A surge of anger explodes inside me as I dart my eyes around frantically. There has to be something here. There has to be a sign somewhere. But the more and more I look, the more I see that there is nothing. We could easily spend days gliding throughout the entire Xinjiang province looking for the spot where he stores his consciousness.
This is all a distraction.
This is all a way to ensure that he can continue killing the Chinese people, and destroying the world, while he gets to watch us fly around like a bunch of idiots.
I feel like screaming, crying, and giving up all at the same time. Then Jake says three words that bring me more joy than anything else has in my entire life: “I see light.”
He doesn’t have to say another word for me to lean all my weight forward, propelling this hoverboard forward as fast as it can go in the direction he pointed to. At first, I don’t see what light he is talking about, but then the faint glow becomes visible above the horizon of buildings, almost like a mist in the night.
We all bound forward in the direction of the light source like a group of frenzied, drunken moths. I think I even allow a giddy squeal to escape from my mouth, but we will forget that ever happened.
As the massive glass facade on the outside of the structure enters my field of vision, I feel all the worry and desperation of a few minutes ago fade away. A bright light emanates from the middle of the structure, the source of light beaming out from it as a beacon of hope in a city that is empty, dark, and succumbing to the forces of nature and urban decay.
When I see the structure, I know that this is the place we have been looking for. The outside resembles a modern Roman coliseum with glass pillars instead of intricate columns and a large logo on the front. I instantly recognize the structure as a soccer stadium, or at least that’s what most would think when they pass by it. It is over a mile in circumference, the stadium likely able to fit over a hundred thousand people.
But no soccer stadium leaves their lights on when no one is playing a game and has their lights shielded from electromagnetic pulses. An ominous glow hangs above the stadium, this source of light the one clue we need to proceed forward.
Inside here is where the hive mind is.
Inside here is our chance at finally killing Li.
Chapter 23
“How do we get in?” Jake leans forward as he examines the outside of the stadium-like structure.
There is no saying what this was used for or even if it existed before Li took over, but it is pretty clear what all the light beaming from this structure is from now. The servers are inside. All we have to do is destroy this place and we win.
“We just fly over the top and right inside.” I smile as I say the words. It sounds too easy, and that’s because it is too easy. Li must have a trick waiting for us on the other side. Some hi-tech defense system that not even the homes of billionaires can compare to. The computer system is likely thousands of feet underneath the earth, buried so far beneath the dirt that not even a hundred nuclear bombs could shake the center.
“Well, if we are doing that, why don’t we bomb the place?” Jake says. “We can get this over with in five seconds.”
I roll my eyes, even though he can’t see. There’s something odd about the fact that things feel even more urgent with no one around than they would if we were being chased by a hundred giant versions of Li. “Dude, you know if this place isn’t guarded on the outside that it must have some crazy shit going on the inside. There is no way Li Wang would have the servers sitting inside a soccer stadium for anyone to come and destroy.”
“What if that’s the point, though?” Jake says. “Maybe he knows that no one would suspect it out here, so he doesn’t have to go through the trouble of hiding it. In fact, since this isn’t hidden at all, he knows that most people won’t come here, they will just see the lights and think that every light in this city was left on and get the hell out of here as fast as possible because it’s creepy as hell here.”
“I’m telling you there is—”
“Wait, look at this.” Ai glides forward closer to the stadium, and Jake and I follow hesitantly. I would let her glide forward all on her own to risk getting swallowed in a ball of fire by a tripwire security system, but the force field is connected to the cube in my backpack. And friends don’t let each other get shocked by a lethal amount of electricity for no good reason.
“Watch out, don’t get too close,” I caution, trying to be conservative as possible as I listen for sounds of drones or robots that may be targeting us. There is nothing but silence.
“See that, it looks like a truck loading area. Do you think that’s where they ship the clones out of?” As she points the area out, the gears in my head start turning. There is a large loading dock, larger than what would be needed for most industrial purposes, never mind a soccer stadium. It is made entirely of glass like the outer layer of the stadium and it has two tall doors that are bolted shut at the top of the platform.
“Yeah, that must be it.” Jake nods as we continue to fly closer to it. We are at an elevation of about fifty feet, a height that puts us at the same height as a lot of the tightly packed buildings in the city, but the stadium easily towers hundreds of feet above us.
“Why don’t we break in there?” Ai’s excitement is infectious as she hovers closer and closer to the looming glass façade. I can feel the determination emanating off her. She may want this even more than Jake and I do. It’s one thing to want to save a bunch of strangers, but getting justice for the people you love is a motivation that is unmatched. “Whatever clones he has might be there. We can destroy them all and then move on to the inside where the servers are.”
“I like that plan.” I open the bag with the Chimera Cube, making sure it is ready for me to deliver it commands on the fly. “If that’s where the clones are, it will make more sense to get killing them out of the way before we get to the servers.”
I make sure to keep the force field activated around us. With this force field making it possible to deflect nearly all shots fired at us, it will take an obscene show of force for Li to somehow hurt us.
But nothing will surprise me.
We all glide down to the ground, following a smooth arc that has us land right at the base of the stadium. Up close it is easy to marvel at the size of this structure. As I look across on both sides of the stadium, it is hard to tell that there is any curvature in the structure due to how large the perfect circle it forms is. However, when I look at the glass, expecting to get a glimpse of what lies on the inside, I am surprised to see that the large paneling on the exterior of the building are all mirrors.
I see a reflection of myself, the three of us covered in our black attire, with turquoise laser guns sticking out of our waist pockets and hoverboards on the pavement right next to us. I wish I could say we look like badasses, like we are ready to take on the world.
But instead, we look like a group of neighborhood kids twinning for Halloween, except our costumes were thrown together at the last minute. I don’t think we’d even scare my seven-year-old self. Jake looks at me, probably thinking something along the same lines that I am, but we don’t have time to crack jokes.
The dark energy of this structure only increases as we near closer to it. And once we are on the inside, all hell is going to break loose.
“Impossible knife.” I hold my palm on the cube as I say the command. The knife appears in the air above the bag and I grab it before it falls. Then I use the knife to slice through the glass. The blade cuts through the glass as easily as it cuts through every other earthly material, but even after I dig the entire blade into the glass and cut a large, door-sized outline into the glass, it doesn’t budge.
The glass is too thick for the knife to cut. It could be as much as several feet thick, which is way too much for the blade to adequately cut into. That leaves us with only one option. We vaporize our way inside.
“We can fly to the top of the stadium.” Jake holds out a hand a
s I drop the knife and reach for the Chimera Cube. “It will be so much easier.”
“No, it won’t,” I quickly respond, placing my hand on the Chimera Cube to deliver yet another command. “This entire thing is covered in feet of bullet-proof glass and reflective mirrors. It’ll be best to make it all disappear.”
I hold up the bag with the Chimera Cube and ask it to produce a detector tool. For such an awesome device, it has a terrible name, and looks like a toy a toddler would play with.
When I let the red bead on the tip of the tool touch the glass exterior, the digital screen on it lights up. I have no idea what the chemical formula means, but I press the vaporize button without a second thought. It is automatically programmed to have each of the trillions of nanobots in the device effuse out the hole on the edge of the red dot and pick apart each of the atoms in the compound. It will detect each atom that is part of the network of bonds and convert them all into oxygen. Not exactly vaporization, but it serves the same purpose.
The Chimera Cube once again comes up clutch, this time carrying out a feat that seems almost impossible in nature. The entire wall of glass disappears. The molecules that form the material are picked apart and converted to oxygen in a freakish show of technology. The amount of radiation emitted from the reactions that took place is likely deadly, and the number of free radicals roaming in the air will probably increase someone’s chances of cancer by a thousand percent upon inhaling.
But it works.
The wall of glass surrounding the massive structure is gone in the blink of an eye. And behind the wall isn’t the source of light. There is still another massive cement barrier a hundred feet away to break through that encircles the compound and is hundreds of feet high. But lying between us and the last barrier to the home of the servers are thousands of clones of Li.
I’ve never seen something more disturbing in my life.
If they were all identical, that would be one thing. Ten thousand humanoids of Li Wang, all with glowing red eyes and Hulk-like muscles is a sight that has the potential to penetrate all my dreams for eternity. But the reality is much worse.
The moment the glass wall collapses into nothingness, the stench of human feces and mildew hits my nose. That’s unpleasant enough, but when put in conjunction with the dozens of different types of Li Wang humanoids, all optimized for killing and destruction, the prospect of turning around and running away is one that is suddenly very appealing.
“Holy shit.” Jake is breathless, all of us standing still as the army of humanoids comes to life. They are packed in against the walls so tight that if it consisted of a group of actual breathing humans, they would all probably suffocate each other from being so close. The sea of humanoids stretches in all directions around the cement wall and they extend a couple of hundred feet out, the last line of humanoids right where the thick glass façade ended.
If you can describe a bunch of killer robots as diverse, then that’s exactly what these humanoids are. Some appear to be the same size as a normal human, with the black hair, aging face, and defined muscles that I remember Li Wang having for most of my interactions with him. Then there are the humanoids that look like bobbleheads with massive faces and extremely small bodies except they are a hundred times larger than a normal bobblehead, meaning that their body is several feet tall and their heads are the size of a semitruck.
It gets worse from there.
Some of the humanoids are werewolf versions of Li Wang, something that my mind has never thought of and desires to never think about again. They are hairy and naked, with large fangs for teeth and red pupils where the black pits of Li Wang’s eyes normally are.
Some have large swords instead arms; others have wheels instead of legs, which is less intimidating and more just creepy; and then others have long necks that are roughly thirty feet in height. If that’s not enough to make you want to throw up and scream, the dozens of guns poking out of their necks will make you rethink whether your sense of sight is truly a gift or not.
Then there are the giants. And these giants make the ones that invaded Hong Kong look like tiny pets. These robot creatures give a new meaning to the word massive. They are the size of skyscrapers, their heads at the same height as the top of the several-hundred-foot-tall cement wall, and their arm and leg muscles the size of entire apartments. They wear the same bright red robes as the other giants and have the same meticulous yet disgusting attention to detail spanning from their toenails all the way up to the hair in their nostrils.
The force field won’t even have an effect on these beasts.
They can probably withstand anything but a nuclear blast. And all the hundreds of the massive gargantuan beasts, and the thousands upon thousands of smaller yet also terrifying humanoids of Li, all come to life at once.
“Time for you to die,” they chant at the same time, their eyes boiling redder the louder their screams get. It echoes off the walls, the sheer force of the wave of sound knocking us all back.
Somehow even with an impenetrable force field around me, I feel defenseless. Li Wang has spent billions of dollars and years refining these humanoids to be horrifying killing machines.
Today he finally gets to unleash them.
I look at Jake and Ai, all of us unsure how to approach destroying an army of mutant robots all hell-bent on protecting the life of their master. The first wave of humanoids charge into the force field, their bodies bouncing off the electrical field, some of them even flying in the air. If my life weren’t currently being threatened, I might laugh at the awkward way in which the bobblehead humanoids fall over onto the ground. Once they fall on their heads, their legs are too short to help them back up, so they lie on the ground like turtles stuck on their backs.
However, that comparison doesn’t do justice to the fact that they are even more scary the moment they topple over. The creepy bobbleheads with mouths the size of home movie theater screens breathe fire. They all have flamethrowers lodged into their throats, and as a dozen of them fall over onto the ground, their legs squirming helplessly, the ring of fire surrounding the force field blocks out our clear view of the army of humanoids.
They are nothing more than big, clumsy distractions.
It’s the rest of the humanoids that terrify me. The humanoids that are normal sized and show the Han version of Li Wang in a suit are deceptively strong. Many of them, once the electric force field hits them, leap right back into the force field, unaffected by the shock of electricity. Dozens of the werewolf versions of Li collide into the force field too, their fangs coming within feet of connecting with my skin before the invisible wall around us pushes them backward.
Each second dozens more humanoids smash into the force field, no end in sight to the chaos. They all immediately get up after the rush of electricity and attack again, unfazed by the fact that some of their exteriors are charred and falling apart. The massive giraffe-like humanoids with small pin-sized heads and an arsenal of loaded weapons in their neck unload hundreds of bullets per second at the force field, all of them deflecting off the bubble and ricocheting back into the army of humanoids.
The sound of the gunfire and the screams of the humanoids aren’t suppressed by the electrical field, causing the sound to take on a vicious character of its own with the vicious growls of the werewolf Lis digging into my skin. The giraffe-looking ones emit a horrible screeching sound, and the giant humanoids of Li scream a warrior chant that is enough decibels in volume to break all glass within miles.
Despite the chaos and hellish conditions, theoretically, we could stay inside this force field forever. But the humanoids could keep on fighting us forever too, and even if the force field manages to wear a few out, Li Wang will make sure to pump out more and more until we are surrounded by a million of them.
If we want a chance at winning, we have to kill them all now before the giants surround us, and the only way out is digging down into the earth, hoping that we can dig faster than a team of ten thousand robots.
/> If I had to guess, they would win that battle.
“We need to get rid of this force field.” Jake grabs my arm, urging me to tap the Chimera Cube.
“I know,” I scream into his ear so that he can hear me above the cacophony. My ears are already ringing, and at this rate in a few minutes I won’t be able to hear anything and will be well on my way to permanent hearing damage.
The only problem with Jake’s bright idea is that once we take away this force field, I have absolutely no idea how to combat this many robots all trying to kill us at once. It may be true that the gunfire will have a minimal effect on us, but the werewolves that can surely run faster than us won’t look so majestic when their teeth are six inches deep into our arms and we are bleeding out.
“Get on your hoverboard,” I scream as I hop onto mine. I have no idea if this is going to work, but in the desperation of the moment, I have a plan that can get us out of this.
There is no humanly possible way that the three of us alone can direct enough firepower at the thousands of humanoids to destroy them all. Trying to do that will end up with the Chimera Cube in Li’s hands and a global catastrophe that will make my name in the history books even more of a dark one.
But we can be the generals of an army.
We can engineer an attack meant to kill every last humanoid of Li and destroy his empire for good.
I’m no general, so I have no idea about the specifics, but first we have to make it into the sky, and with the giants closing in on us, their large bodies easily able to trap us in our force field, we have seconds to react.
Jake and Ai strap their feet into the hoverboards without any hesitation, and before we all know it the engines of the hoverboards are roaring and we are pulling up with all our body weight to ascend into the air as fast as possible.
“I told you we should have gone through the roof,” Jake screams as my body leaves the ground, defying the force of gravity with the propulsion of the hoverboard.
I don’t respond. Not because I don’t want to snap back with a snarky comment—I always love an acceptable excuse to be an asshole. But it’s the hands of the giants that throw me off. Li Wang knows by now exactly what we are planning to do. It’s why he commands the skyscraper-sized humanoids to charge full steam ahead at the little bubble of our force field. The hundreds of them that are part of the army stomp on the smaller humanoids, the force of their feet alone crushing dozens of the werewolf humanoids into a ball of hot metal.
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