The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2

by Michael Evans

  It’s going to create an explosion.

  An explosion just like the one that destroyed everything inside Zion. And if we have to go down with it, if our last moments alive have to be the ones that we decide to destroy the cube, that’s okay.

  I’m not a hero. I’m the farthest thing from it. Heroes are selfless. Heroes rise to the challenge when no one else can and do things that others couldn’t dream of.

  I’m just a guy with a technology that has the power to destroy the world ten times over. And I’m just a guy who can’t keep living with the guilt of knowing that every minute more people die indirectly or directly because of this cube, I am allowing my father’s legacy to die with them—I’m allowing the Syndicate to win.

  And all I really am is a man who can’t keep losing to a world hell-bent on ripping everything away from me.

  I won’t let it take this cube.

  “How do you even destroy that thing?” Ai asks. Sweat is dripping down her face, the humidity pulling all the liquid out of her pores.

  “There’s a note in the back. It’s the one part of all the patents that we never got to read,” I say, zipping open the backpack, making sure to keep it closely guarded from Jake and Ai. “It must tell us how we destroy it in there.”

  “The note in the back is from James,” Jake says. “You think he would actually add a way to destroy his precious device?”

  “My dad wasn’t stupid,” I respond, tears coating my eyes as I think about my last moments with him. It wasn’t until everything was about to blow up that I realized how awesome of a man he was. That all the times he was tough on me, all the times he told me I need to do better, and that everything he sacrificed was all for a singular reason: to make the future of this world a better place. “He knew the risks this thing posed, and he had to have put a safeguard in for any of the predecessors of it that are in the same position that we are in today. One where we have nothing to do but inevitably cave in to the desires of the powerful forces after us, or make sure no one can ever have this cube.”

  “Yeah,” Jake says as he blankly stares at the apartment buildings on the other side of the reservoir. The reservoir itself is about a mile in area. In front of us, a densely populated suburb of Beijing is built along the water, while to the right the gently sloped peaks of the mountains outside Beijing are covered in the golden rays of sunshine. The wave of darkness from the smoke will soon settle over the landscape, this reservoir just outside of the pure destruction surrounding the epicenter of the blasts that flattened every living organism and structure.

  “Are you sure this is the answer?” Ai sits on the ground, the tips of her toes right at the water line. The air smells distinctly of burning rubber and bird poop, an interesting and unpleasant combination.

  “This is the only answer. I know it is, and I want you both to leave.” My voice is firm as I grip my hand on the stack of papers, preparing to pull out the hundreds of pages and flip to the very end where the handwritten note from my father lies. “You don’t deserve to see what happens. The Syndicate isn’t tracking either of you. The United States government won’t be after you guys. Just leave and go start over. Make a new life for yourself in this broken world and—”

  “Sam, what are you talking about?” Jake interrupts my rant, the words spilling out of me without any purpose. The anxiety, sadness, and guilt have coalesced to cause a downward spiral of thoughts in my mind.

  One where at the very bottom I see a darkness that has no end.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I destroy this cube.” I do my best to keep my composure, my insecurity of expressing emotion in front of others still present in what may be my final moments. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it. So I want to give you guys everything you need. Any weapons, any supplies, all the riches you could ever want so that you guys live a good life.”

  “I’m not leaving your side. Remember, blood brothers? We are in this thing together, and after all we have been through, I’m not just leaving you here.” The caring side to Jake is back, the part of him that stuck by me during my darkest moments after my mom’s death. My mind flashes back to the moment on the cliff years ago, Jake being the one person who saved me from making a mistake I could never go back from.

  If he weren’t in my life, I may very well have been dead years ago.

  “You think I have anywhere to go?” Ai exclaims. “I barely had an idea of what to do with myself before all of this. After this? I can’t picture going through all of this with anyone else. We started this together, and now we have to end it together too. We did everything we could.” She chokes on her words as tears stream down her face. “We did our best.”

  The tension and sadness of the moment brings the three of us together for one final hug. Feeling the warmth of both their bodies against mine brings me one last rush of endorphins.

  I have no idea what happens next.

  Destroying this cube could kill us all, and that would be the end of our story. And if we manage to survive after it is eliminated from the world, then we will have to find a way to stave off the Syndicate and US government or finally surrender to them.

  We may be making it easier for the Syndicate to take over the world by giving them an easy path to take charge amid the instability in China, and we may be screwing over the world in the future if this technology is gone.

  But the risk of having it in our hands is too big.

  The responsibility of having the weight of the world on our shoulders is slowly crushing us, and we have to get out before it’s too late.

  It’s time we destroy the cube.

  It’s time we destroy the one thing that my father worked his entire life for, and the one thing that has caused so much pain in all our lives and the world.

  I take the cube out of the backpack, the white exterior glowing at my touch. To hold the dense, smooth structure one last time in my hands is a bittersweet moment as I quietly say goodbye to the one thing that has brought me so close to death and back to life too many times to count.

  I shift the cube so that I can hold it in the palm of my right hand and pull out the patents from the bag with my left hand. One simple command is all it will take for this thing to self-destruct. Thousands of hours and millions of lives all down the drain in an instant.

  Except, when I prepare to flip to the final pages of the patent notes, the font so small that it almost needs a magnifying glass to be legible, I feel the cube pull away from me.

  Jake rips the cube out of my hands, a smile forming on his face as he finally has the cube solely in his grip.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I snap at him, and lunge forward, his joke not funny at all if he is trying to annoy me.

  Jake places his palm on the top of the cube, the exterior glowing white at his touch and lighting up the sinister glow in his eyes.

  “I’ve been waiting for this day for months.” His cold tone and grin that follows sends chills down my spine as my brain connects the dots of all the red flags that I ignored.

  I already know what his next line is going to be before he says it, and I don’t even try to fight him for the cube. He already is gripping it so tightly that he’ll be able to kill me before he gives it up.

  It’s too late.

  He opens his mouth again, and the sentence that comes out is one that I know he has been waiting to say since the day he was sentenced to prison.

  “I’ve been waiting for the day that I finally get to kill you.”

  Chapter 5

  I don’t care if he kills me.

  I’ll do anything to get that cube back. I lunge forward, preparing to deliver a powerful uppercut to his jaw that will knock the cube from his hands.

  Well, at least that’s what I pictured in my mind.

  In reality, my move turns out to be nothing like that. Right as I lean back, preparing to surge forward and rip his head off, I feel the sensation of a million pins and needles digging into my skin.

  I
scream as all the pain becomes concentrated on my upper right thigh, the intense wave of electricity that washes over me causing the muscles in my legs to uncontrollably contract. I fall to the ground, screaming as the agonizing sensation overcomes my body again, this time concentrated in my lower back.

  What the hell just happened?

  I dig my nails into the dirt, the torturous sensation only growing worse as whatever object caused the electric shocks to reverberate throughout my body digs deeper into my flesh. I writhe on the ground. The roots and rocks on the edge of the lake dig into my skin, lining my body with dozens of scrapes and bruises as my muscles continue to convulse.

  It’s impossible to mentally prepare oneself for this intense of a pain, but even as I lie on the ground, I am confused by what happened. Jake is still standing with the cube in his hand, his body unmoving from the moment that he took the cube from me. It would have been impossible for him to shoot something into my back.

  A moment later, it becomes clear exactly who the culprit is: the Syndicate of Truth.

  Right as the electrical impulses hijacking control of my motor neurons wane, I feel two hands grab underneath my armpits and force me to stand up. The man behind me is decked out in a bullet-proof vest with all-black attire that only makes the white mask he is wearing even creepier.

  The white mask is the same one the hundreds of people in the Syndicate wore during the induction ceremony on White’s Island. The cold metal that makes up the mask permanently forms a smile that leaves chills on my arms.

  “No!” Ai shouts as she is picked up by a person wearing the same creepy mask that the one holding me captive has on. I elbow the person behind me with both my arms and kick backward with my leg in an attempt to kick their groin area.

  They anticipate my movements and use my minimal stability to grab my leg and slam me down onto the ground. Unlike the brute force measure that most of the Syndicate operatives take when carrying out their tasks, this person seems a bit more sophisticated in their approach to fuck my life up.

  Jake laughs, the glow in his eyes and prominence to his jawline when he lets out his exaggerated laughter looking like a spitting image of Drew. His body language is so similar to Drew’s that it doesn’t seem real. This all feels like a terrible hallucination.

  The masked person behind me pulls my hands behind my back, trying to force my wrists into cuffs. I pull both my arms up and then erratically to the side to try and force myself free. I scream for help as I break free from his grip, hoping that there is someone nearby that will come to help us.

  My voice echoes off the lake. Even though there probably is someone out there who heard me, my voice is just one of the thousands screaming for help. No one is coming to save me.

  I have to get out of this alone.

  “This is your last day alive!” I dive forward, aiming to wipe out Jake’s legs and rip the Chimera Cube right from him. Once I have that in my hands, I can kill everyone here in a few moments.

  There is a certain drive that is unleashed inside me when I have an enemy in front of me that is more exhilarating than anything else. When I look into Jake’s eyes, the switch in my brain flips to turn off all my emotion and turn on my killer instinct to the highest degree.

  But it doesn’t matter.

  Right as my hands are within inches of grabbing his legs and forcing him to the ground, I feel a surge of electricity course through me. Now I know why he was smiling the entire time and refused to move. He commanded a force field to form around him.

  The shock of the force field puts any pain I felt before to shame. My heart speeds up with the flow of electrons through me, every part of my body feeling like it is being ignited. Then everything turns black.

  I can’t say exactly what happened in the moment I blacked out, but I can say that when my consciousness returns only a split second later, I am sprawled on the ground with two masked figures with guns right above me. This is everything I had feared playing right out in front of me. I always knew the Syndicate weren’t my friends. I always knew that one day they were going to turn on me.

  I was prepared for that.

  What I never thought was that Jake is the enemy too.

  By the time they pull my body off the ground, my muscles unresponsive to my brain’s commands to choke the life out of everyone around me, two aircrafts are hovering above the lake. Their exteriors are coated in black and have tinted windows, the sleek, narrow bodies of each aircraft identical.

  I know who’s likely inside each aircraft, watching from their leather seats and sipping expensive champagne. The council of the Syndicate. The same people that have set out to take over the world and wreck everything in their way, which my life happens to be one of the many things.

  “I’ll kill you!” I scream, saliva frothing out of my mouth as I regain a bit of control over my muscles. Although my internal balance is still out of whack, I am able to flail my arms and legs, doing everything I can to make the job as hard as possible for the two people who are tasked with restraining me.

  “You move again, and I’ll shoot you.” A masked figure standing a few feet to the side of me holds up a shotgun in my face, the barrel only inches from touching my lips. I debate flailing my body wildly again to attempt and break free, but something about the figure’s Russian accent sounds serious enough to scare me into calming down.

  Trying to escape won’t accomplish anything in the long run but ensuring that whatever torturous way the Syndicate decides to kill me is more prolonged. If I want the cube back, I can’t use my raw force to get it. There are at least a half dozen masked figures surrounding us in my field of view, with likely dozens more on backup.

  I have to outsmart them.

  If I don’t, my death will be the last thing they talk about in the new history books rewritten by the council (that somehow must be part of their grand plan).

  “I can’t believe it was this easy,” Jake says, laughing obnoxiously now that he finally has my attention. Ai and I are positioned only a few feet outside of the force field encasing his body. The smoke from the nuclear blast spreads to the sky above us, the dark, puffy, cloud-like structure blocking out all sunlight.

  An ominous film of darkness is cast over the lake, the speed at which the smoke rolls over the landscape sending chills down my spine.

  “You are a traitor. You’re a fucking liar,” I say, coughing as one of the figures puts me in a chokehold with the pressure of his grip concentrated on my Adam’s apple.

  “Keep it coming,” Jake says, stepping closer to me, the threat of the force field shocking me causing my heart rate to increase to a lethal level. “Throw every insult you have my way. Your words can’t even touch me.”

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I say between gritted teeth, the pain of the chokehold only increasing as the hold around my neck tightens. “I should have listened to Riva when she said I shouldn’t trust you. I should have left you in that jail until the day you died.”

  “Oh, all the what ifs.” He chuckles. “My friend, it is too late to think about rewriting the past. That is all behind us now. The future is the only thing left. And your future will be full of never-ending torture.” His voice crescendoes in volume during his last sentence, delivering each word in a mechanical fashion.

  “You are going to rot in hell. Rot in fucking hell until the universe boils over!” I scream, the end of my comeback accented with a sharp squeak as the final air I have left in my throat is forced out of me.

  “Your father is the only one who is doing that,” Jake says. “And soon you will be able to join him.”

  “He’s ten times a better man than you will ever be,” I croak, the words escaping me just in time before the stranglehold on my throat increases in intensity once again. The operative is a master at allowing enough air to flow into my lungs to keep my blood stream replenished with the bare minimum level of oxygen, while ensuring that the torture is prolonged as long as possible.

  �
�You have no idea who he really is, then. You have no idea the monster that James Bennet always was. He killed my father because he wanted the power, because he wanted to be the only one with this cube.” Jake holds the cube up, smiling as he cherishes the anger in my clenched fists and shaking body. “And then he brainwashed you into thinking that you could never share the cube with anyone. He destroyed my entire life. He killed my father, the man who would have made sure this cube did justice in the world decades before James killed him and forced my mom to flee to Paris, all because he wanted me to be incorporated into his family. It was a thinly veiled way to manipulate me for years into thinking that you are a better person than me at everything, by treating me like a secondary child in the house, and by always telling me that I needed to be more like you.

  “He even psychologically abused you too and allowed his own wife to be sacrificed along with fourteen million lives all because he believed that he was the only one who had the right to the power of this cube. Your father is a monster. He destroyed my entire family and kept secret from me everything about my life because from the very beginning he viewed me as a nuisance in his plan. He wanted to eliminate anyone related to Bradley, anyone who had a tie to this technology that was not his own blood. And it’s time he finally gets the same treatment. It’s time we take this cube away from him forever and actually use it to make this world a better place.”

  “They are feeding you fucking horseshit!” I erupt, having to hold myself back before the shotgun is fired at me and I collide with the force field. “You know that none of that’s true! You know that the Syndicate isn’t in it to help you or your family. They want to help themselves. Drew is an evil psychopath. The council wants to take over the world. At the end of the day, there is no place in their vision for you.”

  “Is that so?” Jake steps even closer. This time I can feel the electricity at the edge of the force field rubbing against me. “How come I’m the new ruler of China now?”