slow motion of the platform falling accelerates quickly as the force of gravity no longer pulls our end of the platform down but instead tugs on the entire thing. The large metal pipes beneath the large building at the center allow it to remain standing, but all of the platform beyond the main building and the millions of pounds of piping and wood succumb to the force of gravity.