The war that I thought would never end is now over.
The millions of survivors outside of the blast radius will be exposed to so much radiation and in the middle of so much carnage that they will have no will to continue.
The rebellion in Beijing is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The Party is gone. The loyalists have been reduced to ash along with the skyscrapers they were camped out in.
But none of this was supposed to happen.
None of the millions massacred should be dead.
Jake killed them.
“What is your problem?” Jake says. His bullet-proof suit is still on, his eyes locked forward, refusing to even glance in my direction. Ai is gliding on her hoverboard through the air right next to me. She is so shocked that she is unable to even speak, random nonsensical words spilling out her mouth as the trauma of the explosion hits us.
We have flown over a mile away from the mushroom cloud, the core of it towering so high in the sky that the brown top of it likely touches space. The city of Beijing itself is impossible to see, what is left of the skyline covered in a layer of black ash.
From the slider at the bottom of our hoverboards, I notice that our fuel stores are entering a critical low point, and although it will be easy to make more hoverboards and continue on our journey, I have no idea where we are going.
All I know is that I’m following Jake and am battling between the possibility of outright killing him with the anger flowing through me or leaving him and his hoverboard stranded tens of thousands of feet in the sky with low fuel.
“Dude, unless I’m dreaming or something, you just nuked an entire city full of millions of people!” I yell from a few feet behind him, his body just out of my reach as we both glide forward at maximum speed.
“Yeah,” he says casually as if he has done nothing more than admit to stealing a dollar from the tip jar. “If I didn’t do that, do you know how long that would have lasted? Tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions would have died. This war could have lasted for years. No one was going to listen to us just for occupying the imperial palace. The way we get people to listen to us is with force, and after that we won’t have anyone challenge us. Not even foreign governments. The whole world needs to know that we can do the same thing to them if we want to.”
“You are fucking nuts!” I scream. I’ve never been so mad in my life yet so lost at the same time. I suddenly feel powerless, even with the Chimera Cube. The realization hits me that this entire time I have never had control over the Chimera Cube. It has control over me. It has forced the world’s most powerful people after me, it has forced me to make decisions that have millions of lives at stake, and has made me so co-dependent on it for my livelihood that if we were dating, I’d be rushed to a marriage counselor.
And now I’ve hit a brick wall.
This cube just killed millions.
This cube just destroyed the Party for good in a blink of an eye. This cube is the one thing that has kept me alive all these months, but the fear that it will be the one thing to end me in the future won’t leave my mind.
“I’m being smart,” Jake says. “We can use this cube to clean up the destruction in a few hours. We can make the city look like new in a matter of days and rebuild this entire country in a matter of weeks. The longer we let this civil war drag out and the longer we wait to show the people our power, the more destruction that would have occurred. This way was our one chance to end it cleanly. And we did it.”
“Guys, I can’t do this anymore.” Ai rips off the zipper coating her head to reveal her red face full of tears. “I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to help the rén. I just wanted to try and make a difference. I didn’t want any of this. And I felt like we were so far in that it was impossible to get out, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t!”
“You are a fucking monster!” I scream. I finally have caught up to Jake and I dig my nails into his back as I grab his neck. I zip down the fabric coating my own face so that he can see me screaming at him. I want him to see the tears in my eyes and feel the anger in my fingers that are gripped around his neck.
“I was just being smart.” Jake’s voice is still devoid of emotion, chills spiraling down my spine at the lack of tension in his muscles. “It’s time we actually start using that cube for useful things. We can never save everyone in the world, but we can make sure it’s a good place for as many people as possible.”
“Was this your plan all along?” I shake my head, the amount of vexation I am feeling unable to be expressed by my body that is shaking with tension. “Was this how you have wanted to take power over this country the entire time but were too afraid to tell me?”
“Why the fuck does that matter?” He pushes me away from him, the robotic nature to his tone shifting to one of pure rage. “It’s done with now! It’s done!”
A heavy silence follows his words.
I don’t have any comeback to him.
He is right.
It is done, and when I look down, the true magnitude of the devastation becomes clear. Even with the heavy layers of smoke infesting every inch of air space and blocking out the sunlight to make it feel like it is the middle of the winter, the rubble is visible. Thousands of buildings have been completely leveled, their foundations and all the people and items contained inside them reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash. As the distance from the blast radius increases, the devastation decreases, but only slightly. Most of the buildings within miles are significantly damaged, if not totally irreparable, and the millions of people that were on the streets within that radius are all dead too.
The fallout from this disaster will never leave this region. Even with the power of the Chimera Cube, all the lives that have been reduced to nothingness can’t be brought back from the dead. And something tells me that the large crater formed where the imperial palace once stood at the epicenter of the blast will be a permanent dent in the fabric of the universe.
Nothing can undo this pain.
Nothing can undo this tragedy.
Millions of innocent people just died in an instant. And millions more are bound to die in the coming hours from radiation sickness and suffocation from the rubble.
“I can’t believe—” Ai’s voice breaks off as she stares down at the aftermath of the blast. From a bird’s eye view, it is even worse than being on the ground. The smoke perforating for miles in all directions spreads in the sky like a malignant tumor, stealing all hope in the landscape and feasting off the destruction of the lives below.
The amount of rubble piled on top of each other doesn’t even remotely resemble a city, the remaining metropolis of Beijing looking more like the surface of an alien planet than a civilization on Earth.
“So, what’s your plan now?” I stare at Jake with my arms on my waist. He refuses to take his mask off, but I hope he is crying beneath it. I hope his tears never end.
Maybe I was wrong to ever trust Jake. Maybe I was wrong to ever let him back into my life after he tried to ruin my life the first time.
He’s the only person besides my mom who has ever truly been there for me. He’s the one brother that I never had. Yet, after this, I can’t help but think that he’s an evil person. That this world has made him so far disconnected from his emotions and that this cube has so far divorced his mind from reality that he has been permanently altered as a person.
“We go down there and fix the city and then build a new palace for ourselves,” he says, the confidence in his tone the thing that annoys me about it the most. The fact that he could be so sure that killing millions would pay off in the end and so sure that he is right is what makes me want to punch him in his face until his eyes turn blue and his mouth turns red.
“No. We can’t do that.” I shake my head, the hoverboard beeping beneath me, signaling that it is critically low on fuel. “It’s too late for that.”
“Are you kidding? We got this easily,” he says, crossin
g his arms. “There’s no one around to stop us from doing what we want.”
“I am,” I say, zipping up the backpack with the Chimera Cube inside it to cut off his access to it. “I am. And it’s too late for us to save this country. We already destroyed it. This city isn’t ours; the Party isn’t our power to have. It’s time we leave. You fucked this up, and we can’t ever go back.”
“What are you saying?” Jake questions, for the first time a bit of concern in his voice.
“I’m saying that if we go back down there, this will never end.” I zip up my bullet-proof suit around my head as I prepare to glide through the sky once again. “The United States military will be here to try and stop us, and probably not long after the Syndicate, along with an international force of people looking to take this cube from us. The longer this thing exists on the planet, the more destruction it will deal.” I pause, the first wave of smoke from the destruction encasing us. “I don’t care about all the good it may do. And I don’t give a shit that you killing millions upon millions of people may lead to more lives saved down the road. Having this thing exist is wrong. It will make our lives a living hell for eternity and I’m done with it.”
“You can’t do that.” Jake tries to grab my arm, but I glide out of his way, causing him to wobble in the air as the hoverboard erratically propels his off-balance body.
“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I say. “And it’s time we destroy this cube for good. It’s time we ensure no one else ever has this power again.”
“And what happens to us?” Ai asks.
“We try not to die.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.” Jake lunges forward again, this time successfully grabbing my wrist. The strength of his one hand alone is strong enough to cut off the circulation to my fingers.
“Sometimes there are no good answers.” The anger flees from my tone for the first time, as the tension in my body lowers a few levels with the influx of smoke into my lungs.
Knowing what I need to do next gives my mind a bit of clarity as I focus on the one task ahead. With my one mission becoming clear, the need for my brain to continue processing the horror beneath us wanes.
I have one last duty I need to do on this earth.
I must destroy the Chimera Cube.
“What makes you think you have the right to destroy that cube?” Jake says, his tight grip on me loosening up with the next wave of smoke, this one much thicker and darker than the previous haze.
“What makes you think we have the right to keep a technology like this? Do you see what you just did? You made it look easier than a simple command in a video game!” I hold back from punching him, instead opting to rip my arm away from his hand and glide forward.
“Where are you going?” Jake hurries to catch up to me as I try to rocket forward through the air to outpace the smoke buildup behind us.
“I’m going to destroy this thing.” I pause, my gut instinct to use the cube to destroy him first fading away. As angry as I am, and as much as he deserves to end up like the millions of dead bodies, I can’t live with myself if I kill the one person who has been through it all with me since day one. I’m too shocked to make a decision that I’ll never be able to reverse. “If you want to live, it’s best you follow me. Don’t make me second-guess not leaving your body to rot in the rubble.”
At my words, there is nothing but silence. I continue forward, away from the destruction as the fuel in my hoverboard slowly drains to zero.
I have no idea where I am headed. And I have no idea what to do once I get there.
But I do know one thing.
This cube needs to be out of my life. It needs to be out of the world. It’s the only way to make sure my father’s legacy isn’t the final chapter of humanity.
Chapter 4
This feels like the place it needs to happen.
The stillness to the water calms the tumultuous thoughts in my mind. I watch the dozens of swans swimming about with large necks and dark feathers bringing me to a Zen-like state.
In the woods, I feel at home. With the network of roots and tree stumps underneath my feet and the fresh, crisp air produced by the grove of flowering trees, I feel like the nuclear blast is worlds away.
In reality, the large dark cloud from the destruction is right on the horizon. The radiation has already perforated the air here, and with the coming days of acid rain, this lake will likely be devoid of life and turned into a radioactive cesspool.
But for now, there remains a tranquil beauty to the landscape that has a way of tricking me into thinking that everything is going to be okay.
I know it’s not.
It only takes a second of looking at the top of the forest behind me to see that the fallout from the destruction will cast a dark shadow over this city for months. The mushroom cloud is more defined than ever, the dust and smoke that has billowed miles high into the air just starting to disperse throughout the empty space. And in the wake of the disaster, there are no sirens and no helicopters flying into the city to carry in aid. There is nothing but silence.
“Did you seriously just do that?” I say to Jake, my mind still unable to comprehend how he so easily decided to kill so many millions. Only a moment ago I took off my hoverboard, my legs having an odd numbing sensation shoot through them as my feet touch the soft ground.
“Dude, we are not talking about this again.” Jake shakes his head and walks away from me. He picks a pink flower off one of the low-hanging branches of the trees that surround us on all sides.
“Look at me.” I grab his shoulders and spin him in my direction. Despite Jake having broader shoulders than me, my height and lean muscle allow me to move too quickly for him. “Look at me!” I scream, my voice echoing off the lake. “How could you do that? How could you do that?”
I rear my fist back to punch him in the face, but by the time I lunge forward, all the strength in my body is lost as I collapse to the floor. The shock from the visions of the nuclear blast and knowing that the millions of people on those streets are all dead is one that is driving me past the point of insanity. All the anger I feel for the Syndicate, for the world, and even for my dad for giving me this position and giving me this technology without ever asking me explodes out of me in an instant.
I scream, my bellow so loud that it nearly snaps my vocal cords. The tears soon follow, the madness descending on my mind so intense that I feel nothing but the waves of pain crashing over me, all the trauma that I have held back pouring forth in a single moment.
I feel Jake’s hand touch my back as I dig my face into the dirt, a sharp ringing noise in my ear as I flash back to all the horrors of the last few days. I think about the oil rig collapsing, the remnants of Hong Kong being stormed by giant humanoid versions of Li Wang, and the fire burning through the last of the Uyghur people.
The nuclear blast is the one thing that pushes me over the edge. It’s the one thing that was caused by the Chimera Cube and the one thing that I know my father and Isaac Savery are rolling over in their graves about as the technology they dedicated their entire lives to build was used to kill millions in an instant.
“It’s okay. It’s—”
“Don’t fucking touch me.” I hit his hand away and stand up, the rage returning as his voice pierces my ears. “Get the fuck away! Just go! I don’t ever wanna see you again! I don’t ever wanna hear your voice. Just leave, before I make you.”
“Are you kidding?” Jake snorts, holding his head high even though it deserves to be six feet in the ground. “You can’t make me leave. You can’t make me do anything. I just saved this country. I just saved millions of lives. It’s not my problem if you can’t see that.”
“Do I need to show you how many different ways I can kill you?” I put my hand on the backpack, my ego taking full control in the moment. The tears are gone; the only thing surfacing above all the pain is my desperate rage.
“Sam, give it up. Give it up!” Jake bellows. Ai is standing next t
o me, her eyes transfixed on the mushroom cloud and her body still frozen.
We have managed to stick together for months, letting nothing come between us and our mission. But now we are fractured. Everything is falling apart, and it’s too late for me to try and put it back together.
“If you want to destroy the cube, let’s do it,” Jake says, a smoothness to his expression. “I just did what I thought I had to do. What I thought no one else would have the courage for. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted this all to end. And I know you want the same thing. So, if it’s time for this to go, let’s make it happen.”
For the first time since the explosion, I see the familiar warmth in his eyes. As hard as it is for me to comprehend what just happened, and for as many hours that I will spend crying about this in the future, I understand where he is coming from.
My dad did the exact same thing.
He killed over fourteen million Americans in the Chimera Conspiracy, all because he thought this cube would save ten times more in the end. Jake thought the same thing.
But they are both wrong.
And from Ai’s devastated expression, she knows it too.
“Okay,” I say, my mind refocusing on the mission. There’s no telling how much time we have before the Syndicate or military come and, in the meantime, if we are going to destroy this cube, we have to do it now. “Let’s freaking do it.”
“Well, first off, let’s start with where the hell are we?” Jake asks, his eyes compulsively glancing to the sky, as if expecting the United States military to surprise-attack us in the middle of a nuclear disaster.
“This must be some sort of reservoir,” I say, totally talking out my ass, but my assumption seems right. After I commanded the Chimera Cube to produce us new hoverboards full of fuel, I searched the ground for any location that could be inconspicuous enough for us to dispose of the cube.
When I noticed the large lake only a few miles from the center of the city, and the green space of trees around it, I figured that this would be the perfect spot for us to eliminate the Chimera Cube permanently from Earth.
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