“I was kidding. I was kidding,” Jake states as we both glare at him, not amused.
I don’t care what anyone says anymore, we are committed to this now. After flying to the top of this roof in a high-speed jet that the Chimera Cube constructed, I have been through enough in our journey to make turning back not an option. Even with the force field we had surrounding the aircraft, the sheer number of explosives that collided against the exterior of the electric field as the Chinese military shot at us are enough to keep my insides shaking for the rest of my life.
After thousands of missiles were shot at us, eventually the military itself gave up. Without their dictatorial ruler breathing down their back, telling them what to do at every moment, it’s quite possible the generals in the military are losing their own hope in the Party. Even so, a few generals losing hope won’t be enough to end the threat of the entire muscle of one of the world’s most powerful military forces.
Even in a state of disarray and chaos, they can easily take on any force in the world.
So, Imperial Army, I present to you the Chimera Cube.
“Let’s go right for Li’s mansion.” I narrow my eyes at the lavish imperial mansion built on a man-made hill hundreds of feet in elevation above the surrounding city blocks. The mansion itself is four stories with a hand-crafted brick façade, ornate shrubbery, and landscaping in the front to welcome the cars who take the several-hundred-foot elevator ride from the city floor to the top of the hill. Inside, there is a golden chandelier in the entrance hall and red carpet lining the grand staircase to the dozens of rooms in the mansion.
It’s a place full of so many luxuries that it’s hard to imagine how one human could use so much stuff and even weirder to imagine that a humanoid designed it. The reason why beautiful women constantly roam the palace floors is the same reason why Li Wang chose to build it right in the middle of Beijing and tear down the existing skyscrapers in the process.
He wanted to show his power.
And now it’s our turn to blow up the entire place. After that, everyone will get the message that it’s not the Party who’s in charge or the rebels. It’s us.
“We can just fly above it and unload some bombs on the palace,” Jake says, a thought that would be delusional in almost all instances an actual possibility with the power of the Chimera Cube. “We can surround the entire hill in a force field. Kill everyone inside the imperial mansion grounds and then resurrect a new palace from the rubble. A palace that will catch the eyes of everyone in this city.”
“One made of diamonds.” Ai jumps with excitement and claps her hands together.
“An entire palace made of diamonds?” I question, the idea seeming almost too over the top, but then again, it’s not like it will be hard for us to construct a palace of diamonds with the Chimera Cube. We can produce all the materials on the hill and then force a team of robots to build a large, elaborate structure from a set of predetermined templates.
“We can debate the diamonds later.” Jake holds up a hand, motioning for me to use the Chimera Cube. “First, let’s make ourselves the kings of this hill.”
I nod at him and take a deep breath, gearing up for what will certainly be another near-death experience. My brain still feels foggy, the flight to Beijing impossible to fall asleep on due to the constant bombardment of the missiles.
Even with all the chaos unfolding beneath us and the high stakes of our current mission, the prospect of sleep seems more tantalizing than it all. In fact, if there was a cold pillow behind me and some warm blankets, my mind might not even be able to stop my body from crashing.
But I need to keep going.
“Three hoverboards.” I tap the Chimera Cube and then double-tap it again once the items are produced. A green wave of light flashes over the white exterior of the cube as I grab one of the hoverboards from the air. For the amount of fuel and stability these hoverboards contain, they are surprisingly light, no more than thirty pounds.
We all know what we need to do next.
We need to fly above the imperial palace, using the invisible force field around us as protection, and then unload as many explosives as possible upon the structure. I step onto the hoverboard, my legs at first unstable as I adjust to the sensation of floating through the air.
“This country will be ours soon.” Jake smiles, the glow in his eyes making the hairs on my body stand straight up as we all zip our bullet-proof suits up and prepare for combat.
“As long as we don’t die, I’ll be happy,” Ai says, leaning her body weight forward so that the hoverboard detects her momentum and glides through the air away from the edge of the roof. I follow her. However, a rush of blood swathes my head as the safety of the cement roof leaves and a thousand-foot drop to the rioting people is my only alternative to keeping my feet strapped tight into the hoverboard.
Okay, I’ll admit that my fear is more my internal phobia of heights speaking than reality. Even so, although my worry is a bit unfounded due to the force field, falling off the hoverboard and being shocked by its harsh electrical impulse will be a surefire way to let the crushing exhaustion pulling at the corners of my eyelids to finally win out.
“Once we destroy the imperial palace, how do we know this will all stop?” Jake yells, yet his voice is nothing more than a whisper by the time it gets to my ear. At this high altitude the harsh gusts of wind are constant, and the deafening roaring of the crowd below only intensifies with the sounds of terror all amalgamating into one.
Right as he asks the question, a bomb explodes inside of one of the skyscrapers on the opposite side of the imperial palace. The skyscraper is one of the many super-tall glass buildings on Billionaire’s Row, a place where the top government officials and business leaders closely aligned with the Party have their part-time and full-time residences. The bomb has enough firepower to cause the glass exterior of the building to shatter on the top twenty floors.
I watch in horror, the Chimera Cube unable to do anything fast enough to save the thousands of people within the blast radius. The millions of shards of glass cascade from the building in a single sheet and fall in the same way that hail would to the city streets. Except this hail is sharp and deadly, with pieces ranging from a few milliliters in size to some chunks of glass being as large as cars.
As everyone realizes what is happening, the clashing between the government officials, the loyalists, and the rebels halt as everyone runs for their life.
But the crowd is too large to react in time. With the massive swath of people taking up every inch of the Beijing streets, the millions of bodies are unable to make enough room for the ones caught in the middle of the hailstorm from hell to escape. The angry screams turn to cries of pure agony as thousands of people are coated in debris and shards of glass from the explosion.
Even from our altitude, the resulting blood from the glass tearing apart the faces of thousands is vivid enough to be one of many memories that will haunt my dreams for as long as I live. In the surrounding blocks the horde doesn’t even react, millions still pushing onward to try and storm the imperial palace that is being guarded by a fleet of tanks, thousands of imperial soldiers dressed in their bright red uniforms, and hundreds of thousands of loyalists who have set up camp in the buildings lining the streets throwing homemade bombs, furniture, and poison down onto the crowd below.
“We need to help these people.” I catch up to Jake and grab his arm so that he doesn’t smash into the force field as I stop my movements forward. The force field is programmed to automatically keep the Chimera Cube at its center with a set radius for how far the electrical force field extends in each direction around the cube. When I stare down at the anarchy, I know that this has no end in sight.
I have seen plenty of riots. I have seen tons of awful shit going down right in front of me.
But this is at an entirely different scale.
As I look further and further on the horizon, I see that there is no end to the amount of people here. There a
re literally tens of millions of people storming this city, a bloody civil war taking place in real time. Even as the warm, gentle rays of sunlight touch down on the earth, the conflict only heats up.
Each few minutes hundreds of more people are dying and thousands more are being injured in this brutal guerrilla warfare taking place in the middle of an urban jungle. But the Chimera Cube could save them all.
“No.” Jake grabs my arm. “Don’t even think about it. Going down there could risk you getting killed or other people finding out about the cube. If word spreads about this thing, forget about ever maintaining control of this country. The entire world will be after us.”
“That wouldn’t be any different from today.” I pull away from him, focusing on the thousands of people directly below us that are bleeding out, their desperate screams sounding above the explosions of the smoke grenades and gunshots being fired from the buildings into the crowd. “We can heal them in a few seconds and be right back up here.”
“I said no.” Jake grabs my arm again, this time his nails digging into the fabric of my black bullet-proof suit. “We have too much to risk by doing that. We can’t save every single person in this crowd. Our goal has to be to save this country for a start.”
“What has gotten into you?” I push his chest with both my hands, nearly knocking him off balance into the side of the force field. “There are goddam people dying down there. We can’t just let them suffer.”
I push down on the hover board, the engines immediately letting up to allow gravity to pull me downward. Upon my movements, the Chimera Cube, which is zipped in the backpack hanging off the front of my body, and the force field follow. The sharp scream that echoes inside the force field startles me at first, until I realize that I moved too quickly.
I glide to the right and catch Ai’s body before she smashes into the bottom of the force field, the momentum of her body knocking me to the side and sending us both flying haphazardly through the air.
She didn’t react fast enough to my movements, the electric force field zapping her to a point of pain that no human deserves to be in. I can’t see the agony on her face, but from her writhing body and sharp cries, I know that it got her good.
“Dude, what the hell?” Jake glides over to me as I regain control of myself. I am still holding on to Ai, her shaking body almost freeing itself from my grip on multiple occasions. If anyone can see us from the ground, we must look like a group of superheroes tripping on acid as we wildly fly through the air. “You can’t just always insist on keeping the cube to yourself and then do shit like this. You aren’t the fucking king of this place.” He slams into me, knocking me backward in the air. The strength of his push looks greatly exaggerated with how far I am forced backward. Jake pulls Ai in his direction so that she doesn’t collide with the invisible edge of the force field again.
She is finally regaining her composure, but the sound of her tears hasn’t gone away. That one zap of the force field woke her up to our reality. We may have just defeated Li Wang, but we are still at the bottom.
We have the biggest challenge yet ahead of us, and we are letting it tear us apart.
“Back up, we can’t fight in the air! Do you see what’s happening below!” The end of my bellow is punctuated by an explosion of fire from the center of the rebellion as an array of Molotov cocktails are thrown into the mosh pit. Two more skyscrapers are rocked with explosions, their glass raining down onto the streets and fatally wounding hundreds more.
The fervor of the riots is hitting a new pitch as the military forces surrounding the bottom of the hill of the imperial palace open fire into the crowd. I expect to hear the screams of people running away from the guns, but instead they are running straight into the fire.
Maybe Jake is right. We can’t save them. We have to make sure that this country still exists by the time the sun goes down.
Jake connects with the shocked expression in my eyes and meets me with a determined glare. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he states, his voice devoid of all emotion, speaking in the same robotic tone that my dad would when in the middle of a life-or-death situation. “So what if a million more die? Hundreds of millions more are dead, and it’s not worth our time trying to make sure one person survives. Our goal has to be to ensure that the entire country isn’t reduced to rubble.”
He continues, noticing that I am still hesitant. “We have to sacrifice the few to save the many. This is about the future. The future of everything.”
The visions of Zion and Hong Kong come back to me all at once. The beautiful perfection this technology is able to create and the cruel, dark reality of our world all clash in my mind in an overwhelming wave of emotion.
I know he’s right. As messed up and tragic as it is, we have to let the people with glass poking their eyeballs and severing their limbs die. It’s too late to save them.
“Fuck it,” I respond, the rush of adrenaline having a numbing effect on my body. In one deep breath I do my best to tune out all the distractions of the gunfire, the screaming people, and the explosions and focus on the challenge in front of me. I have to win. We have to win.
“Let’s destroy the Party for good.” Jake clenches his fists with my words, the both of us surging forward so that we hover above the palace. Ai follows right behind us as we center ourselves over the golden bell that sits atop the palace, the roof full of robots with machine guns and surrounded by patrolling drones.
As we enter their air space, the defense systems lock onto us. The clear view we have of the surrounding chaos is soon blocked by the storm of projectiles being fired in our direction. The explosives and bullets create a bubble of sparks around us as the force field causes each projectile to ricochet off it. Many of the missiles explode on contact with the wall of electricity, resulting in a deafening number of soundwaves to be released inside the force field.
For a brief moment my idea of going down into the crowd and helping the wounded sounds like a much more appealing option than being constantly bombarded by deadly weapons. The imperial forces protecting the palace notice us immediately once the defense systems kick into action, causing a row of the tanks to direct their fire towards us.
We are at the center of a ball of electricity being pounded by hundreds of deadly weapons with each passing second. And there is no end to this storm insight.
We can’t just bomb the imperial palace and expect the Party to fall that easily. The remaining officers and high-ranking officials in the military that remain in the palace won’t go down without a fight. And in order to win, we are going to have to take our firepower right to them.
“Let’s fly down onto the roof,” I scream as both Ai and Jake grab on to me to avoid the sparks flying off the sides of the force field. “Screw bombing this place. We have to take it over instead.”
“Are you freaking crazy? We can’t fly down into that mess!” Ai yells in my face, all of her words slurring into one as the pressure of the moment increases the speed of her speech by a factor of ten.
“We can do anything we want,” I say. “It’s the only way we are going to make this palace ours. It’s the only way to bring this—”
“I have a better plan,” Jake states, and tugs Ai and me upward.
I try to push him away, but his grip on me is too strong, his movements more forceful and determined than I knew he was capable of. He uses all the power in his hoverboard to have us rocket through the sky at a steep vertical angle. Within a few seconds we are out of range of the turrets on the roof and missile-firing drones. And in a few more seconds the entire skyline is thousands of feet below us, the gray, fluffy clouds lining the morning sky beneath us.
The tanks have lost sight of us, all of the projectiles fired in our direction not even close to hitting us due to the air resistance and wind.
We abruptly stop as Jake pulls me closer to him, the morning sun reflecting off the top of the clouds to bring a heavenly aura to the air, one that feels worlds away from the war ensuing o
n the city streets.
“Give me the cube,” Jake presses.
“Fuck off,” I say, pushing him away from me, but he keeps his hand gripped on my wrist, causing us both to awkwardly dance midair.
“Open that freaking bag so that I can destroy the Party for good.” His voice has a sinister quality to it, one that makes me feel uncomfortable in the worst way possible.
I put my finger on the scanner, the zipper unlocking at my touch. Although every part of my mind is screaming at me not to let him do it, that I shouldn’t trust him or anyone with this technology, I know that I can’t do this alone.
Soon this country will be ours.
And for as long as the cube is in our hands, this device will be ours too.
He hastily opens the bag and places his palm on the cube. “Destroy force field,” he says and double-taps the cube to ensure that the command is carried out permanently.
His next command is one that shakes me to my core. A command that he delivers so robotically that I question if he had this very moment planned out for years.
“One nuke.” He double-taps the cube and pulls me and Ai up and to the right, away from the area in which the bomb is programmed to form.
“What the—” I try to hit his hand from the cube and pull his body away, but my reaction isn’t fast enough to stop his lightning-quick reaction.
When I see the warhead form in the space beneath us, I know it’s too late. I’m too shocked to react, too confused to even know what to think. We all wait and hold our breath in the seconds that the nuke falls to the ground.
And then finally, the nuke connects with the palace. The clouds form a hazy film over the scene of destruction, but the explosion of light is just as frightening from thousands of feet up.
I don’t need anyone to tell me that the Party is dead.
But so are millions more people.
Chapter 3
“Is that your idea of sacrificing the few?” I scream as I try to catch up to him on my hoverboard. We are all flying upward in the sky, away from the mushroom cloud that is quickly forming above the destruction.
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