My mission is to kill President Li.
I’m willing to sacrifice anything in order to win.
“Okay, all right, let’s break this love circle up.” The moment Drew interrupts, we all part from each other. From the tension between us, I can tell that it took everything each one of us had to not burst into tears. We have been through so much together. We have been there for each other during so much shit. And it feels like we are nearing the end.
We have to be.
One person can only take so much.
And all of us know that if we can’t handle this next challenge, everything is going to come to an end, not just for our lives, but the world.
“How are you feeling?” Justin says immediately as we break apart. He asks the question in the same nonchalant way a stranger would ask someone in a grocery store how their day has been.
“I’m fine,” I lie, knowing well enough that no one wants to hear the truth anyway. We probably all feel like shit, but with the adrenaline flowing through me and anxiety keeping my senses alert, I actually feel halfway like a functioning human being. I ride the wave of energy while I have it and scan the aircraft for anything suspicious.
There are a few holes in the ceiling with glass on them, likely with security cameras mounted right behind the covering. The aircraft itself is much smaller than the one I was in with them a day ago, and all the other Syndicate members that stood at the back are now gone. It’s just me, Drew, Justin, and Kamala.
From the looks of it, none of them are carrying weapons.
Then I look at the walls and see the dozens of guns poking out, the color of their barrels blending in with the dark paint, and feel like I’m about to shit myself.
“What are you looking at?” Drew smiles. The bastard must have seen the alarm in my eyes when my mind connected the dots and realized that the Syndicate picked me up in a flying box of death.
“Oh, nothing, just staring at the dozens of guns you have pointed at me.” I gulp as the thought hits me that they can easily shoot me right now and rip the Chimera Cube off my back. They could easily make sure that my body is buried so far beneath the ground that even my undead self could never get within a thousand-mile radius of the cube.
“Oh, those.” Drew bursts out in laughter, the only one who finds it funny that dozens of guns mounted into the walls happen to all be pointing at me. I keep my eyes glued on him, refusing to let my nerves show as I deal with the fact that I have entered a situation that is now completely out of my control. “We got this aircraft from the U.S. Government a few years ago and had it stationed in Taiwan. It has anti-missile machinery, advanced lidar technology, and it can even withstand the heat of a nuclear blast from a mile away.”
“How did you get this from the United States?” I ask, a slightly nervous tone seeping into my voice. The last thing I want is the most powerful military in the world teaming up with the most powerful secret organization all in an effort to crash my part of trying to take Li down.
But looks like that already happened.
“We have a fantastic relationship with the United States and its current administration.” Drew smiles, and Justin and Kamala nod along with him. “Publicly, the government is not aware of what is happening in China. But privately, top lawmakers know exactly what has happened here.”
“That doesn’t explain how you got this aircraft.”
“I guess I should have told you that when I said you are all now friends of the Syndicate, I forgot to mention who our friends are. For years we have been in discussions with top military officials and intelligence agencies, figuring out how we could overthrow the government of China. The United States has always viewed this country as a threat to its global supremacy and has been waiting for the right time to destroy the threat completely.”
Ai puts her hands on her waist, all of us stumbling backward as the aircraft lifts off from the clearing it landed on in the forest. “The United States government knew what Li Wang was planning?”
“We’ve known for years Li Wang was up to no good. No one would have pictured this, though,” Justin says before Drew can open his mouth. With his hologlasses on and the smooth nature with which Justin talks, it is impossible to know whether he is reading off a script the council is feeding him or whether these are his own words.
I narrow my eyes at Drew, vexation bubbling up inside me as I realize that the United States government let me live for a reason. They wanted me to go and do the same thing I did in the United States to the Chinese. They wanted these people to die. “Why didn’t the government do anything to stop it?”
“It wasn’t the government’s choice.” Drew rubs his hands together, the motion rather distracting. “The brotherhood is the one who makes the decisions about everything at the end of the day.”
“You monsters,” I murmur underneath my breath. Jake eyes me as I say the words, as if warning me to cut it out.
“So you allowed this to happen in every major Chinese city? You allowed this country to go without international sanctions for years, even though you knew about all the human rights violations going on inside of it?”
“You already know the answer.” Drew’s expression is emotionless but there is a glow in his eyes. He has been poisoned by the propaganda of this group for years. In his mind, ruthlessly taking power in a world with nearly unlimited amounts is somehow justified. “More people died yesterday than in any other day in human history. And by the end of today, this country will be ours.”
“You want to make it happen by the end of the day?” I ask, growing uneasy about the entire situation. I have no clue what happened when I was gone, but power feels like it is slowly shifting from my hands to theirs, and I don’t know what to do about it.
“We have a hypersonic military aircraft.” Drew sits back on a metal chair at the center of a room and pulls a pill out of his pocket. He puts it in his mouth and swallows as the tablet screen lights up. “We can travel around the entire world in a few hours. And we need to use every hour we have. The United States government is preparing a covert invasion into China. They want to install a puppet regime for themselves, but we can’t let that happen.”
“I thought you said you were friends with the U.S. Government?”
“Friends for now, but you know the plan of the Last Migration.” Drew grins, the pill seeming to ignite a new energy inside him that makes his face livelier and smile that much more sinister. He motions with his hand, typing into the keyboard that only he can see on his hologlasses with the movement of his eyes. “The Chimera debacle in conjunction with the global fallout from these earthquakes will bring all the instability we need in the United States to unseat the current government and implement a new system. There have been riots in the streets and even an impeachment trial against the current US president. We give it some time and our new candidate will win. And that country will be ours. But we don’t want to control the United States or China, we want to use these two empires as a starting point for the world.”
“Trust me, we know that. All of us know that by now,” I say as Ai glances at me with a worried look in her eyes and Jake continues staring at the floor, biting his lips as if he wants to say something. “So, let’s do it.”
I smile back at him, suppressing my urge to scream. I’d love to pull out the Chimera Cube right now and command it to tear Drew’s body apart. But the second I do that, the council that is watching us on the security cameras will have every single gun in this room fire at me.
I step forward, closer to where he is sitting, and watch to see if the guns follow me. Each barrel rotates slightly to remain locked on my head. Shivers course down my spine as I realize that I’m trapped. Drew could be taking us anywhere.
He doesn’t care about my life.
He let me go out into the middle of a nuclear disaster only to be nearly killed. All he wants is this cube, and the longer I have it in my hands, the more likely I feel like one day he will have it in his.
�
�Do what?” Ai asks, looking a bit lost from our conversation. Having to keep up with people speaking her nonnative language with everything else going on must be no easy task.
“Take over the world.” Static rings in my ears after I say the words, an odd tingly sensation on the end of my fingers. I tell myself I am saying this because I want to appease Drew, because I want to manipulate the Syndicate the same way the Syndicate has manipulated me for years.
But part of me knows that when I really think about it, the idea of garnering that much power is tantalizing in the best way. My whole life I have been addicted to winning. With this cube, I can win anything. I can have anything I want. And that intoxicating feeling is one I never want to leave.
The power is something I never want to let go, even though I know that I should destroy the cube. I should bury it a million miles beneath the earth and ensure that no human can ever touch it again. But now is not the time.
I tell myself that I have to kill Li first—that I have to win.
But I know in reality that once Li is dead, there will be more after that.
I will have to destroy the Syndicate. Then I will have to ensure no one in the U.S. Government can touch me, and along the way I will meet countless more people who want to hurt me and thousands more who want the same power I have.
There will always be more people to fight, more money to have in my pocket, and more power to have in my hands.
My excuse is that I’m doing this for my father’s legacy. That I’m doing this for the good of humanity. But the truth is I love power. I love feeling like I can make anything and everything happen all at once.
And now that I know what that sensation is like, I don’t know if I will ever let it go.
I scare myself more than the Syndicate scares me.
I am my worst enemy. And when I look into Drew’s eyes, the wrinkles on his face especially prominent in the low light of the aircraft, I can’t help but see my own self reflecting right back at me.
“Let’s take over the world, my friend.” Drew raises his fist into the air and Justin and Kamala mimic his movement. “Let’s make it so that every desire, every thought, anything you could ever dream of could be yours in the snap of a finger. People say they need to believe in a god, an invisible, all-knowing force that has the power to do almost anything. What people don’t realize is that soon we will be those gods.”
A rush of energy flows through me at his words. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the council back in their plush mansions and private yachts in the United States served this line up for him to say. Nevertheless, his chilling tone causes goose bumps to dot my skin.
“Do we all have to raise our fists in the air?” Jake questions as Ai and I stare at all of them, the cultish vibes especially strong in the moment.
“We are a team,” Justin says, walking towards the center of the aircraft. They are all standing around the control pad at the center of the room, the black from the ceiling, floor, and walls absorbing most of the light and casting an ominous shadow on each of their faces. “We can’t do this alone. We need to take down Li together.”
Ai shakes her head, saying with everything but her mouth that what they are doing is nonsense. “Before we have a team huddle, don’t we need a game plan?”
“I have the plan,” I speak up, everyone a bit surprised at my assertiveness. They have no idea how many times I have played out the scene in my head in the last few hours, and how many times I’ve imagined watching the last clone of President Li fall. “Going to Hong Kong may end up being the best decision I ever made. I saw a lot of shit and went through a lot of stuff I don’t wanna talk about, but during it all everything made sense. The clones of Li that stormed what was left of the city were all of his real self. They were embodiments of his Uyghur heritage. And that’s exactly where the servers are. They aren’t in Beijing. He wants the rén to think that taking down Beijing will mean the fall of the regime. He wants millions of people to storm that city, as they likely are right now, and cause mass chaos. It is all a distraction from where it really is. It must be in the heart of the Xinjiang province, in the heart of the homeland that he is fighting for.”
“Let’s nuke the whole damn province!” Jake proclaims, his dull expression suddenly coming to life.
“That’s not a good idea,” Justin says.
“No, not at all. But I know exactly what we can do.” I take a deep breath as I prepare to say the one sentence that I will never be able to go back from. After I say these words, I am committed, and the Syndicate will kill me if I don’t go. And after I say these words, I am risking my life and in the end I will either end up as the next leader of China along with Jake and Ai, or we will all die and President Li will have the Chimera Cube.
“We need to sneak into the capital of the province and infiltrate the area where the servers are—after all, he may have equipped the defense systems around the server to handle nuclear blasts. It will be obvious to find, there will be tons of imperial guards there and it will likely be one of the only spots in the province with power. Destroying the servers from the inside is the only way we can ensure Li is dead forever. None of the clones will work without that connection, and once he is gone, the Party will die too. China will be ours.”
I say it all without taking a breath, and when I am done, my lungs are desperate for air and my body is shaking with anticipation.
“I love it.” Drew smiles, and likely the rest of the council smiles right along with him. “Let’s destroy everything left of his homeland. Soon this entire world will be under one roof.”
Chapter 22
There is no escape plan.
I’m not sure how I’m going to make it out of this one alive. I’m standing on the edge of the platform, the darkness settling over the landscape below and sending a series of chills down my spine.
“You ready for this?” Jake squeezes my hand, our bodies bumping together as a large gust of wind sends us both scrambling backward. Ai, Jake, and I are all wearing bullet-proof suits with full-body wingsuits on over it. The black fabric of each will cause us to blend in with the night, and the anti-infrared spray we have doused upon our bodies will make it so that we don’t absorb much heat.
All of these elements working together, in theory, should enable us to glide down safely to Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang province, without being detected by surveillance drones or other advanced detection technology. Once on the ground, our sole mission will be to navigate through the abandoned capital, a once sprawling metropolis with three million inhabitants, and find the section of the city where the servers are stored.
We have no way of knowing which section of the city they is in, or even if they are visible from above the ground. All I know is that as we fly closer to the core of the city, I feel my insides tighten as the dark energy of the city absorbs me. There is something about this place that feels like a graveyard combined with a slaughterhouse that doesn’t make me excited at all to fall thousands of feet through the sky to land right in the middle of it.
But this is the only way.
It’s this or we allow the entire world to go to shit.
I’d rather jump.
“I’m ready,” I say back to Jake, having to almost scream to be heard above the wind. With Ai on the left side of me, Jake on my right side, and the Chimera Cube safely in its backpack strapped around my shoulders, I feel like an unstoppable force.
On the way here, the feeling was much different. In order to optimize our attack plan, we had to take off at dark. As a result, we had to spend nearly six hours in Chinese air space at extremely high altitudes, hoping that Li’s detection drones are unable to work in the upper levels of the atmosphere. Although the force field I commanded the Chimera Cube to form around the airplane shielded us from any projectiles shot in our direction, we still had to worry about Li Wang being alerted that we are still in the country and finding out that we are headed to his little sanctuary in an area
devoid of living humans. And with the country on high alert with massive riots ensuing in every major city and a siege and mass burning of Beijing underway, full-fledged anarchy is taking place between the rén and Li Wang. Not surprisingly, he is fighting back with full force, including robot armies of himself and the firepower of more conventional military weapons like tanks and airstrikes. Every hour we wait to kill Li and destroy the servers, hundreds of thousands more will die. Yet the number of surveillance drones patrolling through the airspace is at a greater number than it ever has been.
We are riding a thin line between life and death, and veering off course by a few dozen feet could spell doom for us all.
However, on the nearly two-thousand-mile flight to the Xinjiang province, no drones ever followed us and no aircrafts ever appeared on the advanced radar system. We should be safe. We may even catch Li off guard, but as we hover above the city below, the tall buildings in the downtown section of the empty civilization looking like nothing more than blocks of wood from this altitude, I feel his presence.
I feel the black pits he has for eyes sucking me into their holes like a vacuum. And when I look down at the darkness and only see the eyes of Li Wang staring back up at me, the thought alone makes me want to simultaneously hide and cry underneath my covers and stab his terrible eyes out until the sockets cave in.
“You are going to have to find your own way out.” Drew smiles as we all prepare for final liftoff. From the glow in his eyes, I can tell that he has been waiting for this moment all along. He wanted to use me to take down the Chinese government, to do the dirty work for them that even they are unwilling to do.
He doesn’t realize that he’s making a mistake. He can try and leave us to die in the middle of a province once teeming with tens of millions of people which now on paper has a population of zero. But he won’t win this game in the end.
I will never let him or the Syndicate or anyone else in the world get the Chimera Cube.
The second Li and his empire are dead, the cube is going to die with it. If all the good this cube does in the world is preventing a terrible dictator from disrupting the world order and killing hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people, then my dad will be happy. Too many people have died. Too many lives have been destroyed.
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