It would take only the most astute observer to notice that the pillar running underneath the center of the compound is really one large passageway to the crust of the Earth, where the Chinese government has the weapons ready to release a catastrophic earthquake upon its own people.
“Let’s get to the top,” Jake says, an excitement visible in his eyes yet a very obvious fear in his tone. The silence that follows his words is eerie. Not until he interrupts the thoughts spinning in my mind do I notice how punishing the silence is.
“Okay,” I respond, shaking the echoes of the collapsing oil rig from replaying in my mind.
“I feel like where we need to get to is up there.” Jake pulls up on his hoverbike and I mimic him, resulting in the bike propelling me directly upward. “I feel like Li would want to have some sort of control center overlooking this entire thing.”
“There’s no telling with that man.” Ai keeps her gaze directed at the sky. In the few moments we have been riding on these hoverbikes, the worry of death only being a spilt second away finally dissipating for a bit, she has had a shift in her body language.
She used to stand strong and powerful, a determined way about her almost as if threatening the world to challenge her. Now her body is hunched forward, and there is a fire missing from her voice.
“He’s easier to predict than you think,” I say, holding on tightly to the Chimera Cube as it shifts in my lap. If I’m not careful, this thing could drop down to the sea, which would almost surely mean our deaths are coming much faster than I’d like. “He’s going to be inside waiting for us. There’s no way he didn’t park a few of his clones permanently on this oil rig.”
I stop pulling up on the hoverbike as we reach the top of the building. Ai shoots me a look, but due to the suit covering her face, it’s impossible to see whether it’s one of fear or anger. I hate this man just as much as she does. I feel the same sick feeling in my gut that she likely does when I know the presence of Li is growing closer to us.
We land on the roof of the building on top of the oil rig and I immediately command the Chimera Cube to deconstruct the force field. Although it is useful when in the middle of combat, it is rather restricting when one misstep by Jake or Ai could send them into a series of convulsions. At the center of the roof is a tall, skinny tower that has a red light blinking at the top. My first instinct is that the red structure is a cell phone tower, but knowing what this oil rig is truly used for puts the innocent assumption that the tower is used for telecommunication into question.
This one tower could contain the device that kills hundreds of millions.
The smoke and debris are less dense here than in the middle of the devastation. But the proliferation of the smoke still swathes most of my vision, making the water feel miles away and the sun in the sky nothing more than a faint light above the layers of smoke.
As we hop off the hoverboards, our feet echoing against the green metal roof, we can’t help but hack. By this point I have no doubt that I have suffered lung damage from the toxins and heavy gases floating throughout the air, but the status of my lungs is about the least of my worries at the moment.
I’m not expecting to survive our journey here today.
My goal isn’t to come out at the end of the day with my two arms still intact. My goal is to win.
And that means killing Li. That means preventing him from destroying this country for good.
“Give me the bag.” I hold the Chimera Cube nestled between my right arm and body and extend my left arm to grab the bag from Ai. I don’t care how aggressive this seems. I don’t care what Jake or Ai think of me.
They may have saved my life.
But I need to be the one who goes down with the cube in my hands. If I die, my father wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
“We are a team here.” Jake steps between us. The space on the roof is no bigger than thirty by thirty feet wide, but the hoverbikes take up so much space that the three of us are standing near the edge. Luckily, the Chimera Cube provides us with more than enough possibilities to break our way inside.
“I said I want the bag,” I repeat, this time my voice cracking from the dryness of my throat. I step to the side of Jake and grab the bag right from Ai’s hands, her grip loose on the bag anyways. I immediately put the Chimera Cube back in its spot inside on top of the thick stack of patents where I can easily deliver commands to it while keeping it safe.
“Dude, we used that thing to save your life. You can’t be the only one who always uses it.” Jake straightens his chest, getting into the typical fighting stance as if we are two boys on a playground. “We have to stick together. It’s the only way we can get out of this.”
“We aren’t getting out of this,” I spit back at him.
“Stop saying we aren’t going to get out of this.” He throws his hands in the air, his dramatic ways not being lost in the moment. “There’s a way out of everything. There has to be.”
I hold the backpack with the Chimera Cube in one hand and unzip the suit around my face with the other. I want Jake to see my face one last time. I want him to see the expression on my face.
I don’t expect there to be tears in my eyes.
But the second I open my mouth, the smoke flooding my face, I feel something inside me give. “We aren’t trying to get out of this. We have hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of lives in our hands right now. Nothing else matters besides that. Nothing. So, thank you for saving my life, but that’s not what matters. We have a much bigger responsibility in our hands, and I’m not willing to fuck this up.”
“We don’t have time for this shit, Sam.” It’s oddly silent after he speaks. There is no telling how long we have until the earthquake hits, but the smoke and dust in the air will stain this oil rig for days. “Just give her back the freaking bag.”
“Impossible knife.” I tap the Chimera Cube and zip back up my suit as the knife forms in the air. I double-tap the cube, a green wave of light flashing over it, and grab the knife from the air.
Then I zip the bag up and throw it around my back all the while Jake and Ai stand there staring at me.
“You can’t ignore me.” Jake tries to block my path as I walk to the center of the roof where I plan to cut a hole in. “You can’t take that cube and think that I’ll be okay with it. It’s not yours. It’s ours.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I hold the knife up at him, the anger pulsating through my veins before I realize my reaction was a bit too harsh. I take a deep breath and speak again, this time with a much more collected tone. “Okay. This isn’t anyone’s cube. No human on Earth deserves this kind of power. But since I have it right now, you better freaking listen to me. I’d rather be the one who makes this mistake, okay? If we fail to save all these people, if we fail to save ourselves, I’d rather be the one who has to live with the guilt than you.”
Jake backs up at my words. I don’t care if he hates me for the rest of my life for what I’m doing today. I know I can’t live with myself if I let anyone else in the world but me have the power to make a decision that could either save or end the lives of so many millions. I’d rather have the consequences of my failure haunt me than the fact that I didn’t try eat away at my being for eternity.
I step forward towards the center of the roof and Ai follows. She seems to be reinvigorated by my words. We will see how long this surge of power lasts.
I get down on my knees and drive the blade of the impossible knife into the metal sheet on the roof. The blade cuts through the metal as easily as I would expect it to. In only a few short cuts there is a sizable hole carved into the roof, and with one last flick of my wrist, the metal sheet falls from the roof and hits the floor below.
From the time it takes to hit the ground, I can tell the fall won’t be bad, but that gives me no indication of what is inside.
“I’ll go inside first.” I keep the impossible knife in my hand, readying to use it on anyone who tries to attack me. I glance at Ai and
Jake, both of whom step closer to the hole, Ai’s feet right on the edge. “I have no idea what to do once we get inside, but our one rule is to kill anyone in sight.”
Jake nods, and that is enough assurance for me to drop my legs into the hole in the roof and lower myself into the interior of the oil rig. I let go of the smooth metal edge and allow gravity to force me into the glass floor beneath me.
The fall is no more than ten feet, yet my entire body still stings on impact. There is an ominous echo the moment my feet hit the glass, and when I look down at the transparent floor, I see why. The thin layer of glass is the only thing keeping us from falling down a dark shaft that likely cuts through the sea all the way down into the Earth’s crust. At the very bottom of the pit of ebony, I can see a dim light, the single flicker no more prominent than a star in the night sky.
Except the open elevator shaft that seems to be so deep that it goes right to the gates of hell is far from the most startling thing in the room. My eyes instinctually look away from the floor, my fear of heights making the one glimpse I got through the glass a nauseating one.
The first thing I see is the dark black eyes of President Li staring right at me. Seeing him doesn’t surprise me. By this point I expect his clones to be as ubiquitous as the security cameras that line the streets of China and monitor the movements of everyone. What I don’t expect to see is the warm smile on his face and his relaxed temperament.
His calm energy makes me feel like I am violating some natural law by holding the knife up at him, my knees bent slightly as I prepare to lunge forward. I want to drive this knife through his neck and watch his humanoid head fall onto the floor in a pile of blood. I wish I could say I don’t know what that looks like, but I have done that exact kind of thing many times.
This time, something stops me from letting the beast inside me unleash itself upon this man. I know that killing him won’t do me any good. Killing this one humanoid won’t make the millions more clones of him that exist die.
So instead, I lower the knife, allowing the soothing music blasting from the speakers at the corner of the room to silence any curse words that naturally want to spit out of me. Jake and Ai both hit the ground at the same time, their falls as ungraceful as mine.
“No,” Ai breathes. She is standing a few feet behind me, the horror of the moment still too much for her to take in. The room is encased in wall screens that allow us to look out at the destruction and the layers of black smoke that press up against the windows. The only thing in this room besides four small pods for speakers at the corners of the room is Ai and the eerily transparent glass floor that gives way to a darkness so thick that it could be mistaken for an entirely new floor beneath the existing glass.
Li continues smiling as we all stand, not sure of what to do.
There are no doors to exit this room. There are no controls or other screens that would signal anything malicious going on. Li is the only thing here, and somehow the fact that the only thing joining us inside is the thick, toxin-filled smoke that is invading through the hole makes this one of the scariest moments of my life.
It feels like this entire thing was one elaborate setup and now that we finally made it here, to Li’s den above the oil rig, he has us exactly where he wants.
“Kill him already!” Jake snaps at me and throws his body in the direction of Li.
“Don’t step a foot closer.” Li narrows his eyes at Jake and holds out a hand. Normally, this move would be intimidating, but not enough to stop Jake. However, when a surge of electricity visibly flows through his hand, causing hundreds of sparks to exit his hand, Jake freezes in place.
“It’s time we play a fun game.” Li places his hand back at his side, the electricity diffusing from the tips of his fingers. He is speaking in Mandarin into a translating device that is around his neck, the ominous and monotone computer voice repeating his words in English. The anger seems to fade from his eyes instantly and the excited glow returns.
“We aren’t playing any games,” I respond, keeping the knife firmly gripped in my hand. I am only waiting for an opportune moment to cut his head off and then castrate him as if cutting a fresh pepper.
“Why did you show up here, then? Sure seems like you wanted to play.”
“We aren’t playing any games.” I inch closer to him, trying to bring myself as close as possible to within arm’s length of killing him. “You know exactly why we are here.”
“Yes, you chose to play the little game I created for you.” Li laughs, the kind of obnoxious laughter that makes any liquid in one’s throat bubble out of their nostrils. “You wanted to try and stop the earthquake.”
“We wanted to kill you,” I respond, my tone stone cold. Ai nods in agreement at my words, her fists clenched. Even through the suit, it is noticeable that the stare she is directing at that man is truly menacing.
“Ah, this is good.” Li clutches his belly. “You know I lied when I told you that I had an experiment on a research station in the middle of the East China Sea. This isn’t an experiment.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“This oil rig is one of dozens along the eastern seaboard of China. You never had a chance to shut this down.” He grins, his front teeth hanging above his lower lip, the edges tipped and jagged like fangs. “In under ten minutes they are all set to execute the plan from the very beginning. They will be firing nuclear warheads into the Earth’s crust. Any energy held up in the fault lines will rupture, and massive tidal waves will pound the eastern coast of China. The military has already raided the hospitals and barricaded any emergency responders from leaving their posts. This game is almost over. You get to pick whether losing means having your life disappear or not.”
I stand in silence. I have no idea how to respond to him. Part of me wants to take the knife and let it rip apart his neck, but I know that me doing so will accomplish nothing.
There are dozens more of these rigs. He knew we never had a shot at destroying them all. He wanted us to come here. He wants us to witness the destruction then watch us die.
“Why did you do this?” I finally spit out. “Why are you doing this?” I inch closer to him, his robot body unmoving as the knife hovers above his head. The idea that he actually planned for us to come here is too preposterous to me. He’s just saying that this is a game. He doesn’t want to admit that we are so close to winning.
He wants us to fear him, when in reality he should be terrified of us.
“I want to make it so that the only people left with power in this world are my people.” He places a hand on my forearm. His touch is warm and gentle, the exact opposite of what I imagined it to be. I let his hand remain on me. It will be that much easier when I move to chop it off. “And I want you and everyone else who could have helped me, who could have let this all end differently, regret not partnering with me for the rest of time.”
“You are going to regret this,” I whisper. I want the hairs in his robot ears to strain to hear me.
“I won’t regret a thing. These people deserve this. And you deserve it too.” He smiles, his voice echoing off the glass walls. I keep my eyes locked on the face of Li, his large pores covering his cheeks and forehead. I wish I could stick a needle through each one and make him bleed out.
“No.” I tense my body, preparing to have my muscles explode forward and tear him apart. “You are going to regret not killing me when you had the chance.”
I slash the impossible knife across his skull. I would let him live and try and get more information about how to shut down the system of oil rigs out of him, but I know Li won’t tell us anything. He’d rather watch us be tortured in our final moments through the network of cameras that are embedded into the walls of every room in this building.
Except, when the edge of the impossible knife touches his skin, it slices through the first layers but never makes it to the guts of the computer controlling him. The knife only scrapes against his outer layer of skin, the blade having
no effect on a man who has already fallen plenty of times from the impact of this weapon.
Li doesn’t move, instead he simply laughs and moves his hand to my hair so that he can pull on it. In the same instant I attempt to drive the knife right into the center of his chest, thinking that the first time must have been some sort of weird fluke. The knife easily rips through the traditional Uyghur dance outfit he wears that covers his torso in a white garb with a flower-filled colorful trim around his neck and on the sleeves. Yet, when the tip of the knife connects with the skin above his heart, it fails to dig any deeper than a surface-level wound.
“You bastard,” I curse and shove him off me so that the pain from him pulling on my hair stops. He could pull out a weapon and kill me right now if he wanted to, but from the joyful look in his eyes, this is all part of the fun.
Upon seeing my minimal progress in killing Li, a switch inside Ai flips. I hear her scream, and out of my peripheral vision her figure is visible charging towards Li.
She wants revenge.
But this man is impenetrable. She isn’t going to get it.
Her body collides with Li before I can drive the knife into him again, this time aiming for his head. She knocks into him with surprising force, causing him to fall onto the floor. Her tackle is impressive even for that of a linebacker, and I have to admit for a moment I feel nothing but shock at the fact that a girl who is barely over a hundred pounds managed to tackle a man who takes enough steroids to be the Hulk.
Her scream that follows as she wraps her hands around his neck is nothing short of heartbreaking. It’s an ugly, terrible scream. The only sound I can compare it to is of a dying cow combined with the screeching of a metal cutting saw. All the pain inside her is roaring out her throat, hoping to gain retribution in seeing the torture in his eyes.
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 39